You know, as I'm sitting here looking at this fire with the lightning behind the mountains, I'm reminded of a night about five years ago. I was out camping with a few friends of mine, and we were sitting around the campfire, telling jokes and stuff. It was a pretty normal night, except for the lightning. It flashed constantly, but there was no thunder. I've been in a few electrical storms before, but never anything like this. This was...eerie. For a couple hours, the lightning flashed without one single crash of thunder, or one drop of rain. That was fine with us, because we liked sitting around the campfire. We'd been camping together for a few years, and we enjoyed it. When we weren't camping, we were close friends; around the campfire, we were brothers. Jared, Danny, Stephen and I were inseparable.

Around midnight, we heard a noise. It wasn't loud; it was just a whistle from somewhere north of us.

"Did you hear that?" I asked the rest. Another whistle sounded, this time to the south.

"Yeah," said Danny, my neighbor. "It sounded like a coyote." There were a large number of them in the canyon, and their howls sounded a lot like whistling. We paid it no mind, and began telling jokes again. A few minutes later, however, we heard another whistle, followed by a shout that was very much human. We looked around at each other, but no one said anything. Then, the same shout came again without the whistle. Steven, the oldest one of us, picked up a flashlight.

"I'm going to check it out," was all that he said. He turned on his light, and began walking through the trees. We watched his glow get further and further away until it was hidden entirely by the trees.

For a few minutes, we carried on as usual. We told jokes, sang songs, talked about other friends, etc. Humor was the order of the evening, perhaps more so because of the unusual circumstances. Then we heard another shout, much closer than the others.

"That sounded like Steve," said Jared.

I was beginning to get frightened, so I tried to deny it. "No, it didn't. It was just..."

"Just what?" Danny demanded. My breathing became shallow.

"I don't know," I said, finally.

"I'm going to go check," said Danny, picking up the second flashlight. He, too, walked into the trees until we couldn't see him anymore. Then the whistling began again, this time from all angles. Jared and I never said a word. We just picked up the lantern, and walked to our tents.

When we got to my tent, we looked into each other's eyes, but still said nothing. Then he turned, and walked towards his tent. I watched the lantern swing in his hand.

I quickly opened my tent and climbed inside. I did not want to be outside without any light for any longer than absolutely necessary. After I crawled into my sleeping bag, I pulled my hunting knife out of a pouch in the tent. I had bought it almost as a joke, never intending to do any hunting. But that night, I held on to that knife as if it were a life line. I was drowning, and that knife was the only thing keeping me afloat.

I don't know how I got to sleep that night, but at some point, I was awakened by the sound of footsteps. I could also see the glow of a flashlight, and I could hear the hiss of a propane lantern. I immediately thought that Danny and Steve had come back, and they'd gotten Jared. Letting out a sigh of relief, I began to sit up. Then, something occurred to me. There were more than three people outside. Many more. And there were more than two flashlights.

Gently settling back into my sleeping bag, I gripped the knife until my knuckles turned white. The footsteps and lights approached my tent, and then stopped. I could hear whispering. Lights were casting dozens of shadows all over my tent. I lifted the knife a little higher.

The shadows started moving in a circle around my tent. Faster and faster they went, until they were running. The lights and shadows spun around, mocking me. The lightning continued to flash, and I prayed for thunder. Somehow, I knew that if there were one clap of thunder, I would be safe. If just one drop of rain would fall on my tent, the shadows and lights would leave. There were none.

The running, the whispering, the lightning, everything continued unabated. I began to cry silently. Sobs wracked my body, but I made no sound. The thought kept repeating in my mind that if I made one single noise, no matter how quiet, I would die. I don't know how long I stayed like that, curled up into a ball on the floor of my tent, silent tears dripping off my face, but eventually I realized the noises and the shadows were gone. The light was still there, but it was no longer the light from flashlights or lanterns or lightning. It was the rising of the sun.

I sat in my tent for hours, waiting to hear another noise. None came. Whatever they were, they were gone. Timidly, I poked my head out of my tent. I held my knife at the ready, but nothing attacked me. Nothing came for me from behind the trees. They were gone. And so was everything else.

Danny's tent, Jared's tent, Steve's tent, my car, everything was gone. I could see the places where they had broken and pressed down the grass, but there was nothing left of anything. There were footprints in the dirt all around the camp, but no signs of life otherwise.

Stunned, I began packing up my tent. It was what I usually did in the morning after camping, and I couldn't think of anything else to do. It was all so bizarre. When I had my tent and sleeping bag on my backpack, I stared at them. I couldn't pick them up, for some reason. So I dragged them to a tree, and attached them to the trunk. I'm not sure why I did that; it just seemed right.

I was about thirty miles from the main road, so I began walking along the dirt path to it. Jared, Steve, Danny and I had driven down that path so many times, but we'd never walked it before. Rather, I'd never walked it before. We would never do anything again.

About fifteen minutes later, I heard a car driving toward me from where I'd camped. It suddenly occurred to me that we'd never driven farther than that campsite. We had no idea what was beyond those hills to the north. Steve and Danny had walked towards that noise without any knowledge of what was in front of them.

Soon, the car approached me. I recognized it as the county sheriff, but it was a deputy that I did not recognize. He knew me, though.

"Hey," he said, calling me by name. "Did you see anything last night?"

I told him of the lightning and the whistles, and of Steve and Danny walking into the trees. I also told him of waking up that morning, and finding no traces of my friends. He sighed, and explained something to me.

To the north was a maximum security asylum. The night before, about two dozen inmates escaped, killing several guards. They took with them flashlights, flares, anything like that. They were all mesmerized by sources of light.

The deputy told me he'd take me home, but it didn't register. All I knew was that I'd never see my friends again.

A few months later, I began to search the news for stories similar to mine. In many of them, nobody was hurt, and nobody disappeared. In some of them, a person walked off from camp with a flash light, and was never seen again. In others, whole RV's disappeared, including the people inside of them. Searches were organized, and even the National Guard was called out to help. But no one ever found anything.

After a while, the stories became less and less frequent. I searched and searched, but never found anything about the capture of an escape mental patient from that asylum. Nothing I ever read connected the stories to each other or to my own experience. But from what I read of the accounts of the people involved, there was always lightning with no thunder.

Eventually, the stories stopped all together. For all the searches, none of the disappeared were ever found, dead or otherwise. I cling to a hope that my friends, my brothers, are still alive. Other than that, there's nothing I can do. If they survived, maybe one day they'll come back home. Maybe, one day, we can tell each other the stories of what we've done for the last five years. Maybe not.

In any case, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed. Don't put out the fire when you're done with it; let it burn itself out. And leave the lantern and flashlights next to it, or take them with you into your tent, and turn them off. Keep them in your sleeping bag if you have to. Just don't let them show off any light. I hope I'll see you in the morning. Good night.