What makes a good scary story? A good scary story is only good if it’s based on something that happened in reality and could happen to anybody. My story is something similar to that. Now that I look back at it, maybe it was just the sugar rush I had from the Surge soft drink. It had my blood pumping and my heart beat was racing. I haven’t been back to those woods since that day; however, there was still a part of me that wondered if what I saw was there in reality and not just my imagination.
Either way, it was thrilling. “Are we almost there? ” I asked as we bounced along on the usty gravel road in my sister’s tiny teal colored Ford Taurus. No,” she said “We’ll be there in about ten minutes. ” I glanced through the hand crank windows and watched the dust fly and the gravel shoot out from behind us. As I fidgeted in my seat, as an eight year old does, I noticed that my brother was passed out in the back with a bottle of chocolate milk and a half eaten can on sour cream-n-onion Pringles clutched to his chest as a little bit of drool dribbled out of his mouth. I turned around and started playing with the zipper on my hoodie and then got the dea to play “Who Let the Dogs Out” by the Baha Men with the zipper as my instrument.
It wasn’t very musical. After being shushed by my sister, I whipped out my 2003 midnight blue Game Boy Advanced and played Lego Star Wars. Time really flies when you’re trying to defeat the Sith. “We’re here,” my sister said, “Josh, get up. ” It took him a while to get up, but when he did, he wiped the drool from his face and chugged the rest of the chocolate milk. As soon asI got out of the car, I felt the cold fall air rush into my lungs but there was something else, I felt omething watching me. We started walking toward the door when all of a sudden, this bright colored tail started running toward us.
As it grew closer and closer to us, it suddenly changed directions and went toward a bird feeder that was by an old, brown shed. It was a peacock, one of the coolest birds I had ever seen. “Hi,” a voice behind me said. “Welcome to the farm. ” I turned around and saw my sister’s friend standing there with two buckets of water, one in each hand. My sister walked up to her and gave her a hug, while my brother and I started walking toward the door. We moseyed over to the door and jumped inside. We were met by Hugh’s mom, who offered us some weird mushroom tea.
We politely declined and raced downstairs. We found Hugh cross-legged on the floor playing one of the greatest Mario Kart games ever, Mario Kart Double Dash. “Hey guys, wanna play Mario Kart? ” he said. Our first instinct was to grab the coolest controller. I shoved my brother and dove after it, but then Hugh gave Josh a different controller and my ill-informed attempt to get the coolest controller was a failure. A couple hours later, my sister yelled down at us that it as time for lunch. Again, I shoved my brother and darted up the stairs trying to get food as fast as possible.
I got to the top of the stairs and hear this ear-piercing squaaawk, I stopped and dropped to the floor holding my ears. I looked up and there was this small bird in a cage bobbing his head and staring at me as if it were laughing at me. I got to my feet and slumped down in a chair at the table. Luckily, no one noticed me hitting the floor. Hugh and Josh made their way up the stairs and sat down at the table. Hugh’s mom brought over lunch, grilled cheese and omato-basil soup. Prior to that moment, I had never liked tomato soup, but this was bomb. “Bon Appetite. ” said Hugh’s mom.
I took my grilled cheese and took a bite. Best, sandwich, ever. I then braced myself for the tomato soup. Don’t spit it back out, don’t spit back out, don’t spit it back out, I said to myself as took a spoonful. Hmm, I thought to myself, this isn’t bad at all. “This is really good,” my brother and I said. We finished lunch and then my sister insisted that we go outside, otherwise the video games were going to melt our brains or some nonsense story like that. We trudged outside into the brisk fall air and decided to go exploring. Off we went into the woods and Hugh took us to a massive oak tree.
It seemed to rise up above all the other trees in the forest, except for a few pine trees. We ascended the short, rough, wooden ladder and ducked inside. After we stood up inside, we noticed that all the papers and pictures that were on the wall had been ripped down and torn into shreds. Hugh looked down in the corner of the fort and noticed some white fur that had snagged on a nail. My brother and my first thought was that a small animal had slept in the ree fort and torn it all down, but the look on Hugh’s face made us think again. “It’s back,” he said. We stared at him with puzzled looks. The white animal is back,” he said. He then quickly ushered us out of the tree house. We stopped abruptly and demanded he tell us what happened. “Alright,” he said. “A couple years ago we noticed that some of our birds had missing, so my dad and I went out to look for them, but we never found them. ”
Fear had filled his eyes. “A couple days later I was walking to my tree fort, and I noticed that one of the peacocks had followed me. I shooed it away and then turned to continue walking toward my fort. I heard an abrupt squawk, turned around and the peacock was gone. Then I ran back to the house. We started walking again toward the house and his story continued. “I never told anyone about what I saw,” he said. Then we stumbled upon a couple of peacock feathers. We stared wide-eyed at each other and then followed the trail of feathers. We approached a thicket of gooseberry bushes, and noticed a dark shadow behind it. It was the peacock, it had bite marks in it and its neck was broken. We raced back to the house s fast as we could, but before we reached the house, Hugh stopped us and made us swear that we would never tell anyone what we saw (Even though I’m telling you this story now).
We stepped inside the door cautiously and darted downstairs. We started playing Mario Kart again, but then Hugh spoke up, “We have to track it. ” Josh and I looked at each other and back at Hugh. “Okay,” we said. We got on our sweatshirts and headed out. On our way back out to the site where we found the peacock, we grabbed sticks, just in case we needed to poke around. We started on the trail of the dead bird and followed he path of debris left by the animal until it lead us to a massive burrow.
It looked kind of like a warthog burrow, but there aren’t any warthogs in the wild in Minnesota. We checked around the hole and flashed a light down into the hole. There were bones all around it and some inside as well. Just then, at the most inopportune moment, my Gameboy fell out of my pocket to a shallow part of the hole. I reached down to grab it when a paw came out and scratched me. I yelled out in pain. We dropped everything and ran as fast as we could toward the main path. When we got back to the house, my sister asked what happened o my arm.
Hugh looked at me and shook his head, “Nothing, I just scratched on a branch when I tripped. ” I got bandaged up and we got ready to leave. We said goodbye and hopped into the Taurus. We still haven’t talked about it till this day. I think back to it now and realize that the story sounds ridiculous; I still have the scar from it though. I learned two lessons from this. The first lesson I learned is to never go into his woods without another person. The next lesson that I learned is to never go looking for danger, because sometimes you just might find it.
