The forest was commonly not an unusual one, but on this night, with a full, orange moon hanging ominously against a sky of pitch, it seemed abnormally eerie. The trees looked twisted and gnarled, with ghastly claw-hands that stretched outward in cruel ebony hooks. The wind whistled deep and low, like the howling of unruly spirits. Leaves, dead or dying shades of grey-brown, shivered on their branches, not daring to let go. And all around, encompassing the trees, the roots, the grass, the beings of the forest, was a mist.

“Come on, Larissa. It’ll be fun!”

“No it won’t, Peter. It’s dangerous. There’re stories about…about those woods.”

“Exactly. Stories. Stories can’t hurt you.”

“But Peter…”

“Shh. Come on. We’ll only go in for a moment. Don’t you want to be able to tell the others that we’ve been in the ‘haunted woods’, Halloween night?”

“Well, no, not really-“

“You’d do it if you loved me.”

“Oh…oh fine.”

Twigs crackled under footsteps, ringing like thunder through the emptiness of the wood. Shadows loomed across their forms, dark foreboding…

“What was that?”

“What was what, Larissa? I didn’t here anything.”

“That! There it is again!”

“You’re hearing things. It’s probably just a raccoon or something. Come on.”

“Haven’t we gone far enough, Peter?”

“Not yet. We need to bring something back, or they’ll never believe us.”

“What about that?”

“That? What is that?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of- Oh my god!”

“Run Larissa! Run!”

They thought it had been a log, or perhaps a stone. Great formidable beast that sprung up from the earth like a golem. A putrid stench rolled off its sludge ridden hide, its foul breath filled the air. It rolled wild, feral eyes, gnashing a mouth filled with tusks and hard teeth. With a scrap of its dirt-caked hoof it took after the pair, bellow hard enough to shake the trees.

It advanced upon them, throwing its massive body at the boy. He cried out, and the rough branches of an alder forced their way into his back. The beast’s jaws widened over the boy’s head, engulfing him in darkness.

A crack of bone. Blackness dribbled down from the trees to form pregnant drops on the flaccid grass below.

“Oh god, oh god. Peter.”

The girl whimpered, cowering between the skeletal arms of a tree, hunched beside its trunk.

The beast turned slowly, the fat of his belly swaying beneath his legs. The dark liquid on its swine-like face glistening like oil in the light of the moon.

“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.” Tears, pouring like fall leaves, fell from her eyes.

The beast regarded her in unmoving silence. Suddenly ration seemed to return to it, and it jerked its ugly head back in surprise. Fear. Painted as clearly in his eyes as it was in the girl’s. It filled his face with a deeper ugliness.

“I am the unicorn,” said the beast. Hurried, mumbled words. He turned and lumbered away, the heavy drag of his hooves echoing the darkness of the wood.

“You are the unicorn,” whispered the mist,”Come with us.”