The Mystery Man

By Grant Prevatt

One day a 14-year-old girl named Kate was walking around the woods. It was a beautiful fall day with a nice cool breeze. She was sitting at the top of her favorite tree, over a pond, reading a book. All of the sudden she sees a flock of birds fly away through the trees. Then a family of deer runs away. Then all the frogs and turtles dive into the pond. Kate is worried and tries to climb down. She goes too fast and slips on a branch. She starts falling for what feels like an eternity. Then she feels the splash of the cool water and sinks to the bottom. She struggles to hold her breath. Her lungs starve for air. She breaks through the surface and gasps for air. When she gets ahold of her breath she swims towards shore and grabs her book from the water on the way. She climbs out of the pond and starts the long walk back to her cottage. Kate follows very large, mysterious footprints back towards the house. She gets home, and the front door is wide open.

She walks in and smells blood. Her heart starts beating harder. Her small brown dog, Rosie lays in the middle of the kitchen floor, lifeless, with blood running from her stomach. Kate runs to the tall plant sitting in the corner and grabs the large dagger that her family keeps in the soil of a fake flower’s pot. She looks around the living room but only sees muddy footprints on the rug. She follows them to her room and the door is locked. She quietly grabs the key on top of the door frame and unlocks the door, with dagger in hand. The footprints go to her closet and she opens it up. She sees the muddy shoes and there are her parents, lying there with knife wounds in their necks. Her father is dead, but her mother is still breathing. Kate knows this is her last few moments with her mom. Her mom reached up and touches her cheek and whispers “Don’t let him get you or your brother. I love you.” Then her eyes roll back, and her head falls onto her husband’s shoulder. Kate thinks that was a weird thing for someone to say right before they died. “Who is him?” she thinks aloud. Her thoughts are interrupted when she hears a window shut behind her. She turns around and runs to the window. She sees a black cape and then it disappears into the woods. Kate needs to find her brother, so she searches the whole house for him. Sure, enough she finds her brother, Alex hiding in his favorite spot, in between the washing machine and dryer. There is no way anybody except Kate could find him there. Alex is crying and looks up at Kate with big wide eyes. She is so happy to see him alive and safe. Alex already knows about his parents and he is scared. He is only 12 so Kate doesn’t blame him. While Kate and Alex are trying to pull themselves together, they hear a knock on the back door. Kate tells Alex to hide and he runs away immediately. Kate hides behind the door and waits, and waits, and waits. After about ten minutes she sees a shadow in front of the window… Then it shatters! Kate hears Alex squeal. Kate jumps back into the shadows. She sees a figure with a black cape over its head come into the kitchen. Kate was sure this was the same person from earlier. Kate is out of sight, but the intruder heard Alex squeal and was heading in his direction. Kate knew she had to act now or never. Kate has always been a good fighter, but she had never actually been in a fight where her and her little brothers lives depended on it. Kate launched herself at the intruder and stabbed him in the side. The dagger bounced off immediately. Apparently, he didn’t even feel it because he started fighting back. He grabbed Kate and threw her on the ground. The last thing Kate saw was a barefoot come down on her head. Then everything went black.

          When Kate came to, she was lying next to Alex in the back of a bed of leaves, under some trees. There was a man sitting on a stump, cleaning blood off his knife. Wait that was Kate’s dagger! Kate got up and started to charge at the man. He stopped her with one easy raise of the dagger. She stumbled back and sat down. The man introduces himself as Ronnie. Ronnie tells Kate that they need to have a long discussion when Alex wakes up. Alex wakes up a few minutes later and they start the discussion. Kate can’t believe what she is hearing. Ronnie claims that Kate and Alex are his kids. He says that they were kidnapped at a young age and raised by strangers. When they were kidnapped, Ronnie’s wife, Shelby was killed. After that Ronnie grieved her but knew he had to find his kids. He set out through the woods and followed the fake family for years. At one point he lost them and almost gave up. He started to live in the woods and became one with the animals and trees. He was a man of the woods and planned to die in the woods. Then he saw a girl up in a tree. He knew that it was “his” girl. He set out to find where she lived. He wanted revenge. He murdered the fake parents and stole his kids back. Kate doesn’t believe it. Ronnie knew this would happen. He says “Remember when you were reading, and all the animals ran away and hid? They sensed your fear and ran. That’s because you are part of them, as you are part of me. And that’s why Alex is so good at hiding.” This convinced them. Alex and Kate soon learned to love their real father and realized that they never really felt a connection to their fake parents anyway. Kate and Alex stayed with their father and had a happy life in the end!

                                                                                                       The End