Hide and Shriek #14
Melissa J. Morgan
PENGUIN group (2010)
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Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Title Page
chapter ONE
chapter TWO
chapter THREE
chapter FOUR
chapter FIVE
chapter SIX
chapter SEVEN
chapter EIGHT
chapter NINE
chapter TEN
chapter ELEVEN
chapter TWELVE
chapter THIRTEEN
chapter FOURTEEN
chapter FIFTEEN
chapter SIXTEEN
chapter SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
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PROLOGUE
They’re coming, he thought as he watched the fog slowly take form above the jagged coves and uncharted crannies of mysterious Shadow Lake.
This year, he would be ready.
I made a mistake last time. I let them get away.
The fog boiled up from the water and rolled toward him. An owl hooted beneath the bone-white moon, warning the little creatures in the dark woods that danger lurked everywhere, and they had better stay alert if they wanted to survive the night. Nature could be cruel. So could fate.
His right hand—his only hand—gripped the rotted wood of the post on the porch of the old cabin. The wood pulped between his fingers in an ooze of dry rot and decay. He was still panting from his explosion of fury.
He had been down in the basement, searching for his old ax and a couple of heads. There was so much junk down there—maps of the woods, some kid’s backpack, a pair of rusted handcuffs—that he couldn’t find the heads at first. Turned out they’d rolled behind the rotted couch upstairs.
He grabbed them and the ax and hurried outside. The cabin bulged with ghosts, and he couldn’t stand being inside it longer than he had to. It should have been torn down long ago.
Soon, he promised himself.
His smile cracked the purple scars across his features. He turned his head slightly to the left. It was a habit he’d developed after he lost his left eye. His black eyepatch looked like an empty eye socket in the ebony darkness.
He took the first step down, then the next, and limped off the porch. The ax blade gleamed in the bone-white moonlight. He carried the heads by their hair.
When his boot touched the gritty earth, the frogs and crickets stopped singing. The owl cut short her beckoning hoot. The woods fell completely silent, and the pine boughs trembled.
The fog raced fearlessly toward him.
He limped toward shrouded Shadow Lake. His bones ached. He had been through so much. He had to get it right this time, so he could finally rest.
He had tied his old dinghy to a desiccated tree trunk that lay half submerged in the water. It looked like a bloated dead giant. The heavy fog gave it the illusion of floating in midair; it bobbed and tugged against the moor line as if it wanted to escape.
He knew the feeling.
He deposited the ax and the heads in the bow of the boat. They rolled together, then rolled apart, their eyes staring at him blankly. They were old friends. Friends he needed now, hopefully for the last time. He winked at them with his right eye. They did not wink back.
Then he held onto the tree trunk and stepped cautiously onto the slightly curved bottom of the dinghy. The craft wobbled as he found his balance. When he had first lost his arm, simple things like this had been nearly impossible to accomplish. But he had surmounted many hardships to achieve his ends. He had an iron will . . . and he didn’t take failure lightly.
He clenched his jaw and slowly sat down on the seat of the boat. Then he cast off, drifting into the fog. From the bottom of the boat, he grabbed his paddle. A set of oars were useless for a man with one arm.
The flat wooden paddle cut through the water like a knife as he glided through the phantom layers of mist to the secret spot. He had hidden it well.
His single eye ticked downward through the fog to the lake, the final resting place of his hopes and dreams. If only they knew what lay beneath the surface of Shadow Lake. They’d be surprised. But all that belonged to the lake now.
Behind him, safely distant, the owl hooted long and low. He’s gone. It’s safe to come out, they seemed to be saying. The forest creatures skittered and darted. The woods heaved a sigh of relief.
He lifted his chin in the direction of the highway that sliced through the landscape beyond the hills and trees. It was the road they would take.
“This time, I’ll get you.”
And he knew that once he’d finally achieved his ends, he would disappear from Shadow Lake forever.
chapter ONE
Dear Grace,
Nat here! I the bus, which is w is so squiggly. I’ve gazillion times on m the reception up here I guess it’s so remote here in rural Pennsylvania that they don’t have a lot of can-you-hear-me-now guys making sure our phones work.
Alyssa’s on the bus. Tori, too. She flew in last night so we could hang in New York together. Lyss, as usual, is writing and sketching in one of her notebooks. Tori bounced a couple rows back to talk to some kids about crops. I have no clue why she thinks that’s interesting, but I’m sure she’ll fill me in later. Our hot, stinky Tri-City charter has been chugging along forever, but we’re almost at Camp Lake-puke. Guess how I know! We’ve hit that super-extra-bumpy part of the road. See? You can tell by my even worse handwriting. Plus, we just zoomed past the sign that says “Camp Lakeview 10 Miles.” Witness my mad detective skills! LOL.
I wish I had brought my iPod to drown out the noise. Everyone except Lyss, Tori, and me is singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” for the fift
h or sixth time. It’s more like yelling. Even Paula Abdul would admit that the tune got lost about a hundred and thirty bottles ago.
I can’t believe it’s my third summer at this crazy-fun place. Do you remember our first summer together, when my mom forced me to “broaden my horizons” and shipped me out here while she went off on an art-buying trip to Europe? Remember how I breaked out? No air-conditioning, ginormous spiders and vampire mosquitoes, and camp food? I was ready to go back to Manhattan that very first day!
But you were so funny and friendly that I actually forgot to be miserable. Now you are one of my best Camp Lakeview Friends (CLFs for life!), and I had to actually talk my mom into letting me come this year instead of going with her to Asia on her art-buying trip.
Seriously, Grace, I can’t wait to see you. I’m so glad you only have to miss the first two weeks of camp. You’ll breeze through summer school, wait and see! English will not defeat you! After all, you passed history!
Tori’s in da house! She just came back to sit with us. Now I will hear about the crops.
Oh! She wasn’t listening to a conversation about crops, she was listening to a story about someone called Cropsy. She says this is the sixth year of some hideous tragedy that takes place every six years at Shadow Lake! She’s going to tell Alyssa and me all about it in gory detail. Mwahaha! If it’s any good, I’ll give you the full 411!
See you in two weeks!
TTFN, Nat
“Okay, I have confirmation on the dark secret of Shadow Lake.”
Tori plopped down into the empty seat behind Alyssa and Natalie and leaned over their sweaty shoulders. “The story I heard is the story they heard. And it’s all true. So, are you ready to be scared out of your wits?”
“But of course! Bring it on,” Natalie said, blowing tendrils of wavy brown hair off her forehead. Despite the open windows—or perhaps because of them—it was hot and muggy inside the bus. Tori’s original seatmate had gone to cram herself in with her buds at the front of the bus, so Tori had her seat all to herself. Alyssa, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun, was sitting in front of Tori with Natalie, and they turned around to face her so they could chat.
Tori launched into her so-very-terrifying story. “Okay, so this homicidal maniac—”
“A what?” Alyssa asked, cupping her ear. “I can’t hear you.”
“It’s about a homicidal maniac,” Tori repeated, raising her voice.
Trading excited looks, Natalie and Alyssa leaned even farther over the seat to listen, and Tori noticed how much they’d changed in the last year. All three of them were definitely growing up. As ever, she and Natalie were way ahead on the trend curve in the hair and makeup departments. Tori had stylish blond Paris Hilton hair and a black T-shirt with CHIC written on it. Natalie was up-to-the-minute in her polka-dot bubble top, and they both had on fancy flip-flops decorated with bows and charms direct from Nordy’s.
Alyssa appeared content to stay with her artist look of a torn T-shirt and paint-splattered jeans (in this weather!), her dark eyelashes accentuated by lots of heavy black mascara and dramatic ebony butterfly earrings. But Natalie and Alyssa’s faces were a little longer and thinner, Tori noticed. More mature. It was both cool and scary at the same time.
Like my story.
“I originally heard this from my Pennsylvania cousin, Nicole,” she began. Then she frowned when she saw that they were still straining to hear her. She figured it was best to unravel her creepy tale of death in a hushed, spooky tone, but two-thirds of the bus was still determined to count beer bottles backward, in song.
“I really should wait to tell it,” she ventured, but both Natalie and Alyssa made sad-puppy faces.
“You can not stop now,” Natalie insisted. “We will die of curiosity.”
“You will not,” Tori said, laughing. “I haven’t even started!”
“Okay, maybe we won’t die, but we will get very sick,” Natalie insisted. “Please, please, please?”
Alyssa, the more subdued one, raised her eyebrows in a silent request.
“All right,” Tori relented. “You know I got sent to Lakeview last year because my mom is a legacy? Well, that and to make friends with kids outside of Hollywood.”
Natalie nodded with the total understanding of one who had been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt. Both their families were big in the entertainment industry.
Tori paused and held up her finger. “My cousin Nicole—she’s way older than us—used to come here. Every summer. Then six years ago, something terrible happened . . . and she never came back again.”
“Why not?” Natalie asked, her eyes wide. Beside her, Alyssa gestured for Tori to go on.
Tori paused for dramatic effect. Then she said, “She never came back because that summer Cropsy tried to kidnap her bunkmate’s cousin, who was in another bunk, and cut off her arm!”
“Yow!” Natalie cried.
“Who’s Cropsy?” Alyssa asked, her jaw dropping.
Tori cleared her throat. “Cropsy. The one-armed monster of Shadow Lake. When the fog rises, he—”
“Okay, campers,” Pete said into a megaphone as he got to his feet and planted himself in a wide stance in the aisle. In his early twenties, he was tan and fit. He wore a Camp Lakeview polo shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. He was holding a clipboard, and he waited for the singing to die down before he spoke again.
“Later,” Tori said to Natalie and Alyssa.
“Wah!” Natalie scrunched up her face. Beside her, Alyssa bit her lower lip and groaned.
“Bookmarking this conversation,” Tori promised, and the two girls nodded.
“A lot of you already know me,” Pete went on. “For those of you who don’t, I’m Pete, sometimes a counselor, and for the last few years, your humble cook.”
“Oh, please tell us you’re going to be a humble counselor this year,” one of the boys shouted from the back, and half the bus started laughing.
Tori, Alyssa, and Natalie giggled. On a scale from one to ten, the food at camp was . . . not a box office smash. In fact, Tori had been fascinated in an I-cannot-believe-this-is-really-my-breakfast kind of way by just how bad it was. This year she had wised up and followed Natalie’s lead, cramming her send-ahead camp trunk with a survival stash of soy chips, PowerBars, and a crate of the new bottled water she and Kallista, her best friend back home, had discovered at Whole Foods. The camp food was bad, but the weak-but-way-too-sugary bug juice was even worse.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m cooking again this year,” Pete informed them. Everyone groaned. “Okay, now that we’ve settled that, let’s move along. Because speaking of moving along, we’re almost at camp.”
Cheers, applause, and foot stomps blared over whatever he was going to say next. Tori and Natalie cried “Woo-hoo!” while Alyssa grinned big-time at her two friends. Natalie folded up her letter to Grace and stuck it into her bright pink daypack, and Alyssa closed her notebook, which she had decorated the front of with silhouettes of modern dancers in African masks—in honor of their friend Valerie, Tori guessed.
“Once you get off the bus, pick up your stuff from Bob, our fearless driver,” Pete said as the driver raised his right hand from the big gray steering wheel and gave a jaunty wave. “Your counselors will be looking for you, but if you can’t find your counselor, stick with me or Nurse Helen so we can help. She’ll be meeting the bus, too.”
Pete checked his big black sports watch. “You’ll have about an hour to stow your stuff and then we’ll meet by the lake for the cookout.”
“All right! Pete’s not cooking today!” the same guy in the back yelled.
Everyone started cheering again.
“You need to finish your story about Flopsy ASAP, okay?” Natalie asked. She was teasing about Cropsy’s name.
“I will,” Tori promised. “But you probably won’t be able to sleep tonight.”
“I won’t be able to sleep tonight anyway,” Natalie said. “We’ll be too busy talking aft
er lights-out.”
“If we have a cooperative counselor,” Alyssa reminded them. “Sometimes we actually have to follow the rules.”
“Maybe we’ll get one who’s a heavy sleeper,” Natalie said hopefully.
“We might want a light sleeper,” Tori said. “In case Cropsy tries to break into our bunk.”
Then she caught sight of the green sign planted on a white post along the side of the road that read CAMP LAKEVIEW 1 MILE.
Natalie saw it, too. “Look, guys! We’re almost there!”
“Where Cropsy will be waiting, mwahaha,” Tori promised.
It was almost noon in muggy rural Pennsylvania and thunderclouds were pressing down on the sky. Standing with Jenna, Candace, and Brynn in the Camp Lakeview parking lot, Alex could smell the burning charcoal as the preparations for the welcome cookout got underway. The odor mingled with the insect repellent on her arms—the smells of summer and Camp Lakeview. It was opening day, and they were waiting for the bus that was bringing Tori, Natalie, and Alyssa to a summer of fun and friendship . . . or so Alex hoped. Something was wrong in the fifth division, and Alex was freaked.
“They’re late,” Jenna fretted, looping her curly brown hair around her ears.
“They’re not late,” Alex insisted, shaking her head of short black hair. “It’s like this every year. On the first day, people show up at all different times. So there’s no such thing as late. Just . . . last.”
As if to prove her point, two cars and another bus unloaded passengers on the opposite side of the lot. A puff of exhaust added to the bouquet of first-day smells.
“Well I wish they’d show,” Jenna said, bouncing on her heels. She reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a pack of gum. “Anybody want some?”
“Thanks,” Alex said as she took a piece of extreme cinnamon. Candace and Brynn took some, too. While Alex unwrapped it, she squinted at the nickel-colored horizon. She’d forgotten her sunglasses in their new bunk, 5A, which was located at the top of the pine-studded hill overlooking the lake. She didn’t want to go all the way back up there to get them. It was too hot, and besides, she wanted to see Natalie, Alyssa, and Tori the moment they arrived.
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