Hot Springs Horror #NaNoWriMo2020

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It couldn't be. There had to be hidden cameras, had to be trailers tucked behind the hills and crews watching, waiting for some signal to turn on the lights, to expose the scheme.

Because standing before me, their bodies like holographs, see-through and scintillating and specter-like... were Rob, Aaron, and Jay.

"How... the fuck?"

The scars from their wounds remained, but all three were clothed; even Aaron, who'd been wearing a towel when we last saw him. Their cheeks were hollow, their eyes lifeless and marblesque, their skin pallid and nearly peeling off. Blood stained through their shirts and pants, and none of them seemed to be breathing.

"Hello, Rose," said Rob, his voice robotic, distorted. He took a step closer, and I crawled backwards, whimpering.

"This... isn't possible." Rocks dug into my palms as I skidded as far away as I could before bumping into the stones surrounding the extinguished camp-fire. I gaped at my dead friends, then again at the ghostly beings before me. "Who... what are you? You're dead. All three of you... you're dead." I felt the urge to throw up again, but nothing came up my throat. It all remained cramped in my stomach, pushing against its linings, causing severe pangs that rippled from my lower abdomen to my upper rib-cage.

"We are dead." Rob stepped forward again, leaving the other two a few inches in his shadow. But he had no shadow; he wasn't real. Like a projection, a mirage, transparent. I could see my tent and the obscure wilderness and the sky behind him, as if he blended in with the air. And yet his appearance was crystal clear. "And we're who we appear to be. The boys you drank with, laughed with, sucked face with."

I gagged. "Sucked face?" Shivering, I attempted to stand, hoping I'd shimmy to the other side of the campsite, to keep the fire-pit between us. If only I knew how to start a fire; that might distract them, give me time to find a hiding spot. There was a malicious energy radiating from these creatures, and I wouldn't stick around to see what they'd do to me. Were they zombies?

"Don't play dumb, Rose. We've been watching you." Aaron's tone matched Rob's, yet it laced with a fickle amusement, a dark humor that I remembered hearing in him when he was alive. Yet here it was harsher, more painful to hear, filled with malevolence.

"We?" I scrambled to my feet and hurried to one of the vacant chairs behind the fire-pit. "You? And Rob and Jay? How were you watching? You... you just said it, you're dead."

Rob chuckled; a bone-chilling noise that froze me to the core as I gripped the back of the chair, bracing to lift it as a weapon if they got too close. "Don't twist our words. You'd do well to shut up and let us speak."

"Our communication in your dream wasn't enough, it seems. You kept digging," said Aaron, standing level with Rob, drawing the focus on himself. Jay remained in the distance, quiet, quite like his living self. "And you dug too far... so here we are. To give you the truth before we end you, too."

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. My thoughts mixed and melted, as if someone had reached into my brain and pressed a pause button, leaving all my words to float there, flashing at me, but I was unable to use them.

"You found Jay's article about the kids in the seventies." Rob motioned at Jay's tent with his thumb. "You saw what it said—death occurred here, and bodies disappeared. But no one ever discovered why the deaths happened in the first place."

Aaron fiddled with his man bun. "They befouled the area. These springs... are sacred, you see. A place of legend, a place where spiritual beings reside, overseeing the water, ensuring it remains pure, prosper. And those idiots... they came through and tinted the air with their marijuana smoke, threw their trash all over the sand, spilled their alcohol in the springs, dirtied the area with their sexual games."