THE CAMP OUT

THE CAMP OUT
by
Terry Burres


My friends and I had been walking for more than five hours using the old railroad tracks as a way of climbing to the old Lucky Lady Silver Mine. We had started walking up the mountain about nine o'clock that morning.
Now we were really getting ready to stop and make camp for the night.

Howie's grandfather had been telling us for years about the abandoned Lucky Lady. A trip up the mountain to the Lucky Lady was a great way to spend the last week of our Summer vacation. The seven of us were half way up a mountain looking for a place to camp. One that would not send us rolling down the mountain if we moved around in our sleeping bag in the middle of the night.

Sam was walking about a block or so in front of us looking for a place to spend the night. Suddenly he called back to us urging us to hurry to see what he had found. When we reached Sam we were as excited as he was.

There down a small hill was a high mountain meadow. Surrounded on three side by a tall forest with a bubbling stream snaking through the field of bright flowers. It was so peaceful laying there in front of us that all we could do was stand silently listening to the birds that were singing in a nearby tree. It was so prefect. This meadow must have been sitting like this for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

As we walked down the hill from the railroad track we were very quite as if we didn't want to disturb the spirits of the meadow. We felt as if we had walked in to another world. Maybe we had wondered through a time warp to a time before people walked over this mountain. When we reached the stream Howie turned in a full circle and said "Wow, This is great. It's just what we need."

The air in the meadow seemed to sparkle as we sat about making our camp as comfortable as possible. Sam, Mary, and Kristy went into the woods looking for wood for the campfire. Sam and Torrie were trying to catch enough fish for dinner. Brad and I were putting the finishing touches to the camp. All the bedrolls were spread. The food was tied in a bundle and hung from a tree to keep an animals from having a meal on us.

We were looking for the large stones to make the fire ring. Brad moved down stream looking for rocks. I headed up stream. As I passed Torrie she was pulling in a large fish. I stood there for a few moments watching as the sun glistened over the fish. I could hear Torrie as she took her fish from the hook teasing Sam about who would catch the most fish for dinner. Howie, and Kristy were walking out of the trees near Brad with their arms full of twigs and limbs for the camp fire. Mary was pulling a couple of small logs.

That is when a whiff of a horrible odor reached me. It almost made me gag it was so strong. I looked at the rest of my friends, "What IS that?"I ask.

Torrie said, "Wooo - That's really bad!"

"What is that smell?" Sam asked.

I was going to say that I didn't know what kind of animal could make that type of smell. It was much worse than any skunk I had ever run into while camping. Before I could speak there was a rustling in the bushes on the other side of the stream.

We all looked at each other. Turning we watched the bushes where the sounds were coming. As we watched, the sound came again, slightly louder than the first time. The smell had became slowly worse. It was so bad that my eyes began to water. I could feel my heart pounding as I watched the bushes under the trees across the stream start to shiver.

All my attention was riveted of the far side of the stream when a strange thing burst from the bushes to stand on the other side of the water. I was about fifteen foot away from the creature. The rest of my friends were twenty to twenty five feet farther away from the thing.

The creature was the strangest thing I had ever seen. It was walking on it's back two legs. It was about seven foot tall with green and brown stuff dripping from it's out stretched arms.

For a long moment it stood there looking like a gross statue. Slowly it started to walk toward me. It's arms reaching for me. One slow step at a time. I was frozen to that spot. I could only stand there watching it move closer and closer. I knew that I should have been running like crazy. It felt as if my blood was turning to ice.

Sam screamed for everyone to run. I know that my friends were running across the meadow and up the hill. They were running for their lives. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was a voice yelling at me to run as fast I could. My legs though did not move. I could hear my friends screaming. There was a high screech vibrating from the air that surrounded me.

The creature moved into the fast moving water of the stream. It moved step by step closer toward me. The wail filling the air becoming even louder. I watched as pieces of the creature seemed to float off. Bits of green and brown that once belonged to the creature became part of the stream.

I felt something grab me from behind pulling with such force that I almost fell over. Only after the wailing stop did I realize that the sound was coming from me. Sam had turned me around toward the railroad tracks yelled run as he pushed me until my legs started working.

We could see our friends cheering us on from the top of the hill as we pushed and pulled each other up the hill. Reaching the top we all ran down the mountain as fast as we could. No one took the time to look behind us as we ran.

We ran until every breath we took burned like fire. When we realized that we were not being chased or followed, we only slowed down to a steady walk. The trip that had taken more that five hours climbing took only three going down.

Howie's grandpa's house was the place closes to the old railroad tracks. We burst into the house shortly after sunset. Panting we fell into the kitchen chairs trying to tell Howie's grandpa all that had happened.

Most people thought that we were just joking. A few people, however, believed that something must have happened.

That was how Sam, Torrie, Howie and I found ourselves and several other people several days later on horses heading up the old train tracks. Mary, Kristy, and Brad wanted to go to, but their mom's would not let them go.

The closer we moved toward the mountain meadow the quieter we became. I kept watching at the others. I could not tell if the adults were afraid. Howie kept looking from side to side. Sam, who was on the horse in front of me, looked straight ahead. Torrie, who was behind me, would smile at me every time I looked back. Each of her smiles became weaker as we climbed higher.

We finally reached the meadow in the early afternoon. The meadow was as peaceful and quite as it had been on that day almost a week before. The only difference was that near the stream our camp waited for us to come back. The sleeping bags were still laying were we had left them. The fire ring was almost built. The bag of food still hung from the tree.

Over near the trees there were scattered sticks and limbs. Sam's fishing pole was laying on the bank with the line stretching out across the water. Torrie's pole was where she had tossed it when she had started running. We could see where I had stopped walking in the tall grass up stream.

There was not a sign of the creature. The air was as fresh and pure as it had been before we saw the creature. Sam, Howie, Torrie and I looked at each other. No one said a word. Howie’s grandpa watched us as he crossed the stream. Nervously we began to break camp.

Howie's grandpa had been looking around where the creature had been. I hear him call my dad and Sam's uncle. They crossed the stream to where he stood looking into the water. As we watched my dad stooped toward a bush that brushed the stream with it’s branches. He pulled something lose.

The three started to cross the stream. Half way across all of them stopped. They leaned closer watching something in the swirling waters. Then Howie's grandpa picked up an object and walked toward us holding in his hands. A human skull and leg bone was all that was left of the creature.