Escape from Camp Boring

by Tom Mitchell

  Alexa had this weird smile and stood there with the torch pointing at nothing. ‘I’m not great at –’ she cleared her throat – ‘expressing myself. But I’m sure your parents are proud of you too, Will.’

  It was a strange conversation to have on a midnight riverbank. Were we trying to distract ourselves from losing the raft? Maybe. The moment had that close distance you get in dreams. Like you’re looking down the wrong end of a telescope.

  I didn’t say anything more. I’d said enough. Instead I returned the hard drive safely to my pocket and slipped my feet back into the damp, slimy trainers. Standing up, I took my jacket and wrapped its arms round my waist, making a kind of freaky skirt that showed too much at the front but completely covered my bum and the back side of my legs. I made sure that the pocket containing the hard drive was in a safe position and didn’t bang about too much.

  ‘It’ll take longer than we planned but I reckon we’ve travelled a fair distance already,’ I said. ‘We just need to follow the river. It’s that straightforward.’

  Ellie frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but I knew exactly what she was going to say.

  ‘Not the river. The plan, I mean. The river has bends. And all we need do is follow it and we’ll get to town before sunrise. Easy.’

  (Wow, I pretty much convinced myself.)

  Ellie shrugged. ‘I mean, I’m up for it, but I was assuming you two would want to turn back. You were sent to camp. I’m supposed to be—’

  ‘Tennis,’ I said. ‘We know.’

  ‘What about Zed?’ asked Alexa.

  ‘He fell over in, like, less than a metre of water and instantly got up. And, anyway, it’s always the same in prison-break films. There’s always one that gets left behind. Have you never seen Paddington 2?’

  Alexa nodded. Ellie didn’t. She started off, following the river.

  Me? I was learning that as long as you said something confidently enough, people tended to believe it.

  Squelching along behind Ellie and Alexa, half boy, half water, I regretted everything. Particularly getting caught listening to music in biology. And there was a time a few years ago when I had pineapple on a pizza. And, a thousand yeses, also accidentally taking Robbie’s hard drive.

  Alexa kept hold of the torch. Its beam bounced along ahead of us. She said that holding it made her feel less like crying.

  My Nikes, more river than Air, farted at every step. And I’ll tell you what else was massively annoying – carrying my trousers and socks under my arm. And being asked if I’d dropped my trousers stopped being funny after the first time.

  ‘Whoops!’ said Alexa at one point, when her foot dislodged a clump of grass and mud by the riverbank, which splashed down into the water.

  She kept her balance and turned to flash an embarrassed smile. I’d like to be able to say that my lightning reflexes had struck, causing me to grab and save her. But they hadn’t. Because they were shattered. It was the middle of the night. And, you know, stress takes it out of you. That’s why bomb-disposal experts and teachers always look so exhausted. Also: I don’t have lightning reflexes.

  I managed to get stung by a stinging nettle. I yelped, okay, but hardly moaned at all. Alexa amazingly remembered something from the plant video. Somehow, and with the help of the torch, she picked out a ‘dock’ leaf and made me hold it against the sting. Weirdly it actually worked.

  In the end thorns, not nettles, stopped us. What started off as the odd clump here and there, which I began to notice when one scratched blood from my ankle, ended up as a huge bush that barred our way with as much solidity as a portcullis. If we’d had two stepladders and a plank of wood, we might have been all right.

  But we hadn’t even been able to find a stick, so …

  ‘Right,’ said Ellie. ‘What now?’

  She had a way of speaking that meant everything sounded like she was blaming me.

  The thorn bush was the size of a train carriage parked directly across our path. Even in the night’s half-light, it looked to continue into the forest for a good distance.

  ‘I think we have to push through,’ I said. ‘There’s no turning back.’

  There was a wedding once, friends of Mum’s, and all the kids were dumped in this room with a TV connected to a DVD player (remember them?!) and no cake and definitely no cocktail sausages, which I love but Mum won’t ever buy. The only DVD was Cars 2, the Friday-afternoon ‘that’ll do’ Pixar.

  ‘And if you don’t like cartoons, there’s Twister!’ said a bridesmaid, holding some champagne and leaving.

  Twister was opened. We played for seven minutes before returning to Lightning McQueen because it’s the most awkward game. It literally makes you put your backside in other people’s faces, which is weird enough if you know them but massively cringe when they’re strangers.

  Anyway, if you don’t know Twister, there’s this dial that’s spun and it lands on a colour and either a hand or foot picture too. You play on a plastic mat with lots of coloured dots. You and the others then have to place your hand or foot on the random colour that the dial chooses.

  And in the forest, as I lifted a leg like a super-suspicious spider, I thought back to that game of Twister, my only game of Twister. Finding a way through the solid bush of thorns was (maybe) less embarrassing, but it would be a hell of a lot more painful if I slipped.

  ‘Hold the light still. And don’t forget I’m not wearing trousers,’ I said – not a statement you want to hear yourself say.

  ‘Believe me, we won’t,’ said Ellie.

  And Alexa laughed, and Alexa was supposed to be my friend.

  I was on my way into the bush. I’d found a space between the thorny stems and was sliding my naked right leg into it. Sure, I felt the fingernail spikes trace my leg but they didn’t catch.

  ‘Your arm!’ called Ellie.

  Ellie didn’t have a Twister dial; she wasn’t calling for me to stick my hand into the darkened mass of tiny blades. Hers was a warning – my T-shirt had caught on a thorn. A number of needy thorns. I tried yanking my arm away, still balancing on my left foot, but the bush came with it. I shook my arm up and down. No success. My clothes were stitched to the bush.

  Alexa stepped up. Handing the torch to Ellie, she caught my T-shirt between her thumb and forefinger. With her other hand she delicately disconnected the thorns.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘But …’

  I waved her away. ‘It looks bad because it’s dark.’ Again something else you never want to hear yourself say. ‘I can see the way through. It’s not far.’

  I realised I was in trouble when my foot touched down on vines that felt as thick and unforgiving as barbed wire. I pushed down as if squashing a massive cardboard box for recycling day (home’s only fun chore).

  Yes, I’d managed to penetrate the first layer of thorns, but I was going nowhere deeper. My foot was now stuck.

  What did I do? Well, obviously I tried pulling out.

  ‘Abort! Abort!’ I might have said, if this were a rocket launch or I were a robot or whatever.

  ‘Will?’ said Alexa.

  ‘Will!’ said Ellie.

  I stood frozen, my right leg encased in thorns, like a loose cast made of needles.

  ‘Umm,’ I said, ‘I’m stuck.’ I tried another yank of the trapped foot.

  This time I was successful.

  But at great cost.

  I fell backwards. And for the second time that night (so far) my blessed top half escaped damage. It landed with a thud on the bramble-free path at the girls’ feet. My cursed bottom half was not so lucky. My fall, gravity’s fault again (I so hate physics) forced my milk-white calves against the thorns. Sure, my waterproof-jacket-for-a-skirt provided some protection. But not much. And certainly not against the girls’ decision to pull me out …

  I’m not ashamed of the sound I made. It hurt about as much as you’d think being pulled from a thorn bush would. Loads. Death by a thousand cuts. Only I didn’t die. And, to be honest, I was
more scratched than cut … but … still.

  ‘Aoaoaoaoaooaoaoao,’ I said like a sad baby yodeller.

  And, free, I lay on my back and I looked at the stars, past the trees, and tried to ignore the feeling in both my legs from the knees down, like a platoon of ants were on fire and dancing to banging ant music across my skin.

  ‘Will,’ said Alexa, ‘I’ve been trying to say.’ My eyes flicked to her looming body. She lifted an arm, pointing. ‘There’s … umm … a path that goes round the bush.’

  If I closed my eyes, would they see me cry?

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Ellie. ‘Like, super tired.’

  Alexa didn’t respond. I mean, I was almost too exhausted to reply but somehow I managed a weak ‘Yeah’.

  The path hadn’t been a quick loop round the thorn bush. Instead it snaked deeper into the forest. It felt as if we were heading in the correct direction, but we’d swung left and right so many times through hundreds of gaps between countless gangs of trees that it was difficult not to lose track, and I mean that literally.

  At least all the walking had dried my shoes enough to stop them farting. I was worried that the girls would think I was suffering the same stomach problem as the one Zed mentioned.

  ‘Wait!’ I called, not expecting Ellie to stop.

  She spun round. She probably thought I was about to tell her she was going the wrong way. Alexa stepped aside to allow her full view of me and my exposed legs.

  ‘Look, if you’re so hot with directions, maybe you should lead the way. It’s not like we’ve brought a … whatever you call it, the thing that points north,’ Ellie snapped. ‘A weather vane.’

  ‘I think you mean a compass,’ said Alexa. As she continued, her voice faded in volume. ‘I’ve got one on my phone.’ Her voice was tiny now, a whisper. ‘A weather vane is something that shows which way the wind is blowing.’

  Our direction, or lack of it, wasn’t the reason I’d spoken. No, I pointed at the reason, and the reason was …

  ‘Actually, what’s that?’ said Ellie, stepping closer.

  … a shed.

  Alexa flashed the torch across it. Standing a little off to the side of our track, it was in a tight, dark space between the silver trees and looked almost as if it had grown out of the earth with them. It was undoubtedly designed to sit at the end of a garden and get filled with lawnmowers and brooms and broken plant pots and bluebottles. It was a cube of planks with a peaked roof and a single window looking out. What was it doing here? Did it mean we were close to civilisation? Maybe someone lived in the forest?

  Maybe they were watching us now?

  How could a shed seem scary?

  (BECAUSE A SERIAL KILLER LIVED THERE, MAYBE?)

  ‘I’m going in,’ said Ellie. ‘I don’t even care. There might be supplies.’

  ‘What kind of supplies?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Use your imagination. A machete? Walking sticks? Stuff!’

  She looked at me and she looked at Alexa. The shed was a good five metres away but she held out her arm like she was about to turn the doorknob – a doorknob that I swear, even in the shadowy light, was definitely and horribly red. Like an internal organ. That kind of red.

  Ellie gulped. I actually saw it move down her throat. A big old-fashioned gulp. Next, she laughed, unconvincingly. ‘You two are chickens,’ she said, voice wavering. ‘What’s the worst that could happen? I’m savaged by a moth?’

  (Having never been sent to the Cooler, she didn’t know how big moths could get.)

  She stepped between two trees, hand still outstretched. Each tree brushed a shoulder. She continued. The further from us she got, the more the darkness dulled her outline. Finally, terribly she reached the door. She looked over her shoulder at us.

  Alexa was shaking her head, a terrified bird. She added a whispered, ‘Nooooo!’

  ‘What?’ called Ellie. ‘It’s a shed.’ And she threw open the door.

  From where we stood we couldn’t see inside. The opened door pressed against the dead window, leaving a rectangle of perfect black.

  Ellie dipped her head inside.

  There was a delay of one … two … three seconds.

  Then she screamed.

  In the next instant she turned and tripped and screamed some more, then pulled herself up and rushed past, knocking us bowling pins out of the way. Alexa caught my eye and I could literally hear my heart pumping in my ears. Without a second’s pause we turned and ran off too.

  Obviously I’d forgotten the fatigue. It was the emergency adrenalin pumping through my system. And the terror. You could see the same was true of Alexa. Her eyes were so wide they might have fallen from her face.

  Away up the path, Ellie had stopped running and stood with her hands on her legs, back curved, breathing in and out. It was a parent pose after their 5k weekend exercise.

  We skidded to a halt behind her. I whispered into Alexa’s ear. (I didn’t worry about seeming creepy. We were long past that.) ‘Say something,’ I said.

  ‘I can hear you,’ said Ellie. ‘You’re about as good at whispering as you are at escaping.’

  Despite her voice regaining that old Ellie attitude, she didn’t straighten out. She remained fixed in position. Was she going to vomit? I was about to ask, when she spoke. And it looked like she was addressing an ant or something. As if ants were interested.

  ‘I couldn’t see anything to begin with. And then my eyes adjusted to the darkness,’ she said. ‘And I saw … a skeleton.’

  Alexa grabbed my arm.

  A skeleton? Did Ellie say skeleton?

  ‘Holy cow!’ said Alexa.

  I admit to a tightening of my diaphragm, a tensing of my buttocks.

  ‘They were dead?’ I asked, which, looking back, was a stupid question.

  Ellie raised her head. ‘Are you kidding me?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  Alexa’s hand dropped from my arm.

  ‘What do you think it was … doing in there?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a skeleton, Will. It wasn’t doing very much except lying there, being dead.’

  ‘But-but-but how did they die? Do you think someone killed them? What have we got ourselves into? There’s going to be a Netflix documentary about all this, I can feel it.’

  ‘It wasn’t a “they”,’ said Ellie. ‘It was an it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Alexa, looking as horrified as I felt.

  ‘Look,’ said Ellie, ‘if you’re so interested, why not see for yourself?’

  Although Ellie was very clearly talking to Alexa, Alexa gave me this look as if to say, ‘Yeah, why not look yourself?’

  I coughed. It was a sound like a frog’s fart. If frogs fart. Which I’m not sure they do. What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t a very impressive cough, not like the ones Robbie or Dad are able to produce.

  ‘Why don’t we keep on walking? There exist sheds that are never meant to be explored.’

  ‘What about the supplies?’ said Ellie, suddenly focused on me like a heat-seeking missile.

  ‘What kind of supplies are kept in a shed in the middle of a forest?’ I asked. ‘And you’ve recovered quickly from the skeleton!’

  ‘Are you always like this?’ Ellie asked me.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You always think you know better!’

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Whatever.’

  A tiny core of resentment ignited within me. It didn’t power a complete takedown of Ellie, though, despite how much of a nightmare she was being. No. It powered my legs, as I turned to stride back down the path towards the shed.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Alexa, handing me the torch.

  Even with the torchlight, the window remained an impossible black, as if the skeleton were able to suck all the light, all the life, from the shed’s interior. The door was still open from when Ellie had stuck her head in, a wedge of darkness.

  I looked back down
the track. The two girls stood there, watching, judging. I thought back to the Cooler, to the moths and woodlice. I’d survived that. I thought of Robbie. He’d be brave enough to stick his head in.

  Phife Dawg rapping about how brave he is in ‘Check the Rhime’ whizzed through my head.

  I grabbed the door handle. And with my other hand flat against the shed’s exterior wall, I slowly dipped my head into the space …

  ‘So it wasn’t a person?’

  Ellie stared at me like I had two heads. ‘What? No! Of course not a person. Why would someone be dead in a shed?’

  I groaned. ‘When you said “skeleton” … and the way you screamed and ran and … You were so dramatic about it!’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Ellie.

  ‘What was it, then?’ asked Alexa, smiling the relieved smile of someone not having to deal with a human skeleton.

  Ellie turned to her. ‘It’s a badger. A skeleton badger. And I hate badgers. And dead things generally.’

  We all entered the shed. I pointed to the skeleton, feeling a bit like a dead animal tour guide. ‘It very clearly isn’t a badger. It’s tiny,’ I said.

  I mean, I don’t know anything about anything but it looked more like a squirrel. Weirdly the bones kind of shone in the gloom, caught by the torchlight, the white really sticking out. And that’s all there really was: a skeleton, no fur or whatever. It must have been dead a long time. An ancient squirrel. Maybe even a mythical squirrel. The King Arthur of squirrels.

  ‘Here he goes again,’ said Ellie. ‘Will always knows best!’

  ‘How about we have a sit-down for ten minutes?’ suggested Alexa diplomatically, turning to check that the door would stay open. ‘I feel kind of anxious and tired all of a sudden.’

  Ellie’s shoulders slumped, and it was as if all her energy had been suddenly exhausted. ‘I only ever wanted to play tennis. Is that so bad?’

  Now the adrenalin had worn off, I’d reached that stage of sleepiness where it stung to keep my eyes open. And I was wearing a skirt made of a waterproof jacket that chafed like you wouldn’t believe. So, yes, I was open to persuasion in terms of resting.