Monochrome

My sister killed herself last week.

I remember when the police called. A neighbour had called when they heard the screaming. They thought it was a home invasion. They said that she was screaming in terror, that she sounded so scared.

I ran straight to my car and drove as fast as I could. There was police tape and blue lights outside her apartment. A police officer greeted me, told me it was suicide, told me there was a note. I didn’t understand.

---

I only wanted to be perfect. Doesn’t everybody? I only wanted to rid myself of this disgusting defect. How can anyone expect me to just ignore this? How can anyone expect me to spend everyday for the rest of my life hating and fearing how I look in the mirror? Sure I can cover it up, I can hide it when I’m in public, but it’s still there. I still know, and every time I go to be I’m reminded of it, every time I shower. I can never be normal whilst this plagues me.

I’m finally committed to ridding myself of this.

My family tell me I’m sick. I need help. They don’t understand. They don’t understand how hard it is to get through each day. Each day I am so scared to go outside, and see those things. They don’t understand how hard it is to buy food that isn’t full of those things. The impurities that make them those horrific colours. I’d been eating cauliflower and rice for months, until Maddy told me about squid ink pasta. They call me sick and they can’t even see this poison they’re putting in their bodies.
They don’t understand how my home is my sanctuary, the one place where I can feel safe. Its perfect white walls, its perfect grey carpets. The black and white tiles in the bathroom. I had to fix the windows, of course. They don’t look great with the black tape over them, but at least I can’t see the horrible sight outside.

I just needed my body to be safe too, I can fix it.

---

I asked to see the body and the officer led me in. The first thing that hit when they opened the door was the chemical smell. It stung my eyes and my nose. I coughed and staggered back when the police officer remembered to hand me a face mask.

“Sorry about that.” he said as I pulled it on.

I recognised the smell. Bleach, but I hadn’t smelt it this strongly before. With water pouring out my eyes, I entered the apartment.

A red streak marked the carpet up the corridor from the bathroom to the living room. It was the width of the corridor and turning brown now, but some parts of it were still scarlet. It was the kind of mark you could make by dragging something covered in paint.

The officer led me into the bathroom first, “This is where the chemical is. It looks like she filled the bath with bleach.”

The bathtub was full of red fluid, and more fluid was on the tiles. There were chunks of solids floating in the bath.

He led me along the corridor, along the trail leading to the front room, and I followed in a trance.

I walked through the threshold, and I saw her laying naked in the corner of the room.

I always thought it was dramatic flair, or Hollywood artistic license when you see the bodies with a look of terror on them. Their mouths wide open and lips drawn back, their eyes dead, and face distorted like someone had frozen it while they were still screaming.

The whole of her legs and waist were swollen and red, covered in blisters and sores. The broken skin had dried blood over them to match the trail in the carpet. Her forearms had burns too, where the chemical had splashed up her body.

The coroner predicted a heart attack from the fear, but the extent of the burns on her legs meant that she must have forced herself into the bath for several minutes.

“She had her eyes closed.” I told them.

She was right, my sister. I never did understand. How can someone be so afraid of colour?

—
Credits to: Kerrima

This Is Why I Hate Clowns

I could never understand how anyone could like clowns. Their ugly white painted faces are scary to look at and they act happy non-stop with their big shoes and squeaking red noses. Stupid high pitched silly voices. I swear if there was one thing on this earth that I can eliminate clowns would be definitely it. And of course, a clown is exactly what my daughter wants at her party. I told her it was going to scare her and make her cry but she didn’t care. She wanted balloon animals and silliness. I love the kid but she takes after her mother a little too much.

You walk into her room and there are clown dolls, statues, figurines, and other clown junk. I never thought I would need to give myself a motivational pep talk to walk into my child’s room. I’ve thought about playing that “It” movie for her and then sending Stephen King a thank you note. Maybe he’s actually the reason I hate clowns. Who knows? They just make me so damned uncomfortable. Maybe Killer Clowns from Outer Space would change her tone?

The problem with hiring a clown is that you need to pay them for their services. Why the Hell would I pay some idiot to act like an idiot and make me look like an idiot for paying him for his idiocy? I’ll say idiot one more time for good measure. We don’t have the money to pay for the damned clown so my wife gets the brilliant idea for me to dress up like a clown and make the day special. Daddy the Clown is what I would be called from now on. Sticking pencils into my eyeballs would be better.

My daughter’s birthday finally arrives and I’m sitting in the office staring down at the computer clock. The Bozo the Clown outfit sits on my desk right along with a make-up kit. Budget Bozo coming right up! Maybe if I pull the make-up job right I can at least get away with looking like the Joker. He’s a scary clown but for a different reason. That’s a clown that commands power. As I’m about to slip into the costume, the telephone rings and I pick it up. It’s my wife.

She tells me the clown I hired was amazing and that she couldn’t believe I would shell out the money for it. I tell her I didn’t hire any clown. In the background, I hear children laughing and an annoyingly loud pitched voice. It’s laughing like a maniac. I want to kill it. There’s a cold chill in my heart as I hear screams. Are the screams of happiness or terror? I can’t tell. My wife couldn’t stop laughing when I tried to speak to her. She laughed until it sounded like she was crying in pain. She struggled to breath and the line was quiet except for rasping for air and the chuckles of a clown…..

—
Credits to: Human_Gravy

The Groundskeeper

I had been unemployed for the greater part of a year when my case worker at the unemployment office got me an interview for a gig as a groundskeeper for the city cemetery. I was to meet a Mr. Bowman at 2pm for the interview. I showed up in jeans and a t-shirt hoping to get to work as soon as possible. Mr. Bowman was an elderly gentleman who walked with a cane and spoke with a deep southern accent. He reached out to shake my hand and I instantly jumped at a grip far firmer than I had expected.

He smiled and ran me through the usual questions. I told him that I didn’t drink or smoke and that I had my own car. He smiled again before telling me to show up each morning at dawn. For the next few weeks I showed up at the crack of dawn and tasked myself with mowing the grass, weed eating around the gravestones and picking up cigarette butts along the roads. It was hard work but a welcome change of pace from sitting on my butt watching daytime television.

Mr. Bowman passed a few weeks after I was hired and as the only person working the cemetery I was offered a promotion. A guy from the city came by with a clipboard asking if I had ever been convicted of a crime worse than a speeding ticket before having me sign some papers and giving me the key to the groundskeeper’s house. He told me I could move in or live off site but that someone had to be there at night in case of any “incidents.”

The emphasis he put on that word disturbed me slightly.

Not one to say no to free rent and utilities I moved out of my parents’ house and into the small cottage to the rear of the cemetery. It was relatively uneventful. Before long I hired a kid to fill my old job and enjoyed the luxury that came with a title and a free house. Aside from tallying hours and telling the kid what to do, I got paid to watch daytime television.

I must’ve lived there for the greater part of a month before the first late night call.

I’d never even noticed the black phone on the kitchen wall before but it didn’t have a bell inside. No, that would have made sense. Instead, I woke to the sound of a klaxxon coming from the phone on the wall in the kitchen. I answered it only to hear a man with a nasally voice say, “We’ve got another one. Unlock the front gate.” I walked into the living room and pressed a button to open the magnetic lock on the front gate as I stood on the porch and watch as a police van backed up to one of the mausoleums and carried something inside before locking the place up tight and speeding off.

These calls happened about once or twice a month and that was pretty much all it was. I would answer the phone, open the gate and watch the police load stuff into that mausoleum. The thing is, I started to notice a pattern. We had a real problem with kids kicking over gravestones and other vandalism. It seemed that these calls seemed to happen on the night of or a few nights after someone had kicked over a gravestone or did some unauthorized digging in around the graveyard.

I had been on the job for nearly a year when one morning I worked up the courage to walk over to the mausoleum and see what all the hubbub was about. I grabbed my keyring and fiddle around with the keys and locks before opening up the heavy iron door and peering inside. Instead of finding a standard mausoleum, the door opened to stone stairs that went down a bit before opening up in a huge room with crates lining the walls with a doorway to the rear of the room that seemed to be the opening of a long hallway. I closed the place up as I found it and went back to the house to catch the latest episode of Judge Judy.

That night when the klaxxon went off I pushed the button first before walking over and answering the phone. A frantic voice on the other end said, “Don’t open the gate. Don’t go outside. They got out. Somehow, they got out. Oh fuck, oh fuck…” The line went dead. I walked over to the window and peered outside.

Nothing.

It was a calm and quiet night. The moon was high in the sky and it was almost bright enough to make out the individual gravestones that peppered the graveyard all the way up to the main road. Everything was normal. The pale blue glow of the moonlight shined down and illuminated the almost serene graveyard. The owls were hooting. The crickets were chirping. Mr. Bowman was staring at me from the other side of the window.

I jumped back.

“You forgot to lock the mausoleum!” he shouted before turning and walking off into the night.

I stumbled back to my chair and sat there staring at the door until I passed out at some point. I was met the following morning by the same guy with a clipboard and a nasally voice. I was promptly fired and given until the end of the week to move out. As I moved the last of the boxes from the house into my parents’ van I noticed the original papers I noticed my termination papers sitting on the table.

There on the paper in the comments section was a handwritten note:

“Employee terminated for failure to properly contain the recently deceased.”

—
Credits to: xylonex

She Whispers To Me

8/13/10
In the middle of the night. In the morning. In the day. In the evening. Her whispers are soft and low, like a lullaby. I can’t see her. She’s in the shadows. In the darkest corners of my room. Her words drive me insane. They’re always my name. Jasmine… Jasmine… Jasmine They’re jolting, and I find myself driven from sleep. I sob, and sob, and sob, and beg her to stop, but she never listens. She just.. keeps… whispering. Even now, as I write in my journal, I can hear her. The door is creaking open. I can see her hair peek out. She’s never come outside the wardrobe before.

8/15/10
She has a pure white face. Her eyes are pure white, as if rolled back in her head. Her jaw is slacked, and drool spits out from her lips. She moves in this weird way, a way physically impossible for humans, that should break all her bones. Her legs twist backwards, her head spinning until the crown reaches her spine, her jaw flat against her chest. Her arms bend backwards, her fingers tips touching her wrist. When she moves, its like hundreds of bones snapping, and the noise is all I can hear. Her whispers are worse. Kill Kill KiLL KILL KILL KILL Until she’s screaming in my mind. Her jaw doesn’t moment when she talks, but her tongue lashes around, longer than any human, and snaps at me. I’m so scared. I can’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes without dreaming of her.

8/18/10
I have to do something. Mother has started to notice the black bags under my eyes. She is not my mother. I have to kill her. I blacked out for a moment. I didn’t write that! Somebody help me please. I’ve barricaded myself in my room from the evil outside, but I find myself trapped between the two. I’ve managed to turn the wardrobe so that she’s trapped! Haha! I’Ve FiGurED iT aLL noW. sHE woNT bOtHER mE nOW. At night I hear her pounding against the wall, screams of frustration erupting. Now her screams keep me awake. I can’t think. I’m so tired, but if I fall asleep, she’ll come and over-take me.

she wont live. her life is worthless.

8/24/10
I am stuck in the bathroom. I keep blacking out. I do things I don’t mean. I… I think I killed my cat a couple nights ago. I found her strung up by twine around her throat, just… hanging from my ceiling fan. Something’s going on… and I don’t understand what it is. Somebodies been writing in my journal. It’s my hand-writing, but its jumbled, and weird, and I don’t understand wHAtS hApEniNG.

My mother is not my mother. She a woman with someone else’s face. I cAn SenSE iT. sHEs KeePinG mE tRaPPeD iN thE bAThRooM.

9/1/10
I’ve… I’ve done it. I did it! When my mother finally flung down the door, I ripped her heart out. I plunged my hand into her chest, not stopping for bones or muscle or skin, and ripped the heart out. Blood poured from the vessels, and the heart still beat even though the veins connecting it was broken. It tastes delicious, like no meat I’ve ever eaten before. I swallowed it hole, and it steal beat in my stomach. My bones crack with every movement, and I’ve receded in the wardrobe. It’s comfortable in there.

As I write, a new little girl sleeps in the corner that I use to. Her name is Elizabeth.

Elizabeth.. Elizabeth… Elizabeth. 

—
Credits to: insanemurder.tumblr.com

Camping

It’s been two years and some change since this event happened. I want to say that I am a logical person; mumbo-jumbo doesn’t exactly jive well with me. If something strange happens, I immediately try to figure out why in a scientific way. I think this night terrifies me because there is no real scientific explanation, no real closure on what the fuck happened to us during a simple camping trip.

I’ll get on with the story.

As a twenty-four year old mother fresh out of the Navy, I wanted to spend time with my three year old, Harlee. Working in the military meant I spent a lot of her life away from her and I wanted to reconnect.
It was a spontaneous decision. I was good at those. I didn’t want a camp ground. I didn’t want other people around me pretending to be camping while they settled on a piece of mowed clearing next to their car. I wanted real camping, authentic primitive camping. That’s actually much harder to find, believe it or not. I turned to Google, found a place about an hour away, and packed up the car.

I invited the people living with me. I had a pretty complicated living situation with my (now ex) husband Joe, his mistress Chelsea, and our male roommate John. At the time, we were all under a ton of relationship tension, trying to figure out what we were all doing without arguing. So we were being friendly, cordial even. They agreed to the camping trip. We figured it would be nice to “get away” together. We even brought our dog, Jake.

The second we were all in the car, I punched the address into my navigation system and off we went. That’s when the trouble started, and probably when we should have turned around.

It was about three pm-ish by the time we left. My navigation suggested about three hours to the camp grounds. That was enough time to hike the mile from the parking area to the campgrounds, set up camp, and enjoy the night before it became too dark. Satisfied, we broke out snacks and enjoyed some time swapping funny stories. My daughter enjoyed eating cookies in the car.

By six pm, we realized we couldn’t find the damned place. My navigation told me we were there, but it wasn’t a campground. Frustrations running high, I stopped at a Walmart and asked for directions to the campground. After they were done laughing in my face, the kind women told me I had overshot the campgrounds by an hour. She handed me an old fashioned map, showed me the route, and continued laughing as I purchased the map. I left feeling angry, but also weirded out. The lady had laughed way beyond what felt like normal; I chalked it up to being a bitch and went back to the car.

Once we were on the right track, our friendly banter started up again. It was starting to get dark, but I didn’t want to be discouraged. We could do this. It was a stupid camping trip; easy-peasy.

I realized just how wrong I was when it took another two hours to find the campground. There was supposed to be a big sign. A little dug out area for a car or three. It was now dark and that big sign turned out to be a little sign half hidden by trees. We had passed it for two hours, going back and forth, arguing and fighting about if we should just give up the damned search for this stupid place. That’s when John noticed the sign.

Gratefully, I parked in the little grass lot. Joe happily pointed out that there was the little trail we were looking for. It looked like a well travelled deer trail. I was pumped now; this was the primitive camping I was hoping for. We put on our backpacks full of gear and sprayed each other down with bug spray. I handed Harlee her bottle of water and took her hand. She was tired, but excited to be out of the car. Jake trotted beside us, pulling his leash, tense but happy.

We meandered down the path for about half a mile before coming into a clearing. There were large mounds in this clearing and a little half-sheltered information booth. I remembered quite clearly that the website had stated to walk a full mile before coming across any camp clearings, but no one wanted to listen to me. Everyone was tired, it was dark, and we wanted to just set up camp.

I set Harlee down by the shelter as it had started to drizzle. The weather didn’t call for rain, but it was super hot and humid; we welcomed the light rain. We tied Jake up to the shelter as John dug a fire pit. Joe and Chelsea started setting up the tent. Harlee stuck by John’s side while I decided to find some dry wood. That’s when curiosity took over and I peeked at the information booth. I expected trail numbers and a big map; instead, I read about the Native American burial grounds.

"Hey guys? This is an Indian burial ground." I told them, my voice shaking.

John and Joe shrugged. “We have Native American blood in us; I think we are good.”

Chelsea piped up. “I’m like, a quarter Native American.”

"Yeah, and Harlee is part Native American, too." Joe pointed out, smiling as if proud his genes were good for something.

I nodded at them. “I’m fucking Irish. I don’t want to camp next to the burial mounds. If we keep walking down the path-“

John shook his head. “We’ll be fine, Eve. We’re all tired, and I don’t feel like hiking any further.”

"Fine. If something happens, I want it publicly known that I did not want to camp here." I turned to the burial mounds. "I’m sorry. I mean no disrespect. Please let us camp here for the night."

The others laughed at me and went on to make jokes about offerings before settling into their tasks. I grabbed the axe we had brought, as well as my forearm sized knife, and decided to find some firewood. My daughter stayed with John, just in case I happened upon a wild animal and needed to fight or run.

"Oh, wow. Look, some idiot partied here and left trash." I muttered out loud.

Apparently Chelsea had followed me. “That’s disrespectful.”

I nodded. “Remind me, in case I forget, to pick that crap up before we leave. I don’t want any bad mojo.”

We decided to wander a bit down a separate path to find firewood. After we had struggled through some gigantic spider webs and had found a decent amount of wood, we wandered back to find a nice fire and our tent up. Jake was dozing peacefully by the tent and Harlee was playing in the dirt, content.

I smiled. Finally, camping! The crickets and frogs were croaking peacefully, the sky was thick with clouds but there was a decent breeze. If only it wasn’t so stiflingly humid…

I tried to get John alone to talk to him, but he was being withdrawn and gloomy. Joe and Chelsea wandered into the tent to relax and talk, which left me alone. I decided to get rid of some pent up frustration by hacking some firewood off a fallen tree down the main path, away from everyone, alone in the dark. My anger made me fearless…up until I made it to the tree.

I felt eyes on me. Not malicious eyes, but eyes none-the-less. As I walked down the path, I felt my anger ebb and fear fill it’s place. I was suddenly nervous. I’ve been camping before and have been watched by foxes, bears, etc; this didn’t feel like those times. I didn’t feel hunted, I just felt watched.

I tried to brush it away as being alone in the woods and having read too many horror stories. I started swinging the axe, and immediately felt better. I felt watched, but better. I swung until I had taken off most of the fallen tree’s bigger branches; my shoulders were aching and stiff. I grabbed my flashlight and went to leave when I heard something rustle in the bushes.

I jumped, axe in one hand, flashlight in the other. Chelsea came around the bend. My heart was in my throat, hammering, and I angrily asked what she was doing. She wanted to talk. I grabbed the newly cut fire wood and walked beside her, talking. After the talk, I wanted to go back to chopping at the damned tree, but I decided against it. I was too spooked.

I apparently wasn’t the only one spooked. When we got back, John and Joe were talking rapidly, wide-eyed. I dropped the firewood and asked what had happened.

"We saw a Native American woman!" Joe exclaimed, pointing to the place where I had seen the trash. "She was right there! John saw her too, didn’t you?!"

I looked around for a moment, perplexed and a bit incredulous, before realizing Harlee wasn’t around. “Where’s Harlee?” I demanded, suddenly afraid.

"In the tent, playing. She was getting eaten up by bugs even with the bug spray." Joe stated quickly. "Can you believe it? John, tell them!"

John didn’t say anything. He sat by the fire and poked at it, his eyes wide. For a moment, we were all silent, listening to the fire. It was as if we all felt it at the same time. That same feeling of being watched overwhelmed us, and I swallowed hard, my hand going to the knife at my hip.

"Do you guys feel-" I started.

At that moment, John jumped up and put his finger to his lips. “Shh! Do you hear that?” He asked, his eyes widening further.

We listened. I suddenly noticed all the normal forest noises had stopped. No crickets, no frogs, no hissing insects; just silence. And the pounding.

"Is that…drums?" Chelsea whispered. We were all standing, all crowding against each other.

"It sounds kind of like the ocean." I whispered back. "But we are smack in the middle of Florida; there is no ocean around here. Just a small lake."

"No, definitely drums." Joe said, his voice sombre.

The bushes across the fire rustled and we all jumped straight out of our skins, but the howl that followed the rustle was enough to elicit a scream from Chelsea. It sounded awful; like a woman being murdered viciously. It also sounded close. John turned to look at me and my eyes widened.

"Get in the tent!" I yelled. "Put another log on the fire; it could be a cougar!"

Florida had what they called panthers. They looked like mountain lions, and were one of the reasons I was carrying the big knife. Not that I could kill one, but I wasn’t going to go down without a fight if it did happen. The howl didn’t sound like the panther’s call (I had Googled it, just in case), but I wasn’t going to chance it. Jake, ever calm and noble, was snarling and yanking on his leash; I untied him and put him in the tent with us.

For a while, we all sat in the tent and listened. The strange silence had returned and we commented on it for a few minutes. Chelsea decided we should listen to some music on her phone, to help us focus on something else. I was watching the fire through the little mesh opening that served as our window. The fire was dying down. I didn’t like that, not even a bit.

"We need to put more wood on the fire." I said in the music laden silence.

No one offered to go out there. It had been about half an hour since the strange scream. My daughter was still politely playing with Jake and the toys we had brought her. It was strange that she was still up, and was so quiet the entire time, but we were all too high strung to really notice. Angry that the boys weren’t offering to stoke the fire, I grabbed the axe and a flashlight.

John shook his head. “Eve, the fire died. Look. It’s just embers. Don’t go out there; if it’s a cat, it’ll brave just one person.”

I shook my head and made for the door anyway. Just as I started to unzip the door, John gasped. I could see through the fabric of the tent as the fire blazed back to life on it’s own. I walked back over to the window. Harlee had decided to lay down now, and I gingerly stepped over her. The fire was crackling and bright, despite the logs being completely ash. Maybe a breeze helped? I thought.

"I’m going to put a log on it before it burns out." I muttered, trying to contain my fear with rationality.

Before anyone could protest, I zipped open the flap and stood up fully in the light of the fire. I checked the bushes for the tell-tale sign of glowing eyes, and saw nothing. I heard nothing. I swallowed hard and made my way to the logs and the fire, axe ready in case something jumped out at me.

I felt the eyes again. Not malicious, not hunted; just watched. It was the creepiest feeling I could possibly conceive; I’d rather something had jumped out at me. Instead, I put three logs on the strangely robust fire and, feigning calm, walked back to the tent.

"Lets try to sleep before the fire goes out. If we stay up like this, we’ll just continue to hear creepy stuff. It’s the middle of the woods, after all." I muttered, lying down beside my drowsy daughter.

John laid down on the other side of Harlee. Joe and Chelsea arranged themselves at our feet so that we were all comfortable. No blankets were needed in this heat. I draped my arm around my daughter. She closed her eyes and, as I closed mine, the screaming began.

My daughter sat straight up. She hadn’t been asleep a second. She clamped her hands over her ears and started singing “rain, rain go away”, screaming as if someone was stabbing her. We all bolted upright and I quickly grabbed her, trying to sooth her, trying to get her to pull her hands from her ears. My heart was hammering, everyone was staring at her with their mouths open; she wouldn’t stop! Screaming, singing, screaming, singing; tears were falling down her cheeks, but she wouldn’t stop.

Suddenly, she stopped mid-scream and opened her eyes. She looked lost in thought, older than three, as if she wasn’t even awake. She stated, calmly, “The Indians are coming.”

First, let me assure you that no one said anything about the burial grounds in front of her. She was three. She could form sentences, but I had never sung her Rain, rain, go away. She didn’t attend a day-care. No one else told her about the Native Americans. We had talked about the frogs and the crickets, but nothing else.

After she made that statement, the silent forest erupted. I have no better way to describe the sudden noise that bombarded us. There were hundreds of animals screaming, howling, growling, barking, hooting around us. Strong, steady, calm Jake was shivering and whimpering in the corner of the tent, far from Harlee and the door. My daughter went back to singing and screaming while the rest of us lost our fucking minds.

"What the hell is going on?!" Joe was screaming. "Do you hear the drums? It sounds like a fucking war!"

I put my daughter back on the floor. Her eyes were rolling in their sockets, and I didn’t know what to do. My heart was going to explode. My hand was on my knife, but what was that going to do?

"Didn’t the Indians imitate wildlife?" John yelled over the ridiculously loud gun shots, or was it thunder?

"Yes!" I muttered, my eyes wide. "Holy shit, yes, they did! I remember reading about that!"

We were yelling at each other now, over the bushes rustling and the loud banging and the horrible screams. There was that fucking owl again! The screaming cougar! The howling coyote! The wolf! The cat! The owl! So fucking close! I felt the panic attack coming, until I looked at Harlee again.

Then I was angry.

"Leave her alone!" I screamed and stood. "She’s fucking THREE! This is her first camping trip! LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE!" I was crying now, furious, ready to fight, wanting to fight, if only it would all just stop!

Just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. My daughter blinked a few times. She yawned and laid back down while we stared at her, incredulous. I was crying hard now, more in relief and disbelief than anything else. It was so quiet, I almost wished for the noise again. Then, a cricket. Soft at first, then louder. Finally, the forest was in full song again, and I collapsed back on my exhausted butt.

"What. The fuck. Just happened?" I asked tiredly.

We all stared at each other in confusion and fear. “I don’t know, but I think we should leave.” John said quietly. “I’m sorry, you were right; we shouldn’t have camped here.”

I nodded. “Let’s just try to sleep. It’s two in the morning; we’ll leave once the sun comes up.”

Everyone else nodded and we all laid back down. I gripped my sleeping daughter tightly. She was steadily breathing, absolutely fine, as if nothing had happened. I shivered, remembering her ungodly screams and the creepy singing. Finally, I started to doze.

SLAP!

I jerked awake. Someone had slapped me. I waited for someone to say they had smacked a mosquito off of my thigh, but no one said anything.

Finally, I turned to John. “Did you just slap me?” I asked, curious.

John turned over and shook his head. “I heard it though.”

"Joe, Chelsea? Did you slap me?" I asked, my voice shaking.

Both Joe and Chelsea sat up and shook their heads. I looked down at my thigh just to be sure. And there it was. A red welt in the shape of a hand. My heart started to pound again as I remembered my anger, my screaming. Did I just fuck up?

I opened my mouth, and shut it quickly. The silence was back. Something dripped on the tent and I wondered, for the briefest of moments, if it was raining. When I looked up, and the others looked with me, I let out the tiniest moan of despair. Blood. Blood had hit the tent.

All of my nightmares rose in my mind; what the fuck was hanging over our tent? A dead body? A mutilated animal? Something else equally fucked up and PTSD-inducing?

"Is…is that…?" John stuttered, pointing.

I didn’t know what to say because I couldn’t open my mouth to say anything. My daughter was stirring at this point. The silence was oppressive, almost daring. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.

And, at three thirty-seven in the morning, the forest erupted for the second time. As soon as the noise begun, my daughter was awake. She started singing. Everyone was screaming at this point, scared out of their minds, while I sat there in stunned silence. I couldn’t move. This wasn’t real life; this was some kind of scary movie you only see on TV. Maybe if I sat really still, it would all go away and someone would come out and tell me how silly I looked all scared on TV.

But no one came, and no one was making a fucking decision. “We are leaving!” I yelled over everyone else. “Let’s go; just stick your shit in the bags! Don’t leave anything behind.”

I started shoving miscellaneous objects into back packs. I couldn’t help my daughter; she just sat in the middle of the tent rocking back and forth, singing and screaming, her eyes rolling crazy in their sockets. I tried not to look at her as we finished cleaning up the inside. If I had, I’d probably cover my ears and sing a childhood song too.

Once we were done with the inside, the noises started to quiet outside. We jumped out of the tent anyway and started dismantling the tent. I kept a look out for any animals, or worse, while clutching my daughter’s forearm. She kept singing. I wanted to yell at her, to tell her to stop, but I couldn’t do it. I loved her so much, and I couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Instead, I focused on the grim task of making sure nothing was going to get us.

After we were all packed, we started down the path. We were being watched. I stopped, suddenly remembering the trash, and cursed under my breath.

"I have to get that garbage. I promised. There is no fucking way I’m backing out of that now." I growled, terrified.

Chelsea, surprisingly, went with me. We picked up the garbage and shoved it into our back packs before hurrying back to the others. John made sure the fire was completely covered with dirt for the second time. As we started down the path again, the eerie silence settled again. Our Watchers stayed with us the entire way. We could feel them.

Half-way back to the car, Harlee stopped and looked behind us. She muttered, tiredly, “Mommy, the Indians are coming.” She had that far-away look in her eye, as if she wasn’t quite standing on Earth, and she looked haggard.

I nodded. “Wave goodbye!” I muttered sarcastically. She waved. I tried not to shiver, but failed.

We threw our crap into the car and piled in. Regular forest noises surrounded us. You could almost believe nothing had happened. All four of us rolled our windows down and shouted apologies. As we started to drive, we even felt a bit silly. Terrified, but silly.

We were hungry, so we stopped at a Checkers. It was four in the morning. John stuck his head out the back window and asked the cashier “Have you ever been camping down the road?”

The woman shook her head. “No, here’s your food, sir.”

John looked her dead in the eye, grabbed his food, and told her, “Don’t. The fucking place is haunted.”

I drove off as the woman stared at us. Chelsea started the laughter. Then Joe. Then John. And finally me. We were all laughing hysterically. The adrenaline was over; we had made it. We didn’t die. We felt silly.

We never talked about that fucking place again, though every once in a while my now six year old will ask if I “remember the Indians”. Because she does. Rain, rain, go away…

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Credits to: EvaStar