That was the one rule stressed by our principal before leaving. See, at the end of 11th and 12th grade at my school, right before graduation, our school had a huge weekend trip for the students. 4 days(Thursday-Sunday), in a beautiful cabin resort. In the winter, it acted as a ski resort, but during the off season, it wasn’t uncommon for schools to rent out the whole resort for a weekend. Although usually rented by preppy private schools, the owners/founders were the in laws of our principal, so we’ve gotten a massive discount the last 13 years our principal has been here.
The place was big enough for my entire school, so we were stoked that we could have it all to ourselves. 320 of us went, only about 20-30 kids stayed behind. It would have been 321, but a kid I knew named Chase got pulled out last second by his mom.
Why this trip was so special for us was the lack of chaperoning. With so many kids, and only 10 teachers going, we were essentially left on our own. We had a group chat that only teachers could text in through our schools grading app. We could also message each teacher privately, in case of a question or emergency.
We all packed our luggage into the busses at school after saying bye to our parents. Right as we were about to leave, our principal gathered us around to make his yearly speech. How he was proud of us, how this is a big moment, etcetera. He reminded us of our assigned lodging, and said the most important rule was, under no circumstances, should we leave the resort and go into the woods alone. Not at night, not during the day, never. This seemed obvious, as we would be too busy running around and having fun to care about the woods.
Luckily for me, I got lodged with my best friend, Ray. Me and Ray were practically brothers, so us lodging together made sense to us. On weekends growing up, we practically lived together, especially during summer. The room next to us was occupied by Lea and Maggie. Maggie was basically Ray’s mom, always taking care him and cleaning up his messes. We all knew he liked her secretly, but she wasn’t into him like that.
Lea had been my childhood crush. We went to school dances, movies, roller rink and carnival “not dates” together for years. Anytime someone accused us of liking each other, we would yell “NO OF COURSE NOT”. This year, however, if someone asked one of us if we were dating, we’d say “I wanna wait til graduation , then we will”.
Our rooms being right next to each other was the talk of the school. She was the popular cheerleader type, and I was the class clown, who had a massive glow up last year. We were, in the words of my art teacher, a match made in a confusing heaven.
The drive up to the resort took about 3.5 hours. Me and Lea sat next to each other, listening to music and watching YouTube videos the whole way up. When we got there, all of us were in awe of how massive the resort was.
It looked to be the size of an amusement park. There was a pool and hot tub, a movie theatre, a giant field bordering the woods. There were multiple buffets and restaurants, ice cream parlors, and even a bar. Me, Ray, Lea, and Maggie all walked up to our rooms. We got rooms right over the slopes, with beautiful views of the mountain and surrounding forest. We even had our own balconies looking over the 854 foot drop of the mountain.
We got up there around 5:30, so we all decided to go grab dinner together. We chose the buffet, and had some of the best food of our lives. I don’t think we’d ever felt this grown up before.
Later that night, Ray let me know he was gonna go hang out with his teammates from the football team. I knew that meant he was probably crashing on someone’s floor, so I told him that I’d tell a teacher he went to the bathroom when they came to check before they went to sleep. There were 2 or 3 teachers on each floor, who would do a sweep around midnight before “lights out”. I messed up his bed sheets, and threw a pair of his clothes at the foot of his bed to make it look like he’d been here all night.
At around 11:30, one of our floor’s teachers knocked on our door, and my plan worked perfectly. Five minutes later, another knock came, and when I opened it expecting it to be Ray, caught by a teacher, I was surprised to see Lea.
She asked me if I saw Maggie after dinner, and I said she was probably watching over Ray, who’s gonna be out all night. She asked if we could hang out before she goes to sleep, and I said yes. We laid down in pajamas and watched one of our favorite movies: Pulp Fiction. I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, Ray barreled into the room.
“Bro Stevie guess- WOAHHHH,”. I’m guessing me and Lea fell asleep around the same time, because we woke up next to each other.
“Jeez way to wait until graduation . Anyways, you… two aren’t gonna believe this,”.
“What, Ray?” I said, full of embarrassment.
“Okay well first off, I won’t tell anyone about this”, he said, waving his hand towards us. “But last night, I was with the football team, right? And we were outside at like, 2:30 throwing the football. And all of a sudden, we heard whispers coming from the woods,”.
“Sure it wasn’t the wind?” asked Lea, half awake and still startled by Ray barging in.
“That’s what we all said. ‘Must be the wind’. Until we heard it start saying Josh’s name. I’m no wind expert, but I don’t think I’ve heard it make J and SH sounds before. I even heard it whisper my… ” he trailed off.
“Huh, yeah that’s weird. Did you guys figure it out?” I asked.
“No, not yet. Tonight, we’re gonna go out and play football and see if it happens again,”.
“Okay, does that mean-,” I started to ask.
“Yup, you two lovebirds get the room to yourselves. See ya guy-“
“WAIT!!” Lea sprung up outta bed and ran over to Ray. “Did you see Maggie at all?”
“Oh yeah, she was with us last night. She left early though, no idea where she is now.”
Me and Lea woke up and decided to go on a run, half spending time together, half looking for Maggie. We ran around the edge of the resort. At one point, we both stopped. We swore that we had heard someone whisper Maggie’s name. We looked around, but no one was there. When we got back to the lobby, an hour later, we saw Maggie sitting alone in the buffet area. We walked up and tried talking to her, but she just sat there, unresponsive.
She had the thousand yard stare, but this was scarier. The whole energy around her just felt… off. We ran into Josh later that day, and he said Maggie got super freaked out by something and ran off around 2:00 in the morning. We asked him about the wind next, and he seemed to become uncomfortable just thinking about it.
“I wonder if they’re related,” said Lea.
“Who?” I asked, very confused. I was too focused on the chicken parm I ordered for dinner.
“Not who, dummy. The two events. Maggie getting freaked out, and Josh hearing his name. You saw how freaked out he was,”. I could hear her starting to get a little spooked herself.
“Maybe, maybe not. Who knows. All I know is, under no circumstance, do I want any part of that.”
Just then, we saw Maggie from where we sat at the restaurant. She was walking outside to the field. I assumed she was going to meet up with Ray again, so we decided to try and catch up to her. When we got out there, she was nowhere in sight. Creeped out by this, me and Lea decided another movie night was in order to calm us down.
We got back to my room, laid down, and started watching Pirates of The Caribbean. After the movie was done, we went out on the balcony to enjoy the last few moments of the sunset. Looking around, something caught my eye.
“Lea, do you have your camera?” I was hoping she brought it with her to the balcony to take a few pictures. She always loved capturing those type of moments.
“Yeah, why?”
“Can I borrow it real quick?” I asked. She gave me the camera, and I zoomed the lens to see it clearer. My blood ran cold, as I saw someone standing in the middle of the forest, looking right up at me. My hands started to shake, and I couldn’t get a clear picture.
“Stevie, what is it? You’re scaring-“
“Quick, zoom in right over there,” I said, pointing towards where I could see the person. Lea almost screamed, so I knew I wasn’t seeing things. She calmed herself enough, and steadied her hands and got a clear picture. When we looked at the picture, we saw Maggie. Her skin was pale as a ghost, and her eyes had trails of blood streaming out of them. It took everything in me to not throw up my chicken parm. When we looked back, she was gone.
We quickly raced to find a teacher, but none of them believed us. Pranks on teachers were common on the trip, especially about the woods. They said “We have security cameras on every gate out of here, we would know if someone left. Plus, I don’t even know who that is,”.
Frustrated, we decided to go back to try and find her again. When we got back to the balcony, we weren’t able to find Maggie. We did, however, see Ray, Josh, and the football team arguing. Josh and Ray seemed to be yelling at the rest of the team, trying to get to a wall that leads to the woods.
“Shit we gotta go,” I said. It seemed Lea read my mind, because within 5 seconds, we were sprinting down the three flights of stairs to the lobby. We didn’t bother waiting for an elevator. When we got out to the field, Ray and Josh were closer to the wall. The team was the only thing that stood between them and the wall.
“Ray!” I shouted. “What’re you-“
“It’s no use,” shouted back one of his teammates. “They aren’t responding to anything.”
“Get out of the way you asshole!” yelled Josh, punching another teammate in the jaw. This lead to three of them rushing Josh and Ray, but the three went down in the blink of an eye. I sprinted over to Ray and tried to grab him, but he shoved me to the ground, hard.
“Back off, you dweeb” he shouted. As I was getting up, I saw Josh had started climbing over the wall, and Ray was getting ready to follow. In an act of adrenaline filled stupidity, I tackled Ray to the ground. He, being about 3 inches taller and twice my weight, pushed me off with ease, and jumped up and started climbing. Josh had made it over at this point, and Ray had just reached the top. In a last ditch effort, I started climbing the wall. Lea shouted for me to stop, but there was no use. I wasn’t about to let my best friend do something so-
“Stevie…” I heard a voice whisper. “You are not invited, not yet. Leave.”
I shook it off, resisting the ungodly strong urge to turn back around, and kept climbing. I reached the top of the wall. Just as I did, I heard the loudest roar ever. My ears were ringing from the volume. This was enough to scare off the team, but not Lea. She climbed up right after me.
We could see Ray and Josh below us, a mere 10 foot drop. Right as we were about to go down to get them, we heard a rustle in the woods. That’s when we saw him… or it. Standing 7 feet in height, with muscles the size of my head, walked out a man. However, the hood that hid its head was horribly misshapen. When it pulled its hood down, I screamed.
It had the head of a ram, with two massive yellow eyes. Its mouth bore fangs sharper than anything I’d ever seen. Ray looked at us, tears in eyes. I could tell he wasn’t in control, but I could still see my bestfriend, my brother trapped in there. After yet another roar, it ran towards them and snatched them, dragging them into the woods. Their screams filled the eerily quiet air, and I watched in horror as it threw Josh down, lifted Ray up, and bit down on his neck. It dragged them out of sight, and the eerie silence returned. Me and Lea ran back inside, bursting into our teacher’s room.
When we explained the situation, the teacher looked confused. She told us that there were no Maggie, Ray, and Josh on the trip. In fact, the only Maggie she knew at this school graduated three years ago. When we showed them pictures, she had no idea who they were. The same went for every single teacher and student. The team had no idea who Josh and Ray were. The teachers never recalled having them in their classes. Everyone had forgotten about them. Everyone except me and Lea.
The rest of the trip, Lea and I cried together. We wondered how everyone forgot they existed, and how many students had been forgotten in the past. We just stayed in my room, hugged eachother, and never let go. When we got home, Ray and Maggie’s parents didn’t show up. When I went to Ray’s house, his family claimed to not know me, and claimed to never have a son named Ray.
Lea and I officially started dating after the trip. I think it was the tipping point that made us realize we needed each other. While the world forgot about our friends, we didn’t. Lea was haunted by fear , but I was enraged.
I’m writing this on the bus up the mountain. It’s been a year since I watched my best friend get murdered brutally. Despite Lea’s pleas, I’m going on my senior trip. And I’m going to find the beast that killed Ray, and I’m going to make it hurt for what happened. I resisted its whispers before, I know I can do it again. I just hope Lea doesn’t forget me if I fail. I can’t help but remember what it said:
“You are not invited, not yet.”