The boy looked into the dark woods, the trees cloaked in the heavy darkness, an eerie silence ensuing from its dinge. He knew he was forbidden to enter, but his parents would not know. The boy debated whether he should disobey his parents or behave like the golden boy they expected him to be. The sky was turning into a blanket of darkness and he was already far from home.
Making up his mind, the boy made a few hesitant steps toward the direction of the woods.
Even this far away from them, the sound of his parents’ voices arguing was like a constant ringing in his mind. That was all they did: argue and work, work and argue. That was entirety of his life, and he could not get away from it.
Jonathan remembered the time when his mother had finally stopped and paid attention to him, but only to tell him about the tale of a greedy man. This, however, was when he was younger. These tales were not told to him anymore. He yearned for his mother’s affection once again; to be able to feel her arms around him, hearing her voice as she clearly spoke every line of the story in his ear.
A cool autumn wind blew caressing his face, giving him a sense of peace. It gave him the confidence he needed to walk deeper into the woods. The walk was not much; it was mostly dark and gloomy, but Jonathan was not steered away. His stride was bold, and it stayed that way until he reached a clearing.
In that clearing, there rested a lake.
The boy was awed by the way the water of the lake twinkled dark blue in the moonlight, rippling the lunar image reflected within it as the wind blew across the surface.
He took a seat on the edge of a big rock a few feet away from the lake. Taking deep breaths, he admired the beautiful lake. The sight of such allure made Jonathan wistfully wish he was able to escape his stressful life.
He began to toss rocks he found by his feet into the lake absently.
One.
Two.
The rock made two skips before splashing audibly in the water, causing circular ripples to spiral out from the area of broken surface.
How did the actors in movies skip the rock up to six times? Jonathan wondered. Two was his best, at most.
“You have to toss flat rocks to be able to make it skip a few times.” A voice answered his mental question.
Quickly jolting up and spinning around, he found himself facing a boy around his age. The newcomer stood in front of the lake, a few feet away from the rock Jonathan had been sitting on. He had hair so dark, it was almost black. His skin was oddly pale, most likely suggesting he did not see much sunlight.
What confused Jonathan, however, was the fact that the stranger had no shoes on his feet, and his shirt and pants were completely torn, with black marking streaking across them. It looked almost as if most of his clothing had been burnt off.
“My name is William.” The stranger introduced himself. “What is your name?” He asked.
With hesitation, Jonathan answered, “My name is Jonathan.”
“Can I ask you a question, Jonathan?” William asked, a small smile adorning his face.
“I guess so; why not?” Jonathan answered.
“What are you doing out here this late at night?” He questioned.
Jonathan just shrugged. “I needed a place to think and this place just seemed to just call to me.” He answered as honestly as he could.
“Problems at home?” William guessed. He had not once moved from his spot in front of the lake.
Jonathan didn’t know why, but he truthfully answered the stranger, and in the process ended up telling him everything about his parents always working, the financial arguments they always had.
He felt the water spilling out of the dam he had created around himself.
“What kind of financial problems are they always arguing about?” William asked, tilting his head in confusion. He seemed genuinely curious.
“They always yell at each other for not paying certain bills. This morning, Mom yelled at Father for making us get months behind on the car bill, which he was supposed to be in charge of paying. We don’t have a car, anymore.” Jonathan explained.
“Oh, I see. But aren’t the shoes you’re wearing a bit expensive? They look brand new.” William observed, raising an eyebrow.
“That’s because they are. I demanded to my mother to get me these specific shoes.” Jonathan beamed.
“You just said that your parents are having financial issues.” William countered slowly, enunciating each word.
“Yes, but I wanted these shoes.” Jonathan simply answered.
William’s face turned stone cold. “Would you like to hear a legend about this lake, Jonathan?”
“Sure.” Jonathan answered shrugging his shoulders, not really interested.
“It is said that a boy, around my age, and his family were camping in these woods not too long ago. Right before going to bed one night, the boy and his parents had a very big argument about leaving. The boy wanted to leave ‘these boring woods’, as he put it, but his parents told him they couldn’t, for they were tired from the long drive they took to get here. The boy left the trailer. The slam the door made when stormed out echoed throughout the trees. On his way out, he shouted that he hated them. If he had known, though, that the trailer was leaking gas from the engine and that the gas would cause the trailer to go up in flames, he wouldn’t have said what he had did.”
Jonathan’s ears perked up and all his attention was suddenly focused on the stranger’s story.
“When he returned from his fuming, he made it just in time to be blasted into a tree by the explosion made by the ruptured engine. The boy slowly died while listening to the sound of his parents’ agonized screams. The only thing crossing his mind, right before his death, was how his parents would die thinking he truly hated them. It is said that the boy’s restless ghost still haunts this place, waiting for a perfect victim.”
Jonathan frowned. “What do you mean by ‘a perfect victim’?”
William suddenly grinned. Jonathan didn’t understand why, but, to him, it looked sardonic. “To switch places with him, of course. And, today, it seems he has found his perfect victim.”
Jonathan’s shoulders tensed up and he shook his head in confusion. And also fear. “What do you mean the boy has found his perfect victim? What do you mean switching places? You said it was a legend; it’s all made up. You don’t really believe all that, do you?”
William laughed. Along with his laugh came a cold swift wind, one that almost blew Jonathan backwards. He stumbled. The laugh was an unpleasant sound, sending shivers down his spine and causing the hairs to rise up on his arms. It was a sound he thought a human being was incapable of making.
“Oh, Jonathan, I pity you. You have no absolutely no idea what you’re about to lose. Would you like to know what you are about to lose?” William asked, cheerily.
Jonathan didn’t want to wait for him to continue. He quickly turned around and dashed back into the trees. His sprint was wild and fast, pushed vigorously by the adrenaline of fear.Pushing branches away, he frantically searched for a familiar tree or bush; anything that would signal a way out.
He desperately pushed them aside trying to escape. Branches clouded his vision; the sharp arms of the trees scraped against his cheeks and arms. It was impossible, with the wind so brisk, not to get hit with tree limbs and leaves. It seemed like the branches were mending together, making some sort of wall in front of him. A wall he couldn’t break through.
But still he continued to move forward. Up ahead he could see the dim light of a street lamp. It was a dim light that gave him hope; hope that he would be able to get out. He pushed himself a bit harder. His feet ached from exhaustion; his sides burned from running. He was so close, yet so far.
He forced his feet to continue, pumping one foot after the other, the distance decreasing and his hopes rising. A sudden wind rattled the trees. The branches seemed to stoop low, making it impossible to run. The mist clouding the air started to move downward towards the ground, becoming thicker as it did. Just as the Jonathan stepped over a root, the temperature dropped to a bone-chilling degree.
A loud crack sounded in the air, causing Jonathan to breathlessly halt his run.
He slowly turned his head to look at his surroundings. He stood there for almost two minutes, expecting an animal of some sort to pop out. When no such thing happened, he continued forward, a little more wary now. Instead of running, however, he decided to walk. He did not want to trip over a root and risk injuring himself while he couldn't exactly see the ground clearly. He also did not want to make too much noise, his pants and gasps from running already too loud in the eerie woods.
There was another loud crack, frightening Jonathan in a way he never thought possible.
An abrupt wind swept him off his feet, and he tripped forward. His head hit the ground, making his vision turn black for a small, split second. He groaned and tried to hold his head, but any sudden movements made him gasp for air, and gasping for air made his ribs hurt.
Jonathan was in so much pain, more pain than he’d ever experienced before. His whole body down from the waist was in excruciating agony. Just a wiggle of his toe made him claw at his eyes, his fingernails to digging into the skin of his face. He lay still for a few minutes, trying to control his breathing. Once he was able to control it, he opened his eyes slowly.
The first thing he noticed was leaves. Tons of leaves were waving back at him, swinging from their twigs back and forth. His eyes moved downward from the tip of the leaf to the stem. The thin twisted branches gradually becoming thicker as his eyes continued traveling down. A thick branch broke off the tree making it fall on top of him. Taking a deep, slow breath, he tried to wiggle out from under it, but the only result was pain. His eyes instantly snapped shut, and a scream escaped his parted lips. The hot pain sent shock waves throughout his whole body. He immediately stopped wiggling. Tears leaked from under his eyelids.
The only part of his body that seemed to be able to move was his arms. Slowly, he moved them over his head, grinding his teeth together in pain; a pain so fierce, it was like holding your hand over a flame of fire, but never being able to move it away.
Sweat started to dot along his forehead. His muscles trembled as he tried to move the heavy branch away from his body. Just as he was about to give up, the heavy branch was lifted from his body. Light laughter filled the air.
“Foolish Jonathan. It’s rude to turn your back when someone is speaking. I won’t mind it, though. These are your final hours, after all. ” William smiled happily, like a child who had just received a mountain of candy from a single house on Halloween. “If you haven’t yet figured it out, I am the boy in the legend. My parents and I died in these woods six years ago. Since then, I have watched every teen that has walked through these woods, carefully determining if they were the perfect victim or not.”
“What exactly is your perfect victim?” Jonathan coughed up, clutching his stomach.
“The perfect victim is someone who doesn’t value what they have, much like you. Your parents work hard trying to pay bills, to keep a roof over your head, to feed you. And how do you repay them? By acting selfish and asking for unnecessary objects, such as those shoes on your feet. Especially when you know how difficult of a time your parents going through.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Jonathan whimpered.
“Even now you act selfish, only thinking of yourself, not even having an ounce of guilt. For that, I will not tell you.”
Jonathan let out a blood-curling scream of pain. His scream was long and loud, his raw voice full of agony.The hot pain he suddenly felt sent shock waves throughout his whole body. He began to claw at his throat, his nails cutting into his skin deep enough to draw out blood. A purple shade began to dominate his face, as if someone was cutting off his access to oxygen.
It is not known for sure what exactly happened to Jonathan that day, but if you stand at the edge of these woods, and strain you ears hard enough, you can just make out the faint sound of his loud, agonized scream.