“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.”
We all tried our best to look appropriately terrified, but it was all mostly for show.
Jesse liked to write stories, but none of them were particularly scary.
The five of us were gathered around a flashlight in our bunkhouse, telling scary stories and generally just creeping each other out. Mike had a sack of junk food he had snuck in, Paul a bottle of pop, and we were enjoying being together more than we were enjoying the stories.
These were the moments that I looked forward to, the gathering of friends as we hung out for the summer.
I’ve been going to Blue Lake Summer Camp for about four years now, and what I look forward to the most was spending time with the friends I only get to see at camp. Jesse, Paul, Steve, Mike, and I had all started going to the camp at the same time, and we had become fast friends ever since. They all lived in different places and didn’t go to school with me, so the only time I got to see them was at summer camp. I didn’t have a lot of friends at the school I went to, so I lived for their emails and the summers that I got to spend with them.
“That story sucks. “came a voice from the back.
We all looked up to see the sixth member of our cabin, Terry Woods, as he lay under his covers reading a comic book.
Terry had also been coming to the camp for as long as I can remember. He was a weird kid who never really got along with anyone. He’d been through four different cabins in four years, and I guess it was our turn to get him this year. He was quiet, didn’t really do sports, and just kind of seemed like a creep. He was constantly hiding in bushes and making people feel uncomfortable, and the counselors had even caught him peeking in bathrooms before. They talked about kicking him out every year, but every year he showed up with his bag and a check, so they let him stay.
It’s probably the only break his parents got from him all year, and who could begrudge them a little downtime?
Jesse turned to Terry and fixed him with a frustrated look.
Jesse hated hearing that his stories were lame, even though most of them were.
“All right then, smart guy. You come tell us a story. Show us what a real scary story sounds like.”
Terry seemed to think about it for a moment before putting down his comic book and walking over to sit on the bed with us. We made a space for him that was a little too big since none of us really wanted to sit next to him, and he looked down into the flashlight beam like it was a crackling campfire. The light made his pale skin look ghostly, and when Terry looked up, we all sat back a little bit in surprise. Terry looks like a corpse, and he seemed to know it.
“You guys ever heard the story of the Whisper Hole?”
I shook my head, but Paul nodded, “Some of the older scouts told me about it. It’s a hole in the woods where they say you can hear Indian ghosts or something. “
Terry nodded, grinning a little.
“Legend says that it’s not Indian ghosts in that hole. The story I heard was that long long ago, a bunch of superstitious farmers buried their kids out there to appease a forest spirit so he would give them a good crop. “
We all leaned in closer now, expecting a good story with a lead-up like that.
“When the land was first settled, and all the creek Indians were safely chased from the woods, the crops began to fail. An old woman, whom the townsfolk suspected was a witch, told the people that they had angered a forest spirit and now their crops would do badly. When they asked what they must do to bring their crops back, she said they must take one child for every year they had settled here and bury them in a deep hole in the woods. Only then would the crops grow again, and the spirit would be appeased.”
We had leaned in closer, our shadows magnified against the roof of the cabin.
“The townsfolk realized that this meant eight of their children would need to be sacrificed. So through a lottery, they decided which eight must be taken. The rich tried to buy their way out, and the poor tried to beg their way out, but in the end, those whose names were drawn were taken to the woods. They were led there by the witch woman and some of the men from the village. Suddenly, the ground opened up to accept their sacrifice, and they herded the children into it. When the last one fell into the earth, the forest erupted in a mighty roar.
The crops grew, and the town prospered.
But if the townspeople needed to be reminded of the price they had paid for their prosperity, they had only to visit the hole in the woods and hear the whispers of their children.
The town is gone now, but the hole whispers eternally.”
We sat in silence for a moment, all of us looking at each other as the story came to an end. Terry had created something special with this one, but none of us believed it. It was a story, plain and simple.
Or so we thought.
“Wow,” Jesse said, “I gotta give it to you, Terry. That was a great story.”
“Oh, it’s no story. That hole exists. I’ve been there.”
We were silent for a few seconds, then we began to laugh, thinking Terry was making a joke.
All of us except for Terry.
As the laughter died down, we all looked at his deadpan stare and realized he was serious.
“You wanna go?” Terry asked.
The five of us looked at each other. Did we want to go out into the woods with someone we didn’t quite trust and didn’t really like? I already figured I knew how the rest would answer, but when Jesse spoke up, it came as a bit of a surprise.
“Sure, let’s go see this Whispering Hole. You’re in, right?” he said, looking at me.”
I surprised even myself when I nodded, but three other heads shook almost at once.
Mike was afraid, “It could be dangerous out there. I don’t think I wanna go.”
Steve was condescending, “There’s no Whispering Hole. Terry’s just trying to play a trick on you guys.”
Paul was sensible, “We should all really get some sleep. Counselor Hank said there was gonna be a big hike tomorrow, and we won’t want to be tired for it.”
In the end, though, Jesse wouldn’t be turned away, and I certainly wasn’t going to let him go alone.
So, Terry, Jesse, and I snuck out of our cabin and trotted off into the woods with only the moon guiding us.
“So,” Jesse asked as we trudged into the woods, “where is this Whispering Hole?”
“Not far,” Terry said, leading the way as we went, “The Camp is actually pretty close to it. No more than a mile.”
Jesse balked at that.
“A mile? That could take us nearly an hour in the dark.”
Terry grinned that same jack-o-lantern grin.
“Then I guess you better start walking and stop talking.”
Then he headed into the woods, and it was either follow him or turn around.
At this point, turning around didn’t seem like much of an option, so Jesse and I went.
The woods were alive in a way that we had never seen during the day. I saw a large pair of eyes looming overhead a second before an owl took flight. The crickets hit a reeeing point that was close to eye-watering. The sounds of squirrels and birds were replaced by night creatures that were beginning their comings and goings. With the moon on high and the wind rustling the overhead canopy, we felt immersed in an alien world the deeper we went into the woods. This was different than the camping we did. This felt almost dangerous, and it was exhilarating to three young boys in the woods alone at night.
We followed Terry for about forty-five minutes, all of us sweating and waving off the clouds of mosquitos before Jesse asked him if he was lost?
“No, I know where I’m going. It’s just a little farther.”
He had picked up a large limb and was using it as a makeshift machete as he thwacked branches.
I had found a stick of my own, a larger one that I was using as a walking stick, and I saw Jesse looking around for a stick of his own. The way he was doing it made it seem weird. He wasn’t looking around in that lackadaisical way that kids look for sticks. Jesse was looking for a stick with a purpose.
“You okay?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
Jesse started to answer but grinned as he found a big stick that looked a little like a club.
He picked it up and took some test swings before turning back to me, “Much better now. I feel way better now that I have something to defend myself with.”
“You hear something following us?” I asked, looking around to see if I could spot it.
“It’s more about what we’re following. I don’t really know Terry. Do you?”
I shook my head, ducking a low-hanging arm of pine bows.
“And yet, here we are following him into god knows what. You buy this story about a whispering hole?”
“I dunno, not really,” I said with a little shrug.
“So then, where is he really taking us? If this is some kind of psycho crap, I want to be ready.”
I realized I had done the same thing without thinking about it and tested the end of my walking stick against the dirt. It was a sorry excuse for a walking cane, but I supposed it was better than nothing. Watching the back of our guide, I suddenly wondered if we could take Terry if it came to it? He was fat, but he was also bigger than either Jesse or I. I had seen him play soccer once, and he seemed slow and easily winded. If he got his hands on you, though, I wondered what might happen? He could probably hurt one of us really bad, and then it would be up to the other to either fight him off or run for help.
At a mile, I didn’t like the thought of having to run all the way back to camp, but I liked the idea of running while Terry stalked me through the woods even less.
It didn’t matter, not really.
Once we came to the hole, it was all irrelevant.
The closer we got to our destination, the quieter it seemed to become in the forest. The sounds of night birds and insects softened at first like sounds heard with the tv volume turned down, but the deeper we went, the more they seemed to become silent. We were soon walking through a silent forest, and it made my skin crawl. Forests aren’t supposed to be like this, and the idea that something actually lay ahead made me break out in goosebumps. What could it be that had scared all the wildlife away? What could it be, and what would it do to three kids who’d just wandered into its territory?
Terry suddenly stopped, declaring that we were here. He stepped past a little ring of trees, and we followed him. He had the stick balanced on his shoulder, but when we came into the open space, he pointed at the hole with the gnarled branch.
“There it is, boys. The Whispering Hole.”
We turned to look, and I could see Jesse’s fingers were white as he clutched his club. When he saw the hole, however, those fingers seemed to become boneless, and the stick spilled out of them. He stepped towards the hole like a drowning man paddling for a raft, and I felt equally as moved.
The Whispering Hole wasn’t a hole at all.
It looked like nothing so much as a grave. The grave was about six feet tall and five feet across. The earth had not been dug out, despite the amount of it sitting on either side of the hole. The way it looked, the earth had simply spat the dirt out like a mouthful of spinach to have its mouth free of the taste. The pit was deep too, and Jesse and I bent over it to look down into the black mouth of the chasm.
The whispering was slight and sounded more like a babbling brook than actual whispers.
Jesse made a rude sound, looking back at Terry as he rolled his eyes, “It’s just an underground river. You drug us all the way out here to show us an underground river?”
Terry shrugged, but his grin never faltered, “It’s the Whispering Hole. Have a listen. They say you can hear the voices of the dead kids down there.”
Jesse bent over, listening to the sounds coming up, but that seemed like a great way to topple into the hole. Instead, I laid down on my stomach, putting my ear over the hole and listening to the sounds within. I had worried about the edge of the pit crumbling and sending Jesse falling in, but the edges of the pit were made of some kind of stone. It reminded me of nothing so much as one of those random caves you sometimes find in Minecraft, those openings in the earth that just wait to be found. I had wanted to see if I could squint and see the bottom, but it was too far down to see anything.
I wondered how we were hearing the water when a voice whispered up and into my ear.
“Beware! He’s going to push you in!”
I looked down into the pit and then over at Jesse, who was still straining his ears and looking in.
Who had said that?
“He’s pushed so many into the Whispering Hole. Sometimes it’s people he knows, sometimes it’s people from the camp, but it’s always him. Get out, get out while you still can!”
I turned to see if Jesse was hearing this, but that was when Terry made his move.
I looked up in time to see him shove Jesse with both hands, sending him falling into the hole.
I rolled before I could really think about it, and it saved me from getting a tennis shoe to the face. Terry was still smiling, but his foot was coming down again and again as he tried to stomp me. I was scared, moving purely off adrenaline, and when I sprang back to my feet, he lifted his stick like he meant to club me.
He didn’t say anything; he just ran forward with that gnarled branch he had been using to clear the path.
I threw my own stick at him and turned, running into the woods as I tried to make it back to camp.
I had to let someone know what was happening out here.
I ran through the forest like a startled deer, but it seemed like something was stalking me. Something big was behind me, and the farther I ran, the louder and more frantic it became. I felt like Snow White as I ran through the woods, the once enchanting landscape now little more than a nightmare forest that grabbed at me with every step. The pine bows whipped at my face, the rocks and palmettos sliced at my shins, and the constant rustling of something behind me kept me on edge. Every time I would think about stopping or slowing down, I would hear it, and it would pique my adrenaline again. I could have run for hours as I dodged that large something, but eventually, I saw the familiar lights of the camp not far ahead of me.
The closer I got, the more I expected that frantic rustling to crop up again. It had seemed to chase me from the Whispering Hole, and I could just see Terry stalking me as he tried to stop me from tattling on him. What would he do if he caught me? Would he club me with that branch, or would he drag me back to the Whispering Hole and throw me in?
When I broke free of the woods and made it back to those familiar cabins, I felt blessed indeed.
The scout master came after a few minutes of steady knocking, and he looked grumpy.
When I told him what had happened, he woke up pretty quick.
He pulled me into his cabin and took my statement as he called the police.
The police came and had me take them to the Whispering Hole immediately. Most of them looked like regular police officers, but a few had bags of climbing gear for spelunking. The scoutmaster and I went with the eight officers and one dog, and as the woods got quieter again, I knew we were getting close.
When we came into the clearing, I didn’t see any sign of Terry anywhere.
The guys with the bags looked over the edge of the hole, and with their spotlights, they found Jesse as he lay at the bottom. I was so afraid that he was dead, but one of the officers said that he was moving some when he shone the light on him. They told me later that we had both been very lucky since Jesse had fallen almost fifty feet into the underground cave. Both his legs were broken badly, and he had hit his head pretty hard, but he was alive. The guys with the bags went down to get him, a stretcher coming down too on cords, and when they got there, one of them said they would need body bags after they had the kid airlifted out.
“There are about six other bodies down here, and all of them look to be kids.”
Most of this is stuff the police either asked me about or stuff they talked about when they thought I wasn’t listening, but it paints a pretty grizzly picture of Terry’s crimes.
Well, not Terry, I guess since there is no Terry.
Terry had taken six other kids to the hole, two of them campers from the previous year, and shoved them in. He had made up the story of the Whispering Hole to take kids out to the spot so he could push them in and listen to them die. A few of the bodies had clearly died on impact, but three of them, the coroner said, had probably lived for a day or two before dying. The sicko had probably come to check on them as they lay bleeding down there, and he had meant to make us his next two victims.
A manhunt is going on right now for Terry, but the camp has relatively little information on him. The address they have goes to an empty lot in a trailer park, Terry pays by cashier’s check every year, and the phone number they have on file goes to a disconnected number. They have never met Terry’s mother or father, and they have no idea where he lives. They know he has to live close to the Whispering Hole, but the chances of finding him might be slim if he lives in the woods somewhere with a relative.
The Camp has agreed to call if he turns up, but Camp is canceled this year for Jesse and I.
Mom says we can visit him in the hospital if I want, and the paramedics told me that he wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for me.
So do yourself a favor, and don’t listen to any stories about a Whispering Hole if they are told around the campfire this year.
Terry will need a new hunting ground, and he may be coming to a summer camp near you.