Reyva took it.
“And we need wire for snares and the fishing line,” Mariana said.
“Normal electrical wire won’t work,” Jack said. “It’ll be too thick. Hard to bend, even stripped. Best is twenty-four gauge, if we can find it. Thinner is better too, because it’s harder for the rabbits to see.”
“What uses twenty-four gauge?” Reyva asked.
“Speaker wire,” Mariana answered promptly, before Claire could ask what twenty-four gauge meant. “Maybe the camp had a PA system, like in a school.”
Side by side, they approached the ruins of the house. Staring at it, they all fell silent. Claire felt a chill on her skin, even though the wind was still.
After a moment, Reyva went first. Claire followed. It felt, she thought, like walking on a grave. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they shouldn’t be there. Studying the charred walls, she looked for anything that resembled a speaker. Reyva plucked a few nails out of the burnt wood with the heel of the hammer head and dropped them in her pocket.
Mariana hadn’t entered.
Stationary, she was still staring at the front doorway. Thedoor itself hung off of one hinge, but the front porch light and half the doorframe were still intact. Claire said gently, “Mariana? You okay?”
She expected her to say something about the tragedy of all the kids who had died here and how the place truly did feel haunted. The rain had washed away every hint of smoke in the air, but Claire still remembered the taste. It lingered in her mind, overlaid with the scent of rain-soaked forest. Or maybe Mariana was thinking about last night, about what she’d told them about her family and her life and how she’d had to move. It must have been hard to share that, after making the conscious choice to suppress it.Harder still to go through it, she thought. Claire wondered if Mariana wanted to talk about it more. Instead of any of that, though, Mariana said, “Doorbell.”
“Sorry?”
“Old doorbells were wired. Thin wire. And if there’s a bell, even better.” She began to tear at the charred, softened wood around the doorbell.
Claire joined her, and soon Reyva and Jack were there, helping tear apart the wall. Softened by fire and then rain, the battered wood broke easily in their hands, exposing the doorbell.
Sure enough, thin wire led from the doorbell through the wall.
With Mariana leading, they traced it through the wall inside to the bell itself. It was an old-fashioned kind of bell, a brass bowl with a mallet that would hit the bowl when the doorbell was rung. “Perfect,” she murmured. “Ecstatically perfect.” Sheyanked the doorbell off the wall. The weak wood gave easily. Shreds of wallpaper fluttered to the floor. “Can I borrow your knife, Jack?”
He handed it to her.
Prying the back off, she revealed two spools, coiled with copper wire. “The coils act like a magnet, to make the mallet hit the bell. Unraveled, though—they’re wire. Lots of it.”
All three of them looked at Jack. “Will this work for snares?” Claire asked.
“Oh yeah,” he breathed, eyes wide. “Absolutely.”
Using his knife, Mariana extracted the coils and pocketed them. She then, with the help of the others, pulled out the additional wire that ran from the bell to the button. Together, they harvested as much as they could. Finishing, they surveyed their bounty.
“Anything else we need here?” Reyva asked. “I’ve got a few nails for fishhooks.”
Probably, Claire thought, but most important thing was to get the net in the water and the snares set as quickly as possible. Also start a fire and boil more water. Also set up shelter for the night, in case it rained again. Also make fishhooks and line. Also think about a signal fire and lay out another SOS. Also... “This is a good start.”
Jack and Mariana picked up the net. Reyva walked in front, while Claire trailed behind. She yanked out dandelions on the way, as many as she could find, for fish and dandelion stew, hopefully. When they reached the trailhead, she glanced back atthe derelict tennis court, the burned-down house and sheds, and the cracked airstrip.
She thought of the wild man and wondered where he was—also,whohe was.
Could he be the missing boy from Jack’s story? But if so, why hadn’t he been found in all this time? It didn’t make sense. They weren’tthatfar from civilization. Yes, it was a serious hike, but it wasn’t a twenty-year hike. More likely he was a hermit or a homeless man who had retreated to the woods a few years ago, not a boy who had failed to find his way home for two decades.
She wondered if the wild man had ever seen Jack’s ghost. Not that she believed in ghosts.If I did, this place would be crawling with them.A kid had died when this camp closed. More had died when it reopened.
It might not be haunted, Claire thought.But it’s definitely cursed.
Thirteen
Squatting on the dock, Claire tied knots in the tennis net to repair the worst of the rips. Enough of the net was intact that itshouldwork to catch fish. Maybe. She hoped.
Look at me, all hopeful, she thought. She wondered how long it would last.
