 Welcome to Microterrorz. Scary stories for kids. Where it's always the spooky season. Full of chills. Thrills. And spine-tingling spooks. Microterrorz are family-friendly frights for those ages 8 and up. And while our stories are for younger years, we are still talking about things that go bump in the night. And some children may not be able to handle what others can. Parental consent is recommended. Now for tonight's Microterrorz. Whispers on the Woods I wanted to tell you about when my sister went missing. Or, so they say, missing isn't exactly the word I would have ever used to describe what happened to her. I'm a senior in high school now, so this all happened 7 years ago, when Marcy and I were only 10. We loved to play Truth or Dare with Abby. She was our older sister. But Abby liked to take it to the next level. Sometimes we were okay with it. Other times it made us a little uneasy. But in the end, that was all part of the fun and thrill of Abby's version of the game. For example, if we chose Truth, it would be a question that would really put us in a bad or embarrassing light. If it was a dare, it was usually a crazy stunt we'd have to do. You get the picture. This particular dare was one that had Marcy and I both nervous. But we figured in the end, like always, we would ride the adrenaline of the thrill. There was a house a few blocks away from us that was hidden within a small wooded area. There were a lot of rumors surrounding this house. They ranged everywhere from it being haunted, of course, to others claiming a creepy family of cannibals lived there. But most people insisted it was just an old man who lived there named Francis Clements, which could be definitively proven by the current city records at the time. Well, since the true occupants of the house seemed to be a mystery to the neighborhood kids, one thing was not a mystery. There was a large number of people who had gone missing in and around the small wooded area that sheltered the isolated house. Over the years, 37 people were reported missing in that area of the neighborhood. 31 of those people were last seen near that property. Ghosts took the people. That's where the haunted house theory came in. Police had searched the woods repeatedly over the years, but never recovered any physical evidence that any one of the missing people had been there. That's where the cannibal family came in. They consumed the nearly 40 people, bones and all. The truth behind the missing people was never figured out. The only truth I knew was that the house belonged to Francis Clements, a retired botanist who lived all alone. He'd been questioned many times by the police as well as served numerous warrants for complete sweeps of his house. And just like always, nothing turned up. So unless these people wandered into a parallel universe or were abducted by aliens, there was no logical explanation for why they just vanished. That's where Marcy and I officially enter the story. Abby had dared Marcy and I to venture through the woods and knock on the front door of Mr. Clements' house. If we returned, she promised never to dare us again. If we didn't, she said the game would be over forever for obvious reasons. It was a dark comment, but she didn't truly expect anything to happen. Unfortunately, it did. Abby gave us a referee's whistle to blow with bad things when a foot in the woods. Marcy draped it around her like a necklace and then she and I entered the woods with no problem. Abby sat in her car out on the street to await the whistle, but she didn't really think we'd need it. I think she just wanted to see the terrified looks on our faces when we came running out of the woods. Marcy and I started up the dirt path that cut through the trees. The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. It was like once we entered the woods, all of the noise from the road ceased to exist. There were only soft chirps from crickets and the rustling of the trees against one another. Marcy joked with me about what parts of us the cannibals would eat first, and I responded with something about how the ghosts wouldn't let them eat us because we were dared and not on the property on our own terms. They would eat Abby instead. I remember Marcy's laugh, soft and innocent. That was the last time I ever heard Marcy laugh. As we continued down the narrow path, I heard something, a whisper. It said, It was barely audible, but I know what I heard. Marcy claimed not to have heard it. We continued a couple of yards further and then I heard it again. Turn around, the whisper said. It sounded like a child. I looked around, but there was nobody else in the woods. I asked Marcy if she was trying to scare me, but she said she didn't know what I was even talking about. She could tell I was spooked though, so she gripped the whistle between her fingers, just in case. Or maybe it was just to ease my mind. We finally made it to the house. It was an old house that had definitely seen better days, so I could tell where the stories of it being haunted had come from. A couple of the windows on the second floor were boarded up and one on the first floor had a webbed crack in the glass. But the weirdest part of the house was how much overgrowth was on and around it. Vines crawled up all sides of the house like chain lightning. Dark green moss covered the roof and the bushes that surrounded the residents were wildly untamed. Marcy and I crept up to the front door and knocked. The main part of our dare was over. All that was left was our retreat. But before we could even turn around and run, the front door swung open to reveal a dark void inside. A man's arm shot out from the blackness and we both screamed. I bolted off the porch and heard Marcy continue to scream behind me. Her scream became fainter the further I ran then suddenly stopped and it turned into a shrill blast from the whistle. I don't know exactly what happened next. The ear piercing sound of her blowing the whistle seemed to echo in my head. I felt dizzy and flush and passed out in the dirt. Gift inspired. A voice whispered in my ear. I opened my eyes and spit dirt out from my mouth. I sat up immediately noticing how quiet it was around me. I was still on Mr. Clement's property laying in the middle of the narrow pathway. I could still see his house but the front door was closed. The woods that surrounded me began to feel disorienting and all I could think about was getting back to Abbey. I stood up and brushed the dirt off my clothes. That's when I heard the whisper again. Get out before he changes his mind. I called out demanding to know who was whispering. I couldn't see anyone. There was nothing but trees and plants and dirt. Whoever it was never responded again. I decided to take the haunting voices advice and I ran for Abbey. Just before I got to the edge of the woods I felt something familiar. I felt like I was once again in the presence of Marcy. I stopped seeing Abbey's car just beyond the remaining cluster of trees. But if Marcy was nearby I needed to get her first. I spun in circles looking for her, looking for her clothes, her body, anything. I called for her to blow the whistle again but nature's silence was the only response. Then something glimmered in the fractured sunlight that shone through the canopy. It was on a tree only a few yards away. I couldn't see exactly what it was so I walked closer. That's what every hair on my body stood on end. It was the whistle embedded into the tree as if they were one and the same. The bark seemed to breathe, lifting up and down like it was alive. I heard Marcy's voice urgently whispered to me. It's been seven years and no one believes my story as to what I thought what I know happened to Marcy. I've always believed that Mr. Francis Clements was a botanist that practiced mad in taboo experiments in his isolated retirement asylum. Somehow he was able to transform people into plants and trees. That would explain why there was never any evidence of missing people in his woods. Because they were the woods. His victims remained in plain sight. Over the past seven years many more people in my town have gone missing. Everyone has a different theory as to what happened to each of them. But not a single theory can be proven. The only thing that can be proven is the fact that the woods on Mr. Clements property is almost tripled in size since Marcy and I chose dare over truth that day. Thank you for listening to Microterrorz. Join us each Saturday for another scary story. For more fun visit our website at microterrorz.com where we will also have spooky games you can print out and play like wicked word searches, mysterious mazes and more. Microterrorz.com is also where you can find us on your favorite social media even sending your own scary story for us to tell. Plus you'll learn more about our author Scott Donnelly who has other horrors for both young and old. I hope you'll join me again soon from Microterrorz. Scary stories for kids.