Just when you thought camp couldn’t get any worse…
…the counselors found another set of bones.
Not animal this time. A whole ribcage, laid out like someone had opened a book and flattened it spine-up in the dirt. Clean, but not bleached. Fresh enough that someone—Mia, probably—threw up in the grass behind the arts cabin.
The sheriff came. Again. Second time this month. He gave the same tired speech about coyotes and illegal dumping and how “nothing about this matches any missing persons cases in the area.” But we all knew. That wasn’t a coyote. Coyotes don’t stack vertebrae like Jenga blocks and leave them at the edge of the lake.
They didn’t cancel camp. Of course they didn’t. Too many lawsuits in that. They just shortened lights-out and added a “new optional buddy system” for bathroom breaks. Optional, like anyone was going to pee alone now.
The thing is—I’m not scared of bones. I’m scared of what made them.
And I’ve seen it.
Three nights ago, I snuck out to meet Nolan. It was his idea, not mine. He wanted to show me a deer skull he found near the canoe racks. “It looks like it was smiling,” he said, which is not something you say unless you want someone to not follow you into the woods.
But I went anyway. And he wasn’t lying. It did look like it was smiling. Not just the skull—everything about it. The way it was posed, legs tucked under like it had just curled up and died peacefully. Except it hadn’t. There were bite marks around the eyes. Deep ones. Too wide for a fox. Too precise for a bear.
We were still crouched there when we heard it. Something dragging. Something wet. I didn’t move. Nolan did. He stepped back, tripped on a root—and it turned.
It wasn’t tall. That’s the worst part. It wasn’t some hulking movie monster with claws and a roar. It was child-sized. Naked, pale, slick as if it had been born seconds ago. Its mouth was too wide. No eyes.
But it saw us.
Nolan ran. I didn’t. I stayed very still, my knees sunk in the mud, heart like a trapped squirrel in my throat. And the thing sniffed the air, tilted its head like a curious dog, and—
Smiled.
Then it turned, and melted into the trees.
I told myself I imagined it. That Nolan made it up. That I’d fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing.
But this morning, Nolan’s bunk was empty. And his flashlight was in the mud behind the canoes.
Just when you thought camp couldn’t get any worse…
…it smiled at me again last night. From my window.