Why didn’t I listen?

It’s always one more minute, one more game. The Coopers left hours ago! I could have gone with them–should have. But the sun was so sweet, painting big scarlet oaks with amber and warmth. Those branches really seemed like they’d hold that sunshine forever…

I was wrong. I run faster.

Spare one glance to the trembling boughs above, fragile in the moonlight. Beneath me, shed foliage softens my steps. But the thud of my panicked heart sharpens. Which pine is it? Which left? My mind jumbles a little more with each night-soaked tree I pass. My chest tightens and for a moment, I squeeze my eyes shut. One blink, two. It feels like years–decades–that I’ve known this forest. And yet the trunks that surround me stare silently, stoic strangers. I clench my fear in both hands and force a breath and repeat the rule again and again…Don’t get bit, don’t get bit, don’t get–

The howl comes again. 

A deep, mournful call slinking up my sleeve and rattling my being and hurdling me forward through low hanging branches. I don’t even feel their sting as I pass. Terror grasps for my fragmented thoughts. I run faster–even as the path narrows, as these woods become something new.

Another howl.

Goosebumps claim my arms. I could swear it was close this time. 

But I’m closer. Up ahead, light melts through the space between two birches. It’s small, a yellow glow that grows bigger with each step. But it’s enough. I run faster. 

The clearing comes quickly: a small, thatched home shining and smiling in this lonesome, silver world. The light beaming through those clouded windows calls louder than the beast–if only I can make it–

–if only I’d seen the upturned roots rimming this glade. 

When the ground chews my palms, when ice blooms over my left leg, my vision fills with thickening shadow. The slow tread of four monstrous feet fills my ears, battling the strained pump of my pulse. I fight the urge to close my eyes once again as darkness ripples in the trees: shifting, slipping, growing. Waiting. Two molten, yellow eyes find my blind gaze. I could look away–should look away—

Calloused fingers grip my arm. 

Then I am hauled to my feet–then the world sways again or maybe that’s my quivering legs or maybe it’s the trees growing smaller and smaller, swallowing those yellow eyes whole. 

I am up the steps, engulfed in flickering light, when the flurry of voices begins. 

“We’ve been searching for hours!” Someone frantic. 

“When we heard that…that, thing–we thought…” The quieter voice doesn’t finish. Or maybe I stopped listening. Maybe I stopped seeing. This can’t be right.

The final call of the beast tears through the cracked, tightly closed door–rattling moon and candle glow alike. But my gaze remains still, frozen on the fine row of inhuman teeth marks that peek over my left boot like a rising sun. 

So much for the rules.