Camp Creepy Time_The Adventures of Einstein P. Fleet
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“Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the cot,” Greeley replied, suppressing a soft chuckle. He eyed the welt marks that covered Einstein’s face and arms with genuine concern. “What happened to you?”
“I attempted to escape,” Einstein replied. As much as he hated to admit it, he was actually happy to see someone other than Nurse Knockwurst and the mummies, even if it was a ghost or just a figment of his own imagination. “Camp man-agement roughed me up a bit as an object lesson to the others. I’m thinking about filing a lawsuit.”
“You don’t say,” Greeley said with more than a hint of sar-casm in his voice. “Looks like the work of some real pros. What did they use on you? Lit cigarette butts?”
“Trained killer bees,” Einstein replied, yawning to show his indifference to the matter.
“Killer bees, huh? Well, I bet that hurt like the dickens.”
“I’ve been trained to endure pain,” Einstein told the post-man. “Last summer my parents sent me to boot camp in Bosnia.”
Greeley ignored the comment and pointed at the bandaged campers. “That lady sure does enjoy her work. Back in my day, we didn’t have a camp nurse or an infirmary. If you got hurt, you were lucky to get a Band-Aid.”
“You went to camp?” Einstein said, somewhat surprised. He tried to picture Greeley roasting marshmallows and singing songs around a campfire, but it wasn’t easy.
“I guess you could say that,” the ghost replied. “I used to own this place. Built it from the ground up in 1962.”
“You owned Camp Creepy Time?” Einstein asked skepti-cally, wondering if Greeley was telling the truth or just having a senior moment.
“It was called Camp Sleepy Time back then,” Greeley said softly. “There was a stable full of horses and riding paths. We taught all the kids to ride and put on a rodeo at the end of every summer. The lake was stocked with all sorts of fish and the swimming pool was always clean. We had a crafts center with artists who taught the kids how to paint and build birdhouses. The kitchen was clean and the grub was top-drawer. You should have seen this place back in the day. Sleepy Time was a great place to spend the summer, and then it happened.”
“What happened?” Einstein asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Greeley replied, his eyes filled with anger. “I lost the camp along with everything else that I owned and became a postman.”
“From the sultan of Sleepy Time to a slave of the United States Postal Service,” Einstein said, feeling sorry for the old man. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
The ghost nodded.
“Why are you still here?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Greeley replied, scratching his head. “One minute I was standing around mind-ing my own beeswax and the next minute I was dead, run over by my own pickup truck.”
“Sentenced to death without parole,” Einstein said, thinking out loud. “That’s a tough break.”
Greeley patted Einstein softly on the head. “You’re all right, Houdini.”
Einstein handed the ghost an envelope that contained his latest letter. “Can you mail this for me?” he whispered.
“Regular or priority mail?” the dead postman asked. It was clear that Greeley took his job quite seriously, although Ein-stein had his doubts about whether the letter would ever reach its destination.
“Regular would be just fine, thanks.”
Greeley licked his thumb and rubbed it across the seat of his trousers. He held the bony digit a few inches from his face, inspecting it carefully to make sure it was covered with a suf-ficient amount of dirt to create a smudge mark on the corner of the envelope.
“You’re all set,” Greeley announced as he ground his thumb-print into the paper.
“Do you mind if I ask you another personal question?” Ein-stein asked, without waiting for Greeley to answer. “How can you deliver a letter without using a stamp?”
“Nothing to it,” Greeley replied. “I use g-mail.”
“You have an account with Google?”
The old postman looked confused. “I use ghost mail. It’s the same principle as e-mail, but it’s guaranteed to be spam free and you don’t have to pay a dime. Being dead has its perks.”
5 Einstein thought nanotechnology was the next great inno-vation, but a technology based on the metaphysical? He had a thousand questions for the old man. “How does g-mail work?”
“Just like that gizmo they used on Star Trek,” Greeley replied. “I can move anything I touch from one location and transport it instantaneously to another.”
“Would you do me a favor?” Einstein whispered. “Sure, Houdini. What do you need?”
“Beam me up, Scotty! I want to go home.”
“You’re not going anywhere in your condition,” Nurse
Knockwurst said, cutting in on the conversation. She placed her hand on the boy’s forehead to see if he was running a fever. “You’re delirious.”
“I feel fine.” “Really?” Nurse Knockwurst asked. “Then why have you been jabbering to yourself for the last five minutes?”
“I’m talking to Greeley, the camp mailman,” Einstein said indignantly. “And if you don’t mind, we were having a pri-vate conversation.”
“Isn’t that cute,” the nurse said loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “Einstein has an imaginary friend.”
“He’s not imaginary. He’s a ghost.”
“What’s the difference?” Nurse Knockwurst said as she jammed a thermometer into Einstein’s mouth. She strolled back into her office, returned with a standard-issue werewolf costume, and tossed it to Einstein. “Bucky brought this by while you were sleeping. Try it on and see how it fits.”
“I’m not feeling up to playing dress-up just yet,” Einstein said, brushing the wolf suit aside.
She yanked the thermometer out of his mouth and checked the reading. “Your temperature is normal. Unfortunately, you are not.” Nurse Knockwurst threw another handful of salt tablets on the bed and glared at Einstein. “I’m tired of play-ing games. I’m going out for twenty minutes and if you’re not wearing that wolf getup by the time I get back, you and yo
ur imaginary friend are both going to regret it.”
“Don’t listen to her, Houdini,” Greeley warned.
“I wasn’t planning on it, but thanks anyhow for the advice,” Einstein replied as he watched Nurse Knockwurst head for the door.
The nurse stopped in her tracks and, without bothering to turn around, screamed at the top of her lungs, “Will you please stop talking to yourself? It’s driving me crazy!”
Nurse Knockwurst mumbled something under her breath and then stormed out of the room.
“There is something wrong with that woman,” Einstein whispered.
“You have no idea,” the ghost replied.
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Day Four — 8:13 P.M. urly’s bad cooking was one thing, but the aftereffects were something else altogether. Diarrhea (or “Curly’s Revenge,” as it was commonly referred to by everyone trapped at Creepy Time) had spread through the camp population like wildfire. The bathrooms at the dining hall were insufficient to deal with the crowds that inevitably gathered after each and every meal. Some days it was so bad that the lines were stacked up all the way back to the fire pit outside the cafeteria.
One camper who was in dire straits ran back to his cabin to find a toilet that was not currently in use, but he was dis-appointed. Not only was the bathroom occupied, but there was also a line of fidgeting campers waiting for a chance to use one of the two stalls. Unable to hold it, he decided on desperate measures.
“Throw me some TP,” he screamed at the guy in the front of the line.
“You’re not thinking about going out there,” the other camper replied, pointing toward the moonlit desert. “What about Godzilla?”
Every summer camp develops its own particular brand of campfire lore that is intentionally invented to scare the wits out of the campers, and Camp Creepy Time was no excep-tion. During the first few days there, many of the kids claimed that they had seen a pony-sized spider covered in matted red fur. The descriptions of the creature varied, but a few of the facts remained constant. It had several bulbous eyes that were perched on the tip of tentacles that sprouted from the top of its head. Rows of large yellow fangs jutted out its mouth like a great white shark’s, and its jaws were so powerful that they were capable of shredding steel. The stories spread and began to take on a life of their own. Einstein theorized that the creature was some type of indigenous spider mutated by toxic waste. Naturally, the toxic waste had been dumped in the desert by either the government or by a large conglomerate with no respect for Mother Nature. There were several names for the creature, but only one stuck. Godzilla.
“I don’t care if King Kong is out there,” the boy screamed. “Just toss me some TP and I’ll take my chances.”
The boy caught the roll on the fly and headed for the pri-vacy of the desert. He squatted behind a large tumbleweed and sighed loudly with relief. The rustling sound a few feet away told him that he wasn’t the only desperate soul.
“Food really sucks here, doesn’t it?” he said, trying to make light of an embarrassing situation.
There was no answer, but someone was definitely there.
“Beats my mom’s home cooking,” the boy added, hoping a bit of humor would break the ice. “If you consider Chinese takeout home cooking.”
The joke didn’t elicit a response and the silence was starting
to make the boy nervous. He supposed that one of the other campers was playing a practical joke on him, but this wasn’t funny. No one likes to get caught with his pants down, espe-cially at a time like this.
“Take a hike!” the boy shouted angrily. He stood and pulled his pants up, deciding that waiting in line was a better option than being spied on by some camp pervert. As the boy started back for the cabin, he heard the sound of something large shuffling through the underbrush. It was heading straight for him. He started to run as fast as his legs would carry him, but it wasn’t fast enough. The camper felt something wrap around his feet and he tripped. He screamed at the top of his lungs as he was dragged into the brush. Then there was silence.
“Did you hear that?” one of the campers said to another camper waiting to use the latrine. “Poor guy sounds like he’s dying.”
The camper nodded in agreement and grimaced. “Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.”
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Day Five — 6:25 P.M. orman Fleet was in the middle of watching the nightly news when he heard the doorbell ring. He went to the front door to see who it was, but there was no one. Once again, a white envelope addressed to “The Fleet Family” was sitting on the welcome mat. It was another letter from Einstein. Aside from the content itself and the fact that no one ever saw the deliv-ery person, there was something very strange about the whole thing. The letters showed up on the doorstep without a stamp or any other visible means of payment. Norman Fleet supposed that a five-star camp like Creepy Time must have contracted with an upscale private delivery service and let it go at that. Nonetheless, it was a bit odd.
He took his son’s letter to his favorite easy chair. Norman adjusted the footrest and leaned back as he opened the goo- stained envelope, eager to hear about camp. A smile came to his face as he recalled his own childhood memories of roasting weenies and marshmallows over an open campfire and singing songs under a sky full of stars. The smile quickly vanished as he read the first few lines of the letter.
Dear Mom and Dad, Help!!!!!!!!
Camp management continues to torture us on a daily basis. Just yesterday, we were forced (at gunpoint) to run half naked through a field while the staff placed bets on which one of us would drop first. After being ordered to strip down to our underwear, our bodies were coated in honey. Little did we know that the counselors had trained enor-mous wasps to attack on their command. My earlier dispute with camp management naturally made me a prime target. As a result, I was stung over 600 times (a new camp record) and have spent the last two days in a coma.
The warden and his lackeys have imprisoned me in the camp infirmary and placed me under around-the-clock surveillance (excluding bathroom breaks). Nurse Knockwurst (aka Dr. Frankenstein) is as sadistic a fiend as this camp has to offer. Aside from being mentally unstable, I
suspect that Nurse Knockwurst is wanted in several states for practicing medicine without a license. Everyone who ends up in her infirmary is treated like a lab rat. Two campers have been subjected to some type of bizarre medical experiment and are slowly turning into mindless zombies. In all fairness to the camp nurse, they may
have been like this before arriving at Creepy Time, but at least they weren’t bound to their cots.
Nurse Knockwurst’s insistence on the liberal use of salt tablets for any ailment is in line with camp policy. In response to her daily efforts to force-feed medicine against my will, I have gone on a hunger strike. I will not eat again until Nurse Knock-wurst’s reign of terror is put to an end or camp man-agement adds Twinkies to the menu.
On top of everything else they forgot to mention in the brochure, it appears that we have a resi-dent ghost at Creepy Time. His name is Greeley. The cantankerous old coot claims to be both mail-man and master of the manor. I suspect that he is just some dead guy with delusions of grandeur. Of course, since I’m the only one who can see Greeley, it may be my own problem.
There is something rotten at Creepy Time, aside from just the food. A few desperate souls decided to make a break for it and have been missing ever since. The word is that someone or something ate the missing campers, but I suspect that camp management planted the story to deter future attempts at escape. If I survive my stay in the infirmary, I plan to get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, please send some more Twinkies. It’s hard to think on an empty stomach.