The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved (10 page)

“I think a couple of them went home today,” Martin said. He had seen John Dee packing his suitcase earlier. Martin had used the short break after chapel to go back to the cabin to make certain that his bed was made. “John Dee and Mitchell went home, for sure,” Martin said.

“Or
did they
?” Melissa said in a spooky voice.

Jackie woke up slowly, first registering the pain in her head, and then the dirt floor of the basement. She was tied to a chair. This was the basement of the main building, maybe. It was hard to know for sure. She’d never been down here before and she was having a hard time thinking. Tony had dragged her down a flight of stairs. She knew that much.

The sledgehammer had broken her bottom front teeth. Some still had the roots, and those were jagged in her mouth, but some of the teeth were just gone. There was a wet kind of suction in the holes. It should hurt, shouldn’t it? But it didn’t feel like anything. Just that weird wet suction. She knew intellectually that she was in shock, but it didn’t change anything. It didn’t seem like useful knowledge. When she moved her mouth, she could feel fragments of her nose move, in her face. She spat some blood on the floor.

Father Tony came into the room backward, dragging a body by its legs. Jackie watched him quietly. It was too small to be an adult’s body. Then she remembered. She had caught Tony killing a little boy. She struggled against her restraints. He had crushed the kid’s head with a sledgehammer. Why? Why a little boy? Why was this happening? She could see other bodies now, pushed to the sides of the room against the wall. More dead kids? There were three bodies. No, four. Four, counting the new one.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Tony said. “But I couldn’t leave that mess up there for someone else to clean up. That wouldn’t really be fair.”

“Let me go,” Jackie said.

“Don’t be silly,” Tony said. He went back to the door. “I’ll be back in just a minute. I have to mop up some blood and teeth and brain gunk. I’m sorry I don’t have a TV down here, or a radio or anything. I didn’t expect company.”

Then he was gone, and Jackie was alone in the room with the bodies. She tried not to look at them. Children seemed smaller when they were dead.

She stopped trying to pull herself free of the chair. It was duct tape, but there was so much that she was never going to be able to just tear herself free. She had to think this through better. He was upstairs cleaning up blood. That meant he was afraid that someone would see the blood. That meant he was afraid to be caught, which meant he was at least a little bit rational. She could reason with him.

He had been laughing when she found him murdering that kid. He wasn’t rational. He was crazy. And she didn’t have anything to bargain with. What could she offer? Her silence? All he had to do was kill her, too, and he would have her silence. Money? Unlikely. She couldn’t get that laugh out of her mind. He was completely insane. There was nothing she could say that would make him let her go. She struggled against the duct tape again.

“How’s that working out for you?” Tony said, coming back into the room with a smile. “Should I give you another minute to escape? I can go back upstairs if you want!”

“Let me go,” Jackie said. It came out muddled and weird, because of her broken nose and teeth. “Lemmie go,” she tried again.

The priest crouched down in front of her. “You’re Jackie, right?” he said. “You’re the girl who is always out there playing chess on the big chessboard right?”

He thought that Jackie was Sherri-Lynn.

“How about this? I have a chessboard up in my office. I’ll go get it, and we’ll play a game. If you win, I’ll let you go. I mean, you have to promise not to tell any of the other counsellors or the campers that I tried to kill you, obviously. But you’ll be free to leave. If I win, though, I get to beat you to death with an arm or a leg from one of those bodies over there. Do we have a deal?” He stuck out his hand to shake, and Jackie just stared at it.

Maybe she could beat him at chess. She wasn’t as good as Sherri-Lynn, but she knew how to play. It was a chance, anyway. She could beat him. And then what? What if he was lying? Still, it was her only hope.

“Deal,” Jackie said.

“Okay, back in a jiffy,” Tony said.

While he was gone, Jackie closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. Her face was starting to hurt. It was a far-away ache, but it was something, and she focused on it. She flexed the muscles in her face, and the pain was sharper. It made her feel more alert, made her mind feel clearer. She spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor, and then opened her jaw as far as she could. The pain was even sharper. It felt closer now, and less foggy.

Father Tony came back with a table first, and set it up in front of her. Then he skipped out of the room, humming, and came back a second later with one of the chairs from the dining room upstairs. He set it down on the other side of the table, making a big show of checking to ensure that it didn’t wobble. Then he was gone again, skipping up the stairs.

Tony returned with a wooden chessboard and sat across from her. He set up the board slowly, careful to make the knights face forward and put every piece in the centre of their square. Then he picked up one white pawn and one black, and put them behind his back. He was even going to be fair about who went first, Jackie thought. Maybe she did have a chance after all.

“Left or right?” he said.

“Left,” Jackie said, nodding toward his left side.

Tony brought his hand out from behind his back, but there was no chess piece in it. Instead, he had an axe in his fist. A big grin spread across his face. He stood up and turned back to the boy’s body on the floor.

Then he lifted the axe up and brought it down hard. Jackie wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. The axe opened a wedge into the kid’s shoulder, and Tony wound up and swung again. He chopped into the shoulder, and then grabbed hold of the arm. He yanked at it, trying to separate it like a chicken drumstick. It took some work, another couple chops from the axe, but he finally got the arm off. It bent awkwardly at the elbow.

“Why?” Jackie said. “Why are you doing this?”

“I just always wanted to try it,” Tony said, standing up with the severed limb. He held it by the forearm, just above the small hand. “It probably won’t work,” he said, coming toward where Jackie was tied to the chair. He upended the chess table, sending the pieces scattering. “And I’ll understand if you laugh. It’s just nervous laughter. It’s perfectly natural.” He gripped the forearm with both hands like a baseball bat, and swung it so that the shoulder smashed Jackie in the face, mixing John Dee’s blood with her own. The blood got in her eyes, and she couldn’t wipe it out.

He struck her again, swinging harder this time, and more blood got in her eyes. But John Dee’s shoulder didn’t hurt her. It bloodied her face, it made a mess, and it gave a nice wet thunk every time Tony hit her, but it couldn’t kill her.

Jackie spat again.

“I was right,” he said. “It didn’t work.” He sighed and dropped the arm on the floor.

“Stop,” she said. “Wait.”

He wiped his hands on his pants, then took the utility knife from his back pocket and slid it open. He put his knee on Jackie’s lap for balance and cut her throat as deeply as he could.

The pain was sharp at first, and she tried to hold onto it. It kept her mind clear. She needed to be able to think clearly if she was going to get away. He pushed the knife into her throat harder and harder, using her shoulder for leverage, until the blade scraped on bone.

Melissa and Courtney were walking behind, letting Martin and Joan lead the way. Courtney didn’t want to steal cookies, even though they were clearly for the campers anyway. What did it matter if they got cookies at dinner tonight, or if they snuck into the kitchen and took a couple cookies now? Joan was still holding Martin’s hand, pulling him along behind her.

“She makes video games,” Joan said, trying the handle on the side door. It turned easily, and the door swung open with a creak. “My mom, I mean. She does the computer programming for video games.”

“Oh, cool!” Martin said.

He never played video games, but he thought it was a cool thing to do for a job. He wondered if Joan played video games. He would play them, if she did. He could learn to enjoy them.

It was dark inside, compared to the late-afternoon sun, but they didn’t turn the lights on. It was a straight line down the hallway to the kitchen, where the cookies were. They stayed close together and moved as slowly as they could. It wasn’t until they got closer to the kitchen that they realized someone else was in the building with them. They could hear someone humming in the main dining room. Melissa flattened against the wall and motioned for everyone else to do the same.

The light in the dining room was off, too, though. Who was in there in the dark? Courtney was shaking her head, and she pointed back toward the way they came in. Melissa put her finger to her lips, and she started creeping down the hall toward the humming. Joan followed her, pulling Martin along. He could feel his heartbeat. It was an adventure! Courtney stood there in the hallway, looking back at the door for a long time before she went after them.

The kitchen had a long window that peeked out into the dining room. If they went in there, they could see out without worrying. Martin tapped Joan on the shoulder and pointed at the kitchen door. She nodded and tapped Melissa on the shoulder.

In the kitchen, it was even darker. Martin couldn’t see anyone’s face. But he could hear the humming now even louder. It sounded so cheerful.

They went as quietly as they could, creeping to the window that looked out into the dining room. There was definitely someone out there, humming away. Then a door opened at the far end of the room, and the light beyond the door switched on. It was Father Tony, standing at the top of a set of stairs that led down. The light from the door came into the dining room, and lit up a shape on the floor.

But it wasn’t until Tony started to drag it toward the stairs that Martin realized it was a body. It was a kid’s body. It looked like Gabe.

Joan ducked her head suddenly, and let go of Martin’s hand. She held her hand over her mouth, and he could hear small sounds that she was trying to keep in. Martin kept watching, though, and Tony dragged the body by its arm to the top of the stairs, and then down. He was still humming his cheerful tune as the body hit each step on the way down with a thump.

“That’s a dead body,” Courtney whispered.

Melissa hit her in the shoulder and held her finger to her lips again.

“That’s a dead body,” Courtney said again, a bit louder this time. “Oh god, why does he have a dead body?”

Melissa pulled Courtney into a crouch and covered her mouth. “We have to be quiet,” she whispered.

Joan was still shaking on the floor, and Martin kneeled down beside her and pulled her into a hug.

Melissa raised her head a little to look, and suddenly the light went out. The door closed and they listened as Tony walked back through the main room to the front door. It creaked when it opened, and then slammed shut. They could hear him outside now, humming as he walked away in the direction of the bonfire and the beach. His feet scraped on the gravel.

“That was a dead body,” Courtney whispered again. “We have to get out of here,” she said.

Melissa stood up, shaking her head. “We have to make sure. What if it was just a mannequin or something?”

“It didn’t look like a mannequin,” Joan said. “Mannequins don’t have moveable arms like that. They stay in the same shape.”

“Maybe it was a scarecrow, or a dummy of some kind,” Courtney said.

But Martin knew it wasn’t. It had looked like a body. Tony had killed Gabe, and he was going to kill again. They had to escape. The longer they stayed here, the more likely they were to die. They had to just go, get out and run into the woods.

“We have to know for sure,” Melissa said. “What are we going to do, go tell Sherri-Lynn that we saw Father Tony hiding a body in the basement? What if it is a dead body, and he’s a killer? If he’s a killer, how do we know they all aren’t killers?”

“Oh god,” Courtney said.

“Sherri-Lynn isn’t a killer,” Joan said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What about the phone?” Martin said. “We could call 911. The police could come help us.”

“We will,” Melissa said. “I say we go and make sure that it really is a dead body, and then we call the police. They’ll take us more seriously if we know for sure.”

Nobody said anything to that. They all sat on the floor in the kitchen looking up at her.

“I’ll go by myself if I have to,” she said.

“No,” Martin said. He stood up, too. “We can’t split up. If we split up, he’ll get us one at a time. We have to stay together.”

The other girls stood as well. This was exactly the kind of thing they shouldn’t be doing. They didn’t need more information. They needed to call the police. If they called, the worst-case scenario would be the police coming and finding out it was a big misunderstanding. But if they were right, then the police would help them. There was no downside to calling the police.

But if they went downstairs now, Tony might get them. He might find them in the dark and hurt them before they had a chance to get to a phone. Martin opened his mouth to say something, but Melissa was already opening the door to the kitchen. She was dead set on checking out the basement. She would go, no matter what he said. And if they split up, it was even more dangerous. He grabbed Joan’s hand and followed them.

Dear Martin,

It just occurred to me that I didn’t give you a Bible to bring to camp with you. I’m sure they have one there, but it would have been the perfect time to pass on the family Bible. It’s been in our family for almost a whole generation now. The cover is thick red leather, with the words pressed in black ink. I found it at a small curio shop in Dartmouth. I was just drunkenly wandering with friends there when you were only small. You were at home fast asleep, and we were hollering and kicking over mailboxes. And then there it was, this small creepy shop with its lights on at three in the morning.

The sign above the door said it was called “Frank’s Weird Shit.” And inside we met Frank. He was an ugly dude. You know when sometimes people are so ugly that you can’t look away? You know it’s impolite, but you just keep looking, because your brain wants to understand. It wants to solve the riddle of how a human being could look this way? It was like that, except in a weird shop in the middle of the night.

“I have that Bible you ordered,” he said to me, spitting with half of the words. He reached under the counter for a package and handed it to me. “It took some doing, but I finally found it. It was in Iraq of all places. Well, I guess that’s not important.”

And inside the package was this blood-red Bible with an upside-down cross on the cover in black. So, I want to say I was smart enough to not mess around with dark forces, Martin, but I wasn’t. We were already on a rampage of self-destruction, so we took the book down to the ferry terminal and sat on the boardwalk, looking at the Bible under a streetlamp. And we made some deals with the Devil.

Did you know the Devil doesn’t always deal in souls, Martin? I was going to tell you this when you got older, but you used to have a sister. Martina. She was a nice girl and everything, but not very smart. She was like a dumber, taller version of you, so I did what the book said. I went home and I got her out of bed quietly so as not to wake you. Then I took her to a crossroads. I figured the paths that cross in the woods back by the frog pond were best, because I had to bury your sister. You can’t really bury someone in pavement.

Anyway it turns out I couldn’t really bury someone in gravel, either. So I just had her lay down and I sort of piled some gravel on top of her. And I waited, like the book said. I waited until a big circus-strong-man-looking guy showed up and told me he was the Devil. He took my makeup kit from me and looked at it carefully. Then he started rearranging the shelves in it, moving the colours around, sorting the brushes by size.

Finally he sat down on the gravel beside your darling sister, Martina, and he painted her face. He drew her eyes darker and darker, and white lines around her mouth, shaping grinning teeth. He made her into a death mask of a skull, and then the two of them stood up.

“She’s perfect,” the Devil said in his quiet, feminine voice. “She’ll be happier now. She will be the Princess of Lost Children.”

“And frogs?” Martina asked, looking up at him.

“And frogs,” he assured her.

She took his hand and smiled a creepy skull smile at me. Then the Devil handed me back my makeup kit, and they were gone. I traded your sister to the Devil in exchange for the ability to work makeup like Robert Johnson played the guitar, is what I’m saying Martin. Or, I guess it’s possible that I traded your sister to a crazy homeless man in exchange for messing with my makeup kit. But after that, nobody seemed to miss her. None of my friends seemed surprised that I only had one child now. And the government cheques for you kept coming, even though hers stopped.

Anyway, I could have sent the Bible along with you. You probably have to read from it in chapel and sing the songs, and it would have been funny if you read from this one and sang the dark twisting incantations while everyone else sang hymns. The walls would have bled and the dead would have risen.

It’s hard waking up and not seeing your dumb face every morning. I can’t wait ’til the movie’s over and I come home and read you bedtime stories. By which I mean watch horror movies with you on the couch. Maybe we’ll watch
Blood Socket 2
!

For the next movie, I’ll bring you with me, even if I can’t afford it. You can work the streets in Toronto, hunting squirrels and selling them to the hot dog cart guys. Child labour builds character, son.

I’ve attached a picture of your long-lost sister, Martina. It might look like somebody cut the head out of your class picture and stuck it on the photo of a teen beauty queen, but that’s what people always said when they met her. It’s just what she looked like.

Thinking of you, (and your sister, who is now Princess of Lost Children and Frogs)

Your Mother.

They opened the door to the kitchen even slower this time, and it didn’t make a sound. In the dining room, they tried to go slowly, but the floor creaked no matter how careful they were. In the end they ran across the room, more afraid to be in the open than they were of the floor creaking. It was Melissa who pulled open the door to the basement.

“The light?” she said.

Courtney shook her head. “He’ll see us.”

“I am not feeling around in a dark basement for a dead body,” Melissa said. “Who knows what I’ll put my hand in. And someone else might be down there. Turn on the light.”

“No,” Courtney said. “He’ll see us! I told you he’ll see us.” There was an edge of panic in her voice. Martin wanted to pull her into a hug.

“We can close the door once we’re inside,” Joan said. “And then turn on the light. Nobody will see that. Then we take a quick look around the basement, and we come back upstairs.”

“Okay,” Melissa said.

It was crowded at the top of the stairs, but nobody wanted to go down before the light was on. So they crowded at the top, and then they closed the door behind themselves. Melissa turned on the light without warning. It hurt Martin’s eyes, and he blinked against it for a few seconds.

He knew he and Joan shouldn’t be there. This wasn’t the setting of a romance. This was what a horror movie looked like. The stairs were unfinished wood, and the walls were bare cement. There was nothing at the bottom of the steps. It was just a dirt floor. They had to go down further and look. Joan had his hand again, tighter this time.

As soon as they got to the bottom, they saw the body. It was Gabe, mohawk and all, and someone had cut his throat. Gabe’s eyes were open but lifeless, and his throat was cut deep, but there was hardly any blood. Beside him, there was a bigger body in a counsellor’s uniform. Martin couldn’t tell who it was, though, because the head had been removed. It was just the top of a shirt with blood and bone sticking out.

“Who is it?” Joan said, staring at the boy.

“Gabe,” Martin said. “I don’t know who that is, though.”

“What about these ones?” Melissa said. There were three more bodies around the corner. Two kids and another counsellor. This counsellor was unrecognizable, too. She had breasts, so it was a girl, but her face was bloody and bashed. Martin remembered Jackie holding her hand to her face, her nose broken and bleeding from the Flying Fox. Her hair was the same.

“It’s Jackie,” he said.

And that was John Dee, laid out on the dirt floor, with his arm beside his body, but separate. They stood there looking at the bodies in silence for a long time. Twice, Melissa took a step forward, like she was going to touch them to make sure, but both times she changed her mind and stepped back.

John Dee had a mother somewhere, Martin thought, staring at the body. He had a mother somewhere, and she didn’t know what had happened. What was she going to do without him? Who was going to take care of her?

Beside Martin, Courtney bent over and vomited on the floor. The sound was slow and retching. She spat the taste out of her mouth, and stood back up. But then she bent over again to vomit.

“What is his mom going to do?” Martin said.

Melissa gave him a look like he was crazy. “What are we going to do, is the real question,” she said.

“We have to find the phone,” Courtney said, spitting again.