by Joey Comeau
But he had already hung up. I bet none of your friends get this many letters from their moms. Do you think it means their mom’s don’t love them enough? How do they live with themselves, going about their day-to-day business, never thinking of their sons off at camp, never once sitting down and transcribing their ghostly phone calls from beyond, word for word?
Anyway, I hope that camp is good, and that giant insects aren’t burrowing a network of tunnels underneath your cabins right now. Because you know what happens then, right? The tunnels collapse and your cabins fall down into the darkness of an insect nest, and your counsellors will make you listen to idiotic ghost stories.
If they do, though, you can tell my ghost story for me. The ghost who references the Muppet Christmas Carol, and his blind stupid dog. I heart you, Martin. My heart beats only for you. You’re heart to deal with sometimes, but it’s even hearter to imagine what I would do without you.
Heart, always,
Your Mother.
John Dee set his suitcases beside Mitchell’s on the side steps of the main building. The parking lot was empty and the woods around the camp seemed dark. He wasn’t angry about going home anymore. At least at home, he would be able to watch TV and play video games. And he’d gotten Gabe’s phone number, so they could hang out later in the summer. This was no big loss. Mitchell might even be doing him a favour. There were no mosquitoes in the city. He could shower by himself, instead of with a room full of other boys.
He kicked Mitchell’s suitcase and looked around for his brother. There were a group of campers down on the beach, yelling and laughing in the waves, and another group over by the Flying Fox. Where was he? Was he still down in the basement crying? What a fucking sissy. Had he been there all day, just crying? Even Mitchell couldn’t cry this long, could he? Maybe there was a TV down there.
There was a sound from inside, like a chair being knocked over. John Dee looked up the steps at the screen door. He couldn’t see very far into the dark front room. It was too bright out here. But everyone was either down at the beach or over at the playground equipment. The only people in the building should be Mitchell and maybe Father Tony.
“Mitchell?” he called.
“Yes, it’s me,” a voice said from the darkness. But it wasn’t Mitchell’s voice. It was high-pitched and too musical. It sounded like an adult pretending to be a child. Like a grown man doing a falsetto. It sounded ridiculous, was how it sounded.
“What?” John Dee said. “Mitchell, are you there?”
“Yes, it’s me, Mitchell,” the weird high-pitched voice said from inside. John Dee squinted his eyes, but he couldn’t see into the building more than a few feet.
It was definitely a man’s voice. Were Mitchell and Tony messing with him? This was too much. It was bad enough he had to sit out here with the suitcases all by himself. It was bad enough he had to wander this camp all day like an idiot, not knowing where his brother was. Before Tony explained things, John Dee had even been worried, at one point. He had been stupidly worried that his brother was hurt or that he’d been pulled out to sea by a strong current or something. Now his brother and Tony were in there, playing jokes. Making fun of him.
He stormed up the stairs and yanked the screen door open. It was silent inside, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The light coming in through the windows made big rectangles on the floor.
“I swear to God, Mitchell—” John Dee started to say, but then Father Tony was there, stepping into view, already swinging the heavy sledgehammer through the air with both hands. It struck John Dee in the side of the head, just under his jaw and behind the ear. His head snapped to the side and the hammer crushed bone somewhere in his neck. He staggered. If there was a sound, John Dee didn’t hear it. Everything went muffled, like he was underwater.
Father Tony swung again. The sledge hit him on the same side of the head, this time higher, on the ear. More bone broke, with a far-away pulling feeling. John Dee tried to lift his hands to guard his face, but they wouldn’t move. Warm blood poured from his ear down his neck and under his shirt collar. The priest was bent over and looking at him, but John Dee didn’t understand.
The screen door banged open, as Jackie ran into the main building holding her nose. She had her head tilted back, trying to stop the blood. Her nose was broken, she was pretty sure. Why did this always happen? There was blood on her chin and her hands and down the front of her shirt. She stopped when she saw that she wasn’t alone.
“I broke my nose,” she said to Tony.
Then she saw John Dee sitting on the floor.
It took her a second to figure out that something was wrong with the boy’s head. It was bent to the side, like he was trying to understand, but it was bent too far. The angle wasn’t natural. Then he slumped forward, and rolled onto his back. Jackie could see the blood. Her first thought was that he had broken his nose, too. But then she looked at Father Tony, smiling at her, friendly as always, a bloody sledgehammer in his hands.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” the priest said. “I think this poor boy tried to kill himself with a sledgehammer.”
Most everyone was on the beach now, gathering around a big bonfire that Chip and Cindy were tossing driftwood onto. The sun was getting low in the sky and the fire was starting to catch. Smoke came up off it in a big plume, and the ocean wind pulled it out over the water. Ricky was coming up the beach toward the fire with driftwood piled in his arms, and Gabe was headed off to find more, holding hands with a girl Martin hadn’t seen before. Everyone else was sitting in the sand, pulling open bags of marshmallows or handing around long thin sticks for the marshmallows.
“I thought everyone had to come to the bonfire?” Melissa said. There were a lot of campers here, but Chip and Cindy were the only counsellors. “I don’t get it. There’s Susan, from our cabin, and the twins, but where’s Sherri-Lynn?”
“I’m right here!” Sherri-Lynn said, grabbing her from behind.
Melissa let out a holler, and spun around. But Sherri-Lynn’s smile was so enthusiastic that Melissa was soon smiling, too. They followed her to the fire, and sat down in the sand. Martin sat last, watching Melissa and Courtney just drop into the sand and kick their feet out. They didn’t seem to notice the sand fleas, or care that sand was going to get into their sneakers and socks.
Joan took his hand and sat down in the sand, too, gently pulling Martin down beside her. He tried to smooth the sand fleas away from where they were sitting, but eventually gave up and took the stick that Sherri-Lynn was offering him.
“Does everybody have a stick?” Chip asked, on the other side of the fire. “We have a few more roasting sticks here,” he said, and Cindy said something, too, but it was too quiet for Martin to hear.
“I’ve never roasted marshmallows,” Joan said.
“Me neither,” Martin said. He immediately regretted saying it, though. Why did he always do that? He didn’t know anything about her, and he kept talking about himself. “Do you like marshmallows?” he said.
“I do,” Joan said. She smiled. “Do you like marshmallows?”
“Oh my god, will you two shut up?” Courtney said. “You sound like morons.” She stood up and moved to sit on the far side of Melissa, closer to where Sherri-Lynn was sitting.
Joan just shrugged, smiling at Martin.
“I wanted to ask,” Martin said to Joan. “What was your grandfather like, before he went to live in the home?” He didn’t know if it was an off-limit topic, but he didn’t know what else to ask her. He couldn’t just say, “Tell me something about you.”
“He was weird, I guess,” Joan said. “He used to let me stay up late to watch science fiction movies all the time. He always acted like we were breaking the rules, and like my parents would be furious if they found out that he let me watch these movies, but they were just old black and white movies about giant monsters and robots and alien invasions. Nobody swo
re in them, and there wasn’t any sex or anything. But I liked the way he pretended. He made me laugh.”
“He sounds funny,” Martin said, trying to spear a marshmallow on his roasting stick.
“He was,” Joan said. “I miss him.”
“Where is everybody?” Sherri-Lynn said. “Hey, you,” she waved her hand at Martin. “You’re in Chip’s cabin, right? Didn’t there used to be more kids in your cabin?” She gestured with her roasted marshmallow to where Chip was trying to stop Ricky from whipping Adrian with his roasting stick. The only other kids here from the cabin were two boys named Gavin and William. Four kids. Five, counting Martin, out of ten.
“I think a couple of them went home today,” Martin said. He had seen John Dee packing his suitcase earlier. Martin had used the short break after chapel to go back to the cabin to make certain that his bed was made. “John Dee and Mitchell went home, for sure,” Martin said.
“Or did they?” Melissa said in a spooky voice.
Jackie woke up slowly, first registering the pain in her head, and then the dirt floor of the basement. She was tied to a chair. This was the basement of the main building, maybe. It was hard to know for sure. She’d never been down here before and she was having a hard time thinking. Tony had dragged her down a flight of stairs. She knew that much.
The sledgehammer had broken her bottom front teeth. Some still had the roots, and those were jagged in her mouth, but some of the teeth were just gone. There was a wet kind of suction in the holes. It should hurt, shouldn’t it? But it didn’t feel like anything. Just that weird wet suction. She knew intellectually that she was in shock, but it didn’t change anything. It didn’t seem like useful knowledge. When she moved her mouth, she could feel fragments of her nose move, in her face. She spat some blood on the floor.
Father Tony came into the room backward, dragging a body by its legs. Jackie watched him quietly. It was too small to be an adult’s body. Then she remembered. She had caught Tony killing a little boy. She struggled against her restraints. He had crushed the kid’s head with a sledgehammer. Why? Why a little boy? Why was this happening? She could see other bodies now, pushed to the sides of the room against the wall. More dead kids? There were three bodies. No, four. Four, counting the new one.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Tony said. “But I couldn’t leave that mess up there for someone else to clean up. That wouldn’t really be fair.”
“Let me go,” Jackie said.
“Don’t be silly,” Tony said. He went back to the door. “I’ll be back in just a minute. I have to mop up some blood and teeth and brain gunk. I’m sorry I don’t have a TV down here, or a radio or anything. I didn’t expect company.”
Then he was gone, and Jackie was alone in the room with the bodies. She tried not to look at them. Children seemed smaller when they were dead.
She stopped trying to pull herself free of the chair. It was duct tape, but there was so much that she was never going to be able to just tear herself free. She had to think this through better. He was upstairs cleaning up blood. That meant he was afraid that someone would see the blood. That meant he was afraid to be caught, which meant he was at least a little bit rational. She could reason with him.
He had been laughing when she found him murdering that kid. He wasn’t rational. He was crazy. And she didn’t have anything to bargain with. What could she offer? Her silence? All he had to do was kill her, too, and he would have her silence. Money? Unlikely. She couldn’t get that laugh out of her mind. He was completely insane. There was nothing she could say that would make him let her go. She struggled against the duct tape again.
“How’s that working out for you?” Tony said, coming back into the room with a smile. “Should I give you another minute to escape? I can go back upstairs if you want!”
“Let me go,” Jackie said. It came out muddled and weird, because of her broken nose and teeth. “Lemmie go,” she tried again.
The priest crouched down in front of her. “You’re Jackie, right?” he said. “You’re the girl who is always out there playing chess on the big chessboard right?”
He thought that Jackie was Sherri-Lynn.
“How about this? I have a chessboard up in my office. I’ll go get it, and we’ll play a game. If you win, I’ll let you go. I mean, you have to promise not to tell any of the other counsellors or the campers that I tried to kill you, obviously. But you’ll be free to leave. If I win, though, I get to beat you to death with an arm or a leg from one of those bodies over there. Do we have a deal?” He stuck out his hand to shake, and Jackie just stared at it.
Maybe she could beat him at chess. She wasn’t as good as Sherri-Lynn, but she knew how to play. It was a chance, anyway. She could beat him. And then what? What if he was lying? Still, it was her only hope.
“Deal,” Jackie said.
“Okay, back in a jiffy,” Tony said.
While he was gone, Jackie closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. Her face was starting to hurt. It was a far-away ache, but it was something, and she focused on it. She flexed the muscles in her face, and the pain was sharper. It made her feel more alert, made her mind feel clearer. She spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor, and then opened her jaw as far as she could. The pain was even sharper. It felt closer now, and less foggy.
Father Tony came back with a table first, and set it up in front of her. Then he skipped out of the room, humming, and came back a second later with one of the chairs from the dining room upstairs. He set it down on the other side of the table, making a big show of checking to ensure that it didn’t wobble. Then he was gone again, skipping up the stairs.
Tony returned with a wooden chessboard and sat across from her. He set up the board slowly, careful to make the knights face forward and put every piece in the centre of their square. Then he picked up one white pawn and one black, and put them behind his back. He was even going to be fair about who went first, Jackie thought. Maybe she did have a chance after all.
“Left or right?” he said.
“Left,” Jackie said, nodding toward his left side.
Tony brought his hand out from behind his back, but there was no chess piece in it. Instead, he had an axe in his fist. A big grin spread across his face. He stood up and turned back to the boy’s body on the floor.
Then he lifted the axe up and brought it down hard. Jackie wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. The axe opened a wedge into the kid’s shoulder, and Tony wound up and swung again. He chopped into the shoulder, and then grabbed hold of the arm. He yanked at it, trying to separate it like a chicken drumstick. It took some work, another couple chops from the axe, but he finally got the arm off. It bent awkwardly at the elbow.
“Why?” Jackie said. “Why are you doing this?”
“I just always wanted to try it,” Tony said, standing up with the severed limb. He held it by the forearm, just above the small hand. “It probably won’t work,” he said, coming toward where Jackie was tied to the chair. He upended the chess table, sending the pieces scattering. “And I’ll understand if you laugh. It’s just nervous laughter. It’s perfectly natural.” He gripped the forearm with both hands like a baseball bat, and swung it so that the shoulder smashed Jackie in the face, mixing John Dee’s blood with her own. The blood got in her eyes, and she couldn’t wipe it out.
He struck her again, swinging harder this time, and more blood got in her eyes. But John Dee’s shoulder didn’t hurt her. It bloodied her face, it made a mess, and it gave a nice wet thunk every time Tony hit her, but it couldn’t kill her.
Jackie spat again.
“I was right,” he said. “It didn’t work.” He sighed and dropped the arm on the floor.
“Stop,” she said. “Wait.”
He wiped his hands on his pants, then took the utility knife from his back pocket and slid it open. He put his knee on Jackie’s lap for balance and cut her throat as deeply as he could.<
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The pain was sharp at first, and she tried to hold onto it. It kept her mind clear. She needed to be able to think clearly if she was going to get away. He pushed the knife into her throat harder and harder, using her shoulder for leverage, until the blade scraped on bone.
CHAPTER TEN
Melissa and Courtney were walking behind, letting Martin and Joan lead the way. Courtney didn’t want to steal cookies, even though they were clearly for the campers anyway. What did it matter if they got cookies at dinner tonight, or if they snuck into the kitchen and took a couple cookies now? Joan was still holding Martin’s hand, pulling him along behind her.
“She makes video games,” Joan said, trying the handle on the side door. It turned easily, and the door swung open with a creak. “My mom, I mean. She does the computer programming for video games.”
“Oh, cool!” Martin said.
He never played video games, but he thought it was a cool thing to do for a job. He wondered if Joan played video games. He would play them, if she did. He could learn to enjoy them.
It was dark inside, compared to the late-afternoon sun, but they didn’t turn the lights on. It was a straight line down the hallway to the kitchen, where the cookies were. They stayed close together and moved as slowly as they could. It wasn’t until they got closer to the kitchen that they realized someone else was in the building with them. They could hear someone humming in the main dining room. Melissa flattened against the wall and motioned for everyone else to do the same.
The light in the dining room was off, too, though. Who was in there in the dark? Courtney was shaking her head, and she pointed back toward the way they came in. Melissa put her finger to her lips, and she started creeping down the hall toward the humming. Joan followed her, pulling Martin along. He could feel his heartbeat. It was an adventure! Courtney stood there in the hallway, looking back at the door for a long time before she went after them.
