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“No,” he finally says. “No, I’m fine. We have to find Anthony. That man is out theresomewhere.”
“He’s here,” Mike says. “Holden, he’shere.”
Holden’s face drops. Mike watches the spark drain from his eyes.
“What?”
“It isn’t just Miranda. There are others. He’shere.”
“Where? Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I have most of the campers in the dining hall. I’ve been trying to find others. I had Lisa, but she ran from me,” hesays.
“I’ll go out again. I’ll get to the police,” Holdensays.
“No,” Mike replies firmly. “We’re going to get to the dining hall and you’re going to stay there. I’m the director of this camp. I’m going to take care of this. I shouldn’t have asked the two of you to go out there in the first place. We’re going to get everyone we can secured into the dining hall and then I’m going to find another of the camp vehicles and go intotown.”
“It isn’t safe,” Holden protests. “He’s out theresomewhere.”
“If it would be safe for you, it would be safe for me. I’m leaving you in charge. You make sure everyone stays in that building. No one opens the doors. Do you understand me? No one opens the doors foranyone.”
On the main road, Lisa is still running. Her body feels like it’s going to give out soon. Her energy is gone and she’s running only on adrenaline now, fueled by the terror that if she stops, he’ll find her again. She got away from him. He’s not going to let that happen again.
Here, she feels more in control. She knows which direction to go and without the trees around her, she feels like she can go faster. She can’t tell how much time has passed, but eventually she sees something glowing in the distance. It’s faint and small, and for a brief second, it scares her into thinking there’s someone holding a lantern or a flashlight and coming toward her. But she forces herself to keep going and soon sees that the light is coming from a decorative lamp post at the end of adriveway.
It’s what she was going for, the nearest neighbors to the camp. It means she’s run more than two miles and she doesn’t know how she did it, but she’s grateful just to see the warmth of lit windows and the easy calm of cars sitting up near the house. She stumbles onto the porch and finally, her legs give out. Landing hard on her knees on the cement sends a shock of pain through her body and it’s everything she can do just to reach up and ring thedoorbell.
Lisa hears the sound of the chime in the recesses of the house, but there’s no reaction. She hears no voices or footsteps. Everything stays still. There’s light in the house. The people inside must be awake. She tries again, but there’s still no response.
“Please,” she calls through the door. “Please, I needhelp.”
Lisa manages to pull herself up and yank open the screen door so she can pound on the door. As soon as her hands hit the wood, the unlatched door opens. She falls over the threshold, letting out a cry. A rush of breeze from a box fan set up in the living room hits her face, cooling the rain and shivering across her skin. The sensation reminds her that she’s still alive, that there’s still enough in her to keep going. She lets that tiny burst of relief bring her to her feet and she slams the front door closed, lockingit.
“Hello?” she calls out. “Hello? Please. I need help. I need to call thepolice.”
When there’s no response, Lisa goes deeper into the house. In the kitchen she finds a phone on the wall and picks it up from the cradle. Nothing but mocking silence greets her through the line. Her heart jumps in her chest, desperation pulling pleas from her lips.
“No. No, no, no. Please.”
Lisa depresses the button on the cradle over and over, trying to make the phone connect, but there’s nothing. As she reaches up once more, she glances down and notices the coiled cord of the phone is slick with red. Dropping the phone, she runs out of the kitchen and down the hallway. A few steps down it, an open door reveals two brutalized bodies lying across a bloodied bed.
She screams and stumbles back, the fear making her dizzy like the house is spinning around her. It makes her turn the wrong direction down the hall and she ends up in a small office. There’s another phone sitting on the desk, but it’s disconnected just like the one in the kitchen. She’s about to leave, ready to run to the next house, when she sees something in the corner that makes her sob with relief. Aradio.
Her grandfather taught her to use them during the summers when she was little and spent weeks with her grandparents in their tiny house in the country. This was his favorite activity, reaching out into the world with his voice. Unsure if she can even control her voice enough to get the message out, she grabs the handset and calls out to whomever is listening.
“Help. I need help. I need police and an ambulance to Camp Hollow. Please. Anyone who is listening. We need help at CampHollow.”
“We’ve got two bodieshere.”
Officer Ronald Tompkins stares at the two bodies sprawled across the bed, their blood turning the mint green bedspread a dark red that obscures the tiny rosettes of the pattern. If he was only looking at pictures of the scene, he might think the bodies were nothing but an early Halloween prank. It’s too grotesque, too much carnage to actually bereal.
But he knows it’s real. The overwhelming smell of death is nearly choking him. It’s more than blood. It’s more than everything contained within the bodies now spilling out onto the floor from where they were eviscerated. There’s a scent to fear. It permeates the house, hanging over every room like fog.
It clings to the girl who used the radio to call for help after finding the bodies. The girl with wild eyes and matted hair, her camp uniform stained and the skin on her knees and hands tattered. They found her curled into a ball in the corner of the office. She’d gone silent, but was still gripping the radio so tight her knuckles were white. When he got into the room, she didn’t want to trust that she was safe. She stayed there on the floor, pushing back against it with her heels to crush harder into the wall like she was still trying to escape.
She’s outside now, perched on the back of an ambulance wrapped in an olive green blanket too close for comfort to the ones many of the boys remember from when they served overseas. They want to make sure she’s alright, but the only thing she will say is that someone needs to go out to the camp. Something is wrong at thecamp.
Ron remembers Camp Hollow from when he was younger. He remembers the massacre that closed it. His father was an officer then. He responded to the calls for help and was one of the first to walk onto the grounds and find the bodies of those kids. He could still remember the look in his father’s eyes when he came home the next day. Something was gone in them. Ron couldn’t place exactly what it was, but there was something there when he left for his shift the night before and it wasn’t there anymore after that.
