“We are walking on the road that the Serbians walked down during the World War II persecution of Serbs. included the extermination, expulsion and forced religious conversion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs by the genocidal policies of the Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945, during World War II. The Ustasha regime systematically murdered approximately 300,000 to 500,000 Serbs.” The tour guide droned on and on.

“You know,” a man leaned over and whispered to me. “They say Baba Yaga lives in these woods.” I was turning around afraid that Baba Yaga would come out and snatch me. I heard rustling in the leaves and a massive hulking figure in the woods that looked like a house with legs. I wanted to investigate the house, so I walked deeper into the forest. As I was looking around I realized that I couldn't see one living thing. I turned around and decided to leave but I couldn't find the tour. “I’m lost,” I thought walking up a hill I saw the light at the top of a hill and as I walked up I saw a tiny cottage at the top.

I entered the house with a creaking door an old woman's voice called with a thick Hungarian accent,

“Tomi Tomi are you home? I have dinner for you!” I walked toward the voice. There was an old woman sitting at a rickety table.

“Hello, my name is Gorge,” I said cautiously she looked up at me and I realized she was blind

“No, No, No, you are Tomi,” she said persisting harder.

I looked at the walls of the cabin pictures. They lined the wall and we're all different pictures of this old lady with different men women and boys of all ages.

“Oh, you are looking at the family photo album.” She said, “Come eat your Goulash” I looked at the steaming pile of stew it looked very appetizing I thought. I sat down next to the old woman and asked her why she lived here.

“Tomi you chose this cabin,” she said. “So you could go get firewood for us.” I ate the goulash and felt a bit drowsy then I asked,

“What did you put in this food?” Stumbling through the cabin, I was so tired I thought everything started going black. Then I saw a little door on the side of the wall. I looked at the old woman and she looked at me and saw that I was looking at the little door. She got up and walked towards me, her fingers growing longer and longer scraping them across the wall. The sound was screeching like a paperclip against a chalkboard. I clutched my head and fell into darkness.

With a thud, I landed at the bottom of the pit and looked around. There was darkness everywhere I heard a shrill scream and the sound of a colossal animal running towards me. Then I saw it. It looked like it was half ape, half dragon. It was running on all fours. It jumped up, its arm slamming down to collide with me.

I woke up in a cold sweat with the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” playing on a small pastel music box beside me. There was an ax beside the door with a note scribbled on it. Gone to go get food. Go chop wood.

MaMa

I grabbed the ax and started heading outside when I realized I could just leave now. Then I thought about the old blind woman who wouldn't be warm with any firewood. She would surely freeze in the cold. I went out, set on getting the old woman firewood. I had only cut down one tree when it was night already. I was putting the firewood in the house. When I was inside the old woman was sitting at the table with a steaming pile of goulash in front of her. She said, “Tomi you are back.”

“Yes,” I said choosing my words carefully. “I must go now,” I said sternly.

“What?” asked the old lady standing up. “You aren't leaving. Not today, not ever” she said walking closer to the ax that was propped up against the wall. I looked at the ax, turned around swiftly and ran out of the house with the old woman right behind me shouting, “You will never go! You will never leave!”

I looked down, the dirt seemed to be weakening me and slowing me down. I was sprinting faster than I ever had before. Nothing was slowing me down now and I felt on top of the world. I had beaten Baba Yaga. Then abruptly my foot caught a root and I tumbled face first down towards the ground, and everything went black.

I woke up in a hospital bed a lot of doctors around me. They told me that my trimester in Hungary had ended, and I had been unconscious for two days. I told the police and led them to the house location. The house was still there but no one was in. All of the furniture was gone, except pictures all over the wall. There were hundreds and thousands of them. They were all of someone and the lady, but in the pictures, she never seemed to age at all. While the police were searching the house they found in basement hundreds of bodies were everywhere. The only sign was written on the basement wall in blood with a limp corpse next to it on the wall there was “Mama will always love you” written in blood.