Cass rolled over on her cot, again. It was hard and narrow and as difficult to sleep on as it had been the last three nights. Even the deep-seated exhaustion of multiple days of long hikes around the extended campgrounds wasn’t enough for her to pass out into the oblivion of sleep.
Around her, the quiet snores of Kaye and Robin, her siblings, were drowned out by the rush of wind through the valley and around the tent. It shook in the whipping winds, disingenuously threatening to fly off into the night as if it wasn’t staked down in every corner and weighed down by three grown adults and their (frankly) excessive camping gear.
She burrowed deeper in her sleeping bag, trying to convince her toes they weren’t actually cold in the two layers of socks she’d wrapped them in. Trying to convince herself she did not need to get up again to pee.
It had been a futile effort for the last hour at least. An effort she was losing. As much as she didn’t want to trek across the dark, cold, damp campground to the spider-infested outhouses, she could feel there was little chance of sleeping with her bladder as it was.
She grit her teeth and cursed under her breath, there was no avoiding it, and putting it off would only make the walk colder as the night settled more surely over the woods. She shimmied out of her sleeping bag wincing as the cold of the tent seeped through her PJs. She rummaged under the cot for another sweater and her windbreaker. A shiver shook her as she put them on. She glanced back at the cot, briefly considering trying to sleep again anyway, but shook her head. She’d already gotten this far.
Bracing herself, she unzipped the tent flap just enough for her bundled form to slip out and zipped it closed behind her. The cold seized her, laughing at her paltry layers of attempted warmth. The wind whipped around her, rebuffed from her raincoat but ripping gleefully through her fleece PJ bottoms. She shivered but trudged toward the distant outhouse.
She pulled her flashlight out as she walked, pointing the light at the ground before her feet. It was a fairly bright flashlight and she could probably illuminate more of the dark if she really wanted to, but she hadn’t bothered to put on her glasses and without them, light or no light, her sight started getting blurry after a certain point. She was no Velma, stumbling around on her hands and knees looking for her glasses without them, but making out faces or reading signs got progressively more difficult as the distance increased.
But that wasn’t important here. She knew where the bathroom was, she’d made this walk several times already this trip. There were no signs involved. She just needed to make sure her clumsy feet didn’t catch on a log or rock.
The wind gusted around her again, chilling her face and freezing her nose. Her breath formed clouds of billowing vapor around her face. If she had worn her glasses they would be fogged over entirely by now.
She wasn’t likely to run into anyone on her way either. It was the off-season for camping. Early January. Too cold for fair-weather campers to consider a trip. This site too dry and too low elevation for the snow enthusiasts to dream of coming.
It was just her, her siblings, and one elderly camp host on the grounds. And the camp host had been asleep by eight pm every night, his camper van dark as the surrounding woods.
They’d enjoyed the exclusivity of the grounds. It’d given them free rein of the trails. Allowed them to enjoy the isolation of nature, without a bunch of other casual campers clamoring around them.
But now, alone in the middle of the empty campground, the dark hanging heavy and cold over the night, she shivered. It went deeper than the cold of the night. An unsettling air hung over her, leaching the little warmth she’d gained from her very bones.
She glanced around, peering through the dark with her flashlight, her eyes squinting to see just a touch more. The light of her flashlight skittered over trees and bushes, over the empty places for tents and the cold fire pits. The shadows danced around it, sharp and fractured through the trees.
There was no one and nothing there. Yet, imaginings of monsters lurked just out of sight.
Something told her to turn around. To go back to the tent and try to sleep. It was as irrational as it was insistent.
She breathed in deeply and breathed out slowly. She gripped that thought, to flee back to the tent, and methodically pulled it apart. There was nothing in these woods that could hurt her. They were only an hour away from her home, less from the nearest town. These woods were an island of nature in a pool of rural land. There were no bears or wolves or mountain lions.
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She breathed in. She breathed out. The fear still rattled around in her chest and leached the warmth from her skin.
Her mind presented a parade of monsters from every game she’d ever played and every story she’d read. Beasts in the dark. Men-like monsters ready to carry her off. Living shadows. Ghosts and ghouls and goblins.
They didn’t exist. She stamped the fear down hard. None of that existed.
What other dangers could be out here?
Axe murders? Psycho killers? Sure. Okay. It was possible. But what were the chances? Such a monster would hardly target a campground like this. If not for her and her siblings there wouldn’t even be victims for such killers to murder here.
Besides, in the end, if such a monster lurked around the outhouses, the fabric walls of her tent wouldn’t provide any protection. Better to find them here than let them creep up on her while she tried to sleep.
She let the logical reasons wash over her, pushing back the irrational fear that slunk around her. That feeling in the pit of her stomach that she should return to her tent and go to sleep was no less than it had been a moment ago, but the fear that had propped it up in her mind hung by slender threads. She wouldn’t let it control her.
She took another step into the night and crossed some unseen threshold. Her foot planted on the uneven asphalt. A terrible keening erupted from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The world shook. It rang in her head and echoed through her body. Lights flashed before her eyes, blue and red and white. Words too fast to read.
She screamed, pain lacing every cell of her body. She dropped to her knees and clenched her chest. Her breath was ragged between her screams.
She didn’t understand what was happening. The rational part of her brain struggled to stay afloat over the chaos ripping through her. Was this a seizure? Pain and illusioned flashes of color? An aneurysm?
Had she been shot? It hurt more than she thought getting shot would.
She was detached from the pain now. Detached from her body, as if her physical form was a separate entity, something wrapped around her but wholly separate. Like it was no more a part of her than her rain jacket.
Was she dying? Whatever that pain had been, it felt like it was enough to kill her.
Her body was still screaming. She hadn’t known she could scream like that. Hadn’t known her lungs held that kind of capacity.
She writhed, her hands grasping over the unnaturally smooth floor beneath her. It was inky black, as black as the empty night sky above. Even the stars had abandoned her.
Someone else was shouting. Not the same screams of her distant pain, but of panicked concern. Maybe the camp host.
She hadn’t been far from his camper. Her screaming must have woken him. Good. He had to have a way to call 911. He would get her an ambulance. Maybe they would even be able to get out here in time to make a difference. They weren’t that far from the nearest town. How far away was the nearest hospital?
She wanted to turn to see for sure, but she couldn’t direct her thrashing body. That same disconnect that protected this rational core of self from the rampaging pain also cut off control of her body.
All she could do was look back toward their tent. The light went on. The tent door burst open. Kaye and Robin shot out into the night in their PJs.
They ran toward her, too dark and too far to see their faces. But they were shouting now too.
Oh, god, they must be so panicked. What were they thinking? They must be even more confused than she was. Even more helpless.
This had to stop soon, didn’t it? How long had it gone on for? The pain was only increasing, bleeding through her numb disconnect from her body. That couldn’t be a good sign.
Her siblings stopped short. A wall of shadows pulsed up from the ground, less than a foot in front of them. They took a step back.
Horror was etched into their faces. It was blurry and dark, but she could see it. Their eyes wide, their mouths open in screams of terror, their faces lit from below by a ghastly purple light.
Oh, god. What was she forcing them to watch? How bad did she look? Did it look like she was in as much pain as her body actually was? Did it look worse?
Oh, she hoped the ambulance was on its way.
Something writhed at the edge of her vision. Something dark and tentacle-like. Something, that same something perhaps, grabbed her ankle. Then her other. More grabbed at her.
Her screaming rose to a fevered pitch. How it wasn’t hoarse—how there was still air in her lungs to fuel that scream—she didn’t know.
It held her down, grasping arms and legs and torso. Wrapping around her neck, pulling down.
She wrenched her arms away. Thrashed her head up. Twisted. Pulled. Kicked. Screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
It changed nothing.
She sank into the blackness, the glassy surface giving way like water beneath her.
The last thing she saw before her head was pulled beneath what should have been solid ground was the horror-filled eyes of her siblings and a single blue panel, hovering in the center of her vision.
It read:
Initial Synchronization Complete
Welcome Initiate. Your Journey Begins.