Do You Want To Hear A Secret

"Listen. Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Woah oh, oh..." -The Beatles

"Listen"

A chill came over little Sandy Richter. She ignored the sound, dismissing it as the wind, wrapped her shawl tighter around her neck and trudged onward into the howling wind. As she passed the deserted ball field at the corner of Stone and Bleacher she perceived a presence. She paused for a moment under the street lamp, looked around. No-one.
She made a right onto Bleacher and started home along the sidewalk beside the ball-park fence. As she approached the home-team dugout she heard the voice again, barely audible on the wind.

"Do you want to hear a secret?"

Barely audible, perhaps, but this time unmistakable. Secret? She had definitely heard that, although she wondered if sheâd actually heard it with her ears or if sheâd heard it inside her head. Either case, she thought, it came from without.

Just then, a figure appeared through one of the portholes on the back of the dugout. It was a finger: a long, black finger, with a nail sharpened to a point like a pencil, and it was beckoning to her. Sandy blinked, incredulous, felt her heart begin to beat. She froze, staring at the beckoning finger. Suddenly, she found herself moving toward it - floating toward it. Half of her - the Sandy half - wanted to run, to scream! But the creature, whatever it was, had taken control of some part of her. She floated in through the dugout gate and rounded the dugout. The large, black, unformed thing groaned:

"Do you promise not to tell?"

A brief, shrill scream pierced the wind up and down Bleacher Street. No-one heard it, or the fiendish, elated voice that came after. "Secret," it said.


300 words