#camera pov

Paulina throws her head back, and for a moment the camera can see the dense forest canopy blocking out most of the stars before it settles its gaze upon Star. “It’s not like I did a ton of research on this - I read what I needed to figure out how to attract Phantom. But apparently, a really long time ago this man like killed a young woman in these woods and two other young women saw him and told on him. So he got arrested and they hung him for it. Oh, and something about his hands were stained red when they found him and were still red when he hung,” she says quickly, her voice sounding unconcerned.

Stars eyes grow wider and her face pales. “Wait what?” she asks.

“Oh come on, enough stories, let’s go before another young girl gets the same idea and beats us to it!” she orders, the sweetness gone from her tone. She turns away from Star and heads off into the woods. A small light near the camera guides her way as she pushes into the dense trees of the forest.

“Pretty sure no one else will be doing this,” Star mutters, her disapproving voice growing quieter as the camera moves further from her. “Wait, Paulina, wait for me!” she cries louder. Quick footsteps patter across the ground behind the camera.

Paulina’s perfectly manicured hands move aside branches. She keeps most of her focus on the ground, taking care to avoid roots jutting up from the floor or rabbit holes waiting to catch unsuspecting feet. Occasionally she looks up, casting her gaze amongst the trees for a spectral glow. In the pitch dark she can only see clearly for twenty feet in front of her. The woods are oppressively silent. The sound of heavy breaths and leaves crunching underfoot echo louder in the silence.

The crack of a branch. Off to the side. The camera swings about quickly and casts about wildly in that direction.

“What was that?” Star’s frightened voice whispers from behind.

Paulina draws in a deep breath. “It was nothing,” she says, her voice forcibly even.

“No, no I heard something,” Star whimpers. She sounds closer to the camera now.

“Oh stop being so jumpy,” Paulina admonishes in irritation. “It was nothing.”

“A branch broke next to us!” Star argues, almost hysterical.

“Star, ghosts don’t have footsteps,” Paulina snaps. “They float. It’s probably just an animal. Now come on.” The camera turns forward and marches through the woods again. Paulina’s footsteps sound louder, angrier. The camera-feed occasionally jerks from side to side, checking the area next to them as well as in front of them. All it can see are more trees as a light fog shrouds tree trunks in the distance, turning them into nothing but vague shadows.

A long breath shudders into the camera from behind. Paulina stops and her breath hitches. “Star, ew, you don’t need to stand that close,” she chastises. “I can feel your breath on my neck - that’s so gross!”

“I’m not...Paulina I’m not behind you,” Star’s shaky voice stammers out. Her voice sounds distant.

The camera turns around slowly. Star is five feet back, kneeling on the ground tying a shoelace.

The camera-feed trembles as Paulina sucks in a shaking breath. “Then who--?” She turns slightly to her right. A blood-curdling scream. She jumps and turns to face Star. She catches pure terror on her face before Star dashes off in the direction she came.

A long, slow moan breathes into the camera again. Long, claw-like fingers emerge in front of the feed from behind. They drip with a thick, red sap, and glow with a menacing red light. They fill the feed, about to swipe.

Paulina screams, high-pitched and petrified, and the camera feed drops suddenly. She dashes out of the way and stumbles, toppling to the floor. The camera-feed shakes as she falls and scrambles back to her feet, but in between it catches the silhouette of a floating shadow. The figure is completely black, save for its long, oozing claws. A faint red sheen surrounds it.

“YOU!” the deep, resonant voice bellows. It distorts the video feed as it speaks. It advances and swipes. Paulina stumbles backwards, but lets out a yelp of pain. She looks down at a long, grazing cut along her arm. She leaps up and runs after Star. Branches and leaves hit the camera, knocking it askew. The feed is bouncy, jumpy. It turns back to show the ghost advancing before whipping forward again. Star is visible in the distance, running and screaming.

“PHANTOM!” Paulina screams. “PHANTOM!”

The foliage is thicker and she catches up to Star. She grabs Star’s arm and pulls her to the side, diverting them down a new path. A branch cracks and falls behind them with a creaking thud. Paulina looks behind quickly and sees the top of the branch is missing where her head used to be. The revenant is right behind her. “Ay wey!” she screams. “En la madre!”

“Don’t look behind! Keep running!” Star yells as she pulls Paulina forward. They duck under a low branch and keep running. They divert course for openings in the trees. The fog creeps in around their feet, obscuring their vision.

Another slicing sound, like an axe through a tree, to the right. Paulina and Star both scream. They pick up their pace, running pell-mell through the forest. The camera feed jumps and bounces, casting about wildly for an escape. Paulina’s heavy pants are punctuated by crashing branches and angry moans.

Star pitches forward with a yelp and Paulina trips over her. They tumble and the camera goes flying. It lands upside down and shows the Red Vengeance advancing on the girls as they struggle to stand.

A blur slams into the ghost and sends it flying back into the forest, out of view. The teens untangle themselves and shakily get to their knees. They look off in the distance, and cast around with wide, panicked eyes. Star clutches her ankle.

“What was that?” Paulina asks.

“We shouldn’t stick around to find out,” Star stammers out. She manages to stand, but limps heavily on her left ankle. “We need to get out of here.”

Paulina hesitates. “But what if it’s--”

“Paulina! You’re bleeding! We’re leaving!” Star yells, almost in hysteria.

She starts to stand when a body crashes through the trees in front of them. They both scream as Star backs out of view and Paulina drops down to the ground again. The revenant advances, but another form floats up in front of it. “Do we really need to do this every year?” a snarky voice sighs.

Paulina looks up, her eyes expectant. “Phantom!” she cries in joy. She reaches back to grab the camera. It wobbles as she puts it back on her head to watch the fight.

Phantom blasts the ghost, and the whole forest lights up with an eerie green light that casts shadows across the ground. He turns around to face them. His glowing green eyes look so bright in the darkness. “Get out of here!” he orders them as he motions for them to flee with his hand.

“But we can’t,” Paulina argues. She tries to make her voice sound sweet and alluring, but it’s too full of fear. “Star hurt her ankle. We need--”

“Figure something out! Just get out of here! It’s not--” A cry of pain cuts his orders short. The Red Vengeance appears behind him, its dripping red claws caked in fresh ectoplasm and blood. Phantom arches in pain and places a hand to his back. He turns to face the revenant. Ectoplasm leaks out of cuts in Phantom’s back. He winds up a fist and punches the ghost so it staggers back in the air. He follows with a blast to its face and another with a blast to its core.

The revenant shrieks. The sound on the camera feed distorts horribly. Phantom covers his ears. Paulina looks at the ground, her elbows visible in the camera view from covering her own ears. She looks up just in time to see one long claw plunge into Phantom. It pokes cleanly through his back. He howls in pain and curls around the hurt. The girls scream in horror.

Phantom turns insubstantial and floats off the blade. He cups his hands together and shoots a powerful blast so bright the forest lights up like it’s almost daylight. The revenant shrieks again as it dissolves under the power of the blast. Phantom finally stops and hunches over, one hand on his abdomen. He grabs the thermos from his side and sucks the remaining wisps of the ghost into it with a bright blue light.

The light dies away as Phantom caps the thermos. The forest looks even darker now. The glowing sheen around Phantom helps distinguish him from the rest of the shadows. He drops down to the forest floor with a soft thud. Paulina looks over at Star behind her. Tears are streaming down Star’s face and her blonde hair is tangled and caked in mud and leaves. Her face and body are bruised and scraped. Star nods in answer to an unanswered question, and Paulina nods back.

She turns to look back at Phantom and takes a step closer with a hand outreached. She stops as a ring of light forms around Phantom. It spreads across him in two directions as he breathes in a shaky breath. The rings disappear as soon as they came. She adjusts her headlamp and shines it down on Phantom-- no it’s not Phantom. It’s a young, dark-haired boy in a white shirt and jeans. His white shirt blossoms with red and green blood along his back. He coughs a thick, wet cough and spits a mixture green and red blood onto the ground.

She jerks back and gasps. “Fen-Fenton?!” she cries out. Star gasps from behind and Paulina turns to look at her shocked face before she turns quickly to look back at the teen kneeling on the ground.

He looks up at her, his blue eyes wide with shock. He looks down and pulls at his shirt. His breath hitches as he looks back up at them. “Paulina? Oh shit what are you--I told you to leave!” he yells.

“I--I...you’re Phantom?!” she gasps out, taking a step back, but the camera stays tightly trained on the dark-haired teen.

“Oh my God…” Star breathes from behind her. “Oh my God!”

Fenton winces as he places a hand back on the stab wound that still bleeds freely through his shirt. “What? That’s crazy talk,” he dismisses.

“I saw it!” Paulina challenges as she points at him.

Fenton shakes his head. “You were running for your life from a ghost - you don’t know what you saw,” he argues.

“Oh no I am very aware of what is going on around me right now, thank you very much!” Paulina argues, her voice full of sass. Her focus keeps shifting from Fenton’s worried face to the red and green blood stain that spreads across his white shirt.

“Danny you have the exact same injuries!” Star counters from behind. The camera moves up and down as Paulina nods.

Danny looks down at his abdomen. He peels his bloody hand away from the wound and curses under his breath before he covers it back up again. Paulina gasps and she looks over at Star just in time to see her shiver and avert her gaze.

“Must be a coincidence,” he insists through gritted teeth. He keeps his gaze at the ground now. Paulina leans to the side, and the camera feed catches Danny’s fist clenching in the soft dirt of the forest.

“It’s not a coincidence!” Paulina contends vehemently, her shrill voice echoing amongst the trees. “Danny we saw it! The weird rings of light. The green blood. You’re kneeling right where Phantom was! You have the same injuries! You--”

“Alright fine, yes! I’m Phantom okay?” he finally admits. Star gasps from behind Paulina. “Have been this whole time. Happy now?”

“But...how?” Star asks. A shuffling limp is heard from behind, and her voice sounds closer. “I mean you’re not-- I mean Phantom’s clearly a ghost but you aren’t…” Even though Star’s talking, the camera feed stays trained on Danny.

He shakes his head. “That’s too complicated to explain here. Just accept that I’m both, okay?”

Paulina takes a step forward. “Danny I never knew,” she says, her voice sweet and coquettish. “If I had known I--”

Danny holds a hand up to interrupt her, a stern look on his face. “I swear Paulina, if you’re gonna start flirting with me right now I’m gonna release this ghost again because I am not in the mood.”

Paulina’s head dips slightly. An awkward silence settles over the clearing. Danny spits out more red and green blood before he tries to stand. He winces and grunts and his body shudders from the effort it takes to stand. Now on his feet, his stance is unsteady, and he wobbles before he pitches to the side. He catches himself on a tree with his other hand, and uses it to steady himself. His agony is clear on his face, and he bites his lip as he takes deep breaths that can be heard from the camera.

Paulina looks over at Star. The blonde shrugs an answer to an unasked question. The camera lingers on Star for a moment, hesitating, before it turns back to the injured teen. “Danny…are you okay?” Paulina asks cautiously. She takes a slow, cautious step towards him.

“I’m fine,” he snaps, and Paulina immediately takes a step back again, hands held up in front of her in a placating gesture. He watches her back up, and a flicker of regret crosses over his face. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and looks towards the camera again. “I’m fine,” he repeats in a more gentle voice. “Not the first time I’ve been stabbed,” he tries to joke lightly, but no one joins him in even a polite chortle. “I just need to get home. Star, can you make it on your ankle?”

“Maybe, but...can you make it?” Star asks, her voice strangely serious.

The camera looks down as Paulina pulls her phone out of her pocket. The bright light of the phone is a marked contrast to the rest of the dark forest. She checks the wireless and cellular settings with swift nimble fingers.

“Yeah, I told you I’m fine,” Danny assures her.

“Are you sure? Because you can barely stand,” she points out.

“I’m a quick healer; I can handle it,” he states forcefully.

“Look, maybe we should just call someone?” Star suggests with a sigh.

Paulina finally looks away from her phone and shakes her head. “Can’t. No signal. We’re on our own.”

Star pulls out her phone to confirm and her eyes grow wide with worry. Danny doesn’t seem surprised. “It’s fine. I’ll just fly us out of here.”

“Ooh really?” Paulina asks excitedly. “Oh wow! A personal flight from Phantom! No one in school will believe this story!”

Something dark passes over Danny’s face. His eyes fill with fear. He rushes up to Paulina and the camera view dips down long enough to see Danny’s hands grab her shoulders. She looks up, and Danny’s worried face takes up the entire camera screen. “Nobody can ever know about this!” Danny demands fiercely. The camera catches a flicker of light in his eyes as he stares Paulina down. “Any of this. Swear it!”

“We do!” she promises quickly with a trembling voice.

He looks over her shoulder, his form tense. “Star? Do you swear?”

“Yes I do!” she squeaks from behind.

He releases his hold on Paulina’s shoulders and slumps against a tree with a wince. He runs a hand through his hair and rubs the back of his neck, clearly not caring about the blood he tracked through his hair. “Oh my god I can’t believe this. My secret just got exposed to the biggest blabbermouths in the whole school. And it’s on video too. Great. Give me those cameras.”

“But Danny--”

“Give me the cameras!” he yells as his eyes flash green, a glow that lights up his whole face in the dark. Paulina takes a step back again. She stares at him, unmoving. She looks him up and down.

Soft footsteps approach from behind, and Star comes into view. She removes the GoPro from her head and hands it to him before she retreats. Paulina sighs, but she reaches her hands up to the camera. The feed jostles as she removes the headband and it swings nauseously back and forth. When it steadies, it shows the upside down view of two women with sticks and twigs sticking out of their hair, their clothes torn and dirty.

The view from the camera lowers, approaching the soft leaf-strewn floor. It shifts at the last minute, giving a slightly askew view of the starry night sky and the tree canopy overhead. Danny’s weary and worried face looks over the camera. He closes his eyes and shakes his head slightly. When he opens his eyes, his face hardens in determination and he extends his hand, palm up, to the camera. His hand glows bright green, wreathed in energy, accompanied by gasps from the side.

“No wait Danny—“ Paulina interrupts just as the energy releases. Intense green light blinds the view. It shudders in a moment of static and then goes dark.

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