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Campfire Tales

Summer Camp

By Cleve Taylor Published 2 years ago 3 min read
2
Campfire Tales
Photo by Joel Berg on Unsplash

Campfire Tales

By Cleve Taylor

The girls had cleaned up their area after a cookout of hot dogs and hamburgers, except for Liz whose mother insisted that she only eat plant based foods. "I hope she enjoyed her tofu," Maggie thought to herself.

Maggie was the group leader for the “Blue Bird” group of nine girls, aged 11 to 14, who were here on Lake Berrington at the annual church sponsored two week nature immersion. They waited anxiously around the campfire for Maggie to tell them the true tales of the ghosts and spirits that roamed freely in and around Lake Berrington. And Maggie, a former Blue Birder herself never failed them.

Making sure she had everyone’s attention, Maggie started. “Three hundred years ago indigenous tribes lived on the shores of this lake. In their language they called it ‘The Lake of Foggy Waters’. The chieftain's daughter, about the same age as you, fell in love with a boy from another tribe who lived on the other side of the lake. The problem was that she was a princess and he was just a warrior-to-be….

While telling the tale Maggie's mind was multitasking. “I wonder,” she thought, “how they would react if she told them about the church elder who had raped her on her first Blue Bird retreat, and who had threatened to kill her parents if she ever told anyone. How he was constantly drunk and how she had smothered him with a pillow the next night when he came for her and passed out after abusing her? Yeah, that would probably hold their attention.”

“….and that is why some nights campers see the little princess walking through the fog on the lake calling for her drowned lover who lost his life swimming across the lake to see her.”

Continuing to another story, she asked “Have any of you heard a girl weeping around three in the morning. If not, you will. It is the spirit of a camper from fifteen or so years ago who drowned in the lake. Like you, she was sent to the camp by her parents, but she had never been away from her parents and was so homesick that she cried every night wanting to go home.

After about a week she took one of the boats and must have thought she could paddle across the lake and find someone to take her home. Instead, she dropped her paddle, and when she reached for it, fell out of the boat and drowned. She was found in the lake the next day by campers who still have nightmares about finding her. Her spirit is still here at the lake, and if you listen hard you will hear her homesick wails.”

And Maggie to herself, “Yeah, that little bitch. So proud and uppity about the bracelet with all the little charms hanging on it that her grandmother gave her. I told her I wanted it, but she wouldn’t give it to me, and I was tired of all her crying. It was hard, but I choked her to death, took her damn bracelet, paddled her out into the lake, rolled her overboard, tossed the paddle overboard, and swam back to shore.” She smiled inwardly at the thought of the bracelet still in her box of treasures in her room.

“And have you seen the graves?” she asked. Back in the woods behind your cabin there are three headstones from the 1800’s. It’s hard to read but it's a father, a mother, and a child. The story is that the little family was wiped out by typhoid, and that their ghosts still wander around the lake. Watch for them, the father will be holding the mother’s hand while the little girl picks flowers and explores. They won’t harm you, at least they’ve never harmed anyone to my knowledge, but it is probably best that if you see them that you just let them be.”

“Now girls. No more stories tonight. Off to bed with you.”

One girl sneered at her. The one from the city who sneered at everything and everyone. “You don’t believe that any of us buy that horseshit, do you? We’re not stupid!”

“No little lady,” Maggie thought to herself, “but you might be dead before the week is out.”

Maggie started thinking about her options. The next night there were only eight girls around the campfire.

Horror
2

About the Creator

Cleve Taylor

Published author of three books: Ricky Pardue US Marshal, A Collection of Cleve's Short Stories and Poems, and Johnny Duwell and the Silver Coins, all available in paperback and e-books on Amazon. Over 160 Vocal.media stories and poems.

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