DO NOT TOUCH.   But clearly people had, for there were disturbed lines and waves in the inch of dust.

The beautiful woman, her eyes glazerd, stared far into a world from which none awake.  The fine craft of the ripples in her dress and the lightness of her hair suggested a wind blowing, but there was none.  All was still.  Of course it was, the woman was made of wood.

Still.

My victim misted as if a curtain had been down, or a blind dropped.

Behind the mist, a scene began to play.  It was the same woman, but not made of wood.  She was standing beneath an overcast sky, staring into the distance.  Her feet were bare on the windy hill, and she was as pale as death.  She shared the pose of her wooden statue, her arms were limp, her blonde hair whipping around her face, her faded dress tousled and fluttered by the wind.

All the while she stared into distance, still.  The mist was fading away, her features sharpening, the scene brightening.

The woman spun round, her eyes flashing furiously.  She pointed directly at me.

"Leave....."

The world spun around me, I was back in the grimy house. With several differences.

My hand had been gripping the wooden figurine's wrist, but had let go when she spoke.  It was covered in a sort of dirty grime.  I wiped it, disgusted, on my trousers.

The second difference took me a second to clock, nor were her arms limply held at her sides.

Her eyes stared furiously at me, her arm outstretched and her finger pointed.  She now shared the pose she had at the end of my vision. 

The sign that had proclaimed: "DO NOT TOUCH" hung over her arm was gone.  It now read: LEAVE.

I turned and sprinted out, scared out of my wits.  I completed the dare, I went into the house, but no-one, no-one, would ever know was there, ever.

As I fiddled with the latch on the door I looked over my shoulder, just to check, you know.

The sign had changed again. "Still....." It said. I stopped my frantic fumbling to stare at it.  Still? Still as death? Stand still?

As the ceiling began to crumble, I ran over to the window.  On the lawn outside there were hundreds of wooden figurines, crafted like the woman before me.  I recognised a face I had seen in the pages, missing, presumed dead.  Once I saw one, I recognised more, dead, missing, gone...

I would join them after my death.  Bits of brick and plaster above me, crushing my body, and before long I knew it - I was gone.

Jenni, Year Eight