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The last bonfire of the summer season.
The last time Tommy has to listen to his camp counselor’s boring campfire stories. Grian was a great counselor, he’d give him that much, but he much preferred Counselor Scar’s stories.
The tale he spun tonight with all the campers gathered had them at the edge of their seats. A tale about his escape from a two-headed deer that ran on two legs, decaying and bloodied. Tommy held onto every word, yet something itched in the back of his brain. Something about it felt fabricated. Well, he knew most scary stories were exaggerated, but he could tell Scar was holding something back. Tommy had to know more.
Tommy’s cabin mates were headed towards their cabin, Grian counting heads as they stumbled through the gravel. He turned his head over his shoulder, spotting Scar packing up s’more supplies with counselors Phil and Wilbur. Now was his chance, while no campers were around.
“I-I’ll be right back,” Tommy muttered, dipping between his friends Tubbo and Ranboo.
“Tommy?” Grian called as he passed. “Tommy, where are you going?”
“I wanna ask Counselor Scar something! I just- one sec.”
Tommy trotted up to Scar who greeted him with a warm smile. “Hey, kid! Stalling bedtime again, are we?”
He scoffed, folding his arms over his puffed chest, nose upturned. “I have never stalled.”
“Right,” Scar mused, tossing bagged graham crackers to Phil, who fumbled and dropped them onto the sandy part of the campground. Wilbur laughed and pointed. “Never stalled bedtime. Just like you never let that raccoon loose in the sanitorium?”
“Nope! Never happened.”
“Or the time you did not convince the younger campers that there was a ghost that haunted Cabin Seven?”
Phil looked up, wide eyed. “Excuse me?”
Tommy’s shoulders dropped, arms still folded. “Uh-”
“Or the time you did not convince them that the ghost possessed the taxidermied moose in the main building? And did not move it around the camp for a full week?”
Phil zipped the cooler closed forcefully. “That was you?”
Scar laughed, his wheelchair squeaking. “Oh, lay off, Phil. He’s just having some fun.”
“He’s giving kids trauma, is what he’s doing.”
“Exactly,” Wilbur piped up, piling chairs onto a flat-bed wheelbarrow. “Fun.”
Phil rolled his eyes.
Scar turned his head back to Tommy. “What can I do for ya, kid?”
Tommy messed with a crease in his sweatshirt sleeve. “Was that story you told tonight- the one about the deer- was that true?”
“Sure was!”
“You really saw a deer with two heads?”
Scar sighed, a smirk growing in the corner of his mouth. “You wanna know the full thing, don’t you?”
Tommy nodded.
Scar called over his shoulder. “Go on without me, guys. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“You sure?” Wilbur picked the wheelbarrow up by the handles. “Don’t need our help to put the fire out?
“Tommy’s a big man!” He reached up and smacked him square on the back, jolting Tommy forward with his surprising strength. “He’ll help me out.”
Wilbur laughed through his nose. “We’ll wait up for you, then.”
Scar waved as the two councilors headed back to the cluster of buildings not fifty feet away. He repositioned his wheelchair to align with the log benches, patting the one next to him, inviting Tommy to sit. He obliged. “So, what makes you curious.”
“Well,” He studied the fire ahead of them, noting the warmth on his face and the lack of it past his ears. How strange, temperature was; abiding to rules he could never understand. Why does water only boil at one hundred degrees? Why not ninety-nine? And why can't you feel heat outside of its radius? He shook his head, bringing back his focus. “Your story. It- it feels off. Like… like it’s exaggerated?”
Scar nodded thoughtfully. “Alright, kid.” He reached around Tommy’s shoulder, pulling him close and shaking him. “I like you, you’re a good kid. And I trust you can keep a secret. Can you do that for me?”
“Oh, absolutely. Lips are sealed. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”
“Good. Now, you won’t tell anyone this. Got it?”
He nodded.
“Not even Tubbo.”
“But he’s my best friend! I tell-”
Scar shot him a look.
“Okay, fine.”
“Atta boy.” He patted his shoulder before breaking the hug. “So, I gotta come clean. That story? I made most of it up.”
“What?!” Tommy shouted.
“Hush! People are sleeping!”
Tommy blew a raspberry. “Whatever. They'll sleep on the bus home tomorrow. So, you made it up?”
“Not entirely. Just tweaked it a little.”
“How?”
“The original isn’t as scary, had to spice it up.”
“You’re gonna tell me the original, right?”
Scar took a deep, thoughtful breath. “Are you sure?”
“You said it wasn’t scary.”
“It’s…” he trailed off. “It’s unsettling. Which I would argue is worse.”
“I’m a big man! I can handle it!”
He forced out a laugh. “That is quite true. Alright. Now keep in mind; Grian is the only one who knows the true story.”
Tommy sucked in his bottom lip as he smiled, shrinking his head into his shoulders as he awaited Scar’s tale.
“I wasn’t much older than you are now, living along the green belt outside the city. This was before I had to use my crutches, so it was just me and this endless wheat field behind my house.”
Tommy’s shoulders dropped. “You already told this part.”
Scar waved him off. “I know, I know, but this is different. This is the truth. No fluff, no flattery, no strange visions. What makes this version different was the sky. Beautiful paislies of rolling clouds hung over this wheat field every day. A dappled blanket over an ocean of gold.”
Tommy huffed. “Ugh, you said no flattery.”
“Want to hear this story or not?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Alrighty, then. Moving on. There was this oak tree in the middle of that field. Huge! Tall, grand, sturdy. ‘Cept for one day, when I slipped off a branch and fell into the stone ruins below.”
“Did you break any bones?” He asked with blunt curiosity.
Scar puffed out another laugh. “‘Course I did! Shattered my ribs! Got a scar along my side from the stitches.”
“Cool,” he mused. He settled his chin on his fist, drinking up every word Scar crafted with shining eyes reflecting the firelight.
“Anyways, those ruins below, an old house that fell from some historic event I can’t remember. Parts of the roof were still intact, and under that overhang is where I painted. I had this whole setup; my easel propped where a window used to be, my paints and brushes nestled between a root that grew over the fractured wall, and a flat boulder I had moved to act as my stool. I have so many pieces of that wheat field, know my way around shades of yellow like no man has ever seen!”
“Like the one in the cafeteria?”
”Exactly the one in the cafeteria!” His enthusiasm drained with his sigh. He gazed into the fire for a moment. “That’s actually the last one I painted under that oak tree. That painting is tied to this story.”
“You didn’t go back?”
Scar shook his head.
“Why?”
He ignored the question, continuing on. “This day was- it was normal. Unsuspecting. A beautiful clear day with dollies for clouds and the sun shining a spotlight down onto the oak tree. The wind accompanied me, wafting the sharp scent of the wheat towards me as I made my way out there. I painted for hours, gouache staining my fingers and nestling under my nails. I was in my painter’s headspace, so focused I barely noticed this…”
He trailed off. Tommy perked up. “What? What did you notice?”
“The fog. It was midafternoon in late summer, there wasn’t supposed to be fog. And the clouds- great, thunderous grey clouds rolling in from the south. I’m a boy from the midwest, I know dry ground and rain don’t mix. I booked it out of there as fast as I could.
“Oh,” he interrupted himself. “I should mention there aren’t many animals in the fields. Too open, could get snatched out of the sky by a hawk. There were animals that lived around the tree, nothing bigger than a gopher, and this red-tailed hawk that nested high in the branches. That’s important. Remember that.”
Tommy dipped his chin with the nobility of a soldier.
Scar continued. “So, the wind carried the smell of rain, and I hightailed it out of there through the fog. It’s already abnormally quiet in the plains, but it was like all sound was sucked from my ears. Thick, heavy silence that made my footfalls echo through the mist and weighed on my shoulders. Something was wrong, nothing felt normal about this day anymore.
“And then my eye caught something in the distance some… fifty meters away or so.”
“The deer.” Tommy filled in.
Scar nodded solemnly. “The deer. But this one didn’t have two heads.”
“That you made up.”
“I did. This deer…” he forced out the word, as if it didn’t fit in his mouth. “Now, I’ve seen plenty of deer in my time. They’re all freaky lookin’, with wide eyes and stillness that chills your spine. But deer don’t really venture out into the field.”
“Too open.”
“Too open, yes. So, seeing it was a little shocking, but I brushed it off and tried moving on, feeling it staring at me with its big eyes.”
Scar swallowed spit, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. “That’s when I noticed the eyes; deep black and set at the front of its skull like a predator.”
Tommy sucked in his breath.
“This dread crept into my bones. A strange type of dread, teetering between fear and curiosity, the moment before your brain decides to flee or fight. I stared at this creature, and like noticing ants on a picnic blanket, the more I found to be wrong with it. Ears that were slightly too big, focused on me, not even flinching as a fly landed on it. Lips that went back too far, stopping past its cheekbones. Its neck…”
“What?” Tommy let out his breath, leaning towards Scar.
He glanced over at him, lips pressed together. “The neck freaked me out the most. It was so… long. Like a llama’s, like Pizza’s. There was- at least I think there was- an extra joint in the neck, right in the middle of it. It jutted out at an angle and then straight up, head positioned like the jaw was glued to the neck.”
Tommy bundled up the bottom of his sweatshirt, gripping it with both hands, eyes focused on Scar’s.
“The deer- no.” He shook his head. “That was no deer. I constantly remind myself it wasn’t. It felt like a deer. It looks like a deer if you look passively. But I looked for too long, and the consequences haunt me. This not-deer and I stared at each other from our places in the field, two beings whose paths were never meant to cross. Two beings who were not supposed to be there, not supposed to know of the other’s existence.
“It’s like we had an unspoken agreement; ‘I’ll be on my way if you go on yours’. And we did, and we walked in separate directions.”
Scar let the moment hang in the air, the crackle of the fire the only sound between the two.
“It… Tommy, it didn’t walk. Deer have this dramatic strut, lifting their legs high. Their whole body goes into their gait. But this… this creature… it stalked. Slinking away with its back to me. The dread grew too powerful, and I fled. My only instinct was to run. To get as far away from whatever it was. To make it home.
“School started up again the next day, and I didn’t speak to anyone, I don’t recall speaking for a week. Not even Grian. Eventually, I did, but I never told anyone about it for years. I did tell Grian before we got married, but he’s a realist, he didn’t believe me. So, I crafted it up, changing the details to be exaggerated for campfire stories.”
“Were you scared?” The question spills out in a hushed whisper, as if he didn’t want to hear the answer.
“‘Course I was. I mean, not in the type of scared you’d feel when you see a bear out in the woods. No. For some reason, I knew it wouldn’t attack me. Sure, it was a predator- obviously it was a predator- but I wasn’t on its menu.”
“What was on its menu?”
Scar breathed. “Well, I went back out there just one last time, but it wasn’t until spring, once the snow thawed. I took my supplies and headed for the oak tree just like before. I got there… and found the skeletal remains of a hawk. The hawk. Untouched and stripped clean. Laid out as if it was taking flight. Not a bone missing. A perfect skeleton.”
He let the air hang over them both.
“I never went back out there again.”
Scar threw up his hands before folding them in his lap. “And there you have it.”
Tommy nodded slowly, gaze turning back to the fire. “That was- holy shit.”
“Tommy!” Scar scolded.
“What?! You tell me a story like that and expect me not to swear.”
He nodded his head in agreement. “Can’t complain about that.” He patted his shoulder. “Wanna go shake this off? Steal a snack from the kitchen before bed?”
An evil, shit-eating grin crept over Tommy’s face. “Oh, hell yeah I do.”
“Lead the way, kid.”
Tommy stood, hopping over the log and grabbing the handles to Scar’s wheelchair. He rolled him along the paved walkway, chatting about next summer’s plans for pranks.