Winter Awakening

The Dare

A flurrying fireplace cracks and pops before you, your best crack at survival in these trying times. Somehow, you didn't pass on your friend's pretty stupid and very possible death sentence of a dare. Maybe your undertaking of an almost unrewarding task was merely proof that you're just as stupid as him. Either way, we'll see who's stupid tomorrow when someone is down three-hundred dollars, probably still the both of you. That's to say, if you're either alive tomorrow, or lucky enough to not have to gotten your fingers amputated when this is over.

No time to think of all that, especially when in the midst of a colonial ghost town, left so desolate with it's aura of mystique that not once in history had anyone bothered, or maybe, dared, to use these former communities for profit. What there was time for, however, was to keep the fire going, and to keep your sub-par insulated jacket from falling off of your shivering body. And it seemed soon it would be time to gather supplies to maintain the warming blaze of your lackluster fire, for your pile of birchwood sticks had dwindled quickly with the hours you had spent here. You looked from side to side before heaving yourself up and away from the slowly dying fire. The creaks that came with each step didn't help, keeping you always on edge, even when you stepped out into the snow storm.

Every space you looked to was occupied by old homes, maybe an expanse of a small snowy yard or two but for the most part, it was just you and whatever supposed horror still lurked these lands. Given a few minutes walking down the lone dirt path, you did eventually veer into the part of the little colony where the amount of houses began to dwindle, giving way to the trees that stood long before any of your forefathers ever set foot here. Not wanting to spend much time in the cold, and desiring a means of cover should any of the farfetched legends prove to be anything but, you stuck near the crumbling abodes and pulled small branches from the trees. By disregarding the occasional snap of a twig or two, really hoping it was just wildlife minding it's own business, you made an attempt to prevent the fearful part of your mind from overtaking, and propelling you away in a frenzy as if you had just reverted to a more primal stage. Such a task proved more difficult as the sun only descended lower with every passing minute.

It was when the sky was purple and every minute sound was, in your mind, a serial killing werewolf, that you really began to regret putting yourself here. At the time of your acceptance, you did not expect to be so on your toes, even after having heard possibly every ghost tale, urban legend and folk tale of these decrepit plots of unclaimed land. However it seemed that soon you would be on more than just your toes. Off to your left, backdropped by an army of trees veiled with the dark, stood an even darker shape, looking to be too rigid and narrow to be just another tree. With the snow gently falling, almost conveniently molding everything in your sight into a form that in some way blended with the snow, it was hard to discern just what the shape exactly was.

It's bottom slowly jutted out like a dress of sorts, the form above the bottom was thin, and looked to slowly taper atop it's moderate height. You could have sworn that shortening the distance between it and you would have allowed you to easily grab ahold and lift the thing, but every off putting detail would not compel you to do so. The shape was topped off with two white spots, those in turn loosely encapsulated by another vague shape that was near the same creamy white, that were too stationary to be just an illusion of the snow. To shorten, it just simply looked too...weird. You rubbed a finger over your little bundle of sticks, gauging how much firewood you had accumulated as you kept your gaze on these shapes of color, uncomfortably close to the shape of a humanoid.

Without enough wood in your arms to feed the fire through the night, you used your free hand to gather what little wood was left around you, hastily tossing them onto your pile as an unprovoked groan sounded out, even amongst the howling winter wind. When that sound failed to repel you, the next set of sounds did. It only took but two eeriely slow crunches of snow to subconsciously convince you, and it took the same amount of time for you to register that you had even begun running. Whether it was because your own heaving and stomping prevented you from hearing anything else, or because whatever that was had ceased it's stepping, you could not hear that sick, alien crunching anymore. The retreat came with it's own problems, for one you could vaguely remember where you had set up camp what with what was happening, secondly obstacles hidden beneath the snow tripped you on almost every step of the way, and lastly you were now convinced that the figure of the urban legend you'd heard was, at the very least, in the same woods you were in.