My morning today was a doozy. I awoke thinking about pancakes. My tongue was imagining a pile of breakfast pancakes smothered in syrup, with eggs and biscuits and apples from the tree in my folks' yard. I was so hungry. It had been days since I last had a meal that wasn't dried or stale. When I came round and realised that Ma wasn't going to be there banging pots on the stove, and Pa wouldn't be coming in the door with a jug of fresh buttermilk, I had a little weep. But it was only a little cry because I know better now. It don't do no good.
I'd slept in a barn just outside of a town I hadn't been to before. It was on a farm that sung with silence. There was no one about, save for tumbleweeds and a raccoon that ran away soon as I went up to say hello. All the buildings were tumbledown and empty, the chill late wind whistling in the open rafters of the main house. There were some old straw bales in the barn, so I bedded down and slept cosily enough until a cock crowing in the distance woke me from my dream.
Just over the hill and down into the valley was the town. It was more like a village really, with just a couple of streets lined with clapboard houses, a saloon, a blacksmith's and a general store. A few hundred yards beyond the town lay a forest that thickened as it grew up the far hillside. I couldn't see into it. It was dark and seemed to only end over the next hill. The trees clambered and clutched tightly together as if trying to stop people getting in. I didn't know then that the trees were stopping something else from getting out.
Anyways, when I got into the town I was even hungrier than before, but I'd lost the last of my money out on the plains, and I'd used up all of the food that I took when I struck out on my own. The grocery man was setting up for the morning, setting out a bushel of apples and a basket of loaves on the stoop outside his store. When he went back inside to fetch something, I had a look around, saw there was no one else around, then went for it. I grabbed two loaves and a handful of apples, scooped them up in my Pa's old coat, then ran. I heard a bang as the grocer's door swung open and he shouted after me as I tore down the street, "Stop! Thief!"
It was still early in the morning, so I didn't see many other people about, except a young fella out of the corner of my eye. He came, half running, half stumbling, out of the saloon, pulling on his left boot as he went. The man from the general store was still yelling. "Get that thief!" he yelled. He must have pulled on his boot quickly, as it was only a second or two before I could hear his footsteps thumping the ground behind me. He was running fast, but not as fast as me. Running with the Indians out on the plains had been good training for me after my folks died. The coat full of food was slowing me down, though. I had to find somewhere to lose him. Maybe I could hide in the forest. I took a right through an alley, and squeezed through a gap in a fence. I scrambled to my feet and ran for the shadows in the forest.
That wasn't the first mistake I made today, but it was the worst. I was running too hard to notice the 'Keep Out' and 'Danger' signs posted on the fence. And I didn't know then that the locals called it The Forest of Lost Dreams. And the town? They called it Nightmare. That should have been a bit of a clue to the horrors that I was about to face amongst the trees...
