Your
True Tales
September 2005 – Page
18
Curse
of the Witch
by Justin
It began when I was very young. I think at the time I was about eight or nine years old. At the time I was in Weblos, the middle group between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and we had all gone camping with our full troop in the middle of winter way up in the woods in Massachusetts, I think it was up north, near New Hampshire, if I remember correctly. Of course the Boy Scouts were trying to scare us younger ones, and were telling us stories about a witch that had lived and died in those woods and she had a cabin nearby. So these couple of older ones who were probably told the story from their older brothers took a few of us young ones out to see it. Of course imagination running wild we were all both excited and filled with fear. One of the older boys had stopped short suddenly and was looking around pointing out noises he heard from the woodlands.
The place we were at was filled with white and gray. No leaves, an area filled with birch trees and covered in snow. We were walking along the frozen creek that ran through our camp as to not get lost, and as we all stopped behind him we fell silent, listening, trying to hear it. Of course, the woods, especially a "dead" wood area, can make for a lot of strange noises that stir the imagination. We heard creaks and clacks that could have been something moving around, a person, or just a small animal, or simply the fallen trees and branches settling or breaking in the wind. But the oldest one kept on and on, and I was unsure whether he was really just trying to get us going or if he was truly freaking out.
But that is when it happened. I was standing on the ice and looked outward through the gnarled branches in the distance and had to squint my eyes and try and focus, because I kept thinking I was seeing something, but then would lose it. Then I realized what I was looking at, and could feel it watching me as if its stare pierced me with knives. It was horrible. What I saw looked to be an old woman, but she looked like she was part of the woodlands, like part tree. Her face was sort of tannish brown and looked like wrinkled bark you see on many trees. Her hair was mixed with silver, gray and white, and nappy, looking more like twigs, like those small birch twigs wrapped in white bark. The eyes, I could never see well, they were always dark, maybe hollow, mouth was unnoticeable, and as I stared, frozen, I kept seeing it move, fast, like some mad beast romping through the woods around its prey.
My body had tensed and I slipped on the ice reaching out for a branch, but of course I missed the branch and grabbed a twig snapping it as I fell face first into the ice. The impact had made my bottom teeth slice my bottom lip half off. I got dizzy and nauseous as I rose and everyone was freaking out and grabbed me and took me back to our troops cabin. When I saw the blood everywhere, I freaked out and started crying, but I kept looking back looking for that image, if it was real or not, because I kept feeling a presence, but could not fully make it out, because it seemed to camouflage itself to the woods.
Things were kind of strange after that for a bit, but I don't quite remember. I do remember my troop leader taking me to the hospital and had my lip stitched, and back to the camp we went. And I had a bit of bad luck for the rest of the trip and people were acting strangely after this. But it was over and soon I forgot about the whole thing, until I was about 16 living in Vermont on the base of a mountain and ski resort. I had a dream one night, terrible nightmare, and so vivid, more vivid than any other dream I have had. I was moving as if floating from my bed or body down the hall and out the backdoor of my trailer. It was night, everything looked as it would as if I would have been awake. I stood there at the base of the steps looking into the woods.
There was a path next to a small ravine, everything on the right I would walk through, but to the left I wouldn't, mainly because no matter how the sun shone, it stayed dark there with the overlapping greenery, even in winter it seemed to be dark there more. That and it was getting too close toward the house next to us further up the hill.
That's when I saw her. Closer than she was before, but this time, more intense, and she seemed much more dark, blending more in with the dark night and green plant life, almost as if she was invisible, yet could see the contours of her shape. It was the same presence as before. I knew and remembered the incident immediately when I felt it. When I felt the presence, it felt like so much hate and rage, I don't know if just toward me or simply in general, but I have never felt such hate in my life, and such fear and dread of something as I did her. These dreams or visions of her would continue off and on vexing me for a year or two before they subsided.
Actually, they stopped when I moved out of that trailer, I believe. After that again forgotten, in the past, never thought about it at all until recently a couple years ago when I was 23 I think it started again. I live in Oklahoma now, and the same thing, the dream, her, everything about her the same, yet the background changed, it was black, pitch black, and she was as she was the first time, silvery and white and gray looking partially like a tree. When this occurred, I was at a point in my life of being in retrospect and observant of things around me and my past, so I began to look at it altogether and realize last time I saw her a string of bad luck ensued on me, though nothing I would add to a curse, I thought. But this time.
Since it has happened, and I have not stopped thinking about it. I will forget to remember and something will remind me. In these past few years, since the last dream where she is even closer than in all the others, both my wife and I have been in constant misery, economically, mentally, physically. As if our physical and mental beings are deteriorating, and it hits us one things after another or on top of the other. Truly things could be worse, they always can, but inside it has become like despair, like something inside of me, eating away at me, trying to break my will and my spirit. She constantly haunts me in my mind now. Whether it is my imagination putting a face on something I'm unaware of or if it truly is some sort of curse, I do not know.
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