Happy Halloween!
Here's a nice, pleasant, only slightly unsettling ghost story for your reading enjoyment. Because that's how I roll.
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Kate was lost in the woods.
On Halloween night.
And her cell phone wasn’t getting any reception.
“I’m a moron,” she grumbled as she slumped against an enormous old tree, rubbing her arms to try to keep warm in the growing chill. Her long blonde hair blew in and out of her face in the night wind. While one side of the tree was tall and weighed down with golden leaves, the other was barren and scorched, as though it had been struck by lightning long ago and never fully recovered.
Taking a hayride through the infamous Sleepy Hollow with some other kids from her high school sounded like a fun idea on paper. What she forgot to account for was the “other kids” part. Kate had wanted to spend the evening enjoying the seasonal rapture of autumn in rural New York – with the added fun of a bit of spooky history - but what she got instead was an earful of gossip and awkward public displays of affection by dating couples. A few guys from the football team had come along, and were obnoxiously full of themselves as always.
And then the ghost stories started. Kate knew this was Halloween and all, but it turned out teenagers became sociopaths when telling ghost stories. It rapidly devolved into a competition to see who could come up with the most macabre tales, and it was as if everyone had simultaneously decided to show their darkest sides and revel in them.
At that point Kate couldn’t take it anymore. When the wagon slowed a bit to navigate a particularly bumpy patch, she slipped over the side and let it trundle on without her. She was pretty sure she could find the way back if she just returned the direction they had come from.
Well, that was half an hour ago and she hadn’t so much as seen a light from a building. And she was getting colder by the minute.
“So this is how I die,” she muttered. “Great. One more ghost to haunt Sleepy Hollow.”
Or she could at least keep moving. Kate pushed away from the old tree and forced her stiff legs to walk. Her cell phone’s light kept her from stumbling over rocks and roots as she scanned the wet ground ahead of her.
Suddenly something new showed up in the pale LED glow—a pair of hooves.
