Lost in the Woods
"Hello?" Roland Jackson shouted. "Can anybody hear me? I need help!"
No one answered.
The hunter cursed himself silently as he glanced left then right. How had he gotten himself into this mess? How had he lost the rest of his group?
By his own admission, Roland didn't know the forest area outside Oscoda very well, and yet he had foolishly wandered off alone. Now, as the sun set against the distant horizon, he saw only the silhouettes of unfamiliar trees in every direction.
His heart began to race. His mind conjured images of bears and coyotes lurking in the shadows, waiting to attack. Roland gripped his shotgun more tightly, but it did little to calm his nerves. The thick forest that enveloped Roland seemed to draw closer, squeezing him. He felt as if he were being buried alive.
"I have to get out of here," the man said to himself. Then he shouted, "Help! Somebody help me!"
Roland darted through the forest, desperate to find an escape, but his luck failed him. Several long hours later, with the moon almost directly overhead, the exhausted hunter collapsed to the forest floor. He resigned himself to spending the night there, and he tried to make himself as comfortable as possible.
Suddenly-to Roland's surprise-a beautiful young women appeared from behind a nearby tree. She was tall and fit, like a runner. Her hair was long and brown, her eyes a deep green.
The woman gasped in apparent surprise upon spying the stranger, but she composed herself quickly. "What are you doing here?" she asked, a subtle giggle suggesting that she already knew.
Roland answered anyway. "i'm lost" He was tired and felt chilled to the core, but the woman's smile was a warm summer breeze.
"My name is Leona," she said. "My family owns a farm not far from here, so i know these woods pretty well. i'd be happy to show you to the road, if you'd like."
The hunter jumped to his feet, his energy restored-if only for a moment. "I'd be grateful. I thought i'd have to sleep out here tonight."
Leona led Roland away, and within an hour, they passed through a final stand of trees and out of the forest. The hunter was overwhelmed with relief to see a familiar road less than twenty feet away.
"Do you think you can find your way back from here?" Leona asked.
"The cabin we're staying in is right down the road, so i'll be fine. Thank you so much for your help." He reached out to shake Leona's hand.
She smiled at the hunter.
And then she vanished before his eyes.
Later, when Roland recounted the story to his hunting buddies, they didn't believe him. And when he called his wife to tell her, she didn't know what to say. However at a local bar the next night, Roland told his strange tale again.
The bartender rolled his head back and laughed . "It's not the first time I've heard that one," the bartender said. "Leona is well known around these parts."
Roland eyed the bartender suspiciously. "What do you mean by that?"
"It's true enough that Leona lived with her family on a farm near those woods. And it's true that she still wanders the forest, helping people who need it. But that wasn't Leona you saw. She died back in 1929 after a hunter mistook her for a deer. You met Leona's ghost."