Sick Summer Camp (Something Horrific)



  Sick Summer Camp

  © Brent Meske 2013

  Cover illustration © 2013 Catreen Yoon

  This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

  Jane lay panting in the bed provided for her, soaking the sheets with a rain of sweat. It was the absolute worst possible thing to happen in the middle of a gorgeous hot summer, and especially bad for her second day of camp. For all the middle school kids running around, being in bed was like being sentenced to a thousand years in prison: doomed to wait out the best of times in a hellish purgatory.

  Groups of kids, younger and older, splashed in the lake not two hundred feet away. Some sat, drowsing in the shade and gossiping about each other, like the infamous Kardashian threesome: Theresa, Olivia and Lizzy casting poisonous little glances at the other kids playing tag, hide-and-seek, or capture the flag. All of them enjoying the day as the second hand jerked its way around the clock, again and again.

  “Oh God,” she moaned. Days like this had seasons they were so long.

  Jane was in the summer phase of her year-long summer day, with her eyes rolling deliriously about in her head. The world seemed to tilt in her sickness, and she leaned over the bed to splash a bit of bile into her bedpan.

  She couldn’t do this. There was no way she could allow her freezing, burning, shaking wreck of a body keep her from the day. She put one quivering foot on the floor, followed by the other, and took her time standing up. Then, she staggered over to the front window of the medical cabin and peered out.

  There: Jackie Eccleston was running like a cheetah through the parade field, while Ronny Regents chased her. They were part of the group that had introduced her to the camp the day before. Both of them had been coming since they could remember.

  Jane leaned her forehead against the window, full of regret and anger that her body wasn’t allowing her out with the rest of them. She left a river of sick sweat on the glass. All of them were making craft stuff, learning songs, running and splashing. All of them were enjoying their freedom from their parents and the loose constraints of the counselors.

  A scream pierced the air, and Jane bolted upright. She staggered to the side window, trying to rush, heart pounding thick in her ears, to see what was happening. Ronny Regents had his back to the big oak tree. There, in front of him, swayed Jackie Eccleston like a cobra. Only, she had an axe clutched awkwardly in her small hands.

  Ronny was shaking his head no, and fanning out his fingers, his hands going back and forth. Whatever he was saying, it failed miserably. Jackie snarled, raised the axe, and brought it down.

  There was a wet sound of flesh giving way. His body slumped to the ground before Jackie stepped on his chest, pulled the axe free, and swung it again baseball style. Blood sprayed out, coating her powder blue tank top as well as her chest, neck and face. Ronny’s head was now propped on the large blade, stuck in the tree. He was staring in incomprehension while the rest of him slumped to the ground. Jackie seemed satisfied, and crossed her bloodied arms over her bloodied chest. She walked off.

  Jane screamed. Hadn’t anyone seen? Or heard? Nobody had noticed, seriously? She crossed to the front window to see who had heard, and who was rushing to the scene.

  No one. The Kardashian Club continued benignly pointing and cursing at each other, the rage plain on each of their faces. Clearly, now they knew what Jane knew: that Theresa had spent some time out in the woods alone with Olivia’s boyfriend, and Olivia had gotten back by dealing with Theresa’s boyfriend the same way.

  Theresa, the bigger of the two, stocky from all that swimming, slapped Olivia hard in the face, and back again. With Ronny headless less that fifty yards away, here were Olivia and Theresa catfighting, pulling on each others’ hair and scratching up their faces while Lizzy tried to get in the middle and stop them.

  But this wasn’t all. A counselor rushed in, just as Olivia had turned and dug her manicured, pink fingernails into Lizzy’s windpipe to get her away from their obviously personal business. Lizzy’s eyes shot open in surprise, while gore spurted from her punctured carotid artery. Jane could clearly make out Theresa, surprised and horrified, mouth the words ‘how could you?’

  Theresa then produced a letter opener, long and slim and sharp, and shoved it into her best friend’s ear. Olivia froze, her hand still clutching Lizzy’s throat, as the life went out of her.

  The counselor rushed toward them, and then unbelievably past. He had some rope with him, which he unfurled and began to tie into a quick knot as he sped toward the lake.

  “Oh god, oh god oh god,” Jane muttered over and over. Theresa was crazy, she had always been, but to go from a gossiping life-ruiner to a crazed bloodthirsty maniac. Jane reeled.

  Theresa stood and began to wipe the blood and dirt off her pleated miniskirt. She looked dazed, as if it were difficult to understand how a six-inch blade could be sticking out of Olivia’s head. Lizzy still thrashed on the ground. By now she had dislodged her friend’s fingers, and was holding her throat, kicking the ground wildly and shaking her brunette ponytail back and forth, willing the blood to stop flowing. Jane saw Theresa roll her eyes, grab Olivia’s face, and yank the knife free. In one smooth move, she knelt over Lizzy and put the knife through her left eye. She buried it deep.

  Lizzy stopped thrashing and lay still.

  How could this be happening? This was her first summer at the camp. This wasn’t some sort of trick. This was the kind of thing you only saw in movies.

  Out in the lake, two teams of boys were cheering each other on, each in their own motorboat. The counselor splashed into the water and tossed each team one of his ropes, while other boys tied the ends of the ropes off to a chubby boy’s wrists. Jane didn’t know his name, but it took four kids to hold him in place, for all his jerking and protesting. Soon they had him, and the boys in the boats tied their ends of the rope to the motors.

  Jane could hear the roar of the motors as they shot away, and the chubby boy screamed. He shrieked like nothing Jane had ever heard, even two hundred some feet away, his bellowing reached her and echoed off the far side of the lake simultaneously. She couldn’t keep from watching, couldn’t hide her face in her hands. The fever within her seemed to flare up as she watched the boy’s left arm stretch painfully, and begin to spout blood as it was ripped off like a chicken leg. The rest of the boy was pulled along behind the boat, fanning red-tinted water behind, while the arm skipped away along the water behind the other boat.

  It finally happened. Jane sucked in a bellyful of air and let out a piercing, mind-blown shriek, which seemed to have a physical presence in the little first aid cabin. The idea of a first aid cabin suddenly seemed ludicrous. The idea of being at this camp, witnessing so much bloodshed, all of it went spiraling through Jane’s twelve-year-old mind and came to rest on her cornered sanity.

  Theresa had remained standing over her two best friends, and now her head shot up in Jane’s direction. She reached down, pulled the letter opener from Lizzy’s eye socket, stepped over Olivia’s corpse and began to walk toward the little cabin.

  Terror gripped Jane. She backed up, fell over her damp bed, and sprang back up again. As she backed away, she looked out the side window again, and froze.

  Ronny’s decapitated head was moving.

  While Jane uttered a tiny, strangled sound, little worms or tendrils or something wriggled around in his head. Jane tried to tear her eyes away, to tell her brain enough was enough. Yet how could she stop herself? Those things were writhing around under Ronny’s head, pulling him…pulling his head toward the end of the
axe blade.

  Jane croaked again. The head fell to the ground, grabbed onto Ronny’s pant leg, and began to heave itself back up to where it belonged. Ronny’s arms and legs twitched in anticipation.

  “You like watching other peoples’ business, is that it?”

  Jane whirled and found herself face to face with Theresa: Kardashian number one. The letter opener was in her tightly balled fist, still dripping with the essence of two of her friends’ lives

  “What…what’s going on out there?” Jane whispered. Her mind had already broken, and it was impossible for her to flee from this killer.

  “You wondered why you got sick as soon as you got here, huh newbie?” Theresa said. “Everybody gets sick their first year. Everybody freaks out.”

  Lizzy and Olivia appeared by her side. Lizzy’s left eye still hung down and drooled clear pus down her cheek, but little tendrils were snaking out of her eye socket and drawing the orb back up into her head.

  “Then they change,” Olivia said, and put her finger into her ear to clear out the blood. “We all change.”

  Theresa stepped forward. “Don’t worry. It’s fun. You can do anything to anybody, and they can do anything to you.” She was breathing heavy, and Jane wondered what had happened to her boyfriend when Olivia ‘had some time alone in the woods’. Had they gotten a little too close, or had Olivia shoved a pine branch through his liver? Had he lived long enough to return the favor, before they both came back and had a good laugh over it?

  “I’m losing my mind,” Jane said distantly.

  “No,” Olivia said. “And you’re not dreaming either.”

  Theresa stepped forward with a dreamy, yet vicious grin and shoved the letter opener into Jane’s chest. The pain was explosive, sending bright crosses of red and black through her vision. There was impact…she must have fallen.

  Then hands were helping her up, and both Lizzy and Olivia were shouting.

  “You idiot! She’s not finished being sick yet.”

  “You’re going to really kill her!”

  Jane opened her eyes to see real, genuine concern on their faces. Theresa had a smug grin planted on her pretty Kardashian face. The counselor, his name was Brandon, Jane thought, burst into the room and stared at her face. He was a cutie, she thought.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, taking Theresa by the shoulders and shaking her. “She could really die, you know that?”

  And Theresa beamed up at him, and said, “Yes sir.”

  Jane’s ages long day began to come to a close.

  About the Author

  Brent Meske lives near Seoul, Korea with his wife and son. He’s published elsewhere, though not for money. He writes and reads constantly, and often teaches English. This is the first ebook cover Brent hasn’t put together himself, instead farming off the work to a talented young design student, Catreen Yoon. Look her up ([email protected]).

  Note

  Thanks for reading. You’re the reason I write.

  If you’re interested in more scary work, or disturbing work, look up From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross. It’s about a school in the near future where the students are all orphans, and all trained to be assassins. It’s cheaper than a cup of coffee and contains fourteen tales (13 shorts and a novella). Otherwise, if you’re an impoverished college student or graduate like me, most of the short tales are free.

  If you liked this, please consider leaving me a review on whatever site you downloaded this free ebook from. It would be greatly appreciated. Wink wink, nudge nudge.