Camp (In)vocation
By
Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar
Jamie awoke to the sunlight streaming through the bare windows of the cabin. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying block it out, feeling every last drop of the shitty vodka she and the other camp counselors had sneaked the night before.
Tasting the hot, stale funk in her mouth, Jamie felt a pang of nausea in her gut. The events of last night flooded back to her: the girls sneaking through the woods to the meeting place; Meghan brandishing the contraband bottle to the surprised but delighted faces of the others; Sierra puking in the bushes, ruining the fun.
Panicking, she realized the implications of the bright morning. The counselors’ wakeup time was 5:45 a.m. to get ready for the day before heading to the mess hall and helping with breakfast duty.
What time was it? It was always still dark when they had to get up, and Jamie was notorious for sleeping through her alarm. She usually awoke to Paula shaking her shoulder.
Where was Paula?
The dread rising along with last night’s vodka in her stomach, Jamie sat up in the bottom bunk bed and scanned the cabin with bleary eyes.
She was alone. All four other girls were missing.
They left without me, is all, she told herself. They couldn’t wake me up, so they said I was sick and let me sleep in.
She felt a rush of gratitude that her friends had covered for her, but she didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. Taking care of thirty ten-year-old girls was hard enough to handle when they were fully staffed, let alone short.
Jamie stood on unsteady legs and headed to her trunk to grab her uniform. Stealing a quick glance at her wristwatch, she noted that it was already 6:30, which meant that her boss was due to arrive at the mess hall, soon to be followed by all the campers.
And that’s when she noticed the filth on the back of her hands and caked under her fingernails. Sure, hanging out in the woods could get a person dirty, but this was far worse than usual.
“What the hell were we up to last night?” Jamie said aloud. She’d had a little to drink, they all had, but only a few swigs of the bottle. Unaccustomed to alcohol, she still shouldn’t have blacked out. Right?
Jamie turned her hands over to inspect her palms.
And she realized that it wasn’t just earth coating her as the sharp, metallic scent of blood assaulted her nostrils.
***
8 hours earlier
Fully dressed, the girls lay in their bunk beds in the dark cabin, waiting for the signal in silence. They were all too keyed up for small talk.
Despite the cacophony of chirping crickets, buzzing locusts, and staccato hoots of owls, Jamie could hear her heartbeat racing in her ears. They’d all agreed to this, to heading out for a forbidden nighttime bonfire with Antoni from the kitchen crew, but the other girls had a lot more experience in breaking rules than she did. They also had a lot more experience with boys.
Even with his protruding ears and large nose, there was something charming and downright sexy about Antoni. An international student from Poland, he’d be heading into his sophomore year at Blackthorn University in the fall, while Jamie was about to start as a freshman. Camp Vocation only allowed female campers and counselors, but they were merely one of many organizations renting the grounds for a portion of the summer, and local management employed their own kitchen crew who stayed for the season’s duration. Thus, Antoni was the only guy in the whole place unless you counted his boss, Carl, who was at least sixty and had roughly the same number of brain cells as teeth. Of course all the girls had a bit of a thing for the muscular young man with the piercing blue eyes and exotic accent, but her friends knew Jamie liked him most of all. Besides, she was the only one without a boyfriend—the only one who had never had a boyfriend.
In the distance, the porchlight outside the mess hall blinked on and off twice. Since Antoni’s quarters were closer to where the director and assistant director were staying, and since he wasn’t under their authority, anyway, the girls had asked him to check when the coast was clear.
“Let’s go!” Meghan said. “No flashlights except mine. We don’t want to risk waking anybody up.”
The girls crept out into the dark, mindful to make minimal noise.
“Sorry,” Isabelle whispered after stepping on a stick that made a loud crack.
“It’s fine. Keep going,” Meghan, their unofficial leader, commanded.
Even though Jamie and Paula had worked at the camp the year before, newbie Meghan was the most brazen. She was the one who cobbled together the plan, scouting out a location days in advance and talking Antoni into setting up the bonfire for them. She was also the only one of the five girls who ever stood up to Ms. Abernathy, Camp Vocation’s tyrant of a director.
The same trees that offered shade in the scorching July days now loomed above them in the moonlit sky, their limbs ominous and protruding. Despite the warmth of the night, Jamie felt goosebumps rise on her arms.
She didn’t like breaking the rules and would’ve preferred lying on her lumpy bunk bed mattress back in the cabin, trying to ignore Paula’s snores. But she didn’t want to act like a goodie two shoes in front of everyone else, especially Antoni.
Have some fun with your friends, Jamie reminded herself. It will help you get ready for college.
Though she hadn’t told any of the other counselors, Jamie didn’t have much of a social life back in her hometown. As a small child, she didn’t understand why her mother stayed in her bedroom most of the time with the lights off, but she knew enough not accept the few invitations for playdates that came her way. At some point, the other children stopped asking, and Jamie contented herself by keeping her nose in a book, trying to block out the sounds of her father’s shouts and her mother’s sobs. In high school, she had poured herself into her schoolwork, though she hadn’t distinguished herself enough to earn a scholarship. Some days, when feeling low, Jamie wondered if she were simply unlucky when it came to life.
When she arrived at Camp Vocation last year, she thought she’d make some cash and that the job would look good on her college application since she wanted to be an elementary education major. She liked the idea of helping underprivileged girls learn practical skills, like time management, communication, and problem-solving, which would help prepare them for their future education and careers. Much to her surprise, she and Paula had become fast friends, gaining that closeness Jamie had always pined for, so she was happy to come back to camp this summer. This year, they’d added three new sisters to their fold.
Jamie smiled to herself even as she stumbled over a fallen branch. It’s harmless fun, sneaking out of the cabin, she rationalized. Kids at her high school had been doing it since they were freshmen, and here she was already a graduate.
When the girls arrived at the top of the hill, the orange glow of the bonfire beckoned them to the clearing.
A shadow appeared from behind a tree. “Hey,” Antoni said, stepping into the light.
Jamie didn’t know how he’d beaten them there or where he’d gotten the supplies, but she felt a rush of gratitude that he’d gone to so much trouble. Her face flushed as he seemed to look right at her, picking her out of the crowd in the darkness.
“Well, come on! We don’t have all night! Let’s start this party!” Meghan said, and that’s when she’d brought out the vodka.
The next couple of hours were a pleasant blur as the girls told jokes, vented about Ms. Abernathy and their parents, passed around the vodka, and told scary stories. When the first bottle emptied, a second materialized as if produced from thin air. Jamie took only shallow sips each time it was her turn, but her head began swimming from the unfamiliar sensation of alcohol in her bloodstream.
Antoni remained quiet as the girls chatted, but he moved closer to Jamie as the hours encroached on morning, so close she could feel the hairs on his arm tickling her.
“I have a story,” he finally said, his baritone voice cutting through the laughter.
Though Sierra dozed against a tree, passed out and snoring softly, the other girls were rapt with attention, watching the shadows dance across Antoni’s face in the firelight.
“Once there was a young man from a faraway land,” he began. “He grew up poor with no prospects for bettering his life. And he was desperate to leave his village. As he walked through the woods on his way home from work one day, he met a man who promised to change his fortunes, offering him riches and passage to America.
“But this was no ordinary man. He wore a human skin over his true form, a demon from the depths of hell. He told the young man there would be a cost, but the young man was desperate. He made the deal.”
A nervous giggle escaped from Isabelle’s mouth as Antoni’s eyes slid over each one of the girls.
“I am that young man. And this is the night I fulfill my end of the bargain, as I have every five years for the last hundred years.” Antoni began to sing a low song, his voice clear but words foreign, unintelligible. Standing up, he withdrew a knife from his pocket and opened the blade.
“I summon you, Mikolaj, to collect your tax,” he said, slicing his palm and squeezing drops of blood into the fire.
Jamie swallowed, the lump in her throat hot and dry. “This isn’t funny—”
“Shh. He will allow me to spare someone after all these years of loyal service, and I choose you.” Though she shied away from him, Antoni clasped onto her wrist, preventing her from moving. Dipping his thumb in the blood from his hand, he placed it on Jamie’s forehead.
Antoni fell to his knees and clutched his stomach. His body contorted like a cat with a hairball, heaving back and forth, attempting to expel the foul substance inside of him. A thick, black smoke spewed from his mouth into the fire.
The flames grew higher, the colors morphing from orange to green and then black as a tall, thin, gray form with blistering, oozing skin emerged.
Paula was the first to scream. The demon turned its huge, bulbous head to her and pounced, its jaws locking upon her throat, and Jamie heard the crunch as it chewed through Paula’s flesh and bones. She fell to the ground, lifeless.
Jamie watched, frozen, as the demon butchered her remaining friends. When Isabelle tried to run, it grabbed her by the leg and yanked, ripping it off with a sickening tear, immobilizing her. Her cries of agony ceased when the demon tore into her chest with its claws and ripped out her lungs, which he devoured.
Sierra, still under the vodka’s spell, never moved from her resting place even as the demon hovered next to her, seeming to whisper in her ear, but a hideous slurp revealed its true intentions as Sierra’s withered form crumpled.
When the demon turned its attentions to Meghan, she grabbed the empty vodka bottle, smashed it on a rock, and held the jagged glass out to her attacker, her arm shaking. But her weak thrust failed to penetrate the demon’s skin. The demon plucked out her terrified eyes, wide as saucers, and swallowed them. Now sightless, Meghan kept screaming, but the demon silenced her by squeezing her throat until it popped.
Finally, only Jamie and Antoni were left. The demon swiveled its neck, locking its beady eyes onto Antoni.
The boy whom Jamie had once liked trembled in the humidity. “I gave them to you!” he screamed, flecks of spittle flinging from his mouth, illuminated like embers in the light of the bonfire. “You can’t harm me! I wear your mark!” He ripped off his T-shirt, baring the carving on his chest.
The demon curled his mouth into what must have been a smile, blood and gore dripping from its teeth. With a sharp, black claw, it pierced Antoni’s flesh and drew a circle, clockwise, around the markings. With a tug, the demon ripped off the skin and threw it in the fire, where it ignited and sizzled.
“You no longer wear my sigil. I require a new host,” it said in heavily accented English, grabbing Antoni by his hair. “You owed me one more life before choosing one to save. I will take yours, instead.”
Jamie watched as the demon’s jaw unhinged and clamped around Antoni’s head, muffling his shrieks and cries. Slowly, like a python, it took Antoni inches at a time into its body, stretching and distorting as it consumed its meal.
She wanted to run, but her feet were locked in place, whether by her own terror or a force the demon exerted. Jamie didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t look away.
Finally, Antoni’s corpse was gone, the only sign of him the baseball cap that had flown off his head when the demon grabbed him.
“It’s time to discuss our agreement,” the demon said.
***
As the full weight of the previous evening consumed her, Jamie stumbled to the mirror and raised her shirt.
There, on her stomach, she saw Mikolaj’s sigil, the crescent moon surrounded by seven eyes to represent his power and foresight. He had claimed her as his, carving it into her flesh with his talon. The wound stung and seeped with blood, a grisly reminder of their bargain.
Five years, Mikolaj had said. She would have five years of good fortune before he hungered again, before he returned for the five souls she owed him.
But first, she had to get through the morning. As much as she craved a shower, Jamie needed proof of Antoni’s involvement. She bore his thumbprint on her forehead, a testament to his guilt.
Antoni was the only one missing; her friends’ bodies lay broken and discarded around their campfire like a child’s cast-off toys. Jamie would tell the police that he had murdered the girls and carved the symbol into her flesh. She would explain how she had fled from his clutches and run back to the cabin in fright.
There were holes in her story, but Jamie had luck on her side.
She held back her smile and fashioned her face into a mask of horror, ready to embrace her future and all the glory it held.
Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar is a writer and associate English professor in Pennsylvania. Her work appears in more than forty creative publications including The Horror Zine, The Stygian Lepus, Wyldblood Magazine, and Tales from the Moonlit Path. A member of the Horror Writers Association, she holds a Doctorate of Education with a Literacy Specialization from the University of Delaware and an MFA in Creative Writing with a focus on horror fiction from Wilkes University. She is the author of the dark suspense novel Darkness There but Something More (Wicked House Publishing, 2024), the short horror story collection Keeper of Corpses and Other Dark Tales (Velox Books, 2024), and the horror novella Close the Door (Unveiling Nightmares, forthcoming). Read her work at https://cassandraosullivansachar.com/.
By
Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar
Jamie awoke to the sunlight streaming through the bare windows of the cabin. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying block it out, feeling every last drop of the shitty vodka she and the other camp counselors had sneaked the night before.
Tasting the hot, stale funk in her mouth, Jamie felt a pang of nausea in her gut. The events of last night flooded back to her: the girls sneaking through the woods to the meeting place; Meghan brandishing the contraband bottle to the surprised but delighted faces of the others; Sierra puking in the bushes, ruining the fun.
Panicking, she realized the implications of the bright morning. The counselors’ wakeup time was 5:45 a.m. to get ready for the day before heading to the mess hall and helping with breakfast duty.
What time was it? It was always still dark when they had to get up, and Jamie was notorious for sleeping through her alarm. She usually awoke to Paula shaking her shoulder.
Where was Paula?
The dread rising along with last night’s vodka in her stomach, Jamie sat up in the bottom bunk bed and scanned the cabin with bleary eyes.
She was alone. All four other girls were missing.
They left without me, is all, she told herself. They couldn’t wake me up, so they said I was sick and let me sleep in.
She felt a rush of gratitude that her friends had covered for her, but she didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. Taking care of thirty ten-year-old girls was hard enough to handle when they were fully staffed, let alone short.
Jamie stood on unsteady legs and headed to her trunk to grab her uniform. Stealing a quick glance at her wristwatch, she noted that it was already 6:30, which meant that her boss was due to arrive at the mess hall, soon to be followed by all the campers.
And that’s when she noticed the filth on the back of her hands and caked under her fingernails. Sure, hanging out in the woods could get a person dirty, but this was far worse than usual.
“What the hell were we up to last night?” Jamie said aloud. She’d had a little to drink, they all had, but only a few swigs of the bottle. Unaccustomed to alcohol, she still shouldn’t have blacked out. Right?
Jamie turned her hands over to inspect her palms.
And she realized that it wasn’t just earth coating her as the sharp, metallic scent of blood assaulted her nostrils.
***
8 hours earlier
Fully dressed, the girls lay in their bunk beds in the dark cabin, waiting for the signal in silence. They were all too keyed up for small talk.
Despite the cacophony of chirping crickets, buzzing locusts, and staccato hoots of owls, Jamie could hear her heartbeat racing in her ears. They’d all agreed to this, to heading out for a forbidden nighttime bonfire with Antoni from the kitchen crew, but the other girls had a lot more experience in breaking rules than she did. They also had a lot more experience with boys.
Even with his protruding ears and large nose, there was something charming and downright sexy about Antoni. An international student from Poland, he’d be heading into his sophomore year at Blackthorn University in the fall, while Jamie was about to start as a freshman. Camp Vocation only allowed female campers and counselors, but they were merely one of many organizations renting the grounds for a portion of the summer, and local management employed their own kitchen crew who stayed for the season’s duration. Thus, Antoni was the only guy in the whole place unless you counted his boss, Carl, who was at least sixty and had roughly the same number of brain cells as teeth. Of course all the girls had a bit of a thing for the muscular young man with the piercing blue eyes and exotic accent, but her friends knew Jamie liked him most of all. Besides, she was the only one without a boyfriend—the only one who had never had a boyfriend.
In the distance, the porchlight outside the mess hall blinked on and off twice. Since Antoni’s quarters were closer to where the director and assistant director were staying, and since he wasn’t under their authority, anyway, the girls had asked him to check when the coast was clear.
“Let’s go!” Meghan said. “No flashlights except mine. We don’t want to risk waking anybody up.”
The girls crept out into the dark, mindful to make minimal noise.
“Sorry,” Isabelle whispered after stepping on a stick that made a loud crack.
“It’s fine. Keep going,” Meghan, their unofficial leader, commanded.
Even though Jamie and Paula had worked at the camp the year before, newbie Meghan was the most brazen. She was the one who cobbled together the plan, scouting out a location days in advance and talking Antoni into setting up the bonfire for them. She was also the only one of the five girls who ever stood up to Ms. Abernathy, Camp Vocation’s tyrant of a director.
The same trees that offered shade in the scorching July days now loomed above them in the moonlit sky, their limbs ominous and protruding. Despite the warmth of the night, Jamie felt goosebumps rise on her arms.
She didn’t like breaking the rules and would’ve preferred lying on her lumpy bunk bed mattress back in the cabin, trying to ignore Paula’s snores. But she didn’t want to act like a goodie two shoes in front of everyone else, especially Antoni.
Have some fun with your friends, Jamie reminded herself. It will help you get ready for college.
Though she hadn’t told any of the other counselors, Jamie didn’t have much of a social life back in her hometown. As a small child, she didn’t understand why her mother stayed in her bedroom most of the time with the lights off, but she knew enough not accept the few invitations for playdates that came her way. At some point, the other children stopped asking, and Jamie contented herself by keeping her nose in a book, trying to block out the sounds of her father’s shouts and her mother’s sobs. In high school, she had poured herself into her schoolwork, though she hadn’t distinguished herself enough to earn a scholarship. Some days, when feeling low, Jamie wondered if she were simply unlucky when it came to life.
When she arrived at Camp Vocation last year, she thought she’d make some cash and that the job would look good on her college application since she wanted to be an elementary education major. She liked the idea of helping underprivileged girls learn practical skills, like time management, communication, and problem-solving, which would help prepare them for their future education and careers. Much to her surprise, she and Paula had become fast friends, gaining that closeness Jamie had always pined for, so she was happy to come back to camp this summer. This year, they’d added three new sisters to their fold.
Jamie smiled to herself even as she stumbled over a fallen branch. It’s harmless fun, sneaking out of the cabin, she rationalized. Kids at her high school had been doing it since they were freshmen, and here she was already a graduate.
When the girls arrived at the top of the hill, the orange glow of the bonfire beckoned them to the clearing.
A shadow appeared from behind a tree. “Hey,” Antoni said, stepping into the light.
Jamie didn’t know how he’d beaten them there or where he’d gotten the supplies, but she felt a rush of gratitude that he’d gone to so much trouble. Her face flushed as he seemed to look right at her, picking her out of the crowd in the darkness.
“Well, come on! We don’t have all night! Let’s start this party!” Meghan said, and that’s when she’d brought out the vodka.
The next couple of hours were a pleasant blur as the girls told jokes, vented about Ms. Abernathy and their parents, passed around the vodka, and told scary stories. When the first bottle emptied, a second materialized as if produced from thin air. Jamie took only shallow sips each time it was her turn, but her head began swimming from the unfamiliar sensation of alcohol in her bloodstream.
Antoni remained quiet as the girls chatted, but he moved closer to Jamie as the hours encroached on morning, so close she could feel the hairs on his arm tickling her.
“I have a story,” he finally said, his baritone voice cutting through the laughter.
Though Sierra dozed against a tree, passed out and snoring softly, the other girls were rapt with attention, watching the shadows dance across Antoni’s face in the firelight.
“Once there was a young man from a faraway land,” he began. “He grew up poor with no prospects for bettering his life. And he was desperate to leave his village. As he walked through the woods on his way home from work one day, he met a man who promised to change his fortunes, offering him riches and passage to America.
“But this was no ordinary man. He wore a human skin over his true form, a demon from the depths of hell. He told the young man there would be a cost, but the young man was desperate. He made the deal.”
A nervous giggle escaped from Isabelle’s mouth as Antoni’s eyes slid over each one of the girls.
“I am that young man. And this is the night I fulfill my end of the bargain, as I have every five years for the last hundred years.” Antoni began to sing a low song, his voice clear but words foreign, unintelligible. Standing up, he withdrew a knife from his pocket and opened the blade.
“I summon you, Mikolaj, to collect your tax,” he said, slicing his palm and squeezing drops of blood into the fire.
Jamie swallowed, the lump in her throat hot and dry. “This isn’t funny—”
“Shh. He will allow me to spare someone after all these years of loyal service, and I choose you.” Though she shied away from him, Antoni clasped onto her wrist, preventing her from moving. Dipping his thumb in the blood from his hand, he placed it on Jamie’s forehead.
Antoni fell to his knees and clutched his stomach. His body contorted like a cat with a hairball, heaving back and forth, attempting to expel the foul substance inside of him. A thick, black smoke spewed from his mouth into the fire.
The flames grew higher, the colors morphing from orange to green and then black as a tall, thin, gray form with blistering, oozing skin emerged.
Paula was the first to scream. The demon turned its huge, bulbous head to her and pounced, its jaws locking upon her throat, and Jamie heard the crunch as it chewed through Paula’s flesh and bones. She fell to the ground, lifeless.
Jamie watched, frozen, as the demon butchered her remaining friends. When Isabelle tried to run, it grabbed her by the leg and yanked, ripping it off with a sickening tear, immobilizing her. Her cries of agony ceased when the demon tore into her chest with its claws and ripped out her lungs, which he devoured.
Sierra, still under the vodka’s spell, never moved from her resting place even as the demon hovered next to her, seeming to whisper in her ear, but a hideous slurp revealed its true intentions as Sierra’s withered form crumpled.
When the demon turned its attentions to Meghan, she grabbed the empty vodka bottle, smashed it on a rock, and held the jagged glass out to her attacker, her arm shaking. But her weak thrust failed to penetrate the demon’s skin. The demon plucked out her terrified eyes, wide as saucers, and swallowed them. Now sightless, Meghan kept screaming, but the demon silenced her by squeezing her throat until it popped.
Finally, only Jamie and Antoni were left. The demon swiveled its neck, locking its beady eyes onto Antoni.
The boy whom Jamie had once liked trembled in the humidity. “I gave them to you!” he screamed, flecks of spittle flinging from his mouth, illuminated like embers in the light of the bonfire. “You can’t harm me! I wear your mark!” He ripped off his T-shirt, baring the carving on his chest.
The demon curled his mouth into what must have been a smile, blood and gore dripping from its teeth. With a sharp, black claw, it pierced Antoni’s flesh and drew a circle, clockwise, around the markings. With a tug, the demon ripped off the skin and threw it in the fire, where it ignited and sizzled.
“You no longer wear my sigil. I require a new host,” it said in heavily accented English, grabbing Antoni by his hair. “You owed me one more life before choosing one to save. I will take yours, instead.”
Jamie watched as the demon’s jaw unhinged and clamped around Antoni’s head, muffling his shrieks and cries. Slowly, like a python, it took Antoni inches at a time into its body, stretching and distorting as it consumed its meal.
She wanted to run, but her feet were locked in place, whether by her own terror or a force the demon exerted. Jamie didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t look away.
Finally, Antoni’s corpse was gone, the only sign of him the baseball cap that had flown off his head when the demon grabbed him.
“It’s time to discuss our agreement,” the demon said.
***
As the full weight of the previous evening consumed her, Jamie stumbled to the mirror and raised her shirt.
There, on her stomach, she saw Mikolaj’s sigil, the crescent moon surrounded by seven eyes to represent his power and foresight. He had claimed her as his, carving it into her flesh with his talon. The wound stung and seeped with blood, a grisly reminder of their bargain.
Five years, Mikolaj had said. She would have five years of good fortune before he hungered again, before he returned for the five souls she owed him.
But first, she had to get through the morning. As much as she craved a shower, Jamie needed proof of Antoni’s involvement. She bore his thumbprint on her forehead, a testament to his guilt.
Antoni was the only one missing; her friends’ bodies lay broken and discarded around their campfire like a child’s cast-off toys. Jamie would tell the police that he had murdered the girls and carved the symbol into her flesh. She would explain how she had fled from his clutches and run back to the cabin in fright.
There were holes in her story, but Jamie had luck on her side.
She held back her smile and fashioned her face into a mask of horror, ready to embrace her future and all the glory it held.
Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar is a writer and associate English professor in Pennsylvania. Her work appears in more than forty creative publications including The Horror Zine, The Stygian Lepus, Wyldblood Magazine, and Tales from the Moonlit Path. A member of the Horror Writers Association, she holds a Doctorate of Education with a Literacy Specialization from the University of Delaware and an MFA in Creative Writing with a focus on horror fiction from Wilkes University. She is the author of the dark suspense novel Darkness There but Something More (Wicked House Publishing, 2024), the short horror story collection Keeper of Corpses and Other Dark Tales (Velox Books, 2024), and the horror novella Close the Door (Unveiling Nightmares, forthcoming). Read her work at https://cassandraosullivansachar.com/.
