by D. Melhoff
“Get a grip,” he mumbled. He wiped his hands on his pants and kept moving.
The moonlight intensified, streaming through the canopy and dappling the earth with flickering silver dimes. The trees had a starving look about them, like famished hostages with physical deformities.
A swatch of grass brushed Scott’s fingers. He paused, perking an ear at the sound of murmuring water.
Dammit. I must’ve wandered back to shore.
He squinted and saw the smoke from the bonfire twisting over the lake in the distance. He had drifted off course and returned along a small arc, arriving north of the counselors’ party where tracts of sedges blocked the view of the beach.
“Scott? Scott, is that you?”
Shit, he thought, recognizing the voice in a heartbeat. He spied a beaten path into the reeds and started toward it.
“Hey,” the person called again. “You okay?”
Scott stopped and turned to see Brynn emerging from the shadows.
“I, uh, I’m sorry,” she said, pushing a branch out of her way. “I’m not stalking you. It—it’s the path. It’s hard to find at night, and I didn’t know if you remembered the way.”
“I’m fine,” Scott said.
“Sure about that? Seems like you need some—whoa!”
Brynn slipped on a patch of moss and collapsed on her hands and knees. Instinctively, Scott rushed to her side and took her arm to guide her up. “Funny,” he muttered. “Looks like you’re the one who needs help.”
Brynn’s shoulders pitched up and down. At first, Scott thought she was crying, but then he realized the sobs were laughter. “I can’t believe…ugh.” She covered her mouth with a sideways hand, giggling. “It’s the booze, I swear.”
“Christ. How much have we had?”
“Enough,” Scott said. He guided her onto a boulder that was jutting out of the grass and sat beside her. Together, they assessed the fire across the beach, then the stars, then the winking crescent moon. Neither of them spoke for a full minute. The wind spoke instead, blowing through the valley and acquiring its own voice as it tussled the forest’s leaves and produced a high hissing sound, like a nest of disturbed rattlesnakes.
“Listen,” Brynn said. “I’m sorry for the crap back there. They’re assholes.”
“Don’t be. Couple arrests get a guy used to attention.”
“So it’s true? I, uh, I just isolated myself with an ex-convict?” When Scott didn’t respond, she added, “Although, that makes it sound like I’m some sort of damsel in distress, which doesn’t really suit me. But hey, listen, if you don’t try anything sleazy, maybe we can get along.”
Get along? Scott wondered in his hazy stupor. Is that supposed to mean I have a shot, or…or what? Shit. Why can’t girls just say what they want?
“All right, damsel. What’s your story?”
“Mm-mm, not so fast. Yours first.”
“Sorry. It’s not PG-13.”
Brynn tried an offended look, but it came off as tipsy.
Scott shrugged. “Guess I jump jobs a lot. No one wants a kid with a record, right? Had to take care of Mom when I was younger. Did some stupid shit, messed up my teens. So yeah, fuck my life, right?”
Scott fidgeted, fell quiet. He hated talking about his past, and if this girl wasn’t so goddamn enticing—and he wasn’t so liquored up—this conversation would never be happening.
“You know what?” he heard Brynn say. “I think you grew up too fast. This camp’ll do you good. Remember a few fairy tales, find your inner kid again.”
“I never knew my inner kid.”
“That’s depressing.”
Not really, Scott considered. His entire youth had been colored—or at least limned—with streaks of adulthood. Losing his virginity at fourteen. Making out with his first girlfriend at ten. And the afternoons—the long afternoons—when he and his buddies would visit the playground across the street from their babysitter’s house in elementary school and talk about boobs and penis sizes and speculate how babies were made. Sure, he reasoned, kids are gonna be curious about that kind of stuff. But that had been three years before his first pubic hair, and two before his female classmates started worrying about their periods. Some children, he contemplated in quick, drunken retrospect, aren’t concerned with sex at all. They can play video games and street hockey and go for bike rides all day long. Not me. Never me.
Of course, not all of his precociousness had been about sex. He would have rather starved than eat at a kids’ table, and he had refused to wear “big kid underwear” even though he had wet the bed at least once a month until the summer of second grade. Talk about goddamn adulthood. At six years old, he had reached the point where every time he wet himself, he’d sneak downstairs and do his laundry to hide it from his mother, who didn’t need any more stress between being a single parent, a Sears cashier, and a full-time waitress at an all-day/all-night waffle house across town. Surprisingly, none of his home life had caused trouble at school. He was a good student, too. His grades didn’t slip until ten years later when he found out you could make more money off marijuana than physics or trigonometry.
Maybe it’s not that I never knew my inner kid, Scott reconsidered. Maybe I just don’t miss him.
“It’s never too late, you know.”
“Huh?” Scott blinked back to Brynn.
“To find what makes you happy.”
She swayed a little closer. Too close for friends, Scott thought. The fiery beast returned to his chest, and his head moved naturally as the moment drew their lips together. Brynn reciprocated, both of them a little smiley, drunk. Far from true love’s first kiss.
Grooooan.
A pause, then grooooooan.
“What’s that?” Brynn pulled away, peeking at the reeds.
“Huh?”
She got to her feet and took Scott’s hand, tugging him in the direction of the water. They stumbled through the grass for thirty yards, then the reeds opened up and revealed a rickety rowboat tethered to a dock in the lake. A coat of zebra mussels covered the underbelly of the vessel and scraped along the shore, producing the low groaning sound they had heard from the boulder.
Scott stepped onto the dock.
“Be careful,” Brynn said.
“What’s the matter?” He put one foot into the boat and tested his weight. “I thought you believed in fairy tales. Y’know, sailing away into happily-ever-afters and all that?”
“That thing looks like it’s from a horror movie, not a fairy tale.”
“Come on, wuss.”
Brynn cocked an eyebrow—challenge accepted.
Scott took her hand and helped her into the boat. When she was in, he didn’t let go. He leaned forward, kissing her deeper than before, and lowered her into the hull, his fingers running through her hair as his lips grazed her neck, first nibbling, then sucking on the tender patch of skin between her jawbone and jugular vein. He felt a tug on his right ear. She was biting too. There was another tug and the lobe relaxed, then a warm wetness filled the space and he realized she had removed one of his plugs and started slipping her tongue in and out of the hole in his right ear. A bolt of lightning shot down his spine—God that feels a-fuckin-mazing—and he rubbed her scalp harder, emitting a low, breathy moan.
Brynn returned the moan, and Scott spread her legs against the side of the boat, taking up as much of the cramped space as possible. He reached down and circled her belly button with his fingers, testing her eagerness, and she inched back, hesitant. That’s okay, he told himself. Patience is a fickle virtue. He kept working his leg between her thighs—coasting his fingers across her midriff and teasing the territory below her belly button—until finally, when she didn’t back off, he pinched the button of her jeans and slid it open in one practiced motion. She twitched, surprised at the speed, perhaps, but didn’t say anything. His hand slipped into her shorts, and she shivered and clenched her pelvic muscles.
The boat rocked side to side as Scott’s fingers
found a steady rhythm. Brynn pushed herself onto him—hotter, harder—and he lifted the bottom of her tank top over her head and pulled it clear off. He watched her hands trail around her back, about to unclasp her bra…
Swish.
She stopped.
Scott waited for the bra to fall, but it didn’t. Brynn was frozen mid-strip, staring at the grass beyond the rowboat with furrowed eyebrows.
Scott pressed his leg harder between her thighs and added pressure to his hand. The creases in her forehead smoothed out as she started grinding her hips again, loosening up…
A twig snapped. Then another—snap.
Brynn’s body went rigid. “Scott,” she whispered. “Something’s out there.”
Scott pretended not to hear, but it was no use. He could feel her shifting around, unnerved.
“Scott.”
“It’s a frog or something.”
“Scott.”
He withdrew his hand from her shorts, sighing, and looked at the shore.
The silhouettes of the cattails waved back, side to side. Barely swishing. Is there a breeze? he wondered. Doesn’t feel like it.
Snap.
“There,” Brynn hissed.
Scott squinted in the direction of the snap. A cloud of mosquitos hovered over the grass in the moonlight, and a lone fly droned through the air. Nothing else stirred in the dark.
He turned back, opening his mouth to say something—
Out of the corner of his eye, a shadow blasted through the reeds.
“Fuck, did you see that?” Brynn’s voice was high and shaky. “That’s not a frog.”
“Beaver, then.” Scott sat up straighter, unafraid but alert. The shadow had been close—maybe too close for a wild animal.
The air was silent again as they scanned the darkness. Brynn crossed her arms and wrapped them around her knees, clearly spooked. Shit, Scott thought. She won’t get back in the mood unless I take a closer look; may as well do it quick.
He grabbed the rope that tethered the boat to the dock and pulled them against the reeds. They coasted to a stop, and he stuck his hands in the grass, parting it like curtains.
He craned his head inside. After a beat: “Nothing’s here.”
“You’re sure?” Brynn whispered.
Scott leaned in deeper.
Still nothing.
Deeper…
Deeper…
“I’m sure,” he said. “Nothing but cattails and—”
Swishing grass exploded in Scott’s ears. He flew back, adrenaline injecting his veins like rocket fuel, and slammed into the rowboat’s bench with all of his weight and inertia. The sudden whiplash churned up a volley of waves, and a swell of water crashed against the hull, capsizing the boat with a whaling splash!
Scott broke the surface of the lake and hacked up a mouthful of algae. The water was frigid. He spun in circles—startled, disoriented—and saw Brynn’s head surface beside him, bobbing like a decapitated skull.
In slow, dreadful unison, they both looked up to see a hunchbacked figure staggering out of the darkness. The figure coalesced into a hardened shape, and Brynn gasped as it emerged from the reeds, revealing…
Two topless bodies, intertwined. It was Chase and Kimberly, sucking face like the fate of the world depended on it.
“What the fuck?” Scott hollered.
Kimberly yipped and covered her naked breasts.
“Hey, babe,” Chase said, “look. Skinny-dipping.”
“We’re not s-s-skinny-dipping,” Brynn fleered.
“Then what are you doing?”
“Leaving.” She snatched her top out of the water, emerging from the lake, and marched in the direction of the bonfire.
Scott batted the algae off his arms as an unprecedented case of blue balls started settling in. He sloshed toward the shore, stone-faced, and was greeted by the sight of Chase holding out a high-five. “Boat’s yours,” Scott muttered, and he knocked his shoulder against Chase’s outstretched hand and left through the reeds.
____
The atmosphere around the bonfire was quieter than before. Everyone had paired off in separate make-out pods along the beach, and because there were more girls than guys, the odd counselors out (Meegan, Bethany, Cynthia, and Mai) had returned to camp.
Scott sauntered up to where Brynn was sitting, dripping wet, in nothing but her shorts and bra. He tossed his shirt beside the burning flat—which was no longer a blazing pyre so much as a glowing plinth of embers—and kicked off his shoes and socks and sat down. Neither of them seemed the slightest bit horny anymore, so he stared into the shimmering cinders and said nothing. There were no more pops or crackles. No more spontaneous bursts of sparks. Only smoldering ashes throbbing in the darkness.
He looked at Brynn, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Her eyes were caught in the glowing wood chips, distant, as if reflecting on a specific memory. A particularly unpleasant memory, he considered. He was about to look away when a droplet of water tumbled down Brynn’s forehead, over her cheek, and down her chin…then her neck…then her chest…
For the first time, Scott noticed a glaring imperfection on Brynn’s body. A series of pale blemishes covered her rib cage, and while they hadn’t been visible in the rowboat—Or tangible, he thought, although the rum might have had something to do with that—they were impossible to miss in the light of the fire.
Scott had seen markings like those before. A guy from his high school, Jeffrey Jackal, was almost killed when a coked-out drug dealer torched his house for refusing to pay back a loan on some bad gambling debts. JJ switched schools soon afterwards, but word around town was whenever new acquaintances asked about his scars, he’d tell them he had a rare form of birthmark. Except everybody knew those weren’t birthmarks, Scott thought. They were burn marks.
“So,” Scott said. “You, uh, you go to college?”
He hated the way the words fumbled out. So forced, so unnatural—especially considering the fact they’d been going at it less than five minutes ago.
“Chicago.”
“Studying?”
“Core arts.” The firewood hissed and shifted. “You?”
“Nah. School’s not really my thing.”
“So what do you do?” Brynn asked. “Or, uh, what do you want to do?”
“Don’t know.” Scott shrugged. “A lot of my buddies have construction companies that need guys in the spring, which is all right. I hear trucking pays decent too. Maybe I’ll look into that.”
“That’s what you want?” Brynn bit her bottom lip. “Like not even your own business? Or, I don’t know, get your journeyman’s or something?”
“I’m not really that kind of guy.”
“What kind?”
“The brainy type. Or the one who busts his ass for his own bottom line. If I can pay off my credit card and have enough left over for a case of beer every week, I’m happy.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Brynn leaned back and seemed to process that incredibly foreign thought. The ultimate culmination—after twenty seconds of reflection—was a trickle of laughter.
“What?”
“I…I just don’t understand.”
“Forget it,” Scott mumbled. “You wouldn’t.”
“Excuse me?”
He straightened his shoulders. Should I say it? Sure, what the hell, the rum beast is already out. “People like you don’t get it. People with ‘normal’”—he added the finger quotations—“lives don’t understand that steady jobs, no matter how shitty, are fairy tales for the rest of us. I mean, you probably came to this camp as a kid, right, before chasing some dream that mom and dad can afford to foot the bill for? Well, some of us, believe it or not, don’t wish for a castle or a kingdom or whatever. Some of us are happy being regular villagers.”
“Crucify me.” Brynn rolled her eyes. “But guess what, I happen to like helping kids too, okay?”
“Sounds like most counselors come here to party, not to he
lp kids.”
“Why not both? Who says we have to grow up right now?”
“Everyone has to grow up at some point,” Scott said. Then, without blinking: “Sorry to burst your little rose-colored bubble.”
Brynn stared back with nothing but daggers. She snatched her tank top and threw it on, covering her burn marks, and stormed up the beach without so much as another word. Scott waited until she reached the edge of the trees and then slipped into his socks and shoes and trailed after her. Not wanting to wander astray again, he stayed a safe distance behind—losing sight of her only once before catching a glimpse of her white tank top—and followed her all the way back to Crownheart, arriving at two forty-five in the morning.
Twenty minutes later, shortly after three a.m., the murders began.
5
Scott stumbled along the row of counselors’ huts and up the steps of number five, disappearing inside, and passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Two huts over, in number seven, the night was far from over. A swell of bedsheets puffed up and down, up and down, to the beat of a hip-hop track thumping out of a battery-powered iPod dock in the corner of the room. The Coleman lamp glowed on the desk—its bulb muted behind a haze of smoke—and the oily herb smell of marijuana hung in the air like a 1960s Febreze scent sponsored by Willie Nelson.
“Mm, fuck…fuck…”
The moans were muffled into a pillowcase and drowned out by Kid Rock’s “I Am the Bullgod.” Erin was spread-eagle on the bottom mattress of the bunk bed, her feet curled around the posts, while Dominique’s naked figure grinded on top of her, his back glistening with sweat as he made his final few pumps and collapsed on the ruffled sheets.
“Day-ummm.” Dominique let out a gust of breath.
Erin’s chest rose and fell in steady waves as her erect nipples sunk into their peachy mounds. “Look.” Her finger wiggled through the skunky haze. “We forgot to kill the lamp.”
