Photo by Rajan Shendre on Unsplash
“Hey, you good, buddy?”
I snapped back to reality as my older brother, Daniel, tapped my shoulder. We stood at the edge of a coniferous forest close to the farmhouse. My older sister, Theresa, had already disappeared into the depths.
It hadn’t snowed in these parts of the country for over a decade. The towering trees were blanketed in powdery snow. We plodded through the cold terrain to come all the way up here from the farmhouse despite the frigid weather.
This would be the first time I played hide and seek here. My brother and sister were both a couple of years older than me and had explored every nook and cranny with our dad before he passed away three years ago.
It was a rite of passage to set out to the forest and play hide and seek. I always wanted to join them growing up, but when Dad passed away I couldn’t even look in the direction of the forest without shuddering. I thought I never would. But Danny told me to have courage – to face my fears, and so I did.
None of our relatives came to my dad’s funeral. Mum took care of everything on her own, from the paperwork to forking out for the headstone.
Danny and Mr Hunter, my dad’s best friend and partner, buried him in our garden, while Theresa took care of me and the livestock.
Mr Hunter and Dad were both deployed to Iraq back in 2003 and have been close friends ever since. They settled in the countryside after the war, in a modest settlement, and made a living through animal husbandry.
Mum couldn’t bid farewell to him. She slept through the funeral and didn’t come out until everything was over. She cried a lot that day. I was only nine years old back then, but I still recalled every single detail of that day as if it happened just yesterday.
My sister said something in the forest took him while they were playing hide and seek. I didn’t know if she said this to scare me or if she was being serious. Danny said she was lying, that Dad simply passed because his heart gave out and stopped.
It was in our genes, he said, Grandpa Joe bit the dust from a heart attack too. It was only a coincidence that he was playing hide and seek with them at the time. But something about the way Theresa said those things made me ill at ease. It didn’t feel like she lied. Not at all.
I lifted my gaze off my feet as my sister showed up at the wooded trail out of thin air, just a few steps away from the leafless blueberry bushes. Danny released his grip on my shoulder and asked why she returned so soon. There was no way I’d ever forget what she replied.
“You two won’t believe what I found! Hurry! Danny!”
“What’d you find?” Danny said as she veered off the trail and disappeared into the wilting clump of bushes. He was about to say something else when we both became rooted to the spot and looked ahead of us in the direction of the chilling scream.
My blood ran cold. Even if Danny tried hard not to lose his cool in front of me, I could tell that he was far from calm. His otherwise gentle eyes flickered, detached from reality, and unable to focus on anything.
“Tess? Stop messing around and get your ass over here! You’re scaring Mickey! Theresa? Tess!”
“Is… is she okay?”
Danny looked at me, hesitating, as the silence continued.
“I’ll go bring her back. You stay here, okay?”
“And if you don’t return?”
“Of course, I will, buddy! You know Tess! She’s probably just messing around. I’ll beat some sense into her, all right? You stay put!”
He was halfway down the wooded trail, inches from disappearing behind the dense bushes when a thought suddenly occurred to me.
“Hey, Danny! Daniel! Daniel—”
“What is it, buddy?”
“What if it becomes dark?”
“What’d you say?”
“DARK! What if it becomes DARK?”
“I can’t hear you! Just stay put and—”
He saw something. I couldn’t see what it was from this angle, but something beyond the clump of blueberry bushes caught his attention. Moreover, something about the way he moved became unnatural, as if he had just seen something he couldn’t make sense of.
He peeked at me one final time and then veered off the trail, venturing deeper into the forest in the same direction Theresa went. That was the last time I saw him. They both went missing. They still are today.
I waited there the entire night, just as Danny said I should. When Mum found me the next morning, Mr Hunter and two other farmers from our village were with her. Had they arrived a few hours later, I would’ve kicked it from hypothermia.
The deputies searched the entire vicinity, every nook and cranny, and left no stone unturned. But they found no trace of my brother and sister. And just like that, the two most important people in my life faded away under mysterious circumstances.
I relived that day every single night. Twenty long and harrowing years passed since then. I missed them. I still do. I named my firstborn after my brother.
There wasn’t a day when I did not think of them. They were always on my mind, somewhere hidden in the most secluded parts of my brain.
Something took them that day. The same thing that took Dad. There was no doubt in my mind that my sister told the truth. And the truth is, had I not hesitated and entered the forest that day, I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.
I’d wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night sometimes and not remember a thing. Then I’d hear Theresa’s voice calling me, begging for help, screaming her head off. She was in so much pain, in so much agony. Why was she in pain? Why…? I’d probably never know.
Then I’d see my brother, smiling, and reassuring me that there was nothing I could’ve done differently that fateful day. Behind him, I’d see a tall figure whose face was blanketed in shadows. I couldn’t if it was Dad or the thing that forever changed the course of my life. But I liked to think it was the former. It had to be.
My brother’s and sister’s disappearance, however, was far from an isolated incident. Seven people, most of them tourists in search of the supernatural, faded away too.
I heard from Mum who still lived there that the sheriff blocked up the entire forest to keep the ghostbusters at bay. While there were still some trespassers in search of adventure now and then, the incidents stopped dead.
I didn’t know what made that thing stop from hunting unsuspecting victims, but one thing was sure: I would never play hide and seek in the forest again. And if you’re reading this, you shouldn’t either – especially after sunset.
The End.
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