Shadows & Blood

  ''There are too much talks of ghosts, we ought to have find ways to fix our minivan and left all this for the daylight'', Whined Roberts McArthur.
'A hushed and anonymous voice broke in,
''Perhaps, that's where we have found ourselves, haunted by our own shadows and fears, we wander despairingly in a paradise of ghosts,..... or perhaps, that's what the ghosts are, craving for our blood, a barbarous vampire they are, similar to what we read in story books, it sucks blood to appease it's evil psyche, whimpered Stephanie Wells, one among the seven High school students that are left stranded in this thicket of a strange forest on their way back from an expedition to the rural country side, dressed in a school uniform of white short-sleeved blouse and a brown skirt.
''All that which we read in the book are just fictitious myths and never real; so stop being ghoulish please and spare us of all the underworld stories,
          I believe in no ghost and will never! shievering like a cat on a hot brick, Bill Daniels moan fearfully.
''We ought to find a way out of this vicious forest'', cried another voice.
The silence of the forest was more oppressive than the darkness that has given birth to the enormous grief which has enveloped the hearts of the students', echoing within tall trees that stands grining mildly are the squealing of vultures, then leaves and branches dancing slyly to the beats of the wind which suddenly gives way to the thunderstorms that afflicts the red earth with it's cold tears that descends fiercely upon the depraved forest, and across the dark thickets of this mysterious forest are shadow-like figures of men, deafening cries of birds, unnamed evils and mystical moaning of infants penetrating violently through the cold night.
Becoming much pronounced in this darkness was the ghostly footsteps and tall gloomy monstrous figures that keep surging ferociously towards the helpless packs of uniformed students, Quaking in their own boots,
    They clasped hands, prayed vaguely through their bated breath, for the red earth to come swallow them to sanctuary.
Unexpectedly, the forest became quite as if a cold water is poured upon a roaring flame, the cries squeaked nearer, Stephanie was jerked up to find herself in a pool of blood of her own tour mates that were leniently devoured by the packs of long-nails, darkened faces and one-eyed monstrous ghosts that were moving hastily out of grave-like shallow pit in the dark tangle and coming towards the flat tyre minivan she hid.
''Don't scream'', she assured herself
Just pray or run as fast as your leg will carry you, perhaps the ghosts can hear your heartbeats over the roaring cries and moaning of the tall dark figures, she thinks aloud dubiously.
Stephanie screamed and stumble over the dried logs and roots of trees as the wailings and cries that pursued her rose even higher.
She saw a tree being uprooted by just a tapping of the hand and the fireballs flapped at her right and there was the glitter of a long finger-nail that cuts her in her lower stomach, tearing off the beautifully sewed white blouse which has in a short period of time become a filthy rag soaked in blood and hanged to dry on a shoulder of a fleeing-frightened school girl.
'The vasteness of eternity was fiercely tormenting her as she gasps for breath,
Death was cunningly offering a hand as a bridge to sanctuary,
Piddling in her brown skirt, with a murky vision and staggering between the big trees that stood prosperously gazing thoughtlessly of her predicaments.
   Then she was down, rolling over and over in the cruel mud of the forest, crouching with arms up to wade off the assembly of vampires that stood over her frail body, yearning for her blood, the ghosts infront of her shifted and cries shivered outwards among them.
Trying to cry for mercy, she snarls and submitted herself to death, to flounce her battered soul........., all of a sudden, a ghost grabbed her around the neck, tensed for more terrors, looking up murkily at a wall clock hanged on the wall.
     The thunderous laughter of her classmates that echoes across the walls of the classroom,
Stephanie woke up to the sight of Mr. Denis, her mathematics teacher at Bilgade High school, yawning and stretching, she whispers remorsefully, ''I'm sorry sir!
Auspiciously! her ride through the paradise of ghosts was just a nightmare, the bell rang and all the students dash for the door at the other end of the classroom for breakfast.

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