Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #12 March 2015 | Page 43

ankle, tensed up again. Shivering with the cool air
and fear he slowly looked up. Just inches above him
was the unnatural smile of the hag who let out another
scream that made her eyes sink into her skull leaving
empty pits as her skin wrinkled like dried papyrus. Her
great hands, with skeletal fingers, grabbed him by his
head. The banshee took him, their screams soon fading
into the sounds of the woods again as the wind whistled through colour changing leaves, birds sang, water
burbled and animals wandered in the woods.
It wasn’t known whether or not this young man, who
seemed to have everything going for him, went to the
woods to end his life, met with foul play or simply got
lost never to be found. It was very rare in these woods,
surrounded by farm fields, for anything like this to
ever happen. There should have been some trace but
the only thing searchers could find were a couple footprints and some broken saplings off the trail.

One of the members of the search party pushed his
way through the thickets before he caught a glimpse
of something shiny among the leaves in his search
area, at first thinking it may be a something belonging to the missing hiker he realised it was part of a
women’s comb, silver in colour and delicately ornate.
He came to the conclusion that it didn’t belong to the
missing man but he couldn’t leave something so nice
lying around. The searcher bent over and was an inch
away from picking up the comb when, from out of the
brush, a mastiff came running at him.
When the dog proved to be friendly the searcher
checked its collar and read the name tag, ‘Brute’, the
name of the missing man’s dog. With his hand on the
Mastiff’s collar, he began his trek out of the woods
leaving the silver comb behind.

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