by JL Bryan
Eventually, I pulled the drapes tight and stretched out on the other bottom bunk. I slept fitfully through the morning, my exhaustion competing against my feelings of apprehension about this place, which never quite faded away.
It was a relief to wake up, or at least give up on fitful in-and-out drowsing, and get back to work.
The gentle whine of a circular saw greeted me as my cellphone alarm beeped me awake.
Stacey appeared undisturbed by the saw and the alarm, sleeping in an improbable position, one arm draped over the front of her bunk, one foot out of bed and on the floor.
“Get up, Snorey Smurf.” I jostled her shoulder. “We have to wire our clients' bedroom for sound and video. Which is weird to say.”
“But I don't snore,” Stacey protested.
Looking out the window, I found the source of the sawing. At the far end of the cabin circle, Josh and his sons stood near Warthog Cabin, one of those that remained in poor condition from years of neglect.
After popping open a can of cold coffee from our travel cooler, I hurried to throw on jeans, a tank top, and my leather jacket—most entities won't attack during the day, but I wanted a little armor just in case. I snapped on my utility belt for the same reason.
“Get ready to meet the kids,” I told Stacey a minute later, as we brushed our teeth. “We have to stick with the promotional videographer angle, it sounds like. I kind of hate lying, though. It takes so much effort to keep the lies straight.”
“Well, I do have a film degree, you know,” she said. “Hey, we actually could make them a promotional video while we're at it. I'll make it sound even better than Camp Mizpah. Though it's clearly, you know, not. But that way—”
“We don't have to lie to the kids,” I said. “As much.”
“Right.”
“I like it. Especially if you do the work part of that, and all I have to do is the agreeing part.”
We stepped outside. The whole family was out there. While Josh and his two teenage sons worked with the power tools to restore Bobcat Cabin, Allison sat on the stoop of Falcon Cabin and read a book to seven-year-old Shiloh, who knelt in the dirt arranging pine needles and cones into patterns. It was unclear whether the girl was listening at all.
“There they are!” Josh grinned through a layer of sawdust as he approached us. I recognized the kids from the picture in Allison's office, though they were older now. The boy at his side, with the blond buzzcut and the Atlanta Braves tank top, had to be fourteen-year-old Nate, his grin even wider than his father's, as if he, too, had a timeshare to sell us.
The older boy, Ephraim, hung back at the work site. He was paler, his hair long and ratty, his black Rise Against t-shirt loose on his frame. He looked like he would have been more at home moping around the back corner of a dark club, maybe wearing a spiky dog collar. Anywhere but out in the fresh air and sunshine doing carpentry.
“These are the filmmakers,” Josh told Nate as they approached us, overly loud as if not-so-subtly reminding Stacey and me of our cover story. I was already feeling more comfortable with Stacey's plan to keep ourselves honest by actually making the video. “Miss Ellie and Miss Stacey.”
“You don't have to call me Miss—” Stacey began.
“Good to meet you.” Nate, nearly as tall as his father and with a similar cocky grin, seized my hand and shook it. He turned and shook Stacey's a bit longer, beaming at her the way guys do, and being no more subtle about it than his father had been about our cover story. “And definitely good to meet you.”
“Uh, hi,” Stacey said, gradually taking her hand back.
“Ephraim, manners! Come say hello!” Josh barked at the distant sixteen-year-old, who reluctantly slogged his way over. He stopped several paces away.
“Nice to meet you there, Ephraim,” Stacey said.
Ephraim gave a half-hearted wave, glancing between us. “So are we done for the day?” he asked his dad.
“Done for the day?” Josh was plainly exasperated. He gave me an over-the-top headshake like he couldn't believe what he was hearing from his son, and for some reason wanted to drag me into it. “Did you not listen to the game plan? Was quitting early in the game plan? Were you staring at your phone again?”
“Uh, no, we aren't allowed to have phones at the work site,” Ephraim said. “So how could I—”
“We'll table this for later,” Josh interrupted. “Like I said, guys, your only job is to stay completely out of these ladies' way. Don't bother them at all.”
Ephraim shrugged and focused on toeing at a patch of weeds with his shoe.
“But we can help them if they need it, right?” Nate said, tearing his eyes from Stacey to look at his dad. “Like to carry stuff, or if they want a guide. I've explored more than anyone else. I can help you find your way no matter how dark it is.” He looked back at Stacey and raised his sawdust-coated eyebrows.
“That's very generous of you, Nathan, and I appreciate your positive attitude.” Josh looked mostly at Ephraim while he said this. Ephraim was still peering into the weeds and kicking the dirt. “Let's get back to work. Ephraim, go watch your sister. Take over for your mom.”
Ephraim shrugged and ambled toward Falcon Cabin, where Allison stood and waved us over. Shiloh continued playing with the twigs, stones, and pine straw on the ground in front of the cabin, not seeming to notice or care that her mother had stopped reading.
“We'll head over there, too,” I told Josh. “Nice to meet you, Nathan.”
“Thanks. Excellent jacket.” He pointed at me and waved before he left.
“He talks a lot,” Ephraim said, almost under his breath, as we walked together. “Sorry.”
“Which one do you mean? Your dad or your brother?” I asked, and Ephraim laughed instead of answering. He gave me an appreciative look, like someone finally understood what he was dealing with daily.
Shiloh did not look up from her sticks and stones project as we approached. Shiloh's hair was sandy and unruly, despite the braid her mother had attempted to create from it. Her large, dark eyes stared intently at her project, her lips pressed together, deadly serious.
“Ephraim, can you finish Shy's history lesson?” Allison held the book out to him while he took her place on the cabin's small covered stoop. “Just to the end of the chapter. Then the questions. She can write in crayon if she wants.”
“Okay.” Ephraim deadpanned the word as he took the illustrated history from his mom. He looked at the page. “Hey, Shy, want to hear about princesses?”
“No,” Shy answered.
“Not even medieval ax-wielding princesses who hack up evil knights?”
“Josh, don't scare her!” Allison snapped, but Shiloh giggled.
“Medieval ax-wielding prin-cess-es!” Shiloh sang out, abandoning her project to clamber onto the porch and gaze at the history book. “Medieval ax-wielding—”
“Let's go,” Allison said to Stacey and me, shaking her head.
We hiked up the trail to the main lodge. Allison had parked her SUV by our van.
We followed her out of the corner of the parking lot, past a faded Do Not Enter sign and onto a bumpy, largely washed-out gravel road winding around the outside of camp, well away from the trails.
Trees were thick on either side, but we also got a look at some of the camp's less rustic features, like a small power station and pumphouse. We skirted around a steep, wooded face of Stony Owl Hill.
The gravel road curved sharply before ending at the caretaker's cottage, where the back yard backed up to the hill.
“We need to get this done as fast as possible,” Allison said as she opened the back door to let us inside. “The kids shouldn't be back for a couple of hours, but things can go wrong.”
In her bedroom, I took a moment to study the layout.
“We can do this discreetly, so it's not obvious even if your kids look in here,” I said. “One camera in your closet, angled to face the windows. Maybe one under the bed. A microphone, too, if you don't mind.�
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“Sounds good,” Allison said, looking at the window where she'd seen the shadow figure enter her home. “It was so tall. Like a walking tree.”
“Hopefully we'll catch some video of it.”
“Not that Josh would believe it. You saw how he reacted to what you found last night. Personally, I got the chills when I saw those things moving in the attic. What do y'all think it is?” she asked, lowering her voice. “Is it really a... you know? Could this place really be haunted?”
“Lots of places are haunted,” I said. “The question is whether it amounts to more than a nuisance—maybe a frightening nuisance—or something truly dangerous.”
“So is it dangerous?”
I hesitated. “It's definitely a strong presence. It's much larger, physically, than what we typically see. That doesn't mean it's malevolent. But if it's powerful enough to move objects, we need to learn more about it.”
As we set up, Stacey talked about her idea for a promotional video. “It'll be fun, and we can sidestep the whole dishonesty aspect.”
“That would be great. I don't like lying to the kids, either. I feel like Ephraim may have seen something. Maybe he'll talk to one of you about it. You're much closer to his age. He's been distant with us for a while.”
“I bet I can warm him up,” Stacey said. “You just have to ask questions they can relate to. Like, do you play Minecraft? Or, have you played Minecraft lately? Or, say, how's about that Minecraft?”
“He... does like Minecraft, actually. Or he used to. It's hard to keep up with what he's interested in.” She stepped out of the room. “I'll be over on the back porch if you need me.”
Stacey and I hurried to set up as quickly and discreetly as we could. We tested the gear from the van.
“Problem,” Stacey said, looking up at the monitors in the van. “I can access the wireless feeds from Allison's room while we're parked here, but the signal from the lodge is poor to nonexistent. We're not set up to work over such wide distances. The big hill isn't doing us any favors.”
“That's too bad,” I said. “We'll just have to drive to different observation points during the night.”
“Like storm chasers searching for a tornado.”
“Sure.” We walked to the screened porch in back, where Allison worked on her laptop at a wobbly old picnic table.
“All set here,” I told her through the screen. “Everything will record tonight. We're heading to the cabins. Maybe we'll pick up some sign of activity in Bobcat Cabin. Or the people your daughter was talking about. I'd like to hear her version of things.”
“She'll only tell you if she's in a talking mood. No guarantees. And whatever she says, take it with some salt.”
Stacey and I drove to the main lodge parking lot, then lugged gear down the long walk to the boys' cabin area. Thankfully there was a slight downhill grade all the way to the lake. Hauling the gear back up after the investigation would be a hassle, though.
I slowed as we reached the cabins. “Where is everyone?”
The tools were still out, but Josh and the three kids had vanished like Roanoke Colony settlers.
“This is weird,” Stacey said. She looked toward the woods on the far side, toward the path down to the lake. “Do you hear that?”
Distantly, a man's voice called out.
“What's he saying?” I asked.
“Shy!” This voice was closer, accompanied by footsteps in crunching leaves.
As Stacey and I reached the central clearing with the fire ring, Ephraim stumbled down from the steep tree-lined slope at one side of the cabin circle. He yelled again: “Shiloh!” He cast a nervous glance at us and began to swerve wide, like he was planning to avoid us altogether.
“What's happening?” I asked him.
“Uh.” He nearly tripped over his own feet as he changed course toward us. “My sister. Have you seen her? She disappeared.”
“No, sorry. We'll help look as soon as we put our stuff down,” I said, hurrying toward Wolf Cabin as fast as I could with all the stuff I was carrying, which was not very fast at all.
We dropped off our gear just inside the cabin door. I heard Josh's voice calling for Shiloh somewhere in the distance. Ephraim was still close by, looking into the windows of the cabins.
“Where did you last see her?” I asked.
“Over there.” He pointed to the porch with the girl's school work heaped on the stoop. “She was just sitting there monkeying around with the pine cones, and I was reading her history book. Then I looked up and she was gone. Dad and Nate went to look for her near the lake. Because, you know. She's not a great swimmer.”
“You already checked all the cabins?” I asked.
“We called into each one. She didn't answer.” Ephraim looked panicked. “I didn't hear her walk away. She didn't say anything. I couldn't watch her and read the book at the same time. That's two things, and I only have two eyes, and they don't swivel independently, so—”
“Let's split up and search each cabin,” I said. “Look in every closet and under every bunk bed.”
I headed for Bobcat Cabin. The door stood open; it would have been easy for the girl to quietly sneak inside.
I stepped through the doorway.
“Shiloh?” I called. The window's heavy canvas curtains were drawn and the light switch didn't respond, so I clicked on my flashlight.
The layout was the same as Wolf Cabin. I'd entered a common room. Where our cabin had new, recently painted drywall, everything here looked like it hadn't been touched in decades.
“Hey, I know we haven't met,” I said. “I'm Ellie. I'm here to help. Are you okay? Shiloh?”
I heard something toward the back of the cabin, where the bedrooms were. A single thump. Maybe an animal, but a small one. Or a small girl.
“Shiloh?”
I crossed the common room and entered the hallway. As in our cabin, the hall ran across the middle of the cabin, dividing the front half from the back. The bathroom door was directly ahead, flanked on either side by the bedroom doors.
“Are you there?” I asked, sweeping the hallway and its doors with my flashlight. “Hello?”
From off to the right came a brief scraping sound, like something heavy dragging across the hardwood floor, but only for a moment.
It was enough, though. I started off for the right-hand bedroom.
I eased the door open and shined my light in. I didn't see anybody. There were a pair of skeletal bunk bed frames with no mattresses. One seemed slightly askew. Streaks in the heavy dust on the floor indicated it had moved recently.
A rusty squeak sounded ahead, and I walked toward it.
Beyond the bunk bed was a closet with narrow folding doors and rusty hinges.
“I know you're in there,” I said. “Game's over. You can come out now.”
She giggled behind the door. It was brief, like she'd clapped a hand over her mouth, but it had rung out clear as a bell in the quiet room.
“Okay, Shiloh. Here I come.”
I stepped forward and opened the closet.
I didn't hesitate, because some part of me expected to see something awful when I opened it. Perhaps instead of Shiloh, the girl with the messy hair and dark eyes, I would see some horrible apparition. It would obviously not be the first time in my life something like that has happened. The best I could hope was for something shadowy instead of gory, that I wouldn't see a dead person swinging from a noose or missing half his head from a century-old gunshot wound.
Nothing like that waited inside the closet, though. There was nothing at all in there but loose boards, rusty nails, and fallen shelves.
“Hello?” I asked, though I seemed to be alone in here after all. I knelt, shining my flashlight into the closet.
Behind the collapsed shelves, the back of the closet had several missing boards. Shiloh could have crawled through there, into the dark space beyond.
I crawled into the closet and shifted aside boards for a better view.
&nbs
p; Beyond the gap in the wall lay another room strewn with more loose boards. Some had rusty nails jutting out of them; it wasn't exactly a safe area for a kid to crawl around. Or for me, either.
“Hello?” I said again. My light found more bunk beds; I was looking into the other bedroom through the broken-down closet door. I didn't see anybody in there.
I heard something, though—footsteps clattering out of sight, along with more giggles. Running away from me. It was a girl, hard to tell her age.
Since there was zero chance of me trying to climb over rusty nails through the hole in the back of the closet, I hopped up and ran to intercept the girl in the hallway.
But nobody was there. The door to the other bedroom was slightly ajar.
“Shiloh?” I approached the door and eased it open.
There was nobody in the second bedroom. I'd half-expected it by that point, having encountered nothing but empty rooms so far, but it was still disquieting.
I checked the bathroom and counselor's room. Despite what I'd heard, I was the only person in the building .
“Okay,” I said, trying to project confidence toward whatever entity was toying with me, though I was very uncomfortable being alone in there with an unseen laughing thing. “You win. Game's over.”
I clicked off my flashlight and walked backward across the common room, keeping my back to the open front door and my eyes on the dark hallway. I didn't want any giggling little demons sneaking up behind me as I tried to leave.
“Want to come out and say hello?” I asked the darkness.
Did something move back there in the hallway? Maybe.
“Ellie!” Stacey's voice called outside. “Ellie, we found her.”
“See you later,” I told the invisible presence before I stepped out of the cabin.
Stacey and Ephraim were walking toward me with Shiloh between them, green weeds in her hair, dirt all over her face and sundress. She smiled impishly.
“I found her under the stairs at Warthog Cabin,” Stacey said. “She said she was playing hide and seek.”
“Who were you playing with?” I asked, still shivering from my unexpected ghostly encounter. The cabin door stood open behind me; I hurried down off the stoop to get away from it.
