"Tyler, turn the camera off."
As Rose Kloves sat in the backseat of her cousin's car alone, she watched the almost battery-dead digital camera she had resting in the cup-holder flicker a red light off and on. As she made to glance her eyes away from its distracting presence, she looked instead upon the film that was currently uploading to the laptop resting on her knees. The little jump in distance the buffering meter had made told the blond seventeen year old that she could finally watch more of the film than the just the opening part.
"Tyler, turn the camera off."
She'd been sliding the progress bar back again and again to see this part of the video, which was a visage of her own face speaking to her camera-wielding cousin. The facial expression she made was quite clear – she looked annoyed. She had been annoyed – annoyed that Tyler insisted on making their boredom-born joy ride into some sort of documentary.
"Aren't you sick of being on camera all the time as it is with our film projects for school?" Rose asked him, before emitting a heavy sigh.
"I'm not on camera right now," Tyler's voice said. "You and Ginger are."
"If Drew was here, we'd have more reinforcements," Rose muttered with a sigh.
"Well Drew, your uber-cool boyfriend, couldn't be bothered to come with us out here to Penn-Roosevelt State Park Park. He called it lame, remember?"
"It is kind of lame," Rose said. "The main, so-called spooky features that people go to the trouble of setting up and staging at Penn-Roosevelt State Park Park all ended weeks ago, when Halloween ended too."
"Yeah well, I saw a documentary on YouTube that says otherwise—"
And it was there that the current video stopped playing, for the video stream had paused to let more of the ever-uploading footage become buffered.
Rose knew he was speaking about a silly video that a few humorous college students had slapped together in an attempt to resemble the infamous Blair Witch Project, and now Tyler wanted to do the same, which honestly shouldn't have surprised her – her cousin had always had a knack for deciding to do questionable, ill-advised things. With a sigh, she resumed playing the next buffered bit of video.
"We're nowhere near the actual setting of the Blair Witch Project. We're in Pennsylvania – the Blair Witch Project was staged in Burkittsville, Maryland."
"Listen to you, Rose – throwing around the words setting and staged like the Blair Witch Project wasn't even real," Tyler said, before zooming in on his cousin's face as she rolled her eyes and moved to shift her blond hair off her shoulders, so it could fall down her back instead.
"Tyler, for the love of God—"
Viewing over the bit of streaming footage a second time, noticing that it still cut out right after she said 'for the love of God', Rose frowned and brought a hand to her chest. "Tyler," she whispered aloud, though he was nowhere near her to hear it. "I'm sorry for being so angry with you."
Glancing over to the small camera, Rose noticed that the red light was flicking quite consistently now, as opposed to there being a slight pause between the flickering before, when it'd only begun to die. It would certainly call it quits altogether soon. All she could hope for was that the entirety of the footage would be uploaded before that happened.
She needed to have the footage. She had no idea what had happened later on into their trip to Penn-Roosevelt, when, at some point, her cousin had gone off by himself into the woods. Now she would know, since he'd had the camera with him when he'd gone. How long she'd taken to search through the woods for him, she wasn't sure, but it had been long enough for her to pull holes in her clothing, to get leafs and needles in her hair – enough to rough her up a bit before she'd found the camera hanging from a low-hanging tree branch.
After taking the camera, she'd made her way out of the woods and back to the car, just knowing that if she could upload what was found on the camera to her laptop in the back of her cousin's car, then maybe she'd find out just what had happened to Tyler.
"We'll see who's right and who's wrong," Tyler's voice said in a cocky manner then on the video, as more of it had become uploaded; Releasing the zoomed-in hold on Rose's face, the focus then turned to Ginger, who put her hands up, as if shielding herself from the lens.
Chewing her bottom lip as she watched this, Rose reached a shaky hand down the front of her shirt, reaching into her bra and bringing out a small, folded over baggie that contained some pills in it. Unfolding it, she slowly opened its self-sealing mechanism, before turning the baggie over, above her cupped palm. As the pills fell down into it one by one, she continued watching the video.
"Let's just get this over with already!" Ginger exclaimed, keeping her hands held up defensively. "I never agreed to be on film, anyway."
"Aw, come on – I thought you were my friend!" Tyler said to her, and as if on some sort of cue, the shot zoomed in on Ginger then.
"I said I never agreed to be on film. Friend or not, I only came here for the fun of it, and because there was nothing better to do. Get rid of the lens or I'm going to snatch that cheap little warehouse camera from you and toss it out in the trees, damn it!"
Laughing, the camera shook a bit as Tyler continued to hold it on his friend. "Wow – so violent, Ging'. Is that why you like to wear brass knuckles for no real reason? I thought it was just to go with your faux-gothic attire, but hey – what do I know?"
"It's Scene – not gothic. It's not gothic in the slightest!" Ginger exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air in annoyance as she turned her head to the side, so that her face still wouldn't be caught on camera.
"Well, if anyone would know, it'd be you," Tyler said nonchalantly, before suddenly turning the camera to the side, pointing the lens toward a random patch of trees. "Did either of you guys see that?"
"Jesus Christ, stop it, Tyler," Rose said, her voice scolding her cousin from off-screen. "There was nothing near the trees. You know it – I know it – Ginger knows it. If Drew was here, he'd know it, too."
"No, seriously – I really think I saw something just now by the trees!" Tyler exclaimed, before rushing forward, the camera shaking further as the trees grew closer and closer.
Closing her eyes as she listened to the sound of static and scratchy sounds that followed after this, Rose placed all fpur of the tablets in her hand into her mouth, before reaching forward to the front seat and lifting a half-empty water bottle from the back of the seat. Chasing the pills with the water, she sighed and slumped lower down in the seat, still inwardly praying that the footage would get uploaded in full before the battery would die.
"R-R-R-" the voice of her cousin stuttered on the computer as the footage struggled to buffer, before finally smoothing out, even as the image of the trees began to grow blurry to Rose's eyes, the effects of the popped pills starting to take over another moment later.
"Really – I just saw something! I swear it, you guys. Stop laughing at me, Ginger."
"It's not because I think you're funny, Tyler," the girl clarified, crossing her wrist-warmer adorned arms over her hoodie as she shifted her weight to one side. "It's because I think you're pathetic."
"Think whatever you want!" Tyler cried out, turning so quickly that the footage seemed to blur even further as he made to put the camera back on Rose herself. "Go on – look for yourself. Tell me if you see something."
"I'm not going out into the trees on some wild goose chase to fulfill some sick need you have to get hits on YouTube, Tyler!"
"But I should have . . ." Rose said in a slurred voice, as she slumped down further on the seat, her knees buckling just a bit, causing the laptop to slide back further, coming to a rest wedged between the top of Rose's knees and the back of the front-passenger's side seat.
"Fine then – Rose, Ginger – I'll go find whatever it is I saw myself!"
"Tyler . . ." the girl now murmured, before slumping over sideways onto the seat.
Slowly fluttering open her eyes, Rose felt as she were in a bit of a trance. Her lips felt cold. Much of her body felt cold, actually, but it was her lips feeling so frozen that she zeroed in on, licking at them off and on as she made to sit up straight in the backseat of the car.
Looking around herself slowly, the brown-eyed girl – at first – felt quite confused and out of place. The pills were still heavily in her system, and even though she had come to, she was still quite disoriented. Touching the side of her face and finding that it also felt cold; she swiftly turned her head and peered out through the window.
It had been growing darker and darker when she'd taken her hit – but now it was outright pitch black outside. Remembering the laptop, she rescued it from its position of being wedged between her now-aching knees and the back of the seat in front of her. Straightening it out on her lap, she touched one of the keys on the keyboard, to make the computer resume itself from its sleeping phase.
After a few seconds' delay, the image of the video player popped up over the background of the laptop. Narrowing her eyes to focus more on the progress bar, Rose noticed that the video seemed to be almost fully loaded, save for the very last portion, which couldn't have been more than two or three minutes, anyway. Reaching for the camera in the cup-holder, she found that it was now completely dead and would not turn on no matter what she did. So much for those last two or three minutes.
"Great," she murmured, snatching up the little digital camera and smashing it down onto the front console affixed between the two front seats, effectively breaking it; she then tilted her head backward and closed her eyes. "Well, maybe I should watch the rest of the video that was uploaded anyway."
Moving the mouse pointer over to the place she last remembered seeing, she fixed the slider at the appropriate time on the progress bar, before moving the pointer of the mouse to the sideways-triangular looking play button.
"Fine then – Rose, Ginger – I'll go find whatever it is I saw myself!"
"Go on – get yourself lost!" Ginger shouted at Tyler, before placing up a single hand to block the lens's view as the camera was turned onto her. "Get that out of my face before I knock your teeth down your throat."
"What are you so afraid of anyway?" Tyler called back to her, keeping the camera on her as he progressed into the woods by walking backwards. "Do you think you'll crack the camera lens if you look directly at it?"
"Go to hell, Tyler," Ginger said simply, before flipping the camera the middle finger.
"Why are you so against being on camera?" Rose's voice asked, and then the camera was turned onto her. "I'm not trying to make you angrier– I'm just curious, Ginger."
Sighing, the girl with blond-dyed hair said off-camera:
"Remember that whole picture scandal at the school? While we're on that, Tyler, my ex-boyfriend can go straight to hell along with you."
"Well, Ginger, it's not like Tyler sent out those pictures. He was text messaged them too, but he deleted them from his phone right away – you know that," Rose said, frowning.
"I can be mad at who I want to mad at," Ginger replied sourly, as the camera was shifted to focus on her once again. "And you-!"
"Okay, sorry, Ginger – sorry!" Tyler's voice exclaimed, and he quickly turned to face toward the forest, the lens now capturing the footage of the trees and bushes as he hurried on further into the woods.
"Good riddance!" Ginger's voice called out to him.
"Christ, Ginger, what's with all the hating on Tyler?" Rose's voice followed after.
At this, the footage cut out, leaving nothing but static in its wake.
"No. No – I need to know what happened in the woods!"
Desperately moving the slider back and forth on the progress bar, her attention was finally caught by the image of Tyler standing in the middle of the woods. It was a curious sight, and it caused a prickle of uneasiness to lift the hairs on the back of her neck. As he slowly turned around until his back was facing the camera, someone quickly rushed up behind Tyler.
"What the – oh God, oh God . . ." Rose murmured, bringing her hands to her mouth as she watched the back of Ginger's hoodie hunch forward, before the girl and Tyler both turned to the side, as if caught in a struggle, one that Tyler ultimately seemed to be losing.
"Jesus, Ginger – what did you do?" Watching with eyes wide-open, she now played witness as the footage showed Ginger lean back, her long hair blowing about in the wind as the night vision feature of the camera showed her to be pulling on Tyler's neck with a short rope.
"Let him go!" Rose cried out as she brought her hands up to her own hair, entangling her fists into its locks as she continued to watch. "Oh God, what did you do!"
Soon enough, the image of Tyler in the video began to go down. Dropping to his knees, he struggled in vain as Ginger continued to hold the rope tightly around his throat, strangling him.
"Rose . . . ?" Tyler managed to choke out, even as Ginger leant forward and knotted the rope after pulling it as tightly as it would go on either end.
"He asked for me before he . . ." Rose began to say, before physically wincing as Ginger placed a foot against Tyler's back, kicking him to the ground, before proceeding to stop hard on his middle back, even as she held the rope beyond his neck, strangling him further, to an impossible point it seemed.
Finally, a sickening snap was heard, and Rose knew it was all over. "Jesus Christ . . ." she said in a whisper, watching as Ginger released the rope and stepped away from Tyler, turning to step toward the camera, which showed no more than her bosom downward.
Finally, when she was there at the camera, she leant her face downward to peer into the camera lens at long last with a smirk, as if to just rub in the fact that she would only appear on the camera over Tyler's dead body. With a loud scream, Rose stared back at the footage in disbelief one second later, however, as the recorded footage showed not Ginger's face gazing into the lens, but rather her own face.
"That's not me! I didn't do that!" she shrieked, before moving the laptop off of her lap and plopping it down on the free seat beside her, before opening up the door and leaning outward, retching sick onto the grass, before coughing and saying, "I didn't do that . . ."
Hearing what she thought to be a scream play over the now-playing static of the video footage, Rose – still feeling quite disoriented, though getting better – sat up straighter and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, before moving to step out of the car, taking off at a run for the direction in which she thought the scream had originated from.
As she ran into the trees, she caught her sleeve on a low branch, and jerked it away, ripping the fabric. As she reached for the torn sleeve, she found a curious thing: the fabric of her shirt was foreign looking. She owned no shirts of this color, nor hoodies or jackets, either. Quickly glancing down at the front of the shirt, she found herself to be wearing quite a familiar top. In fact, it was a top she'd seen just earlier that same evening - a hoodie, to be more specific.
"If I'm wearing Ginger's hoodie, then . . ." she murmured, before turning quickly to run back for the car, feeling crazed and terrified as she ran.
She didn't notice the large, snarled tree root that was above the ground until she'd already tripped over it. Falling forward to the ground, Rose hit the corner of his head on a nearby rock, rendering the world black to her.
Back in Tyler Kloves's car, the static of the video footage had subsided to reveal a sound of footsteps.
"Tyler! Rose! Anyone?" Ginger was crying out in the video, over and over as she slowly rotated on the spot there, amidst trees. "I'm lost, and this isn't funny anymore! I'm sorry I was such a bitch to you guys! I am! Please – I give in. You win – just, just answer me, Tyler! Rose?"
Slowly bending her knees, Ginger reached for her sock, and slipped a small, folded over baggie out from the inside of it. Opening the bag, she took four of the eight pills from the bag and placed them on her tongue. Dry-swallowing the pills as she folded the baggie over and slipped it back into her sock, Ginger then afterward sat on the ground, crossing her legs.
Hugging herself to keep off the chill of the breeze blowing throughout the forest, Ginger had been huddled there for a couple of moments before the sound of a quiet sob began to arise from the girl, whose back was turned to the camera as she slowly rocked back and forth, allowing the effects of the pills to start to take over.
Coming from off-screen, the sound of more footsteps drew nearer, though Ginger didn't appear to notice them, for she remained sat on the spot, rocking back and forth a bit.
The footage cutting out, it soon resumed, showing Ginger and Rose in a different part of the woods together, caught up in a push and pull cat fight with one another.
"You took my pills, you skank!" Rose shouted, pulling at Ginger's hair, while the other, bottle-blond, likewise kicked back at Rose in return.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Ginger shouted back, shoving Rose away, though she cried out loudly as Rose took a small fistful of hair with her as she went. "Jesus Christ, you bitch. What's your problem?"
"You're my problem. Just wait until I find Tyler – you'll see. You took my pills from my back pocket and you know it, Ginger. You know it."
Slipping into a state of static once again, the footage did this for a few seconds, before clearing up again, revealing the image of Rose rushing up behind Ginger, even as she remained sat on the ground.
"Look what I found in the back hatch of Tyler's car?" Rose asked of Ginger, though it was purely rhetorical as surely Ginger couldn't reply with much of a response considering that a rope was now tied around her neck, choking her. "Convenient, isn't it – you little thief?"
Soon enough, Ginger was unconscious from the strangling, and Rose was removing the rope from her neck, satisfied that she was dead. The girl then proceeded to tug at the hem of Ginger's hoodie, trying to tug it up over her head. Before more could be seen, the footage cut out, first to static, and then fully to black. A few moments after the video had ended, the low-battery signal flashed on the bottom corner of the computer screen for a moment, before the computer itself began to shut down, erasing the footage that had been uploaded, for it had not been saved.
Out, far away from the car, Ginger stumbled from the trees in a slow, stumbling manner, scratches covering much of her arms and legs, while along her throat there was a faint mark that resembled a rope burn, though it had faded greatly in the hours that had passed since it'd been inflicted upon her, and it was quite impossible to notice it in the black of night, anyway.
In the distance, she could see flashing blue lights, though no siren accompanied them.
Running forward with an outstretched arm, the girl struggled to call out to the officers, as her voice was hoarse from all the screaming she'd done earlier that evening.
"Officer!" she managed to gasp aloud, as one cruiser pulled up to park alongside an already parked, second cruiser.
"Raise your arms up over your head," one of the cops ordered Ginger to do, as he got out of his car, a gun pointing at her as he stepped forward.
"But – but I didn't do anything," Ginger insisted, though she slowly raised her arms over her head when the officer gestured towards her with the gun further.
"What is your name?" the officer asked her, slowly lowering the gun as he moved around eventually to stand behind her, bringing her arms back around behind her back, putting cuffs on her wrists.
"Ginger Wood is my name. Wh-why? What's with the handcuffs? Officer, what's going on?"
"Ginger Woods, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law."
"I didn't do anything!" she shrieked, her throat aching painfully as she did so.
"If you didn't do anything, then why was a concerned parent of a local boy back home worried about him and his cousin not coming home after midnight had rolled around?" a second officer asked her then, approaching her after he'd gotten out from the passengers' side of the police cruiser; Ginger then looked to notice that the second cruiser was void of any officers at all.
"We were here to . . . Tyler thought something was in the woods, and . . . and then Rose-"
"Rose," the second officer said. "Rose Kloves? His aunt – the Tyler boy's mother – she mentioned her, too. Rose must've been the dead girl we found near the entrance of the woods. Blunt-force trauma to the head is quite evident."
"Oh God . . . but, but it wasn't me!"
"Sir!" a third officer said, as he stepped out from the forest. "Sir, we located the missing boy. He's further on there, in the woods – he appears to have been strangled to death."
"So I see," the second officer replied, giving a look of scrutiny to Ginger. "It seems to me that if three people go out by the woods, and then two are found dead, while one is alive, that the one left alive may very well have committed the killing of the other two friends. Especially when other influences are involved." At this, the cop held up a larger, zip-locked baggie, one that seemed to contain at least twenty pills, one could venture at just a glance.
Wide-eyed, Ginger could do not much else but to shake her head slowly, back and forth at the officer.
"Those are not mine, and I – didn't – do anything! I didn't do anything! I didn't do anything at all!"