Amber

Dear reader,

When we first met, I was walking down the road to go get my groceries and enjoying the summer air. I looked up at the sky while walking, not paying attention to where I was going and I accidentally bumped into a girl. She had loose jeans on and a hoodie up over her head. I thought it was odd but I didn’t mention it. I apologized for bumping into her and continued on my way. After that though I had a bad feeling for the rest of the day and continued to look over my shoulder but nothing else happened until Saturday night when I was at a restaurant waiting for my food. I looked up from my phone for a bit and look out the window. I saw that girl outside standing near the woods, looking at them, but she wouldn’t move. I continued to watch her until my food came and I turned to eat. When I finished eating and paying I left, but stopped in my tracks when I noticed her still standing and staring at the woods. I had been in the restaurant for forty-five minutes. I felt something might be wrong so I went to see if she was ok. When I got near and asked if everything was alright, she turned to look at me with sad eyes and said that her dog ran into the woods and she was scared to go by herself. I then realized she was much younger then she appeared. I told her my name was April and asked for her name. She said her name was Amber and asked if I could go with her to get her dog. I unthinkingly said yes and she grabbed my hand softly and started walking towards the woods. The woods always freaked me out because the trees were so tall and thick it made it incredibly dark. I pulled out my phone to use as a flashlight. As we were walking I got a bad feeling again but this time it was worse. It felt like I was going to faint but I didn’t and kept walking. After walking for what felt like a really short time, I realized I had been walking for almost two hours and my phones battery was getting low. I turned to tell Amber that we had to go back but she wasn’t there. I spun around to find her and didn’t see her anywhere. The feeling became stronger and then I actually fainted. When I woke up my phone was dead and it was really dark. I waited for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I couldn’t remember which way I came from so I just started walking forward. The woods would have to come to an end eventually. It felt like thirty minutes had passed and I stepped on something that made a squishy noise. I jumped back and looked at it and saw a dog’s corpse laying on the ground with it’s heart in front of it. I started running. I fell over and heard footsteps behind me moving quickly. I got up as fast as I could and bolted away from the footsteps. When it got quiet, I slowed down a little bit to catch my breath but blacked out as soon as I stopped. I woke up in a hollowed out tree with a what looked like a prison door. It was old and mossy so I pushed it over and it fell with a soft thud. I saw a lot of other things with me, including different animals like iguanas and lizard and tigers and lions. I let all of them out because I knew that thing was still somewhere probably looking for for more animals. The man eating animals seemed scared of me. That’s why I let them out. I hoped they would cause a big enough distraction to get me away and it worked. I went the opposite way of the stampede and was somehow able to make it out of the woods. As soon as I got back, I went to the police station. However, when I walked in the station they looked at me shocked. I asked them what was wrong and they said I had been missing for over a year. I then told them everything that happened. They seemed skeptical of me, but they shared my story as a warning. Since then, I’ve felt this overwhelming urge to go back to the woods and look for Amber. The police said that they have no record of a little girl named Amber going missing. I realized the mysterious creature must be Amber and I just can’t seem to shake the bad feeling that she’s coming back.