Serial Killer Summer (A 3-Day Novel)

Chapter Two

I hadn't known it would be my last summer at Camp Big Spirit. I'd always imagined the end would come for me as it had for so many others: after years of camping and then being staff, I would graduate from university and realize that spending summers with perpetually damp hair and sand stuck between your toes was not the way most adults lived, and finally, reluctantly get a real job.

If I had known, I might have spent more time that year appreciating everything around me, savouring that last time I hopped out of the boat and onto the dock, and lugged my overstuffed duffle bag up the staircase, around the Lodge, and down the path towards Back Bay, where the senior staff cabins were clustered around a smaller beach, away from the main one where camper activities took place.

It was a kind of gloomy day. The forecast was for a cool, wet summer, which didn't thrill me, but wouldn't matter in the end. I was certain that it was going to be the best summer yet. I'd been a member of the senior staff the previous year, as well, but this year I was head of Nature Programming and would have free reign, more or less, to create activities and experiences on my own. I'd spent the spring dreaming up fun things to do with the campers to help them build a positive relationship with their environment and learn a little something as well. I really felt as though this was going to be my year.

Along the way I saw others, all familiar faces, going through the same routines of getting moved in and ready. I nodded and smiled and tried to wave without losing my duffle, but there would be time later to reacquaint myself with these people I had already spent years with. I wanted to get to my cabin and see Courtney. Bruce, the Site Manager and primary boat driver, had let me know that she'd arrived with an earlier group of staff and should already be settling in at the Hen House, the larger of the two women's senior staff residences.

I staggered the last few steps up to the Hen House and used my foot to pull the door open towards me and somehow wedge myself inside and drop my bag in the middle of the room.

It was dark. There were two windows in the main room, and over both the curtains were drawn. On each side of the room were two bunk beds. There was a side room around the corner to the right, where another set of bunk beds could be found. Six girls would call this cabin home for the summer.

But at this moment, none of them seemed to be home. Maybe Courtney had decided to go for a swim in Back Bay. Or maybe she was visiting friends in other cabins. She might have gone down the path to the Beach House, a men's senior staff residence.

The bunk beds were empty. There were no bedrolls or backpacks or duffles like mine anywhere, like no one had been here yet at all.

I reached for the light switch and gave it a flick. Nothing happened. I looked up at then single light fixture above.

Well. That was not an entirely unusual experience here on the island. Power went out for short periods of time almost weekly. I decided to act as though I was the first to arrive and could therefore plant my duffel wherever I wanted and claim my bed. No one wants to get stuck with the top bunk, after all.

I thought I heard something, then, like a breath or sigh. I stopped and stood as still as possible, but there was nothing. Or else it had come from outside, maybe the cabin next door where I had seen Amy and Lucy a minute earlier, sitting on their deck.

I bent to pick up my duffle to move it towards my preferred bunk when there was a quick shuffle of steps behind me, from the direction of the side room, and I jumped. Before I could turn to see what was happening, or even make a noise of astonishment, something had wrapped itself around my shoulders, yanked me backwards and held me fast.

Instinctively, I struggled, but the arm around me was firm, as was the body I was being held against.

"Did you think you could get away from me by leaving the city? Did you think I wouldn't find you up here?" a voice growled in my ear. "I've had my eye on you for months." Something hard and cool, maybe plastic, pressed into the side of my head.