Chenoa Intro

[grimoireofkenji]

 The summer before I was to begin the sixth grade, my family packed up and moved us from one end of the state, to the other. Despite them saying they would try and bring me back to visit my friends, I wasn’t ever expecting to see them again. My hopes dwindled gradually with each mile-marker we passed. Our new place had a gigantic backyard, bordered on the far side with a densely packed treeline. It gave me no shortage of bright ideas for the first few summer nights, with the gentle breeze blowing through the tall grass and big bushy trees.

When we first moved in, I remember the next door neighbors greeting us and immediately pulling my parents aside. Of course, they weren’t out of earshot. They told my parents, in no uncertain terms, that they need to keep a nearly constant watch on me. That kids in this town and the neighboring city were going missing since the Springtime.

Well, that fear didn’t last long.

Within weeks, I was enrolled at Shikaakwa Summer Camp. 

“They can’t kidnap us all, right?” I remember thinking sarcastically as I was once again uprooted from a place I had grown used to. 

“Don’t worry, they’ll find the culprit in no time!” I remember my mother telling me as we passed under the arches of the camp entrance. The attempts to assuage my worries fell on deaf ears.

A full house. Dozens of campers and about twenty staff were gathered by a flagpole in a field under the blazing summer sun.

Within an hour of my parents dropping me off with my bags, I had been introduced to my cabin supervisor, a much older teenage girl named Katherine.

Within a few days, I had somehow gotten a hold of news, despite the cellphone ban, that the search for the kidnapper had come to a long-awaited close. That they had finally caught the guy.

Well, they didn’t.

I know they didn’t. How?

Because a week from the day that the search had been called to a close, I ran into the culprit, hunched behind the outhouse closest to my cabin, claws-deep in our cabin supervisor’s skull. Poor Katherine never had a chance.

My flashlight illuminated the ghastly scene. Her pitch-black eyes caught the glint of the LED. She turned to face me, her face covered in blood and viscera. And she spoke. In the lowest, softest, raspiest voice that sounded ever-so-slightly like the camp counselor, she spoke.

“Don’t r-run. Pleeease.”