Chapter 1: Six Years Ago
The air in the counselors’ cabin was thick with the smell of mildew and sweat. Chris had been missing for three days, and every creak of the old wooden structure was a footstep, every rustle in the pines outside a whisper. The kids were gone, sent home in a panic, but the rest of us were stuck here. The police said don’t leave town. The Reillys were at the station again, leaving Myles the groundskeeper in charge, which meant he was asleep in his shed with a bottle of gin.
“This is fucking grim,” Anderson said, throwing a deck of cards onto the scarred table. “I say we go to the lake. Swim. Then raid the lodge kitchen for whatever’s left and watch a movie on the projector. Anything but sitting here waiting for the cops to tell us another one of us is fucking dead.”
A murmur of agreement went through the room. Malcolm and Pierre were already pulling on shorts over their swim trunks. Shelby and Brittany nodded, their faces pale but eager for any distraction.
Lexi stood by the window, her arms crossed tight over her chest. She was watching the tree line, her body perfectly still. She hadn’t said much since Chris vanished.
“Lex? You in?” Anderson asked.
She glanced back, her sharp eyes flicking to John, then to Donnie who was rolling a joint by the bunk. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Anything’s better than this.”
The group filed out, the screen door slapping shut behind them. Their laughter sounded too loud, too forced, and it faded quickly into the oppressive quiet of the camp.
That left four of us. Donnie, John, Kyle, and Teresa. Kyle caught Teresa’s eye and jerked his head toward the back hallway. A smirk, a blush, and they were gone, slipping into one of the empty kid’s bunks. The door clicked shut.
Donnie lit his joint, took a deep hit, and held the smoke in his lungs. He offered it to John, who was sitting stiffly on the edge of his bottom bunk, a book open but unread on his lap.
“Takes the edge off, man. You look like you’re about to vibrate out of your skin.”
John shook his head, a faint, tense smile on his lips. “My parents would have a coronary. They can smell it on your clothes from a mile away.”
“Your parents are at a police station, man. They’re not thinking about your laundry.” Donnie exhaled, the sweet, skunky smoke curling in the lamplight. “Suit yourself.”
John picked up his book—some dense historical novel—and tried to fix his eyes on the words. They blurred. All he could see was Chris’s empty bed, the sheets still rumpled from three mornings ago.
“You remember anything?” Donnie asked after a few minutes of quiet. “About that night? You were on fire watch with him, right?”
John’s throat tightened. “No. I mean, yes, I was. But I don’t remember anything weird. We did the rounds. Checked the equipment shed. He said he was tired, he was going to bed. I finished the log and went to my cabin. That’s it.” He shut the book with a soft thud. “I wish I did. I keep trying to… I don’t know. Remember a sound. A look. Something.”
“It’s fucked up,” Donnie said, his voice softening. “Totally fucked.”
The first rumble of thunder echoed in the distance. A storm was brewing over the lake. John stood up, pacing the narrow aisle between the bunks. He needed air, but the thought of going outside into the gathering dark made his skin prickle.
Then the phone rang.
The sound was jarring, a shrill electronic scream in the silent cabin. It wasn’t the landline on the wall by the kitchenette. That one was dead, the cord ripped out during a party last summer.
It was coming from somewhere else. Muffled.
“What the hell is that?” Donnie muttered, sitting up.
John followed the sound. It led him past the kitchenette, to a narrow door he’d never really noticed before, half-obscured by a faded poster about canoe safety. A cellar door. It was slightly ajar.
The ringing was louder here, metallic and insistent. He pulled the door open. A set of rough wooden steps descended into blackness. The smell wafting up was of wet earth and decay. The phone shrieked from down there.
“John, don’t be a hero,” Donnie called from the main room, but his voice was thin, strained.
John fumbled for the pull-cord. A single, bare bulb flickered on, revealing a small, stone-walled cellar. Crates of old, mildewed paperwork. Broken furniture. And on a shelf next to a jar of rusty nails, an old rotary phone, its olive-green plastic cracked and dusty.
It rang and rang, the bell clattering against the casing.
His hand was shaking as he reached for it. The receiver was cold and heavy. He lifted it to his ear.
“Hello?”
Static hissed back at him, thick and white. Then a voice, low, mechanized, like it was being pushed through a cheap voice changer. It was utterly empty of anything human.
“They’re all going to die tonight.”
Click.
The dial tone buzzed in his ear. John stood frozen on the cellar steps, the cold from the stones seeping through his socks. The buzz became a roar.
The phone dropped from his hand, swinging on its cord, banging against the stone wall with a dull, rhythmic thump. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. The voice played on a loop in his head.
They’re all going to die tonight.