My brother Xavier and I were never very close. Not since childhood. There had been a six-year age difference, which might as well have been generations. I was always the black sheep of the family. Ironically, in my youth – it was thought that I would go on to be the most successful, but things in my life always took a weird sideroad into failure. I abhorred going to family get-togethers because the family would engage in lengthy conversation that seemed to revolve around expensive travel, buying RVs and topics concerning home-ownership. I was just doing my best to try to survive. I couldn’t even afford a mortgage of my own yet.

The family decided to throw a party to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend and we rented a house with a swimming pool near the coast. My parents came and so did my brother and sister with their families. The house was very boxy and modern in design with 2 stories. The lower floor met a patio out back inlaid with large smooth square pavers, encasing an inground swimming pool that was 18 feet by 36 feet. The shorter end ran parallel to the back of the house, with the longer end jutting out into the backyard. The patio along the longer side was wedged between the pool and the house which continued onward. Inside the house, this was the den area.

On the second story of the house there was a deck that overlooked the pool, it protruded out over the patio along the lengthier side, not quite meeting the end of the pool. It was on this second deck that a propane barbecue grill had been placed sort of midway along the side nearest the pool. When the family arrived, this deck became a lot busier with coolers and other outdoor items. A small cooler got left next to a chair, and my brother Xavier, who was quite the daredevil, decided that he would jump off the chair into the pool below. The pool was not directly beneath the deck, so he would have to jump out a distance of at least 6 feet to make it into the water. Xavier was 6’4” and around two hundred pounds. He landed in a cannonball, and water shot up in every direction. The children shrieked with amusement while everyone else just stood there assessing how damp they had gotten in the aftermath.

As the day went on, his two oldest children attempted the jump when no one was paying much attention, getting a running start and launching themselves first onto the small cooler then off the chair and over into the pool, splashing as they went. I cringed every single time, remembering a similar game I played with my sister when we were children where we jumped off our bunkbed onto our feather duvets and one time I missed, shattering the bone in my arm in several places. They were all fearless. What would happen if they accidentally hooked their foot on the way over or they didn’t quite make the six-foot gap? The ground below wasn’t exactly soft.

Around dinner time, they were pulling food off the barbecue as I walked out toward the deck. I wasn’t even acknowledged by his wife, who just floated past me without even meeting my eyes in the hallway as if I was the wind. There on the deck was their youngest child, who everyone in the family called Eight, because she was the eighth grandchild. She was just over two years old. I called her Eightball.

I had only seen my niece at one other family get-together before this one and my brother was very distant from the family otherwise, so I wasn’t very close with Eight, where I had some history with my other nieces and nephews.

She stood at the end of the deck. She still had very fine, short dark hair for a two-year-old and big round brown doll-like eyes. Her head was slightly too big for her body. She was light tan, except for her chubby sun-kissed cheeks.

Eight was wearing a dress the color of poppies. I could see her as I was walking past her mother out toward the deck, not quite outside. I turned around to see if anyone was coming because no one was out there with her. They had left her out there alone. And when I turned back, she was bolting toward the small cooler. She stepped onto the chair and swung over the railing of the deck. I couldn’t yet see if she had made the jump, as I wasn’t outside. I could only see her flying off the balcony in a strange trajectory. My heart sank beneath me, and all the blood rushed out of my face. I heard a small splash. I stepped outside onto the deck and looked into the pool. I could see her, swimming in a dive below the surface, and then she turned and stared directly at me. She had stopped swimming, and was just staring at me. It was then that I realized she wasn’t even holding her breath. The thought also occurred to me that if she had stopped then she didn’t yet know how to swim to the surface. She was just doing what she saw up to a point, and copying her siblings. She stared at me with her big round doll-like eyes in the water as she began to move her limbs around in an uncoordinated distressed motion.

I looked back into the house, but no one was there. I let out a scream, “Xavier!” but I heard no reply. The second floor was quiet. Oh God, I’m going to have to make the jump myself, I thought. I wasn’t sure about making the six-foot gap to the pool, or even making it safely over the railing, but if I didn’t jump it would take much longer to go through the house to the stairs and make it down to the pool. Every second seemed to matter. In my mind, I could already hear my skull cracking on the edge of the pool as I stepped up onto the chair and jumped. I fell into the air and attempted to steer my body into a landing over the water, which ended in a sloppy cannonball. It took a moment to orient myself. I hadn’t gone swimming in ages and I was never a very strong swimmer. The weight of my clothes as they became saturated with water only added to my problems. I thrashed around in a doggy paddle looking for the red dress that Eight was wearing, or anything. There was nothing except water all around me. I kept swimming and searching for her, checking below the surface. I was sure I had landed close to her, but my jump must have pushed her off somewhere.

Just then, her mother Hazel walked back out onto the second deck to retrieve her, and discovered me in the pool. She was shouting and pointing at the far end of the pool, but I could only hear her muffled voice under the water. I swam up to the surface.

“She’s over there in the corner!” she pointed at the deep end of the pool. I swam toward it as fast as I could, my heart banging like a drum. She had been underwater for some time now. I dove down and she was there, in her dress, laying at the bottom of the pool, her big doll eyes still open. Hazel had already called for 9-1-1 on her cell. I collected Eight in my arms and then kicked my way to the surface pulling her up through the water. I laid her gently on the pavers, then attempted to climb out of the pool, forcing myself up with my arms along the edge in my waterlogged clothes. Once I was out, I checked for her breathing but there wasn’t any sign of it, so I began performing CPR on her as the others came from the house. My brother pushed me out of the way to take over. Eventually paramedics arrived with an ambulance and took her away.

I stood there, drenched, by the pool for a while, just thinking about what had caused this and if I had done anything differently, would it be different. I couldn’t stop shaking at the thought. My whole body vibrated with unanswered disappointment. I glimpsed over at the glass window on the first floor that looked out onto the pool. The blinds were closed as the sun was beaming down on it, but in its reflection, I could see a girl with a poppy-colored dress and giant doll-like eyes staring at me from the yard beyond the pool, and then she ran out of the window’s view. I turned to look, but the yard was silent now. The water from where we had exited the pool was already evaporating off the pavers. I stood there watching the window until the sun dipped down, not sure what else I was hoping to see. I still can’t get the image of her out of my mind of her big doll eyes staring back up at me from below the surface of the pool. How did she know I was even there?

In a community on the outskirts of Hambergen, children were told never to go out after the sunset, when the skies became dark. Something lurked out there that attacked animals and humans. And it was best never to enter the woods alone, even in broad daylight.

Neighboring children had been disappearing at random after dark, but they would know better than to go anywhere near the Reaper’s Wood because of the local legend handed down from generation to generation.

To make matters worse, a rivalry existed between the girls and the boys in the neighborhood. They played apart from one another and whenever the two groups came upon one another on the road, they would bicker and throw small rocks. The ring leader of the boys was a bully named Stefan. He had four other friends and they all lived on the next street over. There were two pairs of sisters who played together and lived next door to each other, who also played with other children from time to time. Astrid and Sofia lived closer to the forest than Lorelei and Emilia by one house. The eldest was Astrid at 14, followed by her sister Sofia who was 12, Lorelei was 10, and Emilia was 7.

One day, after several disappearances, Stefan decided to enter the forest on a dare. His friends dared him to walk 50 paces into the Reaper’s Wood and then turn and face the entrance, with his back facing the woods for 60 seconds. No one would know if he completed the dare, as they were too afraid to follow. He stood there in the forest, true to his word, counting quietly in his head 1, 2, 3, 4…

As Stefan stood there, in the darkness, he could hear something flutter past him in the trees, and caught sight of a feathered creature out of the corner of his eye. It’s just a barn owl, he reassured himself. 5, 6, 7, 8…

As he continued to count, the darkness dragged itself over the trees. The bird swooped lower, and something caught it midair. The barn owl let out a loud scream, but the sound was not the screech a barn owl would normally make. It was the sound of a girl screaming.

All the blood rushed from Stefan’s face as he turned and ran, heading deeper into the forest, away from the screaming owl and the thing that caught it. As he ran, one of his shoelaces became untied, and his shoe slipped off his foot. He did not stop for it. The forest grew in on itself the further he ran. His foot caught on a root and he fell onto the ground, catching his fall with his hands, which scraped against the earth and rock. Stefan stood to make another run for it, when something caught hold of him. He could feel himself shrinking away from his body, and then all he could see was darkness.

The next day, Stefan’s father, Karl, showed up at Astrid and Sofia’s house. He knelt down with pleading eyes, “Have you seen my Stefan?”

Their bodies felt like lead weights. Even though Stefan was cruel to them, he was someone they knew. Still, they knew nothing, so his father left their house even more drained of hope.

Stefan’s father called police, who brought dogs to sweep the neighborhood for Stefan’s scent, but they would not go near the forest, sensing a danger there, and did everything to lead the police off in another direction. Karl had phoned Astrid and Sofia’s mother to let her know that the search had turned up nothing. The girls overheard them talking from the living room.

A short time later, Astrid and Sofia met with Lorelei and Emilia at the vacant lot next to their house. It had an elephantine tree with many gnarled, hulking branches that hung low to the ground. Today they were there to discuss what to do about the disappearances.

“We can’t just do nothing, and wait for it to get us too,” said Sofia.

“It’s daytime. We should go to the forest and look to see if we can find any signs of Stefan,” she added.

They all agreed. Lorelei grabbed a flashlight from the house just in case, and they left, not telling anyone what they were planning to do. When they got to the woods, the trail leading in narrowed so they had to walk single file with Astrid at the front and Emilia taking up the rear. After walking for some time, Astrid spotted something along the path, “Oh Nooo!”

Stefan’s brown shoe was lying on its side.

“Stefan!” Sofia yelled for him.

“Stefan!” They all yelled, tears filling their eyes.

But in return there was only silence. They continued along the trail. Eventually, they came upon a clearing. In the clearing there was a broad tree that towered over the others nearby, and just below it was a massive ring filled with leaves.

“Isn’t it odd that this is the only spot in the entire wood that has any leaves?” Lorelei remarked.

The scene looked strangely like a circle of fire. Around the circle of leaves were strange symbols engraved in the dirt. Up in the tree that stood beside it, was a platform with planks nailed into the side of the tree to ascend it.

Who would build and abandon a tree house out this far? Lorelei thought.

Instinctively, Astrid climbed, clinging to each of the planks and pulling herself up to inspect what was on the platform. There was a metal bucket and inside it there was a red cloth. Or was it white… and stained red by something? She suddenly realized what it was. It was a nightgown. A little girl’s nightgown covered in blood. Astrid’s heart pounded in her chest.

As Lorelei stood on the ground with Emilia, she could feel the darkness shift over her. “We have to go now.”

Astrid turned to come down from the platform and took one more look at the ring of leaves from above.

“It’s a portal to hell,” she said absently.

An icy chill moved through her body as she realized what she had said. Astrid had never seen one before, nor did she know of any satanic rituals, but she knew in her gut that’s what this was. She hurried down the planks to the ground below. Once she was at the bottom, panting, she said, “It’s how…it’s taking them. The leaves are some kind… of veil.”

The other girls’ eyes grew wide.

“We have to close it!”

What Astrid was saying made some kind of strange sense to everyone.

“But first, let’s get out of here. If it catches us, we can’t stop anything,” Sofia added.

The darkness grew around them. The girls ran the full length of the forest to the entrance, something paced them in the trees the entire way. They didn’t stop running until they got to Astrid and Sofia’s house, collapsing on the patio furniture completely out of breath.

“What are we going to do, Astrid?” Lorelei asked.

“I will try to figure out a way to close the portal.”

A look of deep concern spread across Sofia’s face. “That means we have to go back in there again, it isn’t safe!”

“Nothing is safe.” Astrid replied.

“Why don’t we get our parents involved?” Emilia asked.

“What happens if they don’t believe us? They may forbid us to go, and then we won’t be able to do anything about it,” Astrid said, crossing her arms and slouching back into her chair to think.

The girls resolved not to tell their parents.

That night, Astrid sat at her computer, pouring over countless websites, looking for information on how to close the portal. She could sense a strange presence in her room, but dismissed it because of the horrific nature of the content she was looking at. Around 3 a.m. she shut down her computer, and when she turned to get up from her chair, she could see a figure in her window with a white face and two large black eyes staring back at her. She screamed. Then she realized it was just a barn owl. It placed something on the windowsill outside and then flew away. She got closer to the window to see what the owl had left. On the sill was a neat row of tiny rocks, arranged from large to small.

Owls don’t do that, Astrid thought to herself.

That night she could barely sleep. She kept watch over the window, waiting for the owl to come back. The next morning, Astrid met the other girls in the gnarled tree on the vacant lot after breakfast.

“We have to pick some sage from the garden and tie it into bundles. Try to pick the leaves that look dried out by the sun. Then we need salt, as much as we can find,” she said, laying out the plan with a yawn.

Sofia and Emilia set to work picking sage and tying it while Astrid and Lorelei gathered all the salt they could find in their houses. Astrid also found a lighter, rummaging through the junk drawer in the kitchen, that they would need for the next part of their plan.

Astrid grabbed four ceramic bowls out of the kitchen cupboard and placed them into her bag. Once they had gathered everything, they headed for the woods. When they reached the clearing, Astrid bent down and pulled the four bowls out of her bag. She began scooping a couple handfuls of fresh dirt into each one. The ground was loose there. She handed a bowl to each of the girls and kept one for herself. Then, she passed them a bundle of sage to place inside their bowl. She pulled the lighter from the bag and lit the bundles, which smoked.

“We need to stand at four equidistant points around the circle of leaves,” she said.

The girls each took up one point around the circle as Astrid walked the circumference, pouring the salt onto the surrounding ground.

“This salt will seal the portal,” she explained.

“Now we must pray,” she told the girls.

They held out their smoking sage and followed Astrid’s words.

“By the Power of the Heavenly Father, I command all types of dark portals in and around this wood to be immediately filled with Jesus Christs’ light forever dismantling, closing, and sealing these portals. I also command that the entities who created these portals leave immediately and never return!”

Just then, the ground inside the circle, covered by the leaves, gave way to a seemingly endless hole in the earth, and something was moving upward inside the hole. The girls edged backward in fear, unsure of what they had done. Hundreds of barn owls began flying out of the void and swarming the sky. As the last owl flew out, the earth swallowed the pit, sealing the portal forever.

Astrid felt disappointed. She didn’t just want to stop the children from being taken; she wanted to return them. She wanted to return Stefan to his father. She then realized something.

“The owls are all the missing children.”

The girls stood there for a while, looking at the sky with alabaster faces, horrified by what this meant.

“How do we change them back Astrid?” Emilia asked. The question felt painfully rhetorical.

As the sunlight dwindled, they went to Astrid and Sofia’s house. Their father was sitting in his armchair when the girls came crashing through the door.

“You kids look like you had a visit from Uncle Hendrik,” he remarked jokingly.

That night, and every night since then, a barn owl with a heart-shaped face visits Stefan’s father’s bedroom window and then it flies to Astrid’s house, leaving a stone on her windowsill.

*Note: Uncle Hendrik is another name for death.