The Caverns of Carnage

“Come along, Gabe! Don’t you want to meet your new teacher?,” Mr and Mrs Coleman dragged their seven-year old son, Gabriel Coleman into the classroom.

“Nooo!” Gabe whined, “I wanna go home!”

Mr Coleman looked down at him in frustration. “That’s enough. No more sulking.”

He walked further into the classroom, holding rightly onto his son’s arm.

“Ew, what is that smell?” Mrs Coleman asked, sniffing the air.

The teacher, Mrs Lorraine held her hands up and whispered, “Shh, Mr Coleman, please!”

“What did I say wrong?”

Mrs Lorraine pointed at a small boy, Gabe’s age, with curly black hair and dark brown eyes, sitting alone at a table in the corner.

“It’s the Carrelli boy. I don’t want to embarrass him,” Mrs Lorraine explained, “I don’t think he’s had a bath in a while. He and his elder sister were just- er- removed from their mother’s care. Apparently she had a drug problem. His aunt and uncles have been granted custody. Good people, but they’re struggling to make ends meet. They haven’t paid his activity fees for this year, so I’m not sure he’ll be going on our field trip-”

“Mrs Lorraine, we would be happy to pay the boy’s fees on their behalf.” interrupted Mr Coleman.

“That’s very generous of you, Mr Coleman, but if you’re not a relative, I-”

“We insist.” said Mrs Coleman. She turned to her son. “Gabe, go play with the nice little boy in the corner.”

“You mean the stinky one?”

“Oi, don’t say such a rude thing ever again.” Mrs Coleman took Gabe’s arm and led him to the table where Ryan Carrelli sat.

Awkwardly, Gabe sat down at a chair next to the table.

“Hi.” Gabe said.

“Umm…. Hi,” Ryan looked up at Gabe. “You don’t have to sit here, y’know.”

“It’s okay.”

* * *

Since school had to be closed for a while to repair the damage caused by the fire, the principal decided to hold the annual school trip earlier than usual.

Every year in the fall, our school holds a high-school trip in Los Angeles for three days and two nights. The kids rest in log cabins with large bunk beds. Every night there are campfires with s’mores, as well as long hikes in the woods and the hills of Los Angeles.

The morning of the trip I woke up early. It was still dark inside my room and even darker

outside, even though I knew it would be morning soon. I tried to go back to sleep, but this usually happens every morning of an exciting day. The room slowly started brightening as the sun rose outside.

* * *

The bus ride to Los Angeles was over four hours away from our town. As the bus speeded across the homogeneous environment of rocky hills and herbaceous fields, I glanced at the time on my phone. We had left at 9:00 AM. At the moment it was 10:27.

I groaned. More than an two hours left. Unfortunately, Ryan was put on the other bus, the one behind ours, so I didn’t really have anyone to talk to except Nakia Bahadir, who was literally the most unsociable person I ever met, which is saying a lot, because everyone calls me an introvert.

Finally around 1:50, we had arrived at the campsite.

The first thing we did was to put our stuff down in the log cabins. Each cabin was rectangular, had four sets of bunk-beds, and the carpet smelled dank and sweaty. The walls were peeling, and there were mosquitoes buzzing everywhere.

“Can’t believe they actually made us pay for this,” groaned Ryan as he placed his back-pack onto the side of a bed.

“Dibs on the top bunk,” I said, climbing onto the front.

Ryan chuckled. “Fine by me,” he said, looking at the bed, “That thing looks like it’s gonna fall to pieces.”

I glanced at the top bunk. Its rickety wooden poles were indeed shaking, and they looked as if they were going to collapse at any moment.

“Hey, at least it’ll fall on you,” I laughed, heaving my bag on top of the bed.

After we had lunch in the main cabin, the guides took all of us on an extremely long guided nature hike through the woods. But these were not woods like the kind they have in parks; these were proper woods. Colossal trees that blocked out the golden rays of sunlight, stacks of leaves and fallen tree trunks, as well as howls and chirps from unknown animals.

There was a slight fog, too, a sort of pasty blue haze all around us. The nature guide pointed everything out to us: the various types of trees we were passing, the insects inside the rotten logs on the trail, and the marks of deer and bears in the woods.

As we headed back to the cabins, it started to rain. I pulled on my rain-coat and drew the hood up, but my jeans and sneakers got drenched by the time we arrived at our cabins.

By sunset, we all gathered inside a clearing for a campfire. Luckily, by then it had stopped raining. The wooden benches around the campfire were still slightly damp, but we tossed our jackets on top of them and gathered by the fire, toasting s’mores and eating hot dogs. The woods were so dark that you couldn’t see anything around you, and if you’d look up you see a multitude of stars in the sky; gleaming pin-pricks amidst a black canopy.

It was around 12:50 when me and Ryan headed back into the cabins, exhausted and sleepy. I fell asleep as soon as my head made contact with the pillow.

But the sleep didn’t last very long. About an hour after I fell asleep, I heard a rustling sound coming from outside. I waited until my eyes adjusted to the darkness and then the hairs on the back of my head prickled. Someone from outside spoke my name…

“Gabe,” the voice whispered.

“W-who a-are you?” I asked. I climbed down from the bed, walked towards the door and opened it.

Nakia Bahadir was standing outside, holding her backpack in one arm, and fully dressed in jeans and a puffy jacket. I let out a sigh of relief and asked, “What do you want?”

She set down her bag on the grass and replied, “You need to come with me. Look, I know about those dreams that you’ve been having.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How do you-”

“Because I’ve been having them too.” she interrupted. “Which is why you have to come. Meet me at the dining cabin in ten minutes. You can bring Ryan too…” I woke up Ryan and we both headed over to the dining cabin. It was dark, and both of us were sleepy, so it took us a while to cross the gloomy pathway through the forest.

We stepped inside the empty room, with buzzing lights and mosquitoes flying everywhere. Nakia was seated on a table in the very middle of the cabin. Her fingers were pressed together, and her eyes narrowed. “Take a seat,” she said.

Me and Ryan sat down.

“When Mrs Lorraine said that I had “trouble adjusting”, she didn’t just mean bullying. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been having these dreams. Weird dreams.”

“Yeah, I know.” I said. “But how did you know that I did?”

“That day at school. The fire.” she replied.“I saw him too. I saw BloodLust.”

“BloodLust?” I asked, confused. “Is that his name?”

“Yeah. It means the desire to kill or to see people killed. Pretty fitting if you ask me.” she said. “He killed my mother when I was ten. That was when we moved from New Jersey.”

Ryan stared at us, with an extremely confused expression.

“Um, who exactly are you both talking about,” he asked, perplexed.

“There is this person, w-we’ve both been seeing in our dreams…” I explained.

“What does he look like?”

“He wears this black armor…” I said.

“Which has- like- these glowing red cracks,” Nakia elaborated. “And he has no skin.”

Ryan’s eyes widened.

“I’m sorry, what?” he exclaimed. “What do you mean he has no skin?”

I looked down at the grungy wooden cabin floor. “It looks like his skin burnt off…”

I then looked up at Nakia. “In the letter,” I said, “You said you met someone who can help us.”

“Yeah she should have… Oh wait, she’s here!” Nakia started waving her hands at something behind us at the cabin door. I turned around. My jaw dropped.

“Mrs Lorraine?” Ryan asked incredulously.

“Hi,” Mrs Lorraine waved at us cheerfully.

Stunned, I watched as she took a seat next to Nakia.

“Nakia said that you can help us.” I told her.

“Yes, she told me about the dreams… I recognized the signs…” Mrs Lorraine responded.

“Do you have these dreams too?”

“No,” Lorraine said, seriously. “But I knew BloodLust.”

“You knew him!?”

“Yes.” she responded. “It began at my brother’s funeral, July 1993.”