It was the Summer of 2015. The month after I finished High School. I had no plans to go to college, no license, and no friends really. My relationship with my parents had deteriorated over the past few years and senior year ended horribly with everything going wrong so I guess I was looking for answers, purpose, or maybe just a means to an end…whatever that end may be. Anyhow that’s where this story starts with me alone in the woods located a few blocks from my house. No one really goes in there anymore aside from a few thugs that smoke and drink every now and again but they only go in at night in the summertime, when it’s cooler. Anyhows I was walking along an overgrown trail in the heat of mid day the dry sand making little clouds of dust as my boots hit the ground when I started to think about how high school had ended and thought about what I could have done differently. The thought had plagued my mind for weeks now, a heavy and constant ping of regret, sorrow, and rage. As I thought more and more about the events that transpired I realized I had now walked deeper into the woods where there was now nowhere to run should I need to. It was almost like the woods had swallowed me into a more sinister place.
There was thicket on either side of me and while it was sunny out the area around me was shady due to the trees hanging down from above. As I was walking I couldn’t help but feel something wasn’t right. I had been in the woods alone a thousand times before and never felt this way, something just wasn’t right. I sped up and gradually moved faster and faster untill I was almost at a jog looking at all around me waiting for an ambush from something that I just felt was sure to come. I emerged from the thicket path into a large sand filled clearing and took a look back the way I came…nothing.
I don’t knkw what was spooking me and then I started to consider maybe it was just the heat. I had been out there for about an hour with only a liter sized water bottle that I had only half drank but no it wasn’t that. I wasn’t thirsty at all, wasn’t even hot. I shook it off as just a wierd thing and decided I wouldn’t go back to that part of the woods again today and headed on through the clearing to the next thicket.
As I approached the next thicket I noticed something yellow on the ground. It was common for there to be litter in the woods but this case looked special…it was police tape, the kind they put at crime scenes that says “Do not cross” on it. It was only a single strand of it so I figured it must be junk but how did it get here? People dumped tires, bicycles, beer bottles, you name it back here…but never police tape.
I pressed on figuring I came this far and since my parents would just yell upon seeing me figured going home would do no good at the moment. I went into the next thicket past the police tape on the ground and everything seemed fine until I came to this one part of the woods. A small clearing full of tall grass on all sides with three paths forming an intersection, with that same feeling again…a feeling of dread. A feeling I was being stalked by an unseen predator. I stopped looked around and checked to see if I still had the knife in my pocket I carried for protection…it was there. I slowly walked down one of the paths checking every corner for signs of trouble and I know it sounds crazy but something was telling me I shouldn’t be there, that there was danger. As I walked along the path about to reach another clearing I heard voices. This was odd seeing as it was the hottest point of a Summer day and no one else is normally in the woods other than me. As I walked the voices got louder and I could see through the thicket two large men standing at the end of the path I was down, almost as if they were guarding it. I didn’t like it so I headed down to the intersection to take the path Imwas on earlier back to the large clearing when I heard more voices coming from there…at this point I was thinking “this is wierd I feel like I’m being watched the whole time and now people are blocking off paths and more are coming so I turned and ean the other way to the third path. Coming from this path I heard dogs and people saying “*inaudible* just called said he is heading our direction *inaudible*”. “S**t” I whispered to myself…boxed in. I didn’t know what the hell was going on but I ended up going into the thicket and fighting my way through branches and tangled vines to get out of there back to the large clearing.
Once I was at the clearing I headed out of the woods when suddenly like ghosts in a horror film a group of six to eight people emerged out of the trees about two hundered feet from me and one pointed at me and began shouting something. I looked at them and one yelled “Hey come here! We want to talk to you!” I froze…what could they want? Who are they? They aren’t cops, they have no uniform, why are there so many people in this woods today? As they go closer and formed a semicircle almost as if to try snd surround me I darted into more thicket and then through a path that lead to the road. I ran out into the street almost tripping over my own feet and then I slowed down and stopped…the people were searching the thicket for me. I ran to the nearest corner and walked down the stree there to stay out of view then I ran home in what must have been record time. I haven’t gone back to that woods since.
