The footpath.

I wrote this in 6th grade on halloween. We had to write a short cliffhanger, and then the class had to make up an ending. It's not good at all (I was 11), but I thought you guys might find it funny. Enojy!

Maria ran.
It was the only thing she knew how to do well.
Her breath came out in little white puffs, her sneakers pounding out a rhythym on the hard rock ground. Cold wind slapped at her knees, pulled on her hair. Her eyes were streaming; she wiped them on her sleeve and ran harder, faster. She had to escape the man on her tail.
A huge curve was coming up, and she cut across it, pulling her arms to her chest. She allowed herself a fleeting glance over her shoulder. The man had come down, hard, groaning in pain.
Good, she thought, I hope he sprained something.
For several minutes now, she had been running, -flying, really -hoping to escape the horrid creature following her. Her mother had warned her, told her stories about this forest. She remembered a conversation they'd engaged in, days earlier.
"Maria, the forest is a dangerous place."
"Mother, the forest hasn't been dangerous since you were a little girl!" Maria laughed, admiring the polish on her nails.
"Maria, I am warning you. It is not safe. Never go there alone."
I wasn't alone today, Maria thought bitterly. She had believed the man who told her he could get her out of the forest. Disobedient and fiesty, Maria had defied her mother and gone to the forest late at night, hoping to discover if the secrets her friends had told her about it were true. But Maria lost the footpath, and before long was travelling in circles. She sat on a rotted log and cried, lost and hungry, and very, very wet.
"I could help you," the man with kind eyes had said, smiling, "I can show you the way out."
She had taken the hand he offered, followed him - until he brought her to a small cottage a couple of yards from where she had sat crying.
"I haven't had a human companion in much too long," he said, his formerly kind eyes narrowing into slits, "And I can't wait to be your friend." With that, he smiled, sharp fangs coming into view. And that was when Maria began to run.
The man had matched her, step for step, as she ran out of his cottage and through the forest. The sky had darkened to a menacing purple, and she cried out when a tree branch sliced at her foot. Things had taken a turn for the better when the man had slipped on a muddy leaf and fallen, but now he was up and running, and looming closer and closer.
Somebody, anybody, help she thought.
The prayer fell on deaf ears.
Maria ran.
Her foot snagged a vine, and she landed hard on her knees.
"No!" she cried out.
And the man was on top of her, hurting her, whispering in her ear.
Maria tried to scream, but no voice escaped from the throat the man had latched himself onto.