Daunting Sound

• Jessica McInnes, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2007

My feet are tender from the sharp barb wire under my feet. It feels like bags of scalpels being pressed into my feet all at the same time. My heart is hammering inside my chest like it is trying to break free. I hear a daunting sound. It’s coming from the old rickety mansion. I decrease my speed as I plummet into the forest floor. My head hits a towering tree making me giddy. I get up and look at my clothes. I’m covered from toe to waist in thick black mist. The rest of me is either muddy or covered in cuts and bruises. My clothes are tattered and the ends are frayed, with mud the only thing holding them together.
The spooky sound is launching its self closer to me with every blink of an eye. To scared to reposition myself, I let the cold black mist travel up my body like a carousal with nobody aboard. I choke on the mist as it lifts up and beyond my head. The mist drains the awful sound away into the red sun setting night. I scurry away into the heart of the forest. My hands feel like ice-cubes as it starts to drizzle with the rain hitting my head. It feels like silk being washed through a softener. I run harder. Suddenly I stop in my tracks. I can’t move an inch. I peer into the mist just seeing my feet. I’m sinking.


I grab a branch off a nearby tree. It snaps into a million pieces. I grab another. It stays in tack. I heave myself into the tree. Small ants crawl onto my hands. They don’t bother me though. Only really bloodcurdling noises scare me. I hear something snap underneath the branch I am sitting on. Then suddenly the branch that is supporting me and my body from sinking again, shatters. It shatters into a billion pieces. I slip down, from my very tight spot in the fork of the tree. Just grabbing a vine as I fall rapidly into the sinking mass below. I wait there clutching my vine, as it’s all I’ve got. My hands are sore from waiting there for so long. It may have stopped raining but the vine is slippery and hard to clench. I finally fall. Except I do not fall into the sinking mass, I fall into someone’s arms. They grab me and tell me to not be scared. I think to myself by I don’t say it at least I know it’s human.

“Happy birthday,” yells an old frail figure. In the corner of my eye I realize those wrinkles are none other than my Granddad’s. I just wanted to give you this, and in his hands he was clutching a small intricate object.