James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

The explosion shook the trees and stunned most of the people around them for a few heartbeats. No one was prepared for the impact of the grenade going off, even with the warning that Eddie called out. The tree closest to the impact spot had a small crater blown through the coarse bark and bled a thick red sap.

Christopher’s ears were ringing and he’d caught enough of the flare from the detonation to leave him blinking spots out of his eyes. Still, it had worked. There were much fewer of the monsters around them now; most had bolted as soon as the grenade was airborne and the few that hadn’t had a chance to get away were now bloodied confetti on the ground.

Barbara pointed and yelled. He could almost make out the words through the ringing in his ears, but he got the obvious gist of it: they had to go the way she pointed. His mom nodded her head and started running, pulling along the woman she’d already grabbed.

Something moved. Christopher didn’t know what it was and he didn’t care anymore. His nerves were shot. He swung the rifle around and aimed even as he pulled the trigger.

The rifle made a clicking noise that he barely even heard. “Aw, crap.” Just to make sure he was as screwed as he thought he was, Christopher pulled the trigger seven more times, with the exact same result each time.

“Oh, that’s… that’s not fair!” He looked at his mother, who was running hard, to see if she agreed. As she was currently dragging another woman behind her and, well, running like an intelligent person would in this situation, she had no words for him.

The big thing that came out of the woods made Christopher really wish that he had not just run out of bullets. It charged in his direction on two reptilian legs, snorting heavily as it ran his way, all four of its eyes looking directly at him.

Christopher stared long and hard as the monstrosity flapped vestigial wings and lowered its head coming for him, the long neck that held the head in place weaving slightly like a snake’s.

He pulled the trigger a few more times, just in case he’d been mistaken about having no ammunition left. He hadn’t.

As the thing moved closer still, picking up speed along the way, Christopher tossed the rifle into the air and called on old instincts to save his ass. The barrel of the weapon shifted by one hundred and fifty degrees, until it was almost pointing at him. His hands caught it in a death grip, leaving the heavier stock pointing at his impending doom. It had been a long time since he’d played Little League baseball, but some lessons were hard to forget. Christopher had always sucked at catching a baseball, and his pitching skills left a lot to be desired, but when it came to hitting, he was pretty damned good.

He cocked the rifle over his shoulder as he crouched. The monster opened its slobbering jaws wide and lunged forward, the neck first coiling and then releasing at high velocity.

Christopher got a home run for the first time in over two decades. The hardwood stock of the rifle cracked with a loud snapping noise, as did the skull of the thing that was trying to eat him. That did not stop the six-hundred-pound creature from slamming into him at high speed and knocking him completely off his feet. Christopher let out a loud yelp as the lizard-thing landed on top of him, its body shuddering and spasming. The beast’s skin was hot and dry, like having sun-baked stones set on him to pin him in place.

He pushed against the flesh and felt his palms stinging from the heat, his muscles quivering with exertion. The damn thing weighed too much! He couldn’t get out from under it.

Christopher grunted as the weight slowly increased, pushing him lower and lower, back into the thick loam of the forest floor. He tried to catch enough of a breath to call out for help, but the pressure kept increasing across his body and the thing was still suffering death throes.

More and more, it looked like he was going to meet his doom crushed under the thing that had been ready to eat him only a few seconds earlier.

Tommy felt like his heart was going to explode inside his chest. His sides ached, and it was almost impossible to catch a breath.

He’d lost his Aunt Jean, and then he’d lost everyone else around him. They were all gone and he was alone in the woods, with monsters moving between the trees and sniffing around for more people to eat.

He wanted his mommy.

He knew the other people were nearby, but he was too scared to scream. What if the monsters heard him first? There were a lot more monsters than there were people.

Tommy stopped running, trying to keep the sounds of his ragged breaths as soft as he could. His legs shook and his hands trembled. Just to make sure he didn’t fall over, he leaned against the rough bark of a black tree that had enough leaves to make everything under it seem as dark as bedtime.

For the first time in a very long while, the world around him was quiet, save for the pulse of his own beating heart. The air was sticky and just warm enough to keep him sweating.

Something moved on the other side of the tree. He didn’t hear it, but he felt it: a delicate tapping that vibrated through the heavy wood and made his back tingle where it touched the bark.

Tommy took a deep breath and let it out in a trembling gust. He didn’t know what was causing that vibration, but he knew it would be bad. Everything around him was bad.

“Aunt Jean?” His voice refused to go over a whisper, and maybe that was a good thing.

“Little boy? What are you doing all by yourself?” He looked over to the voice that came from his right and saw six people he’d spotted on the tram car earlier. They were all looking as frightened as he felt, but the one closest to him was a tall woman who was as big as his Uncle Perry, with dark red hair pulled into little pigtails on the sides of her head like puppy ears. She stared at him for a second while he tried to remember how to make his voice work, and then she came toward him, taking mincing steps, as if the ground beneath her feet might be thin ice over a very cold river.

“Come over to me, okay? My name is Becca and I won’t hurt you, but you need to get away from that tree.”

The people behind her—two more women and three men, most of them already injured and bloodied in the attacks from the bad things—took a step back. Tommy knew that if he turned around and looked at what was behind him, he’d start screaming and never stop. The looks on the faces in front of him said that whatever was there had to be worse than the Boogey Man himself.

Becca came a step closer, her skin as white as a glass of milk.

“Come on, hon. You come over to Becca, okay?” Her voice shook as she spoke and her hand rattled in the air.

Tommy’s heart beat faster than ever before, and he resisted the urge to look at the monster he knew was behind him. His daddy always said you should face your fears, but he thought Daddy was wrong this time. You only faced them when they couldn’t hurt you in real life and this, whatever it was, it could do more than hurt him.

Though the forest was gloomy and filled with shadows, the large shadow behind him blocked out all of the others, spreading over him like a black pool as the thing moved closer.

Tommy ran, pumping his short legs for all they were worth, and Becca crouched to pick him up. One of the men standing behind Becca aimed his rifle and pulled the trigger. One bullet left the weapon and whizzed past Tommy’s head. He never saw if the bullet hit its target. He closed his eyes instead, as Becca turned and the thing that had been behind the tree came into view for one split second as the wood and bark he’d leaned against splintered and broke with a sound like thunder.