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Most years, it was the Buckners. Everyone loves a creepy diary, after all. The Deadites, the reanimated, and the witches were common for similar reasons. The less memoir minded groups tended toward Fornicus, the Sugar Plum Fairy, or the Bride. But every year, no matter what the group in the Cabin picked, someone won their bet. Except for 2008. No one wanted to talk about 2008 ever again.
2008 was the year they summoned the Horrible Goose.
“What is all this shit?” the Whore, a freckly red haired woman named Gaia who was stripping three nights a week to pay her way through an epidemiology degree, asked.
The Fool, a dark skinned woman named April with dreams of working in museums, sipped her hard lemonade as she wandered around the room and shrugged. “Some serious hoarder shit, I think. God, I wonder if my cousin would let me catalogue this shit later?”
“Why would you want to? It’s gross as hell down here.” The Athlete, a star softball player and Gaia’s girlfriend, wrinkled her nose. “Why don’t we go back upstairs?
“You worry too much Jane.” The Virgin told her gently. “It’s just some dust and cobwebs. Nothing that’s going to hurt us.”
“Alright, Lee, but you can explain to mom if I get bitten by a black widow down here and die, okay?” Jane teased her ‘Virgin’ twin sister.
“No one’s going to die.” The last member of the group told them with a sigh, her blonde braid swinging behind her as she came downstairs. Their Scholar was a gentle looking woman majoring in elementary education, but she gave the group some fierce teacher eyes as she spoke. “Honestly, it’s just a dusty basement. Just be careful not to touch anything rusty, the last thing we need is to have to leave early to get someone a tetanus shot.”
“Of course, Lizzie.” April replied, laughing. “We all know better than to say no when you look at us like that. You might spank us with a ruler.”
“You’d enjoy it too much.” Lizzie retorted. “I’d have to put you in the corner or something.”
“I wouldn’t mind being stuck in the corner down here.” Lee replied thoughtfully, trying not to let anyone see her blush. “There’s so much to look at.”
Gaia nodded, bouncing over to a table and holding out a round puzzle box. “Look at this stuff, it’s amazing!”
“And creepy.” Jane gestured at a dusty, unsettling fortune telling machine.
“Ah, come on, the worst that one of those could do is turn a kid into an adult to have wacky adventures.” Gaia teased. She set aside the puzzle to check out a table covered in odd looking antiques.
“Well, if I found out I was dating a ten year old like in that movie, I’d be pretty damn upset.” April joked, thoughtfully picking up an old book to flip through.
“Honestly, she was straight. A ten year old in an adult man’s body was probably still a better prospect than most for her.” Jane smirked, picking up a snakeskin and looking at it curiously.
“Ten year olds are great.” Lizzie agreed, looking through a pile of toys. “Still would hate to find out I’d been tricked into dating one, though.”
“ Come look at this! ” Lee called, holding up a beat up old steno pad and waving it at them.
“What’d you find, Lee?” Jane asked, abandoning the snakeskin to come over. The others all put their things away to follow suit.
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“A steno pad? What the hell does that summon? I’ve never even seen it before.” Hadley grouched from his seat in front of the monitors, watching the girls. “They didn’t even look at the conch.”
Sitterson sighed. “The whole point of bringing in an atypical group like this was to hopefully give some of the less frequently used options in zoology a go. Apparently it’s inhumane to keep them in there so long without exercise or some shit. The fact that we don’t recognize the steno means it’s working. If you’re worried about it, call down there and see what they’re racking up, they’ll know.”
“Alright, alright.” Hadley shrugged and picked up the phone. “Hey, you’ve got eyes on the feed, right? What’s the notebook for?”
There was a pause.
“What do you mean you’re having to search your files? It can’t be that rare, can it?”
Another pause. Sitterson perked up, staring at Hadley and trying desperately to hear the other end of the call.
“It’s never been used before? Damn. It’s good to go, though?”
Sitterson watched as the girls ran around the basement laughing, playing with various objects.
“It’s already out there? We don’t have it on video. What is it?”
Sitterson flipped through all the camera feeds, but saw only the faint flash of white through the trees.
“A goose? Like… a giant goose?”
Sitterson zoomed in on the white and saw an utterly normal looking goose padding through the woods near the lake.
“How can it just be a normal goose?”
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All five girls flopped on the couch, giggling, still clutching the steno. “Your cousin is weird, but very cool, leaving us this scavenger hunt thing.” Lizzie said, a bit breathless
“It’s not her handwriting, I told you. Must’ve been something someone put together for their kid or something.” April replied, waving the red ribbon she was holding lazily in the air like a shrug
“Whoever it was, it’s a blast.” Lee beamed. “Do we want to do the next one?”
“Gimme a minute to catch my breath. Then sure!” Gaia grinned.
“Okay… we have to put glasses on the wolf, find the hidden window, toss someone into the lake, ‘Say cheese’, ring the bell, and go on a nature walk to find: a smooth fist sized stone, an undamaged oak leaf, a yellow flower, and a white feather.” Lee read off the steno.
“We’ll go on the nature walk.” Jane blurted, winking at Gaia. Gaia nodded and waggled her eyebrows at her for a moment.
“Just don’t forget to actually bring the stuff when you’re done.” April teased
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“But how can a perfectly normal goose kill four college kids?” Hadley demanded
Sitterson frowned at his computer screen. “Perfectly horrible, apparently. A perfectly horrible goose. I don’t know, but there’s nothing in storage that isn’t theoretically capable of doing it. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Normal, horrible, either way, it’s just a fucking goose.”
“Just wait and see. At least it’s something new this year, right?”
“A merman would’ve been new.” Hadley grumbled, but Sitterson ignored him. Jane and Gaia were on screen, giggling and kissing on the edge of the lake.
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“Gaia, chill. We’re supposed to be finding stuff for the scavenger hunt.” Jane said, pulling away reluctantly. “They’ll never let us hear the end of it if we don’t find this stuff before it gets too dark.”
Gaia pouted, taking her shirt off and tossing it to the side. “You really mean to tell me you’re willing to wait for all of this?”
“God, babe, you’re going to kill me, strutting around like that.” Jane groaned, tugging her into another eager kiss. “How are you so fucking tempting.”
Gaia started unbuttoning Jane’s shirt as they kissed. “You can blame me. Come on Jane, I need you, or I’m gonna explode.”
“Mmmh, how can I say no to that.” Jane replied, tugging her shirt the rest of the way off and sliding a hand down into Gaia’s pants. Neither of them noticed the flash of white feathers on the lake as the goose drew nearer. Neither of them would’ve thought anything of it if they had.
Neither of them paid any attention to the perfect oak leaf that fluttered down onto Gaia’s collarbone as she lay there naked in the grass, Jane’s head between her legs. The leaf fell and was crushed with a shockingly loud ‘crunch’ that actually caught Jane’s attention, causing her to lift her head briefly and find herself face to face with a bright white goose.
She shouted and instinctively fumbled away, which caused Gaia to open her eyes and grumble in protest. “It’s just a bird, Jane. Don’t let it distract you from the important stuff~”
“I’ll just take a feather. For the scavenger hunt.” Jane replied, reaching out toward the goose. “Then we can get back to it.”
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“If this thing just lets her take a feather, we’re fucked.” Hadley grumbled.
Sitterson shushed him, but there were murmurs of agreement in the watching crowd. Everyone wanted to see what the goose would do- a secondary betting pool had started with how and if the goose would kill. The theory given top odds by the impromptu pool was that the goose would have some sort of guardian, but there was no way to know for sure. Until it struck.
Everyone held their breath as Jane reached out to pluck a feather off of the goose’s tail. It struck before she got near its feathers. They all watched in horror as this seemingly innocuous goose used a smooth, fist sized rock and a yellow flower to kill Gaia (or perhaps more accurately to cause her to fall to her death out of the tree she’d climbed to escape after twisting her ankle on the rock so she could not run).
Jane fled for the house, but the Goose- they all thought of it as a proper name now that they’d seen what it was capable of- made quick work of everyone in increasingly macabre ways that somehow continued to correspond with the seemingly innocent list they’d found int he basement. The whole thing somehow took a mere half an hour. One exceedingly smug intern, mumbling something about being attacked by geese as a child, made a mint off the betting, but everyone else was too stunned and horrified to even celebrate.
But, the sacrifice had been completed very effectively, and no one could really complain. Until, that was, it came time to wrangle the Goose back into its box. It refused to return when the five girls were dead, and retrieval ended up having a record fifteen casualties trying to bring the thing in. Despite the effectiveness of the Goose, the Steno Pad was quickly retired, and the missing fifteen employees’ families given large checks to help ease the burden of their deaths.