Bible Camp Bloodbath (3 page)

5.

Martin was assigned to Cabin Seven. Chip showed him the way.

“You’re going to be in one of the old cabins,” Chip said. “The girls all live in the new cabins.” He pointed to the ridge that overlooked the ocean. The cabins didn’t look like cabins at all. They looked like regular buildings, all made out of cement, bright lights inside.

“Air conditioning, plumbing, the works,” Chip said, still pointing to the girl cabins. “We just built them this year. There are plans to build more after the season’s over, but for now the boys have got the same cabins as always.” He winked at Martin and said, “That’s what camp is all about, if you ask me. Haunted cabins and having to run through the woods in the middle of the night to pee.”

Martin could see the old cabins now, wooden and broken-down looking, set back in the woods. They blended in with the trees around them.

“You aren’t afraid of ghosts, are you?” Chip said, winking again. People look so stupid when they wink.

There was a boy in the cabin already. Brown hair. Skinny. Weird teeth.

“Hey,” he said, sticking his hand out for Martin. “I’m Ricky.”

“My name’s Martin,” Martin said. The two boys shook hands and Chip grinned.

“You can have any bunk you want,” Ricky said. “Except this one’s Adrian’s, and that one in the corner on the bottom is mine. You should take that other corner bunk so I don’t have to sleep near a weirdo. You get some weirdo kids at summer camp,” he said. “They let anyone in.” Chip laughed at that.

Martin walked to the other corner bunk and set his suitcase on the bed.

“Already settled right in,” Chip said. “Look at him. He’s not afraid to live in the haunted cabin.”

There was nowhere for Martin to unpack his clothes. His shirts were going to have to stay folded in the suitcase, which was unacceptable. There were no closets here, no drawers. Nowhere to hang a hanger. The glass in the window was broken. Martin took a deep breath and let it go. This was where he was now. In a cabin, in the woods.

There weren’t supposed to be drawers in a cabin. The windows were meant to be broken and ragged. Get in the spirit, Martin told himself. Think of it like a horror movie. A haunted cabin, like Chip said. Don’t worry about your clothes. Worry about who’s going to die first. Who will find the body? Will it have all its limbs? Think about an axe cutting through the air. This was an adventure.

His shirts were going to get creases.

* * *

Outside, Ricky showed Martin the Flying Fox. It was a wire tied to two poles. One of the poles was short so the wire was just above their heads, and the other pole was five feet higher and twenty feet away.

You climbed up a ladder to the higher pole and took hold of this metal bar. Then you jumped and held on like your life depended on it and you went flying along the wire toward the shorter pole. At Martin’s school they just called this a zip line. Here it was the Flying Fox.

“There was a kid, like, five years ago,” Ricky said, “who didn’t let go in time, and he bounced right off that short pole and landed on his head. Everyone could hear his neck snap. I know a kid who was here that year and he said he was over by the canteen and he still heard the kid’s neck snap. Everyone watching heard the weird grinding sound when the kid tried to get up again. Every single person said they couldn’t forget that sound even if they wanted to.”

You could tell Ricky had told the story before. He made little hand gestures the whole time. Every time he said “snap” he pretended to break a stick with his hands. Snap. Snap. After he said “grinding” he made a sound in his throat that was not right.

“I’ll be back in a couple minutes,” Chip said. “I have to go collect our other campers” He waved and headed back toward the main building, leaving Martin alone with Ricky.

“He didn’t die, either,” Ricky said. “That’s the sick part. He’s still alive out west somewhere. Somewhere where there’s no hills, because he pushes around a wheelchair that he controls with his tongue. I heard that every once in a while his head comes loose, and it rolls around on his neck because the bones aren’t connected. Someone has to come and help him put it back in his plastic brace. Otherwise it just swings down and he has to look at his chest all day.”

Another pair of boys was coming toward the cabin. The kid on the right had long hair down to his shoulders and he had the bluest eyes Martin had ever seen. The kid on the left was fat and he was wearing all black even though it was hot out. Ricky saw where Martin was looking and he nodded.

“What did I tell you?” he said. “Dressing all in black on a day like this. Man. Weirdo kids.”

* * *

Martin woke in the dark, terrified that there was a man in the room with him. It was too dark. The blankets felt wrong. It took him a minute to remember he was at camp. It was darker here than his room at home. He breathed in and out and counted to ten as quietly as he could. He felt certain that there was a man in the dark there, about to whisper his name. Already smiling. Martin counted to ten again and then backwards from ten. He wasn’t going to scream. He could control himself. He pulled the blanket tighter and listened.

Nothing. There was nothing. Nobody there in the dark.

Would Ricky be able to help him if something happened? Or Chip? Chip was right in the next room. Would Chip be able to help? But what could they do? Nobody would help him. He was certain. He might as well be alone. Martin squeezed his eyes closed and it didn’t make any difference. The dark was there, too. And in the dark, the man. He tried to breathe in and out calmly. When he was almost asleep again, he thought he heard a man’s voice whisper a name, but it wasn’t his name, and it didn’t wake him up.

6.

Franklin stood at bat, his hands gripping the wooden baseball bat tightly. Twisting on the tape wrapped around the handle. The pitcher pitched and the ball went right past. Again. All day the ball had been speeding right past. How many times was he going to have to stand here? Behind Franklin, Jim was the catcher, twelve years old with a high pitched voice.

“Strike two!” Jim yelled.

A trickle of sweat came down from Franklin’s brow. He gripped the bat tighter and waited for the next pitch. The pitcher lifted his foot, tilted back and threw the ball and Franklin swung hard. He swung hard, the bat missing the ball entirely and whipping back toward the catcher. It hit Jim’s leg below the knee with a crack. The bone snapped, cutting out through the skin of the leg.

Jim screamed.

The coach was there in a second, kneeling down beside Jim while Franklin dropped the bat and backed away.

“It was an accident,” Franklin said.

“Don’t look,” the coach said. The shard of bone stuck up through Jim’s skin. Jim cried and looked away. “It doesn’t look bad,” the coach said. He lifted the leg a little and lowered his face so that he could see better. There was blood pouring out from around the shard of bone now, dark and thick. “In fact,” he said, “it looks good.” With that the coach gripped the leg tight and ran his tongue along the white bone, licking up the blood, sucking on the marrow.

“What the hell,” a man yelled from behind him. “Goddamnit, turn so that the camera can see what you’re doing. And can we get some more blood on that bone? It looks like a candy cigarette.” The coach stood up and went over to talk to the director. Martin’s mother came over and knelt down next to Jim, holding the tube of darker blood.

“You’re doing good,” she said to Jim, but the kid just shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s just a horror movie,” the kid said. “I can do better. I’m going to do better. My mom has another audition lined up for me next week.” He sounded defensive. Martin’s mother just tried to focus on applying the blood. What kind of messed up priorities did this kids’ parents give him, where he felt bad about being in a horror movie?

A black cat came over and nuzzled against Jim’s leg, mewing softly. It looked up at Martin’s mother and then its eyeball popped out with a sick wet sound, splattering her face with blood. The eyeball hung from the socket by a thin thread of purple red veins and muscle. The cat let out a terrified yowl and took off running.

It had taken hours to set up that eyeball effect and now she would have to do it again.

* * *

Mitchell Hemsworth sat on the edge of the washing machine. He had blonde hair and blue, blue eyes and right now they were rimmed in red. He wanted to accept Jesus into his heart. He did. But he didn’t know what that felt like. He felt normal. He didn’t feel filled with light or saved.

“No, it’s not like that,” Tony, the head counsellor said. “You let Jesus into your heart by having faith in him. Those other feelings, they come over time. It’s not like flicking a switch, son. Nothing in this life is as easy as that.”

Mitchell wiped his nose on the back of his hand and looked out the window where the other campers were running around and shrieking with laughter. He had followed the crowd yesterday when everyone went into the other room for cake. Tony had stood up and asked them if they’d accepted Jesus into their hearts and Mitchell hadn’t known. He wanted to let Jesus into his heart. But everyone else went into the next room like they were sure and Mitchell followed.

And then this morning his counsellor had found Mitchell crying in bed, with the Bible under his pillow, and he’d taken him down to see Tony. Mitchell had worries. If he did accept Jesus into his heart, he would be saved, he would live forever in Heaven, but would his dad? His dad was an atheist and Tony had said that there was nothing Mitchell could do to save his dad from Hell.

“But it won’t bother you,” Tony said. He put his hand on the boy’s head and tousled his hair. “You’ll be in a better place. You won’t even notice that your dad isn’t with you.” Tony smiled. “Here, I have something for you.” He reached up behind Mitchell to the shelf above the laundry machines. He took down a folding barber’s razor and opened it. “Have you ever seen one of these before? This was how men shaved when I was growing up. None of these silly fifteen blade razors with plastic handles and ridiculous names. Just cold steel.”

Mitchell nodded, wiping his eyes. He didn’t understand what the razor had to do with anything.

“This is for you,” Tony said, still smiling. He took Mitchell’s hair in his fist and pulled the boy’s head back. With his other hand he slid the blade of the razor into Mitchell’s windpipe. It was perfectly quiet, at first. Mitchell didn’t struggle or try to make a sound. He just looked at Tony with those wide eyes still red from crying, while blood drooled down from the slit across his throat. And then, a quiet gurgling.

Tony pushed the blade in deeper, holding the boy tightly in case he did start to struggle. Then he reached up for one of the darker towels and wiped the blade clean.

The body in his arms stopped twitching. Tony wrapped the towel around the neck and head, then folded his razor closed. It wasn’t Mitchell anymore. Mitchell was gone. He folded the boy up and put him into one of the big laundry bags. He pulled the drawstring tight and slung the bag over his shoulder. In the hallway he smiled at one of the girl campers and tipped his head at her politely.

7.

“There’s something not quite Christian about it,” Tony said. He sat back in his chair and looked up to where his Bible sat on the shelf. “I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but it doesn’t seem right for a couple of young ladies to be out there in the middle of the night, obsessing over their telescopes.”

Melissa didn’t say anything, but she squeezed Joan’s hand a bit. The two of them watched Courtney nervously. Courtney didn’t like that word, obsessing. They could see her back straighten a bit and that was a bad sign. Cindy, their cabin’s counsellor, nodded in agreement with Tony and patted Courtney’s shoulder.

“Besides,” Cindy said, “if we let you girls do this after lights out, then everyone would want special treatment. I told them no already,” she said to Tony, “but they insisted on asking you.” She turned back to the girls. “I told you Tony would say the same thing. This is camping! We’re supposed to leave all our gadgets behind. No cell phones or video games! Just good times with friends out in the woods.”

“This comet has been brightening,” Courtney said, “and soon it might even be visible to the naked eye. It’s so perfect out here in the middle of nowhere. There’s no ambient light. These are really good conditions for observation. And we can’t watch it because of a rule that doesn’t even make sense.” She realized how loud her voice had gotten and tried to bring herself under control. “Even just an hour. Just one hour a night would be enough.”

“God made comets,” Joan said quietly. “He made stars and galaxies and he made comets. And he made them beautiful. Why would he have made them so beautiful if he didn’t want us to enjoy them?”

“You aren’t wrong,” Tony said to Joan after a moment. “That’s very well put. Very well put. What was your name again?”

“Joan,” she said.

“I wish I could say yes, Joan,” Tony said, “and you do make a very good point. But there are practical considerations here, too. We don’t have enough counsellors to spare. We need Cindy to stay with the campers in her cabin, and we can’t very well have you three girls out wandering the night by yourselves. It’s important that we know where everyone is at all times.” He smiled. “We have a responsibility to your parents, after all.”

* * *

Margaret turned ten years old just three weeks ago, but she looked older. She was tall and skinny. She looked almost twelve. Her mother lied to get Margaret into the older kid camp. The under ten camp ran later in the summer. It was just better timing. This way her mother and father could align their vacations. They could get away together for the first time in years.

Margaret was used to her cell phone. She never had to remember anyone’s number, because their names and numbers were right there, programmed into the small blue phone. It was easy. But there were no cell phones allowed at camp. So her mother had written down her number for Margaret in the front of a little notebook.

“You can call me whenever you like,” she said. And then she had driven away.

Like her mother, Margaret had dark, straight hair that constantly fell over her eyes. As she walked across the campground with the notebook clutched in her hand, she was glad to have the hair over her eyes. She was trying not to cry. She knew what was going on. Her mother had told her about menstruation. That’s all this was. She was having her first period. It was early but she knew that it was fine and she knew how she was supposed to deal with it. Seeing the blood had been a shock, though. She just wanted to hear her mother’s voice. She just wanted to hear her mother say that everything was okay, even if it was just on the phone.

* * *

Martin’s mother sent him an email with a picture of the cat with its eyeball dangling out. She had captioned it: “Eye miss you, Martin.” In the email she told him she was having fun, and Martin wrote back to tell her about Melissa and Courtney and Joan, and to let her know that things were going good.

“Today we went swimming in the ocean,” Martin wrote. “And the salt water tastes so strange. I told Courtney about your tattoo. The beach was covered with huge hopping insects, which Joan said were sand fleas.” Martin’s mother hated insects. “And I swam! I could even float on my back, which I could never do. Maybe it was only because salt water was more buoyant, but it didn’t matter! I swam! I have friends and the summer is going to be good. Eye miss you too.”

* * *

Mitchell’s brother was named John Dee Hemsworth. Sometimes their father called him John, or JD, but he preferred to be called by both first names. He wore all black, usually. It made things easier. Everything went with everything else. And it was harder to get the clothes dirty.

And, to be honest, it had a slimming effect. Not a lot, but every bit helped.

Mitchell still wasn’t back and the boredom was getting intolerable. He had even begun flipping through the small red New Testament that his grandmother had given him. But enough was enough. John Dee went into the other room and found Chip writing something in his log book.

“Why hasn’t Mitchell come back yet?” John Dee said. “It’s been hours now. I thought you said that he was going to talk to Tony.” He had heard his brother crying that morning, even before Chip had, but he had done nothing. He’d kept his eyes closed and just tried to ignore him. Mitchell was always crying about something. He was the “sensitive one” their father told people. He was a pussy, was what he was. But pussy or not, it sucked being stuck in this cabin by himself.

“I don’t know,” Chip said. He looked at his watch. “You want to run over to the main building and see if you can find him? You know where Tony’s office is, right? It’s on the top floor, at the end of the hall. See if you can get our evening schedule, too, while you’re over there.”

John Dee jumped down the few wooden steps from the front door of the cabin to the dirt path. Ricky was out there, standing by himself and staring at three girls and that quiet kid Martin, who were all over by the Flying Fox. When John Dee got closer, Ricky spun on him, startled.

“What’re you looking at?” Ricky said.

John Dee said nothing, and Ricky pulled his fist back quickly like he was going to punch, then laughed when John Dee flinched. What a charmer. John Dee kept walking. The girls and Martin were taking turns sliding down the wire. They made it look fun. Mitchell had tried to convince him to try it yesterday. Maybe he’d been too quick to laugh it off as a stupid kid’s toy.

In the main building, John Dee went past the kitchen and the showers and the laundry room and climbed the curving wooden steps up to the second floor. There was nobody around up here and it was dim inside the building. The shades were pulled on the windows upstairs and all of the doors were closed along the hallway. He could hear the other campers laughing and having fun outside. Meanwhile John Dee was stuck here looking for his pussy older brother.

He knocked on the door to Tony’s office. No answer. He knocked again, louder, and there was a muffled sound from inside. Had someone said, “Come in?” John Dee tried the doorknob and it was unlocked. He pushed the door open and went inside.

“Tony?” he said. “Mitchell?” The office was brighter than the hallway. The windows here were open and the sun shone in. But the room was empty. John Dee stood in the doorway with his hand still on the knob, then sighed. Why was everything so difficult with Mitchell?

He stepped back out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him.

In the office, Tony kept his hand clamped over Margaret’s mouth. Her eyes were wild. She tried to twist out from under him, but she wasn’t strong enough. He had her on her back behind the couch, with his knee pressed into her chest. Her shirt lay torn on the floor next to them, split from neck to waist where Tony had cut with the razor. The notebook with her mother’s telephone number lay beside the torn shirt.

“Shhh,” Tony whispered, holding the razor to his lips like a single finger. “It’s okay.” Then he reached down and pushed her hair off her face. “Shhh,” he said again. They stayed like that, listening to John Dee creak his way back down the hallway, and then he smiled. “Okay,” he said. He pushed his knee into her chest harder, shifting his weight until he felt her sternum break with a soft pop. His knee sank a bit deeper into her. Then he took his hand off her mouth and she drew a long, shallow breath, trying to fill her lungs. “Breathe,” Tony said. He smiled encouragingly. She was reaching out for her notebook. “That’s it,” he said. “You’re doing good. Breathe.”