by T. S. Hall
The words struck like a sword, piercing her thoughts and bursting into her imagination with ominous images of death, destruction, and pain. There was no time to analyze what the man had said or the horrifying feelings those words had created, because the ground shook violently, and then plummeted into the river of fire.
Allora awoke to someone restraining her arms. She tried to struggle, but the figures in the dark were too many. A cold sweat had permeated her skin, an obvious effect of the nightmare. She tried to scream, but they muzzled her with duct tape. All she could see was the light from a flashlight, shining mercilessly into her eyes.
“Make it tight, girls,” a sickeningly familiar voice ordered while Allora’s hands, feet and knees were bound with ropes. “I don’t want the freak to do her voodoo fire magic.”
The voice was one she’d heard many times before, a voice that caused most girls to run and hide. As she was carried out of the cabin, Allora was nauseated by the blank, weak, pained faces of the girls of Cabin S. Much to her dismay, they stood idly by, doing nothing to rescue her. “What’s wrong with you?” she tried to scream through the duct tape. “How can you just stand there and do nothing?”
Then, Allora heard the voice address the rest of her cabin. “If any of you try to help, I’ll come for you next.”
The camp was quiet except for the sound of bullfrogs trumpeting in the shallows of the lake. She looked up at her captors: Nancy Williams, Tanya Brown, Madeline Jones, Emily Bowen, and, of course, Jenny Thompson, all seniors on the soccer team.
When they stopped, Allora was seated in an upright position with her back up against a cold steel pole. The girls tied ropes around the pole to secure her there.
The evil voice took shape before her, wearing a smug look of victory, smiling greedily and relishing in the moment. Jenny stepped in close to her victim, so close that Allora could smell her cherry-scented breath as it wafted over her glossed lips. “I told you that you’d pay.” She ripped off the duct tape, aggressively.
“Untie me, and I’ll give you another black eye,” Allora replied.
“An eye for an eye, right?” Tanya said.
“Good point,” Jenny said, swinging her right fist around and connecting with Allora’s jaw.
A trickle of blood ran down her chin. The pain arrived next.
“What should we do with her?” Nancy asked.
“We’ll just leave her here like this for everybody to find in the morning.” Jenny moved closer to her prey. “Next time, I won’t go as easy on you.”
“I’m gonna kill—” Allora tried to yell, but she couldn’t quite finish her threat before Jenny forcefully pressed the duct tape back over her mouth.
“Uh-uh-uh. We wouldn’t wanna wake up the rest of the camp, would we?” Jenny said, flicking Allora’s forehead. “Come on, girls. Let’s give Allora some time to herself.”
Anger spewed from Allora’s slight body as she watched the girls laugh and make their way back up the hill to their cabins. Once they were gone, Allora surveyed the area. She was tied to the flagpole, right in front of the mess hall. Again, she tried to free herself from the rope, but the girls had been surprisingly efficient with their knots, even with their ridiculously long acrylic nails.
After a few minutes of being alone, and allowing for the adrenaline to subside, she noticed how naked she was wearing only underwear. In spite of the Indian summer, the wind blew softly down from the mountain, sending chills up Allora’s spine and causing goosebumps to form on her bare skin.
Her mind raced back to the dream she’d had prior to her rude awakening. It had been an incredible nightmare. What did that old man mean? His words echoed in her head: “They are coming.”
About an hour went by before Allora heard something move in the woods. Her heart began to beat faster, and she recalled that her mother had adamantly warned her about not leaving her cabin at night. Allora continued staring at the woods, jerking her head from side to side, trying to search for the source of the sound that grew louder with every passing moment. Whatever it was, it had made its way to the bushes next to the mess hall, and Allora began to panic. When she heard the same noise coming from right behind her, she pulled violently at the restraints as hard as she could, but they wouldn’t budge. The rope burned her wrists, creating lines of red skin. Suddenly, the sound changed to swishing water, as though someone was moving in the lake. A cold fear enveloped her body as wet footsteps closed in. The muffled sound of her struggle reverberated in her ears as she thrashed against the steel flagpole. Drops of water splashed against the hard dirt. Allora’s conscious mind couldn’t grasp the idea of death and soon released her from reality. Her eyelids dropped, and the floor gave way as she fainted to the cool, damp ground.
A deep, soothing voice called out her name. “Allora.”
A soft, wet hand pulled at the ropes on her back, till she suddenly fell forward, causing an impact that roused her awake. Between fuzzy blinks, she saw a humanoid figure, clear blue and tall, disappear into the moonlit lake. An apparition of sorts, the creature dropped into the depths, as if disappearing in a dream. Allora lay there for a confused moment, unable to comprehend the strange occurrence. Finally, she got up from the ground, dusted the dirt from her body, and slowly tiptoed back up the hill, periodically glancing over her shoulder at the dark, still lake.
During the walk back, she talked to herself quietly, wondering if what she had seen was real. She was almost to Cabin S when a bunch of boys popped out from around the corner of the cabin. One of the boys smacked into her, and she looked up to see Tanner. At that moment, she realized she was only in her underwear, and she hurriedly tried to cover herself with her hands, to little avail.
All of the boys were surprised to see Allora and even more surprised—somewhat pleasantly—that she was half-naked.
“What are you doing?” Allora and Tanner asked at the same time.
“Why are you out so late?” Allora jumped in.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Tanner said, trying to look at Allora’s eyes while he talked to her. “A moonlight skinny-dip?” he teased nervously.
The boys around him weren’t trying so hard to avoid looking at her, though, and Allora noticed.
“Hey! Up here,” Allora whispered harshly, pointing to her face, even though she was really too tired and upset to care whether or not they saw her in her underwear. She had way too much on her mind to even explain any of it. She deduced that the boys were out to play a prank on the girls. “I’ll kill each and every one of you if you step foot near my cabin,” she threatened, then stormed off.
Tanner couldn’t help but watch her walk away, and none of the other boys could either.
Dax smacked the back of his head. “Hey, snap out of it. We’re on a mission, Romeo, remember?”
Tanner turned around and tried to focus on the task at hand. “Uh, okay. Right. Well, you guys know what to do. Let’s get it done as fast as we can, then make a break for our cabins. If you get caught, you’re on your own. Nobody throws anybody under a bus. Ready?”
“Yeah!” chanted all the boys.
“Break!”
They dispersed quietly through the camp and seamlessly carried out the tasks they’d meticulously planned the night before.
“Mission accomplished,” Dax said, giving Tanner a high-five when they returned to their cabins.
* * *
The girls woke up bright and early in the morning, as usual, and were busy talking and making their usual trek down the hill toward the cafeteria. All of them filed behind the senior girls, who filed behind the soccer team. As they walked down the small hill from the girls’ cabins, there were a few points where the steps dropped and they had to jump down.
Allora hung back for a little while, still unsure of what the boys had done. She found Katie and told her to wait as well. Just as they did every day, the soccer girls jumped down the exaggerated step. This time, though, the ground gave way, and they were submerged in mud.
The boys had dug a large hole in the ground and had set up a garden hose to feed water into it from the bottom, creating a giant mud bath. Screams echoed through the camp as filthy faces popped up from the pit. This continued until the girls at the back of the line heard the screams and stopped.
The boys jumped out from behind the bush where they’d been waiting and watching and literally rolled on the ground laughing, in absolute hysterics.
Jenny looked over to where the laughter was coming from, her whole face covered in mud. “Tanner!” she screamed. “You are so dead!”
Dax leaned toward Tanner and whispered, “Maybe this is what the girls of Sonora look like?”
They both burst out laughing.
Allora and Katie ran around the other direction, toward the lake, to see what was going on. They stopped after turning the corner and put their hands to their mouths in shock and amusement. Both of them started chuckling slowly, then burst into laughter. Everyone who wasn’t drowning in mud was cackling loudly at those who were.
“This isn’t funny!” Jenny yelled, trying to get out of the mud pit, only to slip and fall back in.
The counselors overheard the commotion and ran over from the mess hall. Holding back laughter of their own, in an effort to be adult about the whole thing, they pulled the girls from the mud-filled hole. The head counselor wasn’t happy with what was going on, but everyone could tell that even he was trying to hold back a smile.
Allora spent the trip back with Katie, Tanner, and Dax, sharing stories and reflecting on how much fun they’d had. The one story Allora didn’t tell was about the strange creature from the lake. There were far too many eavesdroppers on the bus, and she thought it was best to save that story for when they were alone.
The bus drove on as the excited teenagers quieted down, exhausted from the week, and several dozed off. Before they knew it, they were back in Sandy, heading home where they’d sleep safely in their own warm beds again.
Five
UPPERCLASSMEN
At the edge of the driveway, Bell’s bright yellow bus disappeared over the distant hump in the road, heading off to the first day of school. Left waiting, Allora reflected on her summer and the harsh reality of her life. She felt confused, scared, and unable to comprehend how to deal with everything. Strange, almost alien feelings were waking, churning and stirring up a cocktail of questions for which she had no answers.
As Allora stood alone in a confused state of emotional turmoil, a distant blurry figure appeared, moving quickly through the trees like a surefooted predator on the hunt. She felt an unfamiliar cold breeze fill the air. The hair on the back of her neck rose. Allora clenched her bag tightly, unsure whether she should stay still or run for her life. After looking around frantically for something to defend herself, she picked up a stick from the side of the road as another cold chill blew through. For reasons she couldn’t explain, the wind didn’t feel like a mountain breeze.
Twigs and branches snapped under the weight of the oncoming figure.
“Whoever’s there, this isn’t funny!” she said, gripping the stick tighter.
Something blurry streaked between the tree trunks, accompanied by the sound of more breaking twigs, so close that Allora could almost see the shape of a human.
She dropped her book bag, put her right foot back, and took a batting stance with the stick clenched tightly in her hands like she was ready to knock it out of the park. “Show yourself!” she demanded.
A car flew over the bump in the road, pulled over, and stopped. “Practicing for softball season already?” Katie joked, not noticing Allora’s fearful stare.
Allora threw the stick into the ditch, grabbed her bag, and leapt into Katie’s Jeep Cherokee.
“Whoa! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this excited to go to school before.”
“Just go!” Allora said.
Katie slammed the accelerator, causing the Jeep tires to spin out. White smoke and debris blew out from the tires as the car jerked forward and sped down the road. A good distance from Allora’s house, Katie slowed the speeding car and turned to ask her friend, “What in the heck’s going on?”
Allora spun around, with her fingers gripping ferociously into the leather headrest, and stared intently at the forest. No matter how hard she stared, nothing materialized. She spun back around and forcefully put her seatbelt on. “There was…I heard…something in the woods,” Allora answered between heaving breaths.
“What?”
Allora controlled her breathing, trying to negate a panic attack. “Watch out!”
Since Katie was paying more attention to her friend than the curving road in front of her, she was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a tree. White smoke from burnt rubber billowed on both the sides of the car, and the pungent aroma of worn brakes filled the interior. The girls breathed heavily, trying to regain their composure.
“Whoa,” said Katie. “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” Allora answered, painfully aware that they could have met their demise right there on that road.
Katie allowed her friend to take a minute, then said, “Now…what just happened?”
“I saw… no, I felt, uh… something.” Allora couldn’t really articulate it, because even she wasn’t sure if any of what she had experienced was actually real.
Katie lifted her eyebrows and cocked her head.
“I don’t know, all right?” Allora exclaimed in frustration.
Katie put the car in reverse, gassed it out of the gravel ditch, and backed onto the road. “Look, Allora, with everything that you’ve been through lately, it’s normal and perfectly okay to be a little paranoid,” she said as she turned onto Main Street.
“Paranoid? It’s not that,” Allora snapped. “I-I can’t explain it. Whatever was in the woods wasn’t… natural.”
Katie wasn’t about to argue. She knew all too well the fate of anyone who dared to get into a verbal sparring match with Allora. Besides, her mind was on something a little more important, at least as far as she was concerned.
“What?” Allora snapped again, unsure why her friend was grinning from ear to ear all the sudden. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“No, it’s not that. This has nothing to do with what you saw in the woods.”
Allora paused, waiting for some sort of explanation. “Well? Spit it out!”
“Okay, fine. I was gonna wait, but I can’t.” Katie bit her lip and continued, “Tanner broke up with Jenny yesterday.”
“What?” Allora exclaimed, then pursed her lips together, trying not to show any emotion. “Why? What’d she do?”
Katie could see the giddy struggle playing out in her friend’s mind. “Look, don’t be mad at me, but… well, I kinda told Dax what Jenny and the other girls did to you at camp,” she admitted, a little ashamed because she’d been asked to keep it a secret. “And well, Dax told Tanner, so—”
“Katie!” Allora yelled.
“I know, I know, but you shoulda told him yourself. He needed to know what that heinous, evil troll did to you,” Katie reasoned. “Tanner had a right to know what he was dating.”
Allora sat back in the seat, deciding there was no use fighting with Katie about it. Secretly, Allora had hoped Tanner would find out, as long as she didn’t have to be the one to tell him. “You’re right,” Allora admitted, “but why now? It’s not like she hasn’t done worse things to other people.”
Katie thought for a minute. “It’s probably because of what’s out there right now. I mean, something really bad coulda happened to you, girl. You’re really lucky.”
“I guess.”
“Then again, it might have had more to do with the fact that Tanner totally has a major crush on you.”
“He does not!” Allora said softly, turning several shades of red.
“Right.” Katie shook her head. “And you obviously have a crush on him.”
“I do not!” Allora snapped.
Katie laughed. “Why do you th
ink Jenny has it in for you?”
Then, all of a sudden, as if something Katie had said had sparked her memory, Allora remembered what had happened to her that night. “Oh my God! I totally forgot to tell you,” she said, then told Katie about the odd creature who’d released her from the flagpole. It was difficult to explain what had happened since she hadn’t seen who had untied the ropes, but Allora filled her in on as many details as she could just as Katie pulled her Jeep into a parking spot.
As soon as they walked up to the grey double-doors of the front entry way, Allora could feel the eyeballs staring at them. Rumors of her incident at soccer tryouts had obviously spread amongst the student body. The quiet snickering kept up for the short walk to the class schedule table in the main lobby area. Allora and Katie ignored everyone, and compared schedules.
“How did I get into Swan’s AP History class?” Katie asked. “I suck at history!”
“Good question,” Allora said.
She had a lot of questions, and she hoped Mr. Swan could answer a few. When they got to the door of Room 202, though, they found a lady with curly, short hair and glasses surveying the students as they lumbered into the room. Allora double-checked the room number, and after confirming that she was in the right place, she took a seat in front of two familiar faces. “What are you doing in here?” Allora whispered to Tanner and Dax, who slouched in their seats with their legs extended out.
Tanner didn’t know how to answer the question because he hadn’t even signed up for the class. He only shrugged his shoulders as a response.
The curly-haired lady walked to the front of the class. “Good morning, students. I realize some of you may be confused, since you were expecting Mr. Swan. My name is Ms. Benfield, and I will be your substitute while he is away,”
Allora wasn’t satisfied with the vague explanation. “Away? Where is he?” she blurted out without being called upon.
