The Legend of Youngs Corner VII

PART VII
The Time Has Come

2001

It is now five years after my family saw the 3 cabins in the misty, gray winter skyline atop the great hill of the Northern Woods. From the summer of 1997 to the summer of 2001, the old woman was never seen. Not one day did she appear from the small opening of the Northern Woods atop the hill at the end of the field. She never came down to walk her dog, and she never visited us again. Was she truly gone? For five years she disappeared, but were her days really over and done with?

I passed from grade school to high school, and now this new chapter in my life was about to be closed. The end of my senior year was only 5 months away, and the summer of immortality was drawing closer. My friends and I, believing we were invincible, were constantly seeking ways to scare us. We wanted to escape from the real world and experience something supernatural. We wanted to be rebellious and lawless. We wanted to infiltrate places we’ve never been, places we’ve always wanted to go but were too afraid to go before. Well the time of fear was over. We visited abandoned institutions known for their mysterious experiments from the turn of the century, dilapidated Victorian houses that overlooked the city, and even century old, lifeless farms located in the far reaches of the county boundaries where nothing but farm land could be seen for miles. All of these excursions were, of course, done at the peak of night. But nothing we ever came across was truly frightening. We were constantly searching for haunted houses, closed off buildings, old and historic homes; just something that was uncommon, a place where people avoided out of fear.

Summer was only weeks away, and we still hadn’t found the right place, a place that will stick in our minds for all time, a place where each and everyone of us will be scared to the bone. We wanted something real, something made of pure fear, something no one had ever ventured to find before. And I knew just thing...