Seventeen
When I open my eyes, it’s still dark. But before I can attempt to go back to sleep, my body floods with every other bit of sensory information.
My back’s warm against Beck’s, but my fingers and toes are freezing.
My shoulder and hip and spine ache from the harsh ground.
Even my neck hurts, and I’m not even sure why.
A pebble is somewhere under the tent, digging into my side.
All that, and the forest is loud. Bugs buzz, owls hoot, tree branches rustle together. I knew I should’ve brought earplugs, but I was convinced the sounds of nature would be soothing. Now, I’d do anything for the silence of suburbia.
I look over to Beck, who is still sleeping. The tandem sleeping bag makes me all the more self-conscious about any movement. I use the very ends of my fingers to reach toward my bag and pull out my phone and earbuds. Podcasts have never failed to lull me to sleep before.
My fingers wrap around my phone the second a branch breaks outside the tent.
My muscles go tight, gripping the phone like a weapon. An animal, I remind myself.
Then the dirt crackles.
A footstep sounds.
More than one.
Getting closer.
I shut my eyes, listening harder than my ears should’ve been capable of, straining to hear a rhythm, four pats in the dirt at a time. I know there aren’t wolves here. There aren’t grizzlies or wolves or any animals that would be dangerous here.
But it’s two steps at a time.
I force my eyes open.
Against the moonlight, a shadow falls across the tent. Terror burns in my throat and I bite my tongue to keep the sound down.
It’s just Natalie, I tell myself.
The figure takes another step forward. Its side view changes to a front view, the figure staring right at the door.
I put my hand on Beck’s shoulder, but I can’t move my muscles enough to wake her.
It’s like being trapped in a nightmare, the monster slithering its way toward easy prey.
I always thought I’d be prepared. I always thought I’d run, grab a weapon, be smart enough to not get in the monster’s path in the first place.
The figure stares. The wind howls, blowing the figure’s long hair into the silhouette.
The woman in the parking lot. The woman on the road. The person who cut our fuel line and killed my friends.
This can’t be real.
A screech sounds and I finally scream.
Beck flails up in bed: “Fuck, sorry, sorry, sorry!” She fumbles in the dark, stretching the limits of our sleeping bag bed.
It’s an alarm tone.
I look at the tent door. The figure darts off in the opposite direction, the receding footsteps barely audible under Beck’s phone.
“I usually run in the mornings,” Beck mutters. “I thought I turned that fucking thing off.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper back.
When Beck turns the alarm off, all I can do is settle my fingertips over my heart, feeling the reverberation. I’m alive, I’m here, and that really happened.
Someone was out there, and that someone reacted to Beck’s alarm going off. I don’t think that’s something some witch or ghoul or demon does.
That’s what a human being does.
There was a person outside our tent.
“You okay?” Beck asks.
Less than a year ago, my friends stayed in this campsite and died. And now there was a person outside our tent.
Like they were waiting for us.