teaganmitchell (teaganmitchell) wrote in horror_story, @ 2013-07-18 17:26:00 |
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Having just turned 17, Teagan felt like she was treading a purgatory between teenager and adult. Technically, she was an attendee of Camp Arawak. A fact that was loudly proclaimed by the t-shirt she wore, but she felt far more affinity towards the camp counselors in blue. For the last couple of weeks, she'd been trying to make herself useful to them, proving that she was to be considered a leader amongst the younger children, rather than a card-carrying member of youth. Desperate to be treated as an equal, she'd volunteer for anything that might have read as responsibility. That might get her an in with the mysterious 21+ crowd, many of whom were happy to shirk duties in order to go off and have a cigarette or hook up. Teagan seethed with jealousy over it all. Another year, and the shackles of legalities would be released. She was absolutely certain that it was merely the technicality of her age that kept her from having the same amount of fun. The booze, the cigarettes, the sex...
Granted, she was also aware that many of the other 15-to-17-year-olds at the camp weren't as inexperienced. Several girls in her cabin could probably teach the camp counselors a thing or two about debauchery. But despite her personality oddities, Teagan had walked the straight line of civil obedience throughout her teenage years. Not that it had been all that difficult. Because of her oddities, not many people had taken it upon themselves to offer her anything in the way of temptation. Oh, sure, there'd almost been the deaf boy the summer before... a year and a half younger than she was and not much to write home about. But he hadn't come back to camp this year, so their experimental makeout sessions were doomed to remain just that. Awkward memories of false starts.
Just as well. If it had gotten out that she'd actually lost her virginity to Charlie Patenaude, Teagan would have had to drown herself in the lake out of shame. She'd tried to stoke a preemptive rumor that she'd already slept with one of the camp counselors, just in case something did happen (and perhaps to instigate something to happen), but the rumor hadn't been picked up by anyone. Susie Wilson had been caught on the docks with two of the older boys, and nobody could talk about anything else for the rest of the summer. Even if the had believed a counselor might be interested in her, there was just no way that Teagan could compete with that kind of wanton abandonment. Lord, but she hated Susie Wilson sometimes. All the girls who had it so damn easy.
Maybe actually being a counselor would make it easier. Authority would make her more desirable, for sure. Suddenly the other counselors would treat her as an equal, and she'd become a shining God in the eyes of the underaged, even if her tanlines were uneven. Teagan was definitely going to apply.
"All right," she said, setting aside her guitar after playing the kids to their seats around the fire. Playing guitar had made her an asset to the less-than-musical counselors. She eyed the faces around the campfire. Most of the kids her age had opted to go night-swimming instead, but Teagan (and her guitar) had volunteered for campfire tales with the younger set. It had seemed like the more responsible option, and seeing that their actual counselor was nowhere to be seen, she'd clearly made the right choice. Probably off having a cigarette, she concluded silently to herself. Fucker. No matter. That just meant this was her time to shine. "I'll start. Everyone got their marshmallows? Awesome. Great. Okay!"
A pause, just to get into the character of an adult, though she was going to do the tales better than the actual counselors would, she was sure. They often started out with once upon a time, of all things. Campfire tales, in her opinion, should at least make a token attempt at being scary. "So... let's talk about the Axeman."
"I mean, if that's what we want to call him." She leaned forward, her grin underlit by the flames in the firepit as she began. "Your older siblings, or your parents might refer to him as the Bogeyman, the Shadowstalker, or the Night Axeman... those are all names that he’s been known by, from time to time. There are others, too, but I'm not going to get into it. I happen to know all about it, because it happened to a friend of yours and mine, Charlie. How many of you remember Charlie Patenaude? Nobody? Jeez, you guys. He was here last year, in Herring Camp. Ask around. He was a real smart kid. So smart that he got to skip third grade altogether, but that's not really relevant. He lived in this big two-story house out in Crows Landing with his little brother and both of his parents. Anyway, one night in September, Charlie just woke up suddenly for no reason. He didn't know why, so he went to the window to check things out.
"It was calm, but there were odd rustling sounds from the bushes in front of his house. And there was something large and hulking in the dark. A bear, maybe, though why the heck would a bear be wandering through Crows Landing? There was definitely something weird about it, but Charlie didn’t know if it was worth waking his parents over, so he just closed the window and went back to bed... you know, like sensible kids who are half-asleep do. He hadn’t quite managed to fall back asleep when he heard this creak at the bottom of the stairs. A heavy footstep, followed by another. Real slow, steadily going up the old, creaky staircase.
Thud. Creak.
... Thud. Creak.
"Oh, man, Charlie hated those crappy stairs! They'd always creaked. He'd always been worried that one day they’d break under his weight and send him crashing through to the basement in a pile of broken wood. But somehow, just then, he was more concerned with what was on the steps that the actual, you know, steps, themselves. That wasn’t the sound of his brother, who always ran up the stairs two at a time. And it sure wasn’t the sound of her mother, who had a delicate way of walking and always managed to step around the creaky spots, especially at night. It might have been her father, but why was his father walking so slow like that? With the Thud and the creak.
...Thud. Creak.
"Charlie was scared. He thought it had to be his father, because who else could it be? But he was frightened, just the same. Being smart didn't help, it just made him think of all the terrible things it could be that weren't his father. So because he was such a smart kid, he got up from his bed as quietly as he could, hurried to his closet and shut the door behind him. He hid himself in a pile of old clothes and just waited for the footsteps to stop. Slow and steady, they went, up to the top of the stairs and then down the hallway to his parents’ room. He heard the sound of their door opening. He heard the squeak in the mattress as something shifted on their bed, and then there were two sickening THUNKS, very fast together. THUNKTHUNK.
"Charlie was smart, but he didn't want to think about what those could be. There were more of them, in succession, and it seemed to take a very long time for the sounds to stop. He wondered if his brother could hear them, or if he was still asleep. Now, Charlie wasn’t a coward. He did think about going to his brother and waking him up, but by the time he could bring himself to move the footsteps were right in that hallway again, and this time, they weren’t just heavy thuds. There was something wet about them. There was a definite... squish. Like stepping on a wet carpet. And that squish froze Charlie, so he couldn’t move. Not even to save his little brother. He sunk back into that pile of old clothes, shaking. The squishing thuds stopped at his brother’s door, and he heard it open. Please, he thought, please let him be awake... please let him get away...
"And his brother did wake up!" Teagan continued triumphantly, raising up out of her seat. "But just in time to scream. AAAAAAAAA! The scream was cut off with another nasty thunk, the sound of something heavy and sharp going into something that was mostly soft, something meaty. Charlie had to bite down on his fists to keep from screaming, too. Again, there were a lot of thunks to follow that first one. And those squishy footsteps just sounded wetter and wetter with each one. Soon enough, Charlie heard his own door open, and the thing squished its way into right into his bedroom.
"Lucky for Charlie, he wasn't in his bed, and the dawn was too close for the Night Axeman to go lookin' for him. He had to get out while it was still dark, because those were the rules. So he left without checking the closet. Thudding and squishing down the creaky old stairs.
"Hours later, Charlie crawled out of his closet, sore and shaky from crouching in there all night. Whatever he saw when he left his room, it must have been real bad. After a neighbor called the police, Charlie was sent to the psychiatric ward of the state hospital and has been there ever since.... which is why he's not in camp this year. He's completely snapped, and all he does now is rock back and forth, muttering to himself and making the same noises he heard. Thud. Squish..." Teagan finished her story, not realizing until the end that she probably shouldn't have picked Charlie to star in it. If anyone at the campsite did ask around, they'd probably be told that he was deaf, which would sort of ruin her credibility. Oh, well. She'd just bank on the idea that nobody remembered him. Clearly, nobody at the campfire had, so maybe it was a safe bet.
"Okay, who wants to go next?" She asked brightly, pleased with herself. She thought the look of fear in the faces looking at her were due to her story, since she couldn't see the figure stepping up in the shadows behind her.