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Not sure what to do this summer? Come spend it at Camp Crawford, the east coast’s best place to cure those summer boredom blues! Camp Crawford has state of the art facilities, comfortable boarding, and fun activities like a spring-fed lake, swimming pool and multiple courts and fields for sports, helping keep everyone happy, healthy and moving! Registration starts in May, so what are you waiting for?
Camp Crawford: The Best Place to Spend the Summer!
October 2019
After nearly forty years of working both in Kame Game in Domino and as co-director at Camp Crawford in Hawkins Haven, Sugoroku Muto was finally retiring.
It really came as no surprise. Yugi had seen the writing on the wall when he was still in high school and his grandfather was in his seventies, and all the extra time really had just been a true test of his grandfather’s stubbornness and unwillingness to back down that he worked up until he was eighty . But even his grandfather, for all the spark and energy he still had, couldn’t deny that age was catching up to him, and his time to pass the torch had come. He finished out his last summer at the camp, gave the keys and title of owner of the shop to Yugi, and then tried to settle down and become comfortable with the idea of doing nothing now. That, and he tried not to micromanage the retirement party planning too much .
And Yugi wasn’t one for parties, but damn did him, his mom and Tea do a good job.
They managed to invite just about everyone his grandfather still had contact with, which ended up being quite a lot of people, in the grand scheme of things. He certainly knew more people than Yugi did, that’s for sure. But it was nice to see so many people who had come out to celebrate his grandfather’s long and storied life, and all the different fields and jobs he had dipped his toes into. It seemed like every time he passed by his grandfather, he was telling a new story to someone, eyes sparkling and smile wide.
“And my discovery ended up solving the mystery of the Nameless Pharaoh-”
Yugi smiles at the story he had heard thousands of times growing up, then returns to Joey and Tea standing off to the side, drinks in hand. “Is Grandpa havin’ fun?” Joey asks, taking his cup with thanks.
“He’s telling the story about the Nameless Pharaoh’s discovery again,” Yugi tells them, and Tea sighs.
“That one again ?” she asks.
Yugi shrugs. “It’s his favorite.”
“Didn’t that tomb he found almost kill him?” Joey asks around the rim of his cup.
“I mean, I’m sure he embellished that a little,” Yugi says with a laugh, then looks over at the crowd. At the back of the room, a man stands against a dark wall, silver hair and pink suit a visual shock to Yugi’s senses. He tries to comb through all the invites his mother and him sent out, but he comes up empty - he had no idea who that was. There was a part of him that felt like he should recognize him, but he can’t place him no matter how much he tried. Sugoroku did know a lot of people, and only about half of the faces here currently were recognizable, so maybe he was putting too much thought in it. Before he could continue thinking about it, though, the man slips out the double doors and disappears beyond them.
“Are you okay?” Tea asks.
Yugi looks back over to her with a smile, taking a sip of his drink as he shoves the weird pink-suit-man to the very back of his thoughts. “Yeah, sorry, I’m great.”
Hours later, as the guests have all filtered out, Yugi pulls three trash bags outside of the rented venue to the collection bin, sighing into the chilly October air. “Are you sure you don’t want help with that, Yug?” Joey asks from where he’s standing next to his ruby red Chevy truck. Tea stands at the passenger’s side, Joey’s thick denim jacket on her shoulders. “We don’t mind staying back to help.”
“Don’t worry about it!” Yugi tells them with a smile. “I’ve got it. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
“Have a good night, Yugi!” Tea calls out, then gets into Joey’s truck.
They pull out of the parking lot after a moment, and then it’s just Yugi standing under the stars alone, a content feeling in his chest. He continues his trek to the garbage bin, tossing the bags in with soft oofs , before he puts his hands on his hips. “There we go,” he murmurs to himself, and then turns, running right into someone standing behind him. “Ah- E-Excuse me!” he apologizes, and then takes a step back to get some room.
“Oh, so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you Yugi-boy,” the man says, smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Something crawls uncomfortably up Yugi’s back at the fact this man knew his name already, but well - he was at his grandfather’s retirement party, and Sugoroku liked to talk. “It’s so good to see you again.”
Okay that set off alarm bells even louder than before, but the man stands between Yugi and the door back into the building. “I’m sorry, uh, do I know you?”
The man laughs to himself, like he’s heard a good joke, then offers his hand for Yugi. “Oh where in the world are my manners? My name is Pegasus Crawford. I worked with your grandfather at Camp Crawford.”
Ah . That explained it. “Oh, Mr. Crawford, hi,” he says awkwardly, then shakes his hand. “My grandfather talks about you a lot.” None of it was ever really good, though.
“And he speaks about you quite a bit, too.” Pegasus’s smile grows a little. “Truly raving reviews, all around. Such a shame we could never bring you in as a counselor.”
Yugi laughs nervously, and drops Pegasus’s hand. “I’m usually pretty busy in the summers with my, uh, classes, so… Y’know, I never found time.”
Silence falls uncomfortably over them. Somewhere in the distance, he hears honks and the rev of car motors on a major road. “Well. I was going to ask you sooner, but you seemed to be so busy working the room,” Pegasus starts. “And I’m afraid I’ll be upstate for the unforeseeable future, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to speak to you like this again. But since your grandfather is retiring, I’ll have trouble finding good hands to help set the camp back up for summer. I’d like to invite you to help in March.”
Yugi’s first thought is there was no way he was ever stepping foot in that camp again. He was completely content dying without ever having done so, and it was the literal last thing he ever wanted to do in his life. Walking on a bed of nails sounded more pleasant. The second was that it felt mildly unsettling to corner Yugi outside by the garbage cans to pitch this to him in the first place, but that was neither here nor there.
But the third, and most endearing thought, was that it would be a good way to make his grandfather a little proud. Yugi was never the most courageous person in the world, and had a hard time confronting much of anything , much less his fears. It would be a good little trophy for himself, to be able to say he went back to Camp Crawford, and didn’t completely break down. Besides, his grandfather spent nearly four decades there, and adored every moment of it. It was the least he could do to help ensure the camp was up and running for another year.
Pegasus stares at him, waiting for an answer, and starting to look almost impatient . “Um, yeah, sure,” Yugi agrees hesitantly. “I could uh, clear my schedule a b-”
“Excellent!” Pegasus interrupts, sounding far too chipper for the situation. “Let me get your contact details. I’ll have an assistant of mine forward over all the info and paperwork you’ll need.”
Yugi dumbly swaps phone numbers and emails with him, and as Pegasus walks away to a waiting black car, he feels like maybe he just signed away his soul.
January 2020
It was another slow, slow day at Kame Game. So slow, in fact, that Yugi didn’t even chide his grandfather when he wandered down from the apartment above the shop to sit with him and chat with customers. When there were customers, at least - which there hadn’t been in hours . He’s absolutely bored out of his mind . Taking over a majority of the responsibilities in the game shop wasn’t that bad, when he boiled it down. There was a lot of ordering, restocking, organizing, cleaning and customer service, but he had been helping out since he was a teenager, and the only thing different was now his name tag said owner , and not just employee . And the last few months had been great - the holiday rush was usually the best time of year, as people rushed to buy gifts. But right now - right after New Years - was the worst . Yugi was going to let his brain ooze out of his ears at the complete lack of anything happening.
A creak on the stairs pulls him from his thoughts just long enough. He looks over and his grandfather is ascending the stairs again. “Going back up?” he asks.
“Yes, I’m going to go lay down,” he says, then looks at Yugi with a twinkle in his eyes. “I figure you probably don’t want me snoring behind the counters if customers come in.”
“ If they ever do,” Yugi says, and his grandfather laughs all the way up to the apartment.
Once Yugi’s alone again, he lets out a heavy sigh and folds his arms on the counter, resting his head on top. Outside the windows at the front of the shop, people are passing by bundled in coats and hats, the snow gently falling onto the sidewalks and roads. A couple walks by, stopping just at the window to look at some board game they have set up, and then continues on. Yugi just sighs again. He kinda wishes he was doing that rather than this - outside, experiencing the holiday lights before the city took them all down. Maybe with someone special. But that was a long shot, thanks in no small part to just him in general.
Before he can continue down that rabbit hole of self deprecation, his phone buzzes where he’s had it sitting on the counter. He lifts his head, looking over and making a face at the number on the screen. That wasn’t a local area code, much less a number he recognized in the first place. He hesitates for a moment, then swipes at the screen to answer it, holding it up to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hello,” comes a smooth, sultry female voice. “Is this Yugi Muto?”
Oh God, what did his number get put into? “Uh, yeah, that’s me,” he says nervously. “Um, who’s calling?”
“My name is Mai, I’m Pegasus Crawford’s personal assistant. I was following up on your volunteer work in setting up Camp Crawford for this summer.”
Oh, right. Yugi did agree to that, didn’t he? October wasn’t that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, but he felt like it had been eons since he had that - honestly - really strange chat with Pegasus. Also, a personal assistant? What camp director had a personal assistant? “Oh, uh, right,” Yugi stutters.
“I just emailed you over a release form we’ll need you to fill out, sign and send back. Did you get the information I had sent you in November?”
“I did,” Yugi says, then holds his phone between his head and his shoulder, moving over to where his laptop sits, opening up his email. The ones from Camp Crawford’s information email sit at the bottom of his inbox, unread, where Yugi had elected to ignore the mess he had gotten himself into instead of face it head on. One is a pretty standard volunteer release form, waiving the camp of any liability in case something happens, and the other was a schedule of when he should arrive at the camp in March, and when things needed to be done by. His frame of time was a month - that seemed oddly generous, but what did Yugi know about the upkeep of a summer camp? The signature at the bottom of both is signed by Mai Valentine, personal assistant to director Pegasus Crawford. “Uh, I have one for a release form and one for a schedule.”
“Those are the ones! If you could fill out that form and get it back to me as soon as possible, that would be fantastic.”
“S-Sure.”
“Oh, and Mr. Crawford would like to inform you that this is a paid position, and I’m authorized to negotiate that for him,” Mai tells him. “If you have time now?”
Well. That was a surprise. His grandfather often talked about how counselors were volunteers, and not paid - or paid dirt, if they were. The fact Pegasus was going to pay him to just go in and set the camp up for a few weeks was… well. Out of the norm. But, again, what did Yugi know about the upkeep of a summer camp? Maybe people who helped before the camp opened in June were paid, and everyone else was given the short end of the stick. He gives the window and busy crowd outside one long look, before fidgeting. “Oh, I’m uh, available now, yeah.”
“Great! What were you thinking in terms of compensation, Mr. Muto?”
Yugi’s just been given the easiest out of his life, he realizes suddenly. If he threw out a number so outrageous for what he was being offered, there was no way they could say no, and then he could back off and never have to think of this again. Would five figures be too high? Yugi hesitates, before he blurts out the first number that comes to mind - a six figure sum somewhere in the ballpark of what the game shop would make in six months - and a long stretch of silence follows.
He finally hears Mai scratch something on a piece of paper. “That’s under the maximum amount Mr. Crawford authorized me for, so I think we can do that,” she says, without missing a beat, and Yugi feels a small piece of himself die. What the fuck ? “Of course, I’ll still need to run it by him, but then I’ll get back to you. Does that sound okay?”
Yugi’s so absolutely flabbergasted that all he can do is agree quietly. “Sure.”
“Did you have any more questions for me, Mr. Muto?”
“No,” he says quietly.
“Great! Thank you again, Mr. Muto, for your time, and for helping Camp Crawford open for another summer of fun! I’ll talk to you soon!”
Yugi can’t find a response to that, so he just hangs up, sets his phone down on the counter, and wonders what he’s truly just gotten himself into.
March 2020
Hawkins Haven was nearly three hours outside of Domino, deep in the northeastern forests and woods, surrounded by trees. It was still far too early in the year for the lush green to return to much of the deciduous trees, but the large and looming black spruces still held their leaves, swaying above Yugi in the early spring breeze. The town itself was barely anything compared to its bigger and more urban sister, with two main roads that crossed in a T-shaped intersection, then a splattering of smaller, residential streets. The road that ran through it to the camp was - predictably enough - named Crawford Road, and held a gas station with a small convenience store attached, and a diner directly next to it. The parking lot was scarce, just a few cars and a truck even older than Joey’s. It was definitely a blink-and-you-miss-it type of town, with nothing much going for it besides the summer camp right down the road. When Yugi checks his phone, leaning up against Joey’s old, red Chevy truck, the signal is down to a single bar. Yeah, definitely not much at all.
“Let me go get some money on the pump, then we can grab some lunch?” Joey suggests, hands stuffed deep in his denim jacket, nodding his head toward the diner. It’s a quaint little thing, and boasts a large sign in the front window about $2.50 hamburgers. Yugi’s not sure if he should be impressed, or a little wary, about the price.
“Sure,” Ryou is the first to chirp, sliding out from his place on the passenger’s side, a smile on his face. “It’s been a long journey, and I’m quite hungry.”
Tea just sighs dramatically from next to Yugi. “Oh, you and me both . I’m starving .”
“I mean, I did tell you to eat before we left the game shop this morning,” Yugi tells her, earning a sharp look in return. “But you insisted that that granola bar would be enough.”
“I didn’t realize we’d be in the car for eight hours.”
“Three,” Ryou corrects her quietly, laughing nervously at the even sharper look she throws him. “Closer to four, I suppose but-”
“Were you countin’ ?” Joey groans as he comes back out to them, grabbing the pump handle and shoving the nozzle into his truck.
Yugi smiles at them, and briefly considers if bringing his friends along was going to get him in major trouble. Pegasus never said he couldn’t - and neither did Mai - but Yugi also didn’t really think about asking . But the more he sat on it, and thought about being at the camp again, all alone, he spent at least two weeks tossing and turning at night with a pit of horror and dread deep in his stomach. So, really, the more people around him, the better, even if it was just for the weekend before everyone had to go back to their lives in Domino. He just hoped it wouldn’t get him in trouble with Pegasus.
He’s brought out of his thoughts by the sound of Joey slamming the gas cap back on, then grinning from ear to ear. “Alright, let’s get some grub!”
The diner’s outsides very much matched it’s insides - it had checkerboard tile flooring, and faux leather booth seats that looked like they hadn’t been updated since the fifties. There’s a gruff looking short cook glancing out from the back, and a peppy looking blonde waitress at the counter, who calls out a chipper “Hello! Welcome in!” as the group steps through the door. There’s only two patrons in the building, an officer sitting at the counter with a mug of coffee in front of him, and a person with their head down in the back corner. “Just four?” she asks, swiping up some menus off the counter in front of her and smiling at them as she comes around. As she gets closer, her name badge says Rebecca, complete with a smiley face sticker at the end.
“Yup, just us,” Yugi says as Joey wanders off toward a neon-lit jukebox in the corner.
She motions for them to follow her, and leads them to a booth in the opposite corner, setting the menus down as Ryou slides over to the window and Yugi and Tea take the seats across from him. She takes their drink orders, then disappears into the back kitchen with a chipper whistle. Joey comes back over to them after adjusting the jukebox to some 80’s pop song, grinning and sliding in next to Ryou, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “That jukebox is loaded with the good shit.”
“Define what you mean by that,” Tea says without looking up from her menu.
“Probably all the songs we weren’t alive for when they were popular,” Yugi says without missing a beat, earning an indignant sound from Joey. “What? I’m right.”
Joey huffs. “They’re classics !” he says, then glances at Ryou. “Ryou, back me up, man.”
Ryou hums. “I mean, I prefer classical , over… this,” he says, motioning vaguely over his shoulder to whatever is belting out from the speakers across the diner. “Sorry.”
“I can’t believe this… betrayed by my own boyfriend .”
Rebecca returns before Joey’s tirade can continue. She sets down four glasses of water, then starts pouring a mug of coffee for each of them. “So, what brings you guys through Hawkins Haven?” she asks, smiling politely at them. “Road trip? Heading into the city?”
“We’re actually going to Camp Crawford,” Yugi says, and Rebecca stalls, staring with wide eyes at the table top for a moment. “I was hired to set it up for the summer.”
“Oh,” Rebecca says, voice shaking slightly. “Are… Are you sure ?”
Yugi’s suddenly hit with a cold wave of dread, but then someone’s barking her name from the back of the house, and she excuses herself, scurrying away. The officer sitting at the counter turns to look over at them, and Yugi sinks in his seat by the window a little. “Jeez, what’s with the third degree,” Tea mumbles.
“Have you seriously not heard the rumors about the camp?” Joey asks, leaning forward onto his arms, staring intently at them. Tea and Yugi shake their heads, and Ryou looks equally as lost. “Ah, shit, really? Nothing? You never saw the news?”
“What are you talking about Wheeler?” Tea groans, exasperated.
Joey grins, then leans in closer. “They say a bunch of counselors have been killed there,” he says, dropping his voice. Yugi feels his stomach turn uncomfortably. What ? “Like, slaughtered in their cabins.”
“Cut the shit,” Tea snaps, then after a glance at Yugi, “And stop scaring Yugi.”
“I’m not bullshitting for once!” Joey says. “It happened, we’d talk about it every year!”
Tea huffs. “If counselor after counselor died at that camp, would they seriously still have it open for children ?”
Joey looks a little lost, and just opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water. “She has a point,” Ryou says quietly. “If you were swapping the stories during camp, it could have just been camp urban legend. That or-”
“Don’t say ghosts,“Joey pleads.
Yugi thinks this might be the worst possible outcome outside of the obvious - he could take the camp being haunted , but to know people were killed there? Not just died accidentally? That was a little too much to take, and the idea of going back to the camp in the first place was already too much to take. He holds his hands together tight under the table, trying to will some courage into his cowardly bones, and also not outwardly look like he was having a small breakdown. Despite Joey’s arguments, he was probably just bullshitting and trying to play up the creepiness of the camp for his supernatural, occult loving boyfriend. It probably wasn’t true, and if Yugi himself could just get through the first few nights, he’d be fine. Perfectly, absolutely fine .
Rebecca returns, carrying a small notepad and a forced smile. “Sorry about that! Ralphael needed help in the kitchen for a moment,” she says, then taps her pen on the notepad. “So! What’ll you guys have?”
A half hour later, they pull into the entrance of Camp Crawford, gravel crunching under the tires of Joey’s truck. The camp is, unsurprisingly, exactly as Yugi remembered it, although the trees didn’t seem as tall and imposing as they had when he was a kid. There’s still a pit of uneasiness though, at being back after so long, and Rebecca’s odd behavior at the diner didn’t help much, either. Joey parks in the small and makeshift parking lot next to the camp office, right next to a well-kept dark grey sedan. The sun is settling low on the horizon as they hop out, the sky painted with dark violets and fiery oranges. “Was Pegasus supposed to meet you here?” Tea asks, pointing at the unknown car.
“No,” Yugi says, shaking his head. Joey eyes it suspiciously, and something uncomfortable settles in his chest. “I have no idea why that’s here.”
“Maybe one of the counselors left it after the camp closed in the summer?” Ryou suggests, earning a shrug from Tea.
Yugi steps a little closer. The car is fairly clean, and not at all dirty like how it would be if it was left outside in the elements since September. But he doesn’t voice that, and instead lets the loud chirp of crickets buzz deafeningly from every direction. “So, are we all going to stay in the same cabin?” he asks.
Joey’s pulling their bags from where they had been covered in the bed of his truck, grinning. “Number eight? Like good ol’ times?” Yugi must have made a face of displeasure, because Joey’s smile is gone a moment later. “Sorry. Probably not.”
“No, it’s fine. But let's stay in cabin eight. It’ll be a nice little bit of nostalgia,” he says. Maybe the good things about Camp Crawford will give him enough of a boost to not be a total chicken shit in front of his friends all weekend. “I’ll grab the keys from the office, and you guys can go on ahead.”
“Are you sure?” Tea asks, zipping up her pastel pink windbreaker when a particularly chilly breeze blows past them. “I don’t mind staying back with you.”
Yugi nods and smiles. “Yeah, I can handle this. I’ll meet you up ahead.”
Tea just relents and goes to help Ryou and Joey with the bags. Yugi watches them walk down the gravel road toward the cabins, then glances over, seeing a peak of Lake Crawford, shimmering in the setting light. His stomach churns uncomfortably, but he pushes back the feeling rising in his throat, turning to head into the camp office. The building is musty, dead silent and dark. When he tries the switch on the wall by the door, the lights flicker on with an annoying buzz of fluorescents. The walls are covered in pictures and articles about the camp, and on the biggest part of the wall is a map of the camp - it really hadn’t changed in over fourteen years. Yugi glances around a little, feeling out of place because he never really came in here as a camper, then steps over to the plaque on the wall behind the main desk labeled KEYS . There’s three hooks, one for the co-director’s office, one for the cabins, and the other for the director’s office - the only key missing was the director’s office key, and the cabin key wasn’t coated in a layer of dust like the co-director’s office key was. He hesitantly takes the master key for the cabins, then calmly walks out of the building, turning the light off and closing the door tight behind him.
Outside, the crickets have finally quieted down into something manageable. Yugi lets out a nervous breath and heads down the path toward his friends, holding the cabin key tight in his hands as he does. Above him, the street lights scattered around the camp flicker on, casting a yellow glow across the ground - but behind him, he hears the crunch of leaves and crack of sticks following ever closer, so he picks up the pace, heart racing in his chest. By the time he reaches the fork in the road that leads on either side to cabins, he’s practically in fear-induced tears, but when he turns around under the light of the streetlamp, there’s no one behind him.
And the light is on in the camp office.
He swallows down the bile in his throat, then spins on his heel and runs down the rest of the path to cabin eight. His friends are waiting at the door for him, Joey talking loudly while Ryou and Tea just laugh at him, but the laughter is cut short when they see Yugi all but sprinting toward them. “Yug?” Joey asks, standing up a little straighter and coming around the bags and Ryou to put a hand on Yugi’s arm the second he’s close. “Hey, are you okay? What happened?”
It’s then that Yugi realizes he definitely started crying at some point, so he quickly wipes at his eyes and cheeks with his hoodie sleeves. “I… I thought I heard someone behind me while I was coming down here but there wasn’t anyone behind me and-” He cuts off his rambling mess of words, then swallows down around the awkward lump in his throat. He thought he heard someone but… well. There was no one here but them . Maybe it had just been an animal. “I-I think it might have been an animal, but I… It spooked me.”
Tea doesn’t look like she fully buys it, eying him suspiciously, but Joey lets out a relieved sigh. “Jesus, dude, don’t scare me like that,” he says with a laugh. “I thought you were getting actively chased by some hockey mask wearing lunatic.”
“Ha, right,” Yugi says weakly, then jingles the key. “Well. Let’s get our stuff inside?”
Yugi unceremoniously unlocks the cabin door and lets them in, flipping the light switch as he does. It’s nothing fancy by any stretch of the imagination, just three bunks, six plastic wrapped mattresses, and two bathrooms, but Yugi feels a little relaxed as he steps inside, setting his bag down by a bed. It was well lit, and decidedly not outside in the woods. “I call top bunk,” Joey chimes, throwing his backpack up onto the top of a bunk Ryou was already sitting on.
“Ugh, just like old times alright,” Tea says, setting her bag down next to the bunk next to Yugi. “You always called top bunk when we came here together.”
“I remember one time you got into an actual fight with some kid because he took the last one,” Yugi says, then laughs to himself. “And then you had to sit out of activities for like… a week .”
Joey just shrugs and sits next to Ryou on his bed. “Hey, it was the one thing I always wanted when I came here, the least they could have done was give that much to me,” he says, then grins. “So, when are we going to go set up the firepit and drink?”
Tea snorts. “What do you mean drink ? This is a kid’s summer camp. The only alcohol is going to be antiseptic in the camp office,” she says and eyes Joey intently. “And I doubt even you would want to drink that .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joey asks, making a face. Ryou leans over and begins digging through his bag.
“What do you think it’s supposed to mean?” Tea teases.
Ryou sits back up at that and holds up an unopened bottle of flavored vodka with a sheepish grin. “I thought it could, uh, lift our spirits a little. No pun intended.”
Drinking was the last thing Yugi wanted to do, but God it was exactly what he needed right now. He was pulled as tight as he could go right now, and that run-in outside of the office didn’t help his nerves in the slightest. Some liquid courage could do him some good. “Sure,” Yugi chimes, earning a surprised look from both Joey and Tea. “I’m game. Let’s get a fire going before it gets too dark.”
“Yug-”
“Are you sure ?” Tea asks, looking skeptical.
Yugi shrugs. “I mean, Ryou isn’t wrong. It’ll definitely help bring the mood up,” he says. “Besides, we’re all pretty responsible twenty-somethings. We’re not stupid teenagers. And we’ll be, what? Maybe a yard from here?”
Joey opens and closes his mouth dumbly for a moment. “Well, he… he’s definitely not wrong.”
Yugi stands up and grins. “Then let’s go drink by the fire.”
It takes a cup full each, but once the alcohol hits their systems, the entire mood of the trip changes on the drop of a dime.
“And- And then-” Tea’s wheezing, cheeks flushed pink. “Joey’s running back to the cabin, his ass just hanging out of the back of his ripped swim trunks-”
“It was horrible!” Joey yells, and the vodka has brought out the deep Brooklyn in his voice that was covered by years of living out of state. “ And it was right in front of that girl- oh God, what was her name ? I had a huge crush on her that year-”
Yugi laughs along with Ryou and Tea, and then helpfully supplies, “Her name was Claire,” he says, taking a sip from his cup. “Her older brother hated you.”
Joey scoffs and slams back whatever’s left in his cup, grabbing for the bottle at his and Ryou’s feet. “Yeah, well I wasn’t exactly diggin’ that dick either,” he mutters, pouring himself more. “I bet he’s the one who fucked up my trunks.”
“You were on the edge of the water with no one else around you!” Tea laughs.
“Whatever!” Joey says, then takes another long drink from his cup. “Enough embarrassin’ Joey stories. Let’s get to the real shit about this camp.”
Yugi still has half a mind to feel a little anxious, but the buzz he’s feeling is just enough to keep him from outwardly rejecting the idea. “Sure, tell us the same camp ghost stories we grew up with,” he teases, grinning when Joey looks taken back. “I don’t think the lady of the lake actually exists.”
“And I think those girls that year that were complaining about their things going missing were just getting their stuff stolen by the boys in the cabin across from them,” Tea says.
“No! None of that bullshit!” Joey yells, pointing at where they sat across the fire from him and Ryou. “We’re going to talk about the more recent developments. The shit you guys didn’t want to believe me about at the diner.”
“Well, I’m not from this area,” Ryou says, trying his best to sound supportive, but he’s half muffled by his own cup. “So… I haven’t heard any of it.”
Joey grins, spurred on by the encouragement. “Alright, you guys ready?” he asks. Tea just asks for the vodka again and Yugi takes a drink, settling down the best he could on the log seat. “You two stopped goin’ here before me, but I kept goin’ up until they told me I was too old, and every year we’d come back to another story about the counselor who got stuck with opening duty.”
Tea rolls her eyes. “Okay, so what happened to them?”
“It’s more like what didn’t happen to them,” Joey says vaguely, but it’s enough that a chill runs up Yugi’s spine. Ryou looks equally interested. “The last year I went, in 2010? Well, that year two siblings opened the camp up in the spring before… When they didn’t check in with the sheriff’s office in town, they sent an officer to do a wellness check? They found them butchered in cabin four. They say there was so much blood that they couldn’t get it all cleaned up and they had to close the cabin up for the summer. No one stayed there that year.”
“Why counselors…?” Ryou asks, voice a whisper.
Joey grins, and the fire distorts his face into something monstrous. “They say it’s punishment for slacking on their duties, drinking, smoking, everything they shouldn’t have done, and not embodying the spirit of Camp Crawford,” he says, then takes another long drink from his cup. “These counselors didn’t uphold the honored tradition of taking care of the camp the way it’s supposed to be taken care of, so the camp took care of them .”
Tea scoffs into her drink, but Ryou looks downright horrified as he sits with his cup clutched between both hands. Yugi isn’t too far from feeling the same, the vodka now not agreeing much with his system - or his nerves. “What about us?” he asks. “W-We-”
“Are not counselors. Not even Yugi. He’s a volunteer ,” Joey says, grinning cheekily. Ryou, despite how dumb that explaination is, seems to relax at it. “Shit won’t happen to us .”
“Oh, I knew you were half bullshitting,” Tea complains, finishing her drink and standing up, starting back toward the cabin. “I’m going to bed before I drink myself unconscious out here.”
“I was not!” Joey yells back to her, and Yugi’s now hyper aware of how loud Joey was compared to the uncomfortable and deafening silence of the woods around them. Joey huffs and turns back to the fire. “Well. Ready to call it a night, Yug?”
Yugi’s ready to go home , but that’s not an option he can take. He finishes the last bit of his vodka and nods. “Yeah. It was a long trip out here. Might as well get some rest before we start the real work tomorrow.”
With that, they kick dirt into the fire to put it out, then head back to the cabin together, all a little wobbly and unsure on their feet. Tea’s already got her blankets pulled up over his head when they get inside, and Yugi tries to be as quiet as he can as he changes into his pajamas and crawls into his own bed. Joey clicks off the lights and Yugi hears him get into bed with Ryou instead of into the top bunk, but all Yugi can do is stare at the boards holding the mattress above him up, wired and wide awake.
When sleep finally does hit him, he dreams of a lake of blood and his own lungs aching.