French-Fried-Freida: A Campfire Tale
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“...She sure does—comes right out of the flames of your campfire, then burns you to a crisp. Crispy critter-ed children,” Larry Pinkerton quipped.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRsAlNd4dLW
“Oh,she does not,” Jake Penning screamed at the top of his lungs. “That's just some stupid story you made up to scare us.”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2AbLJMJF3n
“It could be true, it sure sounds real enough to me,” Genny Frosthwaite replied. She'd always managed to be the most pragmatic one in their little troupe. “Maybe we should, you know, put it out—just in case he's right.”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbl44iuXzrD
Lawrence Pinkerton loved telling his ghastly stories to anyone who'd listen. At fourteen years old, he'd made up his mind a long time ago he was going to tell stories for a living. He would have a successful string of best-selling novels published, like Peter Straub, or maybe even the great Stephen King himself.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf5RI0IcZCb
“It's true,” Larry continued. “Seen her charred ghost walkin' around out there, just past that clearing.” Larry poked a moistened, plump finger at a large expanse of open ground, just ahead of their camp site.
Larry, Jake, along with the always practical Genny, had been friends since kindergarten. Their parents had been friends since as far back as any of them could remember.
They'd all gone for a weekend camping excursion at Conner's Lake, a State Park not too far from their homes. Lush, still leafy Poplar and Montery Cypress trees that permeated the majority of the forest, hissed and whispered in response to brisk evening breezes coming off the lake. Each time the winds whipped their collective branches, a myriad of leaves drifted down to the forest floor like confetti. The campfire whirled and danced to unheard melodies, casting elongated shadows upon the ground.
After quickly gulping down a hot dog, Larry immediately began defending his story.
“It's true. She was burned alive somewhere near here, in these very woods. A local ruffian by the name of Thomas Barth tricked Freida by telling' her he'd seen her lost dog out here, and it'd been shot, or stabbed...somethin' like that. Anyways, he got her out here in these woods, then had his way with her. He bashed her skull in with a rock afterwards, then left her body for the animals, ants an' crickets to munch on.
Genny was visibly shaken by the story. Jake realized that as soon as Larry finished divulging all the gory details. Her normally bright, blue eyes glimmered in amber glows of orange and yellow from the firelight, as she sat staring blankly off into the darkness beyond the camp.
“Larry, can't you see this is kinda' creeping Gen out? After all, it is a lot more gruesome than the stuff you usually try to coax us into swallowin'.”
“But, it's all true, Jakey-boy, for real. You want to hear the worst part of the whole story?”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOkNBYnpwY4
“I don't know, Lawrence, do I?” 743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2ECGAAGxE9
The chubby boy lifted his butt up from the chair so fast, you'd have thought he'd sat down on a hornet's nest. Jake knew exactly what buttons to push to get under Larry's thick skin.
“Don't call me that again, pinhead, or I'll do to you just what old Tom did to Freida.”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1kCVdg3dD1
“Do what Lawrence, rape me, then bash my head in with a rock? Don't think so, chubb-o.”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEjYtzkzFLO
Larry's Mom showed up, just before things got really ugly.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCzDPXwfSY4
“Gentleman,” Mrs. Pinkerton said, rounding a thick hedgerow that separated the adult's camp from their children's. “Can't you guys ever play nice?” She reached into the cooler, withdrawing a sweating gallon jug of spring water from within. Larry couldn't understand why his parents insisted on buying water from the store when the stuff was all around them. He also knew it was pointless to mention it.
“Now, who wants some Kool-Aid?”
***
After a few hours of socializing, some guitar playing, and singing together, the kids' parents went off to play cards, leaving them alone once more.
“Well, do ya', or don'cha'?”
Larry certainly wasn't going to let the story drop. He was a man on a mission.
Genny looked over at Jake, giving him a weak smile. “We may as well let him finish, Jake. He's not going to shut up about it until we do.”
“Okay,” Jake murmured. “You might as well get on with it.”
“Good, that's great.” Larry's face took on a darker appearance, picking up the tale where he'd left off. “Well, Old Thomas thought he'd killed Freida for good, see, so he hefted her body up, then tossed it into a thicket to hide it. You know, in case someone came around.”
“Go on,” Genny prompted.
“ When he got back to town, Tom kept thinking of Freida, just lyin' there, all out in the open and everything. Anyone who passed by would surely see her. So, he went home, grabbed a gas can, a flashlight, and some matches, then waited for a couple a' hours before going back down to the spot where he'd left her. Once he got to there, Freida's body was gone. Tom got really scared, so he started lookin' around, seein' if he could figure out what happened to her corpse. Maybe somebody found it and called the cops. Maybe a bear or a mountain lion had already dragged it back to their cave, or den—whatever—and was eatin' on it.”
Larry came closer to the fire, his dark eyes glinting with pretend malice and repugnance.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ29F6MIr55V
“But... it wasn't no animal that drug her off. She wasn't dead, not yet. Tom found her–head gashed open and brains seeping out of the wound–crawling on her belly about a hundred yards from where he'd smacked her one. She was covered in crickets, everywhere, from head to toe. They were crawling in and out of her mouth, from out of her nose...and the sounds they was making terrified Tom. Freida was so fulla' them crickets, it sounded like she was the one doing all the chirp-chirping, not the insects.”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu0Mski0YIk
Jake observed Genny as she sat opposite him on a deadwood log in front of the campfire. When Larry reached the part about the crickets, Genny tugged at her sweater, pulling it in tightly across her chest. Jake watched as a shiver coursed through her slight frame like an electric current .
“C'mon, man,” Jake goaded their raconteur. “Just get on with it, get to the point.
“The point is, my mousy friends,” Larry continued, “is that once ol' Tom found out she was still alive, he didn't bother to put her out of her misery—not right away. He doused her and all them crickets with gasoline, struck a match, then set her on fire—alive. They say you can still hear her screamin', to this very day, when crickets are chirping around your roaring campfire in the forest. Her screams, along with the cryin' of all them crickets, is enough to turn even the bravest, youngest man's hair bone white.
“Larry— please...” was about as far as Genny managed to get before Larry delivered the coup de grace.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrf0oydTC0p
“If you hear crickets chirpin' near your campfire at night, in this place? That's when you better turn tail and run, 'cause the ghost of Freida Cameron will jump outta' the flames, trying to pull you in with her. She presses those cracked, charred blackened lip of hers against yours, vomiting up a mess a' crickets into your mouth. She wants nothin' more than for you to sound like she did on the day she died.”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuv5ttMbP1r
“Thanks a lot, Larry,” Genny sobbed. “I knew you couldn't let it alone until you got to me, at least.” Fresh tears flowed gently down both of Genny's cheeks, shimmering and twinkling in the firelight, before falling quietly to the ground.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIBN4oTxyBA
“C'mon, Genny”, Jake offered, consoling the delicate girl as he extended his hand to assist her from her makeshift seat. Casting a contemptuous, sideways glare at Larry, Jake wrapped his arms around his friend, leading her away from the fire.
“Let's get to bed.”743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwxHSynH12J
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After everyone had gone off to bed, Larry's warped mind started kicking into hyper-drive. He'd noticed how much his story about “French-Fried-Freida” had affected Genny, and this realization sent his cognitive wheels into active motion. He'd made up his mind. He was going to scare that snooty little teacher's pet right out of her Mandy Moore bloomers.
Sounds of distant snoring resonated from their parent's tent on the opposite side of the thicket, and Larry was confident that Jake and Genny also lay quietly snoozing in their respective tents. The full moon beamed lustrously from the gloomy skies above, casting its silvery light on the darkened earth below. Awash in the pale glow from its milky illumination, the forest came alive with all manner of sounds and cries. The unmistakable “whoooo-ooo-ooo-ooo ” of a Great Grey Owl echoed somewhere off in the inky darkness of the forest, causing Larry to repulse a slight shiver. He added more wood to the smoldering campfire, soon stoking and restoring it to a roaring pyre.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuQqDT7zT0R
As Larry sat pondering the fraudulent, future fate of twelve-year-old Genny Frosthwaite, he caught an odd, almost slithering motion out of the corner of his eye. Slightly ahead, far off to the left of their encampment, the forest floor seemed to writhe and glide with a life all its own. However, the boy knew that couldn't be possible. Just the glow from the fire playing tricks on him, making his already overactive imagination run amok, he reasoned.
Rubbing his eyes now burning from wood smoke, Larry got up, then closed in on what appeared to be a large, wriggling mass upon the earthen, leaf-strewn ground ahead. Sounds were coming from its center—not just one, but what sounded to Larry like thousands. Thousands of tiny, individual sounds. It wasn't moaning, or even groaning sounds, these unknown shapes were making. A cacophony of— “c-h-e-e-e-e-t-t--c-h-e-e-e-e-t-t--c-h-e-e-e-e-t-t ”— rang out from their midsts, causing shudders of terror to race up and down Larry's spine.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3zZe7hACd9
These things were chirping...743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg16C2uUeAE
Recoiling in horror, Larry backed away. The black horde followed, methodically approaching him. He backed into the deadwood log Genny had been seated upon only hours before, stumbling and falling backwards— dangerously close enough to the campfire to singe his shirtsleeve. A wall of fluttering sparks erupted from the fire, covering the boy's bulk in ash and smoldering embers.
Larry realized in a stark, crystal moment of terror, that the shape advancing on him wasn't a single shape at all, but a massive swarm of crickets. Larry's blood turned to ice in his veins. Attempting to stand, he was immediately overwhelmed and held down on the ground, gripped by an unseen force with immense strength. The fabric of his shirt sleeve began to smolder, the flesh beneath, to bubble. Larry felt white-hot pains racing up his arm, then crawling into his throat, choking off his voice. He lay there, gasping beside the fire, mouth agape, eyes open wide, as the mass of crickets overtook him, crawling over his prone body. He couldn't scream, he couldn't run—all he was able to do was watch, as the insects invaded his every orifice. 743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwV7VbZr5vn
At the apex of his terror, the fire came alive.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaPd8GTXrwC
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The thing, — for that's precisely what she had become— rose from the center of the campfire. Its scorched, seared flesh rippled and undulated as it moved, hovering to a spot just above Larry Pinkerton's mortified frame. As it bent down, trickles of flesh fell from the creature, popping and sizzling, as dislodged pieces made contact with the fire. Opening its mouth unnaturally wide in an inhumanly grinning rictus, the creature spewed scores of wiggling insects into his mouth, insects eager to find refuge from the heat of the flames. They crawled in and out of Larry's gaping mouth, in and out, out and in again—a desperate dance of self-preservation and survival. Larry remained fully cognizant of everything unfolding before his eyes, but powerless to prevent any of it.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2VrFsfCu6C
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At last, after releasing its grisly cargo, the charred, reanimated carcass of Freida Cameron leaned over, kissing the boy on the lips. Before he blacked out— before his mind shattered into millions of fragments— Larry tasted a sickly-sweet mixture of burnt wood, his own tears, and rotting meat. Scents of sulfur, wood, and an odor much like rotten fruit filled his flaring nostrils.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaNYeRkF5iD
After a few seconds, the world went mercifully black.
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Genny awoke early the next morning, to a full bladder screaming for release. Pulling on a sweater and jeans, she grabbed a roll of Charmin, threw back the tent flap, then greeted the crisp, morning air with a languorous stretch and a yawn.
As she exited the tent, Genny scanned her surroundings for a suitable place to relieve her burdened kidneys. In her search, she spotted a massive pile of leaves near the fire pit she hadn't noticed the night before. Curiosity taking hold of her, she slowly approached the pile and noticed something odd about it. Almost atop it, she was struck by a horrifying realization. 743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFvhgw8LMUr
This pile of leaves was moving.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSJHSClNfBh
Genny picked up a twig from the ground, and poked the undulating mass with its tip. The stick was brutally ripped from her grasp as the pale, gaunt form of what once had been Larry Pinkerton burst from its center. Eyes, once infused with sparkling mischief, were now glazed over and empty. The horror-stricken boy's mouth gaped open, then snapped closed. Little less than gurgling sounds emanated from his throat each time the boy repeated the motion. His plump cheeks now sank into a pallid face frozen in horror. But, the worst part he thought, as a scream welled up from deep within her gut, and made its way up to her vocal chords, was—743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrYD4XLNVi4
—Larry Pinkerton's hair was bone white.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC8JaXJvdQg
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As white as snow.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwlz0lQfQ55
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An inhuman screeching sound broke the silence of the still, morning calm, as the always pragmatic Genny Frosthwaite dropped to her knees, and screamed.743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkaF332iOqE
~***~743Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkkMvdkOGeZ
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French Fried Freida: A Campfire Tale ©
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