Chapter 2: Chapter 2: The Grinning Rhyme

The first few days at Camp Blackwood bled into a monotonous haze of pointless labor. Under Peter’s relentlessly cheerful gaze, Ash, Mary Beth, and four other outsiders were tasked with scrubbing mildewed canoes, repainting peeling signs, and clearing trails that led nowhere. The others were a motley crew, all caught for minor infractions on the roads bordering Sleepy Falls. There was Tommy, a lanky kid with a nervous habit of cracking his knuckles; his friend Grant, handsome and quietly arrogant; Suzy, whose initial bravado was visibly cracking; and a girl named Ginger who never spoke, preferring the company of the staticky old Walkman she wore constantly.

They were all prisoners of this strange, sun-dappled purgatory, and a fragile camaraderie began to form, born of shared misery. It was Mary Beth, predictably, who decided they needed to reclaim some small piece of their stolen summer.

“A campfire,” she announced one evening, brandishing a stolen pack of hot dogs. “We’re supposed to be at a summer camp, right? We’re gonna act like it. Ghost stories, burnt food, the whole deal.”

No one had the energy to argue. They gathered in the main fire pit, the flames casting flickering, monstrous shadows against the silent bunkhouses. For a while, it almost felt normal. Tommy told a lame story about a hook-handed killer that everyone had heard a dozen times. Grant tried to impress Suzy with a convoluted tale of a haunted asylum. The air was thick with the smell of pine and smoke, but the laughter was forced, the smiles thin. The oppressive quiet of the surrounding forest seemed to mock their attempts at fun.

Ash watched the flames, the memory of Nicole’s secret book nagging at her. The mousy girl had been avoiding them, making herself scarce whenever they were in the bunkhouse, clutching that leather-bound tome like a holy text. Tonight, however, she sat apart from the circle, just beyond the ring of light, a small, hunched silhouette.

“Hey! Nicole!” Mary Beth called out, her voice jarringly loud. “Your turn! You’re the local. You must have some good, creepy stories about this place.”

Nicole visibly shrank. “I… I don’t know any.”

“Oh, come on,” Mary Beth pressed, walking over and playfully trying to tug her into the circle. “Don’t be shy. One little story. What are you scared of?”

Nicole’s eyes, wide and luminous in the firelight, darted around the group before landing on Ash. It was a look of pure, primal terror. She looked like a cornered animal.

“Just… just a stupid kid’s rhyme,” she stammered, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s nothing.”

“A rhyme? Even better!” Mary Beth cheered, oblivious to the girl’s distress. “Let’s hear it!”

Trapped, Nicole took a shaky breath. She closed her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice was hollow, a recitation devoid of any emotion, as if she were reading her own death sentence.

“Grinny Grin, long and tall, Comes to knock upon your wall. Through the glass, he’ll want to see, The hungry smile he has for thee.”

A chill, colder than the night air, snaked through the group. Tommy stopped cracking his knuckles. The fire crackled, the only sound in the sudden, heavy silence.

Nicole continued, her voice trembling.

“Give him salt left on the stone, A gift to make him leave you alone. But if you peek, or fail the test, Grinny Grin will take the rest.”

She finished and hugged her knees to her chest, refusing to look at anyone. The rhyme hung in the air, ugly and sharp. The lighthearted atmosphere was shattered, replaced by the very real dread they’d been trying to escape.

“Well,” Grant said, clearing his throat. “That was… cheerful.”

Mary Beth, for once, seemed to sense she’d pushed too far. “Okay, yeah, creepy. You win.” She tossed the rest of the hot dogs into the fire. “I think this party’s over.”

The group dispersed quickly, melting back into the shadows of their respective bunkhouses, the unnerving rhyme clinging to them like smoke.

Later that night, Ash lay awake on her lumpy mattress, staring at the wooden slats of the bunk above. Mary Beth was already snoring softly, but sleep felt a million miles away for Ash. The rhyme echoed in her mind, pairing itself with the image of Nicole’s book—the torn pages in her own guidebook versus the dark, detailed instructions Nicole possessed. Give him salt left on the stone…

THUMP.

The sound was sharp, distinct. Not a branch hitting the roof. Not a critter scratching at the wood.

THUMP. THUMP.

It came from the window right beside their bunks. A hard, insistent knocking on the glass.

Mary Beth snorted in her sleep and rolled over. But across the small room, Ash saw movement. Nicole was sitting bolt upright in her bed, her face a pale mask of horror in the moonlight filtering through the window. She wasn't screaming. She wasn't crying out. Her terror was silent, practiced. This wasn’t a surprise to her. She had been waiting for it.

With a speed that defied her usual timid nature, Nicole scrambled out of bed. She didn’t go to the window. Instead, she fumbled in her small footlocker at the end of her bunk. Her hands found what they were looking for: a rough, grayish block about the size of a brick. A salt lick, the kind you’d leave out for deer.

Ash watched, frozen, as Nicole crept to the bunkhouse door. Her hand trembled so violently she could barely work the latch. She eased the door open just a crack, a sliver of blackness against the moonlit ground. She didn’t look out. She squeezed her eyes shut, shoved the salt lick through the opening, and placed it on the flat stone that served as a doorstep.

Then she slammed the door shut, threw the bolt, and stumbled back to her bed, pulling the thin blanket over her head and curling into a tight, shivering ball.

The knocking stopped.

The silence that followed was more terrifying than the sound had been. Ash lay perfectly still, her heart hammering against her ribs. She stared at the window, at the dark glass that reflected only the dim interior of the room. She thought of the rhyme, of the grinning thing it described wanting to peer inside.

She thought of the missing pages in her camp guidebook and the secret one she’d glimpsed in Nicole’s. RULE 7: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU HEAR A KNOCK.

The stories here weren’t just stories. The rhymes weren't just rhymes. They were warnings. They were rules for a game she didn’t understand, played against things that lived in the dark just beyond the windowpane. And tonight, they had only survived because their terrified roommate knew how to play.