5 Minute Reads - Anthology

The Girl in the Window by anonymous_pizza

by anonymous_pizza 

The sky was dark, only a small section of it visible through the trees thanks to a rather large campfire. It was Halloween weekend, the perfect time for five close friends to be alone in the woods with nothing but their sleeping bags and flashlights. A cabin sat in a small clearing behind them as they surrounded the fire. On the other side of the fire was a lake, large and perfectly still, not a single ripple running through it.

"Okay," Angela began, grabbing her flashlight. "I know it's probably lame, but we're in the middle of nowhere on Halloween. Who wants to tell stories?"

She stood up, waving the flashlight around in hopes that one of her four friends would grab it and start the night off right. She slowly walked around the fire, looking each one of her friends in the eye. "Come on, guys. Wasn't the whole point of coming out here to get drunk and scare the crap out of each other?"

Angela paused in front of Dylan, the quietest one in the group. He squinted at her through the glare of her flashlight before tilting his head back and taking a sip of his beer. When he set his can back on the ground, the air suddenly shifted and his eyes became dark.

"You ever here about the girl in the window?"

Angela and Chloe, the only girls surrounding the fire, huddled close, both excited and nervous about the story that was soon to begin. Ben, Chloe's boyfriend, jumped up to be by her side while Chase, the skeptic of the group, chuckled before chugging his beer. To him, a spooky story by a campfire was childish. There was no way some made up tale about ghosts or monsters could possibly scare him.

"Legend says," Dylan began, looking around into the darkness. "It happened right here. In these very woods."

Chase laughed, cutting through the eerie silence like a knife.

"Dude, can you not?" An already scared Angela looked at him through narrowed eyes. He lifted his eyebrows as he looked back at her.

"What, you actually think this is scary?" he laughed again before shaking his head and taking another sip.

"I do, actually. So shut it," Angela demanded, shooting him one last look before giving Dylan her undivided attention once again. Dylan sat very still as the wind began whistling quietly behind him.

"A man and his nine-year-old daughter lived in that cabin," he said,pointing to the dark house behind him; the house they were all going to be sleeping in once the night was over. "He was a drunk; always getting angry and punishing his daughter for this and that, whether it was her fault or not."

The fire cracked, making Chloe jump. Ben instinctively held her tighter to protect her.

"One night, the girl didn't finish her dinner. Her father was angry. He sent her outside in the middle of the night to collect dry sticks for a fire, then he locked the door and went upstairs to bed. And when he woke up a short time later to the sound of her tapping on the window, he went from angry to livid."

Dylan paused, looking into the eyes of his three scared friends on the other side of the fire before continuing.

"Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Her fingernails pounded against the glass in hopes of getting her father's attention. "Papa," she cried into the house. She was cold and tired and ready to apologize to her father, but his mind couldn't be changed."

Chase rolled his eyes before lying down on the log he was sitting on, his arms folded behind his head. Angela, Chloe and Ben stayed glued to Dylan's words, not paying any attention to Chase or his disinterest in the story.