‘As I walked through the dark and silent forest all that could be heard was the faint howling of wolves. My hands trembled, my courage shook and my forehead was covered with sweat.’

My friend, Yasmine, believes that spirits exist in every corner of the world and always tries to influence me to perceive the same. She is usually very calm and collected, but today was different. She was very fidgety and seemed excited about something. When I first asked her, she was persistent but you may want to know that she is a very bad keeper of secrets and so she filled me in. ‘I’m going to the forest of the hawks tonight!’ and even as she said this, I could tell that something stranger was coming next. ‘Everyone at school thinks that I’m mad because I believe in what can’t be seen. But today, I will prove them all wrong. I’m going to take my camera and record everything. Legend has it that all the spirits that wander the earth come out at night and can be found in the deep woods of that forest.’ I was bewildered by what she had told me. Yasmine had always been very erratic and unpredictable but this had come as a surprise. ‘Why don’t you accompany us?’ she asked me, her eyes round with excitement. ‘Leah and Waleed are coming too! It’s going to be so much fun!’ I don’t even know how but I just instinctively blurted out ‘yes’ without thinking and Yasmine was elated. ‘See you tonight at Park Street at six. Don’t be late!’ she exclaimed before turning and making her way to the classroom.

I was unsure about this and was trying to reason my decision as I walked towards the Park Street. My watch suddenly indicated that it was six and I rushed my footsteps. When I reached, the other three were already there. Leah and Waleed weren’t very good friends of mine. Leah was the nerd of our class who always topped the exams, but on the contrary, was too scared by the mention of anything superficial and I was still wondering how Yasmine had convinced her to come on this trip. Waleed, on the other hand, was very mysterious and usually kept to himself. His personality always made me curious, though. ‘Right!’ Yasmine let out. ‘I don’t want you guys to be scared. This adventure will be amazing, believe me. Today, we will uncover the scariest secrets no one has ever dared to know about.’ At this point, I could see Leah shaking with fear. ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine,’ I whispered and she smiled at me, but I could see in her eyes that she wanted to go back. ‘So are you all ready to start this journey?’ Yasmine said, and we could see that she was absolutely thrilled. ‘Let’s go!’

The forest of the hawks was at a walking distance from the Park Street and after a few minutes, we found ourselves at the mouth of the woods. I asked Yasmine, ‘Are you really sure about this? I’m not scared but we don’t know what might be in that forest.’ ‘That’s the best part!’ she cried. I sighed and followed the others into the deep woods. During all this, Waleed hadn’t uttered a single word and sometimes, it felt as if he wasn’t even there, but when Leah shrieked and told us what she had realized, my strange thought changed into a reality.

We were silently walking through the dark forest, and I was secretly hoping that we wouldn’t find anything here. Every few minutes, I looked around at everyone just so that I was sure that nothing wrong had happened yet. Yasmine was smiling wickedly as she walked, her camera in one hand, ready to record anything strange. Leah was scared to her fingertips but I just couldn’t tell what Waleed was feeling. He was walking at a steady pace with his face calm and expressionless. But after sometime, Leah suddenly yelled, ‘Yasmine, Zara! Oh no!’ and she started crying. Yasmine and I turned around and rushed to her at once. We looked around for Waleed but couldn’t see him anywhere.  A wave of panic ran through my body.  Leah then cried, ‘Waleed, he is not with us. He disappeared, he disappeared. I told you not to come here, Yasmine. I knew that something wrong would happen. I knew it.’ Leah was sobbing so much that she couldn’t catch her breath at one point. We were trying to console her but what worried us more than anything was the sudden disappearance of Waleed. I didn’t know what to think. I looked at Yasmine and shook my head. She nodded, disappointed. I was trying to tell her that we couldn’t go any further now, but I could see that she was twice as worried as me.

We had spent hours looking for Waleed, yelling out his name and looking for any trace of him but we were unsuccessful. I wondered, ‘can this get any worse?’ But my fears came true and we got the biggest shock of our lives.

I suddenly heard something moving in the bushes nearby and held Yasmine’s hand. I picked up a wooden stick but my hands were shaking so much that I felt that it was going to fall any moment. In the blink of an eye, a wolf leapt out from the bushes and appeared in front of us, it’s tongue salivating. All three of us were scared to death. The wolf started circling us, it’s shining eyes staring at us with satisfaction. I suddenly had an idea. I nudged Yasmine and Leah and they nodded. As the wolf came right in front of us, we started retracing our steps as quickly as we could, but alas! Yasmine fell on her feet just as we were gathering speed. The wolf at once started at us but I grabbed Yasmine’s hand and we ran for our lives, yelling and shrieking. We didn’t stop or turn back once. After a few minutes of running, we were back at the mouth of the forest. None of us said a word. We just quietly returned to our houses. It was nine o’ clock now and all I was thinking about was where Waleed would be right now. Yasmine certainly had made a mistake by coming here, and we all had too by agreeing to go along.

The next morning, I went to school but was avoiding both Leah and Yasmine and I didn’t meet either of them. But I did meet someone I was least expecting. ‘Waleed!’ I cried when I saw him in the corridor and ran across to him. ‘Waleed, are you alright? How did you disappear yesterday? Oh my god, we were so worried!’ He was very embarrassed as he looked at me and said, ‘Uh… I didn’t actually disappear. I came back home. I was too scared to go any further down the woods. I’m sorry for doing that, I didn’t know you guys would be so worried.’ I had never expected Waleed to be afraid of something like that, or maybe he hadn’t let anyone know him that well. But I didn’t care about that one bit. I was so relieved to find that he was perfectly fine. I swore that day that I’d never go back to that place ever again or do anything like that and Yasmine promised that too. In the end, we were just happy that nothing wrong happened and we all were safely back.

Well, that was it and you just finished reading the worst experience of my life!