Creeps, true stories from Reddit (Second book)

How to Survive Camping: Rule #2 - in which I ruin food for you

I run a private campground. Last post I threatened some of you and this time I thought I'd further alienate everyone by telling you about rule #2. If you're new here, you should really start at the beginning and if you're totally lost, this might help.
Bad years are just THE WORST. There's the uptick in deaths, of course, that should never be understated. I don't want to lose sight of that as our primary focus here because after all, dead campers can't come back for another visit and they certainly can't spend money at the camp store.
Of course dead campers also can't leave 1-star reviews because they didn't understand that a "primitive campground" means the only toilets that flush are a twenty minute walk away but hey, sometimes I have to make sacrifices.
But for me, personally, it's the little things that take their toll. The constant fear and anxiety. The crushing sense of responsibility and guilt for everything that could go wrong and does go wrong. And of course, the signs. All the little ways the world tells me that something terrible is stirring on my land, that a foul air has settled over it, and all the miserable creatures of the darkness have come to breathe deep of its putrescence.
Like the spiders in my brussels sprouts.
I used to not like brussels sprouts and I'm sure many of you still feel that way. But then someone showed me that if you cut them in half, brush them with oil, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and broil them until they're soft and a little bit charred on top, they're delicious. I probably make them about once a month now. So I got a bag of nice big ones from the same grocery store we buy the camp store's groceries at (and then resell at an upcharge) and started cutting them in half.
There was something dark inside of the first one. Something that crunched and then oozed white-green liquid onto the cutting board.
After I finished throwing the cutting board, knife, and brussels sprouts as far away from me as I could in a panic, I recovered my wits enough to carefully inspect what the hell was inside of my sprouts.
It was a spider.
A spider curled up at the heart, legs pulled in tight like it was incubating inside the leaves.
I cut another in half. It, too, made a sickening crunch as I sliced the knife through and a severed leg clung to the blade. Then I worked up my courage and instead of cutting one in half, I peeled the leaves back. One by one, I gingerly ripped them off, heart hammering. And finally, when only a handful of thin white leaves remained and I could see the shiny black body through the translucent tips... the spider moved.
Its legs shot through the seam between the leaves and the remains of the sprout surged as it clawed its way free. I shrieked and threw it to the ground and then grabbed the cutting board and tried to smash it into a pulp, but it'd escaped its leafy prison and it was fast. It scuttled across the floor even as I desperately chased it with the cutting board - which is an unwieldy weapon, to be honest, but there was no way in hell I was stomping on that thing with bare feet - and then it found a crack between the wall and the cupboards and it was gone.
I'm sure I won't regret letting it get away at any point in the future.
I dropped the rest of the brussel sprouts into the garbage disposal and let it run for a good ten minutes. Then I called my niece who manages the camp store and told her we had a problem with our produce and to please spot check a couple to make sure there weren't any spiders inside.
The apples were fine. The tomatoes were not. Nor were the snap peas. She just destroyed the cantaloupes without checking because no one wanted to see the size or quantity of the spiders that would crawl out of those. I'm not looking forward to seeing how much we lost in the weekly inventory report.
As I've said before, bad years are expensive.
I've been thinking a lot about the rules lately. We get new threats that wander in from time to time (seriously wtf is up with these spiders?) but they're transient or can be easily dealt with. I reserve the rules for the things that are the most consistent, pervasive, and deadly threats. We might deal with the yarn balls only once every couple of years, but the man with the skull cup we deal with perhaps once every couple of weeks. Given enough encounters... without the rules, someone will die. Or creatures like the fairy, who is rarely angered, but the scale of their anger is so destructive that I can't risk even one mistake.
All of this is magnified during a bad year. They show up more often. They are more hostile. And for some, they are more dangerous.
Rule #2 falls into the latter.
Fairy rings are generally benign. If there are the remains of a small animal inside the ring, however, inform camp management immediately.
The fairy ring problem has been around for generations. It's one of those things that my family just dealt with. We'd set out traps and I remember tagging along with my father as a small child to check them in the morning and burn whatever we found inside. I remember the screams. Dad didn't want to risk trying to get at the things that were biting at the wire confines of the trap in order to kill them humanely. He just doused the trap in gasoline and set it alight. I remember that he never talked much during these rounds. He seemed angry and I used to wonder if it was because I was being talkative or because I was distracted by things around me and eventually I learned to stay still and silent and watch the pyre.
Now that I'm older I understand his anger. It wasn't at me. He hated killing things. Even the ones that would kill humans, if given the chance.
Maybe I'd be a better person if I turned out more like my father.
I have a lot of theories around how the world works and how these inhuman things function and where they come from. I can't guarantee any of them are correct. I'm just trying to make sense of the world I live in.
Not every civilization has survived throughout history. Some were conquered, some were destroyed by disease or disaster, and some just vanished. I've already explained that inhuman creatures tend to stay close to the culture that spawned them, whether that's staying on their ancestral land or finding a family whose roots trace back to that same region. So what happens to the inhuman things of a dead civilization?
Surely they would die as well?
I don't think they do.
Ireland has what's called "the Mythological Cycle" which is also sometimes called "Cycle of the Invasions". The Mythological Cycle is an account of how the current inhabitants of Ireland got there. It also talks about the inhabitants that came before them. There were the Partholanians, who came from the west, the land of the "happy dead", and were led by Partholan and his queen. They were afflicted by pestilence and after gathering together in one place so as to bury their dead together, perished as a whole.
Then came the Nemedians, who were also from the regions of the dead. They too died of plague.
After them were the Firbolgs, which you may have already heard of. They were defeated by the Tuatha De Danann, or the fairies, and were given Connacht to live in and some of the people of that region may even be their decedents.
Finally, the Tuatha De Danann were defeated by the Milesians, or... us. As the host of the Milesians approached Ireland in their ships, the Danaan drew mist around the island so the ships could not see it. But the mist was rebuked by the poet Amergin and the Milesians and the Danaan did battle. Many of the Danaan were slain and they withdrew into the hills, into invisibility and into a world that sits next to our own.
If you think, oh hey, the fairies can be killed - look. The Milesians had a poet. And I don't mean the guy with a beard in your MFA classes that writes mostly about smoking weed, I mean a poet. One that could rebuke the wind itself with his words. Good luck finding one of those.
So that's the early history of Ireland.
Bet you weren't expecting to learn about that today.
Bryan's family is from Ireland. They brought with them the creatures of their homeland. I'm not sure if they're from Connacht for perhaps from some proximity to the field that houses the mass grave of the Partholanians, but I think they brought some remnant of one of those vanished civilizations.
We don't know the real name for these creatures. We call them "gummy bears". They're attracted to fairy rings. Finding the remains of a small animal inside a fairy ring is rarely cause for concern, but if we get multiple reports then we know they're leaving the remains of their meals behind and it's time to set out the traps.
I don't know what they look like in their original form. Perhaps they had no body at all and they were merely some spirit of pestilence, the same disease that killed off both the Partholanians and the Nemedians. Perhaps those people brought these spirits with them from the land of the dead.
Diminished as they are, they can only inhabit the bodies of other, lesser creatures. Cats. Small dogs. Raccoons. Rodents.
While they certainly look terrifying, their size doesn't make them much of a threat. A good kick will save most campers from them. However, an incident that occurred the year after my parent's death made me realize their potential.
Since the rules didn't exist yet, we didn't receive reports from our campers about the remains of rabbits and squirrels that were appearing inside of fairy circles. I think this gave them time to grow in numbers. To congregate. It was Bryan's dogs that found evidence of the problem and when Bryan followed the pack to where they were taking him he found the lead dog growling at the circle with its teeth bared and tail down. He told me and I set out traps.
One of my staff, Ed, went with me when I made the rounds to check them. This was unnecessary - I knew what to do - but I suspect that he came with me for different reasons. Ed was hired as a young man by my grandparents. He'd watched me grow up. And he knew that the last time I went to check the traps like this was with my father. So he went with me so I didn't have to face that grief alone and I'm glad he did, because I was conflicted. Careless.
I was trying not to cry, to be honest.
The first couple traps were empty. Then we reached the third and I got the can of gasoline and began to walk towards it. I wasn't paying much attention, as I was thinking of the fire and how the beast's throat glowed in my nightmare as it ripped my dad apart. Ed grabbed my arm and stopped me before I could get too far.
"Look," he said softly.
I did.
We call them "gummy bears" because once the fur and skin is removed from a creature and it begins to decay, that's kind of how they look. Their bodies are intact, held together by the power of whatever inhabits it, but it's decaying in layers. The muscle shines with a jellied translucence and the withered bones are yellowing inside. The dark meat of organs float at the core of its body.
If you kick them really hard they'll explode like you drop-kicked a jello mold. I don't recommend it.
At Ed's quiet warning I took a longer look at what was in the trap. I'd initially taken it for a rat - there was the elongated head, the arch of the spine - but now I saw while it was a rat... it wasn't just a rat.
It was a multitude. Scrambling with translucent paws, gnawing at the wires with ivory teeth, all those bodies heaving and struggling and their tails bound together like a mass of yellow, glistening worms.
We'd trapped a gummy bear rat king.
If you're not familiar with what a rat king is, I highly recommend you google it and just put the cherry on top of this gummy bear and brussels sprout horror sundae.
The cage shook as some of the rats noticed us. They lunged forwards, teeth snapping, liquid eyes conveying their madness as they fixed on where we stood. The entire trap lurched a few inches and the handful of rats stuck in the trap squealed as their bodies were violently raked against the sides.
The rat king was only stuck partway into the trap. Some of the rats at the fore had made it in, gotten stuck, and now they could not get out and the remainder of their attached brethren could not break free.
Ed suggested that he get the shovel from the four-wheeler and pin the trap down with it. I could douse it with gasoline then and we'd just ignite them from a safe distance. I agreed with the plan and waited while he carefully approached. The rat king pivoted to face him, the cage rattling on the ground as it turned. He took careful aim at the far limits of the shovel's reach, and jammed it down onto the body of the trap.
And at the impact, the rat king was spurred to lunge at him in return. There was a wet sound like putty splitting and the tails broke away, leaving behind quivering lumps of flesh as the third of the rat king still stuck in the cage screeched in anguish. And the bulk of the rat king, now freed of the trap, leapt at Ed.
He got in one swing with the shovel, but it went wild, and the rat king hit their target. They wrapped around his ankle, chewing and biting, and Ed was overbalanced from his swing and he went over. He hit the ground hard and the rat king continued to bite, dozens of teeth latching into his flesh as they wrapped around his ankle like a blanket.
I remember his screams. They almost drowned out the screeching of the rats still trapped in the cage.
I ran for him. I didn't know what else to do other than to get them off. So I reached down and with my bare hands I plunged my fingers into the gelatinous mass of rats and wrenched them free.
It was like dipping my hand into a bowl of tepid porridge.
And then they twisted and began biting me - I felt their teeth score deep and I cried out in pain - and I threw them as hard as I could into the nearest tree.
You know how I said I don't recommend kicking them?
The rat king exploded into a shower of flesh, organs, and bits of yellowed bone. Some of it got in my hair. I stood there a moment, breathing shallowly, and slowly Ed's cries subsided into groans of pain.
I radioed for help and while we waited for the ambulance, I wrapped Ed's leg up to staunch the bleeding. Then I burned the remainder of the rat king.
We were both taken to the hospital. They kept us overnight with a drip of IV antibiotics. I was released the next day. Ed was released much later, after they amputated his leg from the knee down. It turned red, the color of the exposed meat of the gummy bears, and then translucent, and then black.
Ed is still around. He keeps saying he's going to retire and I don't think he will, because his job these days mostly consists of driving around the campsite and shooting the shit with my campers and drinking their beer. If any of my other staff complain I tell them Ed provides invaluable intel on what's going on around the campsite, but also they can fuck right off because Ed has more seniority than anyone here and deserves the easy jobs.
Okay, so their bites cause disease, you're thinking. Any animal bite can do that. And anyone that gets bit on my campsite is probably going to get a massive dose of antibiotics and rabies shots in response. Yes, this is all true. But there's one more thing that happened after I was released from the hospital.
We kept finding the remains of animals in the fairy circles. And Bryan's dogs were uneasy. They refused to go into the forest. Our traps kept turning up empty.
I decided to try another approach. We'd leave out bait. I talked to a local farmer and convinced him to part with one of his goats. We killed it and hung the body from a stout branch, high enough that the average animal in the forest couldn't get at it. They'd smell it, though. And then I affixed a digital camera to a tree trunk.
In the morning I went to check on the bait. I found... half the goat still hanging from the tree branch. The rest of its body was gone. There was no trail of blood or broken branches. Whatever had taken it was big enough to reach the bait, rip it in half, and then carry that half off into the woods.
I took the camera home, viewed the footage, and then cancelled the open camping we had planned for the coming weekend and sent out a whole lot of refunds. Then for a week my staff and I scoured the campground in teams of three, armed with fire and guns and accompanied by a dog, until finally we had to admit that whatever was out there had clearly retreated into hiding, for we weren't finding the remains of small animals in the fairy circles anymore. I reopened the campground and when I wrote my rules, I included it as rule #2.
I think I've said before that there's no real order to the rules. Don't read too much into it being the second rule. I think it occurred to me so quickly because I don't know what's out there and that frightens me.
And no, I don't have the footage to share with you anymore. The file got corrupted quite some time ago when I transferred it to a new computer. Besides, there wasn't much to see. When I reviewed it I saw the edge of something's body, the translucence of flesh and the start of a bone. Then it bumps into the camera and dislodges it and all you can see is dirt.
I'm a campground manager. Some of the creatures I deal with are beautiful, like the fairy, or intriguing, like the dancers. And some are straight-up horrifying. I worry that with it being a bad year, the creature that took the goat will come back to the campground. I worry about a lot of things coming back or suddenly becoming more active. And now to top it off, I have to worry about my diet because I'm not sure I want to eat fresh vegetables ever again after the spider incident and my dinner tonight is literally beef jerky, some cheddar cheese, and popcorn; and I'm sure that's not going to be healthy in the long-term.

Posted by u/fainting- - goat