Winter Camping

"Good Luck," said Henry. Dale simply nodded as Henry, his friend, finished packing up his tent and got in his car. "I'll see you on Tomorrow... Hopefully!" he joked, shutting his door. A few seconds later, he drove off.

That's the last one, Dale thought to himself. He looked around at the now-barren campsite. There were empty spaces in the snow, places where his other friend's tents were. The sun had already set, cloaking Dale's camp in darkness, besides for the crackling fire, which burned a dim light. The sight had already creeped out Dale, until he was reminded about why he was there.

Last night, he and his friends decided to have a bet that Dale would have to stay one night by himself. Dale knew that he was the one picked because he was the most fearful member of the group. However, that wasn't all. Dale checked his watch.

He decided to start on dinner, so he went out to the cooler to get some food. It was near the edge of the campsite, next to where one of his friend's tents had previously been. He made a mental note of moving it closer to his before going to bed. When Dale got close to the cooler, he noticed something was off. There weren't any sounds coming from the woods around him. The only thing he could hear came from the fire behind him.

While unnerving, Dale brushed it off. That only means that there is nothing around to hurt me, he concluded. He finally found what he was looking for, and closed the cooler. When he turned around, he saw something that sent chills down his spine. Some sort of figure was behind his tent. It was incredibly tall and thin, but it was just out of the fire's light, so Dale couldn't get a better look. The thing was easily about ten feet tall.

Okay, Dale thought, ''Fuck this! I don't give a damn about twenty dollars!''

Dale ran straight for his car, only to find that it was locked. He remembered with horror that he had left them in his bag, which was in his tent. He turned back to see if the thing was gone, which fortunately, it was. With caution, he looked around the treeline, but it was nowhere to be seen. Even the sound had returned to the forest, with owls hooting and the wind whispering in the air. For once, it gave Dale a little comfort.

Maybe it was just my shadow, Dale thought. He know that sometimes fire could pull tricks like that, but the figure was on the other side of the campfire. Dale finally managed to comfort himself. He finally thought that it was just his brain making something out of nothing. He had read something about how the brain can make something with similar qualities seem familiar to something else, which is why you can sometimes mistake a stranger for one of your closest friends. He had figured that he simply mistook the tree behind his tent for a ghastly monster.

Dale realized that he had lost his apatite. He decided to just sleep and get the night over with. He didn't bother dousing the fire, he knew it would only make him worry. He got into his sleeping bag and shut his eyes.

He woke up, not to the morning, but darkness. The fire was nearly dead, and the forest was quiet again. He looked around, but he didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Dale was about to shut his eyes again, when the fire died. He was surrounded by pitch-blackness. He told himself to calm down, and that there was nothing out there. Finally, Dale heard a sound. This wasn't a comforting sound, in fact, it was the opposite. He a zipper, the entrance to his tent was being opened.

He was to scared to speak, and all of his hunting equipment was outside his tent. So he decided to act like he was asleep, and would wait to see what happened. The zipping sound finally stopped, and Dale was left with silence. There was no movement for what seemed like hours, but Dale didn't dare close his eyes. Then, he noticed something.

A hand was now reaching into the tent. It wasn't grabbing anything, no, it was just reaching, slowly getting deeper into Dale's tent. The arm kept stretching, longer than anyone's should. It reached so far, it could nearly reach the other side of the tent. Dale shut his eyes tightly for what seemed like an hour. When he opened them, there was nothing in the tent. The door wasn't even open. Dale sighed with relief, and rolled over on his side.

That when he felt something on the side of his neck. It was a cold breeze. Dale didn't remember any holes in his tent. He turned on a light, and sat up. He looked around the tent, expecting to find a whole, but when he looked at the entrance, he froze. In the darkness that was just out of his light's reach, he saw a grinning, pale, face. The grin seemed longer that what was humanly possible, and was made even more threatening were the sharp, red-stained teeth.

Dale couldn't move. The only thing he could do was stare at the face, which only stared back. After a while, Dale noticed something. The face was slowly moving towards him. Not just the face, but the entire blackness that started at the end of his tent, had now reached the end of his sleeping bag. He pulled his feet closer to him, shivering.

Then, the light went out.