Throughout the woods, darkness was thrown across the trees like sheets across a bed. Bill was supposed to be home for supper but he had forgot himself on his walk. No, he hadn't lost his way, he had just lost his sense of time. Now the sun was setting, he hoped his meal wouldn't be cold when he arrived home, he was quite hungry after all.

He had ventured deeper then he thought into the wood just to be free, just to clear his mind. It was as if every time he trekked deeper into the forest, the more freedom he had. He could not help but feel foolish now for his long hike, but at the same time he felt no regrets other then the rumbling of his stomach. He knew it would still be another half hour before he reached his front step and his home. Ah, his home, thinking of it made him ready to arrive there all the sooner and be out of the damn trees. He was sick of this darkening forest and didn't like the feel of the air. It seemed to be waiting, crisp and clear. It had never been this perfect before. When he entered earlier he hadn't noticed the crisp and odorless demeanor of the forests breath. Before, it had just smelled...normal, like pine and dying foliage.

Strangely, as the sun fell and the night began its descent on the forest, the air had gotten crisper and cleaner. That's what set him off so much, he knew something was wrong. Farlin's Wood was never calm and quiet, and the air was certainly never crisp. It was all to bizarre and all to unknown. The sooner he arrived to see his porcelain plates and mother the better. He just kept pushing on.

Soon, he found his steps quickening, and his mind followed suit. It seemed to come up with everything he had ever heard.In rapid succession, it recalled stories about people lost. People lost in this old forest and no way out. Most, he had assumed, were just stories he had heard as a child to keep him away from the forests edge. They were to keep him from venturing inward and becoming lost. He had always thought them just stories, but now... he began to let the notion of a horror in the forest seep into the back of his mind. Maybe no one ever got lost. Something may have refused their exit like a dam refuses water passage. No matter how hard they fought they were supressed and pushed back deeper into the forest.

Fear tainted his every conscious thought. From these ponderings and this initial fright the fear grew... oh did it grow. Starting at the back where it had planted itself as some sinister seedling, its roots quickly slithered to the front. There it began spreading its wretched appendages tighter and tighter, faster and faster it manifested as he ran.. Soon his thoughts turned solely to irrational and terrifying thoughts. These thoughts seemed to be black and budding flowers of his fears. These flowers, his thoughts, were only that of being lost, being horribly injured... or possibly even death at the claws, horns, and teeth of some forest fiend. Every single nerve was firing now, but his mind was overgrown with fear. He seemed to barely moving. How far had he come? Was he almost home? He was no longer thinking

The roots of this fear had finally stretched down his throat. He had convinced himself there was a shadow following him and his breaths grew shallower and quicker. He felt as if any minute the cold crisp air would fail him. Would he pass out and join the rapidly spreading dark? Would it be then that the forest terrors devoured him? It seemed to be the only possible ending fo him as the last of the suns rays were consumed by the night.

He struggled on a bit more, but his eyes began twisting inward, the forest became a dark blur. His eyes turned cold, a sheet of ice seemed now to distort his vision. The trees turned into sharp and jagged demons. He inhaled and exhaled, stumbling. He inhaled and exhaled, falling. Thinner breaths came to him, the trees seemed to have overpowered him at last. He felt he could go on no further.

Complete darkness came over him and the forest alike. He crawled one more body length, pulling himself out of a particularly dense patch of trees. Then something new was before him. Lights, his mother had lit the candles at the foot of their cabin's stair and it was only in this absolute black he could see them so clearly. He began to fight the dark back. He pushed at his shadow that, in his mind, had spread and joined the night itself. Now hope began pulsing into his veins. He breathed deeply and steadily. It felt as if he had broken the surface of an unseen and frozen pond as he stood up. Throwing back the tangled roots of fear, he began pressing on faster and faster toward the light.It was his savior and his comrade. It seemed to manifest and take his arm, leading him steadily on. Light, it brought him freedom. Soon he would be completely safe, burried deeply under an empire of blankets that had conquered him and stored his warmth. Yet he knew they would be willing to share, they always did.

His body emerged from the wood, and the dark was left among the forest roots. He was glad to be rid of its strangling company. The shadow must have, he thought, been scared off by the candles and their flames that ruled here, his guards at the borders of human domain. They just burned straight up as if white porcelain statues. He decided it would be best to go and find those blankets rather then wait and dicover whether the shadow could overcome his sentinals.

In one smooth motion he bounded up the steps and turned the knob of the cabin door. Something was wrong here as well. The knob had never been this cold before, it seemed cold enough to turn his hand blue, freezing it in place and binding him to the cabin forever. His breaths began to quicken once again.

With a simple push, the door was slowly swept back. There was a familiar and eerie creak he had heard before. Not personally, but it had been described at countless campfires in the summer. The creak that doors to terrifying and gruesome places made when opened by the naive protagonist. It had never been so real, it had never been so chilling.

His mother was seated at the table with her face turned from him. The table had been set but there was no food upon the unmoving white plates. Just knives and forks waiting timidly in the shadow of much larger porcelain plates. There was another shadow, one even greater. It seemed rank with the smell of the pine, crisp forest pine. He could see a it being cast across his mothers back, it was not his own and it was certainly not that of the porcelain plates.

"I am ashamed Bill, you are quite late. Our guest did not expect to be waiting this long to eat."

The cabin door closed, and Farlin's Wood was still. Deep in the dark of its boughs and its twisting trees, the air of Farlin's Wood was still quite crisp and smelled of pine.

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