Witch Lights

When I was seven years old, my dad took me and my little brother on a spring break trip to the North Carolina mountains while my mom was with my sister on a school trip. The first night, we stopped to stay with my dad's old college roommate and his family. At the time they owned a girls' summer camp in the mountains, and they lived in a small house on the property (they have since moved to Asheville, and I believe they sold the camp). One of their two daughters was just a year younger than me. We had never met before, and I was excited to make friends with someone new. But I guess you could say we did not exactly click right off the bat. Right when we got there, my dad suggested I go play with her out on the playground, which was actually a sort of show-training area for dogs (hard to explain). It was right by the entrance to a path that lead into the woods. While we were playing, the girl started telling me about how the woods were enchanted, and creepy things happened there at night. It sounded like a regular ghost story to me, so I just played along as she told me about a troll who lived under the stone bridge (which we could see from where we were - it looked pleasant and cute), and a witch who lived in an old stone kitchen up on the hill. I didn't know what a stone kitchen would look like, but I didn't really believe the story... although I'll admit I felt a little uncomfortable walking past the woods when we went back inside.

That evening we went out for pizza, and when we got back to the camp it was entirely dark. We sat outside and ate some pie that the girl's mom had baked, and while we were out there my new "friend" constantly told me stories about the witch and the troll, and how the witch would send lights up into the sky at night, and you could see them from miles away. It was her sign that she was about to come down off the hill and kidnap some children.

Still thinking this sounded far-fetched, I went to bed hardly shaken. I was sleeping on the girl's floor, on a blow-up matress right by the window, which was full-length and looked out over the field to the woods. I wasn't really tired, since I had had a Coke at dinner, but the girl fell asleep right away, leaving me alone in the dark. Just as I was getting drowsy, I looked out of the window at the woods... and saw what looked like a weird haze over the treetops. It looked oddly purple, almost like someone had taken a picture of the sky and tinted it in Photoshop. It seemed to ebb and flow, but it didn't go away. I finally picked up my pillow and, my heart beating in my ears, hurried to the guest room where my dad and brother were sleeping. I never told the girl about it, not wanting her to rub it in my face, and to this day I still wonder if I imagined it all.