06 Jul What the Texas Floods Revealed

You don’t forget the sound of a girl being swept downriver. You don’t forget the moment her scream cuts off, as if something grabbed her by the throat and pulled her into a place where sound doesn’t carry.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My name is Lily. I’m eighteen and served as a counselor-in-training this summer at Camp Havenfall in Wyrmwood Glen, an old, beautiful camp for girls nestled along Rattler Creek in the Briarwood Bluffs. My mom was a Havenfall girl back in the ‘90s, and so was her mother. For many families like mine, the place holds special significance. It’s sacred.

This was supposed to be my last year as a camper and my first year as a leader. I had waited my entire life to wear that white sash.

We were in the second week of the session, and the Fourth of July was approaching. Everyone was gearing up for the big fire circle and talent show on Senior Hill. The days had been oppressively hot—so hot that by the afternoon, it was nearly unbearable to walk across the gravel without shoes, and we spent most afternoons swimming in the river. The river was the only place that felt alive in that heat.

That realization haunts me now.

We loved the river. We swam in it, paddled on it, and floated down it on inner tubes. We held water Olympics in it and offered prayers beside it every Sunday.

None of us knew what it was truly capable of.

* * * * * *

The storms began a few days before the Fourth. July in Merrow County typically brings pop-up storms, but these were different. They were not merely quick flashes of lightning followed by ten-minute downpours that evaporated off the roads. These storms featured black skies, thunder that shook the windows, and rain that didn’t relent.

I remember waking up that Thursday night—technically Friday morning, July 4th—because my bunkmate Hallie said the rain on the roof sounded like someone throwing handfuls of gravel.

There were alerts on our phones, the kind you usually swipe away: FLASH FLOOD WARNING: MERROW COUNTY. TAKE SHELTER.

A few counselors in the older cabins assured us that it was a regular occurrence. They explained that the river always rises and recedes, mentioning that it had happened in 2010, and again in 2002 before that, and that they had protocols in place if the weather got bad enough.

But that night felt different.

At around 2 a.m., the head counselor, Ms. Janey, moved from cabin to cabin, calmly instructing us to gather our rain gear and head up to the dining hall on the hill. Most of us thought it was just a drill, and some girls even laughed as they pulled on their Havenfall shirts and Crocs, treating it like a midnight adventure.  However, when I saw the look on Ms. Janey’s face, I realized something was off.

She wasn’t calm. She was pretending to be calm. Her mouth smiled, but her eyes were calculating something, as if measuring how much time we had left.

We filed out into the rain, and I ended up at the back of the line. As instructed, we were supposed to head uphill, yet I couldn’t help but turn to look at the river. I don’t know why I looked, but I felt compelled to.

It was terrifying.

The river wasn’t just high; it was moving fast—so fast that it broke tree branches and spun docks loose from their moorings. It had risen feet—rather than mere inches—and it hadn’t stopped.

An empty, upside-down canoe rushed past where our chapel used to be. I caught a glimpse of it in the flashes of lightning.

And then, on the far bank, I swear I saw someone standing in the trees. It wasn’t a camper or a counselor. Just someone standing there, watching without waving or running, simply observing.

* * * * * *

It wasn’t until morning that we understood fully what had happened. We hadn’t been able to evacuate, as all of the roads got washed out.  It was determined that sheltering in place was both easier and safer.

But what I saw that morning made it clear that having the campers stay put in their bunks may have been a tremendous mistake. Cabins near the river weren’t simply damaged, but entirely missing. It was as if the earth had rolled over in its sleep and buried them.

Our art barn had crushed against a cypress trunk half a mile downstream. Horses from the stables had been set loose and were found on a neighbor’s ranch, wild-eyed and trembling.

We discovered pieces of girls’ clothing in the trees and braids of friendship bracelets tangled in the fence.

And the worst part? Some girls who should have been in those cabins were missing.

At first, they said ten were unaccounted for, then eighteen, then twenty-seven.

I sat in the gymnasium at Dry Hollow Elementary with two hundred other girls wrapped in borrowed blankets, thinking: The river didn’t take them; it revealed something that had been waiting.

I kept recalling the man in the trees—the stillness of him and how he didn’t flinch when the lightning cracked.

Later, when they recovered the bodies, some of them didn’t seem right.

They weren’t bloated or waterlogged. I’m not talking about decomposition. I mean they looked different. They had wrong sizes and mismatched limbs, as though whoever—or whatever—we found wasn’t truly who we had lost.

And I’m not the only one who noticed.

* * * * * *

The reunification center was a gymnasium located in a local elementary school in Dry Hollow, though I don’t recall the name. We were bussed there after sunrise, once the worst of the flooding had passed and the rescue teams started to arrive in waders and camouflage ponchos. It was supposed to be temporary, until it was safe to relocate elsewhere, or girls were picked up by their parents.  I committed myself to helping as much as I could while I was waiting, and to staying as long as necessary to assist those in need.

I remember feeling how small it seemed after Havenfall. The gym had a pale, flickering light overhead, and the air carried the combined odors of feet, rain-soaked carpet, and hand sanitizer.

I sat on a red bleacher cushion in a borrowed hoodie when Hallie’s mother found us. She ran straight to her daughter, wrapped her arms around her, and sobbed as if something was breaking inside her ribcage. She never glanced my way, not even to check if I was okay. I didn’t blame her.

They had just announced the official count: twenty-seven girls were missing, some of whom were younger than ten.

But here’s where things began to get strange.

That night, a group of five girls from Cabin Sparrow—one of the riverside bunks that was completely destroyed—walked into the reunification center.

No one had found them during the rescue sweeps, nor had any helicopters or boats reported them. Somehow, they simply entered through the back entrance of the gym while people were handing out sandwiches. They were barefoot and covered in silt, their skin pale and tight, suggesting they had been in the water a long time.

Yet… they weren’t soaked. Their hair was dry. And their eyes… I swear, they didn’t look at anyone. They seemed to look through us.

When their names were called, parents screamed in joy, and there were cries of relief and hysterical sobs. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that these weren’t the same girls who had gone into that water.

* * * * * *

That night, I woke up in the cot next to Hallie’s. She was whispering.

At first, I thought she might be praying or talking to herself, which she sometimes did after nightmares. However, when I leaned over, I realized her lips weren’t moving.

The whispering came from the cot beyond hers, where Natalie, one of the girls who had walked in earlier that afternoon, lay.

I can’t explain why I knew her name for certain. Perhaps it was because she had always been loud—class clown loud. She was the one who got in trouble for sneaking marshmallows into the bunks during campfire week.

Now, she whispered to no one.

The sound was in that same strange monotone with no inflection, just a steady stream of something I couldn’t make out. I strained to listen, and the hair on my arms stood on end, because it wasn’t English. It wasn’t Spanish, either, or any language I recognized, for that matter. The sounds were too sharp, like bones clacking together.

That was the first night I had the dream.

In it, I found myself back at Havenfall. Though the cabins were underwater, I could still walk through them as if they were normal.

All the girls were there—the ones we had lost. They stood in a line along the riverbank, facing away from me, and they were singing. I couldn’t make out the words, but the melody was imprinted in my mind, like a hymn you hear once and carry for life.

They held hands, gently swaying, as something enormous watched from the trees. I couldn’t describe it. I didn’t see a face, but I felt its presence, and I sensed its gaze upon me.

When I awoke, my pillow was wet, but not from sweat. I know what sweat smells like.

It wasn’t sweat. It was river water.

* * * * * *

In the days that followed, more girls began to show up.

Each time, there was no explanation. News crews labeled it a miracle. Some claimed they had found shelter in a dry spot under a bridge or that they had floated to high ground and hadn’t been able to reach help. But none of the girls could explain where they had been.

They all said the same thing: “I was in the river, and then I woke up.” Not once did they describe how they had survived or who had helped them. They didn’t even seem affected, which was perhaps the strangest thing of all. They were so eerily calm that it strained belief. It was as if they had fallen asleep in a dream and simply wandered back, with no recollection of what they had just endured.

The nurses examined them for hypothermia, and therapists tried to encourage them to talk. But after the initial questions, everyone just seemed relieved to have them back and eased up on the interrogations.

But me? I wasn’t relieved. Not at all.

I witnessed one of them, by the name of Maya, as she stared at a blank wall for ten straight minutes without blinking.

I saw another girl, Jules, bite her fingernail down to the pink, acting as if she didn’t feel a thing.

One night, Hallie, my bunkmate, muttered something in her sleep that sent a chill down my spine:

“The real ones are still down there.”

That was when I stopped sleeping.

I took night shifts helping to hand out supplies, and I tried to get close to the returnees so I could listen.

* * * * * *

One night, I followed Natalie into the bathroom. She didn’t turn on the light, though. Instead, she just stood in front of the mirror.

I waited, hidden behind the doorway, thinking she would wash her hands or fix her hair. But she did neither. Leaning closely to the mirror, she murmured something in that same whispering language. And the mirror responded to her, not with words, but with ripples, as if it were made of water. And, for a moment, just a fraction of a second, I saw another face staring back at her.

It wasn’t hers. And whoever it belonged to wasn’t human.

That was the moment I knew that the river hadn’t just taken them; it had changed them. Or perhaps something else had sent these people back in place of the missing campers.

It was also clear that it wasn’t finished. Hallie has gone now, too. She left her cot empty two nights ago, and nobody saw her leave. However, I found her Havenfall sash folded on her pillow, and the blanket underneath was wet. With river water.

* * * * * *

I didn’t go back to sleep after Hallie disappeared. Instead, I stayed up in the gym’s front office, pretending to help with the supply logs. I kept thinking that maybe she’d slipped out for air, or perhaps someone would spot her at the vending machines or curled up in a nurse’s cot. But by sunrise, everyone else had stopped looking. There was no announcement and no counselor check-in; her name wasn’t called at breakfast. It was as if she had never existed.

As I observed the girls who had come back from the river—the ones who weren’t acting right—they seemed relieved, as if someone had crossed a chore off a list.

I needed answers. That afternoon, while the other girls were being shuttled to the makeshift grief counselors, I slipped out of the gym and walked. It took me almost two hours to reach the edge of the Camp Havenfall property. The roads were badly damaged—trees were down, the asphalt was buckled, and utility lines hung like vines. My shoes were soaked, and my socks rubbed my heels raw.

When I finally reached the stone gate that marked the camp entrance, I stopped. The sign was gone. The Camp Havenfall arch that had stood above the gravel drive for decades—the one with the carved scripture, “Be still, and know that I am God”—was splintered and lay floating in a ditch like driftwood. Something about that felt worse than the flooding itself, as if the river had taken the name along with it.

Inside, the place was unrecognizable. Where the cabins had been, there were only holes—mud pits gouged out of the bank like enormous claw marks. Chapel Hill was a twisted mess of foundation boards and hymnals. The dock had become a black stump, and the campfire ring, where we used to sing “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” had entirely vanished, as if someone had picked up and removed the stones by hand.

The river was too still. Rattler Creek never stopped moving; it always murmured and rippled, even when it was low. But now it sat there, slick and glassy like a mirror. As I looked out over it, I noticed something in the shallows—a girl kneeling, wearing a white sash.

I didn’t call out to her, and I don’t know why. Maybe I was afraid of what she’d say, or perhaps I was concerned she would turn around, and that I would see Hallie’s face, but that it wouldn’t really be her. Instead, I took the trail behind the barn, where the kitchen used to store emergency supplies. I remembered that the old filing cabinet was there—back when I helped Ms. Janey organize camper rosters for my leadership hours. If there was any history about the camp—ownership records, building permits, flood logs—that’s where it would be.

When I found the cabinet, it was moldy and warped, but the text was still legible. There were documents dating back to 1926, including the original land lease, permits for the mess hall, and a typewritten letter from the state water authority warning about erosion risks in the “subsidence zone.”

But the strangest thing I found was a folder labeled “RIVER COMPLAINTS – DO NOT FILE.” Inside were a dozen handwritten reports detailing concerns such as wet beds in Cabin 4, complaints of a “naked woman with long arms” crawling under the dock, instances of whispering during the chapel service, and an unusual sash found in a tree 40 feet above ground, even though there had been no storm that night. One report mentioned a girl who had gone missing in 1952 but reappeared three days later with no memory, having aged in some way, with nails that were too long. These reports, dating back decades, showed that the strange occurrences were not limited to this flood. The river had always taken girls, and sometimes it gave something back.

By the time I left the barn, the sky had gone black again. The clouds had settled in place, as if something immense was pressing down on the whole camp. The girl in the shallows had vanished, but where she had been kneeling, there were footprints in the mud—barefoot and pointing in the wrong direction. Her toes were not facing the river but away from it, as if someone had been pulled backward.

I understand how this sounds. I know grief can make people feel insane. I’ve read the threads and seen the articles about “grief hallucinations.” But this isn’t that. It isn’t survivor’s guilt either, because I’m not the only one who remembers.

I received a private message that night from another girl at camp, one of the older CITs. She said she saw something, too, in the floodwaters just before the cabins went under. She described hands, decidedly inhuman ones, reaching up. She asked if I would go back with her to the ruins one last time. She thought we could figure out what the river wanted.

Her name was Becca. She had been in Cabin Falcon, located up on the ridge, which was one of the few cabins that didn’t get washed out. That was probably why she had survived.

We met after dark behind the Shell station off Route 72. She carried a backpack, a flashlight, two bottles of water, and a printed satellite map of the Havenfall property, which she must have pulled from Google before they took the camp’s site down.

Becca didn’t waste any time. She didn’t even ask how I was. Instead, she said, “It’s still there. You can feel it, can’t you?” And she was right—I could feel it. The pressure in the air, a stillness that felt all sorts of wrong.

She told me she had seen something the night of the flood. While the rest of the cabin slept through the lightning and thunder, she remained wide awake.

From her window, she had seen girls walking into the river, not fighting the current or trying to swim, but walking, calmly and silently, as if they had been called.

Becca said she had tried to wake the other girls, but no one stirred, not even the counselors. It felt as if the whole camp had been put under a spell. When she looked back outside, the girls had vanished, and the river was full of shapes, with limbs that didn’t move right. Not people. The last thing she saw before the power went out was a face staring up at her from beneath the water, wearing her own expression.

By midnight, we had made it to the edge of the Havenfall property. The National Guard had pulled out days ago, and only caution signs, yellow tape, and a crude wooden barrier over the front drive remained, but there was no one watching. No one wanted to be there.

The trail behind the barn was choked with branches and moss. Somewhere in the distance, a barn owl cried out, but otherwise, it was silent—too silent. Even the insects had vanished, and the air smelled wrong, like wet stone and rust.

We made our way down to what was left of the chapel clearing. It looked like a crater now; the benches had been scattered, and the hymn board was half-buried in mud. That was when Becca showed me what she had come to find.

There was a hole in the ground, about three feet wide, ringed with rock and wood that didn’t match the other camp’s construction. This was older and hand-hewn, shaped by tools I couldn’t name. She said it had been under the chapel stage, torn open by the floods.

She shone her light down, and for a second, I thought it was just a pit. But then the mud shifted, and I saw fingers. They were not moving or alive but arranged as if someone had laid them there in rows—fingers of all sizes: childlike and adult, all of them gnarled and clawed, like an offering.

I turned to Becca to ask what the hell we were looking at, but she had backed away from the hole and was staring at something behind me. I didn’t turn right away because I heard it first—the whispering.

It was neither loud nor urgent, but soft and steady. It was that same dry, clicking syllable stream I had heard from Natalie’s bunk at the reunification center, but this time, it surrounded me, like a breeze whispering through reeds, like voices beneath the waterline.

I turned, and the girls were there—every one of them. The missing twenty-seven stood on the opposite side of the clearing, just inside the tree line. They were barefoot, their sashes fluttering in the breeze. Their faces were calm, and their eyes glowed faintly, as if backlit by something deep and blue. They didn’t breathe, blink, or move; they just watched me. Then, at once, they pointed.

Becca screamed, and I don’t even remember dropping the flashlight; I just ran. We didn’t stop until we reached the highway again. We didn’t speak or look back. Once we got into her mud-streaked car, panting, I told her we needed to go to someone—the police, the press, anyone. Becca shook her head and said, “They’re not missing anymore. That’s what they were waiting for. The flood brought them back, and now the river’s full.” She wouldn’t explain what she meant. Instead, she dropped me off at the reunification center and drove away.

I haven’t seen her since. Her phone number goes to voicemail, and her Instagram is gone. I tried calling her mom’s landline. A woman answered and said, “You have the wrong number.” But I recognized that voice. It was Becca’s, sounding like someone older, whispering before the line went dead.

That was three nights ago. Tonight, I woke up to find mud on my carpet and wet footprints—barefoot—leading to the bathroom mirror. It’s happening. Whatever is in that river didn’t stay there. If anyone reading this is near Camp Havenfall, don’t go back. Not during the rain, nor when the river swells. When the waters rise again, they won’t just be coming to take; they’ll be coming to claim.

I really didn’t want to write this. I told myself after that night at the ruins that I was done, that it was over. I even packed up and left Texas, driving sixteen hours straight to stay with a cousin in northern Arkansas. I needed to be somewhere without rivers, without camps, and without memories. But it found me anyway. Now, I believe this is the only thing I can do—the only thing that might help someone else survive what’s coming. So, this is everything I know. No more holding back.

* * * * * *

Two nights after I arrived in Arkansas, I started dreaming again. However, this time was different. I wasn’t standing on the banks watching the others sing. I was in the river.

I was neither drowning nor floating; I was standing. The water surrounded me, black and icy, yet I could breathe somehow. As I looked around, I saw figures stretching out in all directions—hundreds of them—motionless and rooted to the riverbed like trees. One by one, their eyes opened as I passed. All of them were girls—campers—and they all had my face.

I woke up gasping and clutching my chest, and found blood under my fingernails. I didn’t remember scratching myself, but the bedsheets were shredded, and something small and hard was stuck in the folds. I picked it up and realized it was a tooth, too small to be mine, resembling that of a child.

Sleep eluded me. I went to the reunification center’s front desk and begged the woman for coffee. I asked if she had seen anyone come in after midnight. She looked at me as if I were crazy and said no one had checked in or out. But when I returned to my room, I noticed the mirror was fogged. Written in the condensation were three words that sent a chill down my spine: “BE STILL, LILY.”

Be still. The same words that used to hang over the Camp Havenfall archway.

“Be still, and know that I am God.” That’s when I understood. It was never meant to be a camp motto or just scripture. It was a command—not to us, but to the thing in the river. To keep it quiet, contained, and asleep. When the flood came, it woke up.

For the past week, I have spent my time delving into history—reading news articles, obituaries, land records, and accounts of unmarked deaths. Camp Havenfall was built in 1926, but prior to that, the land was owned by a church retreat center called St. Perdita’s Refuge, which operated from 1898 to 1921.

Even earlier, the land was avoided. It wasn’t sold, farmed, or hunted. The Apache referred to the river as Tsékʼáádáʼ—roughly translated, “the place where the ground drinks the dead.” Early Spanish missionaries recorded stories of the Rattler whispering at night, entire villages relocating, and cattle drowning in dry seasons, believing there was something deep beneath that stretch of river.

They believed something lived there, capable of taking on the shape of the people it devoured, transforming them in the process.

That’s precisely what the flood did. It broke the barrier and allowed it to feed. What came back—what looks like Natalie, Maya, Becca, and Hallie—isn’t truly them. It’s what the river made in their image: echoes, mimics, hollow girls made of silt and silence. And now, it wants more.

Last night, my cousin’s six-year-old daughter disappeared from her bed. The only trace left behind was a wet sash folded neatly on the windowsill. Camp Havenfall didn’t send it; no one did.

After all, there is no Camp Havenfall anymore. It officially closed two days ago. The board was dissolved, and the land was transferred to the state for flood remediation. They will probably pave it, fence it off, and pretend it never happened. But I suspect that won’t be enough.

I believe it’s still spreading. Tonight, I heard it—the whispering—coming from the storm drain outside the house. It had the same language and the same cadence. When I looked outside, I saw a girl in the yard. She was barefoot with a sash fluttering, and she was looking straight up at me. She had my face.

* * * * * *

I don’t know how much time I have left. I have blocked the door, unplugged the mirrors, drawn salt lines, and lit candles. I even attempted prayer.

But the rain is coming again. I can hear it building in the clouds, and the river is calling.

If it calls you, don’t listen. Don’t look.

And whatever you do, keep moving.

Whatever you do, don’t go still.