Chapter 3: Chapter 3: The First to Vanish

The week following the midnight knock was thick with a silent, simmering poison. The salt lick Nicole had placed outside their bunkhouse door remained on the flat stone, a grim monument to a rule they didn’t understand. Ash noticed it seemed smaller each morning, as if licked away by something more than just the morning dew. The other outsiders felt the shift, too. The forced camaraderie of their campfire gathering had evaporated, replaced by wary glances and whispered conversations that died whenever Peter’s shadow fell near. Their pointless labor—weeding gardens that grew nothing but thorns, painting over layers of peeling paint—now felt less like community service and more like a distraction, busywork to keep the livestock occupied before the slaughter.

Halloween was approaching, a fact announced by the cheap, plastic pumpkins Peter hung from the eaves of the main lodge, their grinning faces a grotesque parody of the unseen thing from Nicole’s rhyme. The festive decorations only amplified the sense of dread. Every snap of a twig in the forest, every gust of wind that rattled the windowpanes, sent fresh waves of anxiety through the camp.

The first to truly break was Suzy.

Ash found her behind the canoe shed, huddled on the damp pine needles. Her usually confident posture was gone, replaced by a tight, fetal curl. Her body was wracked with shudders, and her wide, frantic eyes were fixed on the impenetrable wall of trees.

“Suzy?” Ash approached slowly, keeping her voice soft. “What’s wrong?”

Suzy flinched violently, scrambling backward like a cornered animal. “Don’t,” she whimpered, the word a ragged gasp. “He saw me.”

“He? Who saw you?” Ash knelt, trying to catch her eye. “Peter?”

“No. Not him.” Suzy shook her head, her blonde hair matted with dirt and sweat. Her gaze darted back to the woods. “The other one. The one that looks like him.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial, terrified whisper. “I was by the edge of the woods, just… just trying to see if there was a road. And I saw Peter walking between the trees. I ducked behind a rock. But then… then I saw the real Peter, coming out of the main lodge. He was humming.”

Ash felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. “What are you talking about, Suzy? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It had his face, Ash!” Suzy’s voice cracked, rising in hysteria. “His walk, his stupid khaki shorts. But it wasn’t him. Its smile was… it was too wide. It didn’t fit right. And it just stood there, in the woods, watching the real one. It saw me look. It knows I saw it.”

Before Ash could process the horrifying image—a doppelganger lurking in the treeline—Suzy was on her feet. Her terror had boiled over into a desperate, manic energy.

“I can’t stay here. He’s going to come for me. He knows I know.”

“Suzy, wait!” Ash reached for her, but it was too late.

With a choked sob, Suzy bolted. She didn’t run towards the main gate or the road. She plunged directly into the dense, dark forest, the one place they were all implicitly warned never to go. Ash watched, helpless, as the woods swallowed her whole, the snapping of branches fading into the oppressive silence.

The next morning, the remaining five outsiders were assembled in the clearing for their work assignments. Suzy’s absence was a gaping hole in their small group. Peter came strolling out of the lodge, a thermos in one hand and that same, horrible, enthusiastic smile stretched across his face.

“Morning, campers!” he chirped. “Beautiful day to build some character! Now, you might notice we’re one short.” He paused, his cold eyes sweeping over their faces, daring them to speak. “Good news! Young Suzy’s family emergency cleared up faster than expected. Her folks came to pick her up late last night. She’s gone home!”

The lie was so bald-faced, so insulting, that the air turned to ice. Ash saw Mary Beth’s hands clench into fists. She thought of Suzy’s raw terror, her flight into the woods. Gone home. The words were a death sentence delivered with a smile.

Tommy, his face pale and blotchy, took a half-step forward. “That’s a lie. She ran into the woods. Ash saw her.”

Peter’s smile didn’t falter, but it became sharp, metallic. “Now, Tommy, are you calling me a liar? Maybe the stress is getting to you. People see things in the woods. Shadows play tricks.” He took a slow step closer, his jovial mask slipping to reveal the bully beneath. “Suzy went home. That’s the official story. And it’s the one you’ll stick to if you know what’s good for you. Understand?”

Tommy flinched back, but the defiance in his eyes hardened into a reckless resolve. He exchanged a look with Grant, who gave a subtle, sharp nod.

Later that afternoon, while Peter was supposedly napping in his office, Tommy and Grant made their move.

“We’re going after her,” Grant said, his voice a low, determined murmur. They had cornered Ash and Mary Beth near the defunct archery range. “We can’t just let him get away with this. Suzy could be hurt out there.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Ash warned, her mind replaying Suzy’s panicked words about a double. “You heard her. Something’s in those woods. Something wrong.”

“What’s wrong is that psycho camp counselor lying to our faces,” Tommy retorted, his jaw tight. “We’re not just going to sit here and wait to be picked off one by one. We stick together. We find her, and we walk out of here. All of us.”

Mary Beth, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, finally spoke. “He’s right, Ash. We can’t just do nothing.” Her fear had curdled into anger. “But going in blind is stupid.”

“We’ll be quick,” Grant insisted, pulling a small, cheap compass from his pocket. “Follow her tracks, find her, be back before dinner. He won’t even know we’re gone.”

They wouldn’t be swayed. Filled with a dangerous mix of bravado and fear, Tommy and Grant slipped away from their work detail, melting into the same treeline that had claimed Suzy. Ash watched them go, a sense of profound dread settling over her. They were breaking another unspoken rule, challenging the woods that whispered with unseen things.

Dinner came and went. The sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in bloody streaks of orange and purple. The plastic pumpkins Peter had hung began to look like shrunken heads in the twilight.

Tommy and Grant did not return.

The cheerful facade of Camp Blackwood was gone, burned away to reveal the skeletal framework of the prison beneath. Suzy had vanished. Now, the two boys who went to find her were gone, too. Peter didn’t mention them. He served dinner with the same grotesque cheer, humming a tuneless melody as if nothing had happened.

As darkness fell completely, Ash found Mary Beth by the cold fire pit. The anger had drained from her friend’s face, leaving behind a stark, unfamiliar fear.

“They’re not coming back,” Mary Beth whispered, her voice rough.

“No,” Ash agreed, her own voice hollow.

A twig snapped behind them. They both spun around to see Ginger, the silent girl with the Walkman, standing there. She had pulled her headphones down around her neck, and in the dim light from the lodge, her eyes were dark and serious. She didn’t speak, but her presence was a statement. She looked at Ash, then at Mary Beth, and gave a single, decisive nod.

The message was clear. Waiting was over. Pleading was pointless. Running blindly was suicide.

If they were going to survive, they needed answers. They needed to know the rules. And Ash knew exactly where to find them. Her gaze shifted across the clearing to their bunkhouse, where a terrified girl slept beside a dark, leather-bound book filled with secrets.

They were no longer just observers. They were investigators. And tonight, they would start their hunt.