In The Woods
Short Story : In The Woods.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ( Horror Story)
By Prabir Rai Chaudhuri . All Copyright Reserved 2018
I come from a town isolated from civilization, deep in the mountains, surrounded by a large forest. I will not say the name for the safety of all its inhabitants. I believe that some things are better hidden. In this town there were many healers, witches and nahuales. We all knew who was who.
In my family everyone was a healer, I was learning, at 16 I was still young to open myself to the spirits. My grandfather was the main healer of the village, my grandmother and my father assisted him. My mother gave her soul as a sacrifice when I was born because my life was in danger, so now she is part of the spirit world.
Our house was small, a couple of unfinished rooms and one more that was suitable for enhancing healings. In this room there was a cot, a cupboard with herbs and preparations and a pyramid-shaped altar dedicated to the spirits that helped us with the healings. Each level was dedicated to a spirit, each one had a different potential.
Despite popular belief, herbal medicine is not enough to perform certain types of healing and healers resort to spiritual practices to enhance their healing power. We are born with a special gift and intuition for healing.
Despite being isolated from civilization, some went to the city as merchants, in this way we obtained basic supplies for the home, among other things. Personally, I asked for books to better learn some subjects, such as herbal medicine, despite that, the best place to learn was in the forest.
The village was a kind of spiritual portal. We ran the risk that, when invoking the spirits, something stronger and more dangerous would also enter. That is why everyone in the village carried amulets for protection, but not even that could protect us the day my father died.
It was well known that the forest was full of chanques, goblins, nahuales and an old witch who had been exiled from the town, that is why we always went during the day and when we entered we had to make a sacrifice so they would know that we did not want problems.
One afternoon, a neighbor's daughter became seriously ill and my grandfather did not have the necessary supplies to cure her, so my father and I went into the forest to look for plants and roots that would help heal the little girl. We took a chicken from my grandmother's yard and headed into the forest; we knew it was risky to go there at that hour, but we did not believe that the little girl would survive until the next day.
Before we left, my grandfather told my father that he could feel the girl's putrefaction. He didn't know why she was so sick, but he knew it was serious and we had to hurry.
We arrived at the forest, sacrificed the chicken and went in. We walked for about half an hour without finding anything, which was strange because we knew the forest and the location of the herbs very well; we didn't say anything and concentrated on our task, it was getting dark; after a while we found some herbs, only the root was missing.
Then we came across a cabin, it seemed very strange to us, we had never seen it before, it was a poor construction, as if it had not been finished; my father made a sign for me to move away from it and told me that he was going to enter, it took him a few minutes, meanwhile I was getting nervous with the wait, when he came out he told me that surely the exiled witch had lived there, since inside he had found animal skins, some tied dolls, others burned and other remains of spells; it was a cursed place.
We started to go back, not caring that we were missing the root, we were almost running, when we started to hear laughter around us, I could see a human figure between the trees, I stopped and told my father, he yelled at her saying that she couldn’t hurt us, since we had made the sacrifice when we entered, she told me that she was the witch, she was wearing a white robe and her hair was disheveled, while the laughter continued, she told us that she wouldn’t do anything to us, but that something else was on the way, then she crouched down, getting on all fours and as if she were an animal she started to walk quickly towards us, my father began to recite one of the protection rituals, I closed my eyes, it was creepy the way she moved, the laughter from around us didn’t stop; then the silence returned and I opened my eyes; the witch was gone.
My father and I looked at each other and without saying anything we started running as fast as we could towards the house, when I realized he had fallen behind, I could no longer see him, so I had to go back for him. I turned back, shouting at him, waiting for an answer, suddenly I felt like I was being pushed, I fell to the ground, the laughter was heard again.
Stunned, I stood up and continued yelling at my father. I didn't understand how he could have been so far away from me. I had been walking for a long time without finding him. That's when I saw him lying on the ground. He was unconscious. It seemed as if he was fighting something in his sleep. I tried to wake him up without success.
I could still hear the laughter. Then the atmosphere became much more tense and I knew that something else was going on; my grandfather was healing the girl and with that the portal of the spirits had been opened.
Being in the forest at that moment, with my father unconscious, was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me. I still didn't know the protection rituals, there was nothing I could do to get out of there. I still had my amulet and that was probably why the witch had only scared us.
Then my father woke up agitated, took my hand and without giving me any explanation told me that something was coming, that we had to get out of there as quickly as we could, we got up and started running again, suddenly everything began to fill with fog and we could see the sick girl in front of us, he told us that it was too late and we saw how something was dragging her deep into the fog.
My father told me that whatever had crossed over was very powerful, and had used her to get in. I felt fear take over me, we started running trying to get out of the fog, to hide, then laughter sounded in all directions.
We came to a very large hollow tree and my father told me to get in there. I went in and instead of going in with me, he gave me his amulet. He told me that this wasn't going to stop, that I had to do something. I begged him not to leave me alone. I told him that I was scared and started to cry. He told me that he believed in me and that he knew that one day I would be a great healer. Without further ado, I watched as he disappeared into the mist.
I stayed alone in the tree, crying, waiting for my father to come back, the laughter never stopped. I started to quietly sing a song that my grandfather used to sing to me when I was little, and I began to feel more and more calm.
Now I just had to wait for my father to return so we could go home. A few minutes later I heard a scream in the distance, a scream of pain, it was my father, suddenly the fog vanished and calm returned to the forest, I left the tree and ran in the same direction as my father, I searched for him for hours, but I couldn't find him, then I returned home and in tears I told my grandparents what had happened, my grandfather told me that he hadn't been able to save the girl and that he felt the moment when the spirit entered, that it was very powerful and that it came to look for souls to feed its power, he told me that the girl had been its means to enter, but who it really wanted was the witch of the forest, that we had only been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For days we went out with some neighbors to look for my father, but we found no trace of him. After that, my grandfather began to teach me the protection rituals. He told me that those entities would not have attacked us because we are not as valuable as the witch or the nahuales. We were just in the wrong place and that my father gave his soul to save me. It had been an accident, but I still had to learn them because nothing could assure us that it would not happen again.
Two months later, while we were collecting herbs and roots for the cures, my grandfather found my father's body.
I was torn apart by the pain when I saw the condition he was in. He was almost unrecognizable, but he had his clothes on. There was no doubt that it was him. The whole town gathered to bless the body, and before burying him, I placed the amulet in his hand.
Copyright © 2018 Prabir Rai Chaudhuri.
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