Chapter Three; The Legend of Camp Banshee
After Mickey and Martha dropped Peter off at camp, he decided that he better start pitching his tent. That's when all of a sudden one of the other boys walked over to him. He had short red hair and dark brown eyes with freckles on either side of his cheeks right underneath his eyes. "So Peter, you decided to show up after all huh?" he questioned him.
"What do you mean, why wouldn't I show up? I always come to all our campouts unless I'm sick or something." He said.
"Yeah, I know." The other boy began before grinning slyly at him. "But none of our other campgrounds have been haunted." He said.
"What do you mean it's haunted?" Peter asked him. "Mr. Brown never said anything about it being haunted." He said.
"Well of course he didn't. He didn't want to scare us, otherwise nobody would show up if they knew that Jack Wicks was out to get them." The other boy said as another dark skinned boy walked over to join them.
"Well, who's Jack Wicks?" he asked him.
"You don't know!?" the dark skinned boy began. "Tell him Scott!" he exclaimed.
"I'm surprised you don't know about that legend." Scott began. "Considering that you and your family are into strange things and stuff. Anyway, they say he lived in an old cottage on top of a hill about two hundred years or so ago. He was a woodcarver and he loved to carve more than anything in the world. So much so that he never got married or had a family of his own. And the one thing he hated more than anything was trespassers on his property.
He was afraid that they would wreck his carvings, or try and stop him from chopping down any more trees. So one day a little girl decided to run away from home, and so she foolishly decided to go through the path in the woods. All of a sudden it started to rain and thunderstorm. She stopped once she got into the clearing. A lightning bolt lit up the cottage for her, and she figured that whoever lived there would help her find her way back home." He told him.
"However that was the biggest mistake that she ever made." The dark skinned boy said inside a spooky and mysterious whisper.
"Why? What happened to her?" Peter asked him although once he did, he was sorry that he had ever asked.
"Jack murdered her, and used her body as firewood, she was never seen or heard from again." The other boy began before he clenched his fists and simulated a whacking motion. "He chopped her up with an axe and hid her ashes and the rest of her remains under the floorboard of his house." He told him.
"Did the police ever catch him?" Peter wondered.
"Eventually they did, and the legend goes that they used his own axe to chop his head off and then they buried him next to his cottage. It is said that his spirit still haunts the woods, and if you ever seen an old man guiding his way through the woods with a lantern, that you better turn around and run away while you still can, or you'll meet the same fate as the little girl and the thousands of other children that trespassed on Jack's property." Scott said.
"Jack?" Peter questioned. "Jack's lantern?" he pondered when suddenly it had hit him. "Wait a minute, Jack O' Lantern!" he realized. "That must have been where they got the name." he began before he shook his head. "Anyway, you guys don't scare me. I don't believe in ghosts." He boasted.
"Oh yeah? Well then prove it, go into the woods. I dare you." Scott said.
"Fine! I will!" Peter cried.
"If you wait until Halloween night they say that the devil will appear and drag your soul to Hell just like he tried to do to Jack's." the other dark skinned boy said.
"Alright, I'll do it. I'll come back here on Halloween and prove to you guys that it's just a stupid story. I'm not afraid of anything!" Peter bragged. "I just have to take my little sister trick-or-treating first." He said before he turned around and walked away.
"Do you think that he'll actually go through with it?" the dark skinned boy questioned.
"Not a chance." Scott replied with a shake of his head.
