Moonlight

 I was in a forest. It was night, and the tall dark trees stood over me. The moon was enormous and shone like a watchful eye down across the shadowscape. it was not yet high in the sky, so only through the boughs of confers could it be seen. The air was cold and unfriendly; I shivered. The trees moaned and creaked as they rocked back and forth as if blown by the wind, but there was none. Goosebumps crawled across my arms. I was cold, but also afraid. I decided i would walk on. I took a step, and then stopped in suprise. i was barefoot, and the needles of the pine trees poked my feet. There was no undergrowth, but there was the needles littered across the forest floor. Enormous black roots twisted across the ground, and then plunged back into the earth. I knew that i was lost. None of this made any sense. Why was i here? I rubbed my eyes again and continued to walk, using the roots of the trees as paths to avoid the needles, like a child on railroad tracks. On and on I traveled, and the night continued. I could tell the sun had never before risen over this forest. Looking down now, the fog twirled itself around my bare feet. I saw falling stars once, in a break through the treetops, but when i looked again, they were gone. A was formed before me. I don't know how. If it had been there and was as old as the earth I don't know, or if it was gradually formed in my moving along the twisted roots. I sat down. I was not tired, but i felt as though I was expecting something to happen. As if on cue, a glow appeared not far from me, on my right towards the Road. A candle. it dissappeared behind a massive pine, and i sat forward, anxiously peering to see it reappear. There. There it was again. Moving slowly, and the candle was carried by a cloaked figure. More appeared behind the first, and moving slowly enought that I could count them. Sixteen. They moved out of the shadows of the trees onto the main road, and continued down it with their backs toward me. I was breathless. i had been certain that no one else or nothing else had been in there with me under the moon, but the expanse of trees must have been endless. I pulled myself up from the side of the road, and watched as the last light disappeared around a left corner. I had to follow. I raced through the trees to meet them at the corner and then follow. I have never ran so fast in my life, but as i ran to cut the corner, i was blown by a sudden gust of energy back onto the Road. I am not certain, but my guess is that i was only allowed to stay on the road, and had seen as much of the rest of the forest as i was allowed. I got up, and my head spun from rolling. As it all came back into focus, I jumped in suprise. A gate of iron stood in front of me, with cruel points and a bent and broken frame. I had not it seen down the Road. i scrambled up and spun wide-eyed around. the moon was there, taking up almost all of the sky, and it let of a ethereal aura that I could see and feel as much as the dim light it gave off. and  A clearing opened up behind the gate, with the trees surrounding it in a circle. Looking back, wrought in the iron was a darkly elegant archway to enter under. On the archway, the number 1995 glowed with a sickly green. i took a quick breath. I stepped through the gate. Suddenly i was struck down, and a deep thrumming sound pulsed through my ears, and the rest of my body. the sixteen hooded figures materialized around me. And in horror i looked up at them from the ground. i couldnt hear anything, and the deep noise in my skull was getting more intense. One of the cloaked figures stepped forward. he knelt down and reached out with an arm. A hand came from under his sleeve. I was skeletal with unnaturally long fingers. the hand went to my chest. Ice. I tensed and stopped breathing. An intense feeling of being put in ice water came over me.I heard only my heart. it beat slow, and slower, and then it quit. The pulsing noise ceased, and I sank below the surface of the icy water. 
A boy stepped into a clearing. he had been wandering in a forest, lost, and confused. Now with a break from the trees, he looked around. Nothing. A gate on the far end he could see, but it had obviously been destroyed and the black metal was broken. he strode out across the dead grass, not knowing what he would do.
 It took longer than he thought to cross the expanse of grass. As he neared the other side, getting closer to the grim pines on the other side, he saw a body. He ran towards it, and put a hand to its shoulder.
he flipped the body over to check if whoever it was was okay. It was him. he reeled back in shock. The face was his, now cold and blank, and the eyes that might have been brown were two black orbs that reflected his own frightened face.
where the dead boy had lain on the ground, the grass had been scorched and burned. He took a deep breath. taking a look at the boys face again, he reached out and shut his dopplehangers' eyelids.
And then he knew. he stood back up. The boy raised his eyes to the alien sky and saw the moon had shrunk and stars glimmered faintly. everything made sense. He didn't look back at the corpse and made his way across the glade.
  He came to the gate and stepped over it. He then walked back down the Road, and after a long walk  came to a bridge that ended half way across a deep vale. he felt something on the Other Side that was competing with the darkness, fighting to stay for the short while that it had to.
He put a bare foot onto the stone, and to his suprise, found it was warm. he also noticed that the stonework of the bridge got gradually fairer and brighter towards the other side.

 A feeling of relief washed over him, and as he came to the edge in the middle of the bridge, he looked down. Darkness. But he knew. The boy took the two next steps, and then vanished with a ripple in the air on the Other Side. A clear, beautiful note rang out once, and a fire of the purest kind burned the trees to the ground.