“Not afraid of bears,” Gary mumbled.

“You should be,” Benny said. “Godless killing machines…”

“Bears are the nice ones,” he agreed, remembering what he’d found past the lights. “Centipedes… So many… so nasty, mean…”

“Centipedes?” someone asked, sounding alarmed. Maybe that was Benny again.

“Come on,” Frank said, grabbing his hand and pulling him up, “You’ve got to come back to camp and get cleaned up.”

“I can’t,” Gary resisted as Nora joined Frank in trying to get him back up to his feet. “I can’t go back; the lights… the centipedes are coming!”

“That’s okay pal,” Frank assured him. “They aren’t going to get you, not with us for protection.”

Gary relaxed in his resistance. This was different from before, he wasn’t alone. Pete wasn’t around to push him in.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” Nora told him, holding his other arm to help keep him upright. “It’s not going to be that bad. We just need your help to fix something, to find someone, who’s in the same kind of trouble you were in. And you’re big now, older. It won’t be that scary. Not like it was.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“A hole,” Benny noted, still holding his other arm, but had turned looking out into the forest.

“Fix a hole?” Gary wondered. “In what? The camper?”

He tried to turn around, look back.

“There are holes?” he said, worried. He couldn’t see any.

Frank patted him on the back, turned him back around.

“That’s it buddy,” Frank offered. “Just do some patching and everything will be good.”

“How are we going to fix it out here?” Gary wanted to know. “We don’t have any supplies.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t need any – not like that,” Benny said, moving ahead of them, helping create a path they took. “We brought everything we need with us. Including you.”

His friends stayed at his side, all the way, down the forest, to a path, down the path to the shore, and the lights.

When he saw them again, in their full glory, he flinched, pulled back, fell down onto the moss-covered ground, covering his face with his arm..

“That’s okay,” Frank decided. “You take a seat, buddy.”

“You see what I see?” Benny stated.

“Um…” Nora offered uncertainly, crouching now in order to keep a hold on him. “It’s not supposed to be visible, not to us, right?”

Gary’s started to shake his head. Floating over the waters of the small lake was a light show, like the aurora borealis. But much, much closer than such a thing should ever be. Orange, yellow and green, lights, slowly floating towards them.

He felt someone grab his jaw, and he found himself looking into Benny’s eyes.

“You remember now what that is, don’t you?” Benny asked. “Where it took you. Where you came from? It’s important you remember how you got out, so you can help us get in.”

Gary tried to pull free, but Frank and Nora still held onto him. Thankfully Benny’s wider body blocked the sparkling beams with the comforting blackness of his silhouette.

“I can’t go back there,” Gary insisted, even if he didn’t exactly know why. He turned his head back and forth, struggled. “The centipedes…”