Danger Ahead

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Plenty of campers claim to have seen it,’ said Sebastian, ‘and it’s just a fact that anyone who wanders around at night ends up having mysterious accidents.’

  ‘Probably because it’s dark and they bump into things,’ said Friday.

  ‘Who is the ghost a ghost of?’ asked Susan. ‘I mean, who were they when they were alive?’

  ‘They say it’s the ghost of a former counsellor,’ said Sebastian. ‘One of his campers fell into the river just after a storm when the water was high. The counsellor dived in to save the camper, but as he was pulling the kid out of the water, a log washed downstream and hit him in the back of the head. His body was swept away and they never found it.’

  ‘What happened to the kid?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘She scrambled to shore,’ said Sebastian. ‘She survived, but broke her leg badly when she fell in. It became infected in the stormwater and had to be amputated.’

  ‘Are you saying … it was Geraldine?’ asked Wai-Yi.

  Sebastian nodded.

  ‘That’s farcical,’ said Friday. ‘Geraldine can’t be more than fifty years old. Penicillin has been readily available her entire lifetime.’

  ‘The doctors said it was blood poisoning,’ said Sebastian. ‘There was nothing they could do. But legend has it that the ghost put a curse on her.’

  ‘Is that why she couldn’t get a proper job and had to work at the place of her horrific childhood accident?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sebastian. ‘It all happened long before my time. I just know you should stay in here where it’s safe at night. Come on, I’d better show you around.’

  Sebastian split them up so the boys got the biggest bedroom. This was no disappointment to Friday. The extra space was somewhat nullified by the huge growth of black mould across one of the walls. Meanwhile, the girls were separated into the two bedrooms on the far side of the common room. Friday would be sharing with Melanie, which was a relief to both of them because they were used to each other’s eccentricities. Wai-Yi and Susan were in the other.

  ‘So this is home for the next four weeks,’ said Friday as she sat down on her slightly damp mattress.

  ‘I like it,’ said Melanie.

  ‘You do?’ asked Friday.

  ‘I’ve got a room with a mattress and no maths lessons for four weeks,’ said Melanie. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s all a bit weird?’ said Friday. ‘An irrationally angry amputee, and facilities that don’t appear to comply with any known building code?’

  ‘We’re supposed to be learning survival skills,’ said Melanie. ‘They obviously take that seriously.’

  ‘And a counsellor who doesn’t even turn up to the introductory session because he’s too busy sleeping?’ said Friday. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?’

  ‘It strikes me as the most sensible thing I’ve seen since I got here,’ said Melanie.

  ‘But the most mysterious thing is this crazy story about the ghost,’ said Friday. ‘There’s something weird going on here.’

  ‘Remember your promise to the Headmaster?’ said Melanie. ‘Even if there is something weird going on, you promised you wouldn’t do anything about it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Friday, but she wasn’t really listening to her friend. Her mind was too busy ticking over.

  Chapter 11

  Fire Alarm

  The first week at Camp Courage was more awful than Friday had expected. It was the mundanity that was so disappointing. Friday did not enjoy ‘extreme sports’, but she appreciated the importance of learning new skills, so she’d looked forward to rock climbing, raft building and flying-fox rides. Camp Courage had nothing like that. There was just a lot of woodchopping, water fetching and building repair. They didn’t even get to eat wilderness food. Friday had imagined they would be fishing and learning what berries and leaves they could eat. But all the meals were the dreadful type of processed, high-fat, high-preservative, overcooked slop that you usually only got in prisons, hospitals and inflight meals.

  Having no common sense when it came to social interaction, Friday was silly enough to ask Geraldine about it.

  ‘Are we going to learn any wilderness survival skills at this camp?’ asked Friday. ‘So far our team has chopped three cubic metres of wood, fetched several hundreds of buckets of water to the kitchen, and spent two days redoing the bitumen tile roof on the Houseboat.’

  ‘Those are survival skills,’ snapped Geraldine. ‘You need wood to make fire, water to drink, and shelter so you don’t freeze to death.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s hardly bushcraft, is it?’ said Friday.

  ‘Excuse me if the actual practical wilderness survival skills you’ve been learning aren’t up to your high standards,’ said Geraldine sarcastically. ‘It’s not all drinking-your-own-urine, you know. What do you want me to do? Put on a bear for you to wrestle?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we be learning how to light a fire?’ asked Friday.

  ‘You’re not ready for fire!’ barked Geraldine. ‘I’ve seen you try to chop wood. A newborn baby would be better at it than you.’

  ‘Really?’ said Melanie. ‘I would have thought there were laws preventing you from giving a newborn baby an axe. And mothers preventing you as well.’

  ‘Fire-making skills are a privilege!’ yelled Geraldine. ‘You need to work on your rudimentary not-dying skills first.’

  ‘And another thing,’ said Friday, ‘this story about a ghost is scaring people. Do you want me to investigate and find out what’s going on? I’d be willing to accept payment in the form of not having to chop any more wood.’

  ‘I forbid you to do that!’ bellowed Geraldine. ‘I like running a haunted camp. Fear of the undead is the only thing that keeps you brats in bed at night. I just wish the ghost would push more of you into the river!’

  Geraldine stomped off.

  When Friday returned to the Houseboat after dinner that night, the group found another five tonnes of firewood for them to chop up.

  ‘Thanks, Friday,’ said Patel.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ said Friday. ‘I was just questioning her syllabus choices and offering to debunk the camp’s mythology.’

  ‘When you say that,’ said Wai-Yi, ‘can you hear how annoying you sound?’

  ‘You’re lucky she only gave us wood to chop,’ said Harvey. ‘I bet she would have loved to have thrown you in the river.’

  ‘I don’t understand why we’re basically doing maintenance tasks,’ said Friday, ‘and why Geraldine is yelling at us all the time. Her anger seems to be totally disproportional to anything we’ve actually done.’

  ‘You’d probably be grumpy too if your leg had been bitten off by a bear,’ said Melanie.

  ‘What?’ said Friday.

  ‘That’s how she lost her leg,’ said Melanie.

  ‘But what about the story Sebastian told us?’ said Friday.

  ‘Maybe he made it up,’ said Melanie. ‘I heard she was in Alaska working on the gas pipeline when she was attacked by a bear.’

  ‘Really?’ said Wai-Yi. ‘I heard she fell off a boat on the Amazon River and it was eaten off by piranhas.’

  ‘No, the way I heard it,’ said Harvey, ‘was that she was in the army doing night-ops when a tank ran over her foot.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Friday.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘All of them,’ said Friday. ‘If you’re attacked by a bear they always go for the back of your neck, not your lower leg. Geraldine would have disfiguring face and neck scars.’

  ‘Perhaps she has a really good plastic surgeon?’ said Susan.

  ‘And piranhas wouldn’t eat your foot,’ said Friday. ‘Anyone travelling in the Amazon would be wearing boots. A piranha isn’t going to eat through your boot when it could go for the soft flesh of your face and eyeballs first.’

  ‘What about the tank story?’ asked Patel. ‘That sounds pretty believable to me. She yells at everyo
ne like a drill sergeant.’

  ‘No, that can’t be right,’ said Friday. ‘Geraldine has clearly not been in the military. It’s forty years since drill sergeants were allowed to yell at people like that. These days they can’t say anything disparaging or derogatory, or they’ll end up in front of a disciplinary hearing.’

  ‘Then how do you think she lost her leg?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘It’s a mystery,’ said Friday. ‘I would need more clues to figure it out.’

  ‘We could just ask her,’ said Melanie.

  ‘If you did that,’ said Friday, ‘my next case would be the mystery of the missing Melanie.’

  They say that fresh air makes you sleep like a log. That is certainly true. Especially if you spend your time in the fresh air chopping wood, scraping lichen off roofs and digging holes. After a particularly long day of scrubbing the mess hall, inside and out, Friday fell into a deep slumber as soon as her head hit the pillow. For once her brain didn’t set to work on complicated problems the moment her eyes shut. She just fell, like an anvil out of a window onto a cartoon character’s head, into a deep sleep.

  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!

  Friday was having a horrible dream about being trapped in a fire, but that wasn’t what upset her. She was annoyed because, in the dream, she was trying to do her maths homework and couldn’t concentrate with the smoke alarm going off. As Friday’s brain slowly clawed its way to consciousness, she became aware that the noise she was hearing was not part of the dream – there really was a smoke alarm going off, just as another part of her brain noticed that she could smell smoke!

  ‘Get up, get up!’ screamed Friday. She ran over to Melanie’s bed and shook her friend.

  ‘Huh,’ mumbled Melanie, trying to snuggle deeper under her blanket.

  ‘The Houseboat is on fire!’ said Friday.

  ‘Good, I’m cold,’ said Melanie.

  Friday ran to the doorway of the other girls’ room. Susan and Wai-Yi were already up and hurrying to put their shoes on. Melanie still hadn’t moved.

  ‘Susan, you go and make sure the boys are up,’ said Friday. ‘Wai-Yi, help me get Melanie out of bed.’

  Wai-Yi came over. ‘How?’ she asked.

  Friday looked at Melanie. It was going to be hard to shift her.

  ‘Grab a corner of the sheet,’ said Friday. ‘We’ll drag her.’

  Friday grabbed one corner while Wai-Yi grabbed another and they started to pull. They got Melanie off the bed easily enough, although she hit the ground with quite a thud. Then they hurriedly dragged her into the common room. The smoke was thicker here.

  ‘Stay down low,’ urged Friday. ‘Smoke rises. The air is clearer down low.’

  The two girls crouched and pulled Melanie towards the boat’s gangplank, coughing and spluttering as they went. It was a relief to get her out the door and be able to breathe fresh air again.

  When Melanie was safely on the bank, and they did a headcount making sure all six of them were there, the Houseboat team collapsed on the ground to catch their breaths. Melanie’s eyes fluttered open and she sat up.

  ‘Did I go to sleep out here?’ she asked. ‘I thought we were staying on a houseboat.’

  ‘There’s a fire,’ said Friday. ‘We had to evacuate.’

  ‘Really?’ said Melanie. She turned to look at the Houseboat.

  The smoke had eased, and there was only a small trickle coming out of the window.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ asked Melanie.

  Friday looked at the boat and realised there was no sign of one. ‘I didn’t see the actual fire. Was it in the boys’ room?’

  Patel and Harvey shook their heads.

  ‘No, there was smoke, but the fire wasn’t in our room,’ said Patel.

  ‘The fire must have put itself out,’ said Susan.

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Friday. ‘That houseboat is a deathtrap. It’s made of rotten old timber, and filled with highly flammable cheap mattresses and no doubt dodgy electrical wiring. If there were a fire, the whole thing should be ablaze by now.’

  Suddenly the bank was floodlit. Friday held up a hand as she was blinded by the light.

  ‘Aagghhh!’ screamed Susan. ‘It’s the ghost of Ghost Mountain, come to kill us all!’

  ‘Be quiet, girl!’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like a ghost,’ said Melanie. ‘It sounds like Geraldine.’

  Their eyes adjusted to the light and they could see that it was, indeed, their formidable leader.

  ‘Caught red-handed!’ cried Geraldine.

  ‘What?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Breaking curfew!’ accused Geraldine. ‘And stealing food!’

  Geraldine swung her flashlight across the clearing where a large pile of snack food was sitting on the grass beneath a tree.

  ‘We didn’t put that there!’ cried Friday.

  ‘Hah!’ said Geraldine. ‘That’s what all you hoodlums say.’

  ‘We only came out here because there was a fire,’ said Friday.

  ‘Where?’ demanded Geraldine. ‘I can’t see a fire.’

  ‘There isn’t one anymore,’ said Melanie.

  ‘But the fire alarm went off so we evacuated,’ said Friday.

  ‘Aha!’ said Geraldine. ‘Caught in your own web of lies. I know for a fact that isn’t true, because the Houseboat doesn’t have a smoke alarm. None of the dormitories do.’

  ‘Is that legal?’ asked Patel.

  ‘Potato-peeling duty for you!’ declared Geraldine. Patel slumped. ‘This is a camp. And tents don’t need to have smoke alarms.’

  ‘But the Houseboat isn’t a tent,’ said Friday.

  ‘Don’t argue with me,’ said Geraldine. ‘The same rules apply.’

  ‘So can we go back to bed then?’ asked Melanie with a yawn.

  ‘You cannot,’ said Geraldine. ‘As punishment for stealing food, you get nothing but bread and water for three days.’

  ‘Now that definitely isn’t legal,’ said Susan. ‘You can’t starve children.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Geraldine. ‘This is a survival skills camp. If you want to supplement your diet, all you have to do is catch or harvest your meals from the wilderness.’

  ‘I knew I should have read a book about fishing before we went away,’ said Friday.

  ‘There’ll be no time for that,’ said Geraldine, ‘because your other punishment for breaking curfew is digging the new latrine.’

  ‘But the latrines here are connected to the sewerage system,’ said Friday. ‘They’re proper flushing toilets.’

  ‘Latrine digging is an important survival skill,’ said Geraldine. ‘You need to learn how to do it if you’re going to be self-sufficient in the wilderness.’

  The six students groaned.

  ‘Now get to bed,’ ordered Geraldine. ‘You start digging at first light.’

  ‘No, wait,’ said Friday. ‘There was definitely a smoke alarm and smoke. We all heard and smelled it. We should investigate.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Geraldine. ‘This isn’t some public service bureaucracy where we investigate and analyse everything. It’s a camp. You’ve been caught sneaking around after lights off. When I say “Go back to bed”, you go back to bed. That’s it. Case closed.’

  ‘What if we can prove there was a fire?’ said Friday.

  ‘Or what if there actually is a fire?’ said Melanie. ‘It could be slowly smouldering away. Fires do that, you know. My great grandmother set fire to her house once when she fell asleep while eating toasted marshmallows in bed. The embers on the marshmallows smouldered for hours before the sheets caught fire. Luckily she’d drunk an enormous amount of iced tea that day, so she was in the bathroom when the flames flared up.’

  ‘You see, there’s precedent,’ said Friday. ‘We need to check this out.’

  ‘Fine, show me this fire then,’ said Geraldine. ‘But if you can’t produce one, you get double latrine duty.’

  ‘What’s double latrine duty?’ asked Pa
tel.

  ‘You dig latrines, and then you fill them in. And when that’s done, you dig them out again,’ said Geraldine. ‘It’s character-building.’

  Geraldine marched up the gangplank and the others followed. The Houseboat seemed even more flimsy with her heavily stomping around the deck. She stepped into the common room and switched on the light.

  ‘I don’t see any fire,’ said Geraldine.

  Friday and the other students looked about. There was no sign of fire. There wasn’t even any indication of smoke, just an unpleasant chemical odour in the air.

  ‘The smoke must have come from somewhere,’ said Friday, glancing about the room.

  ‘I ought to add to your punishment,’ said Geraldine. ‘Look at this mess!’ She kicked a piece of aluminium foil on the ground.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Friday, bending down to pick it up.

  ‘No doubt a wrapper from some of the food you’ve stolen,’ said Geraldine.

  Friday inspected the foil closely. It was very scrunched up. There was a long thin piece with a circle at one end. Friday sniffed it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ snapped Geraldine.

  ‘Don’t take it personally,’ said Melanie. ‘She sniffs everything.’

  The other students nodded. They had seen Friday sniff much stranger things many times before.

  ‘It smells of plastic,’ said Friday. ‘Burned plastic.’

  ‘We don’t put burned plastic in any of the food here,’ said Geraldine. ‘At least, not intentionally. Occasionally something will drop in, but there’s nothing we can do about that.’

  Friday unwrapped the foil. The long thin bit was empty, just several layers of foil, but the larger circle held something inside.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘It looks like a black and orange blob,’ said Patel, peering over Friday’s shoulder.

  ‘The black is burn marks,’ said Friday. ‘And the orange is the original colour of the plastic.’ She sniffed it again. ‘This is a smoke bomb!’

  ‘What?’ demanded Geraldine. ‘This isn’t a war zone. It’s a camp for children, teaching them healthy outdoor pursuits.’