Something’s out here with us
Last weekend one of my friends brought up the idea of camping, at first I was opposed to it as it’s fall and cold outside and the idea of having to sleep in a tent with another person just didn’t seem appealing.
But when all 5 of us talked about it I realized that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. We decided to do it next weekend, aka now.
This morning we went out and bought everything we needed, tents, snakes, a lighter and a couple of more things that don’t need mentioning.
We decided it would be best to do it in the woods 2 hours away from any road or houses, I was particularly upset about that as anything could happen from some random person attacking us to a bear sneaking in our tents. But we’d have our car parked on the nearest road so if anything did happen we could just run to it, at least that’s what some others said. I brought up the fact it’s a 2 hour walk but of course I was ignored.
We drove as far as we could before we got out to start walking, I noticed a few things. First of all, no sound of wildlife. No crickets no birds no nothing making sound. And it felt odd, like something was slightly off.
I chalked it up to my nerves acting up, and ignored it.
“Where should we set the rents up at?” Rob asked, taking a puff of his joint.
“Right over there looks good,” Nate replied, motioning for Rob to pass it to him, “Who’s setting it up?”
After a little conversation we decided Dan and Murphy could do it while the rest of us goes out to see if we can find any squirrels to hunt.
I doubted it, it didn’t exactly seem like this place was crawling with wildlife.
“Grab my riffle would ya?” I grabbed it and threw it at him, don’t worry it wasn’t loaded yet, he catches it saying a quick thanks and off we went.
We were out for hours looking to no avail, there was absolutely nothing. I didn’t even see any bugs.
“Maybe we should go on back now we can eat the stuff we brought,” I suggested, Rob and Nate stopped walking to which I assumed meant they agreed, we turned back around and started walking back towards camp.
A couple of minutes of walking I heard a sound, it was quiet but we all heard it. We stopped walking to look around, behind us there was a deer. Except.. it wasn’t normal, its horns were growing out of its mouth, and it had 5 legs. I had never seen anything like it before, but I’ve heard of it. Deformed deers, I wasn’t too worried. We decided not to kill it because we definitely weren’t about to eat it, being too worried about catching some type of disease.
I wondered though, how long has that deer been following us? Being so silent that we hadn’t even noticed it?
We made it back to camp about an hour later, we ended up eating some cans of chili we brought with us. We cooked it over the fire we made.
The 5 of us were sharing tents, 2 in one and 3 in another.
I was sharing with Nate; Robert, Murphy, and Dan were in the other.
We stayed up for a few more hours singing songs and drinking beer before we headed off to bed.
I fell asleep about a hour after laying down.
Click click click click
I woke up to a clicking noise, it took me a second to register what was happening. I assumed it was one of the guys doing something, but just in case I grabbed my gun and unzipped the tent.
I froze.
The deer from before was standing outside my tent, its mouth moving weirdly. Its teeth were clicking against each other every few seconds from the weird movement.
‘It followed us all the way back? How did we not notice..’
I zipped the tent back and tried to ignore it, needless to say I got no sleep that night.
The next morning all 6 of us decided to stay one more thing before packing up to leave.
It was weird I felt like something was messing with my mind, that my brain wasn’t working correctly. I was scared I just didn’t know what of.
Me, Dan, Nate, Robert, Murphy, and… wait, and? What was I talking about? There was only.. 5, no, 6 of us. Wait 6?
Never mind it’s not important.
I spend all evening wondering what was wrong with my mind, I could tell the others felt the same way.
That night all 6 of us went to sleep, 3 in one and 3 in another.
I was with Nate and.. someone.
Something felt wrong but I just couldn’t put my foot on it.
That night I woke up to the same clicking noise as last night, this time from inside the tent. I was too scared to move, had the deer somehow made it into the tent?
However, I felt Nate shift to get up.
“What-?” I heard him say before he went silent cutting off whatever he was about to say.
“What the hell?” I heard him say, again, slightly louder this time.
I felt something move on my left side which was strange because Nate was on my right side.
“OH- OH SHIT!” I heard before I felt someone (?) leap over me onto Nate.
I woke up the next morning, panting. ‘Was it all a dream?’ I wondered.
All 5 of us packed up to leave, something still felt wrong.
No.
One of us felt wrong.
Nate was off, he talked the same and acted the same but it was the way he looked.
Have you ever heard of uncanny valley?
Like that, I know something was off but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
I ignored it.
And with that all 5 of us walked to the car, got in and took off.
I couldn’t help but feel like i made a mistake, like I was about to unleash something unholy into the town we live in, like I did something bad.