Short Story: Camp Anneheg by Sam Bryant

Short story time! This is a new series that Sam is going to be introducing to you guys. Very cool stuff and I'm really looking forward to more.

Remember, if you're a short story writer then please send me some samples of your work to scaredsheetlessncn@hotmail.com Just put in the subject, "Short Story" as I get a lot of spam!

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Camp Anneheg

I Wish I could tell you that I was Lee Rogers, an ordinary guy, but I'm afraid its a bit too late for that introduction. The worst part is that my life got weirder when I met Michele Holmes at Camp Anneheg. It was a personal tradition to go to Camp Anneheg every summer, but I always went alone, at least until this year. I convinced my close friend Tina Brown to come with me. Our friendship started in a less than conventional way, as to say I saved her from a tormented life at junior high.

It was the seventh day of school, and I had already started exploring the campus at lunch rather than eating. I stumbled upon three punkish older kids picking on a small sickly, fellow eighth grader. I was aware of who they are, being who I am I had to be aware of all the hooligans around me. I was self-obligated to stop them, “Hey, what are you punks doin to that girl over there?” I knew they were making fun of her, but that was the only way to get their attention.

“What's it to ya ” snarled the lead hoodlum.

I answered making the disdain in my voice obvious, even to these buffoons, “Whatever I make it punk. Now, stop pestering the lady,” Fighting ensued when he swung at my face with a sloppy right hook. I easily dealt with them thanks to my foster father's obsessive Marine style training.

With only a few loose droplets of sweat on me I charmingly said, “ Are you okay? Why don't I take you to the nurse?” I could tell quite plainly that she was bothered, and crying about it all, so I grabbed her hand, and began walking her to the nurse while saying, “If you want I can eat lunch with you.” From that day forth we were friends.

We were on the ferry ride to the island of Amethana, off the coast of Oregon. We could hear a faint radio-caster describing the extreme weather that would probably keep us locked on the island for at least a month after the ferry left.

Not being particularly interested in the news, I turned to Tina to say, “ I still can't believe this is your first time at any camp.”

“You know I never really went anywhere before I met you,” before I could spark up an impromptu conversation regarding that fact, the ferry glided to a stop, and the captain told everyone to get off the boat, and line up by year. Standing outside on the pier were the councilors standing in a row, and in front of each was a row of students; Myself, and the other camp-seniors. The older kids who hadn't attended before, Tina. Then the rest of the kids in row by age. I was lucky to have Clay Willis as my councilor, he was a camper last year, and a good friend of mine. I figured it would be a good year; boy, was I wrong.

On the third day of camp, while the counselors were prepping for our first day of target practice an ear piercing screech resounded through the woods, faintly resembling white noise, and three rifles burst in the hands of their counselors shredding their hands, arms, and leaving them in a surprisingly alive state. They were supposed to be evacuated from camp, but a large storm kept the ferry from returning to the island, and cut off all telecommunication.

As the week droned on more, and more counselors were being severely injured, immediately after one of those loud shrieks. The camp was slowly becoming less supervised, until the last remaining counselors called all the camp-seniors to a special meeting. They never said where they had been taking the injured individuals, but we all presumed it that they had a special room in the infirmary, or some other place where they wouldn't be bothered.

I was starting to expect something like this was going to happen. One of the two counselors said, “We only have two adults and eight camp-seniors left. We'll divide the kids into groups led by two camp-seniors, or one counselor,” he paused for a moment, “ Rogers, and Holmes will take Brown, Ray, Taylor, Miles, and Stephens, Farenbach and Lewis...” I zoned out now knowing my group, and thought that I had never met Holmes, and that I only knew her name was Michele. I zoned back in to hear counselor Willis saying, “ Now, get to know your partner, and find your groups.”

At that moment I turned to Michele, who was apparently sitting next to me, and nicely said, “Howdy Michele, how should we...”

“We are going to find our kids before it gets any darker.” She interrupted me, but the strange thing was it didn't make me angry like it usually does, nonetheless I followed with an unintended huff.

It took roughly twenty minutes to find our group, and a cabin. Danny Stephens was a silly exploratory kid. Aaron Miles, a swimmer, and super religious. Keegan Ray, a troublesome little brat that liked setting people off. Bell Taylor, a nice sort of emo-girl, and finally Tina Brown my good friend who wasn't as sickly as she used to be. “Go to bed kids,” spouted Michele just before we heard another shriek. It was louder this time, almost as if it were close by. Every window in our medium sized cabin exploded inward with intensely unsettling crackling. I jumped in front of the group, my back facing the one wall with windows, I know what a weird design it was, but it helped keep the group safe, so I won't complain about it.

Now with tons of little bits of glass deeply piercing the skin of my back I yelled, “Michele take the group out of the cabin! Clay's cabin is nearby, run!” she did as I asked.

I ran to the window to look out of it, but I didn't see anything other than trees outside. I once again turned and ran. It took less than four minutes to catch up to Michele at the head of the group, Clay's cabin was just ahead. I tackled the door open, only to see the walls covered in blood, but without the bodies anywhere to be seen. I was falling to the ground on top of the broken door, and had no way of keeping the others from seeing this horrible sight.

Having abandoned our earlier hurry, we were now sitting on the front steps of the massacred cabin, myself and Aaron closest to the door to prevent anyone from going in. They were all frighteningly calm about the whole thing.

Danny broke the silence, “Ey guys, guys, I think we should find whatever did this.” Bell, and Tina simultaneously shot this idea down.

I had to think, for a minute. We had an unknown enemy and, as far as I knew very little strength, what could I do? 
 
I broke the new silence after less than a minute, “We're going to the main cabin. Maybe the archives have something, anything really.”

“What're you talkin about? Why would they have anything about a screamin monster?” said Keegan

“This camp is made of the old Fort Sedah. Where they supposedly did weird tests.” I stood on the top step, and began walking towards the main building, everyone one followed with little hesitation.

As we walked to our new destination, still with none of the speed we had just twenty minutes ago, Michele inquired to me, “How are you so calm? Not even I'm level headed after seeing that, that horror in the cabin,”

Trying not to think too much I calmly reassured her, and the rest of the group, “After what my birth father did, I refuse to let anyone, or anything prevent me from protecting what I want to protect... Never again will I be too late to help,” from then the group was silent for at least ten minutes, and at that time I realized that something was following us from the edge of the woods. Is it the same thing that’s been causing problems around camp, or something different, maybe even worse? My cautious thoughts slipped to the back of my head as I remembered how my birth father used to beat me, and when I became old enough to protect myself my younger sister, or should I say late younger sister. One day when he was extra drunk he took it a little too far, and she died. Shortly after he went missing, that’s what the police call it anyway. I know exactly where his rotten corpse is.

The door creaked open, which was odd seeing as the building was frequently used, and it was refurbished just three years earlier. The inside is contrastingly nice, just as it should be. Everyone instinctively goes to a different filling cabinet, and begins rummaging through their drawers contents. Roughly ninety minutes go by, and in that time I hear several screams, but no one else reacts, so I assume they didn't hear it, but still it set me on edge, especially since no one else reacted.

Aaron then yelled, “ Everyone I may have found something,” he was holding a thick stack of papers with more black splotches on it than a coffee mug.

All we could read was, “ Classification level: S7...We got the funding... Doctor Paracelsus will commence testing soon.... No one could have expected this.... Station was locked down,permanently due to...” That’s all we could get out of a thirty page report, I'm sure everyone was a little nervous about what we were missing.

“What is the plan from here?” inquired Michele, we were all silent, nothing ran through my head, excluding baseless conjecture on weather these occurrences were related to that one file we found. As we all stood there thinking about what we could do, I looked down at my watch to realize that it shouldn't be as dark as it was, somehow it was three forty three in the afternoon, everyone’s watch agreed. Despite the time, the sun was nowhere to be seen.

“We better hope the fence between the camp, and old base has been taken down,” I said disrupting the stillness that had invaded the room.

Bell then made her first statement of the night, “"Why do we need to find out what that thing is? I mean, its killing all these people and we don't know any way to stop it. I say we just stay here."

“Well that’s a good question. Why would we try to save ourselves? Who would want revenge for their friends? Why do anything? We're not staying here, okay. If you want you can stay, but I wouldn't recommend being alone. “ As I walked out the door they all followed suit, even Bell.

As we approached the old base, we could still hear the screams of that unknown thing still prowling around camp, and causing trouble. The unraked leaves crunching under us, as the only sound. A slight wind making us even more on edge as it continually changed direction and intensity. The large building had an eerie feel to it, even when just approaching it. The door isn't locked, and slowly creeks open. Once inside we see cobwebs covering every surface, excluding a single path between the outside door, and one hallway labeled exclusive access.

We had been walking for what felt like an hour when we found a single room at the end of the path. The room was littered with all the bodies of our fellow campers, and councilors that had either gone missing or were evacuated to an unknown location. No one had left the camp except the Ferry driver. As we all stood there staring at this mausoleum of a room we heard a door burst open, and another blood curdling screech behind us. I thought to myself, “I won't let this thing win,” and then everything was black... Just like before.

To Be Continued

Short Story: The Shade by Samuel L Bryant

Last night Scared Sheetless brought you Ruins by Eric Key, a post apocalyptic thriller. This time the setting is the same, but how it came about is a little different. This story is brought to you by Samuel L Bryant, the very one who gave us The Last Patient. Enjoy!

Rated T for Teen

Got a story? Send it to me at scaredsheetlessncn@hotmail.com and remember to put "Short Story" as the title.

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The Shade

Hello, my name is Jesse Stout, the year is 2093. The world ended twenty years ago, I turn twenty the same day as the worlds end. Twenty years ago a disease known as The Shade killed nearly half of the world’s population, and almost all of the super metropolis known once as New York city. This is where I spent my entire life. To be specific, I lived in an old CIA compound that my parents commandeered days after the birth of me, and The Shade.

My parents died six days ago, and they never talked much about the shade. After mourning their death for two days I decided that I wanted to leave the safety of the compound and see the world that I had only heard stories of.

I expected my eyes would have to adjust to the light but that was not the case. All around me, as far up as my eyes could see were huge rundown buildings, yet they still stood hundreds of stories high, blocking out the sun. Every several feet stood a dim street light, flickering under the power of story old generators running on fumes. I'm horrified when I see the skeletons scattered along the pot-hole infested road, and in crashed cars. I didn't think I could be any more shocked when I realized that they had been picked clean of skin, muscle, and tendon, not even a speck of blood remaining on them.

After spending nearly an hour teaching myself to put the horrible sights out of my mind. Once I had done so successfully I began my search for any living person I could find. I spent the rest of that day alone.. Roughly three hours after working the next morning I found what would become one of the most disturbing things that I will ever see.

An old man, at least seventy, sitting against a post, rocking back and forth. I walked up to him tentatively, “Excuse me sir,” I waited a moment, “Could I ask you a few questions?”

“What? Are you real? I can tell the Shades gonna get to me soon enough. Heck, even if you're not real I supposes I could answer your questions.”

“Thank ya sir. Please tell me everything you know about the Shade.”

He chuckled a little “well mister imagination. The shade isn’t really a disease, it more like a sickness that gets into your head, and makes you do stuff. I still remember the day it all went down. I was walking to work, when a car veered straight off the street into a small store. People were screaming so much, that damned screaming. I couldn't take it; I know pathetic, blacking out right in the middle of the apocalypse. When I woke up everyone was dead, the only sound I could discern among the alarms was a baby crying. Now I'm gonna tell you what I think caused all this...” At that moment his hand jerked to his side shaking violently, he withdrew a bowie knife from a pocket I hadn't seen, and all the while crying and blubbering, before he got another word out his hand shoved the knife upwards through his mouth pinning his tongue to the roof of his mouth and penetrating his brain. I threw up.

After working up enough courage to scour his body for anything I could use, I found a small note with directions to a clinic, with a name I knew my parents had said before on it. It took me nearly nine hours to find the building thanks to the unnavigable streets. I slept, because I wanted to be awake for whatever was inside. I open the door slowly. On the floor lies a man, with blood all over him, and I think he's dead. I kneel down to check his pulse when he jolts up. He says to me in the most relieved voice I can imagine anyone in this world having, “Thank God you’re here. I don't care who you are, but you have to preserve the knowledge in this lab. Here’s the code to the computer over there. A.F.S.l.3.4.3.” before I could ask him anything else his body began violently convulsing, and like that he was dead.

I walk into the dark room, with one LED light overhead still working, and a computer monitor on the other side of the room. I walk up to it nervously, for reasons I did not yet know. I pushed the on button, and a screen requesting a password shown into the dark room. I slowly pressed the keys A.F.S.L.3.4.3. At that point the screen lit up to reveal a journal kept by that poor man in the first room.

It read, 'I think I finally figured it out. Those Stouts are at the center of this. That kid of theirs was born at the exact moment the first Shade incident occurred. It’s the only explanation, those cursed geniuses were always fringe, between the experiments, and the 'worship' something was definitely going to go wrong.'

I was taken back a moment, I went to click on the next page, but my arm wouldn't do what I told it too. It reached into a desk drawer and found a razor, weird place to keep a razor I know, then slit my opposite hand off, clean through the bone.

Upon awakening I looked around to see that, there was blood splattered all over the room I was in, but I could feel my arm. I figured it was just a stress attack making me think it was gone, but when I looked down at my arm, in place of flesh was a black ethereal shape resembling my arm perfectly. Just as I began to freak out at this development my mind started to slide back, that’s when you said, “It’s my turn to lead Jesse-boy...”

By: Samuel L Bryant

Short Story: The Last Patient by Samuel L Bryant

Really digging all the short stories I've been getting. This one was sent by a sixteen year old and I got to say, I'm impressed. One of the scariest stories posted so far! As said before and I'll probably say it again and again, if you have a short story and would like to share it on this site, then please email me @ scaredsheetlessncn@hotmail.com

Scared rated this story T for Teen.

Enjoy!

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 The Last Patient

       My name was once Patrick Day, and I was an engineer. Graduate of Boulder University with a masters degree in engineering, I was the Valedictorian for goodness sake. Look at me now, an unimportant maintinance man in a small city.

          This is the eighth time I've been called in to fix the computer at the Franklin Memorial Hospital. I swear the doctors have to be doing something to the systems here.  They tell me that it just started deleting patient records, and reseting patient number designations. I think that some jilted ex-employee just hacked it to get some petty form of revenge.

          "How ya' doin' Pat, I sure am happy that they send the same guy every time. I bet you're just happy to have repeat work." I wasn't. To me, repeat work meant that I wasn't doing my job right. I simply nodded in response. I typed the code into the elavator pad, so it would take me to the mainframe room. Once I hit enter I waited a moment and the prompt monitor told me that the code was wrong. I stepped out of the elevator and was about to ask what the new code was, but before I could say anything I heard a loud cracking sound.

          As I rounded the corner that led to the foyer I saw one of the doctors standing over the clerk with his large white hands wraped around his now broken neck. I was about to ask what was going on, but before I said anything I noticed that their were several doctors who were going around the room and doing the same to the oddly docile patients. I simply ran back down the hall.

          I had no idea where I would be going, but I knew that I had to fix this somehow. The one time I actually needed to be thinking I couldn't my mind was still replaying the repeated neck snapping over  and over again. In my mad sprint I noticed an abandoned nurses station. I stopped to check the computer that would undoubtedly be on the counter of the station, hoping that it would hold a clue as to what had happened. Just as I logged onto the computer the thought occurred to me that it was strange that I hadn't seen anyone since I left the waiting room. I hacked the security system from the nurses station, and started flipping through the many cameras that were placed in each room, and hallway. Not a single person was anywhere except for the waiting room. The doctors were in a row, each with a line of patients in front of them. The doctors were snapping their necks one at a time, and the nurses were carting the corpses off to god knows where.  As gazed at the screen I realized that as they ran out of patients in their line the doctors were leaving, not leaving but going down the halls, surely to find more victims.

          Running out of the nurse's station I still had no idea on how to resolve this. I ran into one of the doctors. He asked “ Are you a patient ?” as I began running one of the patients stepped out of a room and walked up to the doctor, but before the he could say anything to the doctor his neck had been snapped. I wasn't stupid and had no intentions on standing there to ask him why he had gone crazy, or why the staff had gone nuts. I just ran thinking that I was gonna die here.

          I thought that maybe I could find a clue in the mainframe room whose code had been changed. Now the only problem was getting that code. As I rounded yet another corner I bumped a surgeon, who said “Are you a patient” I was silent “ designating patient idea. Number 00001.” He lurched towards me with murderous intent. I snatched the heavy duty flashlight off my belt clip, and swung at him. He fell to the ground, and I kept hitting him over and over again just to make sure he was dead. I checked his pockets while wondering what he had said. All I had heard was a loud droning sound. Yes! He had a code on him, and I just hoped that it was the code. I found an elevator after running down a few more eerily silent halls. I punched his code into the prompt machine. It buzzed in acceptance, and the elevator began to move.

          As the door slid open I realized that any number of deranged doctors could already be down here. I walked towards the comically large monitor in the middle of the room. Slowly and cautiously walking towards it as deliberately as I could. On the screen I saw a huge message on it that read “Master directive initiated. Sending liquidation orders to all implanted medical staff” What could that mean. Brrrshk. The power went out, and judging by the volume of the sound even the backups went out. I was trapped.

          Before anything else could go wrong I stumbled around looking for the service stairs. As I ran up them to the first door I could find I could hear people walking through the walls. I reached for a door but it opened before I reached it. A crazed doctor stood behind it, and I could see more of his newly twisted ilk behind him. I kept running up those long long stairs. Each door opened as I came near it, so I kept going and going. I thought I would die before I got anywhere safe, but I finally reached a door that was opened prior to my presence. It lead to the roof. I ran to each edge looking to see if any building was within a non-fatal jumping range, their were none.

          I turned to face the door when I heard it opening. At least fifty doctors were standing in front of me in perfect formation. One of them stepped forward “Day, Patrick I hope you had a pleasant stay at my hospital. It looks as if you were our last patient...”

By: Samuel L Bryant.