The Bet

by Rebecca King

  Eager to be on her way, Estelle studied one particularly large apple in her hand before she placed it carefully into her heavily laden basket with the others and squinted at the tree before her while contemplating how many more to pick.

  “Two or three more, I think, and then I am done,” she murmured with a nod. But with no more luscious fruit ripe enough to eat left on the tree, she knew she had to venture further to fill her basket so she could make an apple pie for tea.

  She managed no more than three steps when the sudden crackle of twigs preceded a furtive movement within the dense woodland beside her. She froze. Her ears tuned to it. She tried to identify its cause. Her heart flipped as her stomach coiled into nervous knots at the realisation she was no longer alone. Seconds ticked past as she watched and waited. Vulnerability settled its heavy cloak around her and elicited a shiver of deep foreboding that made her step backwards, away from the direction of the noise. Her heart thundered in her ears. Her nervous gaze scoured each shadow as she took another step back, and another, and another. Slowly but surely she became convinced that someone was watching her and, more sinisterly, following her. A distinctive shiver of alarm swept down her spine when she stopped moving and heard another crackle of movement to her left. One trembling hand lifted to hold the ends of her shawl tighter about her shoulders as she took another hesitant step backward. The snap of a twig beneath her booted foot made her pause again. She looked down in dismay before her gaze lifted to the shadows. The small hairs on the back of her neck stood on end the longer she watched and waited. Rather than abate, as she had been hoping it would, the sense that she was being watched continued to grow, worryingly so.

  Keep calm and carry on as though nothing untoward has happened, she chided herself. Maybe they will leave you alone.

  “It is probably just a small animal,” she murmured. “Or a w-wolf.”

  Determined to find the cause of the noise, Estelle turned in a circle. She wanted to discover what it was, if only to alleviate her fear and reassure herself that nothing was watching her, but then she didn’t want to see anything just in case it posed a threat to her.

  “Don’t be so silly,” she whispered herself. “It was probably a fox or something - although, that doesn’t sound any better.”

  She found herself looking back at the path she had just taken regardless, and groaned in dismay when she realised just how foolish she had been to let panic get the better of her. In her eagerness to get away from the invisible threat that lurked within the trees she had forgotten which route she had taken. Now, all she could see was a solid wall of foliage which hid all trace of the path she had used to get this far.

  “I could have sworn there was a path,” she muttered with a frown. Hopefully, there was nobody around to hear her talking to herself. “Well, if anybody is around, they can help me get out of here because I am well and truly lost now.”

  Her gulp was louder than the thundering of her heart in her ears. Without any landmarks to identify where she was she had no choice but to keep walking and hope she came across something – or someone – to help her.

  “Oh, dear, Grandma, I am sorry,” she whispered.

  It was foolish of her to have left the house unchaperoned as it was, without being so reckless with her own safety as to go wandering off into the trees, especially in an area she had never been to before and her grandma had warned her to avoid.

  “Now what?”

  “Go home, dearie.”

  Estelle screamed and whirled around so fast that she dropped her basket and scattered apples everywhere. She paid them no heed. Her gaze was locked on the small, wizened creature who stepped out from the shadows and stared spitefully at her; her weathered face a mask of foreboding the likes of which made Estelle start to panic. Her world rocked on its axis, suspended in time and animation amidst the narrow eyed stare the woman levelled on her. The brilliant blue of the woman’s eyes were so pale they were almost translucent; hauntingly so, and were so cold and unwelcoming that Estelle took a hesitant step away from her.

  She is an elderly lady who is most probably cantankerous, as some old people can be sometimes, that’s all, she sternly warned herself.

  Rather than allow any of her concerns to show on her features, Estelle smiled tentatively at the woman, and was unsurprised when she received not even a blink in response.

  “I am sorry, you gave me a start. I didn’t realise you were there,” Estelle muttered, but then realised that she had just lied. “Well, I heard you, of course, but didn’t realise it was you who made the noise.” She fell silent when she realised she was rambling.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the old woman grunted eventually.

  “I-I don’t know who these woods belong to,” Estelle murmured.

  She wished she knew where she was so she could find a way out, but truly had no idea how far she had come. She could be no more than a few feet away from the main road leading back into town, or she could be half a mile or so. She had been so lost in her thoughts she had lost all track of time and place.

  “Turn around and go back,” the old woman warned. “It is no place for the likes of you. Get back to yonder place and don’t come back.”

  “Yonder?” Estelle asked. She wondered where on earth ‘yonder’ meant. She would go if she had any sense of where she was. She opened her mouth to tell the woman her predicament only for the woman to raising a crooked finger in warning.

  “Yer strayin’ into places you shouldna go. Get ye home now,” the woman chided.

  Behind that bony finger were the meanest eyes Estelle had ever seen on anybody. They were so full of menace that she immediately began to back away.

  “I-I am sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass. I got lost, you see?” she explained, hoping the woman would take pity on her and at least point in the direction she needed to take.

  “Aye, well this is no place for anybody to wander around,” the woman snapped. “Get yer home now.”

  “I-” The rest of Estelle’s reply was abruptly halted by the loud snap of a twig directly behind her. She whirled to face the noise only to be met with another solid wall of trees.

  I am really starting to hate trees, she thought desperately.

  “If you-” Estelle turned to face the old woman only to gasp and stare in dismay at the empty space where the old woman had been. She looked around but knew instinctively that the old woman had gone. She had vanished, just as quickly and quietly as she had arrived.

  “Now, where did you go?” she murmured, but doubted she would ever find out.

  She received her answer, though, when she began to stomp in the direction the elderly woman had appeared from and caught sight of her rapidly retreating back through the trees. Determined to ask her for help getting home, Estelle followed. She was nervous to do so. The woman wasn’t friendly, but with no other hope of rescue there was little else Estelle could do.

  The more she followed the woman, the more curious Estelle was to know what she was doing in the woods. It was evident from her purposeful gait that the old woman knew where she was going. Her tread was steady and measured. The fallen branches and twigs no hindrance to her meandering route through the woods.

  Estelle was busy contemplating whether to go back and try a different route home when the woman mysteriously vanished again. If she hadn’t seen her disappear behind a tree, but not come out the other side, she would never have believed it.

  “There has to be a logical explanation,” Estelle whispered with a shiver.

  With her eyes glued on the space where the woman should have appeared by now, she quietly crept closer. To her surprise, to her left, in a small clearing, a small house emerged. Estelle wondered if she was imagining it. After all, who on earth would want to live in the middle of purportedly haunted woods, in a place where not even sunlight managed to filter through the thick canopy of trees? Nevertheless, someone did because there, nestled within the gloom, was a small thatched house that looked like something out of her
childhood dreams - or her worst nightmares.

  She made an immediate decision not to venture near it, not least because the woman was less than friendly, and clearly didn’t welcome her presence in the woods. But also because there was something about that odd little cottage that elicited a deep sense of foreboding within Estelle, and kept her frozen in place, several feet away.

  The first thing she became aware of the more she studied the building was the stillness of the trees it was sheltered by. Nothing moved. There were no birds tweeting in the trees, no rustling of small animals in the undergrowth, no gentle trickle of the stream she knew meandered its way through the woods somewhere. It was all startlingly surreal. So much so that if it wasn’t for the presence of the old woman now scurrying toward the front door, Estelle would have doubted its reality. But she knew it was real. She watched the old woman lift the latch on the crooked wooden door and walk inside the small, single storey building. Strangely, there was no sound as the door closed behind her. Instead, there was a deathly silence that was as cold and unwelcoming as the woman.

  Curious, Estelle felt compelled to stay and watch. She had no idea why, or what she should watch, but she couldn’t bring herself to walk away. Not until she could decide whether to knock on the front door and ask the woman for directions so she could leave just like the woman had ordered her to. With nobody else in the area, Estelle studied the building and tried to decide what to do.

  At any other time, probably when there was someone else with her, she would have considered the small cottage quirky. It was quite a higgledy-piggledy dwelling that had most certainly seen better times. About fifty years ago, and in another location entirely, it might have been considered rather quaint. Now, there was a sinister air to it that was distinctly alarming. From a distance, the windows on either side of the single story building looked like two beady eyes, spitefully daring anybody to venture near. The crooked chimney was so angular it looked as though a good gust of wind was going to blow it down. If it did, though, there was plenty of crooked straw on the disorganised thatched roof to protect its fall. It stood like a hornet’s nest, all haphazard and frighteningly woolly. Estelle watched the flicker of wings depart the straw-like beast and disappear into the darkened skies above, and shivered with unease.

  Determined to keep her mind off just how unnerving the small building was, she turned her attention to the gardens. They bracketed the narrow path that led to the front door and could only be described as wild and unkempt. It was obvious that whatever the old woman was doing living in the woods it certainly didn’t involve tending the garden.

  Estelle studied the path and wondered if she could bring herself to use it to go and knock on the front door but knew that she couldn’t. While the woman could provide Estelle with a way out of the woods, Estelle couldn’t wasn’t prepared to put herself at the old woman’s mercy. Heaven only knew what would await her behind that tattered old door.

  “This is too unusual. She is too unusual,” she whispered aloud.

  Slowly, she backed away until she had lost sight of the cottage. Then she turned around. As she did so, she caught sight of the ruins of another building lying just beyond the trees.

  “This gets increasingly curious by the minute,” she whispered beneath her breath as she took a step toward it.

  She searched her memory for any mention her grandma might have made about the Whisperings Woods being home to ruins, but other than the dire warnings of mysterious goings on within the hallowed shrubbery, Estelle couldn’t remember Wynne mentioning anything about the place being inhabited, in the past or present.

  Given the way one side of the stone building reached skyward, she suspected it had once been a large manor house or a church of some kind. But that was odd given its isolated location deep in the darkness of dense woodland.

  What was it then? What connection did it have to the small cottage behind her? The two were so unlike that it was difficult to believe they had any connection whatsoever but it was odd that they were so close together.

  She stared at the decaying finger-like tower pointing skyward and turned away with a shudder. Whatever its purpose had been, Estelle had no intention of investigating it now. She would do that another time, maybe, preferably when she had her grandma with her to be her guide. Until then, she tucked the memories of both buildings to one side to ask Wynne about later, when she finally reached home.

  Determined that was where she had to go now, Estelle turned around and headed in the opposite direction to both buildings. In truth, she was glad to leave them behind. When she began to move, however, she immediately felt the small hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The sense of no longer being alone was so strong that she was compelled to look over her shoulder.

  “Hello?” she called.

  She wondered if it was the old woman back to warn her again, but couldn’t see anything. Rather than wait around for the mysterious woman to make another appearance, Estelle began to forge a route through the trees. Her pace was hindered by the fact that the further she ventured through the dense woodland the more difficult her step became. Each time she put her foot down she winced with discomfort when sharp twigs and leaves bit through the soft soles of her boots. To add to her misery, the wind had started to increase and now tugged and pulled at the branches, which creaked and groaned in protest. The slight howl to the wind as it whistled through the woodland made her feel even more isolated from the rest of the world, and incredibly vulnerable. She hated it.

  Shivering anew, she clutched her basket tighter and tried not to panic.

  “At least I know why they are called the Whistling Woods now,” she murmured only wished she didn’t.

  Suddenly, a loud cracking sound from directly above her head made her look up. Her eyes widened in alarm when she saw a large branch hanging at a precarious angle directly over her head. A scream locked in her throat when she watched it lower toward her. Seconds later, a gust of wind tugged it free and it came crashing toward her, far too fast for her to be able to move out of the way. The pain of it hitting her was prevented only by the blackness that engulfed her the instant her head hit the hard ground.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Estelle flinched when she became aware that something cold was touching her face. She wrinkled her nose up but whatever it was didn’t budge. Swiping absently at it, she sniffed, and only then became aware that she was painfully cold. Her fingers were so cold they were painful, and her feet had long since gone numb.

  A shiver swept through her that was so strong it forced her to open her eyes and gasp at what awaited her. Night had fallen while she had been asleep. Not only that, but a heavy fog had descended and shrouded everything in an eerie gloom that was simply terrifying.

  She frowned in confusion, unable to remember what had happened to make her fall asleep in such a place. She could vaguely remember being chased, or frightened, or both, but the exact details escaped her.

  “What on earth?” she whispered in growing horror when she tried to stand up only for the heavy pounding in her head to warn her not to. She tentatively touched the sore lump on the back of her head with shaking fingers, and winced when a lightning streak of pain shot seemed to engulf her. Clutching her head in her hands, she waited for the worst of it to subside and tried not to succumb to the blackness once more.

  When she was confident that she wasn’t going to be sick, she slowly lowered her hands and contemplated at her current predicament. Only the ghostly fingers of the trees closest to her were visible in the swirling mist that had reduced her world to a cloud of isolating confusion.

  “Grandma must be frantic by now,” she whispered, horrified at the thought of Wynne’s worry; and the force of her anger when her grandma heard about what had happened. “She will be so angry and disappointed with me.”

  Resting a hand on her churning stomach, Estelle slowly pushed to her feet. When the world began to dim, she leaned against the solid bulk of a tree until the feeling passed. She s
till had no idea which way to go to get home. Turning in a small circle afforded her little help unless she could consider finding her basket of apples a bonus. While she tried to calm her turbulent thoughts, she picked up the apples and tried to decide what to do.

  “I hate fog,” she murmured. But this wasn’t just any fog. This was so thick it was cloying and almost impenetrable. As if to prove it she lifted her hand up to look at it, a little shocked to find that it was barely visible in the gloom.

  “Oh, God, what have I done?” she whispered.

  Desperate to keep her gnawing panic at bay, she purposefully blanked out the niggling fear that continued to grow, ignored the deepening sense of isolation, and began to walk forward. She couldn’t remember which way she had come from, so had no idea where she was heading, but knew that she couldn’t afford to just stand there and do nothing.

  “I will freeze to death if I do,” she murmured with a sniff.

  She hadn’t gone far when she sensed movement to her right. Her heart began to pound as she stood and waited for the source of the noise to reveal itself.

  I wonder if it is that strange old woman again? She mused, slightly annoyed that the woman hadn’t stopped to help her in the first place. If it is, I am going to give her a piece of my mind because she has made no attempt to tell me how to get out. I am stuck, so she can go and warn someone else if she isn’t prepared to show someone how to get home.

  When the source of the noise did appear out of the gloom, however, Estelle truly wished she hadn’t seen it. Her gasp locked in her throat when she saw someone’s head and shoulders emerge out of the gloom. It was difficult to tell if it was a man or a woman because of the hood they had pulled over their face; a tall pointed hood of a kind she had never seen before. It was disturbing to say the very least, and not just because the figure seemed to glide through the undergrowth without making a sound.