“They’re not in town anymore,” Maddie soothed him. “Besides, even if they were stupid enough to stay here, there’s only six of them. We could take them.”
“Yeah,” I said, projecting my voice like the leader I thought I was. “They probably hopped a train or something. No worries. We could take them.”
But I wasn’t as confident as I sounded. Supernatural creatures were our specialty, not crazy, escaped murderers.
We started walking back to the gas station. Just as we stepped off the concrete walkway, we heard a voice more gravelly than the parking lot.
“You’re all gonna die!” it said.
5
That Part Where a Crazy Guy Warns Us About Our Impending Doom
“Excuse me?” Maddie said.
We were staring at a crazy-looking man, posted outside Patty’s Pub. He held a smoking pipe. His face was so gaunt, I thought that his cheekbones might tear through his pallid flesh if he tried smiling.
Luckily, this guy didn’t look like the type to smile.
“You’re going up to the camp, ain’t ya?” the man ventured.
We didn’t answer, which I guess was an answer enough.
“Yeah, yeah, I thought so. I told them other kids, too. I told them they was gonna die,” the man said.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“No, wait,” Maddie said. She scowled at me, and the look was intense enough to melt a steel beam.
“Maddie,” Zack urged gently. He looked slightly amused, like in a I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening-to-us kind of way. “Maddie, for real. Have you never seen a slasher movie?”
She ignored him, but Zack went on anyway. “There’s always some old lunatic that warns the characters about their impending doom.” He looked at the guy with the pipe and said, “Well, thanks, pal. But we’re quite aware of our own impending doom.”
This threw the old guy for a loop, making his eye twitch. Reminded me of a robot shorting out in some science fiction movie.
I stepped forward and pushed Zack out of the way. “Sorry about my rude friend, here,” I said. “But yes, we know the risks that come with visiting the camp. I thank you anyway.”
The old guy pretty much ignored me. It was like this exchange was scripted, like he knew he had a part to play, and he was going to play it no matter what. He said, “I was there, you know. When that boy went missing.”
Maddie’s face lit up. “Go on…”
“No, please don’t,” Zack said.
But there was no going off-script with the old guy. I guess I respected him for his dedication.
“I was the cook. I made all the meals. Rubbery, but delicious, hamburgers, beef stews, beans, hot dogs. I was only a teenager myself. But I was there. I was there.”
“Yes, we understand that,” Zack said. “That’s good to know, but we really—”
“I saw his face. That boy’s face. Damn bear trap ripped half of it off. We thought it was the coyotes that got to him. Thought maybe even one of them bears had found its way to the camp. Darla was with me. She looked down at that half of the kid’s face and puked. I held her hair back like a good fella. The face was right there on the other side of the lake, caught in some reeds. Flies were buzzing and crawling all over it. It smelled, too. Smelled all putrefied, like when the beef went over. I thought I was gonna puke with her.”
“I know how you feel,” Zack warbled.
“Then he grew up, that kid. Grew up in the forests. Found the witch,” the old guy said.
I was shaking my head, but Maddie was listening intently. It was like she was in one of the Academy’s classes on eighteenth century blood magic. “The witch?” she asked.
“Yup. That old hag that lived in the forest. She gone now.”
“How do you know?” Maddie asked.
“Cuz I don’t have the dreams no more. I think he killed her, like he killed all them folks in the eighties. Crazy son of a bitch. I warned them back then, too. I warned them about Cageface. I dreamed about him coming out of the forest, and getting his revenge on the people who let him go out in the deep, who let that bear trap tear his face off.”
“Okay,” Zack said. “That’s enough. Let’s go.” He pulled at Maddie, who finally budged though she was beyond enraptured.
Me? Well, I was feeling pretty queasy, thinking about the half-face they’d found in the reeds. Thinking about the flies crawling all over it.
“I tried to warn them, but they died. Now I’m warning you. Are ya gonna listen, or are ya gonna let Cageface taste your blood?” the old man asked, swiping a sandpapery tongue across his equally sandpapery lips.
We walked away, Zack and I dragging Maddie as she shuffled backward.
“I dreamed of him last night. I dreamed he was coming. Then I saw the camp, and it was drowning in red. Drowning. Enough blood to fill the damn lake!”
He was still shouting as we turned the corner and stepped onto the pavement of the gas station.
The gas station attendant was leaning up against Zack’s PT Cruiser. When Zack saw this, he let out a growl. Maddie had to hold him back.
“There you are!” the guy said. “Thought you was lost or sumthin. Figgered maybe you done went up to the mines like them kids that got trapped there a few years back. Ain’t very safe up there; y’all wanna avoid them places. Alotta old dynamite left hanging around, and ain’t nothing more unstable in the world than old dynamite…well, ‘sides my ex-wife.”
We didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, we just wanted to get out of there, so Zack slipped him a twenty dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”
“It’s twenty-five bucks, son,” the man said.
Maddie and I climbed into the car. Zack got in last. “No, it’s not,” he said.
Tension hung in the air for a moment as the guy chewed on his wad of tobacco, and leaned over and spat in front of the Cruiser.
“You’re right. It ain’t,” he admitted.
Zack fired up the engine. The gas needle hovered around full. No more yellow warning sign on the dashboard.
“Heard you talking to Ralph,” the guy said. “Crazy sumbitch. Don’t listen to him.”
The car lurched as Zack shifted into drive.
The guy’s hands were still clinging to the car’s roof. He had to shout so he could be heard through the window. “Yeah, he’s crazy, that Ralph. Cageface ain’t coming. He’s already here!”
6
Zack Makes Sense
We were on a long stretch of faded blacktop that had never seen any repairs.
Maddie was driving.
“The way I see it, we have a ninety percent chance of failure. And I’m being generous,” Zack said. He started ticking off the warning signs on his fingers. “Strike one: Secluded camp, far off from civilization. Strike two: Said camp suffered a gruesome murder spree a few decades ago. Strike three: urban legends of the murderer still lurking out in the forests. We’re out. Shall I keep going?”
“No,” Maddie said. She reached for the radio, clicking it on, but out here in Sticksville, all we picked up was static.
I supposed that was another strike.
Zack continued. “There’s also the escaped prisoners that will undoubtedly end up attacking us at camp. Cageface will kill most of them—you know, because they’re bad people, and the audience wants to see some grisly slasher kills.”
“What audience?” Maddie asked. “Geez, Zack, you’re going crazy, aren’t you?”
He ignored her. “Then there’s the hillbilly bar and the crazy old guys warning us. Man, if you don’t understand how badly the odds are stacked against us—”
“Okay,” I interrupted. “We get it, Zack. We’re screwed.”
“More than screwed,” he mumbled.
“There it is,” Maddie said, pointing to a sign. It wasn’t as old as the one we’d seen when we entered the town, but it was still pretty ancient.
‘CAMP MOONFALL 3 MILES’
She turned onto the road. It was made o
f dirt and was so bumpy it was probably murdering the Cruiser’s shocks. It was narrow, too. As we went on, it seemed to close in on us.
“Another strike,” Zack said. “The camp is three-plus miles away from a road that is God knows how many miles away from the town.”
“I don’t know if you can call Moonfall a ‘town’,” I said. “Maybe you could in the 1950s, but honestly, I was surprised they even had an ATM.”
“The strikes keep piling up, my friends. We lost the game a long time ago.”
Maddie said, “Zack, just zip it. We’ll be fine.”
About five minutes later, we could see the lake through the trees, which were starting to thin out. It was beautiful: the water sparkling in the afternoon sun, the surface gently rippling with the wind.
The camp, however, was not.
As we came into the clearing, we saw two cabins as big as small houses, between a long, adobe-type building that was probably the communal bathroom. We could make out a large dining hall in the distance, and there was another cabin closer to us, which I figured was the counselors’ cabin. The structures were all in varying states of disrepair, to put it delicately.
Slowly, Maddie steered the Cruiser down the road. Near the lake was a small gravel lot filled with other cars, beyond which was a lodge and a dock. Then more trees.
Too many trees, really.
“This place makes your apartment look like the Taj Mahal,” Zack said.
Maddie parked in the last spot, and cut the engine. “It’s gonna be a long weekend.”
7
The Stoned and Drunk Counselors
We piled out of the PT Cruiser. As we started unpacking our bags, which were mostly suitcases stuffed with weapons, someone shouted from near the camp.
“Hey! Heads up!”
Now, you might remember that Zack didn’t fully understand the concept of “heads up.” In Woodhaven a few months before, I’d thrown the lid to a ghost catcher, prefaced with those same two words, and Zack didn’t duck or even try to catch it. As a result, the lid had hit him right in the forehead. Left a pretty gnarly red mark, too.
So when this guy said, “Heads up!” and both Maddie and I moved out of the way, neither of us were surprised when Zack did not.
The projectile this time was a football. Luckily for Zack’s cranium, the guy hadn’t beamed it, but instead lobbed it high up. To Zack’s credit, he had looked toward the sky, but the sun was blinding (even through his Ray-Bans), so any chance he had at catching the football was gone when he stared into the light.
The football clonked off the top of Zack’s head, bounced straight up, then fell right on the spot it had hit the first time with another clonk.
“Aw, what the fuck?” Zack said.
I picked the football up and threw it back to the guy, who was running toward us.
He looked like a frigging Greek god: shirtless, tanned, muscular, and his hair was golden blond. Maddie stared at him, and her jaw dropped slightly.
Guys like this weren’t real, except for in the movies. Maybe that was another strike.
He caught the ball, stopped, and shook his hand, as if the force of the return had burned his palms. “Nice throw, champ!” he said.
“What is he, your dad?” Zack mumbled.
“What?” The buff guy asked Zack.
“Nothing.”
“You really gotta learn what ‘heads up’ means,” I told Zack, who was rubbing his head when the guy reached us.
The dude smelled like beer, and was a lot bigger up close. He was the kind of guy who could be seen as starting quarterback for a college championship team.
“You the building crew?” he asked.
“At your service,” I said.
He gave us a crooked look. “You don’t seem like laborers. I thought you’d be…a little older. You know, a little more experienced.”
I shrugged. “Take us or leave us.”
The guy smiled. “No, no, it’s not like that. It’s just that we got a lotta work to do.”
“That’s being generous. This place looks like shit,” Zack said, still rubbing his head. He flinched automatically, expecting one of Maddie’s cut-it-out hits, but she wasn’t giving it to him. Her eyes were glued to the football star’s abs.
I didn’t blame her. He was a piece of art. A feeling of jealousy had settled in my own soft gut.
When Zack noticed Maddie was staring at the football star, he gave her a little nudge.
She blinked and shook her head. “Huh?” she said.
“His eyes are up there,” Zack said. He meant to sound firm but came off sounding slightly hurt.
Maddie blushed and looked out toward the lake, where a few people were emerging from the water.
It was a fine day for swimming, though knowing what had happened with the bear trap, I probably wouldn’t have participated myself. Perhaps they didn’t know, though. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them.
The football star chuckled at Maddie’s gawking, then stuck out his hand. “I’m Jason,” he said.
“You’re Octavius’s nephew?” Zack said incredulously, now gawking himself. “I certainly don’t see the resemblance.”
“Yeah, Uncle Octavius!” Jason said. “He said you’d be meeting us up here. Glad you made it. I know it’s not much, but I think we can really turn it into something great.”
I shook his hand. “We’ll certainly try. I’m Abe. Nice to meet you, Jason.”
“Likewise.”
Maddie and Zack also exchanged pleasantries with him. Right around the time they finished up, the other counselors drew even with us.
“Fresh meat! Fresh meat!” a shaggy-haired guy said.
He had a wispy beard that looked like dirt from a distance. His eyes were very red and very glazed. I didn’t think it was the lake water that had done that, either, especially considering the smell clinging to him. A smell I was quite familiar with, thanks to my neighbor across the hall. The irony that this stoner represented was not lost on me, and I contemplated that these were the men and women opening a place for people with drug addiction. I chose to keep quiet, however.
“Wassup?” he asked, grinning sheepishly. “I’m Fred. You can call me ‘Freddy’.”
“Abe,” I said.
“Maddie.”
“Zack.”
Freddy chuckled at each introduction.
Among the others who had joined us were two women, both in their mid-twenties. They were good-looking, I’ll admit that. I made it my goal to not look at their bikini tops, which was really hard. One woman, Tiffany, was blonde, and the other, Ellen, was brunette.
Tiffany stumbled over to me, reeking of booze, and swiped a hand down my t-shirt. “Wow, you’re quite a cutie,” she purred.
“Uh, th-thanks,” I said.
Zack elbowed me as Jason pulled the drunk girl away, and said, “There ya go, Abe!”
“Sorry about that,” Jason said. “We’re having a good time. Semester just ended.”
“Yeah, it was a tough one,” Freddy said, giggling.
“You barely ever went to class, Freddy,” Ellen said.
“I didn’t? I dunno, dude, I can’t remember.” He giggled again, then stopped and stared past our heads.
His bloodshot eyes were looking in the direction of the cabins and the forests beyond, but I didn’t think he was actually seeing them. He was so high that he had likely unlocked the secrets of the universe. Too bad he’d forget them when he sobered up.
“You guys want a beer?” Jason asked. “Go to the cabins and put your stuff away, then come down to the dock.”
“What about the work?” Zack asked.
“It’s not much, but we fixed up the cabins enough to sleep in. And the bathrooms and showers have running water. But if you don’t like the cabins, you can always camp outside. It’s gonna be a beautiful weekend,” Jason said, smiling his winning smile.
“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll take you up on that.”
“Yay!” the blonde s
quealed, jumping up and down. She was quite a sight in that bikini—so much so that both Zack and I were practically drooling.
“Settle down, Tiff,” Jason said.
“Yeah, you don’t wanna put one of their eyes out,” Ellen said with a grin. Freddy thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard—not a difficult bar to reach, with how high he was.
Tiffany turned and looked back toward the water, but I, of course, wasn’t looking at the lake. I was looking at her figure.
But then something happened that made me stumble backward a step.
The beautiful, young woman I was staring at suddenly changed. Her tanned skin went flabby and pale. Her shoulders hunched. And her nose seemed to grow a few inches and became covered in warts. I was reminded of that scene in The Shining.
A sound escaped my throat. It would’ve been a scream if I’d had the strength, but it came out as a wheeze.
Zack gripped me. “You okay, man?”
I shook my head, blinking hard. The old crone was the beautiful woman again, and she was looking at me like I’d offended her.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”
“Take a picture,” Tiffany sneered.
“Be nice, babe,” Jason said.
Tiffany smiled devilishly at me, and I shook my head again. I really gotta stop falling asleep while watching scary movies.
She and Ellen walked back toward the beach, their heads together, whispering.
I felt like a pretty major asshole.
Jason smacked me on the shoulder. “Don’t mind her, she’s a handful,” he assured me. “Anyway, I figured we’d have some fun before we really get to work. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.”
That we did. Still, I couldn’t shake that image of the decrepit old woman from my mind.
8
The Campfire
We didn’t spend any time on repairs that day.
Jason and the rest of the would-be counselors hung out on the beach while we stood around awkwardly. We drank a couple of beers, but they were the cheap, terrible kind that college students usually used for beer pong.
Night of the Slasher Page 4
