Feral Youth

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  The little valley was thick with leaves. I remember thinking that it didn’t look like it would even hurt that much if you fell. The leaves would cushion you. It might actually be kind of fun. Tumbling down with a nice, soft landing.

  But Hailey wasn’t paying attention to the scenery the way I was. Instead, she just trudged along half asleep next to me in her frilly pink pajamas and sneakers, yawning the whole way. Once, when we were almost at the top, I even had to grab her arm to keep her from tripping over a tree root in the dark. She was that out of it. I must have been out of it too because I forgot to let go of her arm until we reached the bathroom door.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary about that night, is what I’m saying. Even the story Hailey had told before we’d gone to sleep hadn’t been as scary as usual. It hadn’t even really been a story—just something her grandmother used to talk about from time to time.

  Hailey’s grandmother, it turned out, always said that on the day you were born, the Spirit of Death wrote a line in its book. It marked down the date of your birth, and the date of your death, too. Apparently, the Spirit already knew when you’d die, how you’d die—all of it.

  When your deathday came around, you could try to outrun the Spirit. You could try to hide from it. You could even try to trick it if you wanted to.

  But none of that would matter in the end. Because you were already in the book. The most you could do was make the Spirit of Death angry. And if you made it angry enough, it might decide to take vengeance on you. You could wind up suffering more, and the Spirit might even decide to take someone you cared about ahead of their time.

  The moral of the story was: you shouldn’t try to cheat the Spirit of Death. Unless you were superdumb. Because the Spirit could be anywhere—it was invisible, obviously—and it didn’t care about you, not even a little bit. All it cared about was getting its due.

  Like I said—not a particularly scary story. It was hard to get worked up about a spirit you couldn’t even see. The satanic goat-man was totally fake, but even he was freakier than some invisible Spirit of Death.

  But anyway, that night, we finished in the bathroom and then turned around to come back down the hill. Everything still seemed totally ordinary, until we were halfway to the bottom. That was when the sounds started coming.

  I stopped walking.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Hailey.

  “Hear what?” Her eyes were alert suddenly. She’d stopped yawning.

  The mountain around us was completely silent. Until the sound came again.

  It was a voice. A whisper. But it didn’t sound like a person talking.

  It was what you might’ve expected to hear if the wind could whisper, or the trees could. As if the whole forest was whispering.

  I couldn’t make out the words. Just a low, uneven sound. An empty hiss.

  It was coming from just beyond my right shoulder. Even though there was no one on the hill but me and Hailey.

  “Who’s doing that?” I spun around. Suddenly, Hailey’s story flashed through my mind. The Spirit of Death.

  “Georgia, what’s going on?” Hailey shone her flashlight behind me, down the side of the hill, but there was nothing but trees and dirt and darkness. She stepped closer to the edge, pointing her light down at the fallen leaves. “What is it?”

  The whispers came again, right up against my ear. Finally, I could make out two words in all the hissing.

  “Go. Away.”

  I screamed, jerked Hailey back by her shoulder, and grabbed her hand, dragging her after me down the hill. She resisted, and I pulled again, tugging so hard she squealed in pain. She wrenched her arm away, but she came with me, and that was what mattered.

  “What’s going on?” Hailey’s breath was coming fast, her voice pitched higher than I’d ever heard it. “Georgia, what’s happening?”

  “We have to get away from the hill.” I didn’t even know what I was saying.

  “What is it?” We’d made it to the bottom of the slope. Hailey stopped running. She was holding her arm out of my reach. “Did you get scared?”

  “What?” That was when I remembered Hailey thought I was as cool as she was. As far as she knew, I didn’t get scared easily, like those crying girls in our cabin. “I mean, no. It was just—”

  “Who is that?” A flashlight beam shone in my face. I wanted to cry out, but I resisted, blocking the light with my hand instead. “Georgia? And Hailey? Are you hurt? What are you doing out of your cabin?”

  It was Jenn and Vicky, our counselors. They were both in high school, and they slept in the lodge house at the bottom of the hill. My screaming must’ve woken them up.

  “No, we’re not hurt.” Hailey stepped away from me. Now that the counselors were there, she’d stopped looking anxious. She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and pointed at me. “We were coming back from the bathroom, but then Georgia got scared of the dark.”

  “I did not!” I couldn’t believe she’d said that. Hadn’t she heard the same sounds I did?

  “Was that you screaming, Georgia?” Jenn lowered the flashlight beam, but she frowned and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “No.”

  “Yeah it was.” Hailey jerked her chin toward me.

  By then I couldn’t hear the whispering anymore, and I was starting to feel kind of dumb. I didn’t want to admit to these older girls that I’d heard something in the woods. And I hated the idea that Hailey thought I’d been scared of something stupid. So when Jenn and Vicky tried to ask me more about what had happened, I just shrugged and said I didn’t know.

  They gave us a lecture, because it was against the rules to be noisy at night. We tried to tell them we hadn’t been doing anything wrong, but they didn’t believe us. Hailey threatened to call her mom—her mom always got her out of punishments at school—but our phones had been collected the first day of camp and locked away, only to be used if there was a real emergency.

  So Vicky said Hailey and I would have to do clean-up duty the next day for lunch and dinner. No one ever wanted clean-up duty because you had to scrub out all the pots and pans. The water in the sinks was smelly, and it made you all smelly, too. And we were only allowed to take showers first thing in the morning.

  Hailey was pretty mad at me for that. Even though I tried to tell her it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t made anything up. I really did hear that . . . whatever it was.

  The next day was miserable.

  I’d thought maybe Hailey and I would talk and joke around during clean-up duty. That maybe it would even be fun to have some time to hang out, just the two of us.

  Instead, she wouldn’t even look at me. And of course we got all gross, just like we’d known we would.

  By the time we got back to our cabin that night, I just wanted to sleep. But everyone else, Hailey included, wanted to stay up late telling ghost stories again. I wasn’t in the mood to tell one that night, not after what had happened, so I said I was too tired.

  After everyone else had told theirs—the usual stuff about disappearing hitchhikers and escaped prisoners who stalked couples making out in parked cars and whatnot—Hailey started talking in that hushed, steady voice of hers.

  “I realized I forgot to tell you all the most important part of my last story,” she began.

  “Your grandmother’s story, you mean?” asked Anna. She slept in the bottom bunk under Hailey’s, and she was one of the youngest in our cabin. She was also one of the girls who tended to fall asleep crying after Hailey told her stories. “About the Spirit of Death?”

  “Yeah.” Hailey shifted on her bunk. “Right. My grandmother. I forgot to tell you everything last night.”

  “What did you leave out?” Sydney asked from the bunk under mine. Hailey and I had both claimed the top bunks near the door on move-in day. They were the two best spots in the whole cabin. Plus, this way we could roll our eyes at each other when one of the other girls was being annoying.

  “I already told you it’s
impossible to see the Spirit of Death.” Hailey’s voice had lowered all the way into its spooky storytelling mode. “But I forgot the end of the story. I should’ve mentioned that, thanks to the Spirit, there are some people—but only a very few—who do see things sometimes, or hear them. When they’re about to die.”

  The skin on the back of my neck prickled.

  “It’s very, very rare,” Hailey went on, speaking into the silence that had fallen over the rest of us. “It’s only people the Spirit has specially marked. You see, most people’s deaths are straightforward—they die of old age or illness or car crashes or whatever. But there are also a few people the Spirit has selected to die of a different cause. They’re the people who die of madness.”

  It’s just a story, I told myself. No different from the one about the stupid goat-man.

  But as Hailey kept talking, her voice felt like icy fingers creeping down my spine.

  “Even the mad—or the soon to be mad—can’t see, or hear, the Spirit itself,” she went on. “But the Spirit is tricky. It can make you hear things no one else can. Things that aren’t really there. That’s the first step. Once a person has heard the phantom sounds, their death is only days away, at most. In fact, they might only have hours left to live.”

  How many hours had passed since I’d heard the whispers? Twenty, maybe? Twenty-one?

  “For the rest of their time on Earth, the Spirit will torment them.” Hailey’s voice had sunk so low we all had to strain to hear. “That’s how the madness grows. The Spirit attacks their senses, one by one, until finally, they’re eager for death. For anything to put an end to their misery.”

  Her voice faded into silence.

  No one else seemed to have anything more to say after that. We didn’t even dare to shuffle in our sleeping bags.

  Quiet filled the room after that.

  I lost track of time in the hushed cabin. My eyelids had begun to grow heavy.

  How long had it been since Hailey had stopped talking? Ten minutes? An hour?

  Had she gone to sleep? Had the others?

  It didn’t matter how many times I told myself not to worry. Those icy fingers on my back never loosened their grip, even as my consciousness faded into sleep.

  Then I heard something.

  It wasn’t words, not at first. Just a low, murmuring sound. Then a voice.

  “Do you hear it?”

  But it didn’t sound like the voice that had hissed at me the night before on the hill. This voice was fuller. Human.

  A girl shrieked. Laughter erupted somewhere in the cabin.

  A flashlight beam darted around the room like a laser, coming from Hailey’s bunk. Then she pointed it underneath her to show Anna sitting up in her sleeping bag, her hand over her face. She was the one who’d shrieked.

  Hailey was laughing. I forced myself to join in. A few others did too.

  “You seriously bought that, Anna?” Hailey cleared her throat, then whispered, in the exact voice she’d used before. “Do you hear it now?”

  After that, we were all laughing. Everyone except Anna. She buried her face in her sleeping bag while the rest of us howled.

  Laughing felt wonderful. Laughing made the icy fingers release their grip on my spine.

  It really was just a story.

  I exhaled slowly between giggles. Hailey didn’t know I’d been scared. Everything was going to be all right.

  Soon, she and I would be back to normal. Best friends again.

  I’d missed her so much that day. It hadn’t been until then that I realized just how much I needed Hailey.

  I’d never really needed anyone before. Not like that.

  But I had trouble falling asleep after everything that had happened. I kept starting to drift off, then startling awake, thinking I heard the whispers again. The ones I’d heard on the hill mixed in with my memory of Hailey’s lilting, mocking voice until I couldn’t remember which was which anymore.

  Then there was a hand on my shoulder, shaking me.

  I struggled to pry my eyes open. The cabin was completely dark. Every flashlight was out.

  It took me a minute to make sense of what I was seeing. Then I realized it was Hailey’s face, her features blurry in the dark.

  “I have to pee,” she whispered. It sounded just like when she’d whispered before.

  Do you hear it?

  I tried to twist my shoulder out of her grip, but she wouldn’t let go.

  “You have to come with me.” She squeezed harder. “It’s only fair, Georgia.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was leave that cabin and go out into the darkness. But I didn’t want Hailey to know I was scared, either.

  So I nodded and sat up. Hailey slipped down the ladder, and I grabbed my flashlight from the foot of my bunk and followed her down.

  We put on our sneakers and crept outside to the path, where the moon shone bright above us. By the time we’d made it to the lodge house, I was starting to feel dumb.

  There was no reason to be scared. Everything outside was totally normal.

  I probably hadn’t even heard anything the night before on the hill. I’d just let all those stupid ghost stories get to me. What a loser.

  We got up to the bathroom, and everything was still perfectly ordinary. When we were coming back down the hill afterward, we passed the place where I’d thought I heard whispering the night before. This time, of course, nothing happened.

  By that point I was feeling really dumb.

  When we were halfway to the bottom, near the little shelter with the outdoor sinks, I was trying to think of how to apologize to Hailey for getting us in trouble over nothing when I saw something move behind the trees.

  At first I thought it was Jenn and Vicky coming to yell at us again, even though we really weren’t breaking any rules. But I didn’t see either of the counselors. Just their shadows, moving in the middle of a grove of trees at the bottom of the ravine.

  Or . . . they looked like shadows. At first, anyway.

  They were these tall dark shapes, with sharp edges. The closer we got, the larger they loomed in the trees. Until they were far over our heads—way too tall to be a person’s shadow.

  I stopped walking. So did Hailey. She was staring into the trees too.

  “Do you see that?” I whispered.

  Hailey didn’t answer. Her face had gone still and pale.

  That’s when I remembered the Spirit of Death.

  It would make you hear, or see, things that weren’t there. Things that would drive you mad.

  I shivered, but then I shook my shoulders back. The Spirit of Death was just a story. This was real life.

  I fought past my fear and called out. “Jenn? Vicky?”

  No one answered. But the shadows moved.

  That’s when I knew.

  I wasn’t making it up in my head this time. Something—something big—was moving in the dark, right behind the trees.

  I was so scared I forgot to be embarrassed.

  I couldn’t even scream. All I could do was step backward and grab Hailey’s arm.

  Then, suddenly, I felt cold. I was trembling all over, despite the sweltering August heat.

  “What is that?” Hailey whispered. I didn’t know if she meant the temperature drop or the dark thing behind the trees. But then it didn’t matter because the shadow moved again.

  It was coming toward us. I stepped forward, in front of Hailey, to get a better look.

  The shadow was growing taller. So tall it almost reached the tops of the trees.

  Then the whispers returned.

  Move. Go. Go!

  I screamed then. I screamed louder than I’d ever screamed in my life.

  “What is it? Georgia, Georgia, what is it?” Hailey was practically shrieking.

  Then Jenn and Vicky were running up to us again. And when I looked back, the shadow was gone.

  This time I didn’t hold back. I told them exactly what I’d seen. Jenn and Vicky stared at me like I had thre
e heads.

  Then Hailey rolled her eyes. And suddenly, I wanted to cry.

  I’d been sure she’d seen the shapes moving too. But she was acting like I was just as dumb and boring as the other girls in our cabin. The ones who cried over a stupid story.

  What if I’d imagined her reaction up on the hill? What if I’d imagined everything?

  What if I really was going mad?

  It was clear that Jenn and Vicky didn’t believe me. Even so, they got their flashlights and searched the place in the trees where I’d seen the shadow. Of course, nothing was there. I tried to explain that the thing had gone away before they’d found us, but they only sighed.

  “Look,” Jenn said, “for tonight, just go back to bed. But we can’t have this keep happening, so starting tomorrow, both of you will have to sleep down here in the lodge house where we can keep an eye on you.”

  Hailey basically wanted to kill me after that. The whole point of camp was having fun in the cabins with your friends at night. Sleeping in the lodge house with the counselors was like being grounded.

  Hailey didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. Or all through the next day, either.

  I had no choice but to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the corner of a table by myself while Hailey sat with Anna and Sydney and the other girls from our cabin. They spent every meal leaning in close together, whispering and laughing. Every so often one of them would look up at me, then look away with a muffled giggle.

  It was the worst day of camp so far. Maybe the worst day of my entire life.

  Hailey had been everything to me. It had been the two of us, together, against the whole world. Now she was treating me like I was no better than any of the others.

  But we were still stuck sleeping in the lodge together that night. Somehow, I thought, this had to get better. Maybe, before we went to sleep, I could explain what had happened, and Hailey would understand. Maybe things between us could go back to the way they’d been.

  “This is so stupid,” Hailey whispered when we were setting up our sleeping bags. The lodge house was where our whole group of campers gathered to do crafts and stuff, but at nighttime it was just a big, open room lined with tables and benches. Jenn and Vicky slept on the floor near the back door, so Hailey and I had put our stuff as far from them as we could get, near the front. “If either of us has to go to the bathroom tonight, we should just pee in our sleeping bags. It’d be better than going out there again.”