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“The dark and stormy night is a nice touch, even if they couldn’t actually control that,” Hannah continues.
“Hannah, this is real,” hesays.
She looks at him in disbelief. “We got you. You don’t need to try to cover it up and keep usgoing.”
“I’m not. This isn’t a hoax. Miranda stayed back tonight and we found her cabin likethis.”
Hannah’s face falls and for the first time, she seems to take in the possibility that the blood splattered everywhere is real. “This isn’t ajoke?”
“No,” Anthony tells her. “It’s not. And we need to get it under control immediately. We need to talk to Mike. Emily, get the campers to theircabins.”
“Oh, god,” Emily whispers, still staring at the blood throughout the cabin. “Oh, mygod.”
“Emily, we need you to focus,” Holden says. “We need you to get these campers safely to their cabins and then get as many of the counselors as you can find and meet us at the director’soffice.”
She continues to stare, rocking back and forth slightly as the realization of what’s going on settles into her.
“Emily,” Anthony snaps. “You need to get it together. Comeon.”
They leave the cabin and part ways. Emily herds the three campers close to her, looking around frantically as she rushes them toward the camper cabins nearby. Anthony and Holden make their way as fast as they can toward the main office at the front of camp. As they go, they look around, hoping to catch sight of any campers braving the rain to wander the camp without supervision so they can send them back to their cabins.
Holden is sharply aware of every second that ticks by on the watch he wears on his wrist, of the time passing between them leaving Miranda‘s cabin and getting to the office building at the front of the camp. As they approach, Anthony‘s steps seem tooslow.
“What if something happened to Mike? What if he‘s in there, all cut up and bloody?” heasks.
“Then we need to findhim.”
Holden continues without hesitation. He jumps up the four wooden steps onto the wide porch at the front of the office. This is the first building parents see when they register their children for camp or drop them off on the first day of the summer session. It’s the welcoming point, where in a normal year they would meet Mike and feel assured their children would be safe, charmed by his broad smile and broader shoulders, cool eyes, and dark hair. It’s where they see big, framed pictures of campers from past years, frozen in their camp activities. Canoeing, archery, baseball, crafts, campfires, hikes. It‘s where they hear about the well-equipped infirmary and filling, nutritious meals served in the clean dining hall, the comfortable cabins and never-ending friendships.
They sign their children over here. They walk away with peace of mind but not really knowing what lies ahead forthem.
It‘s different this year. Back in the sixties, some of the campers were little children, as young as six, tucked away into the cabins and struggling against the lake with their oversized paddles. This summer, the youngest campers are sixteen. It creates a different atmosphere that somehow feels tenser, more dangerous. There’s pressure pushing down around them, the unpredictability of teenagers controlled by themselves rather than any authority, wanting to do what they want to do. Small children stay in place. Teenagers roam. They think they can help. That they are the ones who can change the course of what’s happening.
They can’t.
They won’t.
The rain is coming down harder now, but the thunder is still a threat in the distance. It’s coming.
There’s no light in the front lobby area of the building, but the door to Mike’s office is open and Holden can see into it when he tears open the front door and rushes inside. The sound startles the camp director into pushing back from the desk and standing.
“Who’s that? What’s going on?” he demands in a voice that sounds like the thunder outside. He meets Holden in the middle of the dark lobby. “Holden? What are youdoing?”
“Miranda,” Holden says. “Somethinghappened.”
“What are you talking about? Miranda is down at the campfire where you shouldbe.”
Anthony comes in just as Mike says this, and for a second, there’s a whisper of hope. Maybe they just missed her. Maybe she had decided she felt better and went down to the campfire and there’s another explanation for everything else. But the more he goes through the possibility in his mind, the more it explains itself out of reality.
Even if Miranda did go down to the campfire, someone was in her cabin screaming. Someone was bleeding.
“No,” Holden says. “She was sick. She didn’t go tonight.”
They tell Mike what they saw at the cabin and watch the man’s face go hard and dark. Something in his eyes sinks away, like he’s leaving the moment where he’s standing.
“I’ll call the police,” he finallysays.
Turning on his heel, he goes back into the office and picks up the phone. His hand tightens around the receiver and he pushes the contact points on the cradle in rapid succession like he’s sending morse code. The receiver drops back in place with a heavy clang.
