'Psssst.'
Okay. Marie stopped, spun in a full circle. She definitely heard something that time. She lowered her backpack, slipped it down so it dangled from the crook of her arm. If she had to, she reckoned she could take out almost anyone with a quick spinning thwack. The milk carton might explode, but that was a price worth paying.
'Who's there?' She said to the silent forest.
No answer.
Marie checked her digital Dora watch: nearly lunchtime. It seemed later. Darker. It wasn't only the woodland canopy, or the scudding autumn clouds, that dimmed the light from above.
The haze in the air was almost chewable. Visibility had dropped to no further than a half a dozen trees distance from where Marie stood on the winding dirt path. Something was dreadfully wrong.
'Pssssst.'
It came from over there, by a tumble-down pile of stones, which Marie guessed had at one time long ago been a wall.
Something moved.
'Who is it?' Marie said, trying her best not to let her voice tremble. 'I know you're there.'
A small hand appeared from behind the stones and gestured for her to go closer, closer, closer than that.
Marie, who was nobody's fool, did as the hand suggested. Not because she wasn't afraid (she was quite afraid), but because she found, in life, the scary stuff was always less scary when you could see it. This, she believed, could be said of most things.
She stopped at a small mound of shrivelling ferns, a spit away from the fallen wall, and put her hands on her hips. It's what she did when she wanted to show someone who was being silly that she wasnt having any of it, thankyouverymuch. And, frankly, it felt kind of appropriate.
'Why on earth are you hiding?' she said.
'Shush!' came the reply.
'I will not shush,' Marie said. 'You invited me over.'
'Will you please be quiet?'' the voice said. 'They're listening!'
'They? Who's they?'
'Shhhhhhh!'
The hand appeared once more. It pointed a finger, jabbed it toward a darker patch of forest where there looked to be something hovering, something tiny, that disappeared the moment Marie turned to look.
And it was then that Marie realised, whoever was hiding behind the fallen down wall, whatever their reasons for calling to her, they were far more afraid than she was. A fact that was equal parts reassuring or alarming, depending upon your point of view.