Publication:In The (mid)Night Forest

The Story
Have you ever walked through a forest and felt the eirrey sense that someone was casing you? Well I suppose living so close to The Midnight Forest makes it an occupational hazard. There's an edgy silence over the place. We know they're in there but we're not sure they know we're here.

I went out one evening to get some wood for the fire. The place where we kept the wood is only a little way into the forest so it should be safe but it still scares me. The forest is over grown, the trees are gnarled and twisted, the very eccense of the place itself is twisted.

A thick fog surrounded, enveloped, me chocking my nostrils with the smell of damp and creaking trees loomed out of it, resembling bandits or worse. My eyes were constantly alert for the slightest of movements or the vaguest of glows, my ears for any sounds which might be untoward and my noses for the distinct smell of rotten flesh.

That's probably how I ended up leaving the path. I only realized after I tripped over a bramble. I could have been lost for any amount of time as time is irrelevant in The Midnight Forest. All is eternal. Everything seemed to take on a more sinister aspect, a moving branch: a creeping monster, a tree trunk: a hunched figure, a audible sound: proof something was sneaking up on me and all the while by heart beat, begging me to run.

And so run I did, scrambling over under growth and ducking under branches protruded from trees until my arm became caught. At first I convinced myself it was a branch or brambles which had seized it then I looked down.

The man looked as though he had not seen civilization in years. His cloths were torn showing that he was coated with hair. I would have said that he was dead, his white rotting skin would usually have made me certain, except he was shaking everywhere except for his right arm with which he was clinging to me with an iron grip. But the most disturbing aspect was that, despite the beard and the mustache which had grown to the extent that they could not be distinguished, the mad grin. I did not know how I knew the expression he was wearing and yet he defiantly had one.

Despite all my efforts, the arm began to drag me towards him. He stopped when I could feel his rank panting breath against my cheek. He then began to speak as if he was telling me a joke and could not contain how funny he though it was. "Tell them" he chortled before his sentence was interrupted by a launching fit "Tell them they are back" and began to howl with laughter.