Clone Camp!

by B. A. Frade

  “That was weird,” I said to Noah.

  “Shhh…” Spike gave me a warning look. I got the chills. I was feeling like that prison reputation might actually be true.

  Noah scooted his foot over toward mine under the table. He tapped his tennis shoe on top of mine, as if to say, “Yeah. It was weird.” And then another tap for “What is going on?”

  It wasn’t long before we started to see that the day was anything but normal. Jayesh, Noah’s counselor who’d brushed his teeth with shaving cream, escorted ten kids into the kitchen. It was a mixed group of boys and girls, of all cabin ages. The thing they all had in common was the look of terror on their faces.

  We waited, still peeling those stupid potatoes, until one of the kids got close enough to talk to.

  “What’s going on out there?” Noah mouthed then. He tipped his head toward the kitchen door.

  “I—” The boy, who was probably in fifth grade, looked over his shoulder at Spike and fell silent.

  He wasn’t talking. Noah tried to get answers from two other kids before he found an older girl. I recognized her as a CIT who was slightly less scared than the others.

  “Hey, Spike, bathroom break?” Noah called out across the kitchen. He elbowed the girl in the ribs.

  “Yeah, me too?” she asked, then elbowed Noah back.

  “Five minutes,” Spike told them, concentrating on toasting hamburger buns. “Not six,” he warned.

  “Got it,” Noah said, and the two of them left the kitchen.

  Four minutes and fifty-seven seconds later, they came back.

  “I was getting nervous,” I said, dropping a potato on the floor and getting down on my hands and knees by Noah’s feet to retrieve it. I didn’t want Spike to hear us talking.

  Noah dropped a potato too and bent down next to me.

  “Victoria says all the campers have to work today.” He made little quotation marks with his fingers around the word “work.” Victoria was the CIT’s name.

  “Not activities?” I asked. I was talking very fast. We had about one more second before we had to stand up. Spike hadn’t noticed us yet, but he would soon.

  “Work,” Noah said again. “Some cabins are going out to clear brush from that old cemetery. Other kids will be moving rocks around camp. Some will be hauling lumber from a delivery truck. Others are unloading heavy boxes that arrived this morning.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What about painting with only brown paint, or finding out there are no helmets at the rock wall?”

  “Canceled,” Noah said. “Everything fun was canceled.”

  I shook my head. That headache from last night came back in an instant. I glanced across the kitchen, where Victoria was now opening cans of tuna for a massive vat of tuna salad. She didn’t look my way.

  “There’s more,” Noah said. “There are rumors from the infirmary. Like yesterday, anyone who doesn’t want to work, or complains, is being sent there. Only now the windows are blacked out and the doors are locked. No one knows what’s happening inside.”

  “What are we going to do?” I asked, feeling panic build. We had to do something.

  “We’re just kids,” Noah said. “What can we do?” He saw the look of horror in my eyes. “Just kidding,” he said. “Joke.” Noah grabbed the potato I’d dropped and handed it to me, then picked up his own. “We’ll figure this out.”

  Chapter Six

  Saturday night, after KP, I went back to my cabin, where things were on lockdown. There were no evening activities, no counselor-or camper-planned raids, because no one was allowed outside. The window I had snuck out of the night before was sealed with thick metal bars forming an X over the glass. There was no way any kid was leaving the cabin that way again.

  There was no way anyone was leaving the cabin at all. Once we were inside, Samantha and Sydney moved their bunk bed in front of the door.

  “What if we have to pee?” Josie, aka Junkyard, asked. The bathrooms were in another cabin central to all the girls’ bunkhouses.

  “Hold it,” Samantha said.

  “Till morning,” Sydney finished.

  The twins got into their sleeping bags, even though it was only eight o’clock. Samantha on the top bunk, Sydney on the bottom.

  “Lights out!” I couldn’t tell which one of them said it because all the shades were drawn and the lights immediately went out.

  I wasn’t ready, so I turned on my flashlight.

  “Lights out, Katy,” one twin counselor said. Her voice was even more harsh than usual.

  The other twin laughed, her voice echoing through the cabin.

  I flicked off the flashlight, glad they couldn’t see the annoyed expression on my face.

  Luckily, it was still kind of twilight, and even with the bars on all the windows, I could see pretty well. I quickly changed into my pj’s and climbed into my sleeping bag. I’d have liked to go to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, but I wasn’t dumb enough to ask. I knew what the answer would be.

  My cabin mates were clearly exhausted. Most of them had been assigned to moving heavy boxes into an old storage shed by the maintenance office. It meant carrying them one by one down a long, bumpy road.

  I heard that their task tomorrow was going to be moving those same boxes back up the hill to the SRC, now that the fifth graders had cleared the space, putting anything that might be used for usual camp activities in storage. While there were rumors all around camp about the poor kids in the infirmary, no one had any guesses about what was in those boxes, or why Noah’s junior high cabin and the fourth graders were assigned to mow down the wild cemetery grass. The CITs stacked wooden planks along the fence.

  As the sound of soft snores resonated through the cabin, I felt lucky I had KP. I wasn’t nearly as exhausted as the others.

  Then again, it was early and I was wide awake. My worry and dread grew heavier as the hours passed.

  In the morning, the counselors woke everyone up earlier than usual.

  An announcement over the camp loudspeakers called out: “All campers to the SRC!”

  “I don’t think it means us,” Noah said after letting me know that his night had been pretty much the same as mine. “Spike expects us early today.” Noah imitated our boss, using a deep, gruff voice. “Breakfast KP. Come before campers.”

  “He does love short sentences,” I said, focusing on that hopeful feeling that today things would be different than yesterday—or the day before.

  Getting to the dining room was like swimming upstream. The counselors were dividing the kids into rows of three across, herding them from cabins to the SRC. Usually they’d have breakfast, then flagpole for announcements, but today everyone was going directly to the SRC.

  The counselors walked alongside the sleepy campers, keeping them together so that no one went out of line. They must have been up late. Every counselor I saw had a glazed-over expression.

  Noah and I had to walk off the path to keep from getting plowed down. No kid was brave enough to break ranks, especially not when passing the infirmary, which now had a big No Trespassing sign on it, next to one that said “Keep Out.”

  “It should say, ‘By Invitation Only,’” Noah said as a joke. “Get it? The counselors are choosing kids to go there—sort of like an exclusive invitation to a nightmare?”

  When I didn’t laugh, he said, “I think I’m losing my edge.”

  “Some things just aren’t funny,” I told him. There was nothing funny going on at camp. Crazy, maybe. Weird. Scary. Odd. Bizarre. I had a million adjectives to describe it. None of them were “funny.”

  One of the counselors stopped us. It was Thomas, the archery specialist. “You’re going the wrong way,” he said in a rough, monotone voice.

  “We have KP,” Noah told him.

  “We were told all campers must go to the SRC, no exceptions.” I didn’t understand why he was talking to us that way. Thomas was usually so friendly. I stunk at archery, and he was the one who encourage
d me to keep trying.

  “You could ask Director Dave,” I said, a rise of fear in my belly. What if he didn’t let us go to the kitchen? What would Spike do? It was the last day of my punishment, I just wanted to get it over with. “Director Dave’s the one who gave us this assignment.”

  Thomas accepted that. “Well, if he said so, go. But come back to the SRC as soon as possible.”

  Noah and I nodded, then quickened our footsteps on the chance he might change his mind.

  When we entered the kitchen, Spike gave us a surprised look. “You aren’t supposed to be here,” he said in a way that made my stomach roll over. His voice was flat, just like the counselor Thomas. On Spike, it seemed so strange and got even stranger when we didn’t leave fast enough. He kept that flat voice but raised it, declaring loudly, “Go! See the movie.”

  “What movie?” I asked, looking between him and Noah.

  “For the campers,” Spike said, pointing at the door with the large butcher’s knife he was using. “Get out of my kitchen!” He waved the knife.

  We ran, as fast as we could, out the back door and back around the building toward where the flagpole stood. We stopped in the open area. It felt so odd that no one was around.

  I was breathing heavily from the mad dash, but all that tennis practice saved me. Noah was doubled over, leaning his hands on his knees. He was breathing in huge gasps of air.

  “I’m too out of shape to be chased by knife-wielding kitchen prison ninjas,” he said. Seeing as that was very close to the truth of what happened, I wasn’t sure if that was his attempt at another joke or not.

  I didn’t smile. “I guess we should go to the SRC,” I said, though that was NOT what I wanted to do. I had a very bad feeling about all this.

  We walked side by side toward the recreation center, observing the strange silence of a camp that hosted a hundred-fifty campers, plus counselors, specialists, maintenance, staff, and a director. Why was it so eerily, unnaturally, bone-chillingly quiet?

  The SRC was so large that everyone at camp could fit inside, as long as kids sat on the floor. There was a stage area for talent shows and a wide space to play in if it was raining. Basically, anything at camp could be done in the SRC if necessary. There was a big closet at the back for tables, props, whatever. The closet had a small window to the outside, from the old days when it used to be the director’s office, before a special cabin was built.

  We tried to look in through that window to see what was going on, but the closet door was closed. There were other windows all around the sides of the SRC, but they were covered with the same black paper as the infirmary windows. We were going to have to take our chances at the main entry.

  Very quietly, Noah cracked open the heavy wood door.

  Kids were still finding seats on the floor, anxious for the program to begin. I could see that they were grouped by cabin. Mine was in the middle, to the left of the stage.

  Looking past Noah, I spotted a projector and a movie screen at the front on the stage. It made me wonder if maybe there was rain in the forecast. That was when movies were usually shown.

  “Come on.” Noah started to go inside.

  “No, wait.” I pulled his arm back sharply. That bad feeling inside me exploded. We had to get away! This was wrong. All wrong. I accidentally scraped him with my fingernails as I yanked more forcefully.

  “Ouch!”

  “Sorry… Shhhh…” I tugged Noah back and away from the building. The door fell closed with a quiet click.

  I saw movement behind one of those blacked-out windows; the shade moved slightly. Instinctively, I dropped to my knees, dragging Noah down with me, so we were under the window and out of sight. Then I started to crawl on my hands and knees as if that would keep us from being seen. Noah followed me, though I was sure he thought I’d lost my mind.

  I moved us away from the SRC and didn’t stop until my hands and knees hurt too bad to keep going. Then I lay on my belly in the dirt behind a medium-sized rock that provided very little cover. Noah squished in behind the rock, next to me.

  “Last night, while I stared at the ceiling, I started to think. I’m pretty sure this isn’t some grand prank by some random person at camp.” It had been a long night, and as I tossed and turned, I came up with a theory. “I’m thinking something called the Scaremaster really exists,” I said. “He’s like a puppet master. And we all are his puppets.”

  “Kaitlin? Has an alien snatched your body? You aren’t sounding like yourself.” Noah pressed the back of his hand against my forehead as if I might have a fever. “I think you might be sick.”

  “I’m not sick.” And if I was, there was no way I’d go to the infirmary. “You wanted me to investigate, and I’m telling you what I discovered.” I closed my eyes and said out loud what I believed to be true. I’d realized it when we were standing at the SRC door, looking at the kids gathered on the floor. It was like I’d been hit by lightning that told me to go with my gut.

  “We have to ask the Scaremaster to stop,” I said, checking around that no one was watching, then crouching, and checking again before finally standing up. I started down the path toward the clearing where we’d left the book in the tree. I felt such a sense of urgency, I’d have started running if I thought Noah could keep up. Instead, I walked fast. Even then, he struggled to stay with me.

  “What are you thinking?” Noah asked, his breath getting heavier with every step. “It’s a supernatural book? Possessed? Haunted?”

  I didn’t know, so I didn’t answer. Instead, I said, “Something like that. The Scaremaster has the power to make terrible things happen at camp. Anything he wants. He simply tells the story, and it happens.” It went even deeper than that. “We don’t even have to read the story. Remember how I slammed it shut after I read ‘Once upon a time’—the story happened anyway.” There was a part of me that wished I’d read it; then I’d know what was going on and maybe have a better idea how to stop it.

  I didn’t give Noah a chance to argue or try to convince me I was wrong. I rushed off the path, asking Noah to point out the bad plants so I wouldn’t accidentally make a mistake and swell up like a balloon.

  When we reached the tree, Noah stepped forward. “I’ll get the book.” He reached in and pulled out the journal. The cover was dirty and damp. There was a wafting smell of fresh paper pulp and glue. It reminded me of an antique printing press I’d once seen in a museum near my aunt’s office.

  “Is that the same one?” I asked Noah.

  He gave me an “Are you crazy?” look. “It’s a leather journal, stuck in the same tree where we left it,” he said.

  “It looks different,” I told him.

  “It’s the same,” Noah told me, but even so, he ran his hand over the cover where the deep scratches used to be. “It healed itself.”

  Now I gave him an “I told you so” look.

  “Kaitlin,” Noah began as we settled down on a flat rock and he was finally able to catch his breath, “you’re the most logical person I know. Think about it. There’s no way this book is doing what you think it’s doing. There’s a person behind it. Someone we know. We simply need to find out who.”

  I didn’t defend my thinking. I couldn’t have if I wanted to. “Can I take a look?”

  Noah handed me the book.

  I turned to the first page, where the title to this story was still written.

  Twice the Terror

  And under that:

  Once upon a time, there was a boy named Noah and a girl named Kaitlin.…

  That was where I’d slammed the book shut and declared we ignore the Scaremaster.

  I read on:

  They didn’t prepare for double the trouble. Two times the tricks. And now it’s too late.

  That was all that was on the page. The Scaremaster was toying with us. This was his way of saying that he wouldn’t give us a second chance to read the story. The horrible nightmare he planned was happening, and there was nothing Noah and I could do to stop
him.

  “It’s too late,” I whispered on a long sigh. “It took me too long to figure this out,” I muttered. “The clues were there all along.”

  “What are you talking about?” Noah asked, but I wasn’t really listening.

  “Ohhh,” I moaned to myself. “What kind of investigative journalist am I? I’ll have to be something else when I grow up.” I was muttering. “The Scaremaster says it’s too late.”

  “Kaitlin, what is your problem? Hand over that book.” When I didn’t hold it out, he took it from me. After turning to a clean page, Noah dug my pencil stub out of his pants pocket.

  I nearly asked if he was wearing the same shorts for the third day in a row, but figured I didn’t want to know the answer. Plus, I had more important things on my mind.

  Noah wrote in thick letters:

  Who are you?

  The Scaremaster

  Are you a camper?

  No.

  A counselor?

  No.

  Do you work at camp?

  No.

  “See? It’s not a person at camp because it’s not a person at all,” I told Noah. Then, in a voice so low he had to lean in to hear me, I said, “I’m scared.”

  Noah tapped the pencil to his lips, then wrote:

  Whatever you are planning, stop it now.

  The Scaremaster replied:

  No.

  Looking at me, Noah said, “This book is broken. I think it’s stuck on ‘No.’” Out of frustration, he tossed the book to the side, where it landed near some of that poison ivy. Oddly, the pages seemed to pull back, curling into the cover.

  “It’s not a computer,” I told him. I had never been so sure of anything in my life. I reached out for the book.