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“Holden!” he shouts from the back of the cabin. “You need to get backhere.”
Holden jumps down the same way Anthony did, and when he gets to the back of the cabin he sees what caused the tight, cold sound in the other counselor’s voice. The window is open, the wooden shutter broken off and the screen sliced through. On the ground beneath it is a pool of blood.
“Get me through that window,” Holden demands.
“You can’t go in there,” Anthony says. “We need to tellMike.”
Mike, the camp director, is in his office like he always is until the very last camper is in their cabin and the camp is asleep for the night. He’s barely older than the counselors, who are themselves only a few years older than the campers. There’s very little that separates them but titles. But he maintains a tighthierarchy.
“No,” Holden replies, planting his foot against the wood of the cabin and trying to use it as leverage to get himself up toward the window. “I need to get in there. Miranda might behurt.”
Not wanting him to fall and make the situation even worse than it already is, Anthony offers his hands for Holden to put his foot in for a boost toward the window. It’s low enough to the ground for that to be all he needs to get his head through the window. He slithers through on his stomach and lands on the floor between the two beds. He looks around, his breath quickening at the sight of more blood splattered around the cabin.
Holden is still locked in place, not moving, barely breathing, when Anthony’s voice cuts through his racing thoughts. He’s no longer at the window, but standing on the porch, pounding on the door to the cabin and calling in to Holden, demanding he unlock the door and let himin.
When he does, Anthony’s heart sinks. He immediately wishes he hadn’t come in, that neither of them had. They shouldn’t be in the cabin, among the blood, disturbing the scene. The police will need it to be intact. He doesn’t know why that’s the first thought to rush through his head. Of all the other thoughts he could have, of everything that could go through his mind and compel him to action, his first thought was of police investigating.
It takes the rest of his mind a few seconds to catch up. When it does, he can process why the instinct of the son of a detective went first to how they would look at the cabin.
Miranda isn’there.
The cabin is in tatters. Sheets and the dark blue cotton blanket spread like the ones spread across each of the beds throughout camp had been dragged down onto the floor in a tangled, stained mass. One of the mattresses, the one Holden knows is where Miranda slept, is split down the middle. Springs are visible inside, the sharp points seeming less threatening against the destruction of the cabin than they would in any otherplace.
“She isn’t here,” Holden says. “Miranda isn’t here. Where isshe?”
The open window and the blood on the ground beneath fill his thoughts. It seemed at first that it might be have been the way someone could have gotten inside the cabin when bypassing the locked door. Now it also seems like the way she got out. Or was taken out.
“What’s going on here?” a voice asks from theoutside.
It’s muffled by the sound of the increasing rain, but the counselors recognize it as Emily, one of the other counselors they left in charge at the campfire. She and Grant were supposed to stay there with the campers and keep them from following the sound of the screams. They needed everyone to stay together.
“Emily, bring the campers to the dining hall,” Holden tellsher.
“Most of them went to their cabins because of the rain,” Emily says. “A couple went to the dining hall or the rec hall. What are you doing? Open thedoor.”
Holden and Anthony look at each other. They shouldn’t touch the door. They should leave everything as it is. But if they do, this will come down on them. They need someone else to see it just as it is. They need someone who can confirm where they were when the screams started.
Anthony goes to the door and opens it. He tries to close it again immediately when he sees Emily isn’t alone. Hannah and two other campers are there with her. Holden steps into the light of the doorway, trying to block it as much as he can, but they’ve already seen the bloody sceneinside.
“Oh, my god,” Emily gasps under her breath, her face going pale.
“What is that?” Blake asks. “What happened inthere?”
“Where’s Miranda?” Emilyasks.
Anthony and Holden shake theirheads.
“I—I don’t know. She’s not here,” Holden says. “We heard her scream again while we were trying to get up here, but when we got here, the door was locked and we couldn’t open it. We got in through the window at the back. This is how we foundit.”
Blake and Hannah crane their necks around the counselors to try to see inside. Hannah glances back at the girl shying away behind her. She’s standing as close to the edge of the porch as she can get without standing in the rain.
“That’s blood,” Lila whimpers. “What happened toMiranda?”
Hannah, emboldened by her own graze with the pranks at the campfire, steps toward her and reaches out a hand to pull Lila closer to the door. She’s smiling, unfazed by what her mind tells her she’s seeing rather than what is actually in front of her. She’s only seeing what she wants to and blocking out all reason that might bring about fear.
“It isn’t real. Don’t you get it? This is just another of their pranks. Just like Grant in the mask jumping out at us at the campfire. They just want to freak all of us out and get a good laugh out of it,” Hannah says.
“Hannah,” Holden warns, still trying to maintain the calm they were accustomed to from him, not wanting to let out any of the emotion welling up.
