by D. Melhoff
The crowded trees made it difficult to see more than twenty yards ahead. It was dark, too, with the sunlight caught in the forest’s canopy like sparkling anchovies trapped in a fisherman’s net.
Scott shot Brynn a thumbs-up, and she thumbs-upped him back. He stole a peek at the archery shed—silent as ever—then stepped into the woods. The sound of tiny sneakers pattered behind him. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch on the brittle leaves.
The Pied Piper, he thought. I feel like the bloody Pied Piper, leading innocent kids to the water like rats. Scott shook his head and tightened his shirt turban. No. There’s no way she could’ve planned this. Get her out of your head.
They continued down the path in silence. All was well for a minute, and then a bush rustled in front of them. Scott stopped, skittish, and Marshall ran into him. Mindy ran into Marshall, Mikaela ran into Mindy, and Jake ran into Mikaela. A four-kid pileup.
“Hey!” Marshall shouted. “What’s the big idea?”
Scott squinted in the direction of the noise and saw a deer bounding away through the pines. He started walking again, unapologetic, and the kids sorted themselves out behind him.
The rest of the journey went off without a hitch, and fifteen minutes later, the trees opened up on a panoramic view of Lake Mer.
Scott’s nervousness dissolved at the sight of the water. He had forgotten how close it was, but not how vast or alluring.
A chorus of Yays! erupted as the kids hurtled straight for the shoreline.
“Be careful!” Brynn shouted, but Scott let them go. The beach was wide open, and there wasn’t a mote of danger in sight.
A spray of mist erupted as those with the longest legs reached the water first and splashed up to their shoulders. (Brynn had warned them not to go past their necks, and to Scott’s amazement, they were actually listening.) The younger kids stomped into the water and giggled exuberantly when the older boys swirled their arms and sent mini tidal waves crashing over their sunburned bodies.
“No dunking!” Brynn yelled, hands cupping her mouth. “And no—”
“Come on.” Scott took Brynn’s wrist. “Our turn.”
He chucked his V-neck on the sand and pulled her toward the water. She squealed as they raced along the beach, and Scott laughed at the top of his lungs. The water drew closer, and then it was under him. And around him. And over him. The lake wrapped his body in a cold hug and filled every crook and crevice with an icy rush before he surfaced again, letting out a loud “Ahhhh!”
Scott heard clapping around him, followed by full-on cheering.
Ecstasy, he thought. After so much terror, this is what ecstasy feels like.
“Hey, bozo.”
Scott whirled around…
And Brynn splashed him in the face. “That’s for yanking me under.”
He wiped the water out of his eyes and saw her head bobbing above the surface. “You’ve got a funny way of showing appreciation.” He splashed back. Then the kids started splashing—girls at boys, boys at girls—and soon it was every individual for him or herself. Five minutes later, the battle tapered off, and the children paddled away in smaller groups to colonize different parts of the beach, some constructing sandcastles, others going to work digging “the biggest moat in the world” or chasing minnows or burying some giddy volunteer in the sand and sketching inappropriate body parts over his chest and nether regions.
Scott and Brynn drifted to the shore and walked back up the beach, planting themselves under a maple tree.
“Don’t mention it,” Scott said, wiggling a pinky in his ear.
“Thank you,” Brynn replied, sincere. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Without looking, Scott could tell Brynn had her eyes on Stephanie. The younger sister was skipping around the beach by herself, collecting an assortment of twigs and flowers and lily pads from the waterfront.
He glanced down, noticing that Brynn’s hands were buried in the sand. It stirred a memory: on the same beach, crammed around a bonfire when there were fourteen of them sitting in a circle, passing a joint, and picturing the idyllic summer ahead.
“Twenty-four hours,” he said. “It’s all over in twenty-four hours.”
Brynn didn’t respond right away. Instead, she massaged the burns on her sides. Not the sunburns from the last couple days, but the permanent ones—the ones that would never peel away and be forgotten—while continuing to watch Stephy play in the water. “You were right, you know. What you said last time we were here.”
“Hmm?” Scott replied. “Sorry, alcohol and all.”
“You told me I had to grow up. I thought you meant I wasn’t acting responsible or something, but I get it now. You meant everybody has to take care of themselves. And you’re right. If it wasn’t for you, the rest of us would’ve sat around bawling our eyes out while she picked us off one by one.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve been pretty damn brave.”
“For a privileged sorority wuss with no backbone.” She sighed. “So what do you think’s gonna happen now? We’ve been trapped for a week, not knowing if we’re gonna live or die. What’s that do to a kid?”
“We’ll go home.” Scott shrugged, aware that making it out of Crownheart didn’t guarantee a happy ending. He recalled what Charlotte had told him: that some of the campers would be stuck in abusive households or bad neighborhoods for at least ten more years. “The families who can afford it might get therapy. Others will probably just wait around for the trial. With any luck, we’ll get some closure when the jury announces Becker will never see the light of day again.”
“Yeah. I’m looking forward to that most.” Brynn dug deeper into her sides. “Do you know what your lesson was supposed to be?”
“No,” Scott said truthfully, shivering as a breeze rushed over his wet skin. He was about to return the question but thought better of it. Instead, he opened his mouth to change subjects, but a voice cut him off.
“Whoa!” a little boy hollered. “Lookit, lookit, lookit!”
More enthusiastic voices joined in.
“Cool!”
“Find a stick!”
“Roll it this way!”
Scott propped himself on his elbows and hunted for the source of excitement. Then he spotted it: a group of boys huddled together in a patch of reeds.
“What is it?” Brynn asked.
“Dunno.” He shrugged. “Must be a lizard or something.”
He stood up slowly, not wanting to spur any panic, and took a few steps closer, trying to see what the kids were enthralled with. “It’s, uh, it’s a piece of wood, I think. Big one.” There were five boys, half in the water, half on land, pushing a round object out of the shallows. “They’re rolling it out of the lake. It’s a…a barrel?”
“A barrel?” Brynn perked up behind him. A heavy pause, then four more words that were almost whispers: “‘The Three Little Men.’”
Scott didn’t need to turn around to see the panic on Brynn’s face.
“S-Stop them!” she sputtered. “Stop!”
But Scott barely heard her—he was already kicking up sand and torpedoing down the beach.
28
With everyone at the lake, the camp was empty.
Bruce didn’t like it.
As he approached the archery range with his hatchet in one hand and a ceramic mug sporting the rainbow phrase “If you’re happy and you know it, take a sip!” in the other, a scrim of amoeba-like squiggles descended over his vision and heralded a piercing migraine. With every step, his eyesight tunneled around the shed. He felt dizzy—no, more than that, he felt nauseous. The heat had a lot to do with it, but that wasn’t the only factor at play. It was from her too.
Bruce Bergman was no coward. He’d dealt with shady characters in the past and done a lot of things he wasn’t proud of. Drinking Old Milwaukees while driving semis down the Trans-Canada Highway; starting fights outside nightclubs with biker-gang prospects; getting fired for showing up late and hungover at Disney World.
This summer could have rectified that. It was an opportunity to put things right again, or at least prove to his brother-in-law that he was a reliable man capable of taking better care of his nephew than the hundreds of plants that died last winter when he’d left the door to Mike and Melinda’s Garden Center open by accident during their trip to Maui.
But no—she ruined it.
Now Michael would never trust him around Jake again. And who knew the next time he would see his nephew? From under the bleachers of a football field while the kid crossed the stage for his high school diploma? Or perhaps in the parking lot of the church on his wedding day, sans invite, because little Jakey would have long forgotten about his old, estranged uncle whom his parents blamed for the psychiatry visits and counseling sessions resulting from that dark, fateful summer at Camp Satan?
Or maybe, Bruce frowned, maybe I’ll catch his eye across a bar one night. An image of a greasy spoon with a row of bar stools and slot machines came to mind—one of those countless dives dotting the highways where truckers like him hooked up with the waitresses on long milk runs through Indiana and Ohio and Kentucky. He imagined another man hunched over a Bud Light at the end of the bar. The man’s face appeared long and skeletal, but something would strike Bruce as familiar. Then it would click. Jake. The therapy, the counselors, the antidepressants. None of it worked. Neither of them would light up at the sight of the other. They wouldn’t share a smile, nor a beer—not even a nod. They had already shared enough: the same shitty summer that robbed them of any future brighter than grimy slot machines and the black-lit bathroom stalls where both of them went to forget about the long, seemingly endless, roads ahead.
Bruce reached the edge of the archery field and stopped. As he scrutinized the shed, he had a sudden urge to smash the mug and let the bitch die of dehydration.
There had been no signs of movement since he had bound Charlotte by her limbs and thrown her inside. But she wasn’t gagged. She hadn’t been unconscious, either. The woman had stayed still while he had searched her pockets and pushed her down before securing the door with the padlock.
So why does it feel like she has the upper hand?
Instead of dumping the water, he clenched his jaw and approached the shed.
Two steps led up to the building’s only door. Hesitating, Bruce lowered himself and peeked into the crack beneath the shack’s entrance.
The room was dark. A few shafts of sunlight pierced the rafters, but the shadows hid plenty.
He looked left, looked right.
No sign of her.
He shifted an inch closer, then two inches…peering left…peering right…
“Hi, Bruce.”
He reared back, almost spilling the water.
Charlotte’s parched voice had come from beside the padlock. She must’ve propped herself against the wall next to the door—too far for him to spot, but close enough to communicate with a whisper. He hoped that she hadn’t heard him jump.
“Is that for me?”
How the hell does she know I brought something?
“Come on, big guy. I didn’t figure you’d swing by to gab about The Bachelor.”
“Pass me the dish,” he grunted. Thankfully, his voice maintained enough grit to growl like he meant it.
“But I want to know how you’re doing.”
“The dish. Now. Or I’ll dump this under the door and you can lick it up like the animal you are.”
Charlotte tsked. “Manners.”
Bruce grunted, refusing to dignify that with a response. Something scraped across the concrete, and an aluminum pie plate appeared from under the door.
The plate had ranked as one of Bruce’s best ideas ever. A spark of genius, in his humble opinion. Leave her a dish so she has to nudge it under the door like a whining mutt any time she wants a drink. That’ll put her in her place.
He poured the water into the dish and slid it under the crack. “Manners?” he asked.
Charlotte snickered and didn’t reply.
“Fine. Then you don’t get seconds.”
“It’s quiet around here all of a sudden. Where’d everyone go?”
“None of your goddamn business.”
“The lake, right? I wondered how long they’d last in this heat.”
“Wonder how long you’ll last.”
“I’ll be fine. Just fine.”
“No,” Bruce said. “You won’t. Face it: lickin’ water outta that pie plate with your hands tied behind your back was never part of your plan. Now, you can’t finish whatever sick shit you started—and when the cops show up tomorrow? They’ll take you away for good. Not to some nice state prison, either. It’ll be one of those creepy mental hospitals you see in the movies, where schizos keep you up all night screamin’ and the nurses slip tranqs in your mashed potatoes, ’cause nothing you did comes even close to qualifying as sane. Fucking lunatic cunt.”
Bruce smashed the cup against the step, and it shattered into a dozen fragments. He swept them away with the blade of his hatchet and got up to leave.
“You haven’t found them yet, have you?”
Bruce stopped, turned. When he spoke again, his voice was low and livid: “What the hell did you do to them?”
“It’s what they did to themselves.”
“Cut the bullshit.”
“None to cut. Nikki and Cynthia danced their way through school on the laps of men who might’ve been desperate, but weren’t vulnerable. If girls go flaunting themselves to everyone they meet, they’re bound to get bit sooner or later. I mean, you don’t have to read between the lines of ‘Red Riding Hood’ to know that.” Charlotte paused as though savoring the silence. “Should’ve seen their faces before I shot them, though. Ugh. What big eyes they had. But Mai…Mai, on the other hand, she was quiet until the very end. The only time I heard her speak up—and I mean really speak up—was during her interview. She said she could work for nothing, so long as she didn’t have to return home. To Japan, that is. Well, I suppose she got what she asked for. I cut out her tongue and severed her legs with a hacksaw, then dumped her in the lake. If they ever find our Little Mermaid, I’d like to think the director of Immigration will send me a personal thank-you letter.”
Bruce’s hands tightened around his hatchet. “Whatever message you think you’re sending, it won’t work. All these cockeyed murders…no one’s gonna get it. You’re explainin’ this garbage right now, and I don’t see a single goddamn point.”
“But I’m not finished,” Charlotte said. Her voice contained an air of patience, like a kindergarten teacher explaining the letters of the alphabet. “You haven’t heard the whole story yet.”
“Well, you’re doing a shit job telling it.” Bruce turned away from the shed, shaking with fury, and strode toward the fort. “Besides,” he called over his shoulder, “you botched your facts. Nobody gets shot in ‘Red Riding Hood.’ The hunter uses an ax.”
“I know,” Charlotte called through the door. “But I had to work quickly. I mean, meat spoils so fast. And I’m no Julia Child, but the result was fantastic—you should’ve seen those kids. Practically wolfed down that chowder.”
Bruce stopped again, shaking. No. No, she didn’t. She couldn’t have.
But his inner voice was drowned out by the sound of his heart battering his chest, and when he turned, he saw nothing but red—a raging bull possessed by the cape of its jeering matador. This was no human being, he realized. It was a monster. A demon unfit to breathe the same air and share the same water and have the same rights. It wasn’t capable of suffering in courthouses or prisons or hospitals, for there it would only thrive and fester, rally and multiply. A monster could not be punished—a monster had to be vanquished.
Bruce felt the hatchet coming up in his hands as he started toward the shed. “Raaahhh!” With a deep, atavistic growl, he swung the blunt end of the ax through the air and whammed the padlock, crumpling the catch, and then hammered it a second time, snapping the lock clean off. He lowered his shoulde
r and rammed the door—it whipped open, banging against the wall—and stepped inside, raising the hatchet high above his head and bringing it down in a flash of blue, sharpened steel.
29
Scott crashed through the reeds with Brynn close behind him, bursting through a wall of cattails. He recognized the spot in an instant: the inlet with the rickety dock jutting into the lake, and beside it, bobbing in the cloudy water, the derelict rowboat he and Brynn had capsized during their once-upon-a-time make-out session.
At the base of the dock, five boys were crowded around a wooden barrel. Tyrell had one of the boat’s oars wedged under the barrel’s lid and was tugging…tugging…tugging…
“No!” Scott bellowed.
The kids moved—turning in slow motion—but not before Tyrell’s last tug snapped the lid wide open.
Blood flooded out of the barrel in a scarlet tidal wave.
A flashbulb went off in Scott’s head, and he pictured an illustration from the book of fairy tales: a wicked stepmother stuffed into a cask pierced with nails.
The fairy tale flickered back to reality as Tyrell stumbled into the sand. Blood crashed over the boy’s body—drenching his head as though baptizing him for Satan—at the same time that Roddy’s torso tumbled out of the mouth of the barrel. The corpse was milk white. Dead and drained, clawed and perforated. It flopped into the pool of blood and gaped up at the sky. When the waves receded, the nails in the barrel pulled back and ripped Roddy’s skin even farther off his arms and chest.
The boys didn’t scream. They just stood there—eyes bugged out, blood draining from their own faces. Scott ran to Tyrell and scooped him out of the lake. “Back to the path,” he hollered. “Move it!”
But the boys were paralyzed. He batted them away, and only then did they dash up the beach in horror, geysers of sand exploding under their feet.
The commotion drew the attention of the main group farther down the shore. A couple of girls tottered closer, but Scott wheeled around and cut them off. “The path!” he shouted. “Everyone back to the path!”
