Feral Youth

  I agreed. I’d already made sure to go to the bathroom before bed that night, and Hailey had too. Going before lights-out was fine—there were always tons of other girls going up and down the hill at the same time—but there was no way I was going up there again before dawn.

  It turned out we couldn’t really talk after that, though. Not without Jenn and Vicky hearing. So I climbed silently into my sleeping bag, trying not to let my disappointment show.

  It took me forever to fall asleep that night. In our cabin you could always hear people rustling in their sleeping bags, or talking in the other cabins near ours. Down in the lodge, though, it was totally quiet. There wasn’t a single sound except the crickets outside and Hailey breathing softly next to me. I couldn’t even hear Jenn and Vicky.

  “Are you awake?” Hailey whispered all at once. Her lips were so close to my ear I nearly jumped.

  “Yes,” I squeaked.

  She laughed softly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t scare me.”

  She laughed again. “I just wanted to see if you’d like to hear the rest of the story. There’s only a little more.”

  I rolled over to muffle my voice. The only way we could talk without Jenn and Vicky hearing us was to put our faces right next to each other, our lips practically touching. “You said the story was over.”

  “I thought it was, but then I remembered there was something more. The other girls in the cabin don’t need to hear this part, though. Just you.”

  I looked away. I refused to let her see me shiver. “Whatever.”

  “What? You don’t want to know?”

  I shrugged. She laughed again, then started to turn her back to me.

  “Wait.” I gave up. Tears pricked at my eyes. “What is it?”

  She laughed again and rolled her face back to mine. “Last night, when we were coming down that hill, for one second I really did think I saw something there in the trees. But then I realized it was just moonlight. You were so scared you almost made me get nervous too! But the thing is”—Hailey lowered her voice, her tone growing serious—“it made me realize something else, too. I’m sorry, Georgia. Because I could tell, from the way you were looking down, that you really did see something. Or you thought you did, at least. The Spirit, Georgia—the Spirit’s marked you. You’re destined to die of madness.”

  I blinked, trying to keep back the tears, but they fell anyway.

  Hailey shrugged in her sleeping bag. She didn’t look away, even though she must’ve seen me crying.

  “I mean, it’s not like there’s anything you can do about it,” she whispered. “I just wanted to tell you so you knew what to expect. Sorry. Maybe you’ll live long enough to go home and see your family one last time after camp.”

  She rolled back over. She didn’t seem especially sorry.

  After that, there was no way I was going to sleep.

  I didn’t believe Hailey, exactly. The whole story about the Spirit of Death . . . It all sounded like something out of a cheesy horror movie.

  But what I’d heard—and seen—on the hill wasn’t cheesy at all.

  Plus, even though I knew better . . . I couldn’t shake the idea that I’d been marked.

  The whispering voice had kept telling me to go. To leave that hill. What if something bad really was going to happen to me there?

  And if there hadn’t really been a voice—if I really had imagined everything, two nights in a row—did that mean I was going mad? With or without help from any spirits?

  All I remember from the first part of that night was staring at the dark ceiling of the lodge house, freaking out and crying. I definitely don’t remember falling asleep. But I guess I did. Because the next thing I remember, I groggily opened my eyes to a pitch-black room and realized I couldn’t hear Hailey’s soft breathing anymore. She must’ve gone to the bathroom after all.

  The lodge house was probably two stories high with the way the roof sloped, but there was only one light in the whole place, and it was out. Being in there in the middle of the night, with no one around, was like being in a huge, empty cave.

  But there wasn’t no one around. Jenn and Vicky were in their sleeping bags down on the far end of the room.

  I felt stupid for being afraid, but I wanted to see the counselors. Just so I’d know I wasn’t all alone. So I got out of my sleeping bag and made my way to the back of the room, feeling my way along by gripping the edges of the long tables. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the light, but the pure black emptiness in that room never faded.

  “Jenn?” I whispered as I got closer. “Vicky?” But I was so quiet they probably couldn’t hear me.

  Finally, I felt my toe hit the edge of a sleeping bag, and I relaxed. I bent down to shake the counselor’s shoulder.

  But when I reached down into the darkness there was nothing under my hand but a flat, empty sleeping bag, and the hard floor below.

  I reached over to the next sleeping bag. It was empty too.

  “Vicky?” I spoke out loud this time. No one answered. “Jenn? Hailey?”

  There was no sound at all. Even the crickets had shut up.

  By then I was so scared I could barely think. I knew the back door was nearby, and all I wanted was to get outside, where at least there would be light from the moon. I felt around for the door and started to panic when all I felt was empty air. Finally, I reached the wall and ran my hands along the rough wood until at last I reached the door. I yanked on the handle and swung it wide open.

  A rush of air hit my face, and I started to relax. But there was only more blackness. If the moon was out, it was hidden behind the thick trees.

  I knew the cabins were nearby, but I couldn’t seem them. Just the rough wood of the wall behind me, the dim outlines of tree trunks, and the dirt path that wound away from the lodge house and up the hill toward the cabins. I was desperate to see someone, anyone, so I started creeping slowly down the path.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted.

  I jumped so hard I almost screamed. Then a hand clapped over my mouth, and I really did scream—but no sound came out.

  “Relax, weirdo.” It was Hailey. She took her hand off my mouth. I tried to breathe, but my throat felt frozen. “Where are Jenn and Vicky?”

  I shook my head. My vocal cords were starting to function again. “I don’t know. Did you come out to look for them?”

  “Yeah.” Hailey shifted, like maybe that hadn’t really been what she was doing out here, but the truth was, I didn’t care. I was just so happy to see her. “Do you think they went up to the bathrooms?”

  “Probably.” I didn’t want to go that way again. I kept following the path to the cabins. Hailey walked with me. “What if they—”

  That was when the whispering started again.

  It was so close this time. It was inside my ears. Inside my head. And this time I could hear it more clearly than ever.

  Go away! You don’t belong here!

  I swallowed my scream.

  “Did you just—” Hailey started to say as we turned past the grove of trees.

  And saw Jenn and Vicky.

  They were on the ground near the woodpile, with Jenn lying on top of Vicky. They were kissing. Vicky had her hand up Jenn’s shirt.

  I screamed for real that time.

  Hailey saw them too, but she didn’t scream. At first she just stared while Jenn and Vicky leaped up and straightened out their clothes. Then she turned and ran back into the lodge house.

  Jenn and Vicky were both talking at once, tripping over their words, trying to ask me what I’d seen and if I was going to tell anyone. I didn’t really care about that, though. I was just glad that now, I knew what all those strange whispers had been, and the shadows in the trees.

  I guess we forgot about Hailey in the awkwardness of the moment, until a couple of minutes later when she came out of the lodge house with her phone. Our phones were all supposed to be hidden somewhere, but Hailey must’ve figured out wher
e they were because she was already talking to her dad. Telling him he needed to come get her, because two of our counselors were sinners, and Hailey wasn’t about to have sinners taking care of her.

  Well, that was the end for Jenn and Vicky. Hailey’s dad must’ve called someone else right away because it couldn’t have been more than half an hour before the camp director rolled up in her car with a couple of other leaders.

  They brought Jenn into the lodge house first. Vicky had to wait outside with Hailey and me. Vicky was crying by then, and I felt kind of bad for her, but Hailey stood as far away from us as she could, doing something on her phone.

  “You should’ve just said for us to go away in your normal voice,” I told Vicky because it was embarrassing just standing there, watching her cry. “We would’ve left you alone. It’s not like we wanted to catch you.”

  “Yeah, right.” Vicky sniffed and glared down the path at Hailey.

  “Well, either way, you didn’t have to whisper all creepily like that. You scared me. That’s why I screamed that first night, you know. I didn’t even see you guys then.”

  “What are you talking about?” Vicky scrubbed at her eyes. “All I knew was you two kept showing up, screaming like weirdos, every time we—”

  “Vicky?” The camp director was on the back steps. One of the other leaders was getting into the car with Jenn. “Come inside. We’re ready for you.”

  The other leader told Hailey and me to go to our regular cabin for the rest of the night, so I don’t know exactly what happened to Jenn and Vicky after that. I only know they were both gone before we came down to brush our teeth that morning. Instead, there were two new counselors at the lodge, grown-ups who told us Jenn and Vicky had gotten sick and needed to go home early.

  Well, Hailey wasn’t about to let that story stand. Over breakfast, she told everyone what had really happened. She’d decided not to leave camp, since Jenn and Vicky were gone, but all through the day, she took every opportunity to tell the other girls how revolting it had been finding them the way we did.

  Every time she told the story, it got worse. By the time dinner rolled around, I heard her whispering to someone that Jenn and Vicky had been totally naked when we caught them. And that they didn’t stop, even after they saw us, until Hailey called the camp director. She even said Vicky had tried to grab her. Everyone was shocked, and they all kept saying how sorry they felt for Hailey and talking about how gross the whole story was.

  That night, in our cabin, I tried to tell the other girls what Hailey said wasn’t true, but that only made Hailey mad. So instead of telling ghost stories, she told everyone about how I’d been going outside and screaming every night because I was that scared of the stupid Spirit of Death, which she’d only made up in the first place.

  Then she told them the reason I was defending Jenn and Vicky was because I was a lesbian too.

  Which was just totally absurd. But that didn’t matter. Now everyone in the cabin thought I was a big paranoid lesbian weirdo. They all kept whispering things I couldn’t quite hear, then giggling when I looked their way.

  It really sucked, to be honest. And the way Hailey looked at me after that sucked most of all. As if I was nothing. As if I’d been a complete waste of her time.

  I didn’t think I’d ever fall asleep that night. But I’d barely slept the night before, so I guess I nodded off eventually.

  When I woke up it was still dark, and the girls were whispering at me again. That’s what I remember the clearest now. Whispers and giggles. Then footsteps. A door opening and closing.

  I was only half awake, but I’d already figured out what was happening. I’d been coming to camp for years.

  The girls were playing a prank on me. They’d waited for me to fall asleep, and when I opened my eyes, they were going to jump out and try to scare me, or something dumb like that.

  Well, I’d show them. I started to get up, ready to tell them they couldn’t scare me.

  But when I sat up and opened my eyes, the whispers and giggles were gone.

  The cabin was empty. It was dark—not a single flashlight was on—but I could see the bunks around me.

  No one was there. All the other sleeping bags were empty. It was totally silent, too.

  I reached toward the foot of my bunk for my flashlight. It felt too light in my hand, though, and sure enough, nothing happened when I turned the switch. My cabinmates must have stolen the batteries on their way out.

  What a boring prank this was. When I’d played tricks with my friends in other years, we’d always stayed in the cabin. That was the whole point of pranks—to laugh at the girl when she woke up and saw that we’d put her hand in a glass of water, or written on her forehead with markers, or whatever.

  I climbed down from my bunk and reached for the light switch by the door. But when I flipped it on, it was still just as dark in the cabin as ever.

  That was weird. The light had worked the night before. The girls couldn’t have climbed all the way up to the ceiling to mess with the lightbulb. It must have burned out by coincidence.

  Whatever. Hailey and the other girls were probably hiding right outside the cabin, waiting to jump out at me when I went outside.

  I opened the door and shouted, “You guys can cut it out! I’m not scared!”

  But there was no sound in response.

  There were no lights, either. No flashlight beams bouncing around. No lights from the other cabins or from the lodge house up the hill.

  And there was no moon. Everything looked just as it had the night before. Dim and gray and empty.

  “Hailey?” I shouted. No response. “Anna? Sydney?”

  Still nothing.

  But I’d just heard them leaving the cabin. They couldn’t have gone far.

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled. But that was stupid. There was nothing out here except girls playing a mean trick. The only scary things that had ever been at this camp were the lesbians by the woodpile, and they were long gone.

  A breeze picked up and blew against my cheek. A warm summer breeze. At first.

  But it kept blowing, and after a minute or two, I realized the air around me was growing cooler. Soon I was shivering again.

  I didn’t see how Hailey and the girls in the cabin could’ve done that.

  “Hailey?” I said again. But I couldn’t shout anymore. I could barely even get the word out.

  That was when the whispering came back.

  This time, there were no giggles. No furtive shushing.

  This whisper sounded exactly as it had that first night. On the path down from the hill.

  But this time, it didn’t tell me to go away.

  Georgia, the voice whispered. Look down. Look down. Look down.

  The repetition went on and on and on. I shook my head and held my hands over my ears, but the whispering never stopped.

  Look down. Look down. Look down.

  It wasn’t coming from just one side, the way it had before. These whispers were coming from all around me.

  Look down. Look down. Look down.

  I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. My whole body was immobile. I could only move my eyelids.

  So I shut them. Maybe shutting my eyes would shut out everything else, too.

  And it worked. It actually worked. With my eyes closed, I couldn’t hear the whispers anymore.

  The breeze had stopped, too. The cold had begun to let up. The goose bumps that had formed on my arms were fading.

  It was over.

  I tried to relax, to shake it off. I still couldn’t move, but I was sure that when I could see again, the world would have gone back to normal.

  I opened my eyes.

  The first thing I saw was Hailey. She was standing right in front of me. So close our noses were almost touching.

  I tried to gasp, to back up. But I couldn’t.

  She lifted her hands toward me. For a second I actually thought she was going to kiss me.

  I didn’t
know what to think. My heart was racing. I was scared, but I was also . . . not.

  Then she reached for me. And wrapped her hands around my throat.

  She squeezed her fingers, closing in, choking me.

  I couldn’t breathe. I tried to claw at her hands, but I couldn’t lift my arms.

  I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even close my eyes. But the world was turning black, anyway.

  Hailey tipped her head backward, her eyes rolling up, her mouth opening wide. The blackness down her gaping throat was coming forward to swallow me whole.

  She began to laugh. Huge, bellowing laughs, the sound rocking the earth under my feet. I was falling, falling—

  My eyes flew open. It was still dark, but awareness flooded into my limbs.

  I was gasping, reaching for my throat.

  The hands were gone. I could breathe.

  I didn’t see Hailey anymore.

  “She’s awake!” someone hissed.

  Something felt sticky on my fingers and my neck.

  I was in my bunk bed, down inside my sleeping bag. That was why I couldn’t see. I reached up, but I couldn’t find the opening at the top of the sleeping bag.

  A flashlight beam shone bright behind the dark fabric covering me. I reached up again to pull the bag down off my face, but I still couldn’t get to the top. In the process, whatever was making my hands sticky got on my cheeks, and then my face was sticky too.

  And all around me, everyone was laughing.

  It had been a dream. The girls tiptoeing out, Hailey choking me in the dark . . . It was nothing but a stupid, pathetic nightmare. God, even my dreams were embarrassing now.

  I reached up again. I still couldn’t find the opening at the top of the sleeping bag.

  Was there an opening at the top? Maybe I’d somehow flipped myself around backward. I tried to wriggle around so I was facing the other direction, but the bag was too narrow.

  The laughs in the bunks around me grew louder. Bolder.

  “Look at her!” someone whispered.

  “Has she figured it out yet?”

  “Shhh!”

  My heart was racing even faster than it had in my dream. What the hell was going on? I reached up, yanking on the fabric of the bag, but it just came down harder on my head. The bag was hot and stuffy. It felt like I was running out of air.