Left, right, left, right, left-- bursting into the clearing, she took a deep breath, before spinning around to look back down the path she had just walked down, cautiously backing away from it so as not to alert anything that might me hiding there.

She was being silly, she knew her imagination was running amok, yet she could not help but to sink to the ground in relief. She had made it.

I'll just have a minute's break, she decided, to calm my nerves.

It was all okay, she had made it, she was safe. Nevertheless, the vegetation did not appear any less foreboding, and chills still ran down her spine when peering into the darkness that lay beyond it.

Mikayla suddenly became aware of a deafening silence that had befallen the woods, with her being able to hear nothing but her own breath and her own heartbeat as it tried to slow down. She could not ignore it-- the acute sense that there should be a rustling or a scuffling or at least a sigh of creaking branches, but no such susurration existed, only the harsh pant of her lungs.

Lowering her hood and swiping her hair behind her ear, she tilted her head and held her breath. There truly was no sound, not even the slight chatter of grasshoppers as they arose for the night. It was almost as if the woods had been paused, clutched in a frozen grip and left there to soundlessly whither away, or perhaps to be etiolated by the darkness which seemed to permeate the trees.

She reached out to touched the ground, hoping that it would still be warm from the sun that must have grazed it just a short time ago, that it would prove to her life still remained in this bleak landscape. It was deathly cold, a chill that seemed to jump towards her when she touched it, running up her arm and into her chest and reaching out in an attempt to grasp her heart-- her soul-- before she finally managed to pull away and clasp her hand to her chest.

The wind wafted the brown locks which covered the back of her neck, sending a chill down her body as she desperately tried to warm her hands. She could still hear nothing but silence, an ever-present cloud which hung over the woods-- a cloud of nothingness. Mikayla gulped a breath of dry air, which almost seemed as if it had been squeezed of any moisture that could cause the life to rot and shorten its death.

Her hair lifted again, causing her to shiver and attempt to pull her coat more tightly around her once more.

There was no warmth in these woods. No life. No moisture, no wind, just a void where it all should have existed.

She felt her thick tresses fall back down on her neck, covering it.

Something wasn't right, Mikayla knew. Nothing had been right this entire walk, but right then, at that very second, she knew that a very specific thing was wrong, although she did not know what. It was the sudden tensing of her muscles, the raising of her heartbeat again, the straightening of her back in an instinctual reaction which prepared her body of what was to come. Her fear had made the connection before she did, causing her eyes to widen and her breathing to quicken and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck to rise-

Her neck. Bolting up, she turned, her conscious thought finally linking everything together. Her hair had been lifted from the back of her neck, but there was no wind. Her hair had moved without wind.

There was nothing there.

Only the last fading rays of light peering over the tree tops, not quite managing to make their way into the clearing.

Even so, she still backed up, taking it slowly so she didn't reenter the woods, eyes scanning the scene in front of her for any movement, any suspicious shadows. Her feet padded back, one behind the other, until she thought she was nearing the edge of the clearing. Risking a glance behind her, she whipped her head around to find a tree just one meter away, and decided to carry on stepping back towards it, with the blind faith that it would protect her, although she knew it to be impossible.

Only one more step now, and her back would be against the tree where nothing could attack her from behind. It was a rather big tree, and she knew it would hide her from anything looking out of the woods into the clearing.

She stepped back.

Pressed herself against the tree.

And screamed.

Next update: Friday 13th April 2018