Little Callie Winslow was walking home from school today. She was all alone because her best friend, Bitsy who she usually walked with was home sick. Being the good friend she is, Callie had Bitsy’s books with her so she could catch up on her homework. Added to hers, her book bag was very heavy for such a little girl.
When
Callie got to the path in the woods they took most days, she hesitated. Everyone always said don’t cut through there
alone and Callie never had. No one she
knew in her entire eight years of life ever had. It was a bright, sunny day, Indian summer and
Callie was tired. She’d been going the
long way around all week. But she and
Bitsy had walked through the woods together since they’d started school and
nothing ever happened. There was nothing
scary in the woods so just this once Callie decided she would do it. Who would ever know?
Little
Callie Winslow looked around to make sure no one was near. It would be just
like the older boys to sneak up behind her and try to scare her if they saw her
going into the woods alone. She saw no one so she stepped off the road and
started up the path. A few steps into
the woods the temperature dropped.
Callie thought it had to be the shade since there were still a few
leaves on the trees. That had to be why
it seemed suddenly darker too.
There
hadn’t been any breeze before but now the trees were chattering. Branches clicking, clacking, tapping as if in
warning, telling Callie to turn back before it’s too late. Or were they marking her progress, her
solitary state, her foolhardy venture?
Callie looked to her left, to her right and saw nothing. Everyone was just being silly, telling her
not to go into the woods alone. She
walked a little further before the rustling started. She didn’t see anything
but was sure it had to be the little creatures that always lived in the
woods. Bunnies, squirrels, chipmunks,
maybe even a skunk although it didn’t smell like a skunk was near.
She
kept going. Off to the side there was
movement, something scurrying in the underbrush. Callie thought long and hard and realized she
and Bitsy had never seen any of the critters she pictured in her mind. Still, it had to be one of them. It just had to be. A crow cawed
overhead. Those, she and Bitsy had
seen. They’d even talked to one when it
hadn’t flown away at their passing. The
crow today was louder so Callie looked up and froze. There was more than one and they all seemed
to be watching her. And they weren’t at
the top of the trees. No, today they
were lower, staring at her with their beady black eyes as they called out to
each other.
It
grew colder still and Callie began to be afraid. She hadn’t gone all that far so she decided
maybe she better go back only when she turned around the path was gone. Everything had shifted. Nothing looked familiar. She tried to run the way she’d been going but
stumbled. Things that way weren’t the
same either. What was happening to the
woods? The rustling was coming closer,
closer and the crows, oh the crows were making such a ruckus. They were so loud she couldn’t hear the
prayers that she’d begun to utter.
Little
Callie Winslow went into the woods today and never came out. She was never seen again. And when Bitsy’s books, homework assignments
tucked inside, were found at the beginning of the path, no one bothered to keep
looking for her. She would not be found
but she wasn’t forgotten. Oh no. As
those before, when some foolish soul went missing the next generation told
their children to remember, remember little Callie Winslow and do not go into
the woods alone.
