Jack

The Night Jack Died

It was my best friend's deepest secret, and it would be a hard one to keep.

It started at summer camp a couple months ago when my life was turned upside down. Although only my best friend, Jack, and I knew it. Jack had pulled me aside during breakfast to discuss something with me and said it was important. Not really thinking any of it, I told the other guys that I would be back and stood up to follow him. When we get into the abandoned hallway is when I really looked at him. "Holy hell, What's happened to you!?" I quietly yell at him. He looks absolutely horrible, nothing like what he looked like when I had first seen him in the bunkhouse. His hair was disheveled, his t-shirt was in tatters, he had huge bags under his eyes and was breathing heavily. "I need to tell you something and you need to promise me that you won't breathe a word about it to anyone" he says in a rush stumbling over his words. I begin to ask him what's going on but before I can finish he all but yells at me to promise. "Ok ok! I promise. Now just please calm down and tell me whats going on." He looks around before telling me in a hushed tone: "I died earlier" he says with a blank look in his eyes. I start to think either he's going crazy or I am. "What?" I say with a breath of laughter. "What are you talking about?" I say dumbfounded. "I was jogging before breakfast and tripped and fell off the cliff." I look at him like he's nuts and ask him to prove it. He grabs my hand and starts to lead me towards the lunchroom. That's when I noticed how his hand felt on my arm. I could see it was there but couldn't really feel it. Thinking I was probably just freaking myself out I put it to the back of my mind and keep walking. When he reaches the door he looks back at me and slowly walks backwards through the door and disappears through the heavy set of wooden double doors. I start to walk towards it confused but then he walks back through and says:"See? Told you." That's when I really started to believe him. But as I'm about to ask him what now, he starts screaming and then explodes into a blinding white light. When the light fades, I notice that I'm the only one in the hall. I sprint towards the door and push them and look around for the camp counselor. When I spot him I run up to him and say that something might've happened to Jack. I tell him what all happened and with him noticing how disturbed I looked he asked me to walk with him to the cliff.

When we walk up to the edge we both look down and see Jacks mangled corpse at the bottom on the rocks. The counselor grabs me and pushes me away from the edge and reaches for his cell to grab his phone. He dials 911 and we rush back to camp. When we get to the courtyard the police are already there and they ask us to lead them to where Jack was laying. Once we arrive after the long hike, we tell them to look over the cliff and they do. But they look confused and look back up at us and say:"Is this your idea of a joke?" The counselor and I look at each other and go up to the cliff and look down to see that Jack was gone. Later the police inform us that there was blood on the rocks and a trail of blood that led deep into the woods, but had found no trace of Jack. The counselor whispers to me to not say anything about what I saw. "For your safety" he had said.

I close my journal and place it back in it's spot on the shelf and look over at Jacks photo next to it and think to myself, "I'll found you Jack, I promise." With that, I shut off my lamp and close my eyes trying to will myself to sleep.