Campfire Stories Part 2
The earlier trip from camp to the cave took about thirty minutes, but I'm sure we ran back to the campsite in just under ten minutes. I'm still a little hazy on how we got out of the caves so fast. As we reached the familiar tents and fire pit, though, we collapsed into huffing piles of winded flesh. Reggie threw up noisily into the fire pit, and none of us said two words about it. I, for one, felt like heaving myself and Bobby looked like he might start heaving and crying at the same time. I guess seeing your friend gutted like a trout was a little different from drowning kittens in a sack, eh Bobby?
"We...need to...tell...someone." Reggie huffed out as he wiped the vomit from his shiny lips.
Bobby sat up and moved towards the tent that Scoutmaster Mike still hadn't emerged from. It was getting on about midday, and the fact that he hadn't gotten up yet was starting to scare us. Bobby pushed on the tent flap, but it was still locked from the inside. We all started pushing on the tent and yelling for Scoutmaster Mike to get up and help us, but he never even stirred inside his fortress of canvas. Bobby became angry as his shoves and screams failed to rouse the Scoutmaster and went off to our tent to "get something to cut it open with."
Five minutes later, he came out even angrier.
"Alright, which one of you assholes stole my knife?" he asked, his face red and starting to darken as he rounded on all of us in turn.
"I bet it was YOU Wedgy!" he said, pushing the fat boy down so he could tower over him, "I bet you were the one who killed Kyle too, didn't you? You were the one who screamed, you were the one who found the body, and I bet you stole my knife so you could pin it all on me, didn't you?" Bobby was screaming at him now, and Reggie's sobs had a distinctly scared sound to them.
I stepped between them before this escalated any further, "This isn't helping Bobby, we need to get Scoutmaster Mike up so he can call the police and get some help out here."
"And how would you suggest we do that, Gaylord? He's probably got his earplugs in again, so the creepies don't crawl in his brain while he's asleep. You remember last year, right? He slept through the whole Jamboree because he got drunk the night before and put his plugs in?"
I did, Scoutmaster Mike was pretty well-known for getting drunk and sleeping through his duties, but we still needed him despite his shortcomings.
We tried to cut the canvas with our scout knives, but it was a slow process. While Bobby had brought his father's old buck knife, probably a piece of steel sharp enough to shave with, our scout knives were dull little things that were barely fit for arts and crafts. Finally, after ten minutes of hacking and digging, we worried a hole in the side of the canvas and let out an odor we'd smelled back in the cave.
He'd been done the same way Kyle had. His throat cut, entrails spilled out, his face a mask of terror and disbelief, and we all flinched away from the tent in unison as the hole exposed the grizzly scene within. With nowhere else to run from the awful scene, we went back to our tent and zipped the door shut. We sat huddled in the corner as far from the zippered opening as we could get, and at that moment, all past feuds were forgotten, all past crimes forgiven, and for just an instant, we were one united front. I'm not sure how long we sat there shivering, but it was creeping towards evening when Reggie moved towards the cooler to get something to drink.
His moving seemed to break the spell over us, and suddenly we were preparing a dinner or water bottles and granola bars.
I pulled out my map as we ate and sat it between us, "Okay, so here's where we are, the road is a mile from our campsite, the cave is a half a mile back the way we came, and there's a ranger station a half mile past that at the Appalachian Trail mark. Someone should go to the road and see if they can flag down a car while someone else goes to the ranger station to see if they can get help. The others will stay here at the campsite, so we have a safe place to come back to. Whoever stays here should stoke the fire and be on the lookout for whoever's doing this."
"Two kids against a murderer? That sounds like a death sentence to me." Said Bobby.
"Have you got a better idea?" I asked, and he shook his head grudgingly and said he didn't.
"We could check Mr. Mike's tent." Reggie said, his voice becoming less sure as we all turned to look at him, "I just mean...he has that old bag phone, and he has the key to the truck so he might...I don't know...have something that can help us?"
"That's not a bad idea." I conceded and decided to make my first stop the abattoir of Scoutmaster Mike.
It was becoming shadowy as we ripped the tent open and stepped in. The smell of blood was everywhere, and Scoutmaster Mike lay in his sleeping bag like an overripe pea that had burst its pod. We tried our best to ignore him as we went about taking his stuff, but it's hard to ignore a dead body that's less than five feet from you. Flies had gotten into our hole from earlier, and they crawled like tiny mourners all across his gaping neck and chest.
If Scoutmaster Mike believed in hell, I could assume that this was IT for him; his body flush with crawling insects while he lay powerless to stop them.
We took his things out into the fresh air of the campsite. Scoutmaster Mike had an odd assortment of gear. A compass, a fire starter, a swiss army knife which Bobby took, a flask of something alcoholic that was half empty, a cooler that was equal parts lunch meat, deli cheese, beer, and melted ice, some rope, and a faded magazine called Boozoons with a busty topless girl on the cover. His car keys, hunting knife, and bag phone were nowhere to be found, though. Had the killed taken them so we couldn't call for help? Why kill Scoutmaster Mike and not kill us immediately?
As we sat around in the dying light of the day, the howling started again. It was loud and mournful, cutting across our nerves like a knife, and in our current state, it was enough to leave us shaking and unsure. It stopped after a few minutes, but a low grumble of it could be heard afterward if you listened hard. As the sun went down and the howling grumbled at the edge of hearing, I could almost believe that the Woods Witch and not some murderous psycho was responsible for all of this.
Almost.
"I'll go to the rangers station." I said, getting up before I could think better of it, "Bobby, why don't you go to the road and try to flag down a car and see if you can find someone to help us. Mark and Reggie can stay at camp and keep the fire stoked. I should be back in two hours tops with help. Sound like a plan?"
I had expected a token argument from Bobby, but it never came. He just nodded and, slipping the knife out of his pocket, strode off towards the parking lot where Scoutmaster Mike's old truck sat waiting for us to return. Reggie begged to go with me, but I told him to stay here with Mark and help keep watch. He didn't fight me on it, but he slumped off dejectedly to sit on a log by the fire. With a nod to Mark, I set off for the ranger station.
Like I said before, the trail to the cave is clear enough for a blind man to follow, but I didn't want to get anywhere close to the cave if I could help it. I took the trail until I could see the heading for the cave and then broke off into the woods. I was trying to link up with another trail that went to the rangers station, but I must have gotten turned around because I found myself back at my original entry point after several minutes of scrambling through the woods.
Then the howling started again. I don't know if it was the proximity to the cave or what, but for just a second, I remember being unable to hear much besides the wailing that cut through the quiet night. It drove me to my knees as its pitch became higher, and as I glanced around, it seemed like that wail was moving the trees itself. Thunder rumbled overhead and lit up the night for momentary bursts in time. I found my feet as the howling ebbed a little and realized that it wasn't the howling moving the trees but the wind. A storm seemed to be brewing, and as I tried to find my bearings in the deepening dark, another fork of lightning split the sky.
The flash was bright enough to illuminate a figure not five feet ahead of me.
I added my scream to the howling as the hunched and twisted creature was once again hidden by the tangle of forest. In the ebb of the howling, I could hear it creeping noisily towards me. As the lightning pealed again, I got a brief glimpse of a steely blade in its bunched hand and trembled. It had a knife, the knife that had likely killed Kyle and Scoutmaster Mike, and if I didn't get out of here, it was going to kill me too. I ran then. Turned tail and ran, and when I hit the trail I had left, I kept right on running, losing myself in the woods. I have no idea how far I ran, limbs wiping my face and brambles cutting my legs, but it was well and truly dark by the time I found the stream. I crashed into it like a herd of buffalo, and my foot snagged on a rock three steps in. I fell, tumbling into the cold water of the shallow stream, and cut my forehead on a jagged bit of rock. I came up sputtering, hand going to my forehead to staunch the blood, and as the lightning flashed again, I saw something in the water.
A neat little package was submerged in the sluggish current of the stream. It was wrapped in fabric of some kind, and I realized that it was a pair of scout shorts as I unwrapped it. They smelled awful, but the river had washed them somewhat and left them soggy. Inside the shorts was the Motorola bag phone Scoutmaster Mike had brought and the keys to his truck. Both had been drenched by the river, but the keys had been banged around and bent up. I doubt they would even fit in the ignition of the truck again. I stared at the things for a second, puzzled as to why someone would do this when I realized the shorts were too big to belong to anyone but Reggie. Why steal Reggie's shorts just for this?
That's when I heard someone screaming close to the river and realized how close to the campsite I was.
I could see the shadowed hulks of our tents, and though the camp should have stood out like a beacon with its roaring fire, the flames had guttered, and the camp was bathed in shadows. A drop of rain hit my forehead as I stepped into camp and a lightning flash lit up another body sitting next to the fire. In the brief spark of light, I was certain it would be Reggie, his protruding guts opened up and his guts overflowing. As I came up beside the dying fire, though, I could see that it was Mark.
He'd been done like the others. I felt tears on my face as I knelt beside him. Mark was a shit like Kyle had been a shit, but they were still kids. Kids aren't supposed to die like this. Children are supposed to languish in the idea of immortality until the tragedies of the teenage years bring reason before the death of youth and the birth of adulthood. No child out on a campout should have to face the idea that his life might be bled out next to his cook fire, and Mark was certainly no exception. Mark had wanted to be a baseball player, a dream a lot of little boys have. Though I didn't know him very well, I felt like he deserved better than this.
When someone grabbed my hand, I felt my bladder let go as I pissed my pants. Mark's hand was slick with his blood, but he clung to life even as it leaked out of him. His breathing was jagged and watery, but he seemed determined to impart some wisdom before he died. He put his other hand to his torn open throat and croaked out a single word.
"Bobby."
"Bobby? Bobby did this to you?" I asked, but Mark shook his head in a small, jerking way.
"Bobby...gone...Reggie...cave….howling….went….help him." he sputtered out the last with a gout of blood as he flopped back like a landed fish.
I sat with him until he died. Then I made my way towards Howling Cave. I didn't want to, Howling Cave was the last place I wanted to go, but if the murderer had Reggie or Bobby, I felt like I needed to help them. That's what you do when someone's in trouble, after all. I didn't feel like a little kid at that moment. I didn't feel like I sometimes did when I pretended to be a superhero or some other thing for a game, either. I felt like the kids in the adventure books I read. I felt like I had to do the last thing I wanted to do and that if the monster was to be killed, then it was me who had to do it.
The rain fell on me in sheets as I got close to the cave's mouth. The wind picked up, and as the trees shook and danced as the howling screamed across the forest in high, crystalline notes. I wondered as I went if maybe there was a Woods Witch waiting for me there. Some boogeyman that I could blame all this on instead of some hardened psychopath with a taste for murder. I doubted it, but I almost hoped for a witch as I came to the mouth of the cave. Kids in stories tend to fare pretty well against witches in the end.
It was pitch black inside, but I had my flashlight. My beam found an easy trail to follow almost immediately. Someone had left bloody sneaker prints on the cavern floor, and I could only hope that they weren't left on purpose. I crept along through the tunnels. As I went, I began to see signs of fire up ahead. All of a sudden, the howling raced across me again, and I covered my ears to block it out. It was louder than I'd ever heard it, and the otherworldly wail made me want to fall down and cry. I moved towards the fire, always towards the fire, and it led me to a small chamber near the very back of the cavern.
A placard on the wall declared that this was "The Witch's Hovel". I suspected that it had been set up after the legend got popular, though. There was a cauldron and some shelves along with some old books and a cane broom and…
"Bobby?"
My flashlight had found the back of a scout shirt, and as I moved closer, I could see Bobby Terry leaning against a corner like a naughty child. There was a spreading pool of red around him, and I didn't even need to flip him over to know that he was too far gone to help. He was on his knees, face pressed against the stones, and I pulled my hand away from him before it could turn him around and put another death into my mind.
I heard footsteps behind me then and flipped around to find the last person I expected to find.
"Reggie?"
He smiled at me, and my flashlight glinted off the knife in his hand. He was none the worse for wear though the bloodstains on his uniform looked fresh enough to make me think he'd been wounded. When the howling started again, I looked up towards the ceiling and felt stupid for being afraid earlier. The placement of the hovel in this chamber was pretty smart on someone's part because the chimney-like opening at the top of the cave made the howling sound that I'd heard when the wind blew across it. The howling and wailing had been nothing but a big bottle for the wind to blow across.
The revelation distracted me from Reggie, and it almost cost me my life.
"I was honestly hoping you'd make it out. You're the first person in this situation that has been genuinely nice to me, and I appreciate that I do," he said before snaking forward and trying to slice me with the knife.
I stepped back from him. The blade cut a long gash in the front of my uniform but never hit the skin. I took another step back and analyzed this new Reggie. This wasn't the soft-spoken, scared little boy from the camp who pissed his pants and shrunk from bullies. This Reggie was a competent, crafty, creature who waddled less and stalked more. He looked at me like an artist whose sizing up marble for his next sculpture, like a painter who's trying to winkle the next masterpiece from the canvas, a writer weedling his next bestseller from the aether.
A predator contemplating his next meal.
I thought about running, but he was blocking the only exit. I could juke around him, maybe, but he'd proven himself to be a very quick already. I found myself backing up, Reggie walking forward with all the ease of a B movie slasher. Suddenly my heels struck something on the floor, and I tripped. I cursed myself mentally as I fell, and Reggie stalked in, easy as you please, as I crab-walked backward.
"Why, Reggie?" I asked, unable to help myself, "Why would you do this?"
Reggie seemed to think for a minute before shrugging, "Because I can."
The knife opened up my stomach in a single slash and…
"And as his entrails spilled out, the witch laughed and laughed, having claimed yet another victim. The police would later find the bodies of the scouts and their Scoutmaster, but no sign of weapon or killer would ever be discovered. To this day, they say you can hear the witches unearthly howl on quiet nights, and those who sleep within her woods may find themselves to be her next victims."
The campers sat around the fire with big moony eyes as I finished the story, and they all glanced around as the fire crackled, trying to get a glimpse of the Woods Witch before she got them. The wood suddenly caught a pine knot, and the loud crack made all of them jump before laughing at their own jitters. The seven scouts, none older than I had been when I first stepped into the woods, discussed the story in low whispers amongst themselves. A pudgy, freckle-faced scout with the unfortunate name of Davey spoke up just as I'd thought they were about to settle in for the night and drift to their tents.
"Scoutmaster Lawson, is there really a Woods Witch?"
One of them, a toe-headed kid named Ken, who reminded me a lot of Bobby Terry, guffawed loudly and made a rude noise, "Awwww, Lil Daveys scared of the Wood Witch! It's just a story, nimrod."
"Actually, my own Scoutmaster told us about the Woods Witch when I camped in these woods. It's a local legend that's supposed to have some historical fact, though I doubt she still lives around here anymore." I said, tousling Davey's hair as he started to look worried.
"Thanks, Scoutmaster Lawson," Davey said, putting another marshmallow on his stick and holding it over the fire.
I smiled at him, "Call me, Reggie. My friends used to anyway."
Posted Jul 1, 2021, 12:01 AM UTC