INSIDE THE FOREST

CHAPTER 10

Hey Michael! Will you join us?

My friends intended to go spend the afternoon on the haunted hill, as they called it, and they wanted me to accompany them. I left them saying that I didn't have time, and that I should go help my mother with some shopping packages, which were surely very heavy. Now that I think about it, though, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to go hang out with them; he was in no hurry anyway, and that note was surely some kind of prank. However, the idea that if it were related to everything that was happening with that girl - Jane, I think her name was - did not leave me calm.

But where could there be pure and innocent souls? Could it be a place full of children? Sure. That must be it. And it is that, as much as it was spinning in my mind, the only thing I came to think about was children, and that led me to Pandora, a home for orphaned or needy children that was located on the outskirts of town, near the haunted hill, which definitely needed a name change.

What I do? If I call the police, they may think I did it, or maybe my parents are setting up a butcher shop at home; but, on the other hand, if I do nothing, I would no longer tolerate seeing that little boy hanging from the ceiling of what was not my house now, but rather a slaughterhouse. I decided to go to the bathroom, for a towel, to try to lower the body and put it on the floor. What a scare it will take me when, without warning, a strange, tall, dark silhouette came out of the door that led to the bathroom, and started toward me. It was huge, and she looked angry, which I don't have the slightest idea of ​​how she knew, if she could barely describe what she was seeing in those moments. I covered myself, because that thing fell on me, and I tried to suffocate; it was late, because he was holding me with those hands; those icy cold hands that made me feel more dead than alive. But, what I saw when I looked directly at his face was horrible; it was about me, or well, a more adult and tired version of me.

I tried to scream and struggle, but any attempt to escape only made that thing, well, hurt me more. I couldn't take it anymore, so I pulled out all my strength, and screamed as loud as I could, so much that even I was surprised. When I opened my eyes, I was already completely alone in the house. There was no trace of that thing, which is why I immediately went to the living room to see if the boy's body had also imagined it. No. He was still hanging from his shoulders, already bloodless, with a wide, rather cold look that did not express the slightest sign of life.

With more strength, and after recovering from such a supernatural attack, I decided to call the police. As they arrived, I had enough time to reflect and think about the meaning of such a mysterious and disturbing footnote to the body; Was that the thing the author of the note was referring to? Will I myself cause my death? Am I to blame for what happened to that child? The questions did not leave me alone, and I would have gone mad in that silence, if it had not been for the noise and the lights of the patrols approaching the cabin.

As soon as the child was taken away, I realized what time it was; It was almost midnight, and my parents showed no sign of life anywhere. I tried a thousand times to get my dad to answer that phone, but apparently he had it turned off. Something was wrong with this place, and I didn't like it at all.

I wanted to try my luck, and I was encouraged to go out in the middle of the night to see if I could find my way to the town to find my father, who surely had entertained himself with the extravagant bottles from some bars that, by this time, were due to be already full of drunk men to their fingertips, and they were not the most pleasant. I definitely had to go get my father out of there, if he was wandering around in those parts of town.

I was about to leave when, suddenly, someone knocked loudly on the front door. It was Michael, who, apart from bringing all his clothes full of mud and muck, had a wound near his heart. Apparently someone had stabbed him, and he hadn't taken the trouble to remove the knife from the wound. Damn bastard. I hurried up to the dining room table, and tried to pull the dazzling edge of the knife from his chest; all I could do was pass out. Not know what to do. I was alone, scared, with my parents who knows where, and now, with the body of a boy recently stabbed on top of my dining room. And that was not bad at all, compared to what was already approaching from the darkness of the forest. Something was coming towards us, with the intention of taking us into the forest.