The Figure

The woods echoed with the sound of pained, broken sobs as three young boys stumbled upon their friends shredded body. The police once again labled the incident as a bear attack, dispite it being winter. But the oldest of the boys, Oliver, whome watched true murder documentaries could easliy tell this was no bear attack. The police collected the bits of the body in a bag while the boys were escorted home, though they refused to be separated yet, and were all brought to olivers house and sat on his bedroom floor is silence only broken by the gentle hum of the ceiling fan.

"It wasn't a bear attack..." Oliver finally whispered, finally breaking the silence. "The bears don't come out of hibernation until February... that's still 76 day's away..." Jesse replied quietly. Silence fell between the boys again until they all dozed off. Sprawled across the floor of olivers bedroom, each of their dreams haunted by her.

Their dreams were flooded with memories of her laughter, their times together but in every fond memory they could hear distant, terrified screams. And soon all their dreams were hit with the same horrifying visual. A shadowy, bony figure loomed over their laughing friend, before grabbing her with its skeleton-like hands and tearing her to shreds. Her body ripped in half, blood and organs dropping to the floor as her scream was silenced within that second. The figures white orb eyes, turned red as a light blue glow emitted from the corpse and the figures wide, sharp smile was revealed, its teeth yellowing as the light shifted to smoke and was sucked through the smile and the figure vanished with at the sound of footsteps.

The next morning all the boys wake up in a cold sweat, their hearts racing from their dreams as they looked at each other. "W.. what was that thing..." Jesse mumbled weakly, terror visible in his eyes. "I'm... not sure..." Oliver replied "It was..." "A monster." Xavier said in a dry tone, cutting off Olivers sentence. "Yeah..." Oliver agreed. Jesse spoke up once more, his voice shaking "Its the same thing mia said she saw a week before her death..." He whispered, the memory of his sisters death still haunting him. "Mia..." Oliver said her name before looking up and moving to his computer and searching somthing, then turning around to look at them again. "It is him... stories of people claiming to see this figure... in dreams... in shadows... when they close their eyes... all people found dead and alone in the woods..." Oliver said, explaining the pattern between the teenage deaths in their city from the past three decades.

"So... we're next...?" Xavier whispered.