It is midnight. You are in the streets with your friend Darren. You are going to the abandoned park for a bit of adventure.

When you reach the gate, it groans open unwillingly sending a chill down your spine. The play area is totally destroyed and wait! Where's Darren? He just vanished from your side! A sinister wind blew and the swings and roundabout start moving. A voice starts singing but you can not see anyone there. You see a shadow reaching toward you so you run. You slam the hut door shut and scream.

Come with me...

My hands shake as I light the blunt, exhaling shakily as the taste of pond water fills my lungs. Cigarettes don’t work to calm me anymore, and alcohol was too heavy to bring all this way.

“What the fuck was that?” I whisper to myself, pressing my forehead into the damp wood of the Wendy house. “Darren?” I ask, calling out softly into the darkness.

It’s futile. I know this. He probably pussied out, couldn’t hop the fence, is hiding somwhere to scare me. Cautiously, I peek over the low window.

The whole playground is covered in vines, white and green, black and bloody red. The world tilts, and I try not to blame it on the weed. The wind whistles over it all, blowing errant vines upwards, crawling — directly towards me.

I duck beneath the window immediately, just in time to hear a strangled cry carry on the gales.

“Charlotte…run…save yourself…” it’s Darren.

You tense at the sound of your friend's voice in such a panic---surely he was just playing a trick on you? You peak your head back above the window sill. The unnaturally colored vines buffet in the squall, did you imagine them creeping toward you? The weed is fucking with your head, it must be.

You steel yourself, fighting the urge to bolt as you place a foot out of the Wendy house onto the decrepit play ground. The wind whistles as it rips through the trees surrounding the park. the blood pounding in your ears and the air rushing past your head nearly deafen you---the storm is picking up. The merry-go-round creaks barely audibly as it rotates slowly, caught in the gust. In the dim light you strain your eyes in the direction you had heard the scream. "Darren", You try to call out. Instead, your voice made a strangled sound, lost in the squall. You begin to walk toward the gate, from whence you came. You have just made it to the fence when a light catches your eye from just inside the tree line, about sixty feet from you, straight across the play area.

Every step toward the light feels wrong, a tingle reverberates up your spine, becoming more insistent the closer you get. You're half-way to the light now, just crossing back onto the play-ground. The world tilts horizontally as your foot is swept out from under you. You meet the ground with a sickening thud, rolling onto your back, legs kicking violently, trying to dislodge whatever had grabbed you. after a moment, you realize your foot had become impossibly tangled in a patch of rather thick white and green bramble. You manage to dislodge your foot. The fiasco with the creepers had throughly unnerved you; but you are determined to know what the source of this light is.

You pull yourself up, continuing on, leaving the play equipment behind, stepping onto the dewey grass. The surrounding foliage blows violently around as you close on the forest. The closer you get the more your curiosity peaks. It invades your mind until all you can think about is the light. The tree-line looms ahead of you, indicating the edge of the maintained park boundary. You hesitate, the stories of these woods had been told around more than one late-night campfire you'd attended---just stories though, right?

You step into the forest. The storm immediately subsides, the air becomes incessantly still. The silence presses into your ear drums, deafening you in a whole new way. The source of the light is about fifteen feet from you now. Passing a couple of trees you close the distance, stepping into the dim light. The tingle up your spine climaxes as the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.