Outside a gentle breeze blows. In the distance you can hear the beasts howling... To the moon... to the reaper? You toss and turn feeling that someone is watching over your sleep in the most terrifying way. Then you wake up, not warily, but jolting back once, twice in the middle of the night. First there's nothing but darkness, the darkness of a camping site like this, of the thick canopy of trees in a forest like this that blocks the path of silvery moon light above. Only the flickering blazes of the bonfire cracking silently outside your tent gives you some sort of benign illumination, keeping the wild living creatures far enough to not fear... and then you fall asleep again, tucking comfortably inside your sleeping bag.
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Time marks the slow pacing in the wee hours in summer and nights like this refusing to meet an end. Inside your tent a freezing cold piercing to the bones makes you shiver and you've been observed from the dimness, once again. The air is now heavy to breathe and you can not move. Desperately you open your eyes, but there's nothing to see. Darkness envelops you and you hear it laugh... His wicked laughter mocking of your misfortune deafens you. He's climbing on top of you, crawling with its gelid, slimy, hideous inexistent amorphous being through your skin, pushing you down, pressing you down to the ground with the strength of ten men almost to crush you.
You can't talk... But he whispers unintelligible things to your ear, a deadly lullaby that numbs you, yet still you try to fight him. Unable to move, to talk, to scream you find yourself defenseless, desperate, anguished, scared to the bones.
The tent's entrance unzips haltingly, the campfire light gradually invading the interior and that's when you see it. Red eyes like incandescent rubies and sharp yellow teeth; his long jaws open to reveal a slithery reptilian tongue that hisses every time he licks your face leaving a damping nauseous saliva trail that burns to the touch like acid.
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And then it happens, he hauls you out with rampant strength, dragging you through the forest ground. Your sleeping bag shatters, leaving you exposed. The sharp rocks tear your clothes and then your skin, ripping in threads of flesh, as you are pulled into the forest depths, to a cave by the mountain skirts of a boscage like this. And there, in his cavernous dwelling, closer to hell than to the mortal world, he finally stops. Your voice is back but it's too late. Now you're in so much pain, soaring pain to scream. Inside your breaking chest, a throbbing heart chokes you making it so hard to breathe.
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A pair of fiery eyes near threatening, menacing, frightening, announcing that death leans upon you. Closing your eyes, you pray, wishing it's all over soon. And your prayers find an answer when the demon digs his claws in your chest taking out your still beating heart and darkness engulfs you... in a night like this.
*** Less than 500 words -second person POV- This story was written responding to the #campfireghosts writing challenge hosted by the ParanormalCommunity for this summer. Write a scary short story 100-1000 words and tag ten people to keep it up! It must have the phrase "in a campsite like this" Spread the fright, spread the fun! I hope the Magistrais pleased!
