by Tom Mitchell
Withdrawing my hand into my sleeve, I brushed off an old stool, the type you’d imagine people sat on to milk cows a thousand years ago, and sat down. The light blinked and the party of moths sent enormous shadows flittering across the wall’s wooden slats. I took a breath and tried to adjust my focus from my present Hell to the one that waited for me on the other side.
Before I’d been taken to the Cooler, Faulkner had explained what he wanted from the whittlers and had made bad jokes. He’d said I should be present to hear what I’d be missing. When it had been time for Noah to lead me to the Cooler, a boy had asked, ‘Can I join him? I’ve got a mad headache.’
And a girl called Ellie had said, ‘There’s been a terrible mistake. My parents thought this was tennis camp. I don’t want to whittle. I want to work on my backhand.’
(She was blonde and looked like her parents owned at least one Range Rover.)
‘Enough!’ Faulkner had shouted. ‘You’re here to whittle, all of you, so get whittling. Apart from this troublemaker …’ He’d pointed at me. ‘He doesn’t get to have fun.’
I’d raised a hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d raised a hand. People tended to shout out answers at school. It did our teachers’ heads in. Faulkner had nodded permission for me to speak.
‘Yes,’ I’d said. ‘I was wondering if my mum had called. Or my brother. Or anyone.’
With an accompanying withering stare, he’d shaken his head.
Continuing, I’d tried to sound as polite and nice as possible, not something I often do. ‘So could I phone them, please? It’s very important.’
‘Listen up. All of you. This isn’t unusual, this oh-so-important request from Bill. They’re always important. You’ll all want to be calling home. I know. You’re homesick. I get it. I remember military training, missing my mother’s cooking – God rest her soul.’
‘Like I said, I’m meant to be at tennis camp,’ Ellie had said. ‘I mean …’
‘Zed isn’t homesick. Zed was wondering if we get to build treehouses. There was a picture on the website of kids building treehouses.’ (Spoken by a boy with mad hair whose name, I’d guessed, was ‘Zed’.)
‘“Website” is a banned word. And let me be very clear to Bill and anyone else thinking they might use the camp phone. I’ve heard every excuse under the sun and nobody is using it. Period. Under no circumstances. Not even if the apocalypse finally happens. Okay? Nothing you could say could persuade me. It’s the point of the camp, ladies and gentlemen. Screen time is mean time. I’m not having parents demanding refunds because I let you call your boyfriends. Again. Because if there’s an emergency in the outside world, your parents can ring us.’
People talk about a ‘sinking feeling’ when you realise something terrible is about to happen. I don’t know if you’re like me but I get more of a churning, turning sensation. The centre of my body becomes super aware of upcoming bad stuff.
Now, I might’ve been stuck in the Cooler, feeling a thousand slimy things running over my feet and every so often something flappy and warm hitting my face, but I had a bigger problem on my hands.
I HAD ROBBIE’S HARD DRIVE. THE ONLY PLACE HE STORED THE WORK HE NEEDED TO HAND IN ON THURSDAY TO COMPLETE HIS COURSE. I WAS ACCIDENTALLY HOLDING HIS SUCCESS HOSTAGE.
And I know I moan about my brother. And I know he’s annoyingly perfect. But this small black thing I held in my stupid hands was his future. I obviously didn’t want him failing his art course. And I particularly didn’t want him failing it because of me. For, as much as I hated Robbie, I loved him too. If you’ve got an older brother, you’ll understand.
Still, agonising about all this meant I lost track of time and was distracted from all the creepy-crawlies. Afterwards, though, I did spend, like, half an hour in the bunkhouse shower because there were woodlice in my hair, if you can believe that. One even got into my ear.
By the time I finally felt more boy than insect, I had come up with a plan. And this one, I was sure, would definitely work.
Tuesday’s misery didn’t stop with my morning in the Cooler. The afternoon’s activity was proper bad too. For the first twenty minutes Faulkner, who led us through the forest as Noah and Lily guarded the rear, insisted on silence. And then he was stung by a wasp, properly screamed and went back to the camp for ‘wasp ointment’.
Noah cleared his throat and said, ‘So.’
Lily, talking over him, acted like the cool cover teacher. ‘As long as you’re not, like, massively loud, you can talk. It’s about ten minutes to the river. There’s an activity there.’
Although this was only the second day, and there were only ten of us, people had already formed little friendship groups. I guess it’s natural and happens whenever you put kids together. Most people like to be with other people. Robbie has loads of friends.
(I tried not to think about him, though, because I had it all planned out. All I needed to do was use the camp phone without getting caught and then the ants-in-my-lungs anxiety would fade to only worrying about coping without music.)
There were a couple of campers who always talked FIFA, another pair that both had blue hair and were obsessed with Instagram. Two of the other kids were really tall and whenever you heard them speak, they were talking about the disadvantages of their height. I couldn’t work out how this might be connected to tech – genetic engineering maybe? During the trek they were hit by branches a fair few times.
Apart from Alexa and me, the two kids that stood out and/or hadn’t latched on to anyone else were Ellie and Zed.
Ellie kind of flittered between everyone, looking for people to agree how awful it was that she’d been accidentally sent to a rewilding camp when the plan had been to spend the half-term break working on her backhand volley. Or something like that. If she hadn’t been so in-your-face, the campers might have been more sympathetic.
And then there was Zed. He kept to himself. He wasn’t silent, though. He’d shout up to Noah and Lily things like: ‘Zed is thirsty. Zed doesn’t like walking without water.’ Or: ‘Zed is tired of trees.’
He was like a massive toddler. But Lily – on her phone, can you believe it? – and Noah, trying to talk to Lily about Lily’s life and interests, ignored him.
At the river, in pairs, we were told to make model boats and then race them on the water. It was the kind of thing that sounded fun in theory but majorly sucked in reality – like taking a bath in Coca-Cola. Not that I’d ever taken a bath in Coca-Cola.
‘You can use any of the materials you find in the crates.’ Lily read the activity instructions straight from her phone. As they didn’t exactly fit the situation, I guess they’d been cut and pasted from another ‘rewilding’ camp’s website.
‘Zed sees no crates,’ said Zed. ‘And Zed has eagle eyesight.’
That Zed was able to say this without even smiling was majorly impressive.
Noah cleared his throat, desperate to impress Lily with his ability to improvise.
‘Just use whatever you find. It’s like a scavenging challenge. I don’t know.’
In the end we used twigs. It took ages. One pair, the football obsessives, tried tying leaves on to their twig with grass. It didn’t work. The activity was so boring, the moisture in my eyes evaporated, I swear. There were mosquitoes, flies and wasps too, constantly buzzing through the heat’s hum.
Alexa and I worked together. As we collected twigs, I don’t know exactly why – maybe it was the sheer boredom, or the nerves, or Alexa being weirdly easy to talk to – but I felt compelled to share. I told her about the irreplaceable contents of the hard drive, about how important it was to get it back to Robbie by Thursday. And I told her about my plan.
She listened. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ she asked finally.
But sometimes you’ve got to take risks. Would Tribe ever have been as successful if they’d played it safe? I don’t think so. And, anyway, it was a good idea. Because it was a simple idea. They’re always the best.
I’d find the camp phone and I’d ring Robbie. (I knew his number by heart, as he did mine, because the parents insisted for ‘safety reasons’.) And I’d do all this without getting caught.
When it was time to launch the boats, we had to throw them in from the side. (There wasn’t a riverbank as such – the ground just got more and more soggy until it was undeniably water.) The twigs were swept off before you could judge where they’d splashed … and there wasn’t even a finishing line.
‘They’ll be in town in minutes,’ said Noah. ‘That’s where this river goes.’ He turned to Lily. ‘We should have someone in town, waiting to see if they spot any of the boats.’
She liked this suggestion. ‘Yes, I’ll tell Faulkner. I’ll do it next time. I could squeeze out a whole afternoon out of here. In the Nando’s.’
‘Who won?’ asked a camper.
‘Won what?’ said Noah.
‘William Shatner!’ Alexa hissed, more non-swearing swearing. ‘This camp is a joke. Can you believe our parents paid for this experience? You wait until I get on Tripadvisor.’
That evening, before turning off the bunkhouse lights, Faulkner made an announcement.
‘For your safety I will be patrolling the camp throughout the night with this bad boy strapped to my head.’ Like a fancy-dress miner, he wore a hard hat with a light attached. He patted it. I think he probably wanted the light to be intimidating, but it wasn’t strong enough. Instead it was more like a reflector you get on a bike. ‘Screen time is mean time.’
I caught Alexa’s eye. She raised her eyebrows and mouthed, ‘What?’ and despite everything being super serious, I let out a laugh.
I’d got Alexa to move to the free bed between me and the blue-haired girl. Although I’d prefer to sleep away from the group, especially this lot, I didn’t want to be drawing attention, not with my Robbie plan about to kick off. And Alexa had a role to play too.
‘Was that you, Walker?’ Faulkner said.
‘No, sir, sorry, sir,’ was my response and he flicked out the bunkhouse lights.
The faint headlamp illuminated enough of his face that you could pick out the gurn, but the torch was too weak to cut through the darkness. The door closed behind him. There was a moment of silence and then … a fart, laughter.
‘How am I ever going to sleep in here?’ moaned a girl’s voice – Ellie, I think. ‘I hate this place.’
‘It’s so hot!’ said someone else, and they weren’t wrong.
‘And I can still smell the river,’ Alexa said, and sneezed. ‘I had, like, two showers and I still stink of it. I hate this place too.’
But building boats from twigs was more exhausting than you’d think, so it wasn’t long until everyone got into bed and stopped their talking about nothing. If, unlike me, the others were genuinely tech addicts, walking through the woods was probably the first exercise they’d had in months, aside from watching the other, more athletic kids kick footballs in PE lessons. And that would only have been a workout for their eye muscles.
Inevitably it wasn’t long before the night’s first error message. I’d planned to get things rolling at one a.m. Do you realise how difficult it is to guess the time without a phone? At least in classrooms there’s usually a clock. In the bunkhouse the only clue was the glow of light behind the thin curtains. Nobody had a watch; I’d checked at dinner (rice and beans and vegetarian sausages made from rice and beans). So I had no idea of the time when silently I pulled back the blanket and, making a minimum of squeaks, descended my ladder. The ladder of destiny, the steps of fortune.
Alexa must have something like superhero hearing because I was honestly so ninja-like in my creeping. I mean, it’s something I’ve always been good at; it’s a true skill, the sneaking. It’s assisted a number of my plans.
‘Are you doing it?’ she asked, up on her elbows in bed. ‘Now? Are you sure?’
I brought a finger to my lips – be quiet – and then pointed to my wrist – it’s time. She nodded understanding. I lifted the pillows from the bottom bunk and shoved them under my blanket, creating the impression of a rough, albeit fairly hench, bed body. Her job, as agreed over dinner, was to ensure that nobody check this, creating a distraction if needed. I didn’t bring the torch because I didn’t want its light to give me away. And, anyway, how dark could outside be?
This done, I padded off. (Don’t worry, I wasn’t naked. I’d gone to bed in my outfit – black joggers, black T-shirt, dope Nikes.) I was at the door, pulling it open 100 per cent silently, when a voice broke across the bunkhouse like a grenade.
‘You woke Zed,’ said Zed. ‘What’re you doing, waking Zed?’
For a moment I thought my number was up.
‘Toilet,’ I whispered, and I left before Zed could reply.
The next problem was the heat. You’d think the cloudless sky might have let the day’s warmth escape. But no. And breathing more and more of the hot air made me feel like I was a balloon about to lift off, except one that really needed to ring its brother.
Pausing outside the bunkhouse, I don’t think I’d ever hated myself as much as I did right then. Which is saying something. I was such an idiot for taking Robbie’s hard drive. I mean, why hadn’t I looked? Okay, it was a very similar shape and size, but it was so obviously not the portable charger. It had EXTERNAL STORAGE written on it in large silver letters and everything.
At least I could see. The (almost) full moon reflected silver light across the campsite. The lack of colour, the lack of sound, the lack of movement, gave the scene horror-film feels. But it didn’t matter; it wasn’t like I was going to get attacked by a hungry tree demon.
OR SO I THOUGHT.
(I wasn’t attacked by a hungry tree demon.)
NOT THAT NIGHT.
(Again, I’m sorry. I’m joking.)
OR AM I?
Anyway, I wasn’t going to go skipping directly from the bunkhouse to the office, not with Faulkner’s threats about him wandering around with a hard hat. That would have been a mistake. Instead I’d loop round the back, tiptoeing like a stealth master between the trees and the back wall, keeping to the shadows, half boy, half ghost.
Having a landline meant being connected to physical phone lines. After dinner, I’d spotted the black wires running to the back corner of the building from a telegraph pole faking like a tree. All I needed to do was get into the building, find that corner and follow the interior wire. Sorted. And, honestly, I didn’t know why my heart was beating so fast and why my breathing was so mad because it wasn’t like I was breaking into a bank.
The only thing the plan lacked was a soundtrack. Midnight Marauders, Tribe’s 1993 album, had the perfect title.
Behind the bunkhouse, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the gloom. I stopped, pinning my back against the rough wall. Campers were sleeping just centimetres away, dead to it all. But the movement wasn’t Faulkner; it was a fox sniffing at a pair of black bins. Even though I was frozen like a statue made of ice, the animal lifted its head and looked straight at me. Its eyes reflected the moonlight and, although I’m totally aware of how lame this sounds, looked like they might actually be possessed by some terrible wood spirit.
A HUNGRY TREE DEMON.
I gulped. I thought about my bedroom. Had I ever before been awake at two in the morning? (Yes.) Was it even two in the morning? I carried on moving. Like sharks, that was all I could do, and soon I was up and round the far end of the bunkhouse, a hop, step and whisper from the office block’s door.
A quick look over my shoulder showed a perfect view – a deathly stillness. Even the Stars and Stripes slept. Forcing a smile, imagining myself to be not a total coward, I took the handle and turned it.
But the door wouldn’t open. Because the door was locked.
‘Fudge buckets,’ I whispered and thought briefly of Alexa.
I tried again because:
a) I was desperate; and
b) you never know.
But the world, reality, didn’t owe me
a favour. And even if it did, it had never been my biggest fan. The door stayed locked. I checked over my shoulder again.
Okay, no patrolling Faulkner walked through the pencil-shaded nightmare but the fox had left its bins, probably as interested in eating veggie sausages as we had been, and was now out in the open. It padded closer, staring, maybe thinking I might lead it to food. Or even that I was food.
I made a shooing motion with my hands and hissed, ‘No!’
Maybe I’d accidentally used the fox sign language for ‘come closer’ because that’s exactly what it did.
The fox would need a decent sauce to make a tasty meal of me. But there were more concerning things at hand than a fox’s diet. The phone! Robbie! Had he noticed that the hard drive was missing? Was he now turning over his bedroom, pulling drawers fully out from his desk, Mum standing in the doorframe, sobbing? How angry would he be? Would I be able to persuade him not to tell Mum?
Panic seared my mind but I knew I had to keep control. There’d been a window near Faulkner’s desk, I remembered. There was a possibility that it had been left ajar or, at least, could be forced open.
I’d not worry about the fox being pretty much at my ankles. I’d jog round to the back of the office block, and I’d not think about how loads of scary movies are set in forests (and fairy tales too, which are sometimes even worse). Then I’d track along the back wall until I got to the window.
Which is what I did. But behind the building I tripped over something, a log or a stick or whatever. Falling, I struck my head against the wall. Instantly I felt hot blood on my forehead.
I didn’t worry about this, though. I worried about:
a) getting back to my feet because of the fox maybe trying to bite my throat because they were attracted to blood (or was that wasps?); and
b) the sound made when my head had struck wood – a bass drum that was loud enough to wake the dead.
I got up. No shouting. No biting. In the shadows it was harder to make things out, but I could see the metallic blink of the fox’s eyes a few metres away. No doubt it was keeping its distance until it worked out what I was doing.