Camp So-And-So

by Mary McCoy

  Therefore, it was with grave horror that Iffy discovered on the eve of judging that Beau had been correct all along. Iffy had just settled into the pod he’d designed for himself—it was the largest and the nicest, with both the best view and the most privacy—when he heard a creaking sound, then a snap. His pod separated from the branch that had supported it and fell four feet before catching between two sturdy boughs. Iffy scrambled out of the pod just in time to see it roll off the end of the branch and crash to the ground, where it splintered to bits.

  It was then that he saw his treehouse as it must have looked to Beau, as it would certainly look to the judges the next day. As it truly was, not as it existed in his imagination. The structures were precarious, the construction was not square, the bridges that connected the pods sagged. Nothing beyond the staircase and grand entrance, both of which had been constructed by Beau, was any good at all.

  Spite and bile filled his heart. He was furious, but it was the night before judging, and it was too late to do anything about it. He had been wrong, and now his cabin was going to lose the trophy, and Iffy would have to go home and explain to his father why the scion of Yancey Corp. had come in dead last not only against his wealthy peers, but also against a camp full of plumbers’ sons and bus drivers’ daughters. His father would be disappointed and disgusted, and then he would go back to ignoring Iffy. Again.

  It was more than he could stand. And so, under the cover of night, Iffy sneaked to the equipment shed; stole some rags, kerosene, and archery gear; and shot flaming arrows into the oak tree. Then he fled back to his cabin and, on the morning of the final judging, joined his cabinmates in looking shattered and dumbstruck at the sight of their masterpiece in ashes.

  “It must have been Beau,” said the boy Iffy had placed in charge of espionage and sabotage.

  The others murmured in agreement that Beau had been jealous and disgruntled and hostile to their cause. Iffy did nothing to dissuade them of the notion—not even when Beau appeared in the clearing, his eyes fixed not on the smoldering remains of the oak tree but on the splintered pod that had fallen out of the tree, and correctly surmised what Iffy had done.

  His eyes met Iffy’s and he shook his head, saying, “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

  Iffy was startled at being found out so easily, then worried about what Beau might do with the information.

  He turned to his friends, narrowed his eyes, and said, “Get him.”

  The boys descended upon Beau, beating him savagely with their fists and feet. Never much of a fighter, Iffy hung back, watching with a sick smile on his face as the carnage unfolded. Beau might have been killed had the judges not shown up then and the boys come back to their senses and stepped back in horror to see what they had done. As it was, Beau was hospitalized for the rest of the summer with a damaged spleen, a broken jaw, and a skull fracture. By the time he could talk again, he had decided it was best not to speak up about Iffy Yancey and what he had done.

  Though he’d spurred the others to action, Iffy had kept his own hands clean in the melee, and so it was he who made his case to the judges that because of the act of sabotage, the integrity of the whole contest was soiled and it would be unfair to award a trophy to anyone. And because his name was on the camp and because the parents were beginning to arrive, and questions were being asked about what had happened to Beau, and charges were being pressed, the judges agreed.

  A Note from the Narrator: No one was very happy with how my story turned out, and no one would listen when I tried to explain how little I’d had to do with any of it. My understanding of Robin’s role, of Tania’s, of the stagehands’, was rudimentary then compared to now, but they’d played no role in the sabotage, the fire, the beating, the tragic ending to my harmless little treehouse story.

  Everything that had happened that summer, Inge F. Yancey IV brought about on his own.

  CABIN 2

  KILLER IN THE WOODS

  [SCENE: When her cabinmates were swept up in Abigail’s net, WALLIS panicked, fled, and now finds herself quite alone in the forest.]

  Wallis ran through the woods in a mindless panic. She crashed through branches and the low, thorny scrub until her arms and legs were latticed with cuts, not caring whether the next clearing in the forest contained a SWAT team, another trap, or Abigail herself.

  Had the adrenaline that coursed through her body and fueled her flight existed in unlimited quantities, nothing could have contained her. But, as adrenaline always does, it ran out. One moment, she was racing through the forest; the next, she was crumpled in a heap, her legs useless, her muscles the consistency of pulled taffy.

  As Wallis gulped air into her raw, singed lungs, the terrible thing she had done began to dawn on her. She curled her legs up to her chest and rolled onto her side with an ear pressed to the ground. She could hear the chewing, rustling, skittering sounds of insects and snakes going about their morning business. At first, it was creepy, but after a few minutes, Wallis began to find it soothing.

  Maybe I can just stay here forever, she thought, closing her eyes. I’ll never have to face them again, and no one else will have to know what I did. Because I’ll be here, alone, until I die, which will probably be soon.

  The worst part was, Wallis knew she didn’t deserve to be the one who lived. Her cabinmates had needed her, and she’d abandoned them. She’d panicked, and while it was only a momentary lapse, it was still the worst thing she had ever done.

  Abigail would come for her, would find her separated from the others, and then she’d shoot her full of arrows, or string her up by the heels and cut out her eyes, or blow her to bits.

  She swallowed hard and forced herself to sit up. If death was coming, she wanted to see it coming. She wanted to meet it with honor, not with her face buried in a pile of leaves.

  You know, if it’s honor you’re so concerned about, you could always go back for them, you unbelievable moron.

  How long had it been since she ran away? The sun was up now, but it had certainly been less than an hour. Sitting there in the dirt, she realized it was a little premature to resign herself to death—or her cabinmates, for that matter. They’d managed to stay alive in the woods for an entire night. There was no justifying what she’d done, but the only way out of the whole mess, if there was a way out, was to get up off the ground.

  As Wallis pulled herself to her feet and started to run back toward the clearing, two sets of visions ran through her mind. In the first, the girls from Cabin 2 greeted her with contempt, despising her because of the unforgivable thing she’d done. In the second, no one greeted her at all because they were all dead.

  Wallis blinked her eyes shut and forced herself to stop thinking about it. Instead, her mind went where it always went when it needed to escape—to the last scene of the fifth book in the Isis Archimedes series, the scene where Isis Archimedes is unambiguously, unquestionably murdered by her archenemy, S’ulla, two books before the series was supposed to end.

  Once again, she let her mind drift down avenues she’d already explored, looking for something she’d missed the first time around. Necromancy didn’t work in Isis’s world, nor could she have shifted away at the last minute. The room was bound, and her magic didn’t work there. If she really had been killed, maybe she could fight her way out of the realm of the dead in the sixth book . . . but somehow, that didn’t feel right to Wallis either. If Eurydice Horne ever wrote the sixth book, Wallis hoped she wouldn’t go in that direction.

  The mental exercises ended the way they did back at home: Isis Archimedes was dead, and Wallis couldn’t see a way that she wasn’t.

  These reflections kept her mind occupied until she’d run back through the woods and returned to the clearing to find . . . nothing at all. The net hung from a stout hickory branch, empty.

  At first, Wallis thought that Abigail must have captured her cabinmates. Her legs turned to water under her and she sat down hard. But quickly enough, she realized that didn’t make sense. If
Abigail had come for them, there would have been some sign—arrows, hints of a struggle, blood.

  The light in the forest was soft and gray now, and Wallis got on her hands and knees and crawled into a thicket near the tree where the net was strung up. She followed the tangle of cords and pulleys until she found a great wooden spool and crank wound with lengths of rope. Wallis reached into her pocket for her Swiss army knife and cut down the ropes so that the trap could not be reset. The remnants of the net fell into the clearing.

  When Wallis bent down to inspect them, she saw that the girls from Cabin 2 had cut themselves free. Of course, that didn’t mean they were okay, she told herself. It was an awfully long way to fall, and while—encouragingly—there was not a pile of bodies beneath the net, it was possible that at least one of them had been injured when they jumped to the ground. If that had happened, Abigail would have a much easier job tracking them through the woods. Unless, Wallis thought grimly, the rest of Cabin 2 was like her and not above leaving behind a fallen cabinmate.

  Wallis circled the clearing until she found a spot in the brush where the twigs bowed out and a few had been peeled back to reveal the soft green wood beneath the bark. Beyond them, she saw the unmistakable beginnings of a footpath. They must have gone this way.

  There was an unusual number of ravens in the woods. At first, Wallis noticed one every few paces. After half an hour of walking, she began to notice them on every tree. A shower of pine needles fell to the ground in front of her as a well-fed raven came in to roost. Wallis looked up and saw that it held something in its beak.

  “Hey,” Wallis shouted up at the bird.

  It cawed in reply, and when it did, the thing in its mouth fluttered to the ground. Wallis picked it up, and her heart sank when she saw the blood-soaked strip of bandage.

  It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. It might have gotten snagged on a branch. It might have been from three summers ago. It didn’t have to be Shea’s, and even if it was, it didn’t mean the worst.

  The woods were thick with ravens now. Wallis was afraid to look at them, not wanting to know what other things they carried in their beaks. At some point, she realized, she had lost the girls’ trail and was now mostly following the sounds of these scavenger birds.

  The woods thinned, and up ahead, Wallis could see light shining through the tree trunks. She paused, half afraid to see what lay beyond them, then pulled aside the brambles and stepped into the clearing.

  I’ve been here before, she thought. It had been dark and she’d been on horseback at the time, running for her life, but Wallis recognized the cave and the pony trail. They’d seen a hideous creature there, and before they could slow their horses down, they’d trampled it flat.

  Now, every rock, every ledge, every craggy spot around the cave entrance was covered with perching ravens. The noise they made was awful, and the smell was worse, though, to be fair, the ravens were not to blame for that. Wallis crossed the pony trail—looking both ways first—and approached the mouth of the cave. Lying before it were the picked-over remains of what might have once been some sort of reptile or insect creature, but was now just a bloody, smelly mess of scales and legs. Thankfully, nothing human seemed to be mixed in with it.

  “Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone here?”

  There was no answer, but as Wallis explored the area, it was clear that several people had been here, and not long ago. There were footprints everywhere, and at the base of the craggy rock wall, the dust was soaked with blood. Leading away from the cave, the carcass, and the blood was a single tire track, too thick to belong on a bicycle.

  What had happened here, Wallis wondered, and where was everyone now?

  From a long way off in the distance, she heard a series of clipped, staccato caws. A raven sitting on a rock in front of the cave laid down the scrap of intestines it was eating and cocked its head to the side with great interest. One by one, the rest of them followed suit, and soon, every raven on the path, by the mouth of the cave, and on the craggy rocks had gone completely still and silent.

  “What’s wrong?” Wallis asked, forgetting for a moment that the ravens couldn’t answer her.

  The big raven that had been eating intestines flew up to the highest rock, tossed back its head, and burst forth with an oration that held all the other ravens at attention. Wallis could have sworn it was giving them orders—and they seemed to be listening.

  When the raven finished cawing, there was a rustle of wings and a cacophony of raven chatter, and then, as one, they rose from the rock face of the cave like the sail of a pirate ship riding up the mast. They flew up past the treetops and disappeared from view. Wallis couldn’t even tell which direction they’d flown, and she wondered whether something had frightened them away, whether she was in danger if she stayed here.

  Wallis sat down on a rock near the mouth of the cave. The woods felt empty now, and she felt more alone than ever.

  It was fitting that she’d end up here, Wallis thought. After all, this was the place. The place where the other campers had left Abigail in Oscar’s story. The place where she had gone crazy after being left.

  If the story was true, it was probably a significant place for Abigail. Maybe she lived there now or brought her victims there. If Wallis wanted to find her friends, the cave seemed like a good place to look for them, though the thought of going inside by herself made her heart race. What if she lost her way? What if she were driven mad, just as Abigail had been?

  Of course, had you not abandoned your friends like a twitchy little coward, you wouldn’t even be here, Wallis thought.

  At that moment, Wallis realized that she’d called the other girls in Cabin 2 her friends, and meant it.

  In the next moment, she felt herself tap into the veins of the story—of their story—the way she sometimes did. The way she’d known that Oscar wasn’t going to save them, that the horses weren’t going to bring them out of the forest; the same way she’d known those things, Wallis suddenly knew that Abigail was not going to kill her.

  She recognized the story she and the rest of Cabin 2 were supposed to be part of, the story of the killer in the woods. There were hundreds of low-budget popcorn stories like that, and they all played out the same way: girls scream; girls run; girls get separated; girls get picked off one by one. Maybe it was an arrow through the neck or a hatchet between the eyes. Maybe one girl survives. Maybe not. There were variations, but that was the basic gist of it.

  Once upon a time, a girl was abandoned in a cave, and when she came back, something about her was broken. So she murdered a camper, then she murdered a counselor, then she blew up a truck, and she laid barbed-wire traps and nets in the woods.

  Some of the things that had happened to them fit right into that story, but what had happened here last night, when she and the girls from Cabin 2 rode their horses down this trail and mowed down a gigantic spider-snake—that didn’t belong.

  Wallis might have thought she’d made the whole thing up. It had all happened so fast that in her panic and hysteria, she’d barely had time to think about it. But the evidence lay before her, with scales and fangs and hairy legs and beady eyes, and Wallis knew that a beast like that had no business being in a story about a psychotic slasher chasing girls through the woods.

  There was another force driving this story—Wallis was sure of it. It wasn’t Abigail; it wasn’t the question of whether the five of them would escape from her clutches. It was bigger than that.

  The cave beckoned to her, promising answers, and Wallis, who could never resist a story she didn’t know the ending to, took a step inside. She trusted herself, and she trusted where this story was taking her. Maybe she was going to meet her death in this place, but it wasn’t going to be at the hands of Abigail.

  Was there even an Abigail? They’d never seen her. For all Wallis knew, maybe there had never been any such person.

  Before she could change her mind, she took another step.

  She inched throug
h the cave’s winding passageways, using her flashlight to navigate, although it was hardly necessary. The high vaulted chambers of the cave were made of limestone so white, they seemed to glow in the dark.

  Deeper in the cave, there came a sound. It was a sound like chains dragging on rock. It was the sound of something that knew Wallis was there. It was the sound of something that wanted her to know it knew. She froze, turned off her flashlight, and clutching it like a weapon, scanned the chambers for any flicker of motion.

  The sound of the chains grew louder with each corner she turned. Wallis passed through one chamber, then another, and finally one more, until she came to a wooden door, soggy with rot. Behind it, the chains went silent.

  Wallis kicked the door open and held her flashlight aloft.

  It was not a large room, but every inch of every wall was covered in thousands of mirrors, each one no bigger than a deck of playing cards. Wallis saw a bench in the center of the room that had been taken over by mosses and molds and bat guano. The other thing she saw in the room, chained to the bench, clad in rags, undernourished, not very fresh-smelling, and babbling all these things to herself like a crazy person, dear friends, was the face she’d seen on the back inside flap of every Isis Archimedes book, the face she’d looked at when she thought about the books she’d someday write that would have her own picture printed on the back.

  A Note from the Narrator: I’d never much cared for that picture. Much too moody and self-important, the way I’m staring off into the distance, like the photographer just happened to catch me in the middle of a critical thought. It was the kind of photograph that, at a certain point in my life, I thought an author was supposed to have.