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 three 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.