Serial Killer Summer (A 3-Day Novel)

Chapter Six

I stand looking up at that spot where Jay's name and mine are etched into the wood. I'm not surprised they're still there. No one would knowingly remove it. The camp is filled with names and initials. Every cabin, every structure. It was camp tradition to brand the place with your name at least once per year. And this was the last place mine had been recorded.

No, I wasn't surprised to find it still there. I was surprised to find a way into the kitchen. The obvious entrances, through the dining hall and through the back door were no good. The padlocks were large and secure. The entrances through the East and West Lodges were equally well-fortified. But I knew there was one other door, out behind the ancient, disused hot water tank that had been turned into a work of art in the courtyard. It hid a painted over door that lead to the dishwashing area of the kitchen. When the kitchen had been renovated in the late 1980s, the door had been nailed shut and never used again.

And sure enough, it was not only not padlocked, but someone had already found it and pried the nails out.

I can see Gerald, then, at the corner sink, scrubbing an enormous frying pan, singing along to some song on the oldies station.

The kitchen has been cleaned out. The enormous gas range and skillet are gone, a scar left in the floor where it once stood at the very centre of the room. Even the hood is gone. The industrial dishwasher also, and the steamer table. These were apparently too valuable to leave locked up and unused.

It would all be gone, soon. The whole thing.

After five years closed, the decision had finally been made to dismantle the whole camp. The conservation authority was going to take the area over again and try to return as much of it as possible to nature. They were consulting with local Indigenous communities on how best to do this and preserve the natural and cultural heritage of the location. In a few years, there might be no sign of these buildings.

I look at those names one last time. I almost get out my phone and take a picture, but for some reason in this moment, that feels like a crass way to memorialize that evening. I will hold it in my memory the way I have held the rest of it for nearly 30 years.

I did not need a photo to remember those regrets. How could I forget?

I slip back out that door and leave via the courtyard, rounding the side of the West Lodge, and heading towards Back Bay.

The Hen House, like all the other cabins, is locked tight. The windows are so filthy, I cannot see inside even pressing my nose to the dusty glass. The Shack is the same, but at least there is a deck to sit on.

And another ghost.

I can see him in the corner of the deck, relaxed back into some ancient lawn chair, feet up on the railing, a cup of coffee in his hand, resting on his belly. That was his early morning routine. At night, if not involved in programming, he could be found in exactly that position but with a mug of hot cocoa and a small radio tinnily playing music, or a baseball game.

I can even imagine him turning his head to see me approaching and smiling.

Either way, morning or night, he looked serene there on that deck.

This ghost has gotten the timeline wrong.

There weren't many moments like those in 1992.