One day, Amelia was walking through the forest at night when she heard a strange sound. It was so unusual, the sound, that Amelia, who had been walking with her earplugs in and had left her bedroom during the night, actually dropped her mobile.
She also placed her hands over her cheeks as her eyes opened wide.
Now she listened.
What was that sound?
Had that been the howl of some kind of ... werewolf sounding amongst the trees around her?
Amelia, who, earlier that night had just felt like wandering out for a walk because it was so boring at home, shuddered. She turned and ran back off towards home, leaving that mobile right there on the floor of the woods.
The problem was, however, the following day Amelia just couldn’t stop thinking about that strange noise she had heard the night before.
At school that day Amelia couldn’t concentrate on her math, for all she thought about were those yapping barks and long howls, and how they had turned her hairs on edge.
Now, as Amelia listened to Mrs Ryan talk about spelling, she decided that after she picked up her mobile this afternoon, she’d sneak back out again come night to see what had been making all those sounds.
And tonight, the moon would be even fuller than last night!
*
That night she waited in her bedroom until she could hear her parents snoring from the next room, then snuck out her window, and made her way to the forest again.
She was walking along the streets of her suburb by herself.
She had made it out of the house okay. Her parents hadn’t run out after her, calling for her to come back. Hopefully, if all went well, they’d remain sleeping and inside their bedroom until the morning, when Amelia would be sound asleep in her bed after her big adventure tonight.
She now reached the edge of the woods.
The night was dark, despite that blazing near-full moon above them. It seemed that, with all the clouds around, the light from the moon struggled to shine on everything around her.
On the way to the woods, she had passed quiet houses with lights shining behind windows.
The streets had been dark and empty of people.
Other than a single, wandering naughty girl, that was.
Now she stared at those woods.
She shivered as she stood there, and stared back the way she came from.
If I’m going to do this, I just have to do it, she thought, sucking in a long breath and moving through the open gate which led onto the dirt path, the path which cut through the woods.