09 - Welcome to Camp Nightmare (3 page)

Peering out the window, I watched him lope away, taking long, fast strides,
bobbing his head as he walked.

“Great guy,” Colin muttered sarcastically.

“Real friendly,” Jay added, shaking his head.

Then we dived into the plastic bag and pulled out sheets and wool blankets.
Jay and Colin got into a wrestling match over a blanket they claimed was softer
than the others.

I tossed a sheet onto my mattress and started to climb up to tuck it in.

I was halfway up the ladder when I heard Mike scream.

Mike was right beneath me, making his bed. He screamed so loud, I
cried out and nearly fell off the ladder.

I leaped off the ladder, my heart pounding, and stepped beside him.

Staring straight ahead, his mouth wide open in horror, Mike backed away from
his bed.

“Mike—what’s wrong?” I asked. “What
is
it?”

“S-snakes!” Mike stammered, staring straight ahead at his unmade bed as he
backed away.

“Huh?” I followed his gaze. It was too dark to see anything.

Colin laughed. “Not
that
old joke!” he cried.

“Larry put rubber snakes in your bed,” Jay said, grinning as he stepped up
beside us.

“They’re not rubber! They’re real!” Mike insisted, his voice trembling.

Jay laughed and shook his head. “I can’t believe you fell for that old gag.”
He took a few steps toward the bed—then stopped. “Hey!”

I moved close, and the two snakes came into focus. Raising themselves from
the shadows, they arched their heads, pulling back as if preparing to attack.

“They’re real!” Jay cried, turning back to Colin. “Two of them!”

“Probably not poisonous,” Colin said, venturing closer.

The two let out angry hisses, raising themselves high off the bed. They were
very long and skinny. Their heads were wider than their bodies. Their tongues
flicked from side to side as they arched themselves menacingly.

“I’m scared of snakes,” Mike uttered in a soft voice.

“They’re probably scared of
you
!” Jay joked, slapping Mike on the
back.

Mike winced. He was in no mood for Jay’s horseplay. “We’ve got to get Larry
or somebody,” Mike said.

“No way!” Jay insisted. “You can handle ’em, Mike. There’s only two of them!”

Jay gave Mike a playful shove toward the bed. He only meant to give him a
scare.

But Mike stumbled—and fell onto the bed.

The snakes darted in unison.

I saw one of them clamp its teeth into Mike’s hand.

Mike raised himself to his feet. He didn’t react at first. Then he uttered a
high-pitched shriek.

Two drops of blood appeared on the back of his right hand. He stared down at
them, then grabbed the hand.

“It
bit
me!” he shrieked.

“Oh, no!” I cried.

“Did it puncture the skin?” Colin asked. “Is it bleeding?”

Jay rushed forward and grabbed Mike’s shoulder. “Hey, man—I’m really sorry,”
he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

Mike groaned in pain. “It—really hurts,” he whispered. He was breathing
really hard, his chest heaving, making weird noises as he breathed.

The snakes, coiled in the middle of his lower bunk, began to hiss again.

“You’d better hurry to the nurse,” Jay said, his hand still on Mike’s
shoulder. “I’ll come with you.”

“N-no,” Mike stammered. His face was as pale as a ghost’s. He held his hand
tightly. “I’ll go find her!” He burst out of the cabin, running at full speed.
The door slammed behind him.

“Hey—I didn’t mean to push him, you know,” Jay explained to us. I could see
he was really upset. “I was just joking, just trying to scare him a little. I
didn’t mean for him to fall or anything….” His voice trailed off.

“What are we going to do about
them
?” I asked, pointing at the two
coiled snakes.

“I’ll get Larry,” Colin offered. He started toward the door.

“No, wait.” I called him back. “Look. They’ve moved onto Mike’s sheet,
right?”

Jay and Colin followed my gaze to the bed. The snakes arched themselves high,
preparing to bite again.

“So?” Jay asked, scratching his disheveled hair.

“So we can wrap them up in the sheet and carry them outside,” I said.

Jay stared at me. “Wish I’d thought of that. Let’s do it, man!”

“You’ll get bit,” Colin warned.

I stared at the snakes. They seemed to be studying me, too. “They can’t bite
us through the sheet,” I said.

“They can try!” Colin exclaimed, hanging back.

“If we’re fast enough,” I said, taking a cautious step toward the bed, “we
can wrap them up before they know what’s happening.”

The snakes hissed out a warning, drawing themselves higher.

“How did they get in here, anyway?” Colin asked.

“Maybe the camp is
crawling
with snakes,” Jay said, grinning. “Maybe
you’ve got some in
your
bed, too, Colin!” He laughed.

“Let’s get serious here,” I said sternly, my eyes locked on the coiled
snakes. “Are we going to try this or not?”

“Yeah. Let’s do it,” Jay answered. “I mean, I owe it to Mike.”

Colin remained silent.

“I’ll bet I could grab one by the tail and swing him out through the window,”
Jay said. “You could grab the tail end of the other one and—”

“Let’s try my plan first,” I suggested quietly.

We crept over to the snakes, sneaking up on them. It was kind of silly since
they were staring right at us.

I pointed to one end of the sheet, which was folded up onto the bed. “Grab it
there,” I instructed Jay. “Then pull it up.”

He hesitated. “What if I miss? Or you miss?”

“Then we’re in trouble,” I replied grimly. My eyes on the snakes, I reached
my hand forward to the other corner of the sheet. “Ready? On three,” I
whispered.

My heart was in my mouth. I could barely choke out, “One, two, three.”

At the count of three, we both grabbed for the ends of the sheet.

“Pull!” I cried in a shrill voice I couldn’t believe was coming from me.

We pulled up the sheet and brought the ends together, making a bundle.

At the bottom of the bundle, the snakes wriggled frantically. I heard their
jaws snap. They wriggled so hard, the bottom of the bundle swung back and forth.

“They don’t like this,” Jay said as we hurried to the door, carrying our
wriggling, swaying bundle between us, trying to keep our bodies as far away from
it as possible.

I pushed open the door with my shoulder, and we ran out onto the grass.

“Now what?” Jay asked.

“Keep going,” I replied. I could see one of the snakes poking its head out.
“Hurry!”

We ran past the cabins toward a small clump of shrubs. Beyond the shrubs
stood a patch of low trees. When we reached the trees, we swung the bundle back,
then heaved the whole sheet into the trees.

It opened as it fell to the ground. The two snakes slithered out instantly
and pulled themselves to shelter under the trees.

Jay and I let out loud sighs of relief. We stood there for a moment, hunched
over, hands on our knees, trying to catch our breath.

Crouching down, I looked for the snakes. But they had slithered deep into the
safety of the evergreens.

I stood up. “I guess we should take back Mike’s sheet,” I said.

“He probably won’t want to sleep on it,” Jay said. But he reached down and
pulled it up from the grass. He balled it up and tossed it to me. “It’s probably
dripping with snake venom,” he said, making a disgusted face.

When we got back to the cabin, Colin had made his bed and was busily
unpacking the contents of his trunk, shoving everything into the top dresser
drawer. He turned as we entered. “How’d it go?” he asked casually.

“Horrible,” Jay replied quickly, his expression grim. “We both got bit.
Twice.”

“You’re a terrible liar!” Colin told him, laughing. “You shouldn’t even try.”

Jay laughed, too.

Colin turned to me. “You’re a hero,” he said.

“Thanks for all your help,” Jay told him sarcastically.

Colin started to reply. But the cabin door opened, and Larry poked his
freckled face in. “How’s it going?” he asked. “You’re not finished yet?”

“We had a little problem,” Jay told him.

“Where’s the fourth guy? The chubby one?” Larry asked, lowering his head so
he wouldn’t bump it on the door frame as he stepped inside.

“Mike got bit. By a snake,” I told him.

“There were two snakes in his bed,” Jay added.

Larry’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t seem at all surprised. “So where
did Mike go?” he asked casually, swatting a mosquito on his arm.

“His hand was bleeding. He went to the nurse to get it taken care of,” I told
him.

“Huh?” Larry’s mouth dropped open.

“He went to find the nurse,” I repeated.

Larry tossed back his head and started to laugh. “Nurse?” he cried, laughing
hard. “
What
nurse?!”

The door opened and Mike returned, still holding his wounded hand.
His face was pale, his expression frightened. “They said there was no nurse,” he
told me.

Then he saw Larry sitting on his bunk. “Larry—my hand,” Mike said. He held
the hand out so the counselor could see it. It was stained with bright red
blood.

Larry stood up. “I think I have some bandages,” he told Mike. He pulled out a
slender black case from beneath his bunk and began to search through it.

Mike stood beside him, holding up his hand. Drops of blood splashed on the
cabin floor. “They said the camp doesn’t have a nurse,” Mike repeated.

Larry shook his head. “If you get hurt in
this
camp,” he told Mike
seriously, “you’re on your own.”

“I think my hand is swelling a little,” Mike said.

Larry handed him a roll of bandages. “The washroom is at the end of this row
of cabins,” he told Mike, closing the case and shoving it back under the bed.
“Go wash the hand and bandage it. Hurry. It’s almost dinnertime.”

Holding the bandages tightly in his good hand, Mike hurried off to follow
Larry’s instructions.

“By the way, how’d you guys get the snakes out of here?” Larry asked,
glancing around the cabin.

“We carried them out in Mike’s sheet,” Jay told him. He pointed at me. “It
was Billy’s idea.”

Larry stared hard at me. “Hey, I’m impressed, Billy,” he said. “That was
pretty brave, man.”

“Maybe I inherited something from my parents,” I told him. “They’re
scientists. Explorers, kind of. They go off for months at a time, exploring the
wildest places.”

“Well, Camp Nightmoon is pretty wild,” Larry said. “And you guys had better
be careful. I’m warning you.” His expression turned serious. “There’s no nurse
at Camp Nightmoon. Uncle Al doesn’t believe in coddling you guys.”

The hot dogs were all charred black, but we were so hungry, we
didn’t care. I shoved three of them down in less than five minutes. I don’t
think I’d ever been so hungry in all my life.

The campfire was in a flat clearing surrounded by a circle of round white
stones. Behind us, the large white-shingled lodge loomed over the sloping hill.
Ahead of us a thick line of evergreen trees formed a fence that hid the river
from view.

Through a small gap in the trees, I could see a flickering campfire in the
distance on the other side of the river. I wondered if that was the campfire of
the girls’ camp.

I thought about Dawn and Dori. I wondered if the two camps ever got together,
if I’d ever see them again.

Dinner around the big campfire seemed to put everyone in a good mood. Jay was
the only one sitting near me who complained about the hot dogs being burned. But
I think he put away four or five of them anyway!

Mike had trouble eating because of his bandaged hand. When he dropped his
first hot dog, I thought he was going to burst into tears. By the end of dinner,
he was in a much better mood. His wounded hand had swelled up just a little. But
he said it didn’t hurt as much as before.

The counselors were easy to spot. They all wore their identical white shorts
and green T-shirts. There were eight or ten of them, all young guys probably
sixteen or seventeen. They ate together quietly, away from us campers. I kept
looking at Larry, but he never once turned around to look at any of us.

I was thinking about Larry, trying to figure out if he was shy or if he just
didn’t like us campers very much. Suddenly, Uncle Al climbed to his feet and
motioned with both hands for us all to be quiet.

“I want to welcome you boys to Camp Nightmoon,” he began. “I hope you’re all
unpacked and comfortable in your bunks. I know that most of you are first-time
campers.”

He was speaking quickly, without any pauses between sentences, as if he was
running through this for the thousandth time and wanted to get it over with.

“I’d like to tell you some of our basic rules,” he continued. “First,
lights-out is at nine sharp.”

A lot of guys groaned.

“You might think you can ignore this rule,” Uncle Al continued, paying no
attention to their reaction. “You might think you can sneak out of your cabins
to meet or take a walk by the river. But I’m warning you now that we don’t allow
it, and we have very good ways of making sure this rule is obeyed.”

He paused to clear his throat.

Some boys were giggling about something. Across from me, Jay burped loudly,
which caused more giggles.

Uncle Al didn’t seem to hear any of this. “On the other side of the river is
the girls’ camp,” he continued loudly, motioning to the trees. “You might be
able to see their campfire. Well, I want to make it clear that swimming or
rowing over to the girls’ camp is strictly forbidden.”

Several boys groaned loudly. This made everyone laugh. Even some of the
counselors laughed. Uncle Al remained grim-faced.