by D. Melhoff
“Fine,” he shouted. “Go ahead and get yourself killed. See if I care!” He hesitated as she hung a corner and vanished, and then he turned and bolted down a different road. Nebulous shapes danced in the corners of his eyes as he darted by the gingerbread crafts hut, Thumbling’s Reading Corner, and Pinocchio’s Puppet House. Half of him was scared shitless—convinced he would catch a bullet midstride—while the other half felt like a 1940s foot soldier in a Spielberg-Hanks war flick, dodging Nazis and sneaking his way through the quaint Westphalian architecture on his way back to base without the help of some special task force or band of brothers to cover his ass.
He slunk around the corner of a supply shed and kept close to the ground, wary of movement.
Then he saw them: two silhouettes by the Seven Dwarfs fountain, less than twenty yards away. It was hard to tell if they were counselors or not. They looked lankier than Lance and Roddy, but heftier than any of the girls.
The closer of the figures turned and pointed at him.
Scott whipped behind the corner of the shed and held his breath.
Silence…
Then came the sound of boots clomping toward him. Shit. He looked back the way he came, weighing the risk of moving and making too much noise.
Clomp, clomp, clomp…
Run!
He put his hand on the building, about to push off, when a terrified shriek pierced his eardrums. Five feet in front of him, a trio of girls materialized from the shadows and tore by in a flurry of panic and pigtails. The approaching boots pivoted and veered after them.
“Round them up,” a voice hollered.
Who was that? Roddy? Lance?
“A dozen went that way.”
“I’ve got three with me. One more went south.”
“Hurry, before they reach the woods.”
That voice. It registered in Scott’s memory, but his hardwiring crashed when he tried matching it to a face. “Flight” was still his active setting—not “Fight” or “Figure out.”
He rounded the building and spied the lawn that led to the entrance of the fort. I can make it, he told himself. Go for it. Run!
He dipped his chin to his chest and took off like wildfire, when out of the blue, a figure appeared in the darkness and collided with him headfirst, toppling both of them onto the gravel. Scott’s “Fight” mechanism clicked. His fist sailed downward—about to connect with the person below him—when he realized it was none other than his own group member Tyrell.
“Watch it—”
Scott’s fist stopped a millimeter away from Tyrell’s nose. He saw the dread in the boy’s pearly-white eyes reflecting his own fear back up at him, and a swell of terror washed over him anew. Tyrell was no shrinking violet—and neither was he—yet both of them had just been a pelvic pinch away from pissing themselves.
“Hey,” a voice shouted. “Who’s there?”
Scott put a finger to his lips and grabbed Tyrell’s arm, slinking away from the direction of the figures he couldn’t trust. The voices didn’t follow.
The two of them made it to the edge of the square, and Scott felt a twinge of hope when he looked up and caught another wink of the fort in the moonlight. We aren’t locked out yet, he thought, noticing distantly—but definitely—that the wicket door at the front of the building was ajar. Thank God.
He felt Tyrell squeeze his hand as he considered the hill. It presented the final obstacle between them and safety: a hundred yards of unobstructed lawn, as dark and menacing as the Everglades in the dead of night when cottonmouths and alligators glide invisibly through its marshes.
We’ll approach from the side. If someone’s watching and it comes down to a footrace, we’d never win.
He looked left and spotted the hedge maze along the border of the clearing. Without waffling, he dragged Tyrell toward it—skirting the square—and squatted against the branches.
“Okay,” he whispered, meeting the boy’s petrified gaze. “You got my back, I got yours. Ready?” His grip tightened around Tyrell’s hand, about to pull him forward, when all of a sudden the hedge maze rustled in front of them.
They froze.
The hedge rustled again.
Scott held his breath and lowered his head to the ground, expecting to see Bruce’s feral eyes staring back from behind the roots. But there were no eyes. Instead, he saw a pair of blue sneakers with yellow reflector strips glinting dully under the bramble.
“Kid?” Scott whispered. “Get out here.”
The sneakers trembled but didn’t budge.
“You want the bad guys to find you?” Still no movement. Ugh. Scott thrust his arm into the shrub and plucked out the stubborn child like an Easter egg.
“Lemme go. Lemme go.”
The boy kicked up a clump of grass, and Scott seized him by the shoulders, giving him a firm shake. “What’s your name, kid?”
“J-Jake,” the kid stuttered. “Jake McDowell.”
“Keep up, Jake. Got it? I ain’t slowing down.”
Scott grabbed Jake and Tyrell by their wrists and went blazing up the long stretch of clearing, hugging the maze and avoiding all shapes and shadows that went bump in the night. The cobblestones became sod underneath their feet, and then they broke right and rocketed—three comets on the edge of the field—toward the protection of the fortress’s walls.
____
None of the lampposts in the square were lit.
As Brynn raced past the buildings, the only light guiding her way came from the crescent moon hanging overhead. It rocked in the sky like a lunar hammock, and the stratosphere shone with mountainous cloud formations, their peaks as tall and as silvery as the Himalayas’.
“Stephy? Stephanieeeee?”
“Shh.”
Brynn whipped around—arms outstretched, fingers splayed wide open. She couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of her. “Who’s there?” she asked.
“It’s Lance and Denisha,” Lance’s voice whispered from the void. “Anyone else on your side?”
Brynn shook her head, forgetting they couldn’t see her. “No. I’m looking for my sister. Is Stephy with you?”
“No. We’ve got seven kids, but—”
“Have you seen her?”
“Not yet. But Brynn—”
“Then I have to keep looking.”
“I know you want to find your sister,” Denisha cut in, “but keep it down. We saw him. Bruce. And there might be others.”
“Others?” Fear flooded Brynn’s voice. “Where’s Charlotte? And Norma?”
“They’re looking for kids too. Last I saw, Charlotte had a dozen.” Denisha paused, then said, “Chances are Stephanie’s with her.”
Out of nowhere, Scott’s voice seeped into Brynn’s thoughts: “It’s the counselors who are in trouble, not the kids…We’ve gotta get back to the fort.” She pushed the warning away. My sister, she thought. My sister is somewhere in this goddamned darkness, alone, while a bloodthirsty killer is on the prowl. I’m not abandoning her.
“Stay with us,” Lance pleaded. “Safety in numbers, remember?”
“Yeah,” Denisha added, “and if Stephanie’s not with Charlotte, she could be with Roddy or Scott or someone else. Please stay.”
“Scott,” Brynn shot back, “is a coward. He left to save his own ass. I’m not doing that to Stephanie.”
Before Denisha could argue, Brynn turned and took off, ignoring the calls of her coworkers behind her. She rammed into a lamppost, then a rain barrel, then another lamppost, bouncing her way through the square like a marble in a fairy-tale-themed pinball machine. The air was quieter than before. If Lance and Denisha had seven of the kids and Charlotte had a dozen, she considered, that accounted for a third of the camp. But the loud ones would have been easy to find. It was the quiet ones—the kids who preferred running and hiding to screaming and crying—who were still lost, and they would be much harder to locate.
Brynn stopped beside a mushroom-shaped garbage can and tried catching her breath. Sh
e pictured her sister: not a runt for her age, but not a heavy girl, either, with big, bright eyes and petite limbs. Stephy, she thought, choking back tears. Stephy isn’t a screamer. She’s a burrower. A church mouse. She’ll be one of the tougher kids—if not the toughest—to find.
Brynn wiped her nose and dabbed her cheeks. Just as she considered Camp Rose in the distance (Maybe she ran for her bed?), something else snagged her attention.
A light glared beyond the archery range in the east. A harsh light—solid, not flickering—stuck on top of a post.
The stables, she thought. They leave the lamppost on all night. Kids are like moths; they always head toward the brightest spot.
That settled it. She swallowed an oyster of phlegm and panic and started east.
As she ran, an owl hooted to her right. Something furry—a muskrat or a badger, perhaps—hustled past her ankle. A creature whose eyesight she envied. Ahead, the stables grew brighter, and a minute later, she stepped into the gravel yard. Her guiding light—a sodium vapor lightbulb—flickered on top of a twenty-foot post, bathing the enclosure in a pool of soft, buttery light. To the left was a toolshed, and beside it stood a rectangular barn, its separate stalls lined up like the rooms of an abandoned roach motel. Four mares and two geldings were huddled at the farthest end of the corral—quiet, spooked. No one had been around at the end of the day to guide them inside, and now their marble eyes gleamed with the wild equine knowing of something foul on the wind. Something bad.
One of the geldings let out a snort and jump-started Brynn’s feet. She rushed toward the fence and jostled the wooden posts, hunting for weaknesses.
The gaps are too small to squeeze through, she thought. Besides, Stephy would never crawl into an open corral. The two of them had played enough hide-and-seek for Brynn to know her sister’s preferred strategies. If she’s here, she’d find someplace sheltered. Somewhere she could see other people but no one could see her.
She scanned the area, taking in the toolshed, the barn, and the pasture.
The pasture is out of the question. I can’t see her choosing the barn, either, but those stalls are good lookout spots, plus the horses are outside. It’s as good a guess as any.
Slinking across the corral—and cursing the rocks beneath her shoes—Brynn approached the barn’s door. Its latch, she realized, was too high for Stephanie to reach. Don’t give up, she thought. She could have climbed on that rain barrel and hoisted herself through the window. Keep checking.
She undid the latch and slipped into the building.
The smell hit her first: a perfume of petrol, dirt, and fresh cut hay that had baked and aged for thirty summers. It wasn’t as dark as she had expected. The sodium rays from outside slanted through the top halves of the Dutch doors in each stall and projected evenly spaced squares of light along the center alley. A pile of straw sat by the entrance—a pitchfork sticking stereotypically from its center—and saddles, helmets, bridle racks, and riding crops hung on the wall of the tack room on the left.
“Stephy?” Brynn whispered. “It’s me. Don’t be scared.”
She stopped and listened.
No voices, no movement.
“Stephy?” she whispered louder, taking a step forward. Loose stones crackled on the concrete beneath her.
Suddenly, Brynn had the overwhelming feeling that she was being watched.
It’s nothing, she told herself. No one is there, no one is there, no one is there. But her gut said something different. She swiveled around, expecting to see someone behind her…
Nothing.
The barn was as silent as ever.
She let out a delayed breath, relieved.
And that’s when she saw them: two eyes—not horse eyes, human eyes—staring at her from the gate of the nearest stall.
“Brynn,” a voice said.
Brynn’s neck hairs tingled on end. Her heart stopped, and then it was beating again, triple time, as the gate swung open and revealed Stephanie on the other side, trembling in the dark.
Brynn ran forward and enveloped her sister in the tightest hug she’d ever given her. They teetered backward, collapsing in a pile of straw, and started to cry.
“I’m here,” Brynn said. “Stephy, I’m right here. I’ve got you. Everything’s okay. We’re going to make it, all right? I promise. Everything’s okay.”
They burrowed their heads in each other’s necks, and their sniffles echoed into the hayloft. Outside, the wind whistled over the pasture, and the clouds blew across the crescent moon, hiding its milk-white grin and revealing it again. Hiding and revealing…hiding, revealing…hiding…revealing…
Then, in the cycling moonlight, another shadow moved across the sky. This time, it wasn’t a cloud. It was a silhouette—a husky silhouette with wispy hair and strong forearms—standing, unnoticed, in the open half of the Dutch door directly above the two sisters.
____
The wicket door burst open, and Scott flew into the fort, dragging Jake and Tyrell inside by their tiny wrists. He let them go and grabbed a torch off the wall before dashing up the staircase.
“Is everybody okay?”
Jake’s question echoed in the stairwell, unanswered, as he and Tyrell fell farther behind, their stubby legs struggling to keep up. (Tyrell was limping, too, but there hadn’t been enough time to stop and check for injuries.) Scott spotted a sign that said ‘ROOF’ at the top of the stairs. Barreling toward it, he reached for the crash bar and punched the door open—bang. A strong wind blasted his shirt against his chest, and his torch flickered—whoomp! whoomp!—but the flames didn’t extinguish.
Scott’s first thought was that the rooftop was flatter than a crone’s tits. There were no peaks or gables, no air vents or antennas. A dozen crates were stacked in the nearest corner, while the rest of the area lay bare beneath the night sky.
He rushed to the wall and pressed himself against a dip in the parapets. Below, pandemonium raged. High-pitched screams sailed into the sky as specks of children could be seen darting through the clearing.
“Up here!” He thrust his torch in the air and waved it like a lunatic. “Up here! Hey! Get back to the fort! Back to the fort!”
It was no good. From that high up, his voice didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of reaching the campers. He backed away, looking around the roof, and thought, I need a better signal. Come on, come on, come on.
Then he noticed them again: the crates in the southwest corner. He ran over and touched one. It felt empty.
An idea surfaced.
He set down his torch and gripped the empty crate, lifting it as high as a gap in the parapets. With a solid heave, he forced the box over the edge, and it crashed against the lawn seconds later, splintering into a hundred pieces.
“Up here. Come on, get back. UP HERE!”
He seized another crate and threw it off the roof, then another. The wood crashed and splintered and shattered. No change in the chaos. Feeling the situation slipping away from him, he set his sights on the biggest crate—nearly twice the size of the others—and inhaled a deep breath before bending down and grabbing it in his twiggy arms. “Uggghhh.” He hoisted the box above his head with every muscle he could rally and launched it over the wall.
It crashed, splintered…
Nothing.
Fuck me, it’s not working. They can’t hear a damn thing.
He snatched his torch and started shouting again, arms waving, fire fanning the sky. But as he hollered, Scott was so fixated on Storybook Square that he missed the flicker of something else in the shadows. Something to the left, down at the stables. It was the shape of a man peering into one of the horse stalls. The figure turned, catching the light of the corral’s lamppost, but by the time Scott looked over, all that remained was the tip of the figure’s silhouette disappearing inside of a toolshed.
____
Brynn slipped out of the stable first, and Stephy followed.
The corral was silent except for the sound of moths bat
tering their bodies against the sodium vapor lightbulb on top of the lone post. Brynn raised her hand, about to signal her sister forward, when another light caught her attention.
Was that on before?
A single lightbulb dangled in the window of the yard’s toolshed, its orange filament flickering like a dying firefly. An unnatural feeling churned in her gut. The atmosphere felt different. Brighter, maybe—tenser.
She turned her hand: Wait.
The two of them squatted in the shadows, and Brynn kept her eyes glued to the shed. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. The backs of her legs burned like hell. Finally she lowered her hand and nodded: Come on.
The sisters started south. A gritty cacophony of sand and rocks crackled under their shoes, and Brynn prayed to God for a soft, soundless stretch of grass amid the gravel. No grass appeared. The only way to mute their footsteps, she found, was by stepping inside another set of prints—a much larger set—that someone had already tracked through the yard. She wondered, as she had with the lightbulb, if these footprints were also new.
They passed the toolshed with the dying lightbulb. It flickered once, twice.
Brynn pushed forward. As they continued along the fence, the horses turned their heads to watch, their long snouts pointing out the girls as flagrantly as flashing neon arrows. Stephy followed, but the night’s terrors must have been taking their toll, because the girl’s face lacked any trace of pigment. Brynn grabbed her sister’s hand and gave it a squeeze, about to force a smile, when her entire body froze.
Twenty feet back, a silhouette had appeared in the window of the toolshed.
The person—a man—reached up and removed a carpenter’s ax from the wall behind him. When he turned around, the light from the naked bulb seemed to drip down his skull and reveal his features in slow motion: his coarse cheeks, his square jaw, his black basset-hound eyes. It was the sweat-drenched face of the camp’s groundskeeper, Bruce Bergman. His green tunic was slashed in a dozen places, and his wisps of graying hair lay plastered across his balding mountain like wet sleet.
