by Joey Comeau
“What?” Adrian said, turning to watch Ricky run. “Ha ha, where’s the fire?”
And then Tony was on him, bashing him in the back of the skull with the blunt side of the heavy axe, knocking him facedown to the ground. Adrian could taste the dirt, but he didn’t understand what had happened.
“What the fuck!” Gavin said, looking down at Adrian on the ground, and then up at the smiling priest and his axe.
The wire above his head shook a little under William’s weight. William was sliding toward them on the zip-line now, lifting his feet and whooping. Too much was going on for Gavin to process.
Father Tony lifted the axe up above his head and brought it down hard on the back of Adrian’s neck. Then he swung again and then again, the axe cutting into the flesh right where the boy’s spine met his head.
William landed beside Gavin, laughing hard. He stopped laughing when he saw Adrian’s body on the ground. The priest was frenzied. He hacked at Adrian’s neck again and again until he broke through the spine, and the dirt clung to the bloody axe blade like sand on wet bare feet. The body and head were separated.
Tony kicked the head. It rolled!
Gavin took off running toward the woods after Ricky, but William just stood there, his mouth agape. Tony smiled at him and tried to catch his breath, leaning on the axe handle. He held his hands out to William, palms up to show that he meant no harm. William looked at Adrian’s head in the dirt, the eyes open, the face smudged, and thought about his dog, Jeffy. Jeffy’s eyes had looked just like that when William had found him lying in the snow. Tony walked over and patted William on the shoulder. He didn’t bring the axe with him.
“I am out of shape!” Tony said. “Hoo, boy!”
“I don’t know—” William said, but he never got to finish his sentence.
Tony grabbed him by the face and pulled his knife out. He pushed William back against the wooden post of the Flying Fox and held him by the jaw. William tried to struggle free, but Tony was already pushing the blade into his throat, and there wasn’t much struggle left in him after that. The blood poured out, and William went still, and Father Tony sighed. He wiped his blade on William’s face to clean it and dropped the body in the dirt. He turned around to look for Adrian’s head.
“You were way more fun,” he said, giving the head another kick, sending it rolling and bouncing a few feet. Then the priest looked toward the woods.
“Ready or not,” Tony yelled in the direction of the two fleeing boys, “here I come!”
Joan was holding Martin’s hand again. When did that happen? They were still behind the same tree, watching as Father Tony walked into the woods where Ricky and Gavin had disappeared. They had watched everything happen, and they hadn’t helped. They hadn’t run, and they hadn’t tried to stop him. They just hid behind the tree and watched from across the camp. Or rather, Joan and Martin watched. Melissa was sitting with her back against the tree. Her eyes were closed, and her fingers were in her ears.
“We have to call for help,” she finally said, opening her eyes. She stood up. “We have to call for help. We can use the phone in the main building.” There was an edge in Melissa’s voice that made it sound louder than it was. She was shaking her head the whole time she talked. “We’ll call 911, and they’ll send people to rescue us.”
“The phones are out,” Joan said carefully. “We tried that earlier, Melissa. Do you remember?”
“Nobody is going to rescue us,” Martin said.
But Melissa pushed past them and started across the dark campground toward the main building. Joan grabbed her shoulder, but Melissa pulled free.
“We have to call for help,” Melissa said. “Somebody will protect us.”
They followed her across the field, trying again and again to grab her shoulders. But she didn’t stop until they were at the bodies. She stared at William’s corpse. Tears streamed down her face. There were two dead bodies, right there in the middle of the campground, Adrian and William, and William’s eyes were looking right at her. It felt like his eyes were looking right at her.
“Wait,” she said. “Maybe it’s a trick!” There was desperation in her voice. “How do we know it isn’t a trick?” She nudged William with her foot, but his eyes just stared blankly. “Maybe they aren’t really dead.” She couldn’t say the words without glancing over to where Adrian’s head sat, detached from his neck.
“They are dead,” Joan said. “We have to run.”
Martin reached out his own foot to nudge William’s shoulder. He didn’t know William, but he could feel fear welling up inside himself. He must have had a family somewhere. He wasn’t just a dead body in the dirt. He must have had responsibilities. Then they heard laughter coming from off in the woods. The voice echoed in the dark.
It was Tony.
“Please,” Ricky cried, off in the darkness. “Please don’t hurt me.”
And then Ricky was screaming. It echoed all around them, his screams getting higher and higher pitched, until they weren’t recognizable anymore. He kept screaming after that, too, until eventually the voice wasn’t even recognizable as human. It was like when you wrote a word over and over again until it looked alien and wrong.
“Where are all the other kids?” Martin said. All of the cabins around them were dark. The boys’ cabins sat back in the woods a bit, completely in shadow, and there were no lights from the girls’ cabins up on the ridge. “Are they down on the beach?”
“First we have to call 911,” Melissa said. She grabbed Joan’s arm. Joan kept looking at William, but took a couple stumbling steps sideways as Melissa pulled her. Finally she turned and pulled her arm free.
“There’s no phone in there, Melissa,” she said. “We have to run. We have to run away.” She pointed to the woods where the driveway led up and out of the camp. It was away from where Ricky’s screams had come from.
Melissa shook her head, and she ran. She ran straight for the main building and pulled the door wide open. Then she was gone inside. Joan and Martin were left standing in the field.
The woods around them were quiet, until they heard the sudden snap of a branch. And then a quiet chuckle off in the dark. Out in the woods, Father Tony started humming again. It was a cheerful sound, and it was impossible to tell how close he was.
“We can’t split up,” Martin said, still holding tight to Joan. “We can’t just leave her.”
They ran to the building and opened the door. It was quiet inside. They couldn’t hear Melissa anywhere. Outside the humming seemed to have stopped, and Martin wondered if Tony had heard them. He took the kitchen knife out of his pocket and held it tightly. Joan pulled hers out, too. She had a bigger knife, a large chef’s knife, and she held it like a weapon. Martin’s was smaller, but it felt satisfying in his hand. But who was he kidding? What was he going to do with it? Stab Tony? Martin pictured himself trying to stab somebody.
“Hide your knife,” Joan said. “And keep it hidden. Don’t let anyone see it until it’s too late. When you take it out, you have to use it as fast and as hard as you can. My father told me,” she said, “that most of the time, people try to scare somebody with a knife, and they end up getting their knife taken away and used on them. The knife is a surprise. You can’t give Father Tony any time to react to it.”
Martin made stabbing motions in the air and shook his head. “Oh god,” he said. “We have to get Melissa and get out of here.”
Joan took his hand. Her fingers were cold. They stood there in the dark hallway, holding hands, and listened for Melissa. The building around them was quiet. They couldn’t hear Melissa anywhere, and there was no sound from outside. Maybe if they stayed just like this, everything would be okay. This felt safe and right, with Joan holding his hand.
But it wasn’t safe at all.
Just before the top of the stairs, Melissa stopped. Adrian’s head sat on the top step staring at her. Blood dribbled down
from the neck and onto the next step down. The head had been waiting for her, Melissa was certain. It had just been sitting here on the top step waiting patiently for her. How had it gotten inside so fast?
Melissa walked down the hallway quickly. The door to Tony’s office was open and the light was on. There was no sound. Melissa peeked into the room. Tony’s office phone sat on the garbage can with its cut cord wrapped neatly around it. She had known that. Why was she here? Everything else in the office was in its place, tidy.
Behind her, Tony stepped out of the darkness of the hall, his axe already swinging through the air. Melissa had begun to drop to her knee, to sit down just for a second. Her head dropped, so that her neck was safe from the axe, but it didn’t drop far enough. The blade split her skull. Everything went black, and that was it.
With his knife, Tony tried to cut Melissa’s face off. He pushed the blade in behind her ear and he could feel it cutting through muscle and tendons, but it just wouldn’t peel away from the bone the way he had expected. It was different from Cindy’s hair. He scraped along the bone underneath the eyebrow, and finally the top section of the little girl’s face came free.
But it looked fake and plastic, stretched and pulled like this. It didn’t look like a scared little girl at all. He gripped the bottom of her jaw with his fingers and worked her mouth like a puppet.
“Tony,” Melissa said in a high-pitched voice. “Tony, I miss my friends!”
“Well what does that have to do with me?” Tony said.
“Please go murder my friends so we can all be together,” Melissa said in Tony’s falsetto. “Murder us all and then set our bodies up in front of a telescope so we can watch the stars forever and ever.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tony said. “What if they don’t want me to murder them? I kind of like that kid Martin, you know.”
“I give you permission,” Melissa said. “Murder them, murder them, murder them!”
“Oh, okay,” Tony said. “Twist my arm why don’t you.” He laughed and then let her head drop back down.
He left Melissa on the floor, a small pool of blood under her skull, half of her face drooping where it wasn’t properly attached anymore.
Joan and Martin were at the top of the stairs to the first landing when Adrian’s head rolled down and hit the wall right ahead of them. Joan put her arm out to stop Martin short. Above them, on the stairs, they could hear whimpering. Then there was a man’s voice, too, but they couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Joan held her knife in her fist tightly.
“This is it,” she said. “He’s at the top of the stairs. We know where he is, and he doesn’t know where we are. This is our chance, Martin. He’s going to find us. He found everybody else. But he can’t attack us both at the same time. If he goes after you, I will stab him from behind. If he goes after me, you have to get him, Martin. Can I count on you?”
Martin opened his mouth to answer, but then Father Tony was there beside them, grabbing Joan by the hair. She lifted the knife but Tony grabbed hold of her wrist, his huge hand covering hers, so that she still held the knife tightly but he was in control.
“Martin,” Joan said.
Tony just laughed. He used her hand to lift the knife up so that its blade was right in front of her face. She struggled against him but it was no use. He moved the knife back and forth slowly in front of her face, where she could see it. Then he jabbed the knife into her cheek, piercing the skin, but not very deeply.
Joan screamed.
“Why did you do that?” Tony asked her.
There was blood on her cheek now, where the blade had gone in. Tony jabbed her in the other cheek, his fist still around hers. And then he jabbed her again.
“Stop stabbing yourself!” Tony said. He turned and smiled at Martin, and then he made Joan stab herself in the face again. “Stop stabbing yourself!” he said, laughing.
They were small cuts, not deep. But the next jab went into her eye, and Joan let out another scream. When Tony pulled her hand and the knife away, the eye began to sag out of shape.
Martin tightened his grip on his own knife. He had to help her. Tony had his back to him, and this was his chance. He could save Joan and plunge his knife into Tony’s back. But he couldn’t move. What if Tony turned around? What if Tony grabbed him and killed him and he never saw his mother again. Martin squeezed the knife in his hand, but that was all he could do.
Joan was looking at Martin with her one good eye, helplessly. She struggled against Tony’s controlling hand, but it did no good. He made her lift the knife up again, and this time forced the blade between her lips and into her mouth. She clamped her teeth shut, but he wedged the tip in between then, prying her mouth open enough to shove the blade in deeper. Joan struggled and the priest pushed her back up against the wall, and he used both hands now, holding the knife by the handle, shoving it as hard as he could into the back of her throat.
Blood spilled out over her lips and chin, and she struggled harder. Tony twisted the knife sharply. Then twisted it the other way. He opened his hand and slammed his palm on the butt of the knife handle, driving it into her spine at the back of her throat. Joan stopped struggling. She stopped looking at Martin for help.
The priest let out a satisfied sigh, and he let her body slide to the floor, the knife handle jutting from her mouth. Joan was perfectly still, except for her left leg. Her left leg kicked a little. Then lay still. Then kicked a little.
Martin dropped his own knife and ran.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In his office, Father Tony changed into his regular clothes. He folded the wet, bloodied black shirt and pants neatly and set them on the chair with the other bloody garments. He carefully laid the bloody priest’s collar beside the others. Then he tided the office up a bit. But he didn’t clean up Melissa’s blood. The blood had to stay. It was everywhere, like someone had thrown a bloody tantrum.
“Goodnight, Comet,” he said to Melissa’s lifeless body, and he turned out the office light. Then he went down the hall and down the stairs. He took the stairs two at a time, stopping at the landing between floors, where Joan lay slumped against the wall and Adrian’s head sat staring into the corner.
“Goodnight Cupid,” he said to Joan. “Goodnight Donner,” he told Adrian. He stopped beside Adrian’s head and gave it one last gentle kick. It rolled down the stairs and Father Tony smiled. Some people went their whole lives without getting to do that.
In the dining hall he opened the door to the basement and yelled down, “Goodnight Blitzen. Goodnight Dasher and Dancer! Goodnight, goodnight!”
He locked the front door to the main building behind himself as he left. Then he walked up the driveway to the priest’s cabin, where his car was parked. He hummed quietly and cheerfully to himself as he went. Then he got in his car and drove home to his wife and children, who were asleep. He climbed into bed with his wife, and in the morning he made his children breakfast.
When the police came for Tony, they found his wife setting the table for an early lunch. The family was having chicken fingers and French fries. She set out the ketchup and the salt and the pepper. The children were playing in the back yard, shrieking with laughter, and she liked how peaceful everything felt.
And then there were men with guns everywhere. In the kitchen, in the backyard. Then snatching the children up into their arms, smashing in windows, kicking over tables, storming up the stairs, yelling, “Clear!” after every door they kicked in.
“Where is your husband?” one of the police officers demanded.
“Tony?” his wife said, shocked. “He just went to get some milk.”
They found Tony at the store, a carton of milk set on the counter in front of him. The police cruisers screeched into the corner store’s parking lot, and the clerk looked up. Tony put a five-dollar bill on the counter between them.
“Keep the change,” Tony s
aid.
Then the police were on him, screaming a bunch of conflicting orders that he could barely make out. Their faces were flushed red and they were all shouting. They shoved him facedown on the ground and handcuffed him behind his back, driving their knees into his spine. One of the policemen spat on him. They pulled him to his feet and started reading him his rights, but Tony just kept shaking his head.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, and everyone stopped to listen. “This is about those children I murdered, isn’t it?” He laughed. “Listen,” he said. “If you spare the axe, you spoil the child.”
The police spent the whole morning photographing the camp. They had a list of the campers and it was very difficult matching names to the bodies they found, or to the parts of the bodies. The counsellors were easier, because in Tony’s office they found photocopies of their ID cards, along with the background checks.
Eventually they had to ask the parents to provide photographs, and then they had to ask the parents to come in to verify the identities in person. Every one of the parents wanted to believe that their child had gotten away. It was all over the news now, and everyone knew that the girl, Courtney, had lived. It gave them hope. But nobody else had survived. And the police took turns giving the parents the news, trying to console them, and telling them that they probably didn’t want to know exactly how each camper had died.
Father Tony pulled Martin by the hair, dragging the boy toward the beach and the sound of waves. The air smelled like salt and the moon looked lovely up above the ocean. Martin fought, but the harder he fought, the more it felt like his hair was being torn out of his head. He grabbed at Tony’s hands, and tried to hold on.
The water was cold and they didn’t go out very deep before Tony stopped and let go of Martin’s hair. Tony looked around and let out a sigh.
“Look at this,” Tony said. “I’m not trying to be funny, but it makes you glad to be alive, doesn’t it? Take a minute, Martin, enjoy it.”
Martin sat in the water with the waves coming up almost to his shoulders and then rolling past him. Every wave seemed to lift him up, just a little, and carry him back away from Tony, toward land.