Once upon a time, two neighborhood friends, a boy and a girl, spent every free moment playing in the woods behind their homes, even when snow-covered. The forest felt far more familiar than home, thanks to their countless hours spent there. Its silent beauty always hid a faint, mysterious edge beneath the snow. Their parents only had one rule regarding this favored playground. They had to stay close to their homes.
Unfortunately, today, both children pushed the boundaries of their familiar domain with excessive zeal. While they were investigating, they eventually came across a stream flowing through their snow-topped forest playground. The girl turned toward her friend. “Where did this stream come from?”
The girl studied the unnaturally quiet forest. This stream didn’t exist when they were here yesterday, and the snow remained undisturbed. “Something about this thing feels… strange. Streams don’t magically appear overnight. Besides, where are all the animals?”
“I don’t know,” the boy replied as he stared at the stream, captivated by its simple beauty. After a few moments of silence, he looked towards his friend, saying, “But we should cross it and see where it goes.”
The little girl gestured at the stream. “We can’t jump that, and I’m not getting soaked for your fun.”
A chilly breeze swept through the trees, making the snow-laden branches creak and sway. The boy nodded and spotted a large branch nearby. With a grin, he grabbed it. “I’m pretty sure this branch can easily reach the other side.”
“That’s not going to hold our weight,” the girl answered, quickly dismissing his idea.
“No, it won’t,” the boy agreed quickly, but he pointed at another branch a few feet away. “Though several of them tied together will make something we can use to cross.”
The girl folded her arms across her chest asking, “And you just happen to have some rope?”
The boy smiled as he pulled up the sleeve of his coat, exposing a colorful bracelet. “I have my paracord bracelets, so yeah, I should have enough rope, and I’ll test the bridge first.”
The girl smiled and began searching for appropriately long branches under the snow as she cried out to her friend, “Let’s do it.”
The children searched their side of the stream for branches they could use. Whenever they found a promising one, they attempted to stretch it across the stream. Most fell short of the far bank and slipped from their hands, while others reached the opposite side. And each time one of their branches touched that distant ground, they heard a thud that was far too loud for their gentle touch, yet they ignored it as a trick of their minds.
Once they found ten branches of sufficient length, they pulled them back to their side of the stream. And the boy removed his paracord bracelets and lashed them together. When he finished one end, he scurried to the other and repeated the process, completing their make-shift bridge. Finally, they lifted it and carried it to the stream before carefully laying it across the gentle water.
Then, with a smile, they dropped their load, letting the bridge fall to the ground, but instead of a gentle thud, a thunderclap echoed throughout the forest. The noise reverberated through the trees, startling birds into flight. Branches groaned overhead, and the wind stirred as though the forest itself shuddered. The children froze, their hearts thudding in their chests.
They spun around, scanning the trees, but saw nothing. Finally, the boy offered his friend a half smile, and when he placed his foot on the bridge, a strange and unearthly menacing voice cried out, “Who dares set foot on my bridge?”
The children exchanged a glance, wondering if they should leave, but the boy gave a sheepish smile as he moved his foot farther along the bridge. When his foot halted, an arm suddenly emerged from the water near the distant edge. The strange voice asked, “WHO DARES TO TRESPASS where none may walk?”
The girl reached for the boy’s arm, tugging him away before it could grab him, but before he moved, the surface erupted in a violent spray, sending water everywhere. When the impromptu rain subsided, silence smothered the entire forest. A few heartbeats later, they looked up, finding a creature looming over them. An ungainly monster perched upon the far side of their bridge, with water dripping from its misshapen body and patchwork hair. The massive thing snarled at the children, and both gasped in fear.
Between guttural growls, the creature lumbered towards the children. “WHO DARES CROSS MY BRIDGE?!”
Each step made the earth tremble, shaking loose clumps of snow from nearby branches. The children’s breath came out in quick clouds of vapor. The girl gripped the boy’s arm tighter, unable to pull her eyes from the towering figure. Drool slipped between its jagged teeth as it advanced.
The boy flinched and stepped back as his friend screamed. “We have to run!”
Yet the boy’s fingertips brushed his pocketknife, and he knew what he needed to do. He yanked it out of its holster and slashed the lashings. Yet the creature kept moving closer to them, one ponderous step after another. Finally, the boy severed the rope, and he began fanning out the branches, just as the thing’s leg came down upon a single branch.
With the monster’s weight landing upon the single branch, it snapped. In a second, the waters gobbled up the monster’s foot and sucked it down. A moment later, the rest of the creature’s body fell upon the spreading branches, snapping each in turn, and the thing fell into the water. The boy crept forward as the creature sank beneath the surface. Before it vanished, it made one last lunge. The boy fell backward, trying to escape its grasp, and the girl rushed to his side. Once she helped her friend to his feet, she glanced back. The stream had vanished, leaving behind only a shared nightmare and its lesson.