As I returned home late on a bleak midwinter’s day, the strong wind howled through the tarnished branches of the ancient oaks beside me, scratching at the gloomy sky. All around me, the air tasted of dampness and rot, a scent that clung to the giant trees’ roots, while countless dry orange fallen leaves were spread all over the barely visible path, cracking loudly under my short, quick steps.
Suddenly, I caught sight of an abandoned small cottage on the border of a narrow icy lake. A strange feeling caught my wet warm breath as my gaze fixed on the chipped paint of the pale walls peeling to pieces and the broken windows on the top of the roof, standing in front of me like hollow eyes, staring back at me.
It was a cottage that seemed to have been swallowed by the forest, lost in the tangle of overgrown wild grass and thorny bushes. I stopped for a few seconds as I stood still, gazing at the front faded chestnut door, which hung open like a jaw, swallowing me into a revealing and enigmatic scene of darkness.
A spine-chilling heavy silence overshadowed the area, cut by the frantic drum of my heart hammering against my shivering chest. I had always heard about the mysterious cottage in the forest since I came with my parents to live in Leeds, five years ago, but I had never seen it.
Our neighbour, a gentle old lady, used to tell me hair-raising stories about how one of her best friends disappeared inside this abandoned cottage, and the police never found a single trace of her body until now. I remembered how at school, my English teacher, Miss Palmer, always suggested that we refer to the abandoned cottage in the forest when writing about ghosts and mysterious, terrifying creatures.
She said that the owner of the cottage, Mrs Williams, was burnt alive by her malicious husband in the late eighties before he hung himself near her corpse. Since then, a weird shadow has been spotted roaming inside the cottage, screaming in pain as if Mrs Williams was still trapped in the fire, screeching endlessly for help.
I used to hear a lot about this mystical cottage, but, sincerely, I never believed a word of it.
“I cannot write about it. That sounds too comic to me!” I chuckled as Miss Palmer stood next to my desk, staring at my empty paper. “I wish one day I can prove to you all that it is just gossip.”
“That is not comic,” she replied, still gazing with a stern regard. “You should not go there, never try to discover anything about it. Do you hear what I am saying? None of you must go there, under any circumstances. Right?”
However, dear Miss Palmer, here I was, in the middle of the wild dusky bush, standing alone, just a few steps away from discovering the mystery of this famous horrifying cottage.
I tried for a while to calm my racing short breaths as my mind whispered its siren words inside my little perplexed head: “What are you waiting for, eh? Just go in, step inside! That’s your chance to discover the secret of the cottage. Why not be the first one at school who reveals the gossip within?”
Deep inside me, I knew I shouldn’t. But, the curiosity was too strong to resist, and in a daze, I felt my legs, as if possessed, begin to move, carrying me towards the ominous entrance.
BAAAANG!!!
The door slammed violently behind me, leaving me alone, thrown in at the deep end, shivering from toe to head inside a daunting dim dingy corridor.
I WAS TRAPPED!!!
