Few campers at Camp Apple Hill Farm have found the mysterious cabin rumored to be hidden deep in the woods—but those who have whisper of a mysterious woman who tells tales of horrors beyond imagination. Are you brave enough to visit Cabin 23?
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Justina Ireland’s The Boo Hag Flex, which is out May 14th 2024.
The last thing Tasha Washington wants is to move from her home in Savannah to a trailer park in Middle-of-Nowhere, Georgia. But when her mother dies and Tasha is taken in by her father—a man she’s never met, who abandoned her mom when Tasha was just a baby—she doesn’t have much of a choice. At least, she thinks, she won’t have to spend much time with him—something that becomes clear when he dumps Tasha with her grandmother and disappears to be with his new girlfriend.
The Shady Pines trailer park seems like a miserable place to spend a summer, even before an elderly neighbor suddenly passes away. But then Tasha meets a girl named Ellie who says she knows what really killed old Mr. Harold: a terrifying creature that stalks the trailer park at night, sucking the life from its victims. Tasha doesn’t believe it, but when she discovers a book of hoodoo legends in her grandmother’s trailer, and more people around Shady Pines start to appear unwell, she begins to fear the stories are true—and that danger is much closer than she thinks.
Chapter 11
After a dinner of the best pork chops Tasha had ever tasted, Ms. Washington wrapped up a few sugar cookies and handed them to Tasha.
“The office said that they checked on Ms. Greta and she was doing fine, but I tried calling her and she’s not answering. Perhaps you could run these over to her and see how she’s feeling?”
Tasha took the cookies with a nod and ran out of the front door into the summer evening.
The sun had already dipped beyond the horizon, and the streetlights on the main road cast a feeble glow. Some of the lights were burned out, and the deep shadows between the trailers made Tasha uneasy. Wandering around all by herself, Tasha could understand how Ellie could come to think she’d seen something frightening slinking in the darkness. She said the ghost had long stringy hair and smelled bad; the Spanish moss hanging from a nearby tree looked just like that, and Tasha could smell the stinky stagnant water from the marsh on the evening air.
The scent reminded Tasha of the time the kitchen sink in an apartment where she and her mom were living got clogged, and they had to wait for the land- lord to clear the drain. It had taken two whole days for him to show up, and the water in the pipes had taken on a sour, noxious smell. It was so bad that Tasha’s mom had called the man and yelled, threatening not to pay rent if it wasn’t fixed. Tasha couldn’t remember much else about the incident, but she remembered the plumber taking the sink apart and a stench like moldy death filling the apartment.
The closer Tasha got to Ms. Greta’s trailer, the more it began to smell like something spoiled, and the damp, fetid smell had Tasha holding her arm to her nose as she walked. But it wasn’t enough, and by the time she began to climb the steps to Ms. Greta’s porch, Tasha was gagging, afraid she was going to be sick.
There was something very wrong at Ms. Greta’s house. Maybe her sink had gotten clogged. Tasha knocked once and then again, and when no one answered the door, she just set the cookies down. The smell was too bad to wait for the old woman to answer. Tasha had no sooner stepped off the porch than she saw a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye. She froze, terror sending a chill over her skin. Because even though she wasn’t looking right at the shape that was looming in the shadow beside Ms. Greta’s trailer, she could feel the wrongness of it. Her arm was still held across her face, and she lowered it slowly. The smell was overpowering, dead fish and rotting vegetation, and a deep rot that belonged not to a marsh but to a grave.
Tasha didn’t want to look. But she couldn’t help herself. It was as though she was compelled to turn her head, to spare a glance at that dark space between the trailers where the streetlights didn’t quite reach.
So Tasha didn’t fight the unbearable urge. She looked.
For a couple of heartbeats, she felt embarrassed relief. There was nothing there; she’d just let Ellie’s panic and silliness infect her.
But then the shadow lurched.
Tasha was unable to move, to speak, to flee. All she could do was watch.
The thing—it looked almost too solid to be a ghost—was tall and skinny, taller and skinnier than any person should be. It was all jutting angles and grasping hands. Long stringy hair hung down to its knees, and its arms were freakishly long. It looked naked, but there was nothing human about the body, which glistened wetly in the scant streetlight. Tasha couldn’t quite make out what kind of liquid was on the thing, but it was dark in color. But the worst part was the sound it made as it contemplated Tasha: a gasping croak that was not quite animal, but far from human. And the smell. It seemed to grow stronger the longer Tasha looked at the thing.
It was Tasha’s gagging that finally broke the spell. She was going to be sick. But she couldn’t be—not where that thing could get her.
The nausea cut through her fear, and she was able to start moving, her flip-flops making a slapping sound as she ran, breathless, back in the direction she’d come from. A sob hitched in her throat, and she pumped her arms harder, ignoring the painful stitch that bloomed in her side.
When she arrived at Ms. Washington’s trailer, Tasha slammed inside and ran right to her room. She closed the door behind her and dove under the covers, trying to get warm. She began to shake, her breaths ragged gasps. She tried to come up with some explanation for what she’d seen, but it was impossible. The thing had been as tall and narrow as a small tree, but no tree could have tricked Tasha into seeing what she saw; there wasn’t even a tree near Ms. Greta’s trailer. And the smell—
Tasha would never forget that smell.
