Bunny Call

by Scott Cawthon

  Title Page

  Bunny Call

  by Andrea Waggener

  In the Flesh

  by Elley Cooper

  The Man in Room 1280

  by Andrea Waggener

  About the Authors

  Teaser

  Copyright

  The sun erupted from behind low-hanging gray clouds and nearly blinded Bob. He squinted, glowered, and flipped down the visor as he slowed to maneuver his anemic minivan around the millionth sharp curve on this seemingly endless winding road carving its way through thickly forested mountains.

  That’s … just … great, Bob thought.

  The only thing he’d been looking forward to about this trip was the predicted rainy weather. His family was “bummed” about it, but he was secretly gleeful. Rain meant the flurry of activities would be canceled and he’d be left in peace to do a little fishing, take naps, and read a book.

  “Honey, look at that!” Bob’s wife, Wanda, sang out. “Sun!”

  “Oh, is that what that is?”

  She playfully smacked his shoulder.

  “Hand me my sunglasses,” Bob said.

  Bob took his eyes from the road for a couple seconds and watched Wanda lean forward to dig the sunglasses out of the glove box. He admired her shiny auburn curls and the soft contours of her profile. Wanda was petite, pale, and freckled, with small features. Even after twelve years of marriage and three kids, she was still the pretty, perky cheerleader he’d fallen for when they were seniors in high school. The only noticeable difference was her clothes, having traded her pom-poms and pleated skirts for the latest fashion. Today, she was wearing high-waist short black shorts and a netted lavender top over a black tank. The top fell off one shoulder. It looked great.

  Eyes back on the road, Bob put on his sunglasses. Then he took a couple seconds to check himself out in the rearview mirror. A couple seconds was all it took to confirm that he didn’t look like the jock he’d been in high school. Gone were the long thick black hair, the sharp jawline, the mischievous dark brown eyes, and the wide, carefree grin. In their place were thinning, graying short hair, soft jowls, tired eyes, and lips clamped into a downward curve. Most of his muscles had gone wherever too much of his hair had gone. He didn’t have enough time to work out … and it showed.

  Bob quickly shifted his attention to the drive. He pulled the minivan into the right lane as the road starting climbing upward, and the two lanes turned into three, creating a passing lane. Two sporty sedans pulled out from behind Bob to zip right by.

  Bob sighed. “I miss my MG.”

  Wanda glanced at him but wouldn’t take the bait. She never did. She’d talked him into selling his beloved MG when they had their second child. He’d regretted it ever since. He missed everything about that car, even its smell—the distinct motor oil/leather seat smell that always made him feel manly … and young.

  Bob shook his head and tried not to inhale the scents of the minivan: peanut butter, dirty socks, and grape juice.

  “Guess what, everyone?” Wanda called out.

  “What?” the kids chorused.

  “They’ve changed the forecast!” Wanda did a little happy dance in her seat as she looked at her phone’s screen.

  Bob was surprised the phone still had service. It felt like they were thousands of miles from civilization.

  “Instead of eighty percent chance of steady rain,” Wanda said, “it now says twenty percent. We’re going to have sun!”

  “Happy sun, smiling sun, sun come out to play,” Bob’s three-year-old daughter, Cindy, began singing off-key.

  “Bright sun, friendly sun, it’s a beautiful day,” Wanda joined in with Cindy.

  Cindy giggled and started in on the grating melody again. Her curly auburn pigtails bounced as she bopped through the song. What Cindy lacked in singing talent she made up for in cuteness and enthusiasm. Freckles and a happy grin won over everyone who met her.

  “Come on, let’s all sing!” Wanda called out.

  Seven-year-old Aaron sat next to Cindy, in the car seat he was excited to be growing out of soon. He shared his sister’s freckles and auburn hair as well as her energy, and predictably, joined in the singing. Tyler, ten, lanky and dark with broad shoulders that telegraphed the athletic build he’d have soon, lounged in his own space in the third row of seats. Tyler liked to set himself apart because he was the oldest, but he was still young enough to want to be included in family “fun.” He still loved game night, movie night, Sunday picnics, and sing-alongs. Now he did his part by providing a beatbox backup.

  “Happy sun, smiling sun, sun come out to play,” Bob’s family sang.

  “Come on, Bob,” Wanda cajoled, “sing!”

  Bob grunted, then ground his teeth while his family went through the two lines at least half a dozen times. Give me some classic rock and I’d belt out with the best of them, Bob thought. But he wasn’t going to sing about the stinking sun.

  Bob kept his lips pressed together and his eyes on the road, where the still-wet pavement was glistening in the newly shining sun. The double yellow line was a tether pulling the minivan inexorably toward its destination. Bob might be driving, but he had no control. Not really.

  When was the last time he’d had control? Before Tyler was born? When he and Wanda married? Before they met? Since he was born? Was control an illusion?

  Finally the song wound down, and Aaron asked the age-old question, “Are we there yet?”

  “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Cindy parroted.

  “How much farther? Are we there yet?” Wanda asked Bob.

  “Not you, too,” Bob said with a sigh.

  Wanda laughed. She looked at the map she had unfolded, and answered her own question. “Twenty-seven more miles,” she said.

  Bob found it endearing how Wanda insisted map-reading was more fun than using a GPS. It was one of the many quirks he loved about her. Making up songs—like the dumb sun song—was one of the many quirks he wasn’t so crazy about. Harping continually on family togetherness was one of the quirks he truly hated.

  When Tyler had been young, it wasn’t so bad. Taking his son on fishing trips and to ball games was no trouble at all. Even the hikes Wanda had planned were fun. When Aaron was born, the family activities had gotten more complicated, but they had still been doable. Adding Cindy to the mix had raised the chaos factor tenfold. Cindy wasn’t a brat or anything; she was actually a very sweet child. But her energy level was through the roof, and for some reason, all that did was amp up the boys. Lately, it seemed like Bob never got any peace or quiet, even at night. He could be sure that one or more of his kids would end up diving into bed with Wanda and him at some point, every night, without fail.

  Where Bob used to have time to himself, now his time belonged to everyone except him. His work took a slice. His kids took a slice. Wanda took a slice. He never used to begrudge the time Wanda took, but that was because she wanted his time for fun things. Now all she wanted was for him to put on one of his many “family-man” hats: coach, teacher, playmate, cook, handyman, driver, shopper, janitor, money earner.

  A couple months before, Wanda’s best friend had told Wanda about Camp Etenia. “Etenia is a Native American name that means ‘rich,’ ” Wanda read from the nearly magazine-thick brochure describing the place. “ ‘We named our family-inclusive camp Etenia because a man who has family is indeed rich,’ ” she kept reading. “Isn’t that beautiful, Bob?”

  “Mm,” he’d said absently.

  Bob had thought Wanda was just reading about the place the same way she read about Greenland and Norway and Albania. Wanda wanted to travel, and she loved to research destinations. But it turned out Wanda was serious about Camp Etenia.

  “Why don’t we just send the kids to camp,
and we can stay home and hang out in the hammock?” Bob asked when Wanda kept talking about it. He grabbed her and nuzzled her neck. “Just the two of us.”

  Wanda wasn’t buying it. Neither did she approve of his idea that they go to a nice hotel and plop the kids by the pool so they could have time alone together. He finally pulled out all the stops and suggested a high-priced resort that promised to entertain the kids while the parents lounged under big umbrellas on white sandy beaches. Bob wanted to relax. Wanda wanted something else.

  So here he was … on his way to Camp Etenia.

  Bob glanced in his rearview mirror to find out why it was suddenly so noisy in the minivan. Now all three of his kids were engaged in some elaborate hand-clapping game.

  Wanda leaned toward Bob. “Zoie and I used to love camp when we were little girls,” she told him for the tenth time. “The only downside was that we had to be away from Momma and Daddy. Isn’t it awesome we don’t have to put the kids through that? We’ll all be together for a full week!”

  “Awesome.”

  If Wanda noticed his sarcasm, she ignored it.

  A deer ran across the road in front of the minivan, and Bob hit the brakes. Thankfully, the minivan hadn’t been going very fast. It couldn’t. It had no pick-me-up for steep grades, especially at high altitudes. Even though he easily missed the deer, Bob felt his blood pressure go up.

  “Can you keep it down?!” Bob bellowed at his kids. “I’m trying to drive up here.”

  Momentary silence.

  “Do you think there are fairies in there, Daddy?” Cindy asked him. She was staring out the side window at the dense forest crowding the side of the road.

  “Why not?” Bob said.

  Wanda had told him over and over that Cindy was extra-sensitive. He could never “burst her bubble.” If she wanted to believe there were fairies, it was his job to go along with it.

  Wanda changed the subject. “So what are we going to do when we get there?” she asked the kids.

  Bob groaned. Not this again.

  All three of them started shouting at once:

  “Big bubbles, talent show, karoke, scanger hunt, puppets, paint rocks, tampoline, dancing, hula hooping, gymstatics!” Cindy called out.

  “Trampoline, archery, horseback riding, canoeing, tubing, mountain biking, hiking!” Aaron shouted.

  “Agility, kayaking, diving, sailing, swimming, tug-of-war, running, ping-pong, volleyball, bungee jumping, zip-lining,” Tyler yelled.

  Wanda laughed delightedly. She did this on purpose to spin up the kids.

  Bob was tempted to cover his ears with both hands. But obviously, he couldn’t do that and drive.

  And what about fishing? he thought. Bob loved to fish.

  Wanda hated it. But Wanda could manipulate with the best of them when she needed to. She’d used Bob’s love of fishing against him when she was talking him into this trip.

  When it became clear Bob was going to Camp Etenia whether he liked it or not, Bob had comforted himself with the idea that he could wander off and fish on his own. That’s when the truth came out. “Well, you won’t get to just go off by yourself,” Wanda admitted. “They have fishing tournaments, and maybe you can talk the boys into entering one with you.”

  Why did everything have to be so organized?

  The kids kept firing out activities. Bob figured they’d have to stay for about five years to do everything the kids wanted to do, and they were staying for only a week.

  “Only.” Yeah, right.

  Seven days was an eternity.

  “Seven days of fun and frolic,” Wanda kept saying to him while she was getting everyone ready for the trip. She made it sound like that was supposed to be a good thing.

  How was Bob going to survive it?

  Camp Etenia, Bob had to admit, was a great-looking place. Or it would have been if it wasn’t infested with noisy families.

  Nestled in a narrow valley between two tall, wooded mountain ranges topped with craggy rock, Camp Etenia hugged the edges of a massive, meandering deep blue freshwater lake, Lake Amadahy. According to the camp brochure, Amadahy was Cherokee for “forest water.” That would have been an appropriate name for a lake in the woods, except for the fact that the camp was nowhere near Cherokee territory. When Bob pointed that out to Wanda, she didn’t seem to care.

  Accessed via a ten-mile dirt-and-gravel road that left the highway at the bottom of a steep grade, Camp Etenia didn’t announce itself until you were almost upon it. Then an understated rustic sign nearly hidden behind a maple tree reassured tired travelers they were in the right place: CAMP ETENIA: JUST AHEAD.

  The camp itself was as picturesque as its surroundings. The main lodge was a huge log cabin flanked by two stone chimneys and an ample porch that ran along the front and sides of the building. The structure was covered with a shiny green metal roof. The camp’s thirty-five cabins looked like the lodge’s children; little log-and-stone buildings were scattered near the main lodge like baby ducks swimming around their mom. Bob and his family were slated to be in cabin #17, Cabin Nuttah. Nuttah, apparently, was an Algonquin name meaning “strong.”

  Bob’s boys thought that “Nuttah” was a hilarious name. “We’re going to stay in a nut house,” Tyler had told all his friends when they’d gotten their assignment.

  “Don’t mess with my Nuttah,” Aaron kept saying.

  “Will it have lots of peanuts in it, Daddy?” Cindy had asked several times.

  Wanda said, “We’ll get nutty!”

  Bob responded, “I’m going nuts.”

  He thought the name was idiotic because, again, the Algonquin tribe lived nowhere near here, either. The owners of Camp Etenia seemed to have reached into a swirling vortex of Native American names and randomly picked a few.

  Camp Etenia’s parking lot was a shady, tree-guarded gravel rectangle behind the main lodge. When Bob pulled the minivan into the lot, he was reminded you couldn’t drive your car to your cabin.

  “That would ruin the ambiance,” Wanda said when Bob complained about it.

  “Is excruciating back pain from lugging all our crap also part of the ambiance?” Bob asked.

  Wanda smiled at him and applied fresh lip gloss.

  Well, I guess that answers that question, Bob thought.

  Now that he stood here next to a minivan crammed with luggage and toys—not to mention a cargo carrier stuffed with more of the same—Bob’s back started throbbing just at the idea of getting everything to the cabin. And of course, Cabin Nuttah was the farthest one from the parking lot.

  “It’s right at the edge of the woods, Bob,” Wanda had gushed when the cabin was assigned to them.

  “Oh joy and bliss,” Bob said.

  And here they were. One woman’s heaven was another man’s hell.

  Bob looked up at the traitorous sky, which had traded its clouds for vast expanses of pale blue. The sun was almost directly overhead, and it shined down with ferocity. Bob figured it was at least eighty degrees, and the air felt heavy and muggy.

  Their feet crunching over the gravel, Wanda and the kids were practically dancing around the car. Cindy was spinning in circles, Aaron was doing some kind of dance, and Tyler was drumming on the minivan’s hood. Wanda was calling out, “Hi,” and “How are you?” to everyone within earshot.

  “Look, utterflee!” Cindy squealed.

  Bob followed the direction of Cindy’s plump pointed finger and saw a monarch butterfly disappear into a clump of salmonberry bushes. He flashed back to his childhood, remembering when his dad took him camping and they picked salmonberries to go with their fried fresh trout dinner.

  “Come on, Dad,” Aaron said, “we have to get signed up, or we’ll miss out on all the good stuff.”

  “Bob, why don’t you go take care of all that.” Wanda handed Bob four sheets of paper, covered with lists.

  He knew the lists were the activities each child had chosen and the ones Wanda had decided they’d do as a family. He sighed. It was going to
take all afternoon to do this.

  “The kids and I will go scope things out and start meeting people,” Wanda said. “When you’re done with the sign-up, you can bring stuff to the cabin.”

  “Oh, I can? Goody,” Bob muttered.

  “What’s that, honey?”

  “Nothing.”

  Bob watched his family scamper off, but he didn’t move. He wished he could just get in the car and drive away. He looked at the driver’s seat. What would happen if he did that?

  The sweet scents of wildflowers warred with pungent exhaust smells, but overpowering both, the powerful aromas of juniper and pine commanded attention. They made Bob think of a gin and tonic, his favorite drink. “It tastes like an evergreen tree,” Wanda had said the first time he made her one. After that, she started calling gin and tonic “that tree drink,” and eventually, she shortened it to “a tree.” “Make me a tree,” Wanda would say occasionally after the kids were asleep on Friday nights.

  He could use “a tree” right about now.

  Suddenly he got shoved from behind. A kid yelled, “Sorry,” as Bob staggered into the side of his minivan. Clutching the open second-row door, he noticed an overweight, sweating, middle-aged man wrestle with multiple duffel bags and suitcases. The man met Bob’s eye, and Bob gave him a sympathetic smile. Then Bob shut the minivan’s doors and looked around.

  He was immediately sorry that he did.

  Taking in the camp from behind the driver’s seat and watching his family spill from the minivan with uncontained enthusiasm had been bad enough. Seeing the whole of this purgatory in one wide angle was practically unbearable.

  Kids ran all over, like they’d been given a drug that rendered them senseless but kept them in perpetual motion. Men were morphing into pack mules; sweating dads staggered around under the weight of their burdens. Moms were socializing and organizing. In the midst of the chaos, camp counselors blew whistles and shouted incomprehensible instructions.

  Bob tried to decipher what they were saying, but he couldn’t. Steeling himself, he approached a pony-tailed blonde, blue-eyed counselor. She blew her whistle when he was just four feet away from her. The high-pitched screech catapulted into his ears and zigzagged around his brain for several seconds before he could speak.