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"You ready?" jake asked turning off the television.
"yeah I'm ready" I responded as Kendall and Jake both got up from the couch.
We turned off the TV and blew out the single candle in the kitchen.
Once outside, it was obvious the wind and snow were heavy and strong. The visibility was extremely low with the dim yellow glow of the street lights barely seeping through the abyss of night. We all slowly walked down the driveway to Jake's jeep. Jake got in first before unlocking the doors. it felt like minutes while Kendall and I stood on the other side of the jeep waiting for him to lift the lock for Kendall. once Kendall got in she reached over to unlock my door for the back seat. as I stood waiting I started to feel something was a little off. I turned around a looked down the street behind me. I could see another dim yellow glow off in the distance. This one was not a street light but instead hovered over the sidewalk. It was too far to see any distinct figure but I could see that the glow was moving toward us. across the street and about 200 feet away.
The door clicked but I continued to fixate on the glow. eventually, Kendall rolled down her window and broke the concentration.
"Everything okay darling"? she said softly.
"yeah, I was just fixed on something down the street", I said opening the door before getting in.
Jake handed me a cigarette then Kendall handed me a lighter. I rolled my window down enough to not let the snow get in and lit my cigarette.
I looked out the back window as Jake drove down the road. The glow faded as we continued to Edds house.
We parked and found our way to the doorstep. Edd greeted us with a glass of whiskey in his hand. His dad wasn't home for the winter either, he had a job that he had to leave town constantly. Edd would be left home for days, sometimes weeks, he usually throws little parties when his dads is gone. Although Edd, Jake, and the group weren't going to Virtik this winter, they still let me invite some councilors over to let loose before the season started. We were all in the living rooms talking about the upcoming winter season and how fun camp Virtik will be. This year Camp Virtik will host a 10-day overnight trip up in the forest around a lake that froze over in the winter. There are around 25 cabins where the kids sleep. we go on little adventures throughout the day and explore the forest. We hike and skate on the ice, we do a lot of sledding and on some days, we grab skis and let the kids go down the hill next to camp. At nighttime, we break up into our groups and find a spot in the trees to build a fire and tell scary stories for hours or until 10 PM when the kids go to bed. It was a tradition that we have been a part of since Jake, Forest, Edd and I were all campers. The camp is near the town of Northoak which is about 12 miles Northeast of here and 24 miles southeast of the town of Northridge where we go to school. an almost hidden exit off of Jericho, connected by one road and the very dense forest. The thing about camp Virtik is that at night we are highly advised to stay out of the woods and to stay in our cabins. Since I was a camper, the councilors had instructed us inside after 10 PM due to some occurrences over the years. In the late 70s a child named Tomas and a girl named Becca, ages 13 and 9, went missing while at camp Virtik. Authorities never found their bodies. The case shut down the campsite for 3 years until 1984 when it was reported to have opened back up for NYCA to let kids stay overnight again. In 1987 a family was camping half a mile away from camp Virtik in late fall before the winter season. Camp Virtik was empty but a father and his two kids Niomi age 11 and Walker age 9 pitched a tent after a day of hiking. their site was across the lake at the tree line facing the vacant camp. The father woke up to both kids missing. After a day of searching on his own, the man lost hope and hung himself with rope in his backpack. The last story is about an NYCA councilor in 1989. A councilor was in a fight with her boyfriend who was also a councilor at NYCA. She ran into the woods in a fit of rage and simply never came back. She was 17 when she went missing and they never found her body, her name was Nichole l. Camp Virtik is 2 miles away from a town called NorthOak. A small community of about 600 people. The town has a small grocery outlet where we get most of our food and supplies before we head to the campsite. NorthOak has the highest number of missing reported cases in the county and the people that live in NorthOak blame it on something in the forest.
