"...And that's the tale of the porta-potty psycho."

"That's dumb Chad."

"I don't know, I'm going to have to use the woods for the rest of the trip."

"Well, maybe dorky can save us with a good story."

"Beth! Don't be such a bitch!"

"What!? Dorky people tell the best stories, and he's so quiet. It's already got me a little scared."

"Eh... well, I was going to tell a story I made up, but when I did some digging I found a true story about this river."

"Oh, a true story."

"Quit flirting and listen Beth!"

"There are police reports that state this forest burned down three years ago. Of the firefighters who were there, the ones who didn't fry into gooey flesh beneath their fireproof suits say that they heard chanting from the edge of the forest before the attack. Robed figures filled the spaces between the trees. They brandished bizarrely shaped weapons that dripped liquid fire. When they stabbed or hooked campers the wounds would cauterize so they would survive the process all the way through."

"The process of what?"

"Laying the still struggling victims in flames to burn away every ounce of innocence; until all that was left twisted and contorted into monstrosities made of flesh burnt pale and eternally ablaze.

"One unlucky survivor can be found at a mental ward with a face like roast beef and leather. He said he went camping here that night. Him and his girlfriend snuck off to skinny dip, as you do," he paused to wink at Beth, "when the black and red robbed figures began torching the trees systematically and in such mass that it was done before they had even thought to leave the water.

"When they finally did his girlfriend ran out first, screaming for their friends to wake up, but a bulky man stepped through a raging blue and orange fire. He drove the burning end of a torch into her gut. Flames engulfed her body as she was staked upright in the ground, parallel with the earth. A crowd of the madmen gathered to praise the fire twisting and charring the limbs of the girl he had loved."

"Oh my god, that's terrible."

"Now I'm not using the porta-potty or skinny dipping with Chad."

"Shit, thanks a lot dorky!"

"How'd he survive?" Beth was now enraptured.

"Well, he told police that he tried to leave the water, but there was a pain in the back of his head and the world went all blurry. Green silhouettes pulled him into the water. The last thing he saw was the fire filling the treeline all the way to the lake. When he awoke he felt a sharp numbness in the back of his head. He was lying on a bed of leaves and feather clippings in a cozy shack smelled and tasted of thick dirt.

"He was surrounded by a family with mutated and scarred faces. One of the elderly ladies had nothing but scratched flesh where her eyes should have been. The elders treated him with salves and bugs that sucked on his skin.

"The rest of the family of deformed people were watching from against the wall. He demanded answers, he hadn't accepted the truth yet and blamed them for setting up an elaborate prank.

"After talking for a while, they told him that their little green robed tribe grew the forest every time the black and red robes came to burn it down. There wasn't much of a pattern, only that it happened when they least expected and it always released horrors on the earth. Most of the things risen from the corpses and the fire fled this place to haunt some other corner of the world, but some remained and always the cult of fire waited for the growers to drop their guard..."

On cue a char grey monstrosity as thin and tall as the trees stepped up behind Chad. It brandished two sharp points where it should have had hands. Its head stopped being a head halfway up. Instead, the spiked cage top of a metal torch burned a path through the tree leaves above.