Chapter 11 Lydia
Lydia
“Where have you guys been? They brought by breakfast over an hour ago. It’s probably cold by now,” Faye says brushing her hair as we enter the cabin.
I’m sweaty, tired, and starving and now annoyed to find out that we could have just stayed here and food would have been brought to us.
“Oh! Breakfast burritos!” Audrey shrieks, digging into the tin foiled wrapped food.
“Now that you’re finally back, we can talk about the itinerary. I think we should do the 11 am crafting class,” Stephanie says looking over a well-worn print out of the schedule.
I take a bite of the burrito and swallow it down thickly. It’s cold and a little soggy, but better than nothing.
“What about the hike? Isn’t that at the same time?” McKenzie pouts.
Iris rolls her eyes, and my focus instinctively bounces between her and McKenzie making me wonder if they’re about to erupt into one of their fights. I wish the two of them would just agree to how amazing they can be together and save us from the will they won’t they. My money is on they will.
Once the burrito is down, I take my daily medication slinging the little tart tasting pill down with a swig of my water bottle.
“I’m down for the crafts, honestly. I’ve had enough of getting chased around for now,” I say.
“What do you think it’s going to be? Paint and pour maybe?
” I could really use a glass of wine to relax and not feel so fucking scared.
Intoxicated me might be able to deal with all the high stress situations I now find myself in.
Spoiler alert, it’s not paint and pour.
McKenzie, Faye, and Iris all ended up choosing to go on the hike, while Stephanie, Audrey, and I arrive at the craft center. Maybe craft center is a generous term, because our project consists of sewing our own poppets with moldy looking fabric.
Actually… I bring the splotchy thing up to my nose and hesitantly take a whiff.
Oh god. I drop it on the table and tighten my lips to keep from retching.
No one needs to see my breakfast burrito in reverse.
That’s revolting. How are we supposed to make anything with these supplies?
It looks like they dug them up from a trash bin and said here, make something.
Stephanie seems to be unfazed, though, pulling her black string through effortlessly, while Audrey pokes at a bowl of mismatched buttons and bobbles. She manages to string together a few stitches making a sad looking sight.
“This is boring,” Audrey whispers garnering a glare from our instructor, Kelly.
She’s a gorgeous girl, maybe around our same age with jet-black hair and sharply cut bangs that hit right above her eyebrows.
She’s wearing a fitted black dress and wearing black and green striped tights and looks like she’d rather be peeling her own skin off than sitting here watching us.
I’m afraid to nod my agreement with Audrey, but this class is a fucking joke.
“You could go on the hike if you don’t like it,” Kelly replies pointedly.
Stephanie plops her misshapen poppet onto the table and stands up. “All done. That hike sounds great. Maybe we can catch up with everyone?”
“Fine, I’m no good at sewing anyways,” Audrey replies, leaving me looking between the sad piece of fabric and black spool of thread and the door.
I let out an audibly loud sigh and push away from the table.
“I guess we’re going hiking,” I say as I gather my backpack and shuck it onto my shoulders, making sure the straps are tightly secured.
As we leave, there’s an odd sensation that washes over me while Kelly watches us leave. The last thing I see is her plucking Stephanie’s and Audrey’s poor excuses of a poppet up from the table with a wicked gleam in her eyes and a cruel tilt to her mouth.
It’s fake, Lydia. It’s just fake. Nothing to worry about, I tell myself before the door closes behind us and we make our way onto the path.
What started out as a mildly warm day, has crossed over into boiling. Sweat gathers on my lower back and chest almost instantly as we make our way to the trail.
We catch up to our group easily and they give us the biggest ‘I told you so’ look.
“So, arts and crafts was a bust?” Faye asks, handing me a spare water bottle.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say taking a drink of water that I pulled out from my backpack. It truly was such a disappointment and has me wondering how in the hell this place has so many glowing reviews.
She looks relieved to see us, though, because Iris and McKenzie both seem tense as if they’ve been fighting again.
Tension wraps itself around me like a blanket feeling its palpable weight sit on my body, readying myself for another round of scares.
Whoever thought of this place is one sadistic mother fucker.
My friends chat amongst themselves as my eyes sweep the tree line for potential threats.
It’s quiet and I wonder where everyone has gone to.
The path takes us around the lake and into the forest, as the sun twinkles through the leaves glittering like a disco ball and making it seem like we’re on a normal hike. It’s beautiful and peaceful enough that it nearly lulls me into a false sense of security.
Just as I feel my shoulders dropping from my ears, a twig snaps from behind us and my adrenaline skyrockets. I don’t even bother to look what the noise was caused from before I take off running on pure instinct.
“Woah, what’s going on?” I hear my friends ask as I whizz past them.
“Don’t be scared, sweetheart. We don’t bite,” a masculine voice calls out with a chuckle.
“Lydia, it’s fine. I promise,” Audrey calls out.
She’s the least likely of my friends to fuck with me, so I chance a look over my shoulder to find that it’s just the group of guys that are in the cabin over from ours.
My feet slow, and I grip my thighs with my hands trying to catch my breath, feeling a wave of embarrassment churn in my stomach.
There are about six or seven guys all dressed similarly, with khaki shorts and a variety of t-shirts. They all vaguely resemble each other as well so it’s a toss-up if they’re friends or brothers.
“What are you all doing here?” Faye asks, immediately cozying up to the tallest one in the group.
She can make friends with a lamppost. It’s always been her specialty to talk to strangers easily, and I both envy and admire her for it.
The guy she’s latched on to has light brown hair and a prominent five o’clock shadow.
He’s decent enough to look at as he smiles down at my gorgeous friend.
“Getting some fresh air and living out our dreams of acting like we’re in a real-life horror movie,” he says with a wink. Then he does a terrible fake-scare that makes Faye let out a giggle.
The two of them fall into step easily and Faye visibly melts at his attention. I smile at my friend. She mouths “He’s cute!” At me and I give her a thumbs up.
The group of guys melds with ours as we make our way around the lake. We find out they’re from Toledo, on summer break from their college where they’re in their last year of.
They’re younger than us, but not by much.
We walk together, the knowledge of not being scared yet, ebbing at my psyche as I try to maintain a conversation with a guy that’s wearing a red shirt with an angry looking eagle on it.
Something about his vibe is off and has me keeping quiet, listening to him drone on about some podcast he’s apart of.
What is it with all these dudes and podcasts?
“… and I’m partnering with an energy drink this month. I could probably get you a discount.”
I realize he’s waiting for me to say something back as I’ve let my thoughts wander. He’s looking at me with his bushy eyebrows raised that makes him look like a child waiting for my approval.
“Oh— uh. Yeah,” is all I can think to say to him though.
Knowing his type, if I were to mention that I loathe energy drinks because they make my chest feel fluttery would just result in having him mansplain to me, and I’m not in the mood to entertain men with big egos and probably a small dick.
The only reason I’m listening to him now is because there’s nowhere else to go.
As we walk, the area becomes darker and more foreboding.
The trees are thicker here, and the sky is hardly visible.
While the heat still hangs in the air, the temperature dips enough to offer a temporary relief.
But instead of feeling relief, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end and that feeling of being watched comes back in full force.
“We should get a drink after this,” he says, climbing over a fallen tree. It’s cumbersome and eats up most of the path. The way the tree lays looks as if it were cut down intentionally.
My brows pull into a frown as I attempt to maneuver around it, noticing he doesn’t offer to help but just saunters on ahead.
I plant my hands on the bark to help steady myself feeling the small rivets dig into my palms as I lift my leg over the tree, barely getting clear of it before setting my foot down gently into the ground.
As I swing my other leg over, a blur of something stirs in my periphery, snagging my attention and making me falter.
I manage to catch myself before face planting in the ground below, but only by slamming my chest into the tree.
It knocks the wind out of my lungs, and I gasp for breath.
My arms windmill backwards as my ankle catches a rouge root.
My tailbone gets the brunt of my fall this time, and I let out a groan.
This place hates me. I’m sure of it. As I dust myself off, I look around trying to catch my bearings. My ass stings and I can’t seem to find whatever his name is. Chad, Brad, Landon, or some variation of that. I honestly wasn’t paying attention when he told me his name.
My friends are all up ahead and I’m eerily alone.
Twigs snap and I swear I hear a muffled scream coming from the trees. Goosebumps erupt on my skin and that feeling of being watched intensifies.
I can’t see anything but foliage and the longer I wait, the farther my friends get. Rushing to catch up to them, one of the guys asks if I’ve seen Brandon. So that’s his name.
“He walked on ahead of me the last I saw.” But looking around the group, he’s nowhere to be found. “Maybe he wandered off into the woods?” I offer, not sure where he could have gotten to, but somehow, I feel like that isn’t the case at all and worry begins to curl in my stomach.
“I’m sure he’s fine. Maybe he just went back to the cabin,” the one who’s been cozying up to Faye says with a shrug.
We make plans to meet up with them later at the bonfire, where they’re having drinks and dancing amongst the scare actors.
I for one, would like to hunker down in the cabin and read this book I started before I came here, called Hell House.
It’s got these two girls whose dorm room burns down, and they’re forced to move into the fraternity house on campus.
Only all the guys are secretly possessed by the seven deadly sins.
I hate that I had to close my book to be here, but my friends mean everything to me.
For them, I’d do anything. They’re the only family I have left.
With that sobering thought, we head back to the cabin to get cleaned up in time for the dinner.
I just hope it’s better than the breakfast burrito they served this morning.
Just as we’re about to clear the woods, a scare actor comes barreling out from the woods wearing a Jason mask and carrying a machete to match.
We’re off and running once again, fear following close behind.