Lunacy Lake

by Kathi Daley

  Edris suggested that Ellie and I each team up with one of our girls for the ride down. Ellie looked hesitant, but Alex offered to go with her, which seemed to give her confidence. Alex suggested they go next, and the only pairs left to go down after them were Pepper and me, and then Hera and Edris.

  When Ellie and Alex were halfway down the mountain the zip line suddenly stopped. The two of them swayed precariously back and forth hundreds of feet over the ground while I tried to keep my heart from stopping entirely.

  “What happened?” I asked Hera as I watched Alex and Ellie swaying over the ground beneath them.

  “It looks like the braking system malfunctioned.” Hera was trying to look confident, but I could tell that she was far from certain what to do next. “It’s okay. They won’t fall. Give me a minute and I’ll see if I can get it fixed.”

  I held my breath as Ellie and Alex continued to dangle over the rocky ground. Ellie was screaming, but Alex looked to be okay. I could see her talking to Ellie, who eventually stopped screaming. After that, the swaying seemed to decrease somewhat.

  “Hang on,” Calliope called up to them from her position at the bottom of the zip line. “I’m working on getting it freed up, but it might take me a few minutes.”

  Alex called down that they were fine and would be all right hanging on until they were able to continue.

  After a bit I could sense that both Hera and Edris, who were up on the mountain with Pepper and me, were starting to panic. They’d tried everything they knew to do and seemed to be completely stumped.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked again, “Why can’t you get the system to restart?”

  “I don’t know,” Hera answered. “We know that the brake is stuck, and it happens sometimes, but we can usually jiggle it free. Nothing is working now. I think we’ll need to get help.”

  “How long with that take?” I asked.

  “Someone will have to hike down the mountain, and then whoever is sent to help will have to get back up to this spot. Honestly, it could take hours.”

  I knew that Ellie was not going to make it up there for hours. “What exactly needs to happen to fix the brake?”

  “There is a safety switch where the harness meets the zip line; that’s what seems to be jammed. It can be released manually, but someone is going to have to release it from above.”

  I looked up at the line that was stretched across the canyon. “I don’t think Ellie is going to make it. We need to get them down right now.”

  Edris answered, “I’d suggest that one of the two who are stuck detach her harness from the safety line and try to work it free, but your friend seems to be pretty upset. Maybe the girl can—”

  “No. I’ll do it. Do you have a pair of gloves?”

  “Gloves?”

  “Climbing gloves will be fine.”

  “I have some,” Hera said. “But why do you want them?”

  “My plan, crazy as it may seem, is to loop my legs around the wire and hang on with my hands. Then I’ll crawl down the line, fix the safety switch, and hopefully piggy back on Ellie and Alex’s ride the rest of the way down.”

  “Are you crazy?” Edris screeched.

  “I have been called that a time or two. Do you have something I can use as a safety harness? An actual safety harness would work best, but a leather strap or a belt would work. Maybe even a rope. Something that will hold my weight and not break?”

  Even though my idea might have seemed foolish, just the fact that I had one seemed to have calmed Edris, who said, “I have a rope in my backpack.”

  “Wait,” Hera said. “I have a climbing belt.”

  “The climbing belt should be even better.”

  My heart pounded while I waited for Hera to return with the belt. I may have seemed confident when I was explaining my plan to the goddesses, but I so didn’t want to do it. But I really didn’t think that I had a choice. Alex would be okay just hanging there until we came up with a better plan or help arrived, but I was afraid Ellie would freak out completely if I didn’t get her down soon.

  Once I had Hera’s belt, I looped it over the wire, then secured it around my body. Next I looped my legs over the wire, hung on with my gloved hands, and began to work my way down to Alex and Ellie. As I climbed along the cord that had been stretched down the mountain, I reminded myself, as I had told Ellie, not to look down. If I got in trouble, I was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone else in the group who would be equipped to help me.

  I only began to panic once when the cord groaned and vibrated under my hands. I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but I was pretty sure I needed to hurry. I took a deep breath and continued down the line. My arms were beginning to shake, but had no choice but to hang on and keep going toward Alex and Ellie.

  “Do you have room for a hitchhiker?” I asked when I reached them.

  Ellie was completely frozen with fear, but Alex smiled. “Do you have a plan?” she asked.

  “I do. Sort of. There is a safety switch on the wire that is stuck. I’m going to try to work it loose manually. Once I do that, you should be able to continue on your way down the mountain just as you were going before you got stuck. I’m not sure I can crawl all the way to the bottom, though, so I am going to release my makeshift harness and attach it to you. Once the release is freed up, I’m going to try to ride down the mountain with you.”

  “What if you miss?” Alex asked.

  “I won’t miss.”

  Alex suddenly looked terrified, but she nodded. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

  I took a deep breath and chanced a peek at the rocks below me. I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and focused on Alex. “When I free myself from the belt, I need you to unbuckle it and then attach it to your harness. As soon as it is attached, we are going to loop it around my body and then you need to secure it as tightly as you can.”

  Alex nodded. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  I slipped out of the belt. Alex unbuckled it, then grabbed it and looped it though her own harness. When that was done, I let go with my legs and dangled by my hands from the line so she could get the belt around my waist. When she had it secured, I let go with one hand while still hanging on with the other. I pulled myself up just a bit so my free hand could release the safety. The minute I did, the harness began to move. I had to let go with my other hand and grab on to Alex before I fell. Thanks to a lifetime on the monkey bars, I was able to do just as I planned. By the time we reached the ground I thought I was the one who was going to pass out, but I managed to hold it together.

  Calliope and I had a quick conversation. We decided that it was too risky for Pepper, Hera, and Edris to come down on the zip line, so those of us who had already come down the zip line continued on while the three above us went back the way they’d come.

  “Oh my God. I have never been so scared in my entire life,” Ellie said after we were underway. “There were so many times when you could have lost your grip and fallen to your death.”

  “I wasn’t going to fall. I wouldn’t traumatize you and Alex that way.”

  Ellie squeezed my hand. “You are crazy, do you know that?”

  “Maybe. But I’ve stayed in shape. I climb, run, swim, and even still play on the monkey bars at the elementary school once in a while. I had a good chance of making it out alive. Better than anyone else. It had to be me.”

  “We could have waited for help to arrive.”

  “That would have taken hours, and really, I was fine. Although I am hungry. I hope we stop for lunch soon.” I will admit that I wasn’t quite as unaffected by my experience as I was letting on, but the last thing I wanted to do was cause Ellie any more worry than she’d already experienced.

  After we’d walked for a while, we came to a crystal-clear pool. Calliope announced that this was where we would stop for lunch. Everyone other than Ellie seemed to have moved past the excitement caused by the broken zip line. Ah, the resiliency of youth.

  “I’m going to have another chat wi
th Calliope,” I said to Ellie. “She is the only staff person with us now, so I feel like it is an opportunity to see what she knows about Ainsley’s death.”

  Ellie nodded. “Okay. I’ll just wait here in the shade.”

  Most of the girls had decided to take a swim, so Calliope happened to be sitting alone on a flat rock with her feet in the water. I took off my shoes and joined her.

  “Beautiful day,” I said.

  She smiled. “It is. Are you okay? I think if I had done what you did, I’d be a puddle of goop now.”

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. “Not that I’d like to repeat the experience, but I’m fine. Has that ever happened before?”

  Calliope frowned. “Yes and no. I’m sure Adira would kill me for saying anything to you, but the truth of the matter is that some of the equipment at the camp isn’t in the best repair. We had a similar situation a couple of months ago, but the line was only stuck for a couple of minutes and then it released itself. The two girls riding the zip line down were scared but never in any real danger. We’d been told that the line was serviced and everything was working properly but apparently that is yet another lie.”

  “Another lie?”

  Calliope sighed. “Again, I shouldn’t say anything about it, but you did just risk your life to save those two riders. I suppose I owe you this much. It’s known among those of us who have been around a while that the company that runs the camp is hurting financially. Adira tries to put on a good face, but the goddesses have all noticed that the equipment isn’t being maintained, the quality of the food is not what it once was, and any of us who even hint at wanting a raise are fired and replaced. There are only three of us other than Adira and Isis who have been here longer than a year. Even the current cook and her assistant are new hires. The ones we had before quit.”

  “Had Ainsley been one of the goddesses who had been around for a while?”

  She nodded. “I guess that other than Adira and Isis, Electra has been around the longest. Ainsley and I both started at about the same time. Athena and Ceres started last summer and Venus and the kitchen crew just started this spring.”

  “Have there been any accidents or problems like the one on the zip line?” I asked.

  “One of the girls in a previous group broke both her legs while climbing and a counselor Goddess Maia, turned up missing last session. She was one of my best friends. One day she didn’t show up for breakfast, so I went to her cabin to look for her. She wasn’t there, so I told Isis that she was missing. At first Isis thought she was probably just playing hooky, but when Maia didn’t show up by the next day, we called the local police and they conducted a pretty thorough search. It’s been ten days and they still haven’t found her. Adira says that she probably wandered away from the camp and got lost.” Calliope looked me in the eye. “She didn’t get lost. She knew her way around. Something happened to her. Something bad.”

  Okay, this seemed to be a very relevant piece of information. A goddess went missing ten days ago, and then yesterday another one died in the sauna. Seemed unlikely that both were random incidents. “Do you think someone from the camp hurt Maia?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Has anyone else gone missing?” I asked.

  “A couple of counselors quit without giving any notice, but I don’t suppose that is the same as going missing.”

  “And when did that happen?”

  “Early on in the season. It might even have been during the first session. They’d barely even started and then the next thing we knew, Adira was announcing they’d quit and their replacements were being interviewed. I know this job isn’t for everyone, but it still struck me as odd that both of the new goddesses quit on the same day.”

  “Do you remember their names?”

  “Rhea and Thalia.”

  “Do you know their real names?”

  “No. I’m sorry; I don’t.”

  “Do you know the real names of any of the goddesses?”

  She shook her head. “Only a couple. Our goddess names become our real names once we find our inner power. It is the only name we go by when we are here at the camp, or anywhere else if we’re representing the company. The staff who lives at the camp all summer grow close, but we are strongly discouraged from trading personal information. The company doesn’t even want there to be any emails among the goddesses. It’s always seemed pretty restrictive to me, but I suppose they have their reasons for it.”

  “I suppose,” I said, and I was sure Calliope could tell I didn’t actually agree. “Do all the goddesses honor this, or do they cheat?”

  Calliope tilted her head slightly. “Both. I think most of the girls follow the letter of the law at first, but relationships evolve and the exchange of personal information is the natural progression of things. I have only exchanged personal information with Edris. We share a cabin and, in a way, she is like a sister to me.”

  “I understand that. And don’t worry, I won’t say anything about it.” I tossed a rock into the water. “After Maia disappeared, was there any talk of canceling this session?”

  Calliope shook her head. “No. Like I said, everyone is saying she just wandered off and got lost. No one other than me seems to think that something else might have happened to her. No, actually that isn’t true. There are a few others who have questioned the idea that she simply wandered away. But Adira was adamant that what happened to her was just a terrible accident, that accidents do occur sometimes, and that it would be a bad idea for any of us to talk about it. I’m sure we all understand that if we don’t want to lose our jobs we’ll be quiet about it.”

  I put my hand on Calliope’s arm. “I’m sorry about your friend. If it has only been ten days, she could still be alive. I hope they find her.”

  “Yeah. Me too. No one from the camp is even looking anymore, but I imagine that her family hasn’t given up.”

  “Has anyone been up to interview you all? Local law enforcement, or maybe the local search and rescue group?”

  “I haven’t spoken to anyone. To be honest, I never even saw anyone from one or the other. It was Adira who told us that Maia was being looked for when she first disappeared, and she was the one who told us that the search had been unsuccessful.”

  Okay, this whole thing was very strange. And when you were sitting on top of a mountain with a bunch of teenagers, no way of communicating with the outside world, and no way down, strange was the last thing you wanted to confront.

  At least the rest of the hike was uneventful. There was a leap off a waterfall we were all challenged to take, but after the morning we’d had, it felt like a cakewalk. In fact, in my opinion it was downright fun. If not for all the truly alarming things going on, I’d be having a wonderful time. Ellie and I decided to skip the group meeting that afternoon, but we planned to have dinner with Alex and Pepper. In the meantime, I planned to take that long soak in the tub I’d had to skip to think about the information Calliope had provided. My Zodar was screaming by this point and I was pretty much convinced that something very weird was going on.

  Chapter 7

  I was somewhat surprised when Goddess Venus showed up on our doorstep during the afternoon empowerment session. I hadn’t spoken to her individually before, and she wasn’t part of our group today, so I wasn’t sure why she wanted to talk to me, let alone know exactly who I was.

  “I heard about what you did to save the guests on the zip line,” she began. “I wasn’t sure if you were who I thought you were, but then I heard about what you did and I knew.”

  I frowned. “Huh?”

  “My real name, when I’m not here pretending to be Goddess Venus, is Anastasia Anderson. I used to live in Ashton Falls. Not for long. Less than a year, really, but I remembered you from the animal shelter. I adopted my best buddy, Herman, there. I remember hearing that you were an amateur sleuth who went around saving people, like some kind of superhero.”

  I smiled. A superhero. I liked the sound of that. “I don’t kno
w that I would qualify as a superhero, but you are right about the sleuthing thing.” I stepped aside. “Come on in.”

  She entered the cabin and greeted Ellie, who was sitting on the sofa. I introduced the pair and then offered Anastasia a seat on the chair that angled toward the center of the room.

  “So, what can I do for you? I assume you have a reason for sneaking out of the empowerment session and coming to visit me?”

  “I do, but I’m not even sure where to start.”

  “How about at the beginning,” I suggested.

  She nodded. “Okay.” She began to wring her hands together nervously. “I’ve only worked here for a few months, so I can’t claim to know everything that is going on with everyone, but I will say things aren’t as I expected. You see, I took one of the weekend goddess seminars back when I was going into my junior year of high school. It really helped me and did a lot to instill confidence in me. My family traveled around a lot, so I never really had an opportunity to make close friends. After experiencing the weekend, I was able to attend the camp as a senior, and suddenly, I found a built-in family of sorts. After I graduated high school I went to college, as my parents had expected, but halfway through, I realized it wasn’t for me, so I quit and signed up for goddess school.”

  “Goddess school?” I asked.

  “It is a six-month-long training program that is held at the corporate compound in Los Angeles. If you graduate, you are eligible to apply for a position with the company. This retreat isn’t the only thing they have going. They do shorter, weekend seminars around the country like the one I took when I was a junior, and they have their own clothing and makeup lines. This camp is the premier offering of the company, though. It is a highly sought-after retreat that is designed to attract the most affluent customers.”