Amber hoped it was her imagination, but it seemed unnaturally dark out tonight, even with the moon nearly full overhead. This close to the city, there were almost no stars, clouds gliding silently through the night like shreds of cotton dipped in ash. She scooted as close to the crackling fire as she could without toppling off the log she and Chelsea were sitting on, hating the smiles that had come over her brothers’ faces. Their parents had had to go out of town yet again, leaving the boys in charge of her and their cousin.
The skidding growl of a revving engine snapped through the night, echoing like thunder across the valley. Chelsea pressed herself up against Amber’s side, the girls clutching each other fearfully while James just laughed.
“Guess I don’t have to ask if you two heard that,” he commented with a smirk, then he shrugged carelessly. “It was probably just the drag racing that happens every weekend, though, nothing to be scared of. Although…”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. A patchy beard had started growing in, and he drew attention to it whenever he could.
“Ah, forget it,” he said at last, plucking a marshmallow from the bag beside him. “You two already look like you’re about to piss yourselves, no point in scaring you more.”
He glanced at Tommy, then speared his marshmallow on a red-handled toasting stick. The color stood out like fresh blood against his dark skin.
“S-Scare us about what,” Chelsea ventured, her arms shaking like her voice. “W-What are you talking about?”
Amber didn’t like the look that crossed Tommy’s face, but then she never had.
“We really should tell them, bro,” he told James. “How else will they know what to look out for?”
James simply watched his marshmallow, slowly turning it just above the flames. He pulled it away when it was a crispy golden brown, letting the passing breeze cool it before biting into the gooey treat.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. We can’t let them wander around if they don’t know the danger.”
“What danger?” Amber demanded. She had always hated it when the two played those games, it never led to anything but trouble. “Come on, you two, spit it out!”
Tommy opened one of their Hershey’s bars and began breaking it into squares, dropping them in a cup buried to the rim in ice in the small cooler on the log between them.
“We just mean Old Cutthroat Jones,” he started mysteriously. “You guys don’t know that story?”
Chelsea shook her head fast, strands of her wild black hair getting caught in Amber’s mouth. Tommy chuckled, stuck the empty wrapper in his pocket and leaned forward.
“Well, Carl Jones was a psychopath back in the sixties. He practically grew up in the insane asylums that were everywhere back then, at least until they were all closed down. The last time anyone remembered seeing him was a few weeks before Christmas in 1970, when he left on a motorcycle ride.”
He grabbed some sticks from their kindling pile, sparks flying as he tossed them in the flames, then stirred up the charcoal with a broken branch.
“He spent every night that winter hiding in the woods all along this very road,” he pointed to the old highway they had followed to the campsite. Though James’ bright orange Camero was right next to their tent, it had never looked so far away. “Waiting for cars to stop. Of course, they had to, since he rigged up spike strips with nails and rope to pop their tires. If they were adults, or families with little kids, he let them go, but not without leaving a sign that it was no accident. Of course, the police could never prove anything about them.”
He grabbed a graham cracker from the box by his feet and broke it neatly in half.
“The teenagers, though? Well, they were lucky if they made it back in their cars alive. No one knows why he targeted them, maybe it was because of all the girls who rejected him, the jocks who bullied him. Whatever the case, the second their backs were turned as they tried to change their tires, he’d snatch them, dragging them by their necks into the woods before anyone else realized what had happened.”
He set a square of chocolate on one half, and James layered it with another perfect marshmallow. Amber couldn’t help but think the strands of sticky goop trailing off the stick looked like the chicken bones she had soaked in vinegar in science class.
“Like I said, they were lucky if they made it back to the road alive,” he curled his other hand into a hook, the shadow looming wickedly across the girls. “Since it’s said he slashed them until their skin peeled off, and somehow, he was never caught.”
He set the other half of the cracker on top and smooshed it down, the chocolate oozing like the mud that had likely buried so many helpless victims. The squishy crunch when he bit slowly into the s’more sounded unnaturally sinister.
“The story is that he froze to death when that crazy blizzard hit, the one your class just learned about,” he looked pointedly at Chelsea. “But, since his body was never found, people started believing he was still out there, and that he’d just started making sure the bodies he created were never found, either.”
A dark grin spread across his face, the bits of white fluff stuck to his lips making him look rabid. Amber almost puked from how fast her heart was pounding in the dry back of her throat. She hadn’t realized until then that her mouth was hanging open, and she quickly clamped it shut.
“Of course, he had to die eventually, but everyone knows even that’s not enough to stop pure evil. There are nights, just like tonight, actually, where you can still spot him hiding in the woods, and a lot of families have reported their tires going mysteriously flat, all because of a puncture mark where the nail disappears as soon as they spot it.”
The silence after stretched on, even the frogs and crickets going still. Then that engine revved again, sounding closer, louder, angrier. The girls screamed, and the fire flared to sudden life, the flames towering before falling back to normal with a crackling hiss. The boys sat there, looking stunned, the angry accusation of their trick dying on Amber’s tongue when she saw the growing spot of blood on Tommy’s chest. He toppled forward, his head cracking on the stones surrounding the flames, his eyes vacant as blood pooled across the damp soil.
There was a low, guttural noise, and her terrified stare snapped toward her oldest brother. A crimson stream frothed and bubbled from his lips, clouding the tears that spilled down his cheeks. The large, gnarled hand gripping his shoulder shoved him sideways, a rusted hunting knife tearing him open from navel to hip, his intestines spilling out when he hit the dirt.
The face was broad, far older than any human should be, pale as snow and twisted in a manic glee. He ran a single finger along the stained, dripping blade gripped tightly in his fist, the force of his gaze freezing Amber’s blood. Chelsea screamed again, hugging her so tightly she could barely breathe.
“It’s too bad you girls just turned thirteen.”
The voice echoed like wind in a canyon, rasping like dead leaves up an empty street. The smile was two rows of rotted, broken teeth like unkempt gravestones.
“Too bad indeed.”