Serial Killer Summer (A 3-Day Novel)

Chapter Fourteen

The photos on the sign post are of many ages. There were digital photos printed at home, some professionally developed in the age when people still had that done, a handful of instant photos, and many in black and white, since the camp had been founded in the early 1950s. I see one of Gerald in the kitchen, still a young man, that looked mid-1970s. I see another of Lindsey back when she was a junior counsellor, arms linked with a boy I did not know. A group of fresh-faced young women sitting together, including Tracy and Hillary, on the steps of the Hen House in what I imagine was probably 1993. A photo of Devon animatedly performing a skit during a campfire.

I had checked the camp's page almost daily for updates about the alumni visit. I scanned only for names and dates that were familiar, desperate to find something, anything about him.

And it happened one day, while I was riding the streetcar to work. Someone on the page had already suggested that everyone coming bring a photo or a note or some kind of keepsake to leave behind. People were listing ideas and examples below that, and then someone, I don't know who but their signature indicated they were a 2001 to 2010 alumnus, made the further suggestion to bring photos and memorial objects for those campers and staff who had passed away to add to the display.

This suggestion was met with approval, and posters started listing names of those who had died who should be memorialized. I have ought to have shut my phone off right there. We were stuck in traffic downtown. It was not the place. There was no where to go, no way to be alone.

And then, there it was, on the screen, someone asking if anyone else remembered Jason "Jay" McGregor (1969 to 1996).

I gripped the overhead pole I'd been hanging onto even tighter. I could not breathe.

I got off at the next stop and just scrolled.

So many people remembered him. I started to see names I knew: Devon, Sam, Lindsey, Bruce, even Courtney. They all remembered him fondly. I called in sick to work and sat there on a bench reading everyone's memories of Jay.

I keep looking, and eventually someone—Tracy, I believe—posted a photo of a yellowed newspaper obituary.

He hadn't come back in 1993 for his last summer. He'd gotten sick. And he'd spent more than three years fighting before he could fight no more. I wondered if, in that time, he wondered about me. Or did he have enough to think about?

I find him on the sign post, a cluster of notes and pictures attached to the sign that reads, underneath it all, The Shack.

I slip the bag from my back and squat over it, opening the outside pocket and retrieving the object I have brought with me. The round of birch wood. The photo of us on one side. My name and 1992 on the other. I think I might miss it, but it's better for it to be here, for however long that is. Eventually they will come and remove this sign, toss it out with everything else. But adding it to the memories adds me to the memories.

I place it at the base of the sign post, where a handful of other similar objects sit, including a sodden teddy bear, a camp hat, and what might have been a picture of Big Bay painted onto a plank of wood.

He is here. I am here now, too.

Walking out the way I came in, I look back one last time at the curve of Big Bay before I enter the trail and am taken by trees. I can barely make out my own footprints on the beach, and it occurs that maybe I am just another one of the ghosts in this place.

The End