That was, at any rate, what Patti was sure had happened. She didn’t know about the conversation at the time, of course – until that night, five years later, out in the snow in the middle of the forest, Jolene didn’t breathe a word of it to any living soul. And yet, there in the cold, she felt it pouring out of her. There wasn’t much more that had happened during her time at the camp, she said, not until three nights later, when, she claimed, she had gotten into her car and drove off while everyone else awake sat huddled in the cafeteria, abandoning everyone she was meant to be looking after, a scaredy-cat through and through.
Patti wasn’t convinced.
Jolene was a chicken, that much was sure – she remembered watching her from across the cafeteria as some of the girls from her cabin snuck up behind her while she was eating, unable to keep from laughing as she let out a blood-curdling shriek, usually spilling her drink across the table, just from a little “Boo!” – and, odd as it was, she couldn’t say that her story had been as much of a surprise as it should have been. But there had been no escape from the camp that night, not so easily.
Other than the occassional glimpse of her at mealtimes, Patti hadn’t gotten to know Jolene much, or, really, at all. They’d both shown up a couple days early for a bit of slap-dash orientation and training – it consisted mostly of, “Don’t let your kids wander off into the woods and get eaten by a bear” – but Patti had mostly steered clear of her. She’d learned to detect stuck up princesses at school, and Jolene gave off every indication of being one. Technically, Patti supposed that would make sense with Jolene’s story of running away, but that still wasn’t enough.
It had started with Mina, Patti’s co-counselor. It was late, past when the kids were all meant to be asleep, but one of them just couldn’t find her way off to slumber-land. Mina volunteered to stay with her, but Patti knew she wanted to go join the rest of the counselors back at the main building, especially Paul, so she’d told her to go ahead. Mina promised Patti she owed her one, then went practically racing out the door.
The camp was hardly the most intuitively set up there could be – it curved like a horseshoe, with the main building at the bottom, along with the parking and cabins going up either side, girls on one half with the swimming pool, boys on the other with a little baseball diamond, with a path making its way throughout in a half-oval. Other than the road leading in, it was surrounded by the trees on all sides, including the inside. Officially, they were supposed to follow the path whenever they wanted to go to the main building, but most of the counselors only did that when they had their kids with them. It was usually at least a little quicker to cut through the forest at the center, especially for her and Mina, since their cabin was at the very end of the path.
That was just what Patti did, once her charge had drifted off to sleep, and she’d made sure all the others were truly asleep as well, and not just pretending to get her out of the cabin for some kind of crazy twelve-year-old party. The moon was full, hanging low over the trees, so she hadn’t bothered to bring her flashlight along. She started to regret it as she made her way through the forest, weaving past the trees, dead leaves from the year before crunching slightly beneath her feet. She knew there wasn’t really anything to worry about there, but that didn’t make her feel any less paranoid. She’d made the trip every night, but every other night, Mina had been there with her.
But that was just her acting silly, she told herself. If there really was something out there, even with two of them, they surely would have seen some sign of it by then. Surely. And yet, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself of that, her heart just kept beating louder and louder in her chest, her eyes cutting over towards the path, and the lampposts outside the cabins. She took a step or two over towards them, then shook her head, resolving to stop acting like an idiot.
When she turned around, she nearly ran straight into Mina. She didn’t recognize her at first, as she was used to staring at the other girl’s face, rather than her pale stomach, almost glowing in the moonlight. Patti took a step back, not sure what was going on for a moment, until she saw Mina’s face, hanging a a few feet from the ground, a pair of red marks stretching across her neck.
Later, she’d remember the relatively small amount of blood pooled below Mina, the jagged quality of the cuts – rips, almost – in her skin, but at the time, she simply found her eyes going wide as she stumbled backwards, tripping over a branch and falling. She scrambled back up to her feet, running out towards the cabins, sure she felt someone there, trailing her, their hot breath right on her neck.