Excerpt
Craig was waiting in the dark, alert for any sound coming from his parent’s room.
But none came, just the night creaks of wood adjusting itself. Nevertheless, he was afraid Dad - or Mom, mostly - would peek in to check that the lights were off and he was safely sleeping. And he wasn’t. No, not tonight. Tonight he had to face his own fears to show his peers he wasn’t a wuss.
He was startled by a loud crack coming out of the half-open window. A pale, white glow shone suddenly on the glass, casting longer shadows behind him. His heart raced fast as a silhouette grew larger on the windowsill.
They had kept their word; they had come for him.
Matt’s flashlight brightened Craig’s already bleached face, causing his eyes to shrink in distress.
“Eleven-ten,” Matt whispered, excited. “Time to go!”
“Take that darn light out of my face, dumb-ass!” Craig protested, at the same time reaching for his sneakers. Then he went for the window and fully raised it upward, causing a breeze of warm Floridian night air to quickly invade his cooled room as if it were an enemy waiting for the right moment to launch an attack. Yet, the chill he felt inside his stomach seemed unaffected by the change in temperature; it was still there, more, it had expanded to his innards.
‘I’m gonna do it. No matter what,’ he thought.
“C’mon, Craig! We don’t have all the night for this,” Matt whispered again from the tree branch he was perched on, this time a little bit louder, causing Craig’s heart to stop, fearful that would wake up his parents.
“Shut up! Wanna get me in trouble?” Craig sibilated back. “I’m coming.”
Matt nodded with a guilty face, then switched off the torchlight and began backtracking on the branch.
“Whassup? Sissy ain’t comin’?”
That was David’s voice coming from below in an ushered, but still too loud tone. He was seated on his bright yellow bike, wearing black matching pants and t-shirt who made him look like a ninja.
“I’m coming. And stop calling me that,” rebuked Craig, sliding out of the room and jumping on the tree. He was shivering, yet it wasn’t the climb he was afraid of, but his destination.
Kamp Koko.
The Camp of Death.
That summer camp had been abandoned by 1978, when its owner and a kid were found dead, killed by a yet unknown assailant. But stories had circulated in town about the truth behind that double murder. Some asserted that Russell Floyd, the owner and manager of the camp, had killed the seven-year-old boy. The same people swore that Floyd was a pervert, who liked to torture and kill kids, except he had limited his killings to runaways, until then. Mrs. Wilson, an old spinster and grocery seller down at the Chicken Farm on Lakeview Parkway, was sure as hell that one of the runaways he had murdered and (yuck!) eaten, had a father who was looking for him and had carry out his revenge on Floyd. Some said this unnamed guy had infiltrated the staff by getting hired as a gardener or janitor. Others said it was a camp counselor who had taken into his own hands the duty to pay back Floyd with some of his own medicine. Anyway, it was not what had happened before 1978 which scared Craig Turner, but everything that had happened after.
Many people had disappeared down there; mostly backpackers and campers. And kids.
A lot of kids.
Or so the stories said.