The Forbidden Forest - A 100 Followers Special

Chapter 1

|| Chapter 1 ||

Legend has it, that if you go out into the Forbidden Forest at night, you can hear the screams of a girl as she gets ripped apart by a strange creature. But I don't believe it.

The girl stares out at the forest for a heartbeat before continuing down the road back home. And someday I will find out the truth. She thinks as she grabs out her phone and turns on her music.

She walks down the sidewalk until she finally gets to a house, it's not in the best of shape but it's her home. She goes inside and is immediately greeted by her best friend. "Hey Heather!" Her friend says, giving her a quick hug.

"Hey Amy," Heather replied, walking into the kitchen and grabbing something out of the fridge. "So do you know when that Charlotte girl's getting here?" Heather asked, looking up.

"Dunno, but it should be soon," Amy told her. Charlotte was a girl that went to their school. She was apparently there when the legend happened, it was supposedly her best friend Ava that had been killed by the creature.

Heather ate an apple and then up when she heard footsteps outside. "That must be her," Heather said, walking over to the door with Amy behind her. When she opened the door she was surprised to see three people there- Charlotte and two guys.

"Come on in," Heather said, taking a step back so they could come inside. "This is your home?" Charlotte asked, looking around the old shack. "Yep," Heather said, leading them into the kitchen.

"So, who are those to?" She asked, looking at the two boys. "Oh! That's Jackson and that's Ryder," Charlotte introduced the two boys. "Ryder's Ava's brother."

"What are they doing here?" Amy asked, standing against the kitchen counter. "We were all out there the night Ava died," Jackson told them, he glanced at Ryder.

"We woke up in the middle of the night to a scream, when we got out of the tents, Ava and her horse were gone," Jackson explained. "We went to look for her, but when we found her it was too late."

"She was dead," Ryder spoke for the first time. His voice was quiet, and there was an edge of anger in it. Almost as if he blamed himself for his sister's death. "What we're y'all doing in the Forbidden Forest anyways?" Amy asked, curiously.

"We had heard of the creature, but we didn't believe it was real. We wanted to find out for ourselves. But we should never've gone out there, it was a mistake," Charlotte told them.

"Did you see the creature?" Heather asked.

"No," Jackson told her, his gaze met hers. "If your plan is to go looking for the creature, don't. It will find you and there is no escaping it."

After a while, Charlotte and the guys left and it was just Heather and Amy left in the abandoned shack.

"Are you still up for going to the Abandoned Forest?" Heather asked, looking at Amy.

"Yeah," Amy told her, she sounded slightly nervous.

"Ok," Heather said, turning to face a white board. "We'll need a few more people to go with us, just to be safe," Heather told her friend. "And we'll need supplies too," She wrote down supplies on the board while she spoke.

"Well, let's get to work," She said when she had finished.

The two girls headed outside into the growing darkness. "I'd better get home," Amy told her.

"Okay," Heather said as Amy headed down the street to her house. Heather thought Amy was extremely lucky, she had a home and a family. And all Heather had was this terrible excuse of a house.

Heather put her hoodie over her head and headed down the street. Heather may not have any family anymore, but she was good at sneaking around.

She stuck to the shadows, she turned down an alleyway and slipped into an old abandoned hotel. It had gotten shut down after a really bad fire, and the owners didn't have the money to repair it.

She walked through a hallway and slipped inside a room. "Ranger?" She called out. A fluffy black and white dog crawled out from under the bed and trotted up to her.

"Hey boy!" Heather smiled, crouching down and hugging the dog. She had found Ranger here when he was a puppy, he had gotten injured and Heather helped him get better.

Heather didn't have any friends other than Amy, and since her dad left she had always been a little lonely, taking care of Ranger had helped her feel better.

"What did you do while I was gone?" Heather asked the dog, Ranger licked her cheek and she laughed. "You're such a good boy," She smiled, hugging him again.

Heather gave the dog a quick kiss before standing up and walking over to his food bowl. "I'll get you some more food, bud," Heather told him. She grabbed the bag of dog food that she had stashed in the closet and poured some into the bowl.

After she fed Ranger, she grabbed a granola bar out of her pocket and ate it. It wasn't much but it was better than nothing.

After she ate she stepped out onto the balcony and stared up at the stars, they were so beautiful. She glanced down at Ranger who was sitting by her legs.

If the creature in the Forbidden Forest was real and it got her, she hoped Ranger would be okay. There would be no one to take care of him though, and he'd be lonely.

She shook her head. There was no creature in the Forbidden Forest. She would return from the expedition into the forest and Ranger would be fine. Nothing was going to happen to her, because there was no creature.

It was just a legend. It wasn't real. Or is it? The thought rang in her mind and she pushed it away. There was no creature. The legend was just that, a legend.

• • •
Somewhere out in the Forbidden Forest...

Hooves beat in the forest as the wild horse raced through the trees. It let out a whinny as it splashed through the stream. It didn't care that no one had come looking for it. Because it was free now, nothing would ever hurt it again.

Except for maybe, the creature that lived in the forest in the other side of the stream. The same creature that had killed the wild horse's rider. The horse leapt over a log and burst out of the trees and out into a meadow.

The horse was wild now. It didn't care if no one remembered it. It didn't care that everyone thought it was dead. It didn't care that it had no home now. It was forgotten, and that's how it wanted to stay.

• • •

Okay, I'll get the next chapter out in a little bit! I hope you're liking this book so far! It was pretty fun to write :)

~Snowy