Fun Campfire Ghost Stories (9 page)

About nightfall Rufus headed inside the old
house. He looked around at the dusty cobwebs, rats scampering
across the floor and broken furniture and thought, this was almost
like home just a little nicer. This was going to be the easiest
money he ever made.

Rufus climbed the creaky stairs and found a
bedroom where he planned to spend the night. He put his shotgun
down next to the bed and shook the sheets on the bed to get all the
bugs and extra dust off. He took his boots off and slid under the
covers. He blew out the candle that lit the room and laid there for
a few minutes counting that easy money one dollar at a time in his
head. He got up to about three hundred and forty eight when he
finally fell asleep.

It was about two in the morning when a noise
woke Rufus up. He heard a creaking in the old house and the sound
of something rustling on the floor. Rufus yelled out, “Nobody is
going to cheat me out of my five hundred dollars!”

The moonlight barely lit the room through the
cracks in the boarded up windows. Suddenly, Rufus heard another
creeek and a rustling sound down at the end of his bed. He slowly
looked down to the foot of the bed and there, staring at him, was a
set of white ghostly eyes. Rufus was startled, but then remembered
the shotgun at the side of his bed. He slowly reached to the side
of the bed while the ghostly eyes seemed to follow his movement. He
grabbed the gun and pointed it at the white ghostly eyes still
staring at him from the foot of the bed. As he pulled the hammer
back he said, “You ain’t going to cheat me out of my five hundred
dollars.” He pulled the trigger and boom the gun went off.

The council members and the developer, along
with some other town folks, heard the noise and rushed into the old
mansion to see if Rufus needed help.

Later that night, Rufus was in a hospital bed
complaining about his being cheated out of the five hundred
dollars. A lady, passing in the corridor outside, asked the nurse
what had happened to the poor man. The nurse answered, “He will be
fine. He just blew is two big toes clean off with his own
shotgun.”

*****

T
here is a parallel
dimension that is like ours, but also different. This dimension is
called Htrae (which is earth in reverse). Htrae has a lot of real
creatures that we consider in our dimension to be imaginary. Every
once and a while, usually in an isolated spot like this, the two
dimensions of Earth and Htrae intersect and a passageway is
available between the two dimensions. Usually the opening is brief
and nothing goes through the passage, but sometimes the dimension
gateway is open longer and occasionally people, animals, birds and
insects from our dimension pass through to Htrae. Likewise,
sometimes things from Htrae pass through to our earth. This is why
sometimes you hear stories of monsters, unicorns, ghouls, witches
and all sorts of strange creatures having been spotted in our
dimension.

Jennie and Lori had passed through one of
these openings by accident a couple of days before. They were best
friends heading out on a camping trip on a bright sunny Saturday.
They were hiking a trail that they had hiked several times before
and planned on staying a couple of nights in the woods. As they
were heading down the trail the wind came up fast and then a bright
flash of light. All of a sudden, Jennie and Lori found themselves
on the same trail, but it was different. The plants were strange
and there were two suns in the sky. The girls knew something had
happened to them, but they had no idea what it was.

After a short distance down the trail, Jennie
spotted a strange looking house across the field. It was almost
rounded, like a half dome, made of wood and stone. The girls
thought that they would stop there and try to find out where they
were and what had happened to them.

The door to the house was short, only coming
up to chin level on the girls. They knocked on the door. They heard
the door unlock from the inside and then slowly open. Standing in
the doorway was a little elf. He had long hair and a kind looking
face with a big smile. He looked at the girls with an expression
that seemed to say, I know who you are. The girls started to tell
the little man what had happened to them when, in the middle of the
story, he interrupted and finished it for them. He explained that
this was not the first time that some disoriented strangers had
came down the trail and he knew that they had come through a
doorway, a doorway that they could not go back through.

The girls looked at each other with a
concerned look when in the distance came the sound of the most
terrifying howl they had ever heard. Lori looked at the little elf
and asked what that noise was. The little elf said that it was the
howl of the Nicren. “The Nicren,” he said, “are the most terrifying
creatures in Htrae. They are very big, very strong, very fast, very
ugly and eat any type of meat.” The elf pointed to a nearby hill
and said that on the other side of the hill was a valley of large
trees and on the other side of the valley was another hill. These
monsters lived in the valley woods. He continued, “There are two
types of these monsters, one was called the Grizzle and the other
type was known as the Grazzle and their both equally mean.”

The girls asked the elf how they could get
home. The elf said, “Well there is good news and bad news. The good
news is that a passageway opens one day after the passageway you
came through closes. The bad news is that the passageway is on the
other side of the valley of tall trees…where the Nicren hunt.”

The girls got exact directions to the
location of the other passageway and then asked the elf if he could
tell them how to get around the Nicren. The little elf told the
girls that there were some small bells that could help them, but
they could find the bells and how to use them over at the building
on the hill where the town hardware was sold. The girls thanked the
little elf and headed toward the building on the hill.

As the girls entered the building they saw
another little elf behind the counter. The clerk asked if he could
help them. Jennie and Lori said that they had to go through the
valley and they needed some bells to protect them from the Nicren.
The clerk pointed to a shelf on the far side of the store. The
girls went over and picked up two small tinker bells. As they came
back to the counter they asked the clerk how the bells would
protect them. The elf clerk said that the bells would only protect
them from the Grizzle Nicren, but had no effect on the Grazzle. In
order to get protection from the Grazzle they needed a special
colored ribbon that was available next to the counter. The girls
were about to buy two tinkle bells and two ribbons when the clerk
said, “You know that the tinkle bell and the ribbon cancel each
other out so a person could only carry one item in order for it to
work.” Lori decided to get the ribbon and Jennie bought the tinkle
bell.

Lori asked the clerk how they would know if
there were any Nicren around as they moved through the woods.

The clerk said, “You can tell by their fresh
droppings”

The girls asked if there was a way to tell
the difference between Grazzle droppings and Grizzle droppings.

“Sure,” said the clerk. “Grazzle droppings
have tinker bells in them and the Grizzle droppings have a special
color ribbon in them.”

The girls thanked the clerk, packed up their
things and started the long walk through the valley woods.

The tall trees blocked a lot of sunlight
reaching the forest floor so the woods took on a gloomy appearance.
It was not long before the girls started seeing the remains of
other animals that had fallen prey to the Nicren. As the sun set,
the girls drew closer together as they tried to be as quiet as a
mouse traveling through the darkening forest.

Soon they started seeing Nicren droppings.
Some droppings had tinker bells and some with ribbons. As they
walked on there were more and more of the droppings.

Suddenly, the girls heard the bushes moving,
but there was no wind. It was too dark now to see far so the girls
just hugged each other and remained silent. Soon the bushes were
moving on all sides of them.

In the shadowy darkness the creatures moved
in a circle around the frightened girls. They did not think they
were going to survive the ordeal, so the only thing they could do
was huddle together and hope that the tinkle bell and ribbon would
somehow protect them.

(Now the Grizzles and the Grazzles were foul
looking creatures. They stood 12 feet tall covered in very wiry,
dirty hair with huge feet. The most remarkable feature about them
was that they only had one eye. The Grazzle’s eye was in the front
of their head and the Grizzle’s eye was located in the back of
their head. They moved in pairs with a Grazzle walking in the front
and a Grizzle walking behind the Grazzle. They never saw eye to eye
and always seemed to argue.)

A howling growl broke the temporary silence.
One part of the circle of creatures opened and through the dark
mist there appeared a two headed monster larger than the others
with hair that hung down to the ground. This beast had long blood
stained claws and globs of goo rolling out from one corner of its
fanged mouth.

The other creatures seemed to bow at the
presence of this horrific beast. It walked up halfway between the
other monsters and the girls. It looked at the girls with fiery red
eyes for a full minute then suddenly spoke in a very rough voice,
“What are you?”

The girls, in shock, responded, “Human”

“Pleased to eat you,” the monster said. “What
are you doing here?”

“Just passing through your woods to get
home.” Jennie said.

“Where is home?” The creature asked.

“We come from another dimension, a place
called earth.” Lori responded.

“I see you have two heads and four eyes and
do not have a lot of meat on you. Are there more of your type?”
(Apparently, since the girls were huttled together, they appeared
as one.) The girls thought for a minute then an idea popped into
their heads, they whispered in each others ears. They had a
plan.

While the girls were planning their next
move, the creatures in the circle started to argue about how they
were going to eat this trespasser into their woods. They had never
encountered a creature that could repel both a Grizzle and a
Grazzle.

All of a sudden Jennie and Lori yelled at the
top of their lungs. The yell startled the creatures into silence.
Jennie then said, “We are skinny because we have not eaten in such
a long time. Where we come from all the best food has been eaten
and we have come to look for more. We have two heads because two
heads are better than one and we have four eyes so we can see what
we are eating and watch what will be eaten next.” As they said
this, the girls stared at the creatures as hard and mean looking as
possible.

The two headed Nicren looked bewildered at
the girls and then asked, “What is this best food of yours?”

The girls turned their heads and body in
unison so as to look at every creature encircling them. Then Jennie
in a loud voice said, “Our favorite food is Grizzle and Grazzle
feet.” As Jennie said this they looked down at the creatures’ feet
and started to drool.

You could have cut the silence with a knife.
The Grizzle tried to look at the Grazzle while they slowly started
to back up. The two headed Nicren sheepishly said, “You know that
the feet of the one headed Nicren tastes a lot better than the feet
of the two headed Nicren,” as he too began to back up.

Suddenly, the girls yelled loudly and sprang
together toward the two headed Nicren. You would not believe how
fast that long haired, big footed creature could turn and run as it
let out a terrified scream. At the site of this, the rest of the
Nicren turned and ran into the dark mist just as fast as their big
feet would allow.

The two girls snickered and gave each other a
high five and continued on their journey through the woods, never
seeing another Nicren.

Jennie and Lori found the passageway home the
next day and they always went together whenever they went into the
woods again.

*****