Shards of Moonlight || A Short-story Collection

A Smile - Hor

Prompt: "All it took was one smile, one smile for everything to go south that is. A chase through the dark woods, the only source of light coming from the moon."

A sudden chill sliced clean through the air.

A muggy end-of-summer day had wrapped up the small town in the middle of nowhere. As the loud light faded from the faded vermilion roofs and the shadows played tag on the overgrown lawns, some lone figures loomed the deserted streets. Most residents had left recently on summer vacation, some ages ago. One could claim this small town to be out-dated and bleeding out. The population looking for the American Dream in bigger cities, while leaving it behind: a lone remnant of a better time.

Not everyone had left. As a cool breeze made the leaves of the dense, nearby forest rustle in foreboding, a family of three: a father, mother, and a child of mere three years sat in their humble lawn. As no one could ever be seen entering the forest, the neglected fence bordering the border of oakwood and bushes, bent over its weight and carried more than one feisty hole. The parents in their lawn chairs, absorbed in deep conversation about the unnaturally cold breeze, a possible forebode of a storm, proceeded the assumption that their child played only a few steps away from them.

The three-year-old drove a small Hot-wheels car back and forth as it mimicked engine noises. This may be the reason, the parents did not pay too much attention to the boy and the sounds he emitted. A pair of red eyes appeared out of the darkness, casting light onto the hard-packed ground below. Being absorbed in his game, he eventually became aware of the owner of the eyes: a small electronic car. Hopelessly the wheels of the car turned just outside the lawn having caught on something below its belly. Closer and closer the little one inched to the fence, uttering curious sounds. He had found a gap in the fence, he crawled through. As he picked up the car, the wheels spun like possessed, so he let it fall to the ground again in surprise. It landed on all four and disappeared into the light-flecked darkness with the gurgling kid on its tail.

*****

- "Yo, too bad no one ain't here for summer break."

- "Hey, isn't that your lil' bro?"

Two semi-deep voices sounded from above the ground. Two teenage boys, seemingly not a day older than sixteen, had propped their heads up in their hands as they looked out over the uniform detached houses and dense line of trees covering up the mysteries that may lay within. As their conversation seemed to circuit around the same topics, the comment of the ordinary boy with short brown hair devoid of any particular style did not strike the attention of his companion. "Huh? Whaddaya mean?", he brushed his tousled black hair out of his eyes while sitting up. Unsuccessfully scanning the lawn of his parents' next door from the platform of the treehouse, he squinted his eyes.

"You trying to wind me up?", he huffed and raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"You can be such a blind dumbass sometimes, Toby," his friend pointed towards a small silhouette that soon after disappeared behind the thick undergrowth blocking their sight.
"There. I saw him at the tree line some moments ago." The dark-haired teenager Tobias swore while climbing down the wooden ladder in high-speed.

"Hurry up, before we lose him, John!", he called out to his slightly taller friend lingering at the top of the ladder.

"Wait, imma get my pocketknife just to be sure. It's the woods after all", John replied, while mumbling the last words to himself. Tobias, on the other hand, impatiently charged into the woods without looking back.

As John climbed down the steps of the treehouse, he turned around. Dissatisfied he noticed that Tobias had not waited around for him, yet he could make out twigs snapping above the cheerful singing of the birds. "Of course, he wouldn't wait," he muttered under his breath. Right before he could be on his way, he heard worried voices from the other side of the fence calling for the little boy. "Ms. Thomson?", he answered the calls while resting a palm on the loose wooden fence that towered him, "we saw Jeremy enter the woods. We will be back soon though, please do not worry yourselves too much." Just before they could answer, he turned on his feet entering the forest on what must have been an old worn, overgrown path.

Fishing the pocket knife from his back pocket, he fastened his strides to catch up to his friend while calling out to him. Suffocating silence answered his calls, even the birds' voices seemed to fade out the deeper the boy followed a nearly imperceptible line through the forest, at times even having to push overgrowing twigs out of the way until there was no way to follow anymore. With the density of the trees decreasing and the ground seemingly even, no clue could inform John which way to go. "Tobias! This isn't funny! I know you took the same path as me, where are you?", he screamed in frustration while kicking a tree stump in front of him. At least he knew his way back, John must have thought while turning around, unprepared for his first scare that day. Nothing marked the ground from the approximate way he came from with no path. A small adventure on an otherwise inconspicuous summer day turned on the boys. And they had no way back.

Breathing heavily and his hands shaking, John sat down on the stump he previously kicked while placing a hand on his chance in the apparent hope of calming himself. "Tobias! Jeremy!", he called out one more time as he stood up some minutes later. "If there is no answer, I will try to go back. There is no point getting lost too," he muttered to himself and as silence answered him another time, he moved out towards where he thought he came from with a chill settling in his bones. The sun had sure set by now and the shadows of the surrounding greenery were thickening. After a few steps, the boy pulled out his phone turning on his flashlight the highest possible. A few steps ahead a rustling nearly made the boy drop his belongings as he flinched. Hazily turning the light towards a couple of bushes to his left in the half-dark, he squinted his eyes and moved back several steps as he felt like something registered his every move. He jumped back in horror as a shadow seemed to move behind one of the bushes the furthest away. It could have just been him moving, he sure would have tried to calm himself down, but losing the ground underneath his feet he rolled down a hollow. As he feverishly tried to grab some roots on his way down, they slipped through his hand as his head made contact with a rock and the world went dark. The last thing he could have sworn to have heard seemed a vaguely familiar song, yet that could not have been possible. Or?

His head spinning, John blinked hard without actually seeing anything. The whole world turned every second, every day. But usually not as fast as it did in front of his eyes, groaning he lifted an arm that felt more than bruised and felt something wet and warm. Blood. How did he get here again? Oh yeah, the fall. He cursed himself under his breath for not paying attention to his surroundings more and as the picture he saw got clearer he made out multiple sounds at once. The first one: a child wailing. The second one: a heavy brute breathing. The birds still kept silent, which puzzled the boy. He should have listened to his instincts to run and hide, as his dizzy gaze fell on a patch, darker than the darkest shadows surrounding him. All the trees and bushes, the whole forest seemed to hold its breath as the beast with the close to white eyes opened its mouth to reveal its moonlit Boone-white canines, a savage smile.

As the boy ran for his life, a chuckle could at times be heard behind him until at some point the darkness swallowed both of them. An owl's hoots resounded in the gloomy nothingness, finding a companion in the helpless cries of a small child. The owl tilted its head at the small lump of cloth in the middle of roots and leaves. As the owl hopped closer, the wails died out. It tilted it's head again, waiting for another sound. After some time had passed, the owl lifted its wings and gracefully sailed towards the low branches of an oak. At least it would have. If it had not been for the looming predator, catching the owl midair that exclaimed sounds of fear. Fear for its life. No further sound was bound to disturb the peace of the woods until morning. The patch of deep woods stretching the length of multiple hundred miles, everything - soundless.

The case of the missing boys made it into national news. Search teams ran through the forest for weeks before they had to settle on having found two things: a smartphone that turned out to be John's and a full-automatic toy car. Curiously enough, the smartphone was found in the middle of the woods a few miles away from town to the south while the car was located a few hundred feet away to the north-east.

The search got called off as a whole search team of three disappeared without a trace. No one found them until today, ten years later.