THE CHARACTERS AND SETTINGS ARE THE WORKS OF AN ORIGINAL FICTION.
Immortality: Tales of the Undead- Camp Blood
"I'm telling you, it's the truth. And I'll say it again, it's the darn truth." The old man stopped, and was baking marshmallows over the fire. The rest of the young campers laughed at him. They thought he was crazy. But the old man said that it was entirely true. Campfire tales were meant to scare people off to wits, as they used to say. But not like this. They just laughed.
"You don't know anything," the old man said. "You might think I'm crazy. But I'll tell you what. You'll be sorry if you don't listen to me. Oh yes, y'all be sorry."
The kids stopped laughing. At this point, they didn't know what to say. But what had been said, was done. The old man coughed, and coughed. Then he spat on the ground. A scrawny kid sitting beside him looked disgusted.
"Sorry about that, kid," the old man said, "My habit. But you know what they say. Old habits die hard." He gave another spat. The kid wanted to get away from him.
"Well, let's see now..." The old man continued working on the marshmallows. He wasn't aware they were getting burned.
"So, where was I? Oh yes, John Randall. You know who he was. He was a great writer. Wrote stories all day long. Scary stuff. But get this. He wrote a story that you wouldn't believe in your entire life." He looked at the marshmallows, and finally noticed they were getting burned. He chucked them away.
"As I was saying, John Randall wrote great stories." He coughed and spat again. "But there is a hard truth to all this. John had committed serious crimes, and I'm pretty sure you boys and girls have heard of it."
They all nodded. One of them, was a huge fan of John's horror novels. But now, he stopped reading them, because his mother had told him not to read the books of a deranged killer. Not only that, his books were deemed too disturbing, in fact.
"Yes, sir," the old man continued. "He had killed a lot of people. I'm not sure why though. But I can tell you something about him. Something scary that you ain't gonna believe it. He was.. A VAMPIRE!"
The kids laughed out loud. The older kid, who was the leader of the camp group, shook his head.
"Jesus Christ! He was! He was! I'm telling you. Why do you think he killed those people? He wanted to write good stories. That;s why. He was getting inspiration." He coughed again, but didn't spit this time.
"Anyways, John Randall was a vampire. 'Nuff said." He took a bottle of hard liquor, and drank the half of it. The kids looked at him, as if the story didn't end there.
"That's crazy talk," Joe, the camp leader said. "You know there's no such thing as vampires." The kids agreed with him.
"Joe, my man," the old man said. "I know you don't believe me. But you should have seen him. I was there, young as a happy camper. I was pissing off over there at the rock side, and saw John sucking the blood out of his victims. They were my friends!" He drank the rest of the bottle, and then threw it away.
Joe laughed. But the kids didn't laugh with him, because they thought the story might somewhat be true, considering the fact that John Randall may have thought himself to be a vampire, or the fact that he had some unusual craving for blood.
"Joe... John was a vampire, and I won't say it again. I know what I saw." He looked around. "Now... where is that liquor?" He stared at a fat kid, and asked him. But he only shook his head.
"Whatever you say, old man," Joe said. The old man sighed. He stared at the young campers and remembered the days of his past.
"It's time to sleep, folks," Joe said, feeling tired already. But before everyone left, the old man said, "Camp Blood."
Joe looked back at the old man and said, "What?"
"Camp Blood was the name of the novel, written by John Randall himself. Yeah, he came out here alright and got the inspiration. And not surprisingly, it was a hit."
Nobody had said anything, including the kid who had read the novel.
"You see, Camp Blood was about a man, whose hunger for blood drove him insane that he killed his own happy campers. However, the story was set in the 1940s. At the time, the soldiers were living on separate camps. This soldier for some reason, had the hunger for blood. No explanation, whatsoever. He tried eating normal food, just like everybody else. But it didn't work. He puked the food out, as if his system had rejected it. It was bad for him. Then the shooting came out of nowhere. The Germans infiltrated their camps. Lots of happy campers got killed in the process, except for the soldier, who was hungry for blood. I don't remember his name though, but he never got killed. People say he wasn't human. Then he drank the blood from the dying soldiers. He couldn't drink the blood from the dead. That was another nasty thing for him. So off he went on drinking human blood."
The kids only looked at him, and one of them, pissed his pants.
"Anyways, the soldier has never been found to this day. There was no telling how long he was doing the killing, of course. But it had been done."
"Wait a minute," Joe said, sounding curious all of a sudden. "You're saying that... That John was a soldier back then? That his novel was based on a true story?"
"Well, I don't know about that, Joe. But it seemed to me it might have turned out that way. Or... He had killed those campers, just to set his mind wander around into dark places and dark times. I guess that's how these writers probably got their imagination in the first place. Except of course, not by killing, anyways."
Joe felt silent and the kids who had listened to the old man's story, began to shiver.
"Okay, that's enough," Joe said angrily. "We're going to sleep. Goodnight, old man." Then he and the kids went back to their tents. The old man was left alone.
I don't care if Joe doesn't believe me, the old man thought. But it did happen. Yes, it was a nightmare for him, because he was there. He saw what John had done to his poor friends, and that he was the only survivor in the camp site. Dear God, what did I see back there? Was it even real? The old man felt like it was real, because he knew that he didn't imagine it. And that look on John Randall's eyes...
The old man decided to go to sleep. Sleep never came to him that much, since he was a kid. At times, he used to stay awake, thinking that John Randall might come for him, in the dead of night. And there were times that he even had nightmares...
The old man slept peacefully in his own tent. For a while now, everything felt quiet. There were no animal sounds to be heard of. But... Several footsteps approached nearby. And the old man slowly opened his eyes. Was he hearing things?
He waited for that sound. They kept going around here and there, and that the old man felt his heart beating a bit faster. He even tried to calm himself down. Oh no, this can't happen again. I must be dreaming. But it was no dream. John Randall had finally come back for him.
The tent flap opened. The old man looked at him for a while and then screamed.
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The next day, the police have arrived at the camp site. The old man was found dead in his tent. It was later confirmed that he had died of a heart attack. Both Joe and the kids couldn't believe it, and yet they were still sad. But who knew that this might happen one day when the supposedly alive, John Randall would finally come for him.
End of Volume 2.
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