The White Darkness

Chapter 1 Unrevised

Bakersville, Minnesota. I had heard strange happenings going on around here and, knowing my investigative, superstitious ass, came to investigate. There had been a few strange "animal attacks" and even a child missing, so I knew something was up in the area. I was going to get to the bottom of things, even if I was inexperienced.

I awoke in my hotel room on the first day of investigation. I was ready to go and quickly dressed in my skinny jeans and baseball-style shirt. My computer was loaded up with information about the area, even a few files from the dark-net about a strange campsite off of a major lake in the town. After briefly looking at my notes, I knew my first stop would be the forest.

The day was cold and misty as I waited for the bus to arrive. A few people gearing up for work groggily sat on a nearby bench as I stood looking at the sky. My wet black hair was crunchy in the chilly morning, threatening to freeze.

The bus arrived and sprayed us with a drizzle of water that had pooled in the row. Like normal, we all piled in and sat quietly as far from eachother as possible. I only noticed that others were busy on their phones because, for once, I wasn't on my phone. This place seemed so normal on the surface, at least the people did, but I was too busy looking for the abnormal. As we reached the main street in this small town, everyone but me got off the bus.

I relocated to the front of the bus. The bus driver asked me "where ya headed?"

"The forest."

"You mean by the, uh- you know."

"Yeah, that." He knew exactly what I was talking about, which wasn't surprising since it was just barely not national news. I wasn't satisfied with the news reports, though, and absolutely had to see it for myself.

He drove about five minutes out of town, barely stopping at his scheduled stops because he knew nobody would come after the work rush in such a small town. As he came to an all-too-sudden stop by a sketchy piece of forest, he said "Be careful out there. It's dangerous and a skinny kid like you could easily fall and hurt himself." I was hardly a kid in my own perspective, but I nodded in thanks to him and stepped off the bus.

The forest seemed normal enough, but the trees and fog were thick, limiting my view. As the bus drove off, I walked only a few feet before seeing with my own eyes what I had seen on the TV. Red blood was painted in an upside-down cross on each and every tree with only a single iron spike in the middle. The theories ranged from cult worship to student pranks to aliens.

I had never done this before, exploring the unexplained, but I had a lot of reading and conspiracy theories under my belt. Of course I didn't believe most of them and had my own theories and idea formulated from factual information, but I was always interested in the paranormal and the extraterrestrial. Since this was my first time and I was alone, I wasn't quite sure where to start off. I simply walked further into the woods.

Within a few minutes, I came upon a clearing. There was an old, rusted television set thrown on the ground against a tree and a mattress wire with pieces of shredded mattress still attached. The most prominent thing, though, was a large fairy circle right in the middle of the clearing. It was placed right in the path of the speckled sunlight, but it was dark as if the sun was avoiding it.

For those of you who don't know, a fairy circle is a perfect circle of mushrooms thought to be created by flying winged creature of myth known as Fairies or The Fae. From my research, the science seems to suggest that it's caused by nutrients originating from one plant spreading outward until it reaches a limit which in turn allows mushrooms to rapidly form in the nutrient ring. In European folklore, it's the site of fairy dances or witches spells, which can bring bad luck to anyone who enters it.