I ran - by A.B. aged 11

I ran

           by A.B. aged 11

I ran.

My feet pounded against the muddy forest floor.

I looked behind me and saw nothing. Then I looked harder, staring at a patch of moonlight filtering through the trees. 

Then something stepped into the clearing, moving fast, seeming to glide into the starlight, stretching its  . . . its things toward me. I ran all the harder, smashing my feet on the windswept needles like massive bullets, crashing further into the woods.

I turned, frantically scrambling over fallen logs, trying to lose it by weaving in and out of the trees.

Suddenly I tripped on a root, falling flat and scrambling back up and behind the tree. I looked behind me but saw nothing but the moonlit bracken, torn from my dash past.

Then all of a sudden I felt a chill – not the kind of chill you get from a crisp morning air or the chill you get from at the top of the tracks knowing you will fall at any second, plummeting toward the ground, but a kind of chill that crawls up your spine, paralysing your whole body and making your sixth sense scream at your very soul to run.

I turned around about and there it was. The last thing I remembered was a feeling of pure panic before I was gone.