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The fire crackled and shot the sparks high up into the sky. The oranges and yellows danced, never staying in the moment, creating unrepeatable patterns. Along with the few pumpkin lanterns it gave the light that illuminated the river bank where the Avengers decided to have their Halloween bonfire. The light it gave separated them from the silent and shadowy wall of the forest.
Peter took a breath and let the firewood smoke fill his lungs. He extended his hands, letting the warmth of the fire engulf him. He could hear the river and the chatter around. Unfortunately, he could also hear his Aunt talking and laughing at everything Happy said.
“What are you thinking about?” The hand on his shoulder and the voice startled him and made him jump. He looked at Tony, who stood next to him, smiling softly. Peter opened his mouth to answer when the other voice interrupted. Peter and Tony moved their heads towards the person.
“Aww, we haven’t started with the ghost stories and the Spiderling is already scared!” Clint yelled and Sam laughed at that. Peter felt the blood rushing to his cheeks.
“Lay off him.” Natasha pushed Clint playfully. “You are the one that ends up crying after a single ghost story.”
“I… Never!” Clint protested, but Natasha didn’t listen to him. She turned around and left, Clint following her, trying to convince her that he was not afraid of ghost stories.
Tony chuckled and patted Peter on the back. Peter looked at him, but the scene going on behind the man’s back caught his eye. His Aunt was practically leaning on Happy, laughing at the story he was telling. Happy gestured wildly and smiled. He smiled. Peter saw him smiling maybe once or twice in his life. Peter felt his own face drop.
“What?” Tony noticed his change of mood and followed his gaze. “Ohhh…” He smirked. “Well, your Aunt is smoking hot-”
“Mr. Stark!” Peter twisted his face in disgust. “She’s my Aunt!”
“And she’s a beautiful woman with a life of her own. Don’t look at me like that.” He elbowed Peter. “It’s not the end of the world. You like Happy.”
“Yes, but it’s my Aunt. With Happy.” Peter tried to push his point across, but he only elicited a laugh from Tony.
“Better think about your ghost story.”
“Oh, I already have it prepared and practiced well.”
“I’m going to win anyway.”
“How do you even know that?”
“Because I always win.”
Obviously, because it was Halloween they were going to tell the ghost stories around midnight. Officially it wasn’t a competition, but Tony treated it as such anyway. They decided to pass Halloween this way instead of throwing a big party. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was one of the best Halloween celebrations Peter participated in. They put a lot of effort into preparing this and everyone had their own part in it. The place they chose was at the side of the river. The patch of forest separated it from the Compound. During the day, they prepared the place, brought firewood, placed the tables for food around, and made makeshift benches out of wooden planks and tree logs. They also prepared carved pumpkins together, a couple of days before. Despite the night being cold and everyone being in thick jackets it was cozy and what’s more important, spooky.
Peter moved away from the bonfire to the table with the pumpkin pies. He cut a piece and took a bite, listening to Clint and Natasha arguing whether it’s better to roast marshmallows or sausages over the fire. Nat was claiming that in Russia they roast only sausages and nobody does that with marshmallows. Clint, on the other hand, couldn’t comprehend how you could roast something else than marshmallow. In his opinion that was the ultimate campfire food. Peter himself was with Clint on this one. After he finished eating the pie, he grabbed a couple of marshmallows and stuck them on the stick, then started roasting them. They were done quickly and Peter slipped them off the stick, burning his fingers. He put them in his mouth where the candy melted and burned his tongue.
The moment of pleasure was disturbed by Tony clapping his hands and shouting, “Okay everyone, let’s start with the stories because I’m getting bored.”
Everyone has gathered around the fire.
“So, who would like to start?” Steve asked when they were all seated.
“Maybe let the kid start!” Sam shouted.
Everyone turned towards Peter, looking at him expectantly.
“Umm, okay.” Peter got up from his seat.” So… um… Okay. I know I shouldn’t have started with “so”. Anyways. My story is about this place. MJ and I-”
“Ooo, the scary girlfriend,” Tony said with a shit-eating grin.
“She’s not my... “ Peter blushed and continued,” Anyway, we had an idea and we did some research into the history of this place.” He wiggled his wrists, feeling a bit uncomfortable with everyone staring at him. “I mean, the area surrounding the Compound. The records say that this area was, till the second half of the ninth century, covered by the forests. I mean, there still are some.” He nodded at the wall of trees next to them. “Anyway, there were very few villages and roads here and a forest. The local newspapers reported a lot of cases of people getting lost here. Some of them were never found, not even their bodies. They just disappeared without a trace. They were believed to haunt this forest, as the locals reported seeing the white shadows wandering around their villages after dusk. The inhabitants also reported hearing the screams echoing from the forest at night,” Petr dropped his voice dramatically and took a breath. As the story progressed it got easier for him to present it. “But the most interesting are the accounts of people who found their ways home. All of their stories were scarily similar. Those people described finding an empty village in the middle of the forest. It looked like it was abandoned for some time. The buildings were ruined, the dead leaves laid everywhere and the air was filled with the smell of the rotting corpses of the dead animals. But it also looked like whoever had left, did it just for a moment, meaning to come back in a second. There were dishes left on the table, clothes hanging to dry on a rope, children's toys laying outside, everything rotten and covered in dust. But nobody could find this place when they were looking for it specifically, even when they followed the directions from people that were there.”
“Boo!” Sam screamed, making everyone shriek.
“Kid, you've researched how creepy and dangerous those forests are and you haven’t thought to tell us this before, to… I don’t know, maybe stop us from picnicking in a haunted forest during Halloween at midnight?” Rhodey asked after everyone got their breathing under control.
“Well, since most of those forests were cut and the roads started being built here, people stopped reporting those kinds of stories.” Peter shrugged. Everyone looked at him incredulously.
“Aww, fuck, we’re out of marshmallows,” Clint said suddenly, lifting the empty bag.
“We have more at the Compound,” Tony noticed.
“Yeah, any volunteers that want to go there?” Clint retorted sarcastically.
“Aww, the first story and you’re already scared?” Natasha cooed at him.
“Well, if you’re not scared that you’re right now in the middle of the night at the haunted forest then there’s something wrong with you.”
“It can be easily explained,” Natasha calmly replied. “If there were few villages and roads, an enormous surface covered by the forest, then people getting lost and dying in there aren’t anything unusual. The bodies would decompose quickly and after one or two falls the skeletons would be buried under the leaves. Also, the stories like this would discourage people from going to the forest and looking for their neighbors. The part about the abandoned village and ghosts was just made up by people, just like those UFO stories. The screams heard from the forest could be easily explained by the animal noises.”
“Yup, exactly, there’s nothing that the logic can’t explain,” Tony shifted in his seat.
“Well, I don’t know, if someone had told me a couple of years ago that you would’ve become a superhero and fight the aliens, I would have laughed in their face, but here we are,” Happy noticed.
“He’s got a point, you know?” May backed Happy up.
Peter had to fight his gag reflex.
“Well, Nat and I can go for marshmallows to the Compound and prove to you that the ghosts don’t exist.” Tony looked at Natasha, who nodded in approval.
“I’m going with you!” Peter yelled.
“Sure, let’s go.”
The trio got up, took the flashlights, and chose the narrow dirt path in direction of the Compound. They walked in silence.
“You know, but it would be kind of cool to find that village,” Peter started the conversation.
“Did you just go with us in hopes to get lost in the forest?”
“No, but…”
“Jesus. We’re going for the marshmallows. We’re not getting lost. This is a straight path.”
“But you admit, that if we got lost, we could find it.”
“If we got lost, the others would look for us.”
“They’re scared.”
“They would start in the morning. The worst thing that would happen is us getting cold and hungry.”
“And Clint not getting his marshmallows,” Natasha joked.
After a couple of minutes of walking, Peter started again.
“You know, I don’t remember this place.”
“It’s because everything looks different at night,” Tony sighed.
“I’m not so sure.” They got to the place where the path turned slightly right. The giant stone at the side of the road appeared to their eyes. “Do you remember that stone?” Peter asked.
“No,” Tony and Natasha answered in unison.
“We’ve got lost,” Peter said cheerfully.
“Did you hit your head, we’ve got lost!” Tony glared at Peter. “Wait a moment.” He fished his phone out of the pocket and turned it on.
“We had no phone rule!”
“Well, my disobedience is going to save our asses.” He looked at the screen.”Or not.” It showed ‘no service’. “That’s not possible.” He started furiously typing on his phone.
“Tony,” Natasha nudged him. “Look there.”
They all looked in the direction where she pointed. There was something white at the end.
“It’s probably the smoke. We probably took the wrong path and if we keep walking straight we’ll get back to the bonfire.”
“Are you sure?” The white thing started quickly approaching them.
“Change of plans. Run.”
They started running as fast as they could. They moved flashlights too much for them to light the way ahead, so they ran blindly, hoping to be faster than whatever was chasing them.
Peter’s spider-sense warned him about something laying on the trail, so he jumped. The scream and sound of someone falling made him look back.
“Nat?” Tony kneeled next to Natasha, who laid passed out on the ground. He shone the light onto her calf. There was something wrapped around her leg that looked like barbed wire. Blood pooled out of the wound. The white thing chasing them caught up with them.
Tony locked his eyes with Peter just before it touched him.
And then their flashlights went off.
The white thing disappeared without a trace. Peter looked around, blinking, trying to get his eyes used to the dark. His breaths came in short and rushed. He realized that he shook on his whole body. Like in the trans he approached Tony and Natasha and looked at her leg.
He immediately regretted it. The wound was so deep that the bone was visible. It contrasted with the black blood flowing freely. The ripped-out pieces of muscles and skin were embedded on the spikes of barbed wire.
Peter felt lightheaded. He started rocking back and forth a little. Tony caught his shoulder and steadied it.
“Give me your scarf,” he ordered.
“What?”
“Give me your scarf, I have to stem the bleeding.”
Peter unwrapped his scarf from his neck, the cold hitting him and sobering him up.
Tony wrapped the scarf around Natasha’s leg like a tourniquet.
“Wha- what are you doing? She’s going to lose her leg!”
“It’s better to lose a leg than a life,” Tony replied. “Peter?”
Peter didn’t answer as he started throwing up.
“Okay, it’s okay,” Tony soothed. “We’re going to find a way to the Compound and everything will be fine, okay?”
“I don’t want to look for ghosts anymore,” Peter whispered.
“...and then he was just like-”
“Hey, Tony, Nat, and Peter have been gone for a long time,” Happy interrupted another of Rhodey's stories from work. “They went to the Compound 40 minutes ago.” He showed an hour on his phone.
“Hey, we had a no phones rule!” Steve protested.
“I’m serious, something could’ve happened.”
“Maybe they just want to scare us,” May said. “You know, Peter sometimes has ideas like that,” she explained, but the concern showed on her face anyway.
“Just call Wanda or Vision,” Sam shrugged. “They can ask FRIDAY if Tony, Nat, and Peter got to the Compound.”
The quick conversation with Wanda and Vision confirmed that the trio didn’t get to the Compound. What was worse, FRIDAY said that she doesn’t detect them anywhere on the Compound grounds.
Steve started shouting orders. They got back to the Compound’s buildings and Steve ordered FRIDAY to turn on all of the lights in the Compound. Then they started planning a search.
“Let’s follow this road, we’ll get somewhere.” That was their plan in short.
Peter carried Natasha, who was still passed out and Tony led the way, checking the path for any obstacles.
“It’s going to be okay, we’ll get help soon,” he babbled reassurances all the time.
Peter didn’t know how long they walked, it could be minutes or hours. Even though Natasha weighed next to nothing compared to cars he could lift without the strain his arms went stiff and started to hurt. He was petrified, thinking that he could drop her and injure her more.
“Mr. Stark?”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t… I can’t walk any longer.”
“Just a minute, okay? Look, there are some buildings in the distance.”
When Peter strained his eyes he could see some shadowy outline of something that looked like a building, but it seemed far away.
“I don’t think I can.”
“Just hold on for a little longer, ‘kay?”
Peter gathered up all of his strength.
“‘kay.”
Unfortunately, the shadowy outline was one ruined house. There was no way someone was living there. The roof collapsed a couple of years ago, the windows and doors weren’t there anymore.
Peter dropped to his knees and gently placed Natasha on the ground before his arms gave out.
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
Tony kneeled next to him.
“It’s okay, we can take a break here.”
Peter moved to a tree and sat, his back propped against it. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind. He could hear Tony walking around. And something else that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something familiar.
Peter slowly got up.
“Mr. Stark?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I can hear the road.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I think if we follow this path we’ll get to it.”
“Let’s go.”
The faint sound put new strength in Peter. With every step, it seemed clearer. Quickly Tony started to hear it as well.
Suddenly the forest ended. They stepped out of it and ended up at the parking lot, the big McDonald’s sign shining brightly from above.
After they found the McDonald’s the team found them quickly. Natasha was rushed into the OR, while Tony and Peter got checked out and gave the account of what had happened.
“I’ll never again say that the ghosts aren’t real,” Natasha said the next day after she woke up. Thanks to Doctor Cho’s Regeneration Cradle her leg could be saved, although she would have an ugly scar for the rest of her life.
It turned out that they mixed up the trails, and at one point they turned right instead of left. The team mapped all of the trails in the forest and even found that big stone. That trail led to the Compound’s fence that was broken. The only thing left was the barbed wire that injured Natasha. The whole time they were near the road, but Peter couldn’t hear it, because the wind blew in the opposite direction. When the direction of the wind changed, he could finally hear it and follow the sound. The only unclear thing was what exactly had chased them. Was the forest really haunted or was it just a product of their imagination?