Campfire Tales
Who has a scary story?
Moaning wind and rutting hogs surrounded our little fellowship of fire. Dylan was the fire master. Heather and Sean had roasted corn and hot dogs over the licking flames, their charred remnants now heavy in our stomachs. Dylan’s shadow stretched across the side of the navy-cream domed tent Ruhi and I had erected. We huddled close, bundled in flannel and crunchy windbreakers, and watched the flames dance with heavy eyelids.
“Is it log time?” Heather asked.
Dylan tilted his head, studying the burning temple he had constructed. A nod. The fire sizzled as it embraced the fresh wood. We all watched quietly, the miles we’d trekked settling on our bodies, adding their weight to every thought and movement.
“Who has a scary story?” Dylan asked.
Heather and Ruhi laughed.
“We could play hot seat?” Ruhi suggested.
Sean’s eyebrows lifted, and he shook his head. No one expressed any excitement. I shifted in my camp chair to keep the lip of it from digging into my thighs.
“Kris has something,” Heather said, smirking at me. Four pairs of expectant eyes landed on my flushed cheeks.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Tell them the story you told me last trip. About the creepy guy on I-95.”
“Ooh yeah Kris!” Ruhi said.
“I feel like we’ve all run into some weird folks on the highway,” Sean said.
“This wasn’t just weird, Sean. It was…spooky,” Heather whispered, with a flourish of her hands.
“Let’s hear it,” Dylan said, smiling without taking his eyes off the fire. I nodded, rehearsing my words in my head.
“Do you guys remember the road trip I took last summer, with Amelia?”
Everyone nodded. Heather rolled her eyes.
“We were in North Carolina, where it starts to get real hilly. I don’t remember the exact town, but we had to get off on one of those service roads to go around a wreck. I lost cell service and I couldn’t load a map, so I just followed the signs for I-95. Then I reached an intersection with no signs. There were fields and farms all around us, and I hadn’t seen a gas station or convenience store since we left the highway.
I went straight, thinking the other roads were private or just long driveways. After a few more miles I was still on the same road, no sign of the interstate. Amelia had fallen asleep. It was a really rural area. On one side of the road there was an old wooden fence and fields of horses and cows. The other was just dense forest. I had just decided to turn around when I saw someone standing in the middle of the road, waving us down.
It was some old guy, and I rolled down my window as we pulled up to him. He said his car had broken down and he needed a lift to the gas station. I didn’t see a car and he didn’t have a gas can with him, but he said it was just on the other side of the interstate, and I figured he could get us back there.
Suddenly Amelia was shrieking in my ear. I’d never seen her so panicked. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I tried to explain the situation, and she calmed down a bit. I figured she had just been shocked to see someone standing right next to us when she woke up. The guy got in our car and we turned around.”
“Never pick up hitchhikers,” Ruhi quipped.
“Oh come on, clearly the dude was harmless. Right?” Sean said.
“Well…things got weirder in the car. I tried to make small talk to put Amelia at ease, but she kept looking nervously at the rearview mirror. I asked him what he was doing out here. He said he was a cattle farmer, and his car had broken down while he was running errands. I told him we were on our way to Norfolk to visit some of Amelia’s family. He said that’s where his family was from too, and tried to ask Amelia more questions about them. But she just refused to talk to him.
He gave up and turned his head to look out the window. That’s when I saw a streak of red running down his face.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
He said, ‘What’s that?’
‘Are you okay? You’re bleeding.’
He reached up and ran his hand through the blood, streaking it across his cheek. Looking at his red palm, he chuckled.
‘It’s not mine. Cattle farming. Messy business.’”
“He said that?”
“Yeah, it was a weird way of saying it, I figured he was just trying to spook us.”
“Did you end up taking him to the gas station?”
“No.”
“Damn, you kicked him out?”
“No, actually—”
“Guys, just let him finish, it gets better,” Heather insisted.
“It, uh, got kind of quiet after that. We were still a mile out from the interstate when he suddenly yelled at us to stop the car. I asked why, but he wouldn’t tell me. So I pulled over and let him out. He practically ran out of the car and into the woods.”
“Holy shit.”
“He probably had to take a shit.”
“And then we realized there was a cop behind us. They pulled over and got out to talk with us.”
“Oh my god. Was he on the run?”
“It seemed like it. He wouldn’t tell us why they were looking for the guy, but I told the cop what he looked like and where he went. The officer just went back to his car, he didn’t try to follow him.”
“Wow. Did you ever find out who he was?”
“Nope! Super creepy, right?”
Everyone nodded and sipped at their cider.
“I didn’t know you were a snitch, Kris,” Sean joked, breaking the silence. With laughter, we moved on to other stories, tales from their own trips across the country.
That night I was lying in my sleeping bag, awake, listening to Heather and Dylan snore. It was fair weather so I could see up through the netting to the galaxy of stars above. I thought about Amelia and let the guilt of that day slowly smother me.
After we pulled back onto the road, she started crying. I waited until we were a few exits away from everything with the strange man and the police, then I pulled off at a visitor center so we could get out and talk. She sat quietly on a rotting picnic bench, working her hands, and I sat with her until she was ready to speak.
“That was my uncle.”
“What?”
“I don’t think he recognized me, but I could never forget his face.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I—,” she stuttered, breathing heavily, and suddenly anger boiled through. “You didn’t let me! You just let him in our car!”
“I didn’t know—what was I supposed to do?”
“Drive away! Anything!”
“What? Why? Are you scared of him?”
“I…I’m not scared. I just know he’s a monster.”
She never told me what he did exactly, and I didn’t want to press. So I did something worse; I Googled him. He was a monster alright. He had escaped from prison that day, of all days, and killed a guard in the process.
I didn’t date Amelia long after that. She didn’t trust me. I couldn’t really blame her. And to cope with that face, that blood-smeared face in my own backseat, I’d turned the day into a different story. A spooky tale. The man in my story could have been anyone. He held the threat of danger, just a few feet behind you, ready to lunge at any moment—but he never made it certain.
Thank you for reading Every Nook Uncanny. If you liked what you read, please share and comment. The audio version of this story will be available this Friday. You can follow Mae on Twitter.