MacPhantom wrote:While walking through the woods one day, I came across a burning bush that spoke to me. It said "Get thee to a pumpkin patch, before the setting of the sun on the thirteenth day of the thirteenth month." Not being one to ignore verbose shrubbery, I did as I was ordered and beat feet to the nearest patch I could find. Luckily, it was an hour before sunset, so I made it in plenty of time, but all that walking made me powerful tired, so I sat down on a mossy stump to rest. A gentle breeze cooled my brow, and I began to nod off.
I awoke with a start; the breeze had turned to a breath of deathly cold air, chilling me to my core and setting me a' shiver. I must have been asleep for several hours, for there was no light left in the sky. The moon was not yet up, and thick clouds blocked the stars, leaving me in near total darkness. Only the silvery mist, which drifted across the ground, betwixt the twisted pumpkin vines and large orange globes offered any light; and, indeed, the light cast by the mist was unearthly and unsettling. I rose quickly from my stump, determined to get as far from this wicked patch as I could, and humbug to the burning bush! But in the dark and confused by my slumber, I did not know which way to go to make my way back to the path through the woods and then homeward.
Shivering now with both cold air and colder panic, I frantically glanced around to find some sense of where I should go, and noticed that the pumpkin patch was directly adjacent to a very old, very crusty graveyard. How I failed to notice it in the light is a mystery, but I noticed it now. The mist was there too, swirling around the crooked and crumbling tombstones, only it now seemed to have a greenish glow about it. And as I watched the swirling mist, hugging myself to try to stop the trembling, my teeth clattering loud enough to wake the dead, I noticed the ground before a particularly crumbly stone begin to heave, as though it were breathing. And now the grass began to tear and split, as though something beneath the ground were digging, reaching its way up through the moldy earth.
Horror displaced panic, and my brain pounded with pure terror, but as my feet tried to turn and flee, the thick and twisted pumpkin vines beneath me began to weave their way around my ankles, up my legs, pulling me down! Overcome, I screamed out, but my cries were captured by the mist, and no-one could hear them. No-one living, that is, for there were some about who heard, and it seems I did indeed wake the dead, for now there were more, rising from their graves in the old cemetery; horrifyingly gruesome corpses pulling themselves up out of their slumber, climbing across the ground, shambling towards me as I was constrained by the pumpkin vines! "It must be a dream", I thought, but I knew it wasn't as the smell of the dead hit my nose; the smell of wet, rotting autumn leaves, of mold and black soil, of walking death!
Convinced this was my final moment on earth, that I would soon be joining these rotting monsters below the ground, I reached in my pocket for my trusty penknife, nearly dropping it from my shaking hands. I opened it, and slashed wildly at the vines that held me, kicking out and pulling away at the same time....and I was FREE! As the first cold and muddy hand reached my shoulder, I jerked hard away, and ran for my life. I could hear the moans of the dead and the slithering of the vines close behind, and I didn't know if I was heading in the right direction or not, but it was enough to be running. I ran as I had never run before, heart pumping, head pulsing, hands waving frantically in front of me as I propelled myself into the darkness of the night. Then I felt tall grass, and then I felt low shrubbery, and finally trees, and I was back on the path through the forest! The sounds of my pursuers grew fainter, but still I ran faster, back through the woods, past the burning bush (which I though I could hear chuckling at me), until finally I came to the other end, emerging from the dense trees to the sight of the moon, now out from behind the clouds and nearly full, lighting the way home in front of me. But only when I was at my front door, jiggling for the right key, then inside, door locked, deadbolt latched, did I pause to catch my breath. And only then did I notice the burning sensation on my left leg, just below the knee, where the strongest of the pumpkin vines had held me. I lifted my trouser leg, and noticed that a horrible message had been burned there by the bewitched vine! The message was carved into my flesh, and remains to this day. It said: "
www.halloween.com".
And that's how I found this site.
