Serial Killer Summer (A 3-Day Novel)

Chapter Five

Free time really wasn't a concept at camp. There was something called free time for an hour before dinner, but this was spent with your cabin, playing planned games with each other and your counsellors, or maybe reading or writing home. You were not allowed to do whatever you wished.

For senior staff, that hour could be stretched out on occasion if you asked permission, and you might find yourself with two hours instead of one, and for me that meant a hike to the north end of the island. I tried to get one in during each two-week session. And finally, I had my chance, the Saturday before the first batch of campers arrived and session one started. Most staff were given a good chunk of time that evening right after dinner. I put on my long pants, hiking boots, a small backpack with water and bug spray, and set off out of camp by the northern trail.

Something amazing happened to the landscape the further north you went. The forests got thinner and thinner, until the soil became so sandy and thin that there was nothing by scrub in most places, and a few scrappy conifers, windbent and defiant. This was the landscape of our artists. It was where you could walk on rock more than a billion years old. If you couldn't feel connected to everything up in that part of the island, there might be something wrong with you.

It was about an hour and a half there and back, I had at best 20 minutes to find a big rock to perch on and take it all in. I had a favourite rock, had had one since my first visit a few years ago: a big flat one, easy to get up on and nice for lying down on to gaze up at the sky, if that was your thing. I just hopped up onto the rock, though, when I was alerted by a sudden sound as that travelled across some distance to my ears.

A bark. One short, sharp bark.

I got as low as I could and scanned the scenery. I was right at the tip of the island, and in the distance I could see the larger bay and also part of the mainland, but all around me now were other smaller islands of rock and peninsulas of varying sizes, many sporting those wildly-shaped conifers. There were so many places a dog could be hiding.

And in fact, I did not see the dog first. I saw the man.

He was a couple hundred feet away, on a bit of rock that sloped down into the water. He was scooping it up and splashing his face with it. I couldn't really make him out, but he didn't really look like a hiker. Maybe he was staying at the campgrounds.

The man splashed himself with water a few times and put a piece of cloth to his face to pat it dry. He had a couple of bags nearby. It was hard to tell, but it did look like their were plastic shopping bags. He placed the piece of cloth he had been using into one of the bags and stood up.

He saw me almost immediately.

His body language was unmistakable, even at that distance. His first instinct was to hide. But it was too late for that. He had seen me seeing him. He raised one arm and waved at me. Not a come here wave, just a polite and uninterested greeting.

The dog appeared then, to his left, from behind a larger rock. The dog saw me, too, and started barking. It felt moderately aggressive, and since the animal was not on a leash, I decided to make my way back to camp. There was something about their appearance here that spoiled my stay and made me want to leave. I always thought of this place as my place. It was on the visitor's map, so I could never be assured of being alone, but usually I was.

I jumped down off the rock and started walking back to the path.

The barking continued behind me and off to my right. I checked quickly over my shoulder and saw nothing, so I ducked under some branches, rejoined the trail and headed back in the direction from which I had come.

The sound of barking faded then as entered the forest, and I relaxed some. But I wanted to hurry, so I kept up the pace. I was angry that yet another thing was not going my way. Campers with dogs off leash? Or a possible camper. Maybe he had a boat and had come over from the mainland or another nearby island.