The Haunted Woods

The Haunted Woods
(500 words)

Trudging through the woods in the dead of night wasn’t something that normal people would do.  But Sean wasn’t normal.

“Who-oo!  Who-oo!”

Sean stopped abruptly, startled.  He craned his neck and searched his surroundings in fear.  He couldn’t see a thing.

“Who-oo!  Who-oo!”  The hoot sounded again from the tree canopy above.

Just an owl, he reassured himself and continued on.

The axe was getting heavier with every step.  He swung it off his shoulder, attempted to swing it back up to the other shoulder when his cold bony fingers lost their grip.  The axe whirled into the bushes beside the path and landed with a dull thud. 

He knelt down and started to feel for the axe.  The moonless night didn’t help.  Damp earth soaked into the knees of his dingy overalls, but he didn’t feel it.  A gale of wind shook the leaves.  He froze.  Was that a voice?  It was someone whispering.  His hands trembled.  Was it a ghost?  Everyone knew that the woods were dangerous.  Horrible things lived here.

Sean strained to see in the darkness.  The wind rushed through the creaking tree limbs above him.  He pawed the ground, panicked.  He felt safer with his axe.  It protected him against the menacing woods.  When he found it, he jumped to his feet, brandishing the axe before him. 

The whispers in the woods seemed to come from all around him.  They told him strange things.

“No time … all over … you’re ours …”

A shiver of fear ran down his back.  The ghosts were coming.  They were secreted all around him in the dark, hungering for a victim.  He raced down the path in terror, tripping over rocks and slipping on leaves.  Bushes swayed in the gathering wind.  The storm’s force ripped through the treetops.  Twisted twigs and leaves fell down on him like skeletal spiders dropping from nefarious nests.  He slapped them away, whining hysterically.  The whining increased.  Was it coming from him, or from the ravenous wraiths that wanted him to stay in the forest forever? 

Sean plunged ahead into the darkness.  The torturing whispers grew louder.  He could make out nothing in the inky-blackness, and had to rely on his memory of the well-traveled path.  He bolted down the trail desperate to get out of the haunted forest.

As Sean leaped out of the line of trees at the end of the woods, he slid and fell into a puddle of foul-smelling water.  He lay in the mud, relieved that he had escaped.  With cold, decayed hands, he adjusted the pumpkin which sat on top of his shoulders where his head used to be. 

If there was anything he hated, it was ghosts.  They were scary.

The Pumpkin Man, the most horrible thing in the woods, set off through the fields to gather heads from peasants in a constant effort to find one that could replace his own.  He wanted to be able to see again.  He was afraid of the dark.