The flames of the campfire were burning high at the heart of Camp Wanapoke, casting all of our features in a flickering orange glow. We sat on large wooden logs which had been cut to make crude stools and the one beneath me was wobbling back and forth on the uneven ground as I listened to the camp counselors telling their stories. The sky above was full of stars and no moon was out that night, making the forest all around us even darker than usual.

“So remember, boys. If you’re ever out on a hike in the woods at night and you hear a voice calling to you from deep inside the forest, telling you to come closer, speaking in the voice of a friend or family member… Don’t follow that sound. Don’t listen to the voices. Make sure you stay on the path, and run back home before you come face to face with… THE WAMPALUNG!”

An ember popped loudly in the fire and one or two boys jumped from their seats, gasping. But mostly the kids’ faces surrounding me did not look impressed.

The grown ups are doing what grown ups do best, I thought to myself. They’re trying to terrify us before bedtime, telling stories of creatures in the forest that come out at night.

Except most of us weren’t buying their bullshit.

Maybe if we’d believed them, none of this would have happened. Maybe they’d all still be alive.

But we were arrogant. We all thought we knew better.

“You guys are just trying to scare us,” Billy called out indignantly, interrupting the story. Suddenly it was dead silent around the circle, and the only sounds were crickets and the crackle of the fire.

“Yeah, ain’t no such thing as monsters! My parents told me there ain't,” another kid chimed in.

The camp counselors were sitting passively, listening to the objections, but their faces didn’t change. They looked stern and serious - in stark contrast to the happy-go-lucky demeanors we’d been used to seeing all week. Their solemn eyes reflected the flames as they tried again to convince us.

“Your parents have never been to camp Wanapoke,” one of the counselors named Chris responded. “If they had, they’d confirm that what we’re telling you is true. I know you guys think we’re just trying to scare you, but that’s not what this is.”

“My parents went to camp here, and so did my brother! They never said anything about Wampalungs,” Greg said. He and I were sitting next to each other - we’d become close friends over the past week at summer camp and had vowed to keep in touch after we both went home.

“That’s because you’re not supposed to speak of the Wampalung. If you talk about them, that’s when they come out from the forest.”

“So then why say anything, if it’s just going to lure them out?” Billy asked, his voice argumentative.

“We debated not telling you all. But it’s a moonless night and that’s their favourite time to hunt. Especially when the weather is warm like it is tonight. The two of us decided it was worth the risk to warn you kids - since it’s the last night of camp a lot of kids like to go out in the forest and get into trouble. That would be a risky proposition tonight, understand? These creatures are dangerous as hell.”

One kid on the other side of the fire said something under his breath which elicited laughter from a dozen campers over there, but I didn’t hear what it was exactly. The roar of the fire and the muttering of other campers drowned it out. But I got the feeling the counselors heard it, and didn't like what was said.

“That's it,” shouted Zach, the sterner of the two counselors. “Nobody leaves their cabins tonight, for any reason! Got it? End of story. If you need to take a leak, use an empty water bottle.”

We all groaned and the sound of complaining rose up into the night air, growing louder and louder with each passing second.

Zach silenced it quickly with his patented two-fingered whistle - the screech of it piercing our ears and causing each of us to quiet down.

“End of story,” he said again with finality.

We returned to our bunks, whispering quietly amongst ourselves as we walked through the forest, trying to figure out whether we were being played.

It might have been my imagination, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was being watched - as if there were eyes observing me from the darkness of the forest. Every shape and shadow in the trees was a little bit suspicious now, and I found myself jumping at the sound of rustling leaves and the flap of bat wings as one screeched above me.

Finally we made it to the clearing full of small shacks that served as sleeping quarters. Four of us were in each cramped cabin and we parted ways as all of the groups went to their own bunks for the night.

Greg and I were in one cabin with two other guys named Billy and Tim. It was Billy who got us into so much trouble, I realize now, looking back. If not for him we probably would have just stayed inside for the rest of the night like we were supposed to.

“You guys don’t really believe that bullshit, do you,” Billy said mockingly, once we were inside. “Wampalungs and dead campers? Pfft, come on, give me a break!”

I had been feeling halfway convinced about the stories being true. But something about the way he said that made me wonder if it really had just been a hoax.

As a kid with an older brother who loved to make up tall tales, I had been fooled more than once before. So many times I’d found myself buying into my older brother's lies only to find out later that it was all bullshit.

“If someone told you the word ‘gullible’ was written on the ceiling, you’d look up,” my old brother had told me once, laughing at me for believing his most recent fraud.

So now I found myself wondering if that was what was happening again. Was this just another Santa Claus situation? Was the Wampalung like the Easter Bunny? Except instead of bringing chocolate eggs he decapitated kids?

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said hesitantly. “There’s no such thing as the Wampalung. It’s all just a story.”

Billy’s eyes were mean and he looked at me with a sneer.

“Ha! You say that now, but I saw you out there at the campfire. You were eating up every word of that bullshit they were feeding us!”

“Give him a break,” said Greg, getting into bed on the lower bunk. “None of us really believed that crap. Let’s just get some sleep.”

I started getting into my bunk as well but Billy would have none of that.

“You guys are so dumb. I can’t believe you really bought that load of shit. What a bunch of idiots.”

Greg leapt back up out of bed, looking angry.

“Just drop it, man! We didn’t believe the stupid story!”

“Oh yeah? Well, prove it! Let’s go out in the forest and I want to hear the two of you say its name."

"What the hell is that supposed to prove!?"

"They said it comes out when you call its name, right? So, you say ‘Wampalung’ three times out loud and I’ll believe you. Otherwise I say you’re both chicken-shit losers with no guts.”

"Wampalung, Wampalung, Wampalung! There! Are you happy!?"

"Not here. Out in the forest. We're gonna go for a little hike, you pansies."

“Yeah right, this is so stupid. I don’t need to prove anything to you,” Greg turned around and walked back to his bunk.

“Just what I thought. Gutless losers.”

Tim stood up next to him and pitched in with another outdated attempt at mocking us.

“Ha, look at the pussies, hiding inside, scared of the big bad Wampalung,” he laughed.

Greg and I exchanged a look. We both nodded at each other reluctantly. Neither one of us wanted to be called a coward. It was somehow even worse than being called gullible. And nobody wanted to go to their grave being seen as chicken-shit.

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go. But you guys are gonna say it too. Three times, just like us. Otherwise how do we know you’re not scared?”

Billy’s eyes hardened.

“Great,” he said. “Perfect. Let’s go. You guys lead the way.”

He held the door open for us. Greg and I got up reluctantly and put on our shoes. Tim and Billy did the same.

“You can lead the way,” I said, grabbing the door from Billy. “This is your idea, dickhead. You go first. We’ll be right behind you.”

Billy gulped, suddenly looking a little more nervous. I began to get the feeling he had thought we’d back down. Tim’s eyes were darting around the trees as he stepped down onto the grass, and we followed after them.

If they had been worried, they put on brave faces again a second later, stomping into the woods and glancing back to make sure we were following.

“Come on,” Greg said. “Let’s get this over with.”

We marched through the trees, deeper and deeper into the forest. It was pitch black outside and none of us had brought a flashlight, I realized, as it became more and more difficult to see.

With each step forward I grew more and more uneasy. I kept getting the distinct feeling that I was being watched again. And not just from one place, but from several different locations. It was like a tingling sensation on my skin that grew more and more intense as we ventured further into the darkness of the woods.

The trees began pressing in around us and suddenly I found myself tripping over roots and shrubs and getting tangled in vines. Muddy ground threatened to swallow my shoes with each step, trying to pull them from my feet.

"Where's the path?" Billy asked, looking down. He started turning and wandering around, trying to locate the dirt path we had been following. "It was right here. We were on the path a second ago…"

“We’ll just backtrack,” said Tim. “C’mon let’s get this over with already.”

He was looking around nervously and then his eyes settled on me.

“Well, go ahead. Do it! Say the name.”

I stood there nervously, looking around for any signs of movement nearby. As far as I could tell, we were alone.

“Are you sure about this,” Greg said suddenly. “We don’t need to do this for real. Do we?”

Hesitating, I was about to agree with him, when Billy interjected.

“Ha! I knew you guys were pussies! Check it out, losers. There’s nothing but a bunch of frickin’ crickets out here!”

He took a couple steps away from us and then cupped his hands around his mouth.

“WAMPALUNG, WAMPALUNG, WAMPALUNG! Hey, come and get it! Fresh meat, right this way! I hope you like chicken!”

Then he turned around and smiled at us, looking very proud of himself.

“See? Told you idiots. There’s no such thing as…"

He broke off suddenly at the sound of a dry twig snapping somewhere a little ways away.

"What the hell was that? Did you guys hear that?”

Another odd sound came from the woods nearby which I couldn’t place. It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard before. There was a sound of cracking branches high in the trees after that and I realized it was someone or something very tall moving towards us.

Whatever it was, it was moving fast.

"What the hell is that?" Greg asked, backing up.

"I don't know. But whatever it is, it doesn't sound like a person."

A scream suddenly came from the trees to our left - sounding like a man in terrible pain and anguish. Someone crying out in distress and hurt. His voice sounded familiar.

But then a second later that scream broke off into insane laughter.

"This way, guys. Over here," a voice said from the right.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Billy said. “It kinda sounds like… Zach. The camp counselor”

He was the one who had warned us about the Wampalung. Only his voice now sounded different. Darker. And strained, as if trying very hard to sound normal but failing.

"All you have to do is take a few steps from where you are, over towards me, and you'll be safe. Huh ha! C'mon, guys. You know me. Come over this way. It's safe."

The voice was persistent and friendly, but there was an undertone of something unpleasant underneath. An impatience which hinted at an urgent need left unfulfilled for too long.

A hunger left unsated.

"Come - ERK - here…. Now!"

The voice was breaking apart now, devolving into something strangled, animalistic, and difficult to discern. An alien tongue which was unlike our own. Like a jackal trying to talk.

Zach's face suddenly appeared in the shadows, walking steadily towards us. But there was something very wrong with him. I couldn't tell what it was at first, it was so dark and difficult to see in that forest with no moon.

As he drew closer, though, I saw why he looked so surreal.

His strides were stilted and unnatural, his body far too tall, too slender and dark, lacking features of any kind except for on his face. When I took in his visage more closely I saw it was slack and emotionless, like a corpse's face inside a coffin.

The body beneath him was not his own, I realized. His form was black so that it blended perfectly with the shadows of the forest. Whatever this thing was, it was wearing Zach’s head like a hat, and using it as a disguise.

It looked to me like a nightmare creature made of black ink and shadow. With no moonlight to illuminate the thing it made it even more terrifying. Only glimpses of it could be seen in the darkness, while the floating head of our camp counselor sat atop its swirling liquid form.

“Are you boys looking for the Wampalung?” Zach’s dead face asked, his jaw making painful crunching sounds with each word. Blood poured from his mouth, dribbling down his chin. “You shouldn’t be scared of it. You should embrace it. Become part of the Wampalung, boys. Join the liquid shadows of the forest. That way you’ll never have to leave Camp Wanapoke. You can stay here forever.”

His words devolved into a garbling jumble and he ducked behind a tree, vanishing completely.

It was totally silent in the woods for a few moments except for the sounds of our rapid, terrified breathing. But then I heard movement coming from all around us. Slithering sounds like snakes approaching on the ground. And its words came from every direction, like a thousand voices speaking at once.

“I can show it to you! I can introduce you! Don’t you want to become one with us? In the darkness we all become as one.”

I looked down and recoiled when I saw a puddle of black inky sludge spreading out towards me from the shadows of the forest. It rolled in towards me with a dreadful power teeming beneath the surface of it, electric like a thunder storm’s static in the air.

“What is that shit!?” Billy screamed, seeing the same thing that I was now observing - a spreading flood of malignant darkness getting closer by the second.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” I yelled back, feeling hysterical - on the brink of a complete panic attack. All ability to reason was gone and my fight or flight mode had kicked into overdrive - and I wasn’t the only one.

“Run!” Greg shouted, trying to avoid stepping on the encroaching puddles of darkness which were now moving in closer on all sides.

There was only one way to go, I saw. And it meant going even deeper into the forest. Further away from the camp and from safety.

The four of us bolted from the trees into a clearing, running as fast as we could away from that spot. When I looked back over my shoulder I saw the twisted shadow figure regaining its shape and standing upright again. It began chasing after us with a lopsided, shuffling gait. The thing was bulbous and deformed - laboring with each movement, like an escaped bipedal python after consuming a beloved housepet.

The shadow-creature was malformed and stretched out in places, while looking bloated and almost bursting in other spots. The whole appearance of it was wrong - hurting the eyes and making my brain feel scrambled every time I stared for too long. It reminded me of that old anime movie “Akira.” I didn’t want to look at it but I had to. I couldn’t turn away.

“Come back, boys,” Zach’s decapitated head shouted after us, still in a twisted imitation of his own voice. “I just want to help… Want to…. Wampalung, wampalung, wampalung…”

It began a strange chanting incantation and I saw more tendrils of darkness leaking out from the treeline all around us. The creature was calling to its own, drawing out more of its power.

The sound of that ominous chanting began to come from the trees all around us, joining the creature’s sickening voice. A low noise like rumbling thunder in the distance, repeating that dark word over and over again until it no longer had any meaning.

“This way! We can try to circle back towards camp,” Greg said, pointing off to the right where a path was visible. It looked familiar, and I hoped he was right.

The trees closed in again as we ducked through their boughs, out of the clearing and onto the path. Dark chants and heavy footfalls could be heard in pursuit, not far behind. And then there was the ominous sound of tree boughs breaking and snapping as something much larger than any of us chased us through the forest.

Entire trees were soon collapsing in its wake, the thing gaining on us with each passing second, like a tsunami wave that we could not outrun.

I was terrified to look back, knowing that it was just a few steps behind. I could hear its breath wheezing in and out with crackling gasps.

Billy tripped over a root and before I even realized what had happened I had passed by him.

Then the sounds of him being consumed by the Wampalung could be heard sickeningly behind us. His bones crunched as he let out a howling cry of agony.

I managed to look back for a second and saw the shadow-form of the Wampalung crouching over him, feeding on his flesh and tearing it from his bones. The thing seemed to absorb Billy’s very essence, pulling him into the black tar of its form and subsuming him. He wailed and screamed, the pitch of his voice going higher as he was eaten alive.

Only his head was kept whole and intact, and the creature added it to its collection, grasping it by the temples and holding it up to us like a trophy as we escaped.

Only we hadn't really escaped. We were only running deeper and deeper into the darkness of the forest.

Into ITS territory.

"I think we're safe. It's gone," Greg said as we sat catching our breath behind a tree.

"I don't know, man. It could still be out here anywhere. Just don't say the name. Whatever you do, don't say the name."

We'd been running for twenty minutes or more and now I had absolutely no idea where we were. The forest looked the same in every direction and no way looked safer or better than any other. The way back towards camp was also the way back towards the creature. Even in my mind I didn't want to consider its name, fearing it would somehow still draw it to us.

"What the hell do we do? We can't just keep running. Who knows how far out into the wilderness we could end up. If we don't die from that THING, then we'll die from being stuck out here without food or water!"

He made a good point.

"Let's try backtracking. Maybe we can find our way back to the path. Maybe it's gone now."

"Good idea. Hey, did you see Tim? I thought he was with us."

"I thought he was right behind you."

We both looked around nervously.

"Shit."

Tim was nowhere to be seen. He was just gone.

"Maybe he turned back already. Hopefully we'll catch up with him."

The two of us began moving quietly in the direction of the campsite. At least, we were pretty sure we were heading back towards the campsite, it was difficult to know for certain.

Each step I took seemed so loud in the stillness of the forest. Each twig snapping underfoot sounding like a gunshot being fired. The crunching leaves made me wince with every movement.

For a good twenty minutes or more we walked on eggshells, terrified of every shadow and every sound in the darkness.

After a while I started to wonder if maybe we’d missed the camp completely, and if we were now walking far past our destination, wandering deeper and deeper into the wilderness with each passing second.

I breathed a sigh of relief when eventually we came into a clearing and I saw the silhouettes of the cabins up ahead. The lights were all off as the inhabitants slept inside. The other campers and counselors were still unaware of the bloodbath which had just occurred a few hundred yards away.

I ran up to the door of the cabin on the far left, which was slightly larger than the others. It was where the camp counselors stayed.

If there was ever a moment when I needed a grown-up, this was it.

I raced up to the door and was about to knock and start yelling, waking up the camp, when I heard a sound coming from the forest behind me.

"Psst, over here!" a voice called from the darkness. It sounded like Tim.

Had the Wampalung gotten him too? Was it now using his voice to lure us away from safety?

“Come here!”

I ignored it and began hammering on the door, and a second later I heard movement coming from inside.

"Chris! Help! That thing got Zach! It got Billy and Tim! Let us in, please!"

Someone came to the door on the other side and I heard it begin to open up, a voice speaking softly from inside.

"What got them? What are you talking about?"

My heart was hammering in my chest as I realized suddenly that there was something wrong. Something was off about all of this.

The cabin in front of me was too dark - as if it had been constructed of shadow and black ink instead of wood. Its surface reflected the stars and was cool, slick, and unpleasant to the touch.

"What got them?" repeated the voice from the shadow cabin. "Say its name."

I began to back away when I heard the voice calling from the woods again, in Tim's voice, clear and true.

"Run! It's not real!!!"

With that the entire mirage of the cabin dissolved and I fell several feet into the dirt from where I had been standing.

A dark form stood over me, leaning above my face with malicious-looking eyes. It was about to kill me, I was sure of it. Only I wouldn’t just die, I would become part of that terrible thing which lived forever and fed on innocents. A thing which existed only to hate and cause harm. A thing which lived in darkness and could not exist in the light.

That was when it hit me.

It needed the darkness…. That was why it lured us out so far. Why it only hunted before the moon had risen.

I didn’t have a flashlight, but I did have one other source of light with me. Part of being a scout was being prepared, and that meant being ready to build a fire if you needed to.

As the thing came within inches of my face, I struggled to pull the pack of matches from my pocket. Pulling several free at once, I pinched the matchbook's abrasive strip around them and raked the match-heads against it, setting them ablaze in my hand. They burnt my fingers badly but I didn’t even notice at the time, the sting of that feeling insignificant compared to the terror of what I was facing.

“RRRREEEEEEeeeeee!!!

The Wampalung snapped backwards as if hit by a semi truck, rolling and then crab walking away, injured, towards the treeline. Its skin blistered and bubbled - pustules on the surface popping and sending steam hissing into the night air.

Without wasting one more moment of time, Greg and I ran to join Tim where he was hiding.

The three of us ran from there, not sure if we had overshot the camp or had simply not walked far enough. We took a risk and kept heading the same direction we were going before, hoping that the Wampalung was gone for now.

A few minutes later we saw the lights up ahead and realized this time it was the actual campsite. No more tricks or illusions.

We began to scream for help as one light after another flipped on in the camp, glowing brighter in the darkness.

I made it home alive. But to this day I see the shadows bend and twist sometimes, as if that thing is still watching me. From the darkness of my bedroom closet or the space behind the shower curtain, anywhere there is a shadow, I hear a vague murmur of:

Wampalung, wampalung, wampalung.

JG

TCC