How to Survive Camping: The Horse-Eater

Book : How to Survive Camping

by Bonnie Quinn

Genres: Humorous Fantasy; Paranormal; Horror

Synopsis

A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

Release date: August 1, 2026

Publisher: S&S/Saga Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

1. Don’t Try to Do My Jobs Don’t Try to Do My Job
The campground was turning ancient. This was bigger than I felt equipped to deal with, so I did what every campground manager before me had done when confronted with a massive problem. I called upon my extended family.

It was the most unproductive meeting I’d ever run in my life. Normally I try to keep things moving and cut off pointless conversations, but people would just not move on. In retrospect, perhaps I should have handled it differently. Tossed “The land is turning ancient!” in like a hand grenade and then dismissed the meeting for a week to let everyone digest it. Instead, I gave them that update at the beginning and then naively tried to start in on my proposal on how to handle it, only for the attendees to spend TWO HOURS in what I can only describe as hand-wringing, navel-gazing denial.

“Okay, but can you really trust that the land is turning ancient?” Great-Aunt Lorna protested. “Didn’t the Lady with Extra Eyes tell you this? Didn’t she try to kill you?”

“Ye-es, but murderous intent doesn’t automatically make you a liar. I’ve murdered people. Does that make me a liar?”

Everyone glanced around at one another uncomfortably.

“Not… habitually,” Great-Aunt Lorna replied.

Wow. Okay. Rude. I only routinely lie to campers.

“Maybe,” a second-cousin-twice-removed-I-don’t-fucking-even-know-how-we’re-related said from the back, “if you hadn’t killed the Lady with Extra Eyes we could have asked her for more information. Maybe if you weren’t such an asshole you could have resolved things peacefully.”

Anyway that’s when I lost my temper. I told them that I owned the land; that I was the reason none of them had to live in the main house, where the Little Girl and the Beast waited for their blood every night; and that the land was turning ancient and that this was how I’d decided to handle it. Because the Little Girl had killed my mother and the Beast had killed my father. They were my curse.

The last fifteen minutes of the meeting was spent with me outlining the plan to a room full of hostile silence, and then I dismissed the meeting because it was clear no one was going to provide productive commentary. My extended family filed out, muttering among themselves and avoiding looking at me. At least I wouldn’t have to decline very many invitations to Thanksgiving this year.

I lingered behind as everyone was leaving, waiting for the building to empty out so I could lock it and then call my brother, Tyler, to give him the full report. He was watching over his newborn daughter, Colleen, that evening and couldn’t make the meeting. I’d barely pulled the keys out of my pocket when the camp radio crackled.

“Someone tried to drive off the Children with No Wagon,” Bryan said.

“Oh no.”

Most people sensibly ignore the small pack of children carrying bags of ice around when they show up at a campsite looking for a buyer. It helps that they look rather creepy, standing there in utter silence, not smiling, waiting for someone to hand them money and take a bag of ice in exchange.

“They threw a whole bucket of water on them and the Children all screamed and ran away down the road. I think they might be pissed off,” Bryan continued.

“Oh no.”

On the whole, the people who camp here are decent folks. I’ve probably given you all a slanted view of my campers because I only talk about the worst of them. For instance, the kind who feel they are somehow smart enough to get away with anything, the sort you look at and think, Ah yes, this is someone who needs a swift punch to the teeth by Madame Consequences.

Around here, she wears brass knuckles.

It was late in the season, but we were still getting large amounts of people on our open camping weekends as the weather grew steadily cooler. I asked Bryan where this individual was located. It was time to pay a visit in person and ask just what, exactly, the hell he was thinking.

He was camping alone, his tent staked at the edge of the deep woods and far from other people. He didn’t seem that interesting to me as he walked up to my four-wheeler, other than having a rather punchable face. I know that I was biased at the time, but I really do think you’d agree with me. He had the kind of face that just begs for a black eye and a broken nose.

“Why did you throw a bucket of water on some kids?” I asked. “And why shouldn’t I evict you from the campground right here and now?”

“Those aren’t normal children. And it wasn’t just water—it was holy water.”

“That’s… worse.”

He shrugged nonchalantly.

“Oh yeah, well, I read your guidebooks and I figured maybe a bit of holy water would get rid of them. I mean, they’re clearly ghosts. Holy water works on the undead.”

He sounded rather pleased with himself. I took a short breath and counted to ten but only got to three.

“We don’t have ghosts on the campground,” I said, my hands curling into fists. “Believe me—I’d have seen them by now, and I haven’t.”

“But—they kind of sizzled when the holy water hit them.”

“And now they’re pissed off! Fuck it! Get off the campground! I want you gone in an hour.”

I stalked away before I did something really regrettable.

I almost made it to my four-wheeler before my mind calmed enough to come up with a rational—better—idea than mere eviction. Last time the Children had been unleashed I’d had to murder someone to stop them. I was now making an effort to avoid killing people, but perhaps this camper could be useful to me in another way. I turned around and went back to where he stood forlornly by his tent, apparently confused as to why I wasn’t thanking him for his “assistance.” I stalked right past him, stuck my head in his tent, and swiped his car keys before he could realize what was happening.

I dangled them in front of me. He took a step toward them and I fixed him with a stare intended to remind him that I had killed people for less and I would do the same to him if he tried anything else.

“These stay with me,” I said. “You get them back when you pacify the Children with No Wagon. You caused this problem, so now you get to figure it out.”

“But—”

“Don’t whine to me,” I snapped. “You were clever enough to figure out the holy water, right? So now you get to figure out this problem.”

He followed me to my four-wheeler, protesting the whole way. Didn’t I see how they ran off? It’d worked, obviously, right? I ignored him and left him to contemplate his bad decisions.

Two hours later, he showed up at my office.

“So the Children are still on the campground,” he said nervously.

“Fancy that,” I muttered, not looking up from my book of folklore, where I was searching through every reference to holy water.

“They’re following me,” he said miserably. “Do you think they’re going to kill me?”

“Oh absolutely,” I replied. “You better figure something out before they skin you alive.”

The nice thing about his having read my guidebooks was that I didn’t have to pretend to be nice.

“Maybe I can distract them,” he finally said. “Do you think they like candy? They are kids, after all.”

“Why don’t you try it and see what happens?” I said tersely.

Which is really a polite way of saying “Fuck around and find out,” so I guess while I wasn’t the one doing the murdering, I really wasn’t trying very hard to keep him alive, either. He went to the camp store and bought a bag of saltwater taffy (bad choice) and then someone found him a few hours later, staggering down the road, mouth agape, skin turning faintly blue. The paramedics have a good response time to our campground (for obvious reasons), so they got here in time to remove the mass of taffy that had been shoved down his esophagus and restore oxygen before he died.

After a brief trip to the hospital, he was cleared for release and I was there in the parking lot to pick him up. The hospital staff have learned to look the other way when I show up to the hospital with my shotgun. They know I always have a very good reason, such as forcibly escorting someone back to the campground to deal with the mess he’d created.

On the drive back to the campground I explained through clenched teeth that buying ice from them was an invitation to do mischief on the campground. Mischief that, according to the other inhabitants, would escalate into violence.

“Instead,” I said tersely, “what you did was attack them. You see how that is much worse, right?”

“I was trying to apologize!”

“Well, clearly the candy wasn’t enough. Keep at it, because I haven’t found a solution in my books yet.”

Then I dropped him off at his campsite and went to do more important things, like review the registration of everyone on my land to figure out how long they were staying. I admit that I had some ulterior motives for keeping that idiot around. If the Children with No Wagon were preoccupied with tormenting him, then perhaps they’d leave everyone else alone long enough for them to pack up and go home at the end of the weekend, blissfully unaware of the danger they were in.

It worked. The campground was quiet, nothing happened, and I went to bed. But around midnight I got a call on my phone via the emergency number.

Any guesses who it was? Anyone?

“They’re outside my tent,” he whispered frantically.

“That’s great,” I replied, and then I hung up.

I tried to go back to sleep. I really did. But I guess I had a conscience now, and it might not have been that strong but it tried its best, and I just couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking of what could happen if the Children got done tormenting him and went after the rest of the campground.

I got out of bed and went to the garage. I didn’t even bother to get dressed. I reserve the courtesy of pants for people who haven’t pissed me off. This guy got the privilege of dealing with an angry Kate in pajamas. Not many people have reached the point where they’ve used up all my fucks and I have none left to give them.

I drove out there and stopped the four-wheeler along the road. His tent glowed from within from the light of an LED lantern. I could see the outline of the camper, huddled in the middle of his tent. Around the nylon structure were the Children, holding hands and walking in a slow circle. They were singing “Ring Around the Rosie,” I think. Their laughter sounded like the shrieks of hyenas when they got to the end and fell down.

I called him back on my cell phone.

“Yeah, I’m at your campsite,” I said. “They’re not bothering anyone else.”

“But what about me?” he said wildly, clearly frightened. “They’ve been doing this for hours!”

“I dunno,” I replied. “They don’t seem like they’re ready to murder you quite yet. You’re out of holy water, aren’t you? I guess you’re in for a bad night.”

Then I hung up and left.

Harsh? Yes. Look, I find people largely tolerable on good days. My interactions with my campers are brief and so I don’t get to know them well enough to learn their annoying quirks. The rest of the time I’m dealing with people who are either complaining to me or causing problems for me. I don’t really have any patience left for someone who decides to do the supernatural equivalent of using gasoline to combat a forest fire.

I did try at least one thing to help the situation. Only because it was conveniently on the way.

My route home took me past the Thing in the Dark. Honestly, I’d been a bit afraid to visit it. I hadn’t talked to it in a while.

I had left it offerings. Food. Drink. Flowers. Small trees. I just kind of dropped them and ran. They all vanished, so I think that means they were accepted, which I was willing to classify as a good thing. I wanted to stay on its good side.

Perhaps I was being reckless after being woken so late at night, but that was the moment I decided to find out.

I tentatively crept up to the pile of debris, every nerve in me screaming that I should flee at the slightest movement. My mind was racing with adrenaline and for a moment I thought I’d hallucinated that exact thing, that the mound had shifted, and I froze like a mouse hiding from a hawk, my gaze fixed on the pile of sticks and leaves, not even blinking. Only when I convinced myself that it was my imagination did I continue forward until I was at a respectful distance from which to hold a conversation.

“The Children are angry again,” I said. “I’ve asked you about them before and you told me to remove the person who started it… but I was thinking maybe I’d try something different this time. Could I… remove the Children instead?”

Nothing. I waited for a minute and then a minute more, and finally the quiet of the forest started to get to my nerves and I felt it was really best if I just left. The forest shouldn’t have been this quiet at night, anyway. It was a bad sign. Perhaps because the Children were angry and released from whatever normally held them in check, or perhaps something worse was nearby. Either way, best if I got to the safety of my house. I turned to go.

“You can’t,” the Thing in the Dark rumbled as soon as I had turned my back.

The ground beneath me lurched and then softened to a faint trembling as its voice quieted.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, not turning around.

“The Children.”

It sounded like a sigh and this time the ground barely stirred beneath my feet. I thought that was rather considerate of it.

“So… I can’t get rid of them?”

“You can’t.”

I cursed under my breath. Fuck.

“Is my only option murder, then?”

“They must be appeased. Do what you can, campground manager, before it escalates.”

The earth seemed to deflate around me. The Thing in the Dark had no other advice to give.

I sulked back to the four-wheeler and kicked on the gas. I was on the road for only about ten minutes before I realized that I was being followed. I let up on the gas so that the engine noise subsided. The unnatural silence of the forest made it easier to hear the giggling that came from the trees around me. I cursed under my breath. The laughter of children.

I floored the gas, but it was already too late. I made it only a few yards before I was seized by hands. Dozens of invisible hands, closing on my shoulders and arms, wrapping fingers around my ponytail. They yanked backward, pulling me off the back of the four-wheeler, and I landed hard on my chest, stunned by surprise. It had been so fast. I’d barely had time to register that anything was touching me, much less grab my shotgun. Then they began to drag me backward, down the road and toward the darkness of the trees.

Meanwhile my four-wheeler continued blithely on, expending the rest of its momentum until it veered off into a ditch and hit a tree.

I think this says a lot about my priorities, but the main thought in my head as that invisible presence yanked me along the ground was how much was left in the budget for four-wheeler maintenance.

There was a lurch as my body dropped off the edge of the road and I hit the dirt of the forest floor. I twisted, trying to flip over onto my back. I shielded my face with one arm and flailed wildly with my other arm at whatever held me. My fist only met empty air and the laughter of the Children all around me echoed in my ears, mocking my futile struggles.

A sharp jerk pulled me up into the air by my ponytail. I screeched in pain and kicked wildly, heart pounding, and I swung my fists back and forth, up and around, trying to connect with anything. Then something slapped my hand, something immense and strong, and my wrist went numb, pins and needles spreading through my fingers.

The Children tied me to a tree branch by my ponytail. I swear I about blacked out when they let go and it was only my hair holding me up. The jerk sent a jolt of agony through my skull and for a moment it was like the world went dark, and then I was thrashing on instinct, until my hands slapped against the bark of the branch and I was able to relieve some of the pressure on my hair. Beneath me, the Children joined hands and began to circle. They sang.

It was not “Ring Around the Rosie.”

It was a song of their own invention.

“Our mothers buried us deep

So her secrets we will keep

Bring us a blanket

Made from the flesh of man

Under which we can sleep

For our mothers buried us deep”

I held very still, my arms trembling with the effort of holding myself aloft enough to keep my weight off my hair. Slowly, trying not to attract their attention, I lifted a leg and hooked it over the branch. Then another. Just enough to stabilize myself so that I could remain there until they left.

Which wasn’t until dawn.

And that whole time I was clinging to that branch, shaking, hoping that they had no intention of carrying through with their promise of skinning someone alive and making a blanket out of their flesh. It was… a long night of contemplating my own mortality and cursing the irony that landed me in this position. It didn’t escape my notice that I’d left that asshole camper to the same fate I now faced.

“Go bother him again!” I yelled at the Children. “He’s the one who pissed you off in the first place!”

Somewhere, Fate was laughing at me. My guidebooks had started out with the Children and my guidebooks were what had launched the slow process of my land turning ancient into overdrive. I’d told everyone about the Man with No Shadow and how last winter he put into motion a plan to seize control of my land. I shared my moment of triumph over him with the world. And when the Lady in Chains returned earlier this year in the spring, setting off a battle over territory with some of the campground denizens—when she wasn’t trying to kill me specifically—I rallied my allies and then I alone made the choice to kill her. I wrote that into the guidebooks as well.

And now someone had taken the guidebooks as inspiration for enacting their own adventure in a misguided attempt to be as badass as I am.

So in a way, this entire situation was of my own making.

This is what I get for trying to help people.

By the time dawn came the Children had run off into the woods, giggling like this was just the best game. And I guess it was, for them. They left me hanging there by my knees and hands, my hair firmly knotted around the branch.

One of my staff making the midmorning rounds around the campground found me and was able to help get my hair untangled. They cut the branch and once I was on the ground we were able to get me loose. It was worse than the time someone stuck bubblegum in my hair in fourth grade.

It wasn’t until noon that I got back to my house and got myself cleaned up. I’d just stepped out of the shower when my phone started ringing. It was the camper.

“You had better have solved this,” I said, clutching my phone hard enough that my knuckles hurt.

“I did!” he replied. “I thought about what you said about appeasement and I got them a gift and they seemed really happy with it. I bought them a wagon.”

“You did WHAT?!” I screamed into the phone.

So that’s a new rule that’s going to have to go in the next round of pamphlets.

RULE #2: If you see some children trying to sell ice with no wagon to carry it in, do not try to help them by giving them a wagon. You will only make them more dangerous and everyone—especially the campground manager—will be angry at you for it.

For a moment I stood there, seething with blind fury, and struggled to find the right words that would convey that anger in such a way that he’d understand the full weight of it. You don’t help the Children with No Wagon. You don’t help any of the malicious creatures. Oh sure, the wagon would certainly appease them; it was the one thing they lacked that the human children had, the thing that might convince people that it was safe to buy ice from them. But while screaming nigh-incoherent profanity can be cathartic, it was not a very good way to communicate that I had told him to fix the situation, not to save his own skin and make it worse for everyone else.

“Also I told one of your staff that I’d lost my keys and someone had returned them and I was supposed to pick them up from your office, but that you weren’t in at the moment, so they helpfully got them for me. I’m miles from the campsite and I’m never coming back.”

He hung up. I didn’t want to throw my cell phone at the wall because those things are expensive, so I went outside and angrily chopped firewood for a while. I should have had enough to last me until spring.

Then I stormed down to the camp store. My employee Emily, who had recently been promoted from seasonal hire to full-time, was running the store that day. She watched in wary curiosity as I stormed over to the shelf where we stored the pop-up wagons.

“Yeah, we just sold the last one,” she said as I glared angrily at the empty shelf. “I’ll include a couple in the next restock.”

“Don’t bother,” I muttered, ripping the sign off the shelf. “We’re done with wagons.”

“But the wagons are popular—”

“Don’t care! They’re going on the list of things I can’t trust people with!”

Other notable items on the list: golf carts, dirt bikes, and fireworks.

Then I stormed off to my office. Until I got the new pamphlets printed I would have to settle for a flyer warning people not to buy ice from any children whatsoever. I’d make up some bullshit excuse about local tax laws or something. As dear Great-Aunt Lorna had so kindly pointed out, I wasn’t averse to lying to people who camped here.

Then I yanked open my desk drawer and pulled out a list. I’d made it at the start of the summer when I thought this was only a bad year, a year when the inhuman activity was unnaturally high, and if I eliminated the right entity it would all stop. Well, I now knew that wasn’t the case, but maybe I wasn’t entirely off-base with the general idea of getting rid of the more troublesome campground inhabitants.

I popped the cap off a pen and wrote at the top of the list, The Children WITH a Wagon.

I was once again breaking with tradition. For generations my family never tried to fight these things. Doing so invites disaster. That’s what my parents taught me and that’s why my family meeting was so contentious. They didn’t want to admit I’d been successful because they were scared of what that meant. They wanted things to stay like they were, comfortable, when we didn’t put ourselves at risk to stop—to kill—these things.

Screw tradition. This land was turning ancient and everything was changing.

I was going to change with it.