The Woods Behind the House

By Kris

The woods behind the house were pitch black. The trees hung down like reaching claws, like they longed to grab up little children such as Shaun Goodman and gobble them up with a mouth that really wasn't there, just in their imagination.

A crow was perched on the lower branch of a tree. It squawked and flew off with wings flapping like a sail in high winds on the sea. The bird startled Shaun; it felt like he leaped four feet into the air.

It wasn't nice out here. It was spooky.

And cold. He shivered.

Shaun was eight years old, and had been dared to camp in the woods behind his house, without a tent, but with a poor excuse for a blanket - a cleaning rag from his garage. It was a grimy thing with dirt and dust covering it.

Great dare, Shaun thought sarcastically. It's not even fun. Next time Timmy Hotshot Delvin wants to play dares, I'm gonna make him eat yesterday's garbage!

Shaun had only entered the beginnings of the woods now. As he went in, he felt like he was being wrapped in a black shroud, enveloped by it, sucked in, never to come out of it again.

Don't think about that kind of stuff, he warned himself. You'll freak out and run back to the house screaming, and everybody will call you a little wussbag. Sure they will. It'll be just like the time Terry Jackson was dared to stay in his garage (which he suspiciously thought was haunted), and he'd come out screaming and crying and saying he'd seen a ghost in there. And the whole group had teased him for the next whole week.

Just like Terry had thought his garage was haunted, Shaun thought these woods were haunted. Had thought so for quite some time.

Something rustled in the trees above him.

Oh no, he thought, please let it be the wind making the leaves do that.

Shaun stopped, looked up. Nothing there. Just the tree branches.

And a dangling arm.

He had lowered his eyes and now he shot them back up to the branches. No, there was nothing there.

Stupid imagination, Shaun thought, leave me alone.

Something rustled in the trees above him once more.

He looked straight back up. Still, nothing there.

Damn it, why did I ever have to play stupid dares?

Suddenly, Shaun wanted to be back in his house, under his warm blankets, with his mum and dad in the next room.

Mum and dad.

He wished that they were both out here with him, camping with him in their tent. But instead, they were inside the house back there, most likely asleep in their own warm bed, his dad snoring away. They thought he was over a friend's house, because he'd lied and told them that so he could do the dare. The other kids in the group did this often. They were never caught.

Shaun wished he would get caught. That maybe his mum would get up and look out the back window and see him walking into the woods.

No such luck.

Instead, the rustling again in the trees.

He looked up and was grabbed by a branch. The branches end had curved twigs - fingers- and he was being thrown into a giant gaping mouth in the tree's trunk, and being swallowed whole.

Never go into the woods alone.