by Morgana Best
But Tom Trent—the man who liked to grow tall corn—was dead, and he certainly wasn’t poisoned by his garden. Well, maybe he was, but not without human help. Two of my suspects were going on the camping trip—Eliza Entwistle, who sat along with Tom on the committee for the Birds of Pray Church community garden, and Celia Watson, who also sat on the committee. While keen to keep an eye on these two, I also needed to watch Dylan, the man possessed by my mother.
My mother had never possessed a man before, either in the spiritual sense or in the natural. She was always too shrill to capture the attention of the opposite gender, and she took great pride in that little fact. I shuddered to think what was going on inside of her head now—well, inside of Dylan’s head, I supposed.
“I thought you could use the sustenance,” Basil said as I opened the front door. “And by sustenance, I meant caffeine.”
“Same thing,” I said, taking the coffee and kissing Basil on the cheek. His skin smelt like soap. In fact, his skin smelt better than soap, because it also smelt like the sun.
“There are more than two food groups, you know?” Basil set his car keys down on the coffee table and yawned. I took a huge gulp of coffee and felt my muscles release.
“Why am I going on this church camp again?” I asked.
“Your mother is currently possessing one of her boarders,” Basil replied. “That seems a good enough reason as any to go on a camping trip, I should say.”
“But bugs!” I whimpered. “Bugs and bears!”
Basil laughed. ”We don’t have bears in Australia.”
“Maybe I am about to discover that actually we do, in fact, have bears in Australia? And we do have crocodiles!”
Basil chose not to feed my hysteria. Instead he said, in a voice warm and kind, “Not this far south. What have you decided to pack?”
“I’ve packed everything you’re supposed to pack on a camping trip. Five sets of pyjamas, five pairs of slippers, three porcelain tea cups, and a matching teapot.”
Basil laughed, but then he caught the expression on my face. “Seriously?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”
Basil’s expression reflected concern. He walked past me and into the bedroom, where my suitcase lay open on the bed. I had actually packed five sets of pyjamas, five pairs of slippers, three porcelain tea cups, and a matching teapot.
“Laurel!” Basil sputtered.
“I don’t like camping,” I said, in a pale effort to defend myself.
“What does not liking camping have to do with packing five sets of pyjamas?”
“They make me feel cosy.”
“All right. Where is your tent, sleeping bag, pillow, torch, chair, table, canteen, water filter, fire starters, first aid kit, pocket knife, and compass?”
“At the store,” I replied, “seeing as I have bought none of those things.”
“You’re unprepared.”
“For camping or for life, because that statement applies to both of those things?”
Basil sighed. “Laurel, you’re not taking this seriously.”
“I’m a little preoccupied with solving a murder and my mother’s possession of Dylan Jackson.”
“Let me run to the shop and buy you everything you need.”
“Thank you,” I replied, feeling a surge of warmth for Basil. “But the bus is about to pick me up. Besides, Pastor Green said we wouldn’t need to take anything. Everything will be provided for us at the camp.”
“Do you trust him?”
“He’s Pastor Green, Basil.”
“Is he going on the trip?”
“Of course not. He has business to attend to here.”
“It will only take me twenty minutes to run down to the shops.” Basil’s face turned red. I loved how protective he became when I was involved, but I didn’t love the thought of missing the bus and letting Dylan go on the camping trip without me.
“The bus will be here in a minute,” I said.
I zipped up my suitcase, kissed Basil once on the cheek, told him to lock up after me, and practically bolted out of the funeral home. I didn’t even let him carry the suitcase for me, which I knew would annoy him, but what else could I do? The bus was already outside my mother’s home when I got there.
“I’m Tiger,” the bus driver said. He offered me his hand, which was covered in tattoos of spiders. “I’m your driver.”
I eyed him askance. “Excellent.”
Dylan was already on the bus. We were the last people Tiger was picking up, so I took the only seat available—the one right behind the driver. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach as we drove away. Maybe I should have asked Basil to come along with me? I knew he wanted to, but also I knew he had to work. I didn’t want him to lose business just because I couldn’t handle a little church camping trip. After all, how bad could it be?
It started raining as we drove out of town. I wondered if the camping ground was actually just ground, or if there were cabins set up. Maybe I could sneak into one of them and take a hot shower and make a coffee and watch some television? Maybe I could watch The Bold and the Beautiful, if only to lock down my lie that my mother had been sent to rehab for watching too many episodes.
I could hear Dylan gloating to Ian about sinners spending eternity in hell as the bus continued towards the camp. Soon, however, the rain grew too strong to hear anything besides the beating of my own heart and Tiger singing along loudly to Waterloo by ABBA, which he replayed for the duration of the drive.
When we arrived at the camping grounds, I discovered to my dismay that the word ‘ground’ was literal. There were no cabins. There was no anything, except for mud and spiders. I mean, I couldn’t see the spiders, but I knew they were there, lurking. Bidding their time. Discussing how they would kill us in our sleep and eat our bodies. Did spiders eat bodies? I didn’t know, but I was determined not to find out.
“He’s a wonderful young man, isn’t he?” Ian said, clutching my hand as we stood next to the bus, waiting for Tiger to unload all our suitcases.
“Who?” I said, pulling the hood over my head. It was only sprinkling, but sprinkling was bad enough. Sprinkling was frizzy hair and smudged mascara. I really did not need help smudging my mascara either, as I barely knew how to apply it in the first place.
“Dylan,” Ian said.
Before I could reply to him, Ian had grabbed his suitcase from Tiger and was wheeling it towards a muddy clearing.
“Where are you going?” I called after him.
“This is where we are camping,” Ian replied.
“Can’t we camp in a five star hotel?” I asked.
Ian chuckled. “Oh, Laurel. You do have the best sense of humour, no matter what Thelma says.”
“I wasn’t joking,” I replied. “Ian? I wasn’t joking!”
“You are now all unpacked,” Tiger said. “I’ll pick you up in three days.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Absolutely,” Tiger said, and he hopped in the bus and closed the door.
I banged on the glass. “You can’t leave me here,” I yelled. “You can’t leave me here with these people! Look at them! They are happy! They are happy outside! I am scared!”
Tiger blew me a kiss and drove away. Soon I found myself huddled beneath a tree, watching Ian and Dylan laugh with each other as they set up the tents. There were seven tens in total, each made of canvas, and they were set up in a circle. I ducked inside my tent, which I was sharing with Eliza, a possible homicidal maniac and, I had on good authority, a snorer. Now, I could put up with a murderer, but I was not about to sleep next to a snorer, which is why I had packed earplugs. They were stashed safely inside my teapot.
“Laurel.” Ian stuck his head inside my tent. “Laurel, come outside and partake in fellowship. Do you want to make s’mores?”
“No.”
“I’ll get you a marshmallow.”
I let Ian drag me out of the tent and shove a stick in my hand. On the stick was a marshmallo
w, and I could sympathise with being on the pointy end. I almost felt a little too sympathetic towards the marshmallow and didn’t want to eat it, then my stomach rumbled and I stopped caring.
Ian had set up chairs around a crackling bonfire. I had to admit the fire was nice, and for a moment there I felt at peace, watching the flames crack. Then I stuck the marshmallow straight into the flames.
Now, I had never been camping a day in my life. My mother liked to say that pride became before a fall, but I liked to think pride helped me retain my dignity, in that pride stopped me from taking bathroom breaks in the bushland.
Yes, that’s the thing people who love camping don’t like to address—the whole shuffling into woods in the cold of night, digging a hole among the spiders and snakes, to take a bathroom break. In what world is this an acceptable—nay, enjoyable—pastime? Who chooses to do that in the Aussie bush? Venomous brown snakes. That’s who. Venomous brown snakes and dingoes. But that is only because they don’t have indoor plumbing. Or an indoors.
And since I had never been camping, I was a little confused about how to make s’mores. In hindsight, holding the marshmallow above the flames seemed the common sense move, but I was all out of common sense. I had been camping for two hours by then and I was more than ready to return to civilisation. Instead, I just went ahead and stuck the marshmallow straight into the coals, which meant the marshmallow caught on fire.
I started to panic. I yanked the stick out of the fire and waved it around, trying to put out the marshmallow, which was emitting a tower of flames.
Instead of this putting out this fire, the marshmallow flew off the stick straight into one of the tents, setting the canvas on fire. Now, until that very night, I didn’t know just how quickly seven tents standing next to each other side by side in a circle could be engulfed with flames. I guess camping was a little more educational than I had previously given camping credit for.
We huddled together as the tents burnt down, and then I clapped my hands together and reached for my phone.
“I guess I’ll just call Tiger,” I said. Then I remembered my phone was in the tent. “Err, does anyone have a phone?”
No one did. No one was mad at me either, which slightly infuriated me, actually. If Ian had accidentally set fire to our tents with an incendiary marshmallow, I’d have strangled him. So now I had no tent and no moral high ground. I hated camping.
I really hated camping.
“I suppose we could all huddle together,” Eliza said. “It’ll be an adventure.” She yawned and grunted horribly.
“Not all adventures are good adventures,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t think I had the right.
Instead, I said, “What fun.” Then I remembered my earplugs were in the tent, gone too, along with all five sets of comfy pyjamas.
Chapter 11
I spent a sleepless night huddled together with the rest of the campers for warmth. Eliza snored the whole time, but that’s not why I failed to sleep. No, I could still smell the crisp tents and the melted phones, which reminded me of my desperate shame. Who knew marshmallows could be so dangerous? And why do Americans fear Australia, with our spiders and snakes, when it was their s’mores burning down innocent little camps?
Around dawn, and after painfully conceding that a Hemsworth brother wasn’t going to burst out of the woods and carry me to safety in his massive arms, I pushed Eliza off me and stood. There wasn’t much left to salvage from the camp, although I did find a half melted chocolate bar. For a moment I considered sharing the bar with the others—maybe we could ration the chocolate?—but then I shoved the whole thing in my mouth, sat on a log, and sobbed. Why hadn’t I listened to Basil? If I’d just let him run to the shops, I would have a water filter now. I would have a pocket knife and a compass. Wait—no, those would have also burned with the tents.
“Laurel?”
It was Ian. I swallowed the chocolate and tried to look innocent. “Ian, hi.”
“Hello, Laurel. I wanted to thank you on behalf of the camp for the gift you have given us.”
“You’re welcome,” I said instinctively. Then, “What gift?”
“I have a minor confession. In my suitcase I had packed several fine cheeses.”
I straightened. “I love cheese!”
“Limburger cheese uses Brevibacterium linens to ferment the cheese.”
“I love linen!” I said.
“It’s considered one of the world’s finest cheeses. But that’s not all. I had also packed a certain cheese so we could have chargrilled sandwiches with sauteed mushrooms and melted Caprino Romano cheese.”
“But,” I whimpered, “that doesn’t sound like camping food?”
“All of that potential camping fun, all of those cheeses, well, it made me think of Luke Chapter twelve, verses thirty-two to thirty-four: ‘Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ Do you see what I mean, dear?”
I grunted by way of response.
A sanctimonious look passed over Ian’s face. “We can now spend two more nights living a humble and honest life. We can fish, we can hunt, and we can gather water from the stream. Yes, even if we die of starvation, it will be a glorious death!”
“This escalated very quickly.”
Ian beamed. “Thank you, Laurel. For showing me what is truly important. Now, let’s go kill a snake.”
“A snake?”
Ian frowned. “We have to eat, Laurel.”
“Let’s eat the chargrilled sandwich.”
“Most of our supplies burnt.”
“It’s literally called a chargrilled sandwich.”
“Morning,” Eliza said, approaching us. “What are you talking about?”
“Sharpen a stick, Eliza. We’re going hunting.” Ian clapped his hands together and went to get the others.
Eliza sat on the log beside me. “Do I want to know what that was about?”
“Absolutely not,” I replied.
“There’s a town not too far from here.”
“A town?” The fear in my stomach subsided a little. “A town-town with town things, like coffee shops?”
“No, it’s a petrol station in the middle of nowhere, but it has coffee and food. And, look, I keep my money in this bag. So it didn’t burn down when you set fire to the tents.” Eliza patted her bag. “I’ll buy you a coffee. We’ll tell Ian we went hunting and keep this our little secret. What do you say, Laurel?”
I didn’t care if she was the murderer. I loved her. I would help her flee the police. Change her name. Start a new life.
Three hours later, we arrived back at camp caffeinated, and fed. The petrol station had been tiny, but to me it felt like a wonderful oasis.
“We had no luck finding a snake,” I told Ian, trying to look sad. “Better luck next time, I guess. Did you happen to catch a snake?”
“No, but we found something better. We’ve been licking the moss of trees,” Ian told me. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Superb.”
“Now we’re nourished,” Dylan said, “Why don’t we all sit in a circle, hold hands, and sing?”
“Yes,” Celia said. “That sounds like a marvellous idea.”
Does it? I thought, but I didn’t say anything. I could still smell the crispy tents, so the guilt was too real. At least it wasn’t raining today. “Your skin looks lovely today, Celia,” I said instead.
She glared at me. “Yes, well, I use a very expensive face cream. It is my one vanity. It costs three hundred dollars and I have it sent from Paris. That is in France.”
“I know where Paris is, actually.”
“It’s made from organic Aloe Vera.”
“That’s nice.”
Celia nodded. “It is rather. Thankfully, I saved my jar from the tent before your actions”—she glared at me even harder—“made everything bur
n down.”
“Err, I might just study some trees,” I said, knowing this would please Celia, who loved trees. However, she didn’t seem that impressed, pursing her lips as she watched me slowly walk backwards into the woods.
I knew I needed to keep an eye on Dylan, but truthfully I was so over camping. The petrol station’s landline had been out of order and they didn’t have mobile service, so I hadn’t been able to borrow a phone. I was stuck here until Tiger returned.
I wondered if Basil and I were somehow linked. Like twins who can feel when something happens to their sibling. I once knew a girl who felt a sharp stab in her stomach when her sister’s appendix burst. Maybe I just needed my appendix to burst, and then Basil would feel it and come racing to my rescue. Not that I needed a man to rescue me, unless he was that aforementioned Hemsworth brother. For a Hemsworth brother, a girl does like to make an exception.
I looked around. It was too much to hope that there was a secret, glorious bathroom hidden somewhere close. I had come here not to relieve myself, but to breathe. Breathe. How hard is fresh air to come by in the Aussie bush? Apparently very hard, even more so when you have a group of people loudly singing Kumbaya amongst the charred remains of their campsite.
I pulled down my knickers and squatted over what I hoped was not an ants’ nest. Or any other type of nest, really. No animal, not even a spider, deserved to see my giant looming bottom right above their quaint little home.
“Laurel!”
I got such a shock over hearing my name I fell backwards, right into a patch of what I hoped was grass. Good, old fashioned grass. Nothing more.
“Laurel?” It was Dylan. He peered down at me with my mother’s judgemental eyes.
“A little privacy, please,” I whimpered, yanking up my pants and standing. “Is everything okay?”
“Why are you sitting in a patch of stinging nettle?” he asked me.
It turned out I had fallen bottom first into a patch of stinging nettle. Suddenly, I was in agony. I looked around, searching desperately for something which would relieve the pain.