The Whistler

 His breath was frosted in the chilly air as he rushed to his campsite; dodging Scouts as they made their way to the dining hall in the exact opposite direction. Everyone was going to eat, but Neil needed to find Thomas.

Thomas didn’t show up for anything after Geocaching, not Communications, not First Aid, not even Mining in Society, and he was really excited about that. “Weird, and my dad was a coal miner, so it’ll be interesting to see.”

He didn’t get to see, because he never came to the pavilion where they held the merit badge lesson.

Neil weaved his way on the muddy path, covered in twisted vines and scattered rocks, all the way back to campsite twelve. He rushed past the trailer and into the camp, where he scoured the site for Thomas’s bright, neon green tent. But it wasn’t where it was before. In fact, it seemed as if it had vanished entirely. Maybe he moved into to tent with someone, to fight the cold and all that, Neil thought.

It was somewhat creepy to see the camp in the dim of dusk, entirely deserted. Not a single soul, other than Neil himself and the various other haunting ghosts that counselors told roamed Camp Porter. It would be serene, or at least not unsettling, if there was a bit of sunlight seeping in through the coat of trees, but hardly even a sliver of the piercing silver light of the moon cut to the ground. Or if there was somebody there, even deep in slumber. But this felt as if it was the recipe for a perfect crime scene. 

The guidelines from the tent were black, meaning they were entirely out of sight on such a dark night. Neil must’ve pulled out twenty stakes from the ground as he tripped on the lines. “Thomas, where are you? You’re supposed to be my buddy. Buddy system and all that great stuff.” No reply. “C’mon, Tommy, it’s time for dinner.” Still, nothing. Maybe I missed him at the dining hall, he thought. But that wouldn’t explain all the merit badge classes he missed.

He turned around, toward the just-as-deserted path. They were the campsite furthest back, so there was zero foot traffic. He’d lost his flashlight or left it in his tent, or something. All he knew was he didn’t have his stupid flashlight. He had to walk along this unbeaten path in the pitch black for minutes, alone, until he finally saw a gleam of orange light blowing from the dining hall, until he saw a single sign of human life. Despite his quick pace, his entire troop was sitting at the table they consistently claimed, right next to the window. He was late.

He began to sprint to the dining hall, as tonight was no regular night of the week. This was the night they were going to share stories, as long as they were pre-approved, at the indoor fireplace. They would cut the lights, lighting the whole dining hall with merely the firelight, leaving everyone's face looking like those spirits in all the ghost stories, especially that Whistler one. That “silly story,” or so his father called it when he was trying and failing to comfort a young Neil, gave him chills. Nightmares and chills.

He stopped at the end of the line, panting wildly like a dog, trying to catch his breath. Even though he was in the back of the line, it barely even extended out the door of the dining hall. He threw his gloves into his pocket and rinsed his hands underneath the wooden structure that, when connected to a hose, spewed water from miniature faucets. Frigid water that made his hands feel like they were burning on ice. He jolted them back, drying them on his jeans. He headed into the old, wooden building painted a blue-gray on the outside, and lacked any sign of paint on the inside. It was merely glossed cedarwood, but it felt cozy, homey. And warm. Thank the Lord it was warm.

He moved forward in the line along the concrete floor, as his stomach growled, begging for food. Another Scout, Andrew, met his eyes. Andrew was already awarded the rank of Eagle but still tagged along on campouts, for the fellowship, for the badges, for the fun. Andrew sat up and strode towards Neil. “Hey, Neil. Where were you?”

“Looking for Thomas, he’s my buddy,” he said. Andrew gave him a strange look, but shrugged it off. 

“Alright, just tell someone next time. We thought you were with Tucker, but Tucker swore he didn't know that you two were paired together.”

That’s a pretty strange mix-up, Neil thought. Andrew walked off, glancing back at Neil, giving him a strange look.

As the volunteers piled ham, mashed potatoes, corn, and green beans onto his plate, Neil became increasingly distant in his thoughts. Why was he looking at me like that? He seemed surprised about Tommy too, like… like he didn’t know who he was. The Whistler, that horrifying camp story, crept its way into his mind. Maybe I’m remembering the details wrong, maybe it doesn’t line up.

He sat down at his table, seeing that each and every member of his troop had already cleaned their plates. He was incredibly late. Late enough that as soon as he sat down, almost instantly, the lights cut, and they were left with only the glow of the fire to see their surroundings. Now my face will be a mess. Great, thought Neil. He’d have to blindly shove food in his face, hardly seeing where exactly his mashed potatoes were versus where the ham claimed home to on his plate.

Someone stood upon a table in the center, but Neil couldn’t pinpoint exactly who it was with such dim lighting. “Hello, Scouts!”

A chorus of “hey,” “hello,” and applause rose up, echoing around the hall, each reverberation becoming a ghostly call. “Now,” said the man, “We’re gonna be holding a story-telling campfire event! I love these things! First up, we have…” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of loose-leaf paper. He squinted his eyes as he tried to read it through the darkness. “We’ve got a boy named Evan Pullman, reading a story he calls “A Cursed Statue!”

And so the night went on, boys stepping up to recall the stories. One was about a baboon chasing a troop historian through the trees, another about a ghost who haunted a lonely lake on the rim of the camp. But, Neil was so anxious for the details, the missing pieces to the jigsaw, of the Whistler. And the man, who he discovered was the employee who ran the trading post, Mr. Carp, was the one who was going to retell it, the horrifying masterpiece.

It was the second-to-last day of camp, and Johnathan was laying in his tent, unable to shake a feeling of intense paranoia that something was nearby. Of course, the first time he'd been able to sleep alone with his proud new rank of First Class, something strange happens.

A twig snapped. Leaves crackled under the pressure of a foot. A slow, calculated thump, thump. It was rhythmic. Thump, thump. When it stopped, it wasn’t a slow halt; it was sudden. A final thump, right in front of John’s tent. Oh boy, here we go, he thought. This is how all of the horrors begin.

Something hit his tent, and he started. The air felt colder, the burning sensation it gave felt sharper, stinging his skin, drying his throat, and when he gasped that air felt so thin it was as if nothing entered his lungs at all. 

Jonathan heard a car go by, the gravel crunching, crying out. The car's headlights flashed through the trees, and John caught a glimpse of a silhouette. A silhouette of a man, at least six feet in stature, standing over his tent, a cowboy-style hat crowning his head. And that man was looking straight at Johnny, there were zero mistakes. He wanted John, and he wanted John bad. 

The man began to whistle, an eerie, somber tune. It was deep, a lower pitch than any human John knew could whistle. Up, and down, something of immense musical beauty. Then, just as sudden as the footsteps, it stopped. The leaves crackled one final time, as the man turned to face John’s tent. A car flew past. John heard the zipper of his tent as the door opened, and he saw, shrowded in no less shadow as when he was merely a silhouette, the Whistler.

He lunged forward, no whistling anymore, just heavy breathing. He snatched up Johnathan, pulled his ear close to his mouth, and let out that pretty tune.

Tyler, asleep in another tent, heard two sets of footsteps leaving the site, two whistles forming an even prettier harmony together. Tyler felt the urge to stand up, to unzip the tent, to follow whoever was making that tune. But, he resisted. Something just felt… off. Something was off about it. It wasn’t two kids, it was something unnatural.

That morning, when Tyler actually did crawl out of his sleeping bag and climbed out of his tent, yet again, something was off. He couldn’t pinpoint it- where was John’s tent? Where was John? Did he leave? Have a medical emergency in the night?

“This kid, this Tyler kid was very determined that something happened to his Johnathan friend. So determined, in fact, that he and a few friends who swear they also knew this kid went as far as getting a volunteer to tell every single kid in the dining hall that there was a missing Scout.” That comment from Mr. Carp garnered a few laughs. But not from Neil. Neil was horrified. Those details seemed to match Thomas exactly.

“Caused a panic in the camp. Went down as the ‘Johnny Boy Prank.’ Our camp yearbook actually wrote a huge article on it. But, these kids were clingin’ on to their story, despite the fact that this John kid wasn’t a single one of our records, not a single merit badge counselor's roster, not nothing.

“But, the scary thing is the fact that these kids didn’t just say that the Johnny Boy went missing, no. They said that each night, someone disappeared. Someone who believed that John went missing. Someone who heard that whistling. They said that no one who heard his call would be safe. The only reason that we can apparently remember this was that camp ended early that year. A blizzard. So those kids got away from that spirit that romps around the campground. 

“So, if you hear that whistling, you're doomed.” He paused. “Thank you, y’all, and, do we got any questions?”

Neil had a few but was too in shock to answer. He had realized that he was next. He was the next victim in the story.

Unless he could get out of the camp. Maybe… maybe faking sick would free him from the Whistler, the beast.

Neil’s own bed felt far more comfortable than the uneven ground from beneath this tent. No stones giving him a knot in his back, no twigs poking him to death.

He’d hardly gotten out in time. It was almost midnight, when Mr. Carp had said he struck, but his mother swooped in to pick him up at 11:46. It was pitch-black, and they’d never see someone coming in that setting. Easy to sneak up, blow a tune into Neil’s ear, and drag him into oblivion, all while nobody noticed.

The hardest part about faking sick wasn’t actually doing it, but the boredom that followed. Sitting at home, letting the monotonous hours tick by, because you were supposed to be too sick for school, or in this case, for camp. Sitting there felt like being grounded, minus the part where someone was angry- well, that wasn’t true. Neil was furious, that no one seemed to remember Tommy except for him. That he was stuck in some seeming fantasy, that no one believe those poor friends of Johnathan. That there was a Whistler out there, snatching up kids for whatever army he must be building.

Unless the Whistler wasn’t really real, and the anxiety was just creeping back into Neil’s head, just as the light crept through the crack in his curtains, never going away and making sleeping something difficult and rare. 

Not that he would get much sleep anyway, with the poignant images constantly barging their way into his mind every chance he managed to fall asleep. Every. Single. Time.

Maybe it’ll ease your mind if you find out more, he thought. Stories are often dramatized to get that good reaction that they want.

Mr. Carp had said something about a yearbook article, and, considering that the camp was this little town’s main attraction, if you could call it that, maybe the library had some of those. By the trading post owner’s words, it was a pretty big event. Mr. Donner, the librarian, was a Scout back in the early ’80s, maybe he was there when the incident actually happened. More human perspective.

Sneaking out wasn’t hard; Neil’s dad left years ago, and his mom was a journalist who was always out and about, so no one was home except for him. The only dilemma was his phone. Neil’s mother could easily track him with that “Find My” app, but if he left his phone at home and something happened…

Nothing will happen. You’re overworking your brain again. 

So he left, heading toward the library, walking along the town’s main street that tourists seemed to love, with all of the cute, teenie shops, including what Neil needed. A library. Mr. Donner was the head librarian there and was one of the nicest people Neil knew. And the smartest.

Neil pushed the glass door of the shop. On the door, there was a worm crawling out of a book stenciled on, something simplistic, sleek, and stylized for the modern people. To try and influence all of the children who don’t know the true magic of a book to come in, open one up, and delve into a magical world. Still, the place was always quiet, even in the morning when a coffee shop opens up in the back to serve a drink even Neil managed to enjoy.

“Hey, Mr. Donner!” Neil said, running straight to the center of the library. He didn’t yet have to navigate the aisles of books, trudging through titles, reading each one.

“Hey, Neil. Aren’t you supposed to be at camp?” His voice was deep, but it had gone up with his old age. Donner was 62, but still going strong. He’d run in that year’s Easton Marathon, the town’s annual race, and he came in tenth.

“Yeah, wasn’t feelin’ so good though,” he said. Neil hated lying, hated that he’d snuck out, but he hated that Whistler- if he was real- even more.

There was an awkward pause before Mr. Donner spoke up. “Lemme guess, Carp told that darned story again?”

“You talking about the whistling one?”

“Yeah. You know, every camp, I get at least one kid comin’ here asking ‘bout that yearbook,” he said, standing up. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

He began to guide Neil through those aisles taller than Donner himself, talking about the story. “You know, I was there for that Johnny-boy stuff.”

“Really?” This was good. The more outside information, the better verification.

“Yep. Was friends with one of the writers for this yearbook. But, they had to cut quite a bit outta it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Too much for kids to read. There was some pretty scary stuff, some I’m not quite sure I should tell you about.”

Neil's stomach churned. That wasn’t the kind of news he wanted. “Um… I’m no wimp. I could hear it.”

Mr. Donner looked at him, sizing Neil up. “I’ll tell you some of it, then you get outta here with the yearbook and home before your mom gets back.” He winked as Neil gawked. That man was intelligent. 

He told him all about the details; weird markings all over the camp, the pranks more widespread belief, and actual searches for a kid that “didn’t exist.” And that was Donner holding back.

“Pretty creepy, huh?” he asked, a smile creeping at the corners of his mouth.

Neil felt worse than ever. “Yep,” he said. 

It was night, almost twelve o’clock, when Neil heard the tapping. Thud, and then his window kept on vibrating. What!?

Neil sat up and crawled out of bed, climbing down his ladder, to stand on the floor. He was too nervous, practically shivering. Should he open the curtains? Thud. Should he reveal himself to whoever was down below? Thud. 

Thud.

“Would you just shut up?” Neil yelled as he threw the curtains over. He peered out the window, scouring the yard for whoever or whatever was making that obnoxious thud. 

His jaw dropped. His eyes widened. It wasn’t that stupid Whistler, rather, it was-

“Tommy? Thomas, is that you?” He threw the screened window to the side and slammed the glassed one open. “Tommy!”

“Neil, shut up!” he whispered. “Bro, you’re gonna wake up the whole neighborhood!”

The jump down looked scary, but Neil had done it before. Only twelveish feet down, nothing major. Neil climbed onto the windowsill and jumped, tucking in and rolling as his body slammed the grass. He was dazed; somewhere in the fall, he hit his head. Nothing concussion worthy, but it hurt, and he couldn’t see very clearly. Standing, he heard Tommy’s voice- wait, no, that wasn’t Tommy’s voice.

“You thought you could trick me, didn’t you, boy?” he asked. It asked. His voice was deep and gravely, somber as his tune.

He grabbed Neil’s shoulder, pulled him close, and began to whistle.