Camp Creepy Time_The Adventures of Einstein P. Fleet

by Dann Gershon

  A moment later he was vaporized.

  1

  Cha p te r

  T

  Day Eight — 2:31 P.M. hey stood next to the police cruiser and stared slack-jawed  at the dark sky, dumbfounded by a black funnel that had  formed overhead. It had appeared suddenly and from out of  nowhere, like a tornado. Claps of thunder were followed by  huge streaks of lightning that could be seen for miles.

  “What is that?” Shirley Fleet screamed. “I don’t know,” Mr. Armstrong shouted, “but I’m gonna get  my camera.”

  Suddenly, everything stopped and an eerie silence swept  across the desert. The black swirling cloud disappeared and  the funnel became completely transparent, like a long tube of  glass. The tube reached into space for as far as the eye could  see, like an escalator to the stars.

  “You ever see anything like that before?” Norman asked the  chief.

  “Only on television,” the stunned policeman replied.

  As Armstrong began to snap pictures, an oblong silver disc  shot through the tube and disappeared into space. Moments  later, the skies cleared and the funnel was gone. “Ladies and  gents, you’re looking at the next cover for The National Enquirer,”  Armstrong said, showing the digital display on his camera to  the group. “I just got me a picture of a genuine UFO.”

  The tears rolled down Norman’s cheeks as he choked back  a sob. Shirley hugged him and held him tight. “He’s gone and  it’s all my fault,” Norman whispered to his wife. “I’ll never be  able to forgive myself.” They stood arm in arm staring at the  empty sky, saying a silent prayer for their son.

  “What are you looking at?” Einstein asked, standing be-hind them with Roxie at his side. After transporting them  there, Greeley had promptly disappeared. Einstein would have  enough explaining to do without adding a ghost to the mix.  Camp Creepy Time would never be the same once word spread  about what had happened. It wouldn’t be another Roswell. It  would be worse, especially for the campers.

  “Einstein!” Shirley screamed, wrapping her arms around  him. She squeezed Einstein so tight that he couldn’t breathe.

  “Mom, you’re crushing me!”

  “I don’t care!” she sobbed. “I thought I’d never see you  again.”

  Norman Fleet joined in on the hug. After they were done  crushing him and messing up his hair, Einstein broke away and  introduced them to Roxie. The Fleets exchanged a brief, but  confused, look at each other. “The alien agent from PIMPS?”  Norman Fleet said, giving his son the eye.

  “IMPS,” Einstein replied, correcting him. He looked at his  father and smiled. “You didn’t take all that stuff I wrote seri-ously, did you?”

  Before Norman could answer, the chief walked up. “I’m  Chief Chester of the Saugus Police Department,” he said to Ein-

  01 0 stein. “Your parents have been worried sick about you. Heard  a lot of talk about alien abduction, ghosts, and monsters. You  want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Einstein  wished  he  had  never  written  the  letters,  but  what was done was done. Now it was time to do some dam-age control. “The camp came down with some type of rare  plague, I’m afraid,” Einstein lied, “but everyone seems to be  on the mend.”

  “Where are your counselors, young man?” the chief asked. Einstein  pointed  to  the  sky.  “Swept  into  space  by  the   tornado.”

  “All of them?” Chief Chester asked.

  “All of them except for Roxie,” Einstein told the police-

  man.

  “She looks a mite young to be a counselor,” the chief said

  suspiciously.

  “I’m in the counselor training program,” Roxie replied, smil-

  ing at Einstein.

  As Chief Chester prepared to continue his interrogation and

  get to the bottom of things, he was interrupted by the sound

  of cheering. He saw a group of campers hiking toward them.

  From a distance, they all seemed to be dressed in costumes. As

  they approached the police cruiser, Chief Chester rubbed his

  eyes to make sure that they weren’t playing tricks on him. If

  the campers were on the mend as Einstein suggested, they still

  had a long way to go.

  “It’s my Billy!” Armstrong shouted.

  “He-he’s a werewolf,” the chief stuttered.

  “Yeah, isn’t it great!” Armstrong replied. Sure, his son was a  werewolf, but he didn’t seem any worse for it. His acne was less  noticeable beneath the facial hair and his foul temper seemed  to have improved. All things being equal, Armstrong decided

  that he hadn’t lost his boy; he’d gained a meal ticket. One by one the rest of the campers showed up. There was

  a great deal of cheering and several high fives. The mummies

  lifted Einstein over their heads and paraded him around the

  police car. “Mmmmm!”

  “You want to explain all this?” Norman Fleet shouted at

  his son.

  “I thought I already did,” Einstein replied.

  “Hey, let’s take a group photo!” Mr. Armstrong shouted.

  “Everyone gather around and smile at the birdie!”

  “CAMP CREEPY TIME!” the campers shouted in unison. “A  genuine  UFO  and  a  camp  filled  with  monsters!”  he

  shouted as he snapped away with his camera. “This must be

  my lucky day!”

  0

  Cha p te r

  T

  Day Nine — 5:31 P.M. he campers sat around a roaring fire, toasting marshmallows  and singing songs. It was the last night at Camp Creepy Time  and it called for a celebration. Einstein was smack-dab in the  middle of it all, barbecuing hot dogs and burgers. He had gone  from a sheltered introvert to the life of the party.

  “Will you look at that,” Norman said, nudging Shirley. “I   don’t believe it. Maybe Einstein was abducted after all and  they left a clone in his place.”

  “I told you a little sunshine and fresh air wouldn’t kill him,”  she replied.

  Norman rolled his eyes and gave her a look.

  “Well,  he’s  not  dead,  is  he?”  his  wife  said  in  her  own   defense.

  Einstein tried to keep up a cheerful facade, but it wasn’t  easy. Greeley’s prediction had come to pass. Camp Creepy  Time had become a regular Roswell. Wi
thin hours after the  spaceship had passed through the wormhole, an army of FBI  agents and men dressed in black suits had arrived with truck-loads of high-tech equipment. They swarmed over every inch  of the camp like ants, looking for clues as to what happened.  A team of doctors and scientists examined all of the campers,  poking and prodding them to make sure that the “plague” was  contained. The side effects of the illness seemed to have myste-riously reversed, but none of the medical experts had a clue as  to why. The kids were promised that once they had received a  clean bill of health from the government medics, they would be  allowed to leave. Rather than trust the government with their  fate, Einstein and the others had agreed to keep the antidote a  secret. They divvied up the doses and kept their mouths shut.  The feds could interrogate them and these quacks could exam-ine them until they were blue in the face, but they wouldn’t get  the real story out of any of them and they couldn’t keep them  locked up at Creepy Time forever.

  “How about a couple of burgers?” Vinnie said, bringing  Einstein back into the moment. The little vampire had almost  completed recovered, except for the two small fangs. He no-ticed that Einstein was staring. “If they don’t go away, my father  is going to file them down when we get home,” he whispered.

  Einstein reached into his pocket and secreted a black tablet  into the center of the patty. “How would you like those bad  boys?” he asked.

  “Blood rare and mooing, of course.”

  Einstein spotted the Whammy sisters with their parents and  another man, who looked like an attorney. Like the others who  had been captured and cocooned by Godzilla, they were re-covering the slowest. If it weren’t for Greeley, they wouldn’t  have recovered at all. The old ghost had gone out to the desert  and cut them loose, then administered a healthy dose of the  antidote. Most of the campers seemed to be doing just fine

  05 except for the Whammy sisters. Apparently their witch noses  looked just like their original hooked beaks and their parents  were livid about having to cover the cost of two new nose  jobs. They were threatening to sue. Einstein made a mental  note to make sure that they got more of the antidote as soon  as possible.

  Billy Armstrong was standing next to his father, who was  screaming bloody murder at a group of FBI agents. The fact  that Billy’s canines were still sharp and yellow didn’t seem to  bother Mr. Armstrong as much as the fact that they had con-fiscated his digital camera and his photos. The agents tried  desperately to calm the man down and maneuvered to stay  upwind from the argument. Billy bit one of the agents in the  leg and had to be muzzled.

  “Where is Roxie?” Vinnie asked as he slathered his ham-burger bun with ketchup. “I haven’t seen her all day.”

  Einstein had been wondering the same thing and he was  worried. It was only a matter of time before they examined  Roxie and discovered that they had a real live extraterrestrial  on their hands. “Take over for me, will you, Vinnie?” Einstein  asked, removing his apron and handing him the tongs. “I’m  going to go find her.”

  Vinnie put on the apron and asked the next camper what  he was having. Manny looked at the hamburger and pointed.  “Mmmmm! That burger looks good!”

  “Want a burger, mister?” Vinnie asked the next person  in line.

  The man, dressed in a conservative navy suit, shook his  head. “I’m looking for Einstein P. Fleet,” he said. “Do you know  where he is?”

  “You just missed him,” Vinnie replied, flipping a burger. He  pointed at a couple standing about fifty yards away. “His par-ents are over there. Maybe they know.”

  The man walked up to the Fleets and introduced himself.  “I’m not sure if you remember me,” he said. “I’m Agent Smith  with the FBI. I was the one who handled the Wilson case.”

   “We’ve apologized and paid the damages.” Norman sighed.  “Now what?”

  “Relax, Mr. Fleet,” the agent said. “As it turns out, your son  had it right. Wilson was a deep cover agent. If it hadn’t been for  Einstein, we would have missed him altogether.”

   “You’re kidding,” Shirley said.

  “I couldn’t be more serious, Mrs. Fleet,” the FBI agent re-plied. “On behalf of myself and a grateful nation, I’d like to  thank you. Your son is a real hero.”

  “Does Einstein know about this?” Norman asked.

  “Not yet,” Agent Smith replied, “but I’m sure he won’t be  surprised. Knowing your son, he’ll probably wonder what took  us so long. Einstein is quite a character.”

   “Ain’t that the truth?” Norman laughed. “Does this mean  we get our money back?”

  “What’s going to happen to this place?” Shirley asked, ig-noring her husband.

  “That’s up to Einstein,” the agent replied. “The bureau was  just informed that he bought the place a few minutes ago. In  fact, that’s why I wanted to speak with him.”

  0 “What are you talking about?” Norman groaned. “Einstein   doesn’t have any money.”

  Agent Smith couldn’t help but laugh. Obviously, the Fleets   didn’t know their son quite as well as they thought they did.  “We estimate that The Smoking Peashooter has over eight million  active users. Each user pays ten dollars a year for membership.  You do the math.”

  “You mean Einstein’s a millionaire?” Shirley gasped.

  “And then some, Mrs. Fleet,” Smith replied. “Please tell him  that I’d like to speak with him when you see him. We’d like to  know what he intends to do with the camp.” The agent said   good-bye and walked away, leaving the Fleets standing there  in a state of shock.

  “I don’t believe it,” Shirley said to her husband. “No wonder  Einstein didn’t want to go away for eight weeks. He was run-ning an empire from his room.”

  “And we thought he was crazy,” Norman added.

  “Poor  people  are  crazy.”  Shirley  laughed.  “Rich  people  are eccentric.”

  “What’s the difference?” he asked.

  “Money.”

  Cha p te r

  E

  Day Nine — 6:10 P.M.

  instein found Roxie sitting outside what was left of the care-taker’s cottage. Her eyes were swollen and puffy. She saw  Einstein and looked the other way.

  “
Is this your bunk assignment?” he asked, taking a seat be-

  side her.

  “That’s on a need-to-know basis, Fleet,” she replied without

  turning around, “and you don’t need to know.”

   “Aren’t you going to go to the farewell cookout?” he asked.

   “You’re missing all the fun. It’s a real circus down there.” “Cookouts are for weenies,” she replied.

  They sat together and watched the sunset. Slowly, the day

  turned into night and stars filled the sky. Einstein knew that

  she wasn’t looking at the bright balls of light. Roxie was think-

  ing about her brother, hoping that he was still alive and burn-

  ing just as bright.

  “You saved my life,” she said. “I owe you one, Fleet.” “Now that you mention it,” Einstein said, “you still owe

  me a buck. Are you planning on paying up or welshing on

  our bet?”

  “Welshing,” Roxie said. “If you want your money, you’ll have

  10

  to turn me in for the reward. I’ll bet you could get more than a  buck for a real live alien.”  “Don’t be so sure,” Einstein said. “An alien that looks like a  human is a tough sell. I could probably get more for Greeley.”

  “Where is he, anyhow? I haven’t seen him all day.”

  “He went to check into something for me,” Einstein replied,  looking at his watch. “That old coot should have been back  by now.”