by Dann Gershon
Cha p te r
1
H
Day One — 7:30 A.M. e could not imagine a worse way to spend the summer. It would begin with a torturous, three-hour excursion in a broken-down school bus to the middle of God-knows-where, surrounded on all sides by a tribe of screaming lunatics. If he survived the ride, the next eight weeks would be spent with the same group of misfits in the equivalent of a maximum-security prison. Days would consist of a strict diet of inedible meals, strenuous physical exercise, and “special activities” normally reserved for patients committed to mental institutions. Nights would pass without the comfort of a bed, sleeping outdoors and being eaten alive by an unspeakable assortment of blood- sucking insects. No Internet, no blogging, no e-mail, no cell phones, no video games, no iPods, no television. The rules were quite clear. The boy braced himself for what lay ahead. As the motor exploded to life, his fellow inmates burst into song. The first day of his eight-week sentence had officially just begun. He resigned himself to his fate and stepped into the vehicle.
Einstein P. Fleet was headed off to summer camp. As Einstein’s parents watched the bus door close behind their oversized son, a sense of relief washed over them. “Well, he’s off,” Einstein’s father announced, waving good- bye to the back end of the bus with a rolled-up brochure in his hand.
Norman Fleet opened the brochure and stared at the sce-nic picture on the front cover. Recently refurbished and under new management, the place was too good to be true. It looked more like a luxury resort than a sleepaway camp. Horseback riding, hiking, swimming, canoeing, and kayaking were just a few of the things that the camp had to offer, including a small lake, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a fully equipped arts and crafts center. The cabins were rustic but charming. The brochure boasted a gourmet chef and a menu that was enough to make one’s mouth water. Leaving nothing to chance, the new owners had even built a state-of-the-art infirmary with a professional nurse on staff twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It just didn’t get any better than this, Norman decided, especially with a special introductory offer of fifty bucks a week.
“Camp Creepy Time will never be the same.” Einstein’s mother giggled.
“That’s for sure,” Norman agreed.
Holding hands, they watched the yellow bus disappear into the distance, enjoying their first real time without the obliga-tion of being a parent in thirteen years. Though neither of them was willing to admit it to the other, the break was long over-due. Einstein was not exactly a problem child, but he was no angel either. There was the time that he “accidentally” locked his art teacher in the supply cabinet and conveniently lost the key in order to determine the effects that solitary confinement had on the human psyche. She spent six hours in the closet before the fire department finally arrived and freed the poor woman. Then there was the time that Einstein invented a new type of super epoxy and glued half of his science class to their seats to demonstrate how it worked.
The fact was that these scientific and social experiments were not isolated incidents, but more of a daily routine. As a result, Einstein and his principal were on a first-name basis. And, after five years of dealing with their son’s oddball antics, Mr. Hearst had suggested to the Fleets that the boy was in dire need of a change of scenery, preferably to another school dis-trict. Einstein, however, had reassured them that he was sim-ply misunderstood and that they should not let the politically correct attitude of one public school bureaucrat sway their God-given right to raise their own child as they saw fit and in the location of their choice.
For the most part, however, Einstein spent endless hours locked away in his room, blogging with others on his computer about any number of conspiracy theories. He even had his own website—The Smoking Peashooter. The site had attracted a large number of visitors and a cultlike following. Einstein and his fellow bloggers discussed everything from corporate cover-ups to political plots.
The main problem with spending eight weeks at camp was that it meant spending eight weeks without a computer. Ein-stein had fruitlessly argued that summer camp could wait, but the conspiracies that plagued the world demanded constant monitoring. He had even questioned his parents’ motivation for sending him away for the summer. Norman and Shirley countered that the world could survive for one summer with-out him and that this conspiracy was not up for debate. The boy did not speak to them for days.
“He really looked upset,” Norman said to his wife, having second thoughts. “Do you think he’ll ever forgive us?”
“We’re sending him to summer camp, not to prison,” Shirley replied, nudging her husband playfully. “Besides, a little fresh air and some exercise won’t kill him.”
“That’s not how Einstein sees it.”
“Don’t you worry about Einstein,” she said with authority. “That boy’s gonna have the time of his life.”
Cha p te r
E
Day One — 7:35 A.M. instein stood at the front of the bus and shook his head in dismay. All of his fellow inmates were dressed up like clas-sic monsters from old black-and-white horror flicks. A sea of mummies, vampires, and werewolves were wedged into their seats, singing camp songs and swaying in unison. Suddenly, the little monsters stopped singing and stared directly at Einstein. The silence was deafening.
A familiar pit formed in the bottom of his belly, and he started to feel sick. Einstein briefly recalled a recurring dream in which he stood up in math class to answer a question only to discover that he wasn’t wearing any pants. He quickly checked to make sure that he hadn’t made the same mistake in real life. To his relief, Einstein’s shorts were in place, his fly was up, and he had remembered to wear his underwear. It took a moment or two before he realized the real problem. Einstein was the only cam
per on the entire bus who wasn’t wearing a costume. He had not been away from home for five minutes and he was already the official camp outcast.
“Where’s your costume?” the surly bus driver demanded, as if Einstein had committed a federal offense. “You’re supposed to wear a costume.”
“What on Earth for?” Einstein inquired. Befuddled by the boy’s response, the bus-driving troll pointed to a slogan on his T-shirt that read have a creepy day in big block letters that were wrapped around a bright yellow smiley face symbol, except the face wasn’t smiling. “The open-ing day ceremony? Didn’t you get an orientation package?” he asked gruffly.
His father had given him the orientation package, but Ein-stein never bothered to read it. He had simply tossed it into the pile with the rest of his homework and promptly forgotten about it. The bus driver seemed upset, so Einstein decided to employ the same tactic that he used when one of his teachers asked him about an assignment that he had ignored. Einstein shrugged at the man and played dumb.
“You were supposed to dress up like your favorite monster. That’s how we decide which cabin to assign you to for the summer.”
“What does one thing have to do with the other?” Einstein asked.
The bus driver looked at Einstein and shook his head. “You filled out the questionnaire in the brochure, didn’t you? Were-wolves stay with werewolves, mummies stay with mummies, vampires stay with vampires, and so on and so forth. We want you to live in a cabin of your peers.”
Einstein never saw a questionnaire, let alone filled one out, but he had a sneaking suspicion about who had—his father. No doubt the bargain-basement price tag of fifty bucks a week was worth spending a few minutes on the Internet to fill out the questionnaire and assure Einstein a seat on the bus. Obvi-ously his father had decided to omit a few small details about Creepy Time, like the ridiculous dress code. He eyed the bus full of costumed campers and firmly clasped his head with both hands. “Somebody shoot me and put me out of my mis-ery,” he muttered.
Einstein noticed an odd look on the bus driver’s face and decided that the man might actually be considering his re-quest. Taking no chances, he quickly made his way down the aisle and squeezed his ample frame into a seat next to a pint- sized camper who was masquerading as a vampire.
“I vant to drink your blood,” Vinnie the Vampire snarled, threatening Einstein with a fake set of fangs. The baby-faced vampire wore a starched white shirt under a long black cape. His jet-black hair was greased back and formed a tiny widow’s peak at the top of his forehead. With his high-pitched voice, the boy reminded Einstein more of Eddie Munster than the legendary Count Dracula.
“You want to suck my blood,” Einstein corrected, trying to be helpful. “Vampires don’t drink, they suck.”
“You’re wrong!” Vinnie hissed. “Obviously you know noth-ing about vampires.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” the boy said with authority. “I’ve seen every vampire movie that was ever made at least a hundred times. I’m an expert on the subject.”
“If you say so,” Einstein conceded. He offered the boy a Twinkie, hoping to smooth things over.
“No, thanks,” the vampire replied, baring his plastic fangs at Einstein. “I don’t eat sweets. They rot your teeth.”
“Are you an expert on oral hygiene too?” Einstein asked. “Sort of,” Vinnie replied, eyeing the Twinkie with desire.
“My dad is a dentist.”
“Well, your dad isn’t here, is he?” Einstein replied as he
reached into his backpack and extracted a golden brown treat
still freshly wrapped in cellophane. “Have one, my man. It’s the
Rolls-Royce of pastries.”
The little vampire’s eyes froze with fear, which was not the
reaction that Einstein had expected. As best as he could recall,
vampires were afraid of crucifixes and wooden stakes, not junk
food. Either the boy was taking his role-playing a bit too far or
he was too much of a wuss to disobey his daddy the dentist. As it turned out, it wasn’t the Twinkie that Vinnie was afraid
of at all; it was the pack of snarling werewolves standing di-
rectly behind Einstein. They were dressed in plaid flannel shirts
and gray cotton pants. They all wore the same variety of dime-
store rubber wolf masks and rubber wolf feet, which made a
flip-flopping sound as they slapped against the floor of the bus.
Einstein wondered if they had called one another before the
trip to coordinate their outfits.
“You’re sitting in my seat, chubby,” the leader of the
pack said to Einstein, stripping him of the Twinkie. “Move it
or die!”
It wasn’t the sharp curvy claws that protruded from his rub-
ber feet that made Billy Armstrong menacing. It was the foul
stench. His feet smelled like moldy cheese. Perhaps it would
go unnoticed if they were outside in the fresh air, but in the crowded bus the odor was unbearable. Einstein held his breath
and prayed for divine intervention.
“Sit down,” the bus driver screamed at the werewolves.
“You’ll have plenty of time to kill each other later.” “Count on it,” the werewolf threatened, eyeballing
Einstein.
Billy took a big bite out of the stolen Twinkie to emphasize
the point, and then zinged the rest at an unsuspecting mummy
who was sitting at the back of the bus, reading a vintage copy
of Famous Monsters of Filmdom Magazine and minding his own
business. Einstein watched the mummy wipe the goo from his
eyes and slide down in his seat. The pack surrounded the boy
and howled, then moved on to work on a vampire that was in
a heated debate with a portly mummy about whether Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein should be considered a horror film
or a comedy. Unfortunately, they did not notice the pack until
it was too late. Billy grabbed a fistful of bandage and lifted the
mummy out of his seat.
�
��Let’s spin him until he pukes!” Billy shouted. He pulled hard
on the thick strand of gauze and, as the bandages unraveled,
the mummy began to twirl in circles. The harder Billy pulled,
the faster the boy twirled, until he was spinning like a top. Things continued like this for the next hour or so as the
sprawl of the city disappeared and was replaced with the empty
nothingness of the Mojave Desert. Einstein contemplated the
odds of jumping from the moving bus and surviving the fall.
Surely he would be better off taking his chances out in the des-
ert despite the obvious dangers. If the fall didn’t kill him, he
had no doubt that the man-eating desert vermin would. Scorpi-
10 ons, snakes, lizards, and a wide variety of other creepy crawlers lived in this hostile terrain, including his least favorite creepy crawler of them all, the spider.
Einstein had never been fond of the insect species on the whole, but he was terrified of spiders. One had once crawled up his leg and taken residence in his underwear, never to be seen again. Einstein was convinced that it was nesting inside him, planning to hatch babies and eat him alive from the in-side out. Actually, he had gotten the idea from an old B movie, but the concept was plausible. He had been terrified of the eight-legged freaks ever since. The mere thought of them made him shudder. He could feel their spindly little legs tap dancing across his body and began to squirm. As they sank their razor- sharp fangs deep into his shoulders, he screamed.
“Why aren’t you, like, wearing a costume?” the spiders demanded.