by Drew Hayes
Topher Nightshade vs. The Camp of The Undead Apocalypse
By Drew Hayes
Copyright © 2014 by Andrew Hayes
All Rights Reserved.
Edited by Erin Cooley ([email protected]) and Kisa Whipkey (http://kisawhipkey.com)
Cover by Geoff Galt ([email protected])
Produced and Published by Thunder Pear Publishing LLC
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
I’ll be honest here: I sort of did dedications to all the main people in my life in the earlier books. I could keep cycling through folks, but that just seems like no fun. Instead, I think I’d like to dedicate this book to you: the reader who took a gamble on such a strangely titled work from a relatively unknown author. You’ve got some weird taste, but damn if I don’t like your style.
I also want to give a shout out to my butt kicking beta readers. To E Ramos E, Priscilla Yuen, and Bill Hammond; you three helped make this book the best it could be.
Chapter 1
Danger burst through the front door without so much as the courtesy of a knock. Danger, in this case, was a six-foot-tall man with spiky hair dyed a garish shade of blue and a black shirt barely containing his muscular torso. He barreled through the front of the office, hand clutching a piece of paper as though it contained the secrets to eternal youth, or hangover-free liquor. Within five clomping steps of his black boots, he let out a bellow that would have startled all those around if his door-slamming entrance hadn’t already done so.
“AUGGIE! We got it! We got permission for the camp!” The blue-haired bundle of noise, muscles, and horrid fashion sense stopped, gazing across the room with all the anticipation of a dog waiting to be leashed for a walk. His eyes—biologically brown, but made green through contact lenses— rested on another man, this one sitting at a desk, instead of traipsing about.
August Parrish, a young African-American man several inches shorter and at least a hundred pounds lighter than the intruder, glanced up from his computer and tried very hard to keep the exasperation off his face. Once Topher got going, one simply had no choice but to hunker down and ride out the storm. Nearly two decades of friendship had cemented that lesson well.
“Topher, we currently have inquiries out to three camps, one abandoned mining town, an insane asylum, and a Denny’s. Could you narrow it down a bit for me?”
“The camp, Auggie, the big one! Camp Tekonichia, the haunted camp out in New Mexico that is supposed to be one of the most spiritually-infested places in America. When they let investigators in, everyone was getting voice recordings and visual anomalies and just a slew of stuff. It’s been locked down for twenty years, but they agreed to let us come investigate it! We’ll be the first ones to use modern tech. Think of all the phenomena we’ll capture.” Topher wasn’t hopping from foot to foot like a child waiting for a restroom, but Auggie could practically see the desire to do just that simmering beneath his massive grin. As patience-straining as it could be, that very enthusiasm was why Topher had found such success in his field.
Topher was Topher Nightshade (though that obviously wasn’t his given name), host of Specter Quest, the online web-show that (for reasons Auggie couldn’t comprehend) drew a massive audience with each installment. It had started with the two of them, a lost bet, and an illegal traipse through a historic graveyard, then rapidly ballooned in to an actual profit-generating business. Though Auggie was a skeptic at heart (and head, and gut, and like . . . liver), he did believe in the magic of a steady paycheck. He also believed in fine print and details, which made him the logistics man of their operation.
“First off, when can we go? We’re already committed throughout most of March, you know. Secondly, why are they letting us in? That camp has been closed for over two decades, and they stopped letting other investigators come in long before that. How did you change their minds? And bear in mind that if you say, ‘with half our location budget,’ I will booby-trap your microphone to shock you.” In addition to being competent and rational, Auggie was also the tech-guru for the show. He handled equipment checks, repairs, and maintenance. It was a waste of an engineering degree, according to his parents, but he also didn’t have to deal with idiots in management like his classmates struggling under the corporate yoke.
“No way; the guy in charge of it is a fan of the show,” Topher explained. “He likes how we treat the supernatural, with respect and all, so he was willing to open the gates up to us for only triple our usual fee.”
Auggie suppressed a groan. Instead, he just scowled. For Topher, that was actually pretty reasonable restraint. “We’ll talk about that later. For now, what about my first question? What’s our window of time?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s the best part. I know we don’t have a conflict, because it’s this weekend. That’s the only time we can come.”
“This weekend? The one we talked about taking off weeks ago? The one meant to provide everyone a chance to rest and recuperate? That’s the weekend you want to spend gallivanting in the woods searching for dead people?”
“Come on, Auggie, we can rest any time. How many chances are we going to get to be the first investigators in decades to check out a place? We can take next weekend off.”
“No, we can’t,” Auggie corrected. “We have to be in Buffalo, shooting in a supposedly haunted taffy factory.”
“Weekend after?”
“Atlanta. Reports of ghosts in a trampoline store.”
“Weekend after that?”
“That’s . . . actually, we’re not booked for that yet,” Auggie admitted.
“Then there you go, we’ll take that weekend off.”
“How do you know I haven’t already made plans for this weekend?”
“Because you don’t do anything without me,” Topher pointed out. “And since I don’t have plans, you probably don’t either.”
Auggie drummed his fingers on the desk several times, trying to think of a coherent rebuttal to the argument. It wasn’t that he didn’t do anything without Topher, not really; it was just that, by his nature, Topher was often at the center of the most interesting things to do. Plus, he usually dragged Auggie in to said things; otherwise, the intellectual young man would stay at home, working on his own projects. But Topher would never see activities such as those as “plans,” so bringing it up would just waste everyone’s time.
“Fine. We can shoot this weekend. However, we are taking that next open weekend off. I don’t care if we get an offer to interview Dracula himself: we’re not doing a shoot. Clear?”
“No problem,” Topher said happily. “Besides, vampires aren’t real, anyway. We’re after the genuine paranormal article: ghosts.”
“Then, the ghost of Gandhi. You get my point.”
“Yeah, yeah, no work that weekend. It’s a deal.” He walked over and set the paper on Auggie’s sizable desk. Topher’s own area of the office held a mini-fridge and a computer where he did research on new locations to shoot in. The third member of their team usually occupied a space near the back—filled with screens and editing equipment—but she tended to come in at whatever hour fit her mood.
“Here are all the details.” Topher slid the page across
to Auggie. “Do you need help with arrangements?”
“Just tell Kay about the change. If she has any plans, she’s probably forgotten them.”
“Who’s forgotten what now?”
Kayla Krupchyk wandered in from the hallway, which made Auggie realize that Topher hadn’t even bothered to shut the front door in his excitement. She was the shortest of the three, with a tangle of light brown hair that always somewhat resembled an unkempt bird’s nest. She dressed in flowing clothing, wore oversized sunglasses despite being indoors, a small silver chain with a pendant of a bear, and a bow situated on one of the upper-left mounds of her hair. In her left hand was a dark green thermos with the words “2004 Pie & Whiskey Wrasslin’ Champion” emblazoned across the front.
Auggie ignored the question and just gave her the relevant news. “Topher booked us to go to a haunted summer camp this weekend. Can you come?” There was a lot about Kay that Auggie could—and did—object to, but the quality of the footage she captured and edited was not something anyone could call in to question.
“Meh, why not? The parties were looking kinda shitty anyway.” She took a deep glug from her thermos as she walked past Auggie’s desk toward her own, and the smell of alcohol hit his senses like a wave.
“What are you drinking?” he said, half-gagging from the potency.
“Mimosa,” Kay replied, setting the mug down on her desk.
“There is no way on earth that is champagne.”
“It’s a Moscow Mimosa: vodka, with a splash of orange juice.”
“That is called a Screwdriver!”
“Hence, Moscow Mimosa. You think people in the mother country have champagne just sitting around? Jeez, Auggie, aren’t you supposed to be smart?”
Without thinking, Auggie half-rose from his desk. “Names aside, why are you drinking vodka at nine in the morning?”
“Social protest,” Kay said, falling into her seat with the grace of an epileptic rabbit. “Why is it only okay to drink certain booze in the morning? Beer with breakfast: alcoholic. Champagne with breakfast: alcoholic. Champagne with a few drips of orange juice: totally acceptable. Fuck that shit; I’m taking back morning drinking.”
“Kayla, even when drinking mimosas, people tend to do it on the weekends. Today is Wednesday!” Auggie wasn’t even sure why he was bothering with this fight; they had it so often, he might as well have put it in his schedule.
“Oh. Um . . . then, I’m going with the excuse that it’s a religious right.” Kay smiled at that one, pleased with her sudden burst of inspiration.
“For the love of . . . Ke$ha is not a religion,” Auggie snapped.
“Hey, this is the way people in my faith greet Wednesday mornings. Don’t persecute me.”
“Yeah, Auggie, tone it down. You can’t go crapping on other people’s faith,” Topher chimed in. He’d taken refuge at his desk during their battle, experienced enough to know a pointless exercise when he saw it.
“She doesn’t have a faith! She’s making things up on the spot,” Auggie said, aware that his tone was rising as he struggled to defend himself. He was the one in the right; this kind of activity made no sense, so why did he feel like he was losing? Again.
“Religion is whatever I have faith in,” Kay said defiantly. “I choose Wednesday Moscow Mimosas, and Thursday Old Fashioneds, and . . . bears.” The last one came after a quick glance down at the necklace resting on her chest.
“There are worse religions out there,” Topher added.
Auggie threw up his hands in defeat and slumped back into his chair. “I give up; drink your thermos of vodka, which was highly illegal to walk over here with, by the way. Just do your work quietly while I try to cram two weeks of shooting prep and arrangements in to a single day.”
“I asked if you needed help,” Topher pointed out.
“Yes. Yes, you did.” Auggie resisted reminding Topher of the other times he’d helped, several instances of which had resulted in them flying to the wrong town, waiting for transport that never arrived, and, in one particular low point, shooting an episode in some kid’s basement because he swore there was totally a ghost down there. There had actually been a busted radiator, which Auggie had fixed and for which he tried to invoice the family. It had not gone over well.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Kay asked, polishing off the remains of her thermos.
“Camp Tekonichia,” Topher told her happily. “It’s an abandoned summer camp that was legendary for its hauntings, even when it was still running.”
“It’s a summer camp,” she said skeptically. “What’s it haunted by, the spirits of underage drinking and lost virginities?”
“Trust me, it’s going to be soaked with spirit activity,” Topher assured her. “That place is probably crawling with ghosts.”
* * *
The ghosts of Camp Tekonichia were not crawling in the literal sense. They only did that on the rare occasions when they snuck down through one of the caves to where an old stash of nudie magazines had been smuggled in and abandoned by a camper many decades ago. Sure, they could just phase through the rock and stroll into the cave, but walking through stuff was an uncomfortable sensation. Art had once said it best: having other objects occupy the same space as one’s body felt like you really had to poop, but like . . . out of everywhere.
They were also not crawling in the sense that Topher had meant. Currently active in Camp Tekonichia were three humans’ ghosts, a multitude of animals’, and a few wisps that floated in and out of existence around the woods. Wisps were ghosts, or ghasts, that had slowly faded away without ever moving on, leaving only a few strands of ectoplasm bobbing about. They were the ghosts of ghosts, in their own way, and were incredibly rare save for in a few spots around the world. Camp Tekonichia was one such spot.
Art and Clinton were not wisps, though. At least, not for a while yet. They were both proper spirits, having died on the job while working as counselors and subsequently finding themselves unable to move on. Clinton had gone out first after falling down a ravine he’d been scaling in the dark while on the way to a midnight hook-up with a fellow counselor. Art had died roughly a decade later, flipping his canoe after downing half a handle of whiskey and inspiring the creation of the camp’s “No Boating and Boozing” sign. They’d both been dead long enough to reach acceptance with their early ends to mortality and to shed many of the trappings that the living carried around. Clinton and Art had found peace in their deaths.
The same could not be said of Irwin Pistole, who was currently sitting on the edge of the dock, glowering at the frogs nestled on the shore. Every few days, he would try and grab one, or a rock, or something of that nature, only to end up howling in frustration as his intangible fingers refused to find purchase. Irwin was newly dead, scarcely gone over a year, and he was far from the realm of acceptance.
“Something up with the island?” Clinton probed gently, pointing to the center of the lake, to which campers had once rowed to in order to splash around on the island’s banks. Despite the fact that it was early afternoon, a light mist seemed to have settled onto the center of the landmass. It might have been real, but it might also have been a spectral manifestation. Clinton had long ago lost the ability to distinguish between which realm he was peering in to. Then again, given that he’d died in the seventies, Clinton had been seeing altered realties long before he actually crossed out of the limited, physical realm.
“It’s fog, obviously,” Irwin snapped, glancing up for a moment. He disliked the other spirits, not because they were cruel or unwelcoming, but because they could do things Irwin couldn’t. Somehow, these two idiots had found a way to manipulate physical objects, albeit only a little bit. Few things irked Irwin like the sensation that someone might be better than he, despite the fact that countless people objectively were, which explained both his life’s near-friendless existence and his former employment with the TSA.
“Don’t look like fog to me,” Art added. He wore shorts well above his
knees, a pink polo shirt, and a whistle around his neck—the counselor’s uniform at the time of his death, and his burial vestments when the waters pulled him under. A touch of envy burned in him toward Clinton, who’d died in late summer while wearing pants instead of the silly shorts.
“The word is ‘doesn’t’ and of course it’s fog. What else is it going to be? A magical gate opening up and finally letting us out of this cursed place?”
“Could be,” Clinton said, plopping down next to Irwin on the dock. “I always figured that the day we moved on would be something sort of like that: a big, grand gate opening into the sky, pulling us right to the throne where Jesus sits.” He waved a massive hand through the air, pointing to the throne amidst the clouds with his long fingers. Once upon a time, Clinton had had a promising football career ahead of him. That was before trying to make some extra summer cash and falling down a ravine chasing a pretty piece of tail, though.
“Nah, I doesn’t think it goes anything like that,” Art said, dropping to sit on the other side of Irwin. “I think we just float up in a ball of energy and merge back into the universe.”
“You mean ‘don’t.’ You don’t think,” Irwin corrected.
“I thought you said the word was ‘doesn’t’ a few seconds ago.”
“It was that time, but the second time it was—oh, fuck you.” Irwin jumped up from his seat on the edge of the dock and adjusted his royal blue pants that rode down just below the top of his ass when he sat. The matching shirt didn’t help to cover it up, as it was a size too small as well. The Irwin Pistole who first joined the TSA was several inches slimmer than the one who choked to death on an egg-salad sandwich just as his plane was flying over Camp Tekonichia; the latter Irwin Pistole had also lived in just enough denial to avoid ordering a new uniform.
Art and Clinton flashed each other a grin while he fumed. Once they had learned Art’s deep-country dialect annoyed Irwin, and how prone to fits he was, they had allowed themselves the occasional indulgence of fucking with him. Even for ghosts, several decades in one spot got pretty boring.
