I scream. What is that? “HELP!” I scream out of breath, I slowly back away from this weird apple creature. It’s the apple I just picked from the Orchard. My farm is turning on me, becoming alive and trying to kill me. It’s green-red with four weird-looking arms. I dive down into the hall while it is in my room looking for me. I get up to run to the stairs, I get to the stairs and I turn around, and there it is. I go running down the stairs, and I trip.

FWAMP…BAM!

I am reading through a chapter in my book, Where the Red Fern Grows when I hear a paper being written on. It’s coming from my desk, the book from the haunted house. I get up instantaneously, run to the book, and start flipping through the pages to see a story that the ink is fresh. It has a name, James, oh no! I grab my walkie-talkie and start talking into it. “MAXIS,” I blurted, “something is happening. I need you here now!”

I then explained everything to Maxis when she got here, Francis was on her way. She had needed to go to the store to buy stuff. When she got here we convinced her to drive to James and tell her everything on the way there. She started speeding up when we started talking about the book, which I had managed to grab before we left. As we are on our way we see cop cars as we get closer. “Is that for James? Is he alive!?” Francis adds as I and Maxis talk about it. I nod no, the book says he is dead so I am not sure.

“Ma’am, so what you're telling me is you saw an apple your son just picked from your Orchard attack him?” I question, this is impossible, she must be tired, she passed all of the tests I gave her. 

“YES! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I AM SAYING,” she trembles as she cries, she swears she knows what she saw but how can we be sure? 

“Ma’am, I am gonna assume you are just a little tired. Just please go to bed, your son probably just ran off and will be back in a couple of hours. Our work here is done,” I walk away, and as I do I see a couple of kids around 16 come out of a car near the house and wonder if they know anything about the women.

“Hey kids, can you tell me anything about this woman, is she ok?”

As I and Simon talk about the book and look at the other stories we see some familiar names that have also gone missing. We finally made it to James Orchard, and we see a couple of cops, as Francis and I got out of the car a cop came up.

“Hey kids, can you tell me anything about this woman, is she ok?” he says pretty calmly for what he was probably just told. 

“No she is not her kid, just died, we assume. There is this weird book and it writes stories-” He stops me right in the middle of my sentence.

“Ok, never mind you're just as crazy as the women at the door,” he looks at me and Francis and then starts talking into his radio “7-92 reporting, time to round this up, let's move out!”

I look at Francis and we both just ignore him. We ran over to the front door and wondered what was going on. James’ mom was crying, we ran over to see if we knew anything, but by the look of that officer, he didn’t even think she was sane. 

“He is gone, he just,” she sobs, she slowly starts sitting down on her wooden rocking chair, plumping onto the big white pillow on it. “the apple just dragged him from the house to the Orchard! Am I going crazy?”

“No, you are not, this book has something with it. Words keep appearing on the page, it’s a story and the people in it end up how the story shows. We don’t know what to do,” Simon complains to James’ mom. Francis and Simon explain everything to James’ mom as I go try to find clues to where James is. After some time passed, we left, and we were all tired. I don’t remember too much after we leave, I just remember getting home and going to bed.

I light the bin. The fire sputters up as I see the book slowly get engulfed by fire. “Francis, it's over! I am not doing this anymore, JAMES IS DEAD,” I scream as Maxi's cowards. I start to cry, I can’t take it. This is my fault, I did it to him, I took the book from the haunted house. After about half an hour the fire slowly burns out. I kick it. Are my eyes playing tricks on me? Did I just see the book in perfect condition? I run over to the ashes and quickly drop to my knees, it takes me a minute to find the book under the ashes, but the book is completely fine. Francis looks from me to Maxis. “What are we going to do…?” 

“What if we put the book back? What if we talk to Shara?!” Francis exclaims like she came up with a wonderful idea. 

“She is dead! Are you insane, that makes no sense,’’ I add, she has been dead for almost 100 years. 

Maxis walks over to me and Francis, “None of this makes sense, what are you talking about,” She grabs the book from which was in my hand to see the writings. “We are going and I don’t care what you say. We have to try everything we can think of because this can’t keep going.” 

I can’t argue with her now, so I just go along with it. We get into Francis' car, not even touching the front seat where James sat last. As we are driving I hear a sigh coming from Francis. She is scared and doesn’t know what to do. We pull up to the house, and we get out of the car. All of us look at the house and look back at each other, Francis doesn’t want to go in and you can tell. We all start walking up to the house when the door opens slightly like it is telling us we need to go in and put it back. I look at Maxis and her face turns as pale as a ghost. I walked in to see the painting had fallen, and the girl’s eyes didn’t have the dark circles anymore. I quickly ran through the house to the secret book door. I try to get it open but it won’t budge, I look around the bookshelf and find a latch to open it. I pull the latch and the door slides open. I look down the stairs and all I can see is the first three steps, the rest is pitch black. As I start to walk down, Francis and Maxis come in and have the flashing. They shine it down the stairs. I was more careful than the last time I was here, and I made it down safely.

When I get down I shiver from a cold spot, I ignore the cold spot and quickly run towards the room where I got the books mixed up and put them back. As I put the book back, I heard a scream coming from upstairs. It sounded like Maxis. I quickly grab the book back and skim through the pages, and reach a fresh page. I touch the fresh page, and the ink seeps into my hand. I quickly run out of the room, but as I run out of the room I trip over the wooden horse. There are blood stains all over it that was not there before. I got up as fast as I could to get up the stairs. It was warm up there. I hear Francis crying. As I get up to the top I see no Maxis. She is gone, where did she go? 

“What happened to Maxis?” I cry, where is she, why isn’t she here? Was this all just a joke, is this a prank? I don’t know if this was some elaborate Halloween plan or real life. 

“She was taken by this creature. It had six arms, and four legs, and was tall. It was just a pitch-black figure, and it took Maxis and there was nothing I could do.” She breaks down into a scream, she can’t handle this anymore, nor could I. We don’t even leave before the book starts writing another story; it is about Francis this time. I didn’t even realize this until a weird guy with glasses showed up. He looks like an apprentice of sorts. I look into the book and see a new story called ‘The Helper’. I look at the name, it's Francis. 

“RUN!” I scream as my lung burns, it hurts. I quickly ran back down the stairs, to the basement to see a ghost walk into the room I got the book. I run and trip over the horse again. The ghost looks at me with an evil look, it's the girl from the painting. I get up and run towards her, she shoves me into the room and my glasses fall off and break. I can’t see, but I see her, as I scream at her and ask why she is locking me in here. She takes a look at me and says one word.

“Revenge,” she gives me a slight smirk and laughs. 

“Why do you need revenge? Is it about your family, being blamed for two kids' murders?” I question, as I am trying to get to a wall for support, I realized my leg was broken. I had to crawl and I howled in pain. Everything hurts, I think I broke my leg for sure though. She looks at me after saying ‘murders’, she knows what I am talking about. “Look you don’t need to do this, I know you didn’t murder the kids, you were taking care of them. I will tell people your story, I promise you won’t be known as a killer anymore-” I get stopped by a scream, a yelp in pain. Francis is gone. I just know it, she didn’t make it. 

“But child, how would you make people believe I am not a killer? Would you write a book about it?” She faintly lets out a sigh. I nod my head, telling her I will. She gives up and hands me a pen, “use your blood.” I go to thank her but she is gone. I quickly opened the book to fix the writing, but it was too late. She was gone. Francis was gone. I get up, I yowl, the pain is so intense, I limp to the stairs. I make it out fine, and even though I am not supposed to drive, I get in the car and drive home. I think everything will be ok.

Everyone has been asking me questions, but I don’t know what to say. It turns out I broke my leg and fractured a finger. I am leaving today, I am going to find my friends. I hope I do. Everything will be alright though. It’s gonna be fine.