User name: swaswj
Dead leaves fell, flickering briefly in the firelight before being caught by the licking flames, one final flash before being reduced to ash. This deep in the woods, the earthy smell of dirt and detritus competed with the oily heat of the bonfire. Too cold for most of the insects, now, yet still warm enough for the occasional flash of eyeshine in the distance, unseen animals encroaching on the clearing, drawn to and yet afraid of the crackling firelight. The night was filled with a quiet, relentless energy; it was a full moon, and even completely hidden behind a thick bank of black clouds, it pulled and tugged at primal longings and inhuman instincts.
A sharp, metallic crunch pierced through my thoughts, and I looked over at Ray. He threw his crumpled beer can into the fire and stood up. The others looked over at him and he reached into the cooler, pulling out a bottle buried deep in the ice. "What do you say, guys? Let's have a toast!"
"To what?" Bodhi asked, seated on a log to my left and clad in a purple hoodie, although the small smile on her lips suggested she liked the idea.
I wasn't normally a drinker, but I made exceptions for toasts. It seemed unlucky to refuse. "To Cade and Helen," I suggested, lifting my unopened can of soda in mock tribute.
From the opposite side of the fire, Cade stood up with his jean jacket unbuttoned. "Or to Gareth the Second!"
"Fuck you, man!" Gareth laughed, shaking his head. He ran his fingers through his hair, a haunted look flashing through his eyes and disappearing. I knew he was both incredibly excited about the prospect of being a dad, but terrified as well. Fresh out of high school, he wasn't sure he could provide for a kid, not even mentioning that it was his ex who was pregnant. Looking up, he tilted his beer bottle in my direction, then Bodhi's. "How about you two? A toast to you guys getting into your colleges of choice!"
"Hear, hear!" Bodhi agreed, sipping from her wine cooler. Everyone but me took a sip of their drinks, while I mimed the gesture with my unopened can. I looked over to Ray, knowing he had something else in mind.
Sure enough, he was pulling some clear plastic tumblers out. "To us," Ray said. He popped the cork on the bottle -- champagne? Wine? -- sending a small cloud of vapor into the air. Almost immediately, the smell wafted over toward me, a sour but familiar smell. Champagne, for sure, and probably a cheap brand. "We made it! We graduated! We're off into the real world, off to show everyone how it's done!" As he spoke, Ray was filling up the glasses. I cringed a little at just how full he was pouring them, but at least I knew it was cold. "You know, this will be our last night together."
"You don't know that," I pointed out, setting my can down next to the log I was sitting on.
Ray set down the bottle, uncorked, and pulled his flannel jacket hood back before handing out the glasses of bubbly. As he passed them out, he pointed out, "I'm leaving for basic tomorrow. You're off to Mass, Bodhi's going to Washington. It's already hard to get Gareth away from work."
"I've got two jobs, what do you want from me?" In fact, the green and white windbreaker he was wearing was technically a work jacket.
"Then Cade's leaving us."
Cade laughed, almost spilling his champagne. "What? When? I'm not going anywhere!"
Bodhi snickered. "You're getting married, sweetie. You're dead to us."
"Like that's not why you picked a college in Seattle," Cade retorted, causing Bodhi to spit out some of her drink and laugh.
Ray interrupted, sounding mildly flustered. "I'm just saying, we're never going to be able to get together like this again!"
I stood up, lifting my plastic glass high. "To our friendship!"
"To old bonds and new!" Cade added, tapping his cup to mine.
Gareth was next. "To our future!"
Giggling, already tipsy, Bodhi stretched out to add her glass. "To you fantastic assholes!"
Ray tapped his cup to ours. "To the present, and all the time we've had together!"
With a small, mock cheer, we all tapped glasses again and then drank the champagne. I grimaced at the bubbly, sour grape taste, feeling the mild burn all the way down my throat, but managed to polish off the glass, tossing it into the fire after.
A tingly sensation rushed to my head, but passed just as quickly. I looked up, looking out at the eyes at the edge of the woods, flickering in the firelight. It seemed like there were more than before. The others immediately began chattering again, but once more I found myself zoning out, their words turning into little more than buzzing in the background, mingling with the crackling of the fire. Babies, marriage, the army, psychology, all of it was just so much noise in my head. I smiled, even laughed at the appropriate times, but it felt like I was somewhere else, watching. Listening. Waiting for… something.
It was only after many long minutes that I realized I was no longer letting my eyes lazily scan about the edges of the woods. I was staring straight into a distant pair of eyes, gleaming with animal shine. Too high off the ground to be a coyote or fox, so… deer? Whatever it was, it stared back, unafraid. An itch began to crawl down my spine for reasons I couldn't begin to explain in words, but I couldn't pull my eyes away. The fire seemed dimmer, the cold wind stronger, the beating of my heart faster.
A hand clapped down and squeezed tightly on my shoulder, and I jumped! "Hey! You still awake over here or what?" It was Bodhi. I looked up at her, swaying on her feet, and managed a shaky smile.
"Sorry, just got lost in thought." I looked, and the eyes were gone. The fire really had dimmed down and I wondered how long I had been zoned out. "I guess maybe I did doze for a little while?"
Giggling, Bodhi squeezed my shoulder again and then leaned against my back. She always got really touchy when inebriated. "Well, get your stuff together, sweetie. We're about to start walking back." Fidgeting uncomfortably while she started running her fingers through my hair, I could feel her breasts pressed against me. I looked around. Cade was bagging the trash and Ray was closing up the cooler, dumping out the melted water to make it easier to carry. Sensing my question before I asked it, Bodhi said, "Gareth slipped away to take a whiz." Wind began to blow, suddenly, edged with the cold promise of winter coming, sending embers and sparks up into the air.
I stood up, using the excuse of stretching to separate myself from Bodhi. Unperturbed, she gathered up her little backpack and then went over to chat with Cade, leaning bodily against his side. Even if I knew she didn't mean anything by it, I was always uncomfortable with her affectionate side. Maybe it was because on some level, I enjoyed it, even knowing it was meaningless. My ears were starting to get cold, so I pulled up the hood of my jacket. "I'll go check on Gareth," I offered, since there didn't seem to be much I could do to help clean the camp.
"Ooh, didn't know you were into that," Cade teased, crunching up another can to toss in the trash bag.
While Bodhi gasped and started giggling, I nonchalantly tossed back, "Sorry to disappoint but that's just you, bud." Cade tossed an empty can at me but I ducked away and grinned, then headed off toward the edge of the woods at a light jog. I wasn't planning to announce it, but nature was calling and checking on Ray was just a convenient excuse. Ideally, I wouldn't see him at all and we'd both make it back to camp a little lighter.
As I left the comforting light and warmth of the fire, I began to regret the decision. By the time I reached the edge of the woods, it was nearly pitch black. We'd only chosen to come out tonight because the forecast was for a full moon, but with the veil of clouds, it might as well have been the depths of space. Wind blew, rustling barely-seen branches while I crunched through the underbrush. Every step seemed startlingly loud, but rather than echo, the noise was swallowed up almost immediately. I turned around, making sure I could still see the fire in the distance, a wavy orange blob, and then sighed, turning my back to it and closing my eyes. My heart was beating faster, even though I knew the most dangerous things in these woods would be a buck, and they'd be more likely to bolt than attack. I stood there, counting to thirty, forcing my eyes to acclimate to the darkness. I reached out, placing my palm against a nearby tree, pine from the feel of it, ignoring the whistle of the wind through the limbs while I counted.
Thirty. I opened my eyes. The forest was still dark, but I could vaguely make out shapes, the oh-so-faint outline of branches and tree trunks. Most, but not all, of the underbrush was thin; this was in a park, so people traipsed through regularly. Usually during the day, but darkness didn't make anything more dangerous. At least, that's what I kept repeating to myself as I walked forward, reaching out to touch each tree trunk to stay oriented. I resisted the urge to use the tiny LED flashlight on my keychain, knowing it was barely worth it and would kill what little night vision I had going. With each step, I winced from the sound of dead branches snapping underfoot. I half-expected a wild dog to come running up.
I froze in place. A gasp, off to one side. Maybe I accidentally found Gareth, after all, and I found myself immediately rehearsing what I could say. "Hey, fancy meeting you here," or "hi, the others sent me to check on you," or even just, "'Sup, buddy." Which awkward greeting would seem the least awkward, would seem most natural? As these thoughts rushed through my mind, I heard a wet splatter against dry leaves. I frowned in disgust: had it taken him this long to do his business? Abandoning the rehearsals, I prepared to head away from the sounds, avoiding the encounter entirely until we both made it back to the campfire.
Except, I turned back peering into the blackness. Something didn't sound right. It wasn't a sustained stream, more of a burst and now a slow, persistent dripping. As I listened closer, I also made out faint, rapid breathing. A terrifying thought entered my head: a kidney stone? Liver disease? Or even… the big C? Gareth wasn't saying anything, wasn't cursing or even groaning, and I found myself impressed, imagining him dealing with excruciating pain silently. I'd have to ask him what was going on once we were back in camp. I took a step off to the side, grimacing as yet another loud snap rose up. I heard Gareth move, heavy footfalls slowly moving… not toward me, but away, which I was frankly okay with. Awkward conversation avoided, I was about to start moving again when I realized I was still hearing the steady dripping sound, splashing into what had to be a small puddle. Curious now, I hesitated, but turned toward the sounds. I don't know what I was thinking it was. I don't know why, in that moment, I cared. I could have done my business and left. But I didn't.
I slipped past trees I could barely see, getting closer to the dripping sound, growing more uneasy with every step. Finally, I pushed past a rattling bush and into a small clear space around the trunk of a larger tree. Cold wind rushed past and far overhead, the cloud cover broke, if only for a moment. Silvered beams of moonlight filtered through the leafless branches. A faint creaking sound came from overhead. I froze, my mouth felt dry. I tried to make sense of the dark shapes in front of me, panic rising with the goosebumps on my arms. In the silver luminescence, a deep black puddle was visible at the base of the tree. Clouds move overhead and the beams of lunar light shifted, moving as if alive. I followed them upward, dread creeping in while the dripping continued.
A body. Insides of both arms slashed downward, from elbow to wrist. The glint of metal, some kind of hook pierced through the chin, tied off in the lower branches to that the body swung just inches above the ground. Green and white nylon. Blood. My eyes lingered on the blood, watching the deep black puddle rippled with each drop that fell into it.
My guts roiled and twisted. I turned to the side and vomited, a morbid chill filling me from within. As I retched and heaved, I heard heavy footfalls again.
I turned and looked. There, at the edge of the small clear space surrounding the tree, was a figure. It stood silently, a hood shrouding its face. Moonlight licked along the edge of a blade in the figure's hand, a hook-like sickle on a wooden handle. The bottom half of the blade was covered in blackness, in blood. The beam of moonlight climbed the body of the unknown person -- man? Woman? -- the strange light obscuring more than revealing. Just before it could have shown me what was under the hood, however, the clouds rolled back in, snuffing the light and leaving us in utter blackness again.
I screamed.
I ran.
I put my arms in front of my face and barreled through the woods, bouncing off of and slamming into trees, running desperately for that orange blob in the distance. I broke free of the trees, sprinting over the open ground toward the fire.
"Hey! Whoa! Hey, what's the matter!?" Ray called out, running over from behind while Cade and Bodhi rushed over from the campfire. Ray laughed nervously. "Get too close to a coyote or something?"
Bodhi shoved Ray out of the way and slapped a hand on my shoulder leaning in to look at my face. "What's the matter, did Gareth do something? Need me to slap some sense into him?" Her earlier tipsiness seemed to have faded and now the future psychologist was in mama bear mode, an almost equally awkward side of her.
I could barely form the words, still tasting bile on my tongue, the vivid image of that black puddle burned into my mind. "Dead…" I managed to blurt out. "Gareth's dead!"
Immediately Ray turned and started running for the woods while Cade stared in shock. "What do you mean? How? Why?"
"Stop!" I yelled at Ray and, surprisingly, he did. "Killer!"
"Killer?" Bodhi repeated incredulously, sharing a look with Cade that told me immediately they didn't believe me. The two of them looked me over and I instinctively did the same: not a drop of blood on me, except for the scratches on my arms.
"Cade, get the fuck over here." Ray reached behind his back and pulled out a handgun. He held it up, checked the safety, checked the slide, and carefully held it with his finger outside the trigger guard. Next he pulled a flashlight from his pocket, small but obviously legit. He clicked it on and the white light reached all the way to the edge of the woods.
Cade shook his head and took a few steps back. He was pulling out his cell phone. "Whoa now, not a chance. I'm calling the cops."
Infuriated, Ray looked like he was about to throw the flashlight. "What if he's not actually dead, asshole! We don't have time to wait around!"
"I'll go," I croaked out, swallowing the fear and nausea. He was right. I ran when I saw all the blood, but that didn't mean he was necessarily dead… yet. I took the flashlight, hands shaking.
Cade looked over the phone. "Bodhi, stay here." Then the call went through and he started talking to dispatch.
It really was the smarter choice.
Ray and I ran back. Although he hadn't started basic, yet, he seemed to already know something about using a gun. He carried the handgun in both hands, didn't put his finger on the trigger. His competency helped calm me down and I started questioning what I had seen. It was dark, almost pitch black, and it was only one glass, but I had something to drink that night. Was it a bad reaction with my medication? Was I hallucinating? Was it just an overactive imagination? Branches cracked and snapped as the two of us pushed back into the woods. Ray was growing more and more frantic, looking every direction, swinging the gun in front of him in preparation for whoever had attacked or killed Gareth. Meanwhile, I was talking myself out of my own fear, convincing myself it was me, my mistake, a trick of my mind. We would run into Gareth walking back, complaining about accidentally pissing on a badger or something. If there even was a body to begin with, maybe it was an abandoned sex doll and my mind invented the details.
"Are we close?" Ray asked and I swallowed before nodding. The woods looked different in the white light, less scary, less ominous. I was rehearsing an apology now, prepared to laugh it all off, preparing for the inevitable teasing that would follow for weeks or months to come.
Instead, we saw red. A deep, wide pool of bright crimson. Some distant trivia factoid forced its way to the surface, telling me arterial blood was brighter than venous but I couldn't tell which this was. Ray cursed, sounding sick, but unlike me he managed to avoid throwing up. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," he muttered rapidly, looking at the blood, looking at bloody footprints, looking at blood streaked up along the bark of the tree -- an oak, my brain filled in -- and looking at the discarded windbreaker, green and white. "Where the fuck is he?"
Gareth was gone, or his body was gone. I wasn't even sure anymore. The flashlight was shaking wildly in my hand and I slowly panned around while Ray flitted between looking at the edge of the woods and looking at the pool of blood.
My brain was twisting itself in knots, mimicking my stomach, and suddenly a cold chill ran down my spine. "Ray?" He didn't answer so I swallowed and continued. "Hey Ray, when I ran out of the woods, you… didn't come from the campfire." I looked him over, but there was no blood that I could see. His reactions seemed genuine, if almost a little too prepared.
"Taking a piss," he replied off-hand, the simplest answer, almost too simple. I took a step back.
"Can I have your knife?" I asked abruptly, looking at it on his belt.
He looked back at me, sweat beading on his brow. "I don't think that's a good…"
"Why not?" I challenged, suddenly angry, clenching my free hand. "Huh?"
Someone came rushing through the underbrush, interrupting before he could answer. Ray's gun snapped up, then lowered. "Bodhi," he breathed out in relief.
"Hey! Come on, let's get out of here!" she cried out as she stumbled through into the light. Bodhi suddenly stopped, staring at the blood and the jacket. Her hands went to her face and she almost immediately started crying. "Oh god, Gareth! What… what happened? Where is he? Is he okay?"
A dozen answers came to mind, most of them sarcastic and snippy, but I swallowed them back and instead answered with, "We don't know."
"Oh god, oh Jesus," she repeated. I wanted to say something about that, but again, I didn't.
Ray put a hand on her shoulder. That little bit of physical contact seemed to bring her back into the moment. "Police are on their way," she said, voice straining as she fought to keep from sobbing. "They want us to leave the area and meet the responding officers at the parking lot."
That was a half-mile-long walk.
"You have a permit for that?" I asked Ray, wondering how cops would respond to the handgun.
"It's my dad's," he answered. At my questioning look, he explained, "He knows. He's the one that told me to bring it. There's coyotes out here."
I cast the light around, still shaking. The amount of blood filled me with dread, but as long as there wasn't a body, there was hope, right? I kept telling myself that. I looked closer at the bloody footprints but they weren't clear enough for me to tell anything. I couldn't even tell if they were male or female. They could be Gareth's prints.
Some part of me wondered if it was an elaborate prank. Gareth brings a big bottle of fake blood, waits until I see him, then sits back somewhere and laughs it up as we panic. The blood looked too real, though, the horror felt too real.
And who was the one with the sickle?
The three of us exited the woods, heading toward the orange blob of campfire yet again. Nobody said anything, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Ray, at least, seemed to stay on alert, which was good because Bodhi and I were probably useless on that. He was the first to notice something wasn't right up ahead. "What's… oh hell." Ray suddenly broke into a run, yelling, "Cade!" Bodhi and I started running, too, although I couldn't tell what had set him off. It was soon apparent: the campfire had spread, consuming the logs seated around it. Our bags were on the fire, the cooler was dumped over. "Cade? Shit, oh shit, oh shit…"
Cade was on his back in the grass, just beyond the flames, and a bottle of vodka was shoved down his throat, so violently that his teeth were broken. His eyes were bulging out, hands clutching at his throat -- not, as I would expect, at the bottle. Drowned, or suffocated? For some reason that seemed important to me. Ray pulled the bottle free, checked Cade's pulse, and immediately started doing chest compressions. I stood and stared, useless, numb, jittery. Bodhi was broken down, sobbing, saying she shouldn't have left him. I looked at her, questioning for a moment. Would she have the strength to do something like that? Would any of them? Rather than comfort her, I eyed her and found myself agreeing. If she hadn't left, would the killer have been brave enough to approach? Wouldn't two people be able to fend him off?
I looked away and saw Cade's phone in the grass. I picked it up. There was a passcode, but I already knew it. As soon as I plugged in the numbers, I let out a shout, "Ho' fuck!" and dropped the phone.
Bodhi picked up the phone and gasped as she saw it: a picture of the killer, still too dark to make out details. The hood, the sickle, standing just outside of the fire's light but with one difference: red eyes, like photos of an animal in the wrong light. Inhuman.
"Fuck, fuck, come on, come on, dammit, what about Helen, what about your parents, wake up goddammit!" Ray was in tears as he tried to resuscitate Cade, but it was Bodhi who finally walked over to tell him to stop.
"We need to go. We need to go now. Now!" I shouted, overwhelmed by sudden dread, spine tingling. I spun around, searching for the source of that unease, and as soon as I turned my back, a gunshot rang out. I spun back around only to be nearly bowled over by Bodhi. Ray was pointing his gun toward the edge of the woods and as I squinted, I made out the shape of a person, a hood. I couldn't see it but I could imagine the sickle.
"Don't you come any closer!" Ray shouted hysterically, voice cracking. "The next shot will be for real!"
The figure seemed unperturbed, standing there silently.
"Ray, come on!" Bodhi shouted.
"No, I'm not letting him take Cade!" Ray shouted. "You go, I've got the gun. Go and bring the cops back!"
I noticed suddenly that Bodhi had Ray's knife. When had that..? "Don't do anything stupid!" Bodhi shouted at him before turning and grabbing my arm. "Let's go!"
We ran. I knew immediately that I should have stayed, that he couldn't handle it, but I ran, because it was easier than fighting against his wishes and fighting against Bodhi's feelings, but I knew it was wrong. The flashlight shook wildly in my hand as we ran, down the trail this time instead of through the brush. We reached the main trail and I let out a cry of relief to see the lights were on. Old street lights, caked in dirt and fogged over, they cast orange and brown light over the trail. Even muddy light was light. Bodhi and I ran, listening desperately for sirens. Would they play the sirens? Would they take the call seriously?
Had Cade even actually finished the call? Bodhi said he did, but…
A gunshot shattered my thoughts. I slid to a stop while Bodhi kept running. Another rang out, then another. Including his first warning shot, I counted seven shots. I tried to think of what sort of handgun he had pulled out, how many rounds could it shoot? Was he out of ammo or did he… win? Slowly, I started moving, running back the way I came. The killer was behind us, Bodhi would be safe ahead, she could bring the cops. I had to go back, though. Dread tugged at me and just as I made my decision, another gunshot came. Eight. This one had an air of finality to it and I started running faster, ignoring the stitch in my side, ignoring the voice in my head telling me what an idiot I was. I ran, tears blurring my vision until all I could see was the muddy orange lights. How many had we already run past? Where was the turn off toward the camp-site? I ran and ran, heart pounding, breath growing hoarse. How far? How many lights?
I ran, alone, the woods eerily silent save for my breathing. Orange and black seemed to blend together and after a while, the orange light on the dirt trail seemed darker, more like blood. I searched desperately for the turn, debated turning around. Had I passed it? Was I just going deeper into the woods? Or would I be giving up too soon? No screams, no gunshots, just silence. It pressed in around me, smothering me with dread. I was too late, but I had to try. So I ran.
Then I stopped. Up ahead, in the muddy light, there stood the killer. Featureless as always, carrying his sickle. It dripped with blood. Slowly, my eyes panned upward. Gareth, veins sliced. Cade, drowned. Ray, a final bullet to his own head. They were hanging high in the trees, each with a sickle hooked through their heads from below, swaying morbidly when the wind began to blow. I looked at them, looked at the killer. I didn't even question, how they had managed to hang all of them up, why they had killed my best friends. Instead, the one question rolling through my head: why not me? Why not just me? "Why not me?" I shouted aloud, gripping the tiny flashlight in both hands and swinging for the killer's head. I felt nothing. The hooded jacket collapsed, falling to the ground, and the sickle thudded into the dirt.
The flashlight flew from my hands, cracking as it hit the ground. It spun around, sending shadows dancing wildly for a long moment before finally settling. It pointed straight at me, trembling where I stood above the discarded jacket, only a jacket, and the still-bloody tool. I bent down, picking it up and staring at it. I looked at the jacket, stunned at how familiar it looked, realizing only then how cold I was. I looked up, feeling nausea welling up once again. I dropped to my knees and vomited.
"It's your fault!" The scream echoed my own sentiments. "It's all your fault!" I didn't realize at first that they weren't my words.
I turned around, just in time to see Bodhi's wild eyes, to see Ray's camp knife in her hands as she stabbed me. Screaming, shouting, echoing my own guilt, I felt hot pain and icy dread.
I couldn't find words, couldn't rehearse anything, didn't know what I would say. "Stop," I croaked, but it wasn't enough. She stabbed me again, again. How many stabs can a human survive? A lot, not enough. The sickle was in my hand… and then, it was in her throat. All of it without a conscious thought, all of it without being capable of thought.
I watched as Bodhi's blood ran, watched the self-satisfied smile as she fell to the dirt.
I dropped to my knees, surrounded by my closest friends, surrounded by silence. Full of questions with no answers.
I looked up, and the clouds rolled back, revealing the full moon. Then I looked down, at the blood-soaked knife, wondering again why I was spared.
Heavy footsteps came up behind me. A sickle came down in front of me. I closed my eyes, grunted as the blade sank into my stomach, ripped across.
Blood poured onto the trail.
Title: Survivor
Dead leaves fell, flickering briefly in the firelight before being caught by the licking flames, one final flash before being reduced to ash. This deep in the woods, the earthy smell of dirt and detritus competed with the oily heat of the bonfire. Too cold for most of the insects, now, yet still warm enough for the occasional flash of eyeshine in the distance, unseen animals encroaching on the clearing, drawn to and yet afraid of the crackling firelight. The night was filled with a quiet, relentless energy; it was a full moon, and even completely hidden behind a thick bank of black clouds, it pulled and tugged at primal longings and inhuman instincts.
A sharp, metallic crunch pierced through my thoughts, and I looked over at Ray. He threw his crumpled beer can into the fire and stood up. The others looked over at him and he reached into the cooler, pulling out a bottle buried deep in the ice. "What do you say, guys? Let's have a toast!"
"To what?" Bodhi asked, seated on a log to my left and clad in a purple hoodie, although the small smile on her lips suggested she liked the idea.
I wasn't normally a drinker, but I made exceptions for toasts. It seemed unlucky to refuse. "To Cade and Helen," I suggested, lifting my unopened can of soda in mock tribute.
From the opposite side of the fire, Cade stood up with his jean jacket unbuttoned. "Or to Gareth the Second!"
"Fuck you, man!" Gareth laughed, shaking his head. He ran his fingers through his hair, a haunted look flashing through his eyes and disappearing. I knew he was both incredibly excited about the prospect of being a dad, but terrified as well. Fresh out of high school, he wasn't sure he could provide for a kid, not even mentioning that it was his ex who was pregnant. Looking up, he tilted his beer bottle in my direction, then Bodhi's. "How about you two? A toast to you guys getting into your colleges of choice!"
"Hear, hear!" Bodhi agreed, sipping from her wine cooler. Everyone but me took a sip of their drinks, while I mimed the gesture with my unopened can. I looked over to Ray, knowing he had something else in mind.
Sure enough, he was pulling some clear plastic tumblers out. "To us," Ray said. He popped the cork on the bottle -- champagne? Wine? -- sending a small cloud of vapor into the air. Almost immediately, the smell wafted over toward me, a sour but familiar smell. Champagne, for sure, and probably a cheap brand. "We made it! We graduated! We're off into the real world, off to show everyone how it's done!" As he spoke, Ray was filling up the glasses. I cringed a little at just how full he was pouring them, but at least I knew it was cold. "You know, this will be our last night together."
"You don't know that," I pointed out, setting my can down next to the log I was sitting on.
Ray set down the bottle, uncorked, and pulled his flannel jacket hood back before handing out the glasses of bubbly. As he passed them out, he pointed out, "I'm leaving for basic tomorrow. You're off to Mass, Bodhi's going to Washington. It's already hard to get Gareth away from work."
"I've got two jobs, what do you want from me?" In fact, the green and white windbreaker he was wearing was technically a work jacket.
"Then Cade's leaving us."
Cade laughed, almost spilling his champagne. "What? When? I'm not going anywhere!"
Bodhi snickered. "You're getting married, sweetie. You're dead to us."
"Like that's not why you picked a college in Seattle," Cade retorted, causing Bodhi to spit out some of her drink and laugh.
Ray interrupted, sounding mildly flustered. "I'm just saying, we're never going to be able to get together like this again!"
I stood up, lifting my plastic glass high. "To our friendship!"
"To old bonds and new!" Cade added, tapping his cup to mine.
Gareth was next. "To our future!"
Giggling, already tipsy, Bodhi stretched out to add her glass. "To you fantastic assholes!"
Ray tapped his cup to ours. "To the present, and all the time we've had together!"
With a small, mock cheer, we all tapped glasses again and then drank the champagne. I grimaced at the bubbly, sour grape taste, feeling the mild burn all the way down my throat, but managed to polish off the glass, tossing it into the fire after.
A tingly sensation rushed to my head, but passed just as quickly. I looked up, looking out at the eyes at the edge of the woods, flickering in the firelight. It seemed like there were more than before. The others immediately began chattering again, but once more I found myself zoning out, their words turning into little more than buzzing in the background, mingling with the crackling of the fire. Babies, marriage, the army, psychology, all of it was just so much noise in my head. I smiled, even laughed at the appropriate times, but it felt like I was somewhere else, watching. Listening. Waiting for… something.
It was only after many long minutes that I realized I was no longer letting my eyes lazily scan about the edges of the woods. I was staring straight into a distant pair of eyes, gleaming with animal shine. Too high off the ground to be a coyote or fox, so… deer? Whatever it was, it stared back, unafraid. An itch began to crawl down my spine for reasons I couldn't begin to explain in words, but I couldn't pull my eyes away. The fire seemed dimmer, the cold wind stronger, the beating of my heart faster.
A hand clapped down and squeezed tightly on my shoulder, and I jumped! "Hey! You still awake over here or what?" It was Bodhi. I looked up at her, swaying on her feet, and managed a shaky smile.
"Sorry, just got lost in thought." I looked, and the eyes were gone. The fire really had dimmed down and I wondered how long I had been zoned out. "I guess maybe I did doze for a little while?"
Giggling, Bodhi squeezed my shoulder again and then leaned against my back. She always got really touchy when inebriated. "Well, get your stuff together, sweetie. We're about to start walking back." Fidgeting uncomfortably while she started running her fingers through my hair, I could feel her breasts pressed against me. I looked around. Cade was bagging the trash and Ray was closing up the cooler, dumping out the melted water to make it easier to carry. Sensing my question before I asked it, Bodhi said, "Gareth slipped away to take a whiz." Wind began to blow, suddenly, edged with the cold promise of winter coming, sending embers and sparks up into the air.
I stood up, using the excuse of stretching to separate myself from Bodhi. Unperturbed, she gathered up her little backpack and then went over to chat with Cade, leaning bodily against his side. Even if I knew she didn't mean anything by it, I was always uncomfortable with her affectionate side. Maybe it was because on some level, I enjoyed it, even knowing it was meaningless. My ears were starting to get cold, so I pulled up the hood of my jacket. "I'll go check on Gareth," I offered, since there didn't seem to be much I could do to help clean the camp.
"Ooh, didn't know you were into that," Cade teased, crunching up another can to toss in the trash bag.
While Bodhi gasped and started giggling, I nonchalantly tossed back, "Sorry to disappoint but that's just you, bud." Cade tossed an empty can at me but I ducked away and grinned, then headed off toward the edge of the woods at a light jog. I wasn't planning to announce it, but nature was calling and checking on Ray was just a convenient excuse. Ideally, I wouldn't see him at all and we'd both make it back to camp a little lighter.
As I left the comforting light and warmth of the fire, I began to regret the decision. By the time I reached the edge of the woods, it was nearly pitch black. We'd only chosen to come out tonight because the forecast was for a full moon, but with the veil of clouds, it might as well have been the depths of space. Wind blew, rustling barely-seen branches while I crunched through the underbrush. Every step seemed startlingly loud, but rather than echo, the noise was swallowed up almost immediately. I turned around, making sure I could still see the fire in the distance, a wavy orange blob, and then sighed, turning my back to it and closing my eyes. My heart was beating faster, even though I knew the most dangerous things in these woods would be a buck, and they'd be more likely to bolt than attack. I stood there, counting to thirty, forcing my eyes to acclimate to the darkness. I reached out, placing my palm against a nearby tree, pine from the feel of it, ignoring the whistle of the wind through the limbs while I counted.
Thirty. I opened my eyes. The forest was still dark, but I could vaguely make out shapes, the oh-so-faint outline of branches and tree trunks. Most, but not all, of the underbrush was thin; this was in a park, so people traipsed through regularly. Usually during the day, but darkness didn't make anything more dangerous. At least, that's what I kept repeating to myself as I walked forward, reaching out to touch each tree trunk to stay oriented. I resisted the urge to use the tiny LED flashlight on my keychain, knowing it was barely worth it and would kill what little night vision I had going. With each step, I winced from the sound of dead branches snapping underfoot. I half-expected a wild dog to come running up.
I froze in place. A gasp, off to one side. Maybe I accidentally found Gareth, after all, and I found myself immediately rehearsing what I could say. "Hey, fancy meeting you here," or "hi, the others sent me to check on you," or even just, "'Sup, buddy." Which awkward greeting would seem the least awkward, would seem most natural? As these thoughts rushed through my mind, I heard a wet splatter against dry leaves. I frowned in disgust: had it taken him this long to do his business? Abandoning the rehearsals, I prepared to head away from the sounds, avoiding the encounter entirely until we both made it back to the campfire.
Except, I turned back peering into the blackness. Something didn't sound right. It wasn't a sustained stream, more of a burst and now a slow, persistent dripping. As I listened closer, I also made out faint, rapid breathing. A terrifying thought entered my head: a kidney stone? Liver disease? Or even… the big C? Gareth wasn't saying anything, wasn't cursing or even groaning, and I found myself impressed, imagining him dealing with excruciating pain silently. I'd have to ask him what was going on once we were back in camp. I took a step off to the side, grimacing as yet another loud snap rose up. I heard Gareth move, heavy footfalls slowly moving… not toward me, but away, which I was frankly okay with. Awkward conversation avoided, I was about to start moving again when I realized I was still hearing the steady dripping sound, splashing into what had to be a small puddle. Curious now, I hesitated, but turned toward the sounds. I don't know what I was thinking it was. I don't know why, in that moment, I cared. I could have done my business and left. But I didn't.
I slipped past trees I could barely see, getting closer to the dripping sound, growing more uneasy with every step. Finally, I pushed past a rattling bush and into a small clear space around the trunk of a larger tree. Cold wind rushed past and far overhead, the cloud cover broke, if only for a moment. Silvered beams of moonlight filtered through the leafless branches. A faint creaking sound came from overhead. I froze, my mouth felt dry. I tried to make sense of the dark shapes in front of me, panic rising with the goosebumps on my arms. In the silver luminescence, a deep black puddle was visible at the base of the tree. Clouds move overhead and the beams of lunar light shifted, moving as if alive. I followed them upward, dread creeping in while the dripping continued.
A body. Insides of both arms slashed downward, from elbow to wrist. The glint of metal, some kind of hook pierced through the chin, tied off in the lower branches to that the body swung just inches above the ground. Green and white nylon. Blood. My eyes lingered on the blood, watching the deep black puddle rippled with each drop that fell into it.
My guts roiled and twisted. I turned to the side and vomited, a morbid chill filling me from within. As I retched and heaved, I heard heavy footfalls again.
I turned and looked. There, at the edge of the small clear space surrounding the tree, was a figure. It stood silently, a hood shrouding its face. Moonlight licked along the edge of a blade in the figure's hand, a hook-like sickle on a wooden handle. The bottom half of the blade was covered in blackness, in blood. The beam of moonlight climbed the body of the unknown person -- man? Woman? -- the strange light obscuring more than revealing. Just before it could have shown me what was under the hood, however, the clouds rolled back in, snuffing the light and leaving us in utter blackness again.
I screamed.
I ran.
I put my arms in front of my face and barreled through the woods, bouncing off of and slamming into trees, running desperately for that orange blob in the distance. I broke free of the trees, sprinting over the open ground toward the fire.
"Hey! Whoa! Hey, what's the matter!?" Ray called out, running over from behind while Cade and Bodhi rushed over from the campfire. Ray laughed nervously. "Get too close to a coyote or something?"
Bodhi shoved Ray out of the way and slapped a hand on my shoulder leaning in to look at my face. "What's the matter, did Gareth do something? Need me to slap some sense into him?" Her earlier tipsiness seemed to have faded and now the future psychologist was in mama bear mode, an almost equally awkward side of her.
I could barely form the words, still tasting bile on my tongue, the vivid image of that black puddle burned into my mind. "Dead…" I managed to blurt out. "Gareth's dead!"
Immediately Ray turned and started running for the woods while Cade stared in shock. "What do you mean? How? Why?"
"Stop!" I yelled at Ray and, surprisingly, he did. "Killer!"
"Killer?" Bodhi repeated incredulously, sharing a look with Cade that told me immediately they didn't believe me. The two of them looked me over and I instinctively did the same: not a drop of blood on me, except for the scratches on my arms.
"Cade, get the fuck over here." Ray reached behind his back and pulled out a handgun. He held it up, checked the safety, checked the slide, and carefully held it with his finger outside the trigger guard. Next he pulled a flashlight from his pocket, small but obviously legit. He clicked it on and the white light reached all the way to the edge of the woods.
Cade shook his head and took a few steps back. He was pulling out his cell phone. "Whoa now, not a chance. I'm calling the cops."
Infuriated, Ray looked like he was about to throw the flashlight. "What if he's not actually dead, asshole! We don't have time to wait around!"
"I'll go," I croaked out, swallowing the fear and nausea. He was right. I ran when I saw all the blood, but that didn't mean he was necessarily dead… yet. I took the flashlight, hands shaking.
Cade looked over the phone. "Bodhi, stay here." Then the call went through and he started talking to dispatch.
It really was the smarter choice.
Ray and I ran back. Although he hadn't started basic, yet, he seemed to already know something about using a gun. He carried the handgun in both hands, didn't put his finger on the trigger. His competency helped calm me down and I started questioning what I had seen. It was dark, almost pitch black, and it was only one glass, but I had something to drink that night. Was it a bad reaction with my medication? Was I hallucinating? Was it just an overactive imagination? Branches cracked and snapped as the two of us pushed back into the woods. Ray was growing more and more frantic, looking every direction, swinging the gun in front of him in preparation for whoever had attacked or killed Gareth. Meanwhile, I was talking myself out of my own fear, convincing myself it was me, my mistake, a trick of my mind. We would run into Gareth walking back, complaining about accidentally pissing on a badger or something. If there even was a body to begin with, maybe it was an abandoned sex doll and my mind invented the details.
"Are we close?" Ray asked and I swallowed before nodding. The woods looked different in the white light, less scary, less ominous. I was rehearsing an apology now, prepared to laugh it all off, preparing for the inevitable teasing that would follow for weeks or months to come.
Instead, we saw red. A deep, wide pool of bright crimson. Some distant trivia factoid forced its way to the surface, telling me arterial blood was brighter than venous but I couldn't tell which this was. Ray cursed, sounding sick, but unlike me he managed to avoid throwing up. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," he muttered rapidly, looking at the blood, looking at bloody footprints, looking at blood streaked up along the bark of the tree -- an oak, my brain filled in -- and looking at the discarded windbreaker, green and white. "Where the fuck is he?"
Gareth was gone, or his body was gone. I wasn't even sure anymore. The flashlight was shaking wildly in my hand and I slowly panned around while Ray flitted between looking at the edge of the woods and looking at the pool of blood.
My brain was twisting itself in knots, mimicking my stomach, and suddenly a cold chill ran down my spine. "Ray?" He didn't answer so I swallowed and continued. "Hey Ray, when I ran out of the woods, you… didn't come from the campfire." I looked him over, but there was no blood that I could see. His reactions seemed genuine, if almost a little too prepared.
"Taking a piss," he replied off-hand, the simplest answer, almost too simple. I took a step back.
"Can I have your knife?" I asked abruptly, looking at it on his belt.
He looked back at me, sweat beading on his brow. "I don't think that's a good…"
"Why not?" I challenged, suddenly angry, clenching my free hand. "Huh?"
Someone came rushing through the underbrush, interrupting before he could answer. Ray's gun snapped up, then lowered. "Bodhi," he breathed out in relief.
"Hey! Come on, let's get out of here!" she cried out as she stumbled through into the light. Bodhi suddenly stopped, staring at the blood and the jacket. Her hands went to her face and she almost immediately started crying. "Oh god, Gareth! What… what happened? Where is he? Is he okay?"
A dozen answers came to mind, most of them sarcastic and snippy, but I swallowed them back and instead answered with, "We don't know."
"Oh god, oh Jesus," she repeated. I wanted to say something about that, but again, I didn't.
Ray put a hand on her shoulder. That little bit of physical contact seemed to bring her back into the moment. "Police are on their way," she said, voice straining as she fought to keep from sobbing. "They want us to leave the area and meet the responding officers at the parking lot."
That was a half-mile-long walk.
"You have a permit for that?" I asked Ray, wondering how cops would respond to the handgun.
"It's my dad's," he answered. At my questioning look, he explained, "He knows. He's the one that told me to bring it. There's coyotes out here."
I cast the light around, still shaking. The amount of blood filled me with dread, but as long as there wasn't a body, there was hope, right? I kept telling myself that. I looked closer at the bloody footprints but they weren't clear enough for me to tell anything. I couldn't even tell if they were male or female. They could be Gareth's prints.
Some part of me wondered if it was an elaborate prank. Gareth brings a big bottle of fake blood, waits until I see him, then sits back somewhere and laughs it up as we panic. The blood looked too real, though, the horror felt too real.
And who was the one with the sickle?
The three of us exited the woods, heading toward the orange blob of campfire yet again. Nobody said anything, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Ray, at least, seemed to stay on alert, which was good because Bodhi and I were probably useless on that. He was the first to notice something wasn't right up ahead. "What's… oh hell." Ray suddenly broke into a run, yelling, "Cade!" Bodhi and I started running, too, although I couldn't tell what had set him off. It was soon apparent: the campfire had spread, consuming the logs seated around it. Our bags were on the fire, the cooler was dumped over. "Cade? Shit, oh shit, oh shit…"
Cade was on his back in the grass, just beyond the flames, and a bottle of vodka was shoved down his throat, so violently that his teeth were broken. His eyes were bulging out, hands clutching at his throat -- not, as I would expect, at the bottle. Drowned, or suffocated? For some reason that seemed important to me. Ray pulled the bottle free, checked Cade's pulse, and immediately started doing chest compressions. I stood and stared, useless, numb, jittery. Bodhi was broken down, sobbing, saying she shouldn't have left him. I looked at her, questioning for a moment. Would she have the strength to do something like that? Would any of them? Rather than comfort her, I eyed her and found myself agreeing. If she hadn't left, would the killer have been brave enough to approach? Wouldn't two people be able to fend him off?
I looked away and saw Cade's phone in the grass. I picked it up. There was a passcode, but I already knew it. As soon as I plugged in the numbers, I let out a shout, "Ho' fuck!" and dropped the phone.
Bodhi picked up the phone and gasped as she saw it: a picture of the killer, still too dark to make out details. The hood, the sickle, standing just outside of the fire's light but with one difference: red eyes, like photos of an animal in the wrong light. Inhuman.
"Fuck, fuck, come on, come on, dammit, what about Helen, what about your parents, wake up goddammit!" Ray was in tears as he tried to resuscitate Cade, but it was Bodhi who finally walked over to tell him to stop.
"We need to go. We need to go now. Now!" I shouted, overwhelmed by sudden dread, spine tingling. I spun around, searching for the source of that unease, and as soon as I turned my back, a gunshot rang out. I spun back around only to be nearly bowled over by Bodhi. Ray was pointing his gun toward the edge of the woods and as I squinted, I made out the shape of a person, a hood. I couldn't see it but I could imagine the sickle.
"Don't you come any closer!" Ray shouted hysterically, voice cracking. "The next shot will be for real!"
The figure seemed unperturbed, standing there silently.
"Ray, come on!" Bodhi shouted.
"No, I'm not letting him take Cade!" Ray shouted. "You go, I've got the gun. Go and bring the cops back!"
I noticed suddenly that Bodhi had Ray's knife. When had that..? "Don't do anything stupid!" Bodhi shouted at him before turning and grabbing my arm. "Let's go!"
We ran. I knew immediately that I should have stayed, that he couldn't handle it, but I ran, because it was easier than fighting against his wishes and fighting against Bodhi's feelings, but I knew it was wrong. The flashlight shook wildly in my hand as we ran, down the trail this time instead of through the brush. We reached the main trail and I let out a cry of relief to see the lights were on. Old street lights, caked in dirt and fogged over, they cast orange and brown light over the trail. Even muddy light was light. Bodhi and I ran, listening desperately for sirens. Would they play the sirens? Would they take the call seriously?
Had Cade even actually finished the call? Bodhi said he did, but…
A gunshot shattered my thoughts. I slid to a stop while Bodhi kept running. Another rang out, then another. Including his first warning shot, I counted seven shots. I tried to think of what sort of handgun he had pulled out, how many rounds could it shoot? Was he out of ammo or did he… win? Slowly, I started moving, running back the way I came. The killer was behind us, Bodhi would be safe ahead, she could bring the cops. I had to go back, though. Dread tugged at me and just as I made my decision, another gunshot came. Eight. This one had an air of finality to it and I started running faster, ignoring the stitch in my side, ignoring the voice in my head telling me what an idiot I was. I ran, tears blurring my vision until all I could see was the muddy orange lights. How many had we already run past? Where was the turn off toward the camp-site? I ran and ran, heart pounding, breath growing hoarse. How far? How many lights?
I ran, alone, the woods eerily silent save for my breathing. Orange and black seemed to blend together and after a while, the orange light on the dirt trail seemed darker, more like blood. I searched desperately for the turn, debated turning around. Had I passed it? Was I just going deeper into the woods? Or would I be giving up too soon? No screams, no gunshots, just silence. It pressed in around me, smothering me with dread. I was too late, but I had to try. So I ran.
Then I stopped. Up ahead, in the muddy light, there stood the killer. Featureless as always, carrying his sickle. It dripped with blood. Slowly, my eyes panned upward. Gareth, veins sliced. Cade, drowned. Ray, a final bullet to his own head. They were hanging high in the trees, each with a sickle hooked through their heads from below, swaying morbidly when the wind began to blow. I looked at them, looked at the killer. I didn't even question, how they had managed to hang all of them up, why they had killed my best friends. Instead, the one question rolling through my head: why not me? Why not just me? "Why not me?" I shouted aloud, gripping the tiny flashlight in both hands and swinging for the killer's head. I felt nothing. The hooded jacket collapsed, falling to the ground, and the sickle thudded into the dirt.
The flashlight flew from my hands, cracking as it hit the ground. It spun around, sending shadows dancing wildly for a long moment before finally settling. It pointed straight at me, trembling where I stood above the discarded jacket, only a jacket, and the still-bloody tool. I bent down, picking it up and staring at it. I looked at the jacket, stunned at how familiar it looked, realizing only then how cold I was. I looked up, feeling nausea welling up once again. I dropped to my knees and vomited.
"It's your fault!" The scream echoed my own sentiments. "It's all your fault!" I didn't realize at first that they weren't my words.
I turned around, just in time to see Bodhi's wild eyes, to see Ray's camp knife in her hands as she stabbed me. Screaming, shouting, echoing my own guilt, I felt hot pain and icy dread.
I couldn't find words, couldn't rehearse anything, didn't know what I would say. "Stop," I croaked, but it wasn't enough. She stabbed me again, again. How many stabs can a human survive? A lot, not enough. The sickle was in my hand… and then, it was in her throat. All of it without a conscious thought, all of it without being capable of thought.
I watched as Bodhi's blood ran, watched the self-satisfied smile as she fell to the dirt.
I dropped to my knees, surrounded by my closest friends, surrounded by silence. Full of questions with no answers.
I looked up, and the clouds rolled back, revealing the full moon. Then I looked down, at the blood-soaked knife, wondering again why I was spared.
Heavy footsteps came up behind me. A sickle came down in front of me. I closed my eyes, grunted as the blade sank into my stomach, ripped across.
Blood poured onto the trail.
