The Specter of Middlecombe Woods

Hi everyone!

So, this is another Creative Writing story [I know I post a lot of them]. Our prompt was your worst nightmare, except it’s real. I wrote about a girl named April’s worst nightmare. I know the ending is kind of abrupt, but it would have been too long without that ending.

Thank you so much for reading my book and these stories, and I hope you like this new one! Please comment!

-S. P. Kumar

  

   Feet pounding against the hard, tight-packed ground, her breaths came in short, sharp pants. Her long, waist-length caramel colored hair whipping around her face, her almond shaped, dark brown eyes wide with fear. Her ripped white nightgown whipping around her knees. That was her world now. April didn’t care about the sharp stones tearing into the soles of her bare feet. She didn’t care about the sticks that jabbed their points, stripped of bark, into her shins. All she cared about was getting away.

Part of her still thought this was a nightmare. That soon she’d wake up.

Running was too rhythmic, the steady pounding of her feet creating a crazy cacophony, a mad harmony that rushed in time with the pounding of her pulse. She didn’t glance back. She couldn’t stand to look at it.

Images from the past few crazy hours flickered past her vision, tinged at the edges with red mist. She had just been settling into bed, when her house had … exploded. The force of the blast had thrown her to the ground. Summer, her older sister, her mother, and father had been right there, when the wall of fire was roaring up. Her father had pushed her and her sister.

“Run!” he roared. “RUN!”

“Mom!” she had screamed.

“Daddy!” her sister cried.

“Go! I love you!” yelled her Mom. “We’re coming. So they had ran, and she had seen her mother and father run, only to get claimed by the flames. And from this wall of destruction – the specter had risen.

She was a dark, fearsome being, composed of white smoke. She looked about April’s age, sixteen. Her long, perfectly straight hair had fanned out around her, the white tendrils snaking out around her, past her waist. Her long, fluttery dress, torn around the edges, fanned out, the long tendrils touching everything. As the long swathes of fabric touched things, they burst into flames. April screamed, because the worst thing was … if she had been drained of color, a white specter, the ghost could easily be … her.

“Run!” Summer yelled. “I’m right behind you, April, go!” April, hating herself, had run for her life. At the edge of Middlecombe woods, she had turned back, just in time to see the specter’s white, ghostly hands touch Summer, running for her life.

Summer had just … disappeared into thin air as the specter laughed, Summer’s straight waist-length blonde hair and bright blue eyes fading into nothing, her last scream carrying on the wind. April had screamed again, a long, drawn out scream.

Now there was only running. The specter’s voice echoed behind her, a mocking voice.

“Come, now, April, do you really wish to play games of hide and seek?” The specter’s voice echoed mockingly out of the trees. “You can run, April, but you can’t hide. I will always be here.”

“Who are you?” whispered April.

The specter laughed, cold, high and cruel. “I am the Specter of Middlecombe Woods, April. But when I lived, my name was Winter.”

“No,” gasped April, a stich in her side from running.

Winter was her mother’s older sister. When Winter had been sixteen and her Mom fourteen, there had been a terrible fire. The first fireman had ran out with Mom. Autumn. But the second fireman hadn’t been able to reach Winter. She had died in the fire.

“Autumn was always the perfect child,” said the specter, her voice thick with disgust. “I swore when I died I would haunt her, and kill her. It was her fault I died. She was always so perfect. So, of course, perfect Autumn gets saved and pretends to cry for her lost sister. She should have died that day! Not me! I was always better, always more beautiful, always smarter, always the best! But no one acknowledged that! Oh, no, they all loved Autumn. Ugly, stupid Autumn!”

“Please!” screamed April. “Please, that isn’t my fault! Please just leave me alone!”

“Oh, but I can’t!” cackled the specter. “Once you are dead, April, Autumn’s youngest daughter, my revenge will finally be complete!”

“Please,” begged April. Every breath made her lungs feel like they were on fire, her thighs ached. Then, the specter was right behind her, the long, perfectly straight strands of ghostly hair swirling around her as her scary white eyes bored into April’s face.

“Goodbye, April!” she snarled. And then her white fingertips touched April’s face. It was icy cold, as if her entire body was made of ice or snow, and she was falling, falling, falling through the earth, blackness enveloping her, and April was in her mother’s arms again.