HIDE

972 Days Before

"It is not!" I shouted as the girls around me tried to hush me.

It was two a.m. and Alex's parents were fast asleep and the last thing we wanted was for them to come in and tell us to go to bed.

"It is." Kelsey hissed. The room was dark except for the glow of the tv in the corner of the room. 

"Camp Strongfire is definitely haunted. A boy in my grade told me all about it. It happened in 1998."

I looked up. My eyes were wide. I had never been scared of any silly story but the way Kelsey was looking at all of us had my nerves on edge. As a 9 year old, I was not accustomed nor comfortable with the feeling of anxiety and fear that manifested itself in my stomach. I was good at pushing it away and bringing rational thought to mind. My mom taught me that. When you think of something bad, realistically, could it happen to you? Would you ever be in the situation where it would happen to you? When the answer was no (as it often was), that was called rational thought.

"It was a cold night in November, the skies were clear." She had her storyteller face on. She was pulling out all of the stops. 

"A youth group was sitting around a fire, telling bible stories, when they realized one of the campers was missing. They searched all the cabins, the mess hall, everywhere. She was nowhere to be found."

We all stared at her. Our eyes begging her to continue. 

"They never found her because they never made it out of those woods. The only survivor was the girl and her boyfriend, who were kissing behind the cabins. They found all of their friends dead, scattered through the woods. The pastor was strung up in the trees. The only thing the girl could remember, other than the blood and the guts, were the white eyes shining from the trees."

We all screamed and immediately threw ourselves into sleep mode, hearing the steps coming from down the hall. 

After Alex's dad checked on us and made sure we were all asleep, we fell into a fit of giggles. As the night passed we talked secrets and boys. The secrets we were scared to tell and the boys we were even more scared of. Alex fell asleep first, next to Sarah. Sarah fell asleep next. After they were both asleep, it was only me and Kelsey. 

"Do you think it's true? About the camp?" I whispered.

"It's just a story, Dane, don't worry about it." And I tried to not worry about it. I dreamt of fire that night, of more stories told around it and a monster. Taking me by the throat and screaming into my face. And then I woke. There was no monster and no bodies surrounding me. There were no dead pastors and no dead kids. But there were sleeping kids, until I started shaking them by the shoulders and screaming earthquake.