Rain ran through the sheets in the garden. Leaves whispered with their newly-found voices as the wind began to sing and the cold started chilling her spine. Her shivering shadow on the sheets began to stride faster. Then the girl stopped and listened, for she caught a tattered phrase on the wind. Sounds in the night created great 'Oh's and whispers of long forgotten memories.
    Mary was out collecting words. She moved her feet again blindly in dark, only stopping to finger stray hair out of her face. 'It's come loose again,' she thought, bitterly, and looked into the wind and the rain sweeping into the dark, beckoning trees ahead. It was a stinging cold night and the forest seemed some comfort against the wind. The tempest was breathing all it's substance at her. Mary could stand it no longer; she broke into a run, running right at the trees. Her long, straight hair whipped behind her undone and rain washed her face hard, giving her a tear-stained look. Trees passed and went, but she continued running on. The girl scampered over root and rock, all covered with rain-soaked moss. Her feet sunk deep in to the squelching mud. Mary knew her clothes would be ruined; she did not care.
And then, at last, she stopped. The air was calmer here, and the wind whistled the leaves pleasantly overhead. Catching her breath, Mary sat down on a rock. She glanced sideways. The moon-lit forest floor was littered with leaves, revealing a patch of moss here and there and the occasional boulder. Behind these boulders were more, disappearing into the hazy darkness. Mary sat up,  suddenly aware of her strange surroundings. Her ears pricked up as a low muttering reached her, then another, higher voice, and yet again another murmur, next more and more, till they were all around her, engulfing her in the dark. Eyes dazed, she turned round and round frantically. As the hidden voices came closer and nearer, they multiplied and magnified, covering her. Mary was confused, so confused at the indistinguishable language of her attackers from every side, each voice as unique as a snowflake. They grew louder, louder, louder and louder and Mary's ears were now ringing from all that sound, all that music...
    Then they stopped. Just like that, and the forest was filled with a sudden eerie silence. Completely mute.
Mary opened her eyes
    and gasped. Something was in front of her, something dark, towering over her and blocking out the weak moon shine. It had a hundred mouthes, and posed silent and watchful. Like a crown on the creature's mighty head sat a single, piercing eye that chilled Mary to the very bones. The eye looked straight at her, and Mary now noticed the creatures legs. It was rearing up closer to her, moving its thin, insect-like legs like long, black, shiny walking sticks. The girl stood transfixed in horror at the mess coming at her, and the eye, ever so watchful of her movements. Sluggishly, like in a dream, Mary backed off into the darkness behind her, only to come to a tree with a thud.
But then, to Mary's horror, the mouths began to move. They were calling at her, a hundred voiced singing her name, 'Mary. Mary...'. Mary froze, too petrified to move. The mouths bewildered her; she did not know on which one to place her gaze, so instead she summoned the guts to look at its eye.
    'Mary.', the creature croaked, screamed and whispered at her, 'Do not go, do not leave now, when you have only just come!'
Mary gazed at the eye hard and shouted, 'How do you know my name!? Leave me alone, beast, and come back from whence you came! I bring no loss, no sorrow to this place, all I ask is a safe passage.'
    'I am so lonely,' the creature wailed, 'So lonely, yet you never have need of -
    'Mary, we know everything about you!', another voice broke in, 'We have been waiting, waiting so long!'
The voices began to build up again, so the girl could only hear snatches of 'Mary!' and a drone of 'longing for this moment' in the background. It was terrifying, like being confronted by a hundred questions at once.
    'Silence!', a low, commanding voice cut in, 'One at a time'.
    'What are you?', Mary whispered.
A slow, drawling voice answered, 'We are spleen.Your spleen.'
    'Yet you cannot touch us...', said a squeaky voice.
    'You never feel us!' the low voice boomed.
    'You never listen long enough!'
Mary's head was now racing. Spleen? Here? In this forest? Her spleen? Such a thought! She gathered up the courage to confront it again,
    'What do you want of me?'
    'We only wish to follow you', the drawling voice slithered.
    'Yes, take us with you!'
    'We will do no -'
    'Command us, we are yours, are we not?', another voice cut in.
Mary gazed up at it, her spleen, and was too lost for words.