Steinberg thrashed around a bit more, waiting for one of his cabinmates to come to his rescue. “I’m sorry! Help! Help!” He wondered if the guys were scared for their safety. Maybe that was why they weren’t responding. “What did you say? You’re not going to hurt my friends? Good, ’cause I’m the one to blame!” Any second now. “Play Dough! Totle! Help!” Nothing. “Wiener! Smelly! Dover! Help!” More of nothing. “The ghosts are only after me! Don’t worry!” Dead silence.
Steinberg dropped the act and whipped the curtain open. His cabinmates were gone. “Hello?” He walked out of the bathroom and into the sleeping quarters. “I know you’re in here, guys . . .” He checked under the beds. “Ha. Ha. Very funny.”
Suddenly, he heard a creak coming from the porch. Aha! Gotcha! He ran to the front door, grabbed the doorknob, and it fell off into his hand. Uh-oh. He could feel his face getting hot and his chest getting tight. “Guys . . .” He pounded on the door, slammed his body against it, but it wouldn’t budge. “I’m locked in!”
He raced toward the back for an alternate escape route. He leapt over the fan and landed with a thud, and a light fixture fell three inches from his face. Glass shattered, a floorboard popped up, and a plume of dust enveloped him. He pushed his goggles down over his eyes, took two puffs from his inhaler, and screamed the Help! This is not a drill! word they’d settled on earlier. “BRUSSELS SPROUTS! BRUSSELS SPROUTS!”
Seconds later, the guys knocked down the front door and dragged Steinberg out. He was wheezing and his chest was closing in and he thought this was what Smelly must feel like on a bad day times ten.
“Do mouth-to-mouth!” Dover shouted.
“No, dude, you do it,” Play Dough said.
“No one do mouth-to-mouth!” Steinberg croaked. “I’m conscious! I never even shut my eyes!”
The guys cheered, and then they laughed with relief while Steinberg took another two puffs from his inhaler.
As the guys scrambled back to their tents, Steinberg tried to navigate his feelings of frustration and embarrassment. This whole Polio campout was HIS idea. HE was the one who had held his bar mitzvah training hostage to get permission from TJ! HE was the one who was supposed to be doing the spooking! Apparently Chaim wasn’t an improv genius after all, and Steinberg had replaced Wiener as the butt of the jokes. The machine was breaking down. He’d tried to impress his cabinmates and set things right, but he’d failed.
As the guys finally approached their tents, Play Dough put his arm around Steinberg’s shoulders. “Those ghosts must’ve been really pissed off,” he joked. “They made a mess in there.”
Steinberg knew the guys had just pulled a silly prank, and it wasn’t their fault the knob detached and the light fell and all the dust exploded. But if it wasn’t their fault, whose was it? He didn’t want to admit it, but a part of him couldn’t shake the idea that he’d upset the Polio ghosts after all. He just prayed they wouldn’t come back for more.
Steinberg stuck a bundle of tinfoil into the campfire. Inside was a banana sliced down the middle, and inside that, a whole fistful of chocolate chips and marshmallows. Banana boats, his favorite. He hoped eating potassium would ease some of the residual panic he was feeling.
He eyed his stopwatch. 8:51.42 . . . 8:51.52 . . . 8:52.01 . . . 8:52.18 . . . 8:52.30. Watching the food like a hawk wasn’t helping it cook any faster. He shifted his focus to his cabinmates. Totle was at eight o’clock, stretching his calves on a log and gripping Dover’s shoulder for balance. Wiener was off at who-knows o’clock relieving himself in the woods, sans flashlight, since he didn’t want the moths to gather around his you-know-what.
Steinberg peered over his shoulder to get a visual on the discord happening at six o’clock. Play Dough was cradling Smelly’s guitar, slamming his head down like a rock star with every pluck. The Slim Jim he’d stored in the tear of his life vest was hanging out of his mouth like a cigar. Smelly had his patient face on, which, to those who knew him well, meant his patience was wearing thin. Between failed attempts to take back his instrument, he stole peeks at his tinfoiled hot dogs over the fire.
Steinberg felt a chill. He shrunk his neck deeper into his hoodie and turned back to check on his banana boat. There sat Yoshi, blocking the heat. “Ready for some Japanese folklore?”
“Huh?” Steinberg wasn’t trying to be rude. He just had no idea what that was doing on the campout agenda.
Yoshi leaned forward with no sense of suspenseful timing. “Ghost tales, I mean.”
“Ghost stories,” Steinberg corrected. Camp had a specific language, and you couldn’t just choose words at random.
“Whatever happened to this place, anyway?” Yoshi asked, skimming the campgrounds over Steinberg’s head.
Really? Steinberg thought. You’re asking me this NOW? Do you have any idea what I just went through? He rubbed his nose warm, hoping Yoshi would catch the hint and scoot over. He didn’t. He squatted there, blocking all the warmth and looking earnestly at him for an answer. Taking matters into his own hands, Steinberg scooted over to reclaim the glorious chill-melting flames. He finally responded. “Polio is what happened.”
“Right, I heard that part, but . . .”
“It’s Tuesday, so you’re safe.”
“Huh?”
“From the landowner.”
“Who?”
Steinberg sighed. He was done explaining the Camp Polio legend and making up stories and getting mixed up in real-life paranormal activity. “Never mind.”
Yoshi fiddled with the sleeve of his shirt and darted his eyes directly beyond Steinberg. Steinberg turned to look. The flames lit a hazy, overgrown path toward a flagless flagpole, and past that, the outline of an abandoned bunk. “I’m gonna check it out,” Yoshi said, rising slowly like he was going on a mission and might never return. “I’ll, uh, I’ll be right back.”
Steinberg craned his neck and the guys did, too, as Yoshi, flashlight in hand, ventured into the unknown.
During the fourteen minutes and forty-nine seconds Yoshi was gone, the guys gathered around the fire and feasted on hot dogs and banana boats and s’mores. Steinberg was even starting to relax! Then the guys decided it was time to SHARE MORE GHOST STORIES. Don’t worry about me, Steinberg thought anxiously. It’s not like I’m recovering from post-traumatic stress.
Wiener told the first story of the night, his face appearing wavy in the smoke. That gave him mad spooky points, until he spoke in his wacky Wiener voice, which had no spine-chill factor whatsoever. “Once, I heard my mom YELL my name from downstairs, but my mom wasn’t downstairs, she was in the room next door and SHE HEARD IT, TOO.”
“It was your dad, stupid,” Play Dough joked. “He was yelling ‘Wiener’ like a woman ’cause he bumped his wiener.” The guys cracked up at that one. Even Wiener admitted it was pretty clever. So far, so safe. These stories are totally harmless.
Dover went next. He attempted a monotone voice, which was sort-of-creepy, sort-of-boring: “I woke up to knocking.” Totle knocked two sticks together three times for effect. “At first, I thought it was the window, until I heard it again. It was coming from the mirror.”
“Ben Doooover,” Smelly boomed. “Bend over and show me your butt.” The guys were hysterical. Steinberg laughed a little bit, but quietly, just in case the ghosts could hear.
Play Dough jumped up from the log and mooned them, shaking his pimply cheeks toward the flames. “Hot!” he yelped. He pulled his sweatpants up and gave Smelly a high five.
Just then, Steinberg heard the crunch of dead leaves and the snap of twigs. It was Yoshi, stumbling back to the fire. His face was paler than a marshmallow. His eyes were glazed over. His lips were quivering tiny words no one could make out.
He stood over Steinberg, limply holding the now low-battery flashlight. It slipped from his fingers and crashed to the ground and rolled at Steinberg’s feet. Steinberg wondered what had freaked Yoshi out—Did he go inside a cabin? Was it another broken doorknob? A fallen light? A loose floor
board? A plume of dust?—but he was terrified to move or ask or do anything that might make his devil-possessed counselor bite.
“Dude, what happened?” Play Dough asked.
“I—I—I saw someone,” Yoshi stuttered, his eyes drifting to the blue flames at the heart of the fire.
Dover blinked compulsively. “Who? Who’d you see?” The guys were sitting at the edges of their logs in anticipation.
Yoshi kept his eyes fixed on the blue. “Mujina.”
“Who?” a bunch of the guys asked all at once, Steinberg not included.
“Mujina!” he shouted, whipping his neck around to glare each camper in the eye.
“Who is that, your girlfriend?” Wiener mocked.
“Yeah, man, if she’s so ugly she scares you,” Play Dough said, “you might want to look for someone else.”
“Plenty of fish in the sea,” Totle added thoughtfully.
It crossed Steinberg’s mind that this was all some big hoax and that Yoshi was spooking them like how Steinberg had tried to spook his cabinmates earlier, but something told him Yoshi couldn’t pull that off. He better not be trying to pull that off. Camp Polio was his territory, and he didn’t need his counselor outshining him once again, making him look like a hack. An even bigger hack, he reminded himself, since in the end, he’d spooked no one. Except maybe the actual ghosts.
“Mujina,” Yoshi whispered, then paused for two heavy, crushing seconds, “is a faceless man.”
The guys exploded with laughter.
Steinberg shuddered so hard he spilled his canteen on the crotch of his sweatpants. Then the banana boat resting on his lap toppled over, staining the same area with chocolate. The faceless man?! Yoshi hadn’t known about the faceless man! Now Steinberg was SURE this wasn’t a prank.
“Good one!” Play Dough heckled Yoshi.
Wiener tapped the side of his head. “Everyone knows the faceless man spends Tuesdays playing racquetball.” Steinberg hadn’t heard that one before.
“No, idiot,” Play Dough said, swatting Wiener with his s’more stick, “the faceless man can’t play racquetball. He doesn’t have eyes! Also, TJ made him up.”
Steinberg wanted so badly to laugh with the guys. But if Yoshi hadn’t heard of the faceless man moments before he’d said that he’d seen the faceless man, the faceless man had to be real. Simple logic.
Without uttering a word of defense and still under a trance of terror, Yoshi stumbled to his tent and zipped himself in. Steinberg couldn’t see much except for the bulging outline of Yoshi’s palm, then other palm, then a face, then a boot against the flap of the door. He was thrashing around inside the tent like he was fighting his inner demon. And the demon was winning.
Steinberg was too paralyzed with fear to run, so he conducted recon instead: Yoshi was the only sort-of adult around. There was no one to protect the boys from the faceless man or their possessed counselor. And since Steinberg was the only one who knew to take it seriously, it was up to him to save everyone from getting murdered. He felt his head pound against his temples and his eyelid twitch as he searched for an answer, but in its place came a flood of more questions.
Was the faceless man in his tractor? Did he have a shotgun? Did he say anything? CAN he say anything? Where was he breathing from? How does he hear? How does he see? How does he eat? Did he shoot Yoshi? Is Yoshi dead? Is Yoshi a ghost? Are we ghosts? Are ghosts real? Are they really out to get me? Is any of this real?!
“Hey, Steinberg, don’t piss yourself,” Play Dough cracked, hustling over from across the fire.
Steinberg surveyed his pants and could see where Play Dough was coming from. “I didn’t,” he said impatiently, the stain being the least of his concerns. “It’s just water.”
“Dude-a-cris! I was using a . . .”
“Figure of speech,” Totle retorted.
“Yeah, a finger of speech,” Play Dough said, holding up his index finger. “I meant you look scared. You actually pissed yourself?” He leaned in to check out the parts where Steinberg’s light gray sweatpants were dark and smudged with chocolate, while Steinberg tried to casually block the stains with his arm and elbow. It wasn’t working. “I see it! You pooped, too!”
Steinberg choked with frustration. He wanted to warn his friends about the imminent danger, but they weren’t settling down. Their laughter echoed through the rustling leaves and across the lake and up to the treetops.
Wiener offered him a pound. “Yes! I’m not alone!” Steinberg went to limply pound him back, but Wiener opened his fist into a stop sign. “Just kidding! I don’t do that anymore!” Wiener went to leap on to Play Dough’s back to celebrate his bump in the hierarchy, but Play Dough ducked, sending Wiener crashing to the ground.
“Here, use this as a diaper,” Play Dough said to Steinberg, offering him Wiener’s pillow. Wiener swiped it from him and sat back down with it between his butt and the log. Play Dough gave Steinberg a shrug. “I guess you’ll have to learn to go in the woods like a big boy.”
Steinberg’s fear was turning into fury. You think I’m a baby? If you knew what was going down, you’d be the first one to piss yourself, Play Dough. And the only reason you didn’t just piss yourself, Wiener, is because you emptied your bladder sixteen minutes and forty-eight seconds ago! Also, I didn’t piss myself! He stood up and walked straight to Yoshi’s tent to prove he wasn’t the baby they were making him out to be.
Whatever, Steinberg thought. Who cares what they think? What mattered was Mujina. He shoved his ego into whatever brain lobe would take it and decided to go through with Mission What the Heck Is Going On? Hopefully Yoshi wasn’t feral and could shed some light.
Steinberg sucked in some sweet O2 and unzipped the tent. There was Yoshi, chilling in his sleeping bag, cool as a cucumber on ice. His face was pink, his eyes were normal, and his lips were steady. “Oh, hey, Steinberg. You dig the folklore?”
Steinberg was so surprised to see Yoshi as himself, he had no idea what Yoshi had just said. “Huh?” Steinberg asked.
“Mujina. Faceless man. You dig it?”
Steinberg pulled up his goggles and rubbed his eyes clear. So you didn’t see the faceless man? There’s no faceless man? The guys were right? I was wrong? You were bluffing and I fell for it?! Steinberg answered Yoshi with a groan.
“Hey, sorry, buddy. They told us at orientation. We’ve got a similar faceless monster in Japan so . . . I thought you’d dig it . . .”
Because you think we’re both Japanese? That makes no sense. Steinberg could still hear the guys laughing around the fire. He couldn’t believe he’d been the butt of yet another joke.
Yoshi tossed Steinberg a flap of rubber.
“What’s this supposed to be?” Steinberg asked.
“You’re gonna be Mujina tonight.”
It’s a bald cap! Steinberg realized. For the faceless man! He felt a smile creep up his face. Tonight, Steinberg wouldn’t be relying on robots or Camp Polio history. He’d go full-blown Japanese horror on his cabinmates, finally be the pranker not the prankee, and leave the campout with a win. “I’m in,” he said, putting his hand out for a shake.
A counterattack prank was under way.
Melman awoke to the beeping of Sophie’s watch alarm and was greeted by a spider chilling near her face. “Holy—!”
She wiggled herself out of her sleeping bag and shot up, her statically charged hair clinging to the tent’s ceiling. She wasn’t afraid of spiders like Jamie was afraid of spiders, but she didn’t want a bite on her nose. Princess Bethany had enough on her face as it was.
Melman bent down to flick the spider away, and it landed near Sophie’s arm. Whoops.
“Is it time to go?” Slimey muttered, her eyes fluttering open.
Melman hopped over a sleeping Sophie, flicked the spider to the corner, and pressed the glow-in-the-dark button on the side of Sophie’s watch. 2:01A.M. She gently placed Sophie’s hand back down. “Yeah.”
Slimey rubbed the crust from the corners of her eyes
and pushed herself to standing. Sophie drowsily lifted her head, breaking the line of drool that dripped from her mouth to the pillow. “I’m coming, Steinberg,” she mumbled, removing her night retainer and popping a watermelon Jolly Rancher.
Slimey and Sophie had slept in their Anita sweatpants and their hoodies. Melman had, too, with her princess dress over it all, so they were ready to go.
“Let’s do this,” Melman said, pumped for the adventure.
They walked a few paces to Missi and the J-squad’s tent. The three girls were clearly already awake. Their tent was so well lit that, from the outside, they appeared like shadow puppets.
“Are you ready?” Slimey asked, gently tapping on the front flap.
Jamie let them in. “Yeah, one sec.”
Jenny waved her hand in front of her nose. “Ew, Missi, your breath smells like croutons and Pine-Sol.”
“I didn’t eat either of those things,” Missi said. “Do you have a mint?”
Jenny huffed impatiently. “No. Mints are food, and food lures bears. But honestly, with your breath, it would have been worth the risk.”
“You can have my ABC gum,” Jamie offered sweetly, spitting it into her hand. Missi took Jamie’s already-been-chewed gum and stuck it in her mouth.
Slimey, Melman, and Sophie hovered all cramped in the front of the tent, too sleepy to say what they were thinking, which was Let’s go!
Jenny gestured for the girls to move, and they tiptoed around the fizzling campfire to get past sleeping-soundly Scottie’s tent.
“Coast clear,” Melman mouthed.
The girls filed into the crisp, dark night, clutching each other and their flashlights, hiking, they hoped, in the general direction of the lake.
Earlier, TJ had driven them to Camp Polio in his pickup truck instead of having them canoe over like the guys had. It was a bummer, but it had made sense. The girls had gone an hour over on their weekly phone calls home and the Captain wanted them in their tents by 11:15 p.m. Melman had spent the whole drive kneeling on her pillow in the back, scoping out the trail they’d take this very moment.
Crossing Over Page 11
