The forest

Growing up next to a forest will both forever be one of my most cherished and haunting memories. As a kid my brother and I grew up next to a beautiful national park. My parents always warned us to never to go in, under any circumstances. My brother and I used to play on the outskirts of the forest, sometimes we would hear strange noises and see things dashing between the leaves from the corner of our eyes. My brother began to question my parents why they always seemed so scared. They would always simply reply that they just didn’t want us to get lost. My brother and I would play all sorts of games to pass our time. One day we decided to play catch, my brother threw the ball to high and too fast and it went straight into the forest. It was only just inside and I could see the ball from where I was standing. I began walking over to get it but our mother would watch us sometimes from the window and saw me walking towards the forest. I remember her running out and screaming telling me I was to never go into the forest under any circumstances. I was sent to my room and grounded. My mother yelled at my brother too as he was quite older than me and she told him it was his responsibility to watch me. She screamed on about all the things that might have happened to me had she not been watching. At the time I couldn’t understand why it had been such a big deal, I was going to quickly walk in grab the ball and walk out. I wouldn’t have gotten lost as the house was still in sight, my brother was there to watch me. A week passed and my mother finally allowed us to play outside again, however this time she was always watching us play. The ball sat there just outside of our reach, it was our favourite ball to play catch with as it was bright red and had a little drawing of a rocket on the side that my brother and I had done together. As time went on and my brother got older, stronger and more confident he began pushing and breaking the rules my parents had set out. He would joke about going into the forest and proving to my parents that there was no reason for them to be so scared. Until one day I walked into the kitchen to get breakfast and I saw him stuffing his bag full of food and drinks. I asked him if we were going on a play pretend picnic as we had done so many times before. He told me that we weren’t playing picnic today instead he wanted to explore the forest. I knew this time it wasn’t a joke, I began crying and begging him not to go in. My parents were away that day as they had to go to the markets to get food. He sat me down and told me not to cry, he took my favourite bear that I wouldn’t go anywhere without. He told me that he would take my bear to protect him and that way he’d have to make sure he came back. I agreed and watched as my brother walked into the forest. He grabbed our favourite red ball and threw it to me, I asked him to come back after that, but I watched him disappear into the leaves. With nobody to play with to pass the time I bounced the red ball off the house to play catch. My parents arrived home some hours later, was almost sunset. My mother immediately asked where my brother was as I was playing alone. She saw the red ball in my hands and her eyes immediately darted to where the red ball used to lay inside the forest. All I remember was her screams, she ran to the side of the forest and began calling his name. My father ran to her and tried to console her, I knew he had to come back to give me my bear. The search party was called to look for my brother, they never found any sign of him. They said it was like he had vanished, it was all over the news. My brother never brought my bear back, we never got to play catch with our favourite red ball again. Sometimes I think I could see him standing just inside the forest holding my bear, almost as if it was calling for me to enter. I think my parents saw him too one day, however they seemed frightened and shortly afterwards built a fence blocking off the forest. To this day I’ll never know what happened to my brother.