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“Oh, my God. Oh - my - God.” Cora looked up and then slowly shook her head. “Please, God. I don’t want to be here.” She looked around, took a few steps, stopped for a moment, and started again in a different direction.
“What’s going on?!” They heard Vincent shout from afar. Moments later, he arrived with Ed, who asked.
“What is it? We heard Cole yelling.” Jack answered. “Nothing much. Just this.” He pointed to the empty pit.
“What are you saying? The petrified man got up and left?” Ed asked.
“Something like that.” Mused Claudia.
Vincent was not amused. “That’s ridiculous! So, what’s he gonna do? Take his revenge out on us?”
Fear overtook Cora, and she began to walk away. Realizing there was no place to go, she stopped once more, looked at the team, and began to sob. “Take me away. Someone, please take me away.”
Cole walked up and began to mock her. “Someone take me away?” He turned and looked at the group. “How about someone take her away?”
Vincent expressed displeasure with Cole. “She’s frightened, Cole, so why don’t you back off of her!”
“And, if I don’t? What are you going to do about it, Mr. Boyfriend?”
“I’m not her boyfriend. And, as to what I would do about it...” Vincent fashioned two fists and assumed a fighting position.
“Everyone, please calm down.” Stacie interjected. “We need to think about this.”
Jack interrupted, “Stacie is right; we need to think about this.”
Claudia stated what everyone had on their minds. “What’s there to think about? We were forced into spilling our blood on that stone man, and now he’s alive!”
“Stone man? I think you mean Petrified man?” Asked Jack.
“Call him whatever you want. To me, he’s just some kind of creature from Hell.”
Jack raised both eyebrows. “Can’t argue with that logic.”
Ed swung around 360 degrees and looked entirely around. “Hold on. Wait a minute. Just cause he’s not in there... doesn’t necessarily mean he somehow came to life. There’s probably another explanation. Ain’t that right, Cole?”
Ed’s words appeared to anger Cole, who suddenly became even angrier. He started walking towards the group. First toward Vincent but continued past him until he stood face to face with Eric. “Look, you son of a bitch! If this is another of your stunts to frighten us, you’ve gone too far.”
Ed began to laugh uncontrollably. Cole whipped around and asked. “What the Hell’s so funny?”
“What’s so funny? You! You stupid idiots! Don’t you get it? Of course, it’s one of his stunts. Just look at you. Shaking like a bunch of teenage kids in a horror film.”
Eric didn’t like where Ed might be going with his conversation. He cautioned Ed, “Shut up, Ed.”
This got Claudia’s attention. “No, keep talking, Ed.” She said.
“Can’t you see? He got Curtiss and Lester to remove the stone man while we were all trying to go to sleep.” One by one, the team began to turn their attention to Eric. Ed continued. “We were supposed to wake up and find all this, but Claudia...no offense Claudia,”
“None was taken, Ed.”
He continued. “But Claudia decided to spend the night inside the bus, and that accelerated the process.”
The team stood around dumbfounded. Had they allowed themselves to be suckered into Eric’s ultimate fright fest? Ed continued to berate the team.
“Grow up! There’s no grotesque monster out there.”
Suddenly, everyone’s eyes widened. They slowly started to back away from where Ed was standing. “What? What is it? What’s wrong with you?”
Ed turned to see what they were staring at. It was the Creature, a massive stone man lurking nearby. He watched them as he slowly approached. His eyes were burning blood red. But, Ed was convinced it was nothing more than one of Eric’s elaborate schemes.
“Oh, that’s good, Boss. Nice touch with the red eyes. I'd probably wet my pants if I didn’t know it was fake.”
Jack confessed. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I just did.”
Ed looked at Eric, who backed away along with everyone else. The monster continued to inch closer.
Jack yelled out. “Fake or not, let’s get the Hell out of here!”
They all began to scatter into the woods in different directions.
“No, wait! We need to run, but we need to stay together! There’s always strength in numbers. Come back!” Screamed Stacie.
Ed turned back around to face the approaching demon.
“Maybe the others ran, but you don’t scare me. Come on, who’s ever inside of there. I know it’s you, Curtiss. I saw you talking to the boss in private.”
The behemoth slowly swung out at Ed and tried to grasp his arm.
“Hey! Let go of me!” Ed pulled back to see blood trickling down his arm. “That’s not funny, you asshole!” Ed pulled out his gun. “You asked for it. You got this coming.” He aimed at the creature’s arm. “Take this, you bastard!”
He fired the gun. The bullet penetrated it’s outer surface but only enough to dislodge a few pieces of its petrified skin. Ed was puzzled.
“No blood? I hit him. I saw him get hit. There should be blood.”
Cole had stopped running long enough to see what occurred and turned his direction back toward the camp.
Then, someone grabbed Ed’s arm. It was Claudia. “Ed! We don’t have time to figure out what’s going on. Let’s get out of here! Come on, move!” Ed agreed.
As they ran, several blood-curdling screams were heard coming from all directions. After a few minutes of running, Claudia and Ed slowed down.
They sat for a second or two. “I think we’re ok for the moment.” Ed surmised.
Claudia noticed the blood on his arm. She pulled a scarf from her jacket and tied it tightly around it. “It’ll have to do for now.”
Ed looked down and smiled. “Hey, that’s kinda nice. Where’d you learn that?”
“At school. There were plenty of times when the kids used knives. I got to the point of patching them up so many times; they started calling me Nurse Chan.”
Ed chuckled, “We’ll, thank you, Nurse Chan, I mean, Claudia.”
“You’re welcome, Driver, I mean, Ed,” They both laughed. Claudia then became serious. “Look, Ed, all this, it can’t be real. Can it?”
“There’s only one person that can answer that, and it’s our boss. We’ve got to find that son of a bitch uncle of mine. And, when we do. He’s going to come clean...one way or another... You see, I’m going to find out what’s really going on if it’s the last thing I do.”