Chapter Text
“Are we there yet?” —— looking out of the back of the van.
“Yeah, Fred are we??” Shaggy joins in on the pestering, while him and Scooby make sandwiches across from me.
“Yeah, we’re here.” Fred sighs and pulls the van into our campground. Everyone gets out. Velma and Daphne help Fred with the tents, while Shaggy and Scooby gather sticks and make a fire for us to cook hotdogs over later tonight.
—— gets out of the van and look around. There’s a green cotton wood forest off to the left of the grounds, a tall dead spruce forest to the right, behind our area stands roughly 300 more campsites, only fifteen of which have other campers. They have their own little groups with them. The other campers vary in age. After, the last camp is a wall of undergrowth and a railroad, with an arch you have to drive under to enter. There’s a city on the other side.
In front of the camp is a shining, murky blue-green Lake. It has flowers and algae floating on it. It’s cool blue waters lap at the shore in front of the camp. Pulsing almost to the beat of —— heart. Its serene. Peaceful. Inviting. Entranced by the water, —— sees lights blinking in and out of existence… fireflies. Hundreds of them, blinking across the lake, and the cliffs towards the back.
“—— Come get some hotdogs!” Daphne calls, breaking the waters trance. —— steps back away from the waters edge, not realizing how close —— had gotten to it. —— runs back to Daphne and takes her hand.
“Daphne! Did you see the Fireflies?” —— asks, swaying back and forth.
“I did! They’re gorgeous! Come on let’s eat then we can catch some later!” Daphne laughs.
After eating, Fred points out that it’s late and we need to be getting around to sleep. Everyone takes their turn getting ready for bed.—— sits watching the sun go down over the cliffs.
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The sunlight starts to fade from the sky as —— turns around to go walk to the tent. —— pauses as the sound of bells mixed with a fog horn starts to boom through the campsite. Looking around other campers, start running from their campsite, into the woods or dashing for the entrance to the park. —— runs through the camp screaming for the gang. No one answers, they’re all gone.
—— looks out into the lake, and in the center of the lake a hand bursts out. It’s pale, and decaying, the nails are green from the filth of the lake. Slowly, a creature pulls itself to the surface and stands. It’s humanoid, and stands on two legs, hairless aside from the strands plastered to its head, and face. That’s where the similarities end. Its neck hangs like it was broken, the lifeless grey and black hair, sticks to the creature. It’s malnourished frame is decaying, parts of bone shining in the moonlight. Its hands end with talon like fingers, and drip with red. It stares and tracks ——‘s movements with its hollowed eye sockets, void of anything but pitch black darkness and glowing red and yellow dots where the pupil would have been. The Bells toll again, and the creature folds backwards in half and falls back into the water.
—— turns and runs for the camp entrance. Accidentally nicking ——‘s wrist against the van doors.
There’s a laugh from behind, and —— turns around to see the creature exiting the water and crawling towards them like a possessed spider or something. The creature lunges for ——.
You wake up crying in your bed. There’s a stinging pain in your wrist, looking down you see a small cut. You run down the hall to your parents room… you sleep there until morning. In the morning you won’t remember anything from the night before. But you’ll have a scar from that nick for the rest of your life. And sometimes when you grow older you swear when you’re alone, you’ll hear it chuckle.
“The game’s just begun.”