Monsterstreet #4

by J. H. Reynolds

  Director McGee chuckled.

  “I’m glad you both got plenty of rest. You’re going to need it for all the fun things we have planned this week.”

  They watched as Director McGee continued his rounds, encouraging campers to eat to their heart’s desire. He even stopped and placed a whoopee cushion in a chair and belly-laughed when he heard a camper sit on it.

  A few moments later, Director McGee stepped up to the microphone on the stage at the front of the room. He cleared his throat and addressed the crowd. “Good mornin’, campers! I know that your counselors informed you last night that you can write letters home to your parents, and I wanted to let you know that you can drop them off in the blue basket that we’ll be coming around with here in a moment. I’ll personally be mailing them out every day before lunch.”

  He held up the blue basket so that everyone could see it, then he started gathering letters from the campers, one table at a time.

  “Are you going to write a letter home?” Brodie asked Harper.

  “I probably should,” Harper replied, debating whether to make contact with her parents while they were still trying to figure things out. Ever since they told her what was going on, she had distanced herself from them.

  Nearby, Darla filled her plate with pancakes and covered them with syrup and chocolate chips. She looked like a kid in a candy store.

  Director McGee stopped to talk to her for a moment.

  “I can’t wait to tell my family about camp!” she declared, setting down her plate and taking a family photo from her pocket to show him.

  Director McGee smiled, blew a kazoo in her face, and continued on to another table.

  Darla kissed the photo and started to put it back in her pocket. But Regina, who had been watching her, walked by and knocked the photo out of her hand, also bumping the syrup bottle off the buffet table.

  The syrup spilled onto the tile floor, drenching the family photo.

  “No!” Darla cried out, reaching her hand to the floor to save the photo.

  “No one cares about your stupid picture,” Regina said. “If you were smart, you’d have it backed up on your Instagram.”

  With tears in her eyes, Darla peered down at the photo. The syrup had covered the faces of her brothers, sisters, and parents.

  “Oh, wait, you probably don’t have Instagram because you’re not old enough to have a phone yet. I don’t think they should allow kids into camp that aren’t even old enough to have a phone,” Regina said, jabbing a final blow, and then she walked away.

  Harper hurried to Darla’s side.

  “It’s ruined,” Darla said, feeling defeated.

  “Here, let me help,” Harper offered, fetching a roll of paper towels and trying to wipe the syrup off the photo. But the harder she rubbed at it, the more damage she did. “You shouldn’t listen to anything Regina says. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  Harper hoped Darla might conjure a smile, but she seemed too sad, like the light inside her had been snuffed out.

  During breakfast, Harper sat next to Darla. While they ate, Counselor Fuller conducted the morning roll call. All the while, Harper could feel Regina staring at them from the other end of the table. It was as if, for whatever reason, she had it out for Darla.

  Once everyone was checked off the list, Counselor Fuller gave them instructions for the morning. “All right, ladies. It’s time to match up with a buddy.”

  Regina and Tabitha immediately paired up. All the other girls did the same.

  Harper turned to Darla. “Want to be my buddy?”

  Without looking up, Darla gave a slight nod.

  Counselor Fuller continued, “Unfortunately, Director McGee says it’s too foggy to go to the waterpark today, so the girls will be playing bazooka ball in the gym while the boys head over to the laser tag arena. We’ll switch during snack break and will have an epic indoor game of capture-the-flag this afternoon—boys against girls!”

  She waved for the girls to follow her, and Harper and Darla quickly cleaned off their trays and joined the other girls.

  When they arrived in the gym, there were a dozen blue and red dodgeballs lined up at the center of the court. But even more interesting were the cannon-like contraptions leaning against the walls.

  “Half of you on each side!” Counselor Fuller instructed in a voice a bit more stern than her usual chipper one. “We’re going to play three rounds. When the whistle blows, fetch the balls at the center of the court, and bring them back to your team’s bazookas to launch at the other side. No aiming at the face—only the body. The winning team gets first dibs at the chocolate buffet tonight.”

  Regina and Tabitha ran to the left side of the court with ten other girls. Harper and Darla joined the rest on the right side.

  Everyone stood behind the white line, waiting for the whistle to blow.

  Harper did her best to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. She always felt nervous before any kind of competition or performance—whether it was a spelling contest, volleyball game, or piano recital.

  She noticed Darla standing off to the side next to one of the cannons and realized that Darla was feeling even more nervous than she was.

  Even worse, Regina was staring daggers at Darla from across the gym.

  “You want to take off your glasses and let Counselor Fuller hold them?” Harper asked.

  Darla shook her head. “I can’t see anything without them,” she replied, more timid than usual.

  “Just stay behind me, okay?” Harper said. “I’ll keep an eye on Regina.”

  Darla nodded and hid herself behind Harper.

  As soon as Counselor Fuller blew the whistle, Harper sprinted toward the center of the court while Darla stayed behind her. Close to the wall.

  Regina was the first girl from either side to grab a rubber ball and make it back to her team’s cannon. She loaded it quickly, then took aim and launched it across the gym as hard as she could.

  Harper watched in distress as the ball spun, as if in slow motion, directly toward Darla . . .

  And then it knocked off her head.

  7

  Weird

  Harper ran to where Darla’s head tumbled to the gym floor. It was bloodred.

  Only . . .

  It wasn’t Darla’s head.

  It was the ball. It had hit her face so hard that it had seemed like her head had popped off.

  Like a twig, her glasses had snapped in two over her nose and fallen to the ground. One of the lenses burst out of the frame and cracked down the middle in the crooked shape of a lightning bolt.

  Darla collapsed onto the floor.

  “You jerk!” Harper yelled across the gym at Regina, then ran over to help Darla. Her little body looked lifeless as a slug.

  Just then, a whistle echoed throughout the gym.

  “I said no aiming at faces!” Counselor Fuller scolded Regina while hurrying to Darla’s side.

  Counselor Fuller and Harper helped Darla down the hall to the camp nurse, and Harper waited outside the door. She put the remnants of Darla’s glasses in a plastic bag, hoping they might be able to repair them later.

  Regina is awful, Harper thought. She’s going to keep making Darla’s life miserable unless I can find a way to stop her.

  Right then, Brodie walked by. His frizzy black hair looked like it could be nesting a family of crows.

  “What are you doing here?” Harper asked, surprised to see him.

  “I was dropping off a letter to my parents,” Brodie said, pointing to Director McGee’s office at the end of the hall. “Just letting them know I’ve been taking my medicine.”

  He noticed the sign on the door. “What are you doing outside the nurse’s office?”

  “I’m waiting for Darla to get out. Regina launched a dodgeball at her and broke her glasses,” Harper explained, holding up the plastic bag.

  Brodie sighed and shook his head, bothered by something.

  “Weird,” he said.

 
; “Weird? It was downright cruel.”

  “What I mean is—” Brodie stopped himself and looked around. Then he stepped closer to Harper and whispered, “It’s weird because I saw a list of all the campers on Director McGee’s desk.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So . . . Regina’s name wasn’t anywhere on it. It’s like she isn’t even supposed to be here.”

  That night in the girls’ cabin, Harper helped tape Darla’s glasses back together. After all, Darla still had one good lens left. Nurse Betty had told Darla to keep ice on her nose for the rest of the day, and Darla was now lying in the bottom bunk bed with her face to the wall, crying silently.

  “It’s okay to cry,” Harper said. “But you might not want to let Regina and Tabitha see you. It will only make things worse.”

  What she really wanted to say was that Regina and Tabitha were like vultures circling a wounded animal, waiting for it to die.

  Outside, the fog seemed to be getting thicker. And darker.

  “I just want to go home,” Darla whimpered. “This place isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  Harper sighed and put her hand on Darla’s shoulder. “It can only get better, right? I mean, if you act like what they say and do doesn’t bother you, then they’ll eventually stop. My mom told me that’s how bullies work.”

  “But how do I act like it doesn’t bother me?” Darla asked.

  Right then, Harper heard Regina laugh from the other side of the room. It was loud, unfeeling, even cruel.

  “Oh, is poor Darla homesick?” Regina mocked, then added sarcastically in a whiny baby’s voice, “Does she need her mommy and daddy?”

  “Be quiet, Regina!” Harper yelled, and the cabin grew quiet. “Haven’t you done enough damage for one day?”

  Regina walked across the cabin to Harper’s and Darla’s bunks. Tabitha followed after her like a loyal pet.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Regina said, threatening Harper. Then she turned to Darla again. “I wouldn’t go to sleep tonight if I were you. Nighttime is when ghosts possess people and take over their bodies and minds. If we hear a scream coming from the cove tonight, we should just hand you over, and the ghost girl will leave the rest of us alone. You could be like our sacrificial offering.”

  “Stop it,” Harper demanded.

  Regina glared at her. Before she could say anything back, Counselor Fuller walked into the cabin.

  “Lights out! Everyone in their bunks.”

  Regina and Tabitha scurried back to their beds, acting innocent. Harper climbed up the ladder to the top bunk, leaving Darla sulking alone in her bed below.

  A moment later, the lights flicked off.

  In the darkness, before the noise machines came on, Harper could hear the sound of the ceiling fan creaking as it spun around and around. The crickets chirped and the cicadas rattled outside. And the springs of the bunks squeaked as the girls gossiped in the dark, tossing and turning in their beds.

  Then . . .

  Harper thought she heard Darla whispering something below.

  Over and over again.

  Like a chant. Or incantation.

  Harper leaned over the side of the bunk so that she could hear what Darla was saying.

  “I wish I could make them pay. . . . I wish I could make them pay. . . . I wish I could make them pay. . . .”

  The words turned Harper’s blood cold. It seemed unlike Darla to threaten to hurt someone—even a bully.

  Every person has a breaking point, Harper thought.

  And when she glanced over the edge of her bunk, she saw something even more disturbing on Darla’s face. . . .

  A smile.

  That looked a lot like evil.

  8

  Missing

  When Harper entered the mess hall the next morning for breakfast, she didn’t see Darla at their usual table. And when Darla’s name was called out during roll call, Darla didn’t answer.

  “Has anyone seen the little girl with pink bows in her pigtails?” Counselor Fuller asked.

  Everyone at the table shook their heads.

  “How about you? Do you know anything?” Counselor Fuller asked, looking at Harper.

  “Darla wasn’t in her bed when I woke up this morning,” Harper said. “I figured she had just gotten up early to come to breakfast.”

  “Hmm. Would you mind going and checking the cabin again?”

  “Sure,” Harper said, and headed toward the door.

  On her way out, she approached Brodie, who was eating a stack of chocolate-covered waffles.

  “Will you come with me?” she asked.

  “Where?”

  “To look for Darla. They don’t know where she is.”

  Concerned, Brodie abandoned his waffles and followed Harper outside.

  They ambled through the fog with their flashlights. Even though it was midmorning, it was still difficult to see anything. It felt like they were walking around on another planet.

  “I hope Darla’s okay,” Brodie said, shining his beam behind a thicket of bushes.

  “Me too,” Harper replied. “The sooner we find her, the better.”

  They checked the girls’ cabin. But Darla wasn’t there. So they decided to continue their search before heading back to the mess hall.

  “Do you think that Regina and Tabitha could have done something to her?” Brodie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Harper admitted, having secretly been wondering the same thing. “I mean, they’re terrible, for sure. But I don’t know if they’d actually do anything to hurt her.”

  “Didn’t they launch a bazooka ball at her face?”

  Harper realized Brodie was right. Regina and Tabitha had already proven that they had it in them to hurt Darla physically.

  “I did hear Darla say last night in the cabin that she didn’t like camp and wanted to go home,” Harper said. “Maybe she snuck away while everyone was sleeping.”

  “You mean, like, hitchhike home in the middle of the night?”

  “Maybe,” Harper said.

  “Surely she’d know better than to do something like that,” Brodie replied. “If I’ve learned anything from movies, it’s that there are a lot scarier people out there in the world than Regina and Tabitha.”

  “She didn’t seem herself last night,” Harper said.

  She paused, pondering over a thought that had been tucked in the back of her head.

  “What is it?” Brodie asked, sensing she was distracted.

  “It’s just that . . . the last thing I heard Darla say before bed was that she wanted to make Regina and Tabitha ‘pay.’ I didn’t know what she meant, but do you think she could have run off to hide in the woods to play a prank on Regina and Tabitha? You know, like, make them feel bad for bullying her?”

  “That’d be way twisted,” Brodie replied.

  “Yeah,” Harper agreed. “She’s too innocent—she couldn’t have thought up anything that manipulative. At least I don’t think she would have. I mean, it’s not like we know her that well.”

  They walked farther down the path, searching every inch of ground.

  Rocks.

  Grass.

  Mud.

  Twigs.

  Pine needles.

  But still no sign of Darla.

  As they passed by the yellow caution tape at the ladder to the zip-line platform, Brodie stopped to look around.

  Then . . .

  His eyes grew wide, and Harper followed his gaze to the gray water washing up against the bank.

  Brodie shined his flashlight at the ground, and his jaw dropped.

  Harper’s did too.

  Together, they stared down at the ominous scene.

  “Shoe prints,” Harper whispered. “They’re in the mud leading up to the bank.”

  “And straight into the water,” Brodie added.

  Even creepier . . .

  There, at the edge of the cove, were Darla’s broken glasses.

  Covered in a fluorescent green slim
e.

  9

  No Evidence

  Harper and Brodie ran as fast as they could back to the mess hall. The cool mist filled their lungs and stung their faces.

  When they arrived at the main office, they found Counselor Fuller and Director McGee looking over what Harper assumed was the camper list.

  When Director McGee saw Harper and Brodie, he hid the list behind his back.

  “You both have to come quick!” Harper shouted. “We found Darla’s glasses and shoe prints by the cove!”

  “What?” Director McGee said. “I think you must be mistaken.”

  “We have to hurry!” Brodie urged.

  “Calm down,” Counselor Fuller chimed in. “There’s no need to worry yourselves. I’ve already spoken with Director McGee. Nurse Betty sent Darla home early this morning with a severe stomachache. It seems she ate too much popcorn, candy, and soda at the movie last night.”

  Harper and Brodie exchanged a confused look.

  “That doesn’t make any sense—she didn’t seem sick,” Harper said. “Can you please just come look at what we found? There’s something really weird by the cove.”

  “Yeah, you have to see it,” Brodie added.

  Director McGee stuffed the camper list into a drawer and locked it. Then he and Counselor Fuller grabbed their flashlights and followed Harper and Brodie out the door.

  When Director McGee and Counselor Fuller noticed the lock on the nearby canoe shack had been broken and the door was open, they grew more concerned.

  “If someone went into the cove, I hope they were wearing a life vest,” Director McGee worried aloud as they hurried down the dirt path.

  “It would be difficult to find their way back in the fog,” Counselor Fuller added nervously.

  Harper sensed that they were both uneasy.

  “So the story about the girl who drowned . . . did that really happen, or did you guys just make that up?” Harper asked.

  Director McGee and Counselor Fuller didn’t reply.

  When they arrived at the cove, Brodie led them straight to the site. He shined his flashlight around on the bank. But there was nothing there.