What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Part Three: Xander's Story
by Elizabeth Ann Lewis
He stared at the small mound of turned earth. He'd found the possum before anyone else was up, and buried it before the others could see it. He didn't know if La Charona's ax or Hook Guy's slicer/dicer had done the work, but it had the same effect. Luckily, Miranda didn't come equipped with sharp objects, although he'd rather not meet a walking one-armed decomposing corpse, if it was all the same.

"Okay, now what do I do?" he asked the silent woods. They didn't have an answer for him. "You know, when all this weird stuff started happening," he said conversationally to a pinecone, "I pretty much knew what to do. Sic Buffy on it. I mean, she's the Slayer, she's good at fighting supernatural bad guys. But we're miles from anywhere, my mom's not going to be picking us up for another two days, and Buffy's in LA. So... that leaves me. Me, Xander, fighting the forces of evil." He would have thought he'd feel strong and mighty at the thought. Xander, facing down the bad guys.

Instead, he was scared to death.

Of course, he had been before. When he followed Buffy down into the electrical tunnel to rescue Jesse. When he and Willow and Giles had gone into the Bronze to rescue everyone from the Harvest. When he and Buffy had gone to rescue Willow from the demon in a tin can. When he and Angel had gone down to rescue Buffy from the Master.

"Of course, there's one word that keeps popping up in each one of those examples," Xander continued to the sympathetic pinecone. "'And.' There was always someone else along for the ride. Geeze, how does Buffy handle this on her own all the time?"

Options. He needed options. They could fight. That was his gut instinct. Bad things attack you, you fight back. Clean, simple, and it didn't take too much planning. Except that was iffy when you were fighting things that all seemed to be back-from-the-dead things. *Could* they die?

Xander started pacing through the woods, keeping an eye out for ghoulies and ghosties, but they seemed to generally be nocturnal creatures. They had been created by stories, old stories repeated time and time again, told by kids around a campfire.

Could they be made to leave the same way?

By the time it started getting dark, Xander though he knew what he was going to do. He collected massive amounts of firewood, to keep the fire high and bright. He kept a few sturdy sticks handy, in case hand-to-hand combat actually happened. Wendell and Pete showed up on time for dinner.

But neither of them had seen Josh.

"I think he went to the rocks," Pete said, pointing at the cliffs that were too tempting for a teenage boy to ignore.

"We all agreed that we wouldn't go wandering after dark," Xander argued. Impatiently, he opened a backpack and yanked out a fluorescent lantern.

"Hey, Xander, chill." Wendell put his hand on Xander's arm. "Maybe he just forgot. You know Josh, he may have decided to blow us off and keep climbing just because he wanted to. Hell, he may be hiding in the trees listening to us and laughing his ass off."

Xander switched on the lantern, cutting a stream of blue-white light through the darkening woods. "You two stay here, okay? By the fire. I'm going to go look for him."

"Xander... you think there's something out there?" Pete's newly-baritone voice trembled into treble for a few notes.

Xander considered for a moment. "Nah," he lied. "But there might be... um, bears. Yeah. Or mountain lions. Better stay by the fire."

Five minutes later, he was wishing himself back with Wendell and Pete. It was *dark* at night. And really, really quiet. So quiet, you'd think you'd hear someone sneaking up behind you really easily -- unless, of course, it was a ghost and could glide over the crackling pine needles. "Josh?" Xander croaked out. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Josh!" It was hard to shout in that silence, hard to attract attention in the night. But Xander gripped his makeshift club tighter and headed off to the rocks.

There didn't seem to be anyone there, but Xander persisted, clambering around, shining his light into various crevices. "Josh?" he called, his voice bouncing oddly off the rocks, reflected and refracted around him.

~One more. One more little cave, one more minute. Then I'm heading back and Josh can just find his own way--~

"Aaagh!" he and Josh shrieked at once. The light from the lantern caught Josh full in the eyes from where he had been cowering in the tiny depression in the rock, and the glitter had startled Xander. Xander nearly lost his balance and tumbled backwards.

"Man, what are you doing here?" Xander snapped, furious and scared, and *more* furious because he was scared.

"Sssssssh!" Josh hissed. "He's out there!"

"So are you, Josh. Come on."

"No! He's out there, I heard him. He was calling my name."

"That was me," Xander said patiently. "Come on, we'll be safer by the fire."

"I'm telling you, I saw him. Awhile ago. How long have you been here?"

Xander shrugged. "I didn't check my watch. Five minutes, maybe."

"I saw him before that. Right after the sun went down. He was big -- huge, seven feet tall and built like a linebacker. And he...." Josh gulped. "He had a hook on one of his hands."

Xander felt a shiver of fear work its way down his body from his scalp to his toes. ~This is so very, very, majorly bad...~ "Josh, we can't stay here. We've got to get back to the fire. To Wendell and Pete. We're not safe up here."

"You believe me?" Josh said gratefully.

"Yeah. Yeah, man, I believe you. Come on, let's go."


* * *
By the time they got back to the camp site, Josh had recovered completely from his brief bout with humility. "What, you thought I really saw some guy with silverware as an appendage?" He snickered at the thought. "Get real, Xander!"

"Weirder things have been known to happen," Xander muttered.

Pete had given in to the inevitable and had already cooked dinner, a largely inedible meal of burned beans and charred trout. "It took you guys too long to come back," he said sheepishly.

Josh leaned back on his sleeping bag and sighed, crossing his arms behind his head and staring up at the stars. "Aaaaaah. Tomorrow -- civilization! A Big Mac!"

"Running water," Pete chimed in.

"TV," Wendell contributed.

"Nintendo!" Pete, Wendell and Josh chorused.

"Yeah, yeah. You guys are a bunch of wimps. You don't have any appreciation for meeting Mother Nature on her own terms." Xander tried to sound noble, but flush toilets were looking more and more attractive. Not to mention that Men in Black was opening soon...

However, they still had this little problem to clear up. Hopefully, they would be safe for the night. The fire had enough wood to burn until morning, and they would head out in daylight.

But the next group of campers who came up there would get to face Hook Guy, Hatchet Lady and Putrefying Polly. Not a good scene.

"Okay, my turn to tell a story." Xander paused for a moment to listen. There wasn't any sound other than the snap of the fire and the murmurs of the three other guys. Even the wind seemed to have stilled. He mentally crossed fingers and toes in the hopes that his idea would work -- ~Hey, I'm not Knowledge Man, that's Giles's job!~ -- and dove in.

"You know that bend in the road, near the river back in town? You know how it's got guard rails up and reflectors and everything? Well, one night, this truck driver was going through there, and he almost runs over this girl who's standing on the side of the road."

There was a loud *snap* of a twig, out in the forest beyond them, as though a large man had shifted his weight, waiting. A point of light glanced off something in that direction, gleaming silver in the shadows. Xander gulped and continued. "It's pouring rain, thunder and lightning and everything. So, this girl flags him down. She's wearing a long, white dress, and she's soaking wet..." ~Buffy in a long white dress, face down in the pool, not breathing, not moving, not *living*...~ "...and she says that her boyfriend ran his car into the river on the way to the prom. He's hurt really bad, and she needs a ride back to town to call the police. The truck driver tries to call in the accident on his radio, but he gets nothing but static. Figures it's the lightning, and doesn't worry about it."

A long shriek echoed through the night, a woman's cry, flavored with absolute insanity. "What was that?" Pete asked fearfully.

"A mountain lion or something," Wendell said calmly.

"Oh. Okay. Go on, Xander."

Hidden in shadows, Xander's hands clenched and unclenched. Sweat that the fire wasn't responsible for beaded his forehead. "So, ah, so he takes her to her parents' house, like she asks him to. He's involved with setting the brake and everything, and when he looks up -- she's gone. Nothing there but a wet spot on the seat and a silk scarf."

~Swish-THUMP. Swish-THUMP.~

Xander started talking faster. "The guy thinks that she left the cab when he wasn't looking, forgetting her scarf. So he gets out and goes to the front door. An older guy answers it, and the truck driver tells him that the girl left her scarf in his truck. 'Yes, this is my daughter's scarf,' the older guy says, very sadly. 'She died when her boyfriend crashed his car into the river on the way to the prom, twelve years ago.'"

Xander paused and took a deep breath. This was the important part. "You see, the things that don't belong in this world sometimes wander over into our world. But when their time is up, they disappear -- poof -- into thin air. They have no power to harm anyone here. They're not a part of our world, and they go away."

Nothing. Silence. No sound from the woods. Nothing at all.

"That was okay," Wendell said. "But you could've have picked a scarier one."

"That ending part was weird," Josh complained. "It ruined the whole story."

"I think Wendell's was best," Pete said, casting his vote.

"Hey, *mine* was the best! You had nightmares about it, remember?"

"Did not!"

"Did to!"

"Did not!"

Xander settled down to sleep, listening to Pete and Josh bicker. And slept dreamlessly.

Just before dawn, Xander woke up. He packed all his gear, grabbed some raisins out of the dwindling rations, and went to check out the surrounding area.

There were no new marks on the trees, no mutilated animals, no furrows dug by a dragging foot. Just quiet, and stillness, and the breath of the forest. Surrounded by the whisper of the wind, the scent of sap and leaves and earth, Xander smiled. "Way to go, dude."


* * *
"So how was the trip?" Xander's mom asked as the four boys piled into her station wagon.

"Way cool, Mrs. Harris," Wendell grinned.

"Yeah, I caught a lot of fish," Pete bragged.

"Me, big man, lord of the forest." Josh beat his chest with his fists.

"Oh, man, we are *not* letting you see George of the Jungle," Wendell groaned.

"Xander? You're awfully quiet. Didn't you have a good time?"

By long practice, Xander was able to gracefully duck his mother's fussing hand over his hair. "Sure. It was cool."

"'It was cool'? That's all you can say? You didn't enjoy yourself?"

"Yeah, I did." Dawning understanding appeared in Xander's voice. "I really did."

"Well, good." Xander's mom smiled at him and started the engine.

"And *I* won the ghost story telling contest," Josh bragged.

"Did not."

"Did too!"

"Did not..."

THE END



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