Page 17 of The Girl in the Mist

His mother cried for hours when she heard what happened. Ron didn’t really understand it at the time. He was eighteen, a year past graduation and at the end of his first summer not going to Camp Hollow since he was six years old. He’d taken that year off to work and save money and was getting ready to go to the local junior college in just a couple of weeks. It didn’t make sense to him why his mother sat in the old rocker in the corner of the living room, bathed in the yellow light from the lamp on the pink marble table beside her, and cried into her handkerchief until the tears couldn’t come anymore.

Now that he’s an adult, he understands. He has children of his own. One the same age he was that summer. Two more just a couple years younger. None of them are at the camp. As soon as he heard they were opening for a special session this summer, he felt his mother’s tears embedded in his heart. He knew he couldn’t let the younger ones set foot on that ground. He couldn’t bear the thought of any of them facing what those campers did that night twenty years before.

He’s never really considered himself a superstitious man. He likes to believe in what he can see and touch. He likes to feel in control.

But there’s something about that camp. He spent twelve summers there, but he never wants to see it again. There’s evil in that campground. Something like that doesn’t just happen without it leaving a stain. He doesn’t even want to breathe the air around that place. It carries it. It will get inside you.

“I’m going to need backup,” a voice crackles through his radio. “There’s a truck crashed up here on the road right up from thecamp.”

It gives Ron a chill. He straightens his spine to stop it from rolling down each of the vertebrae like stairs.

“Any injuries?” he asks the officer back through the radio.

“It’s empty and I don’t see anyone around. But there’s blood inside and some on a tree nearby. We need to search thearea.”

Ron confirms the message and puts in a request for more officers to head in the direction of Camp Hollow, though he had a feeling this girl was who they were looking for. The poor thing must have left the accident and tried to come for help, but knew she couldn’t make it all the way to town, so decided to come ask to use the phone. He couldn’t even imagine what she felt when she went into the house and found the couple.

He doesn’t want to upset her more, but he has to ask her about the crash and find out who else was involved. If there’s no one around the truck, they need to know how many people they are looking for. They might have hit their heads during the crash and got disoriented so they wandered away from the truck. He has to get details so they don’t risk leaving anyone behind.

Leaving the crime scene investigators to handle processing the bodies in the bedroom, he goes outside to talk to the girl whose name he was only able to get through one of the EMTs after they got her out to theambulance.

“Lisa?” he asks, stepping up to theambulance.

“Is someone going to the camp?” she asks desperately, leaning toward him so quickly the movement knocks the blanket off of one shoulder. “They need help. Please, they needhelp.”

Ron nods, patting her back to soothe her. “Alright. Try to calm down for me. I need to ask you a couple of questions. You said they need help up at the camp. How many people were with you in thetruck?”

Lisa looks confused. “Truck? Whattruck?”

The question isn’t what the officer wanted to hear.

“The truck that crashed up on the road toward the old camp. How many people were init?”

Her face contorts even more and fresh tears pool in the corners of her eyes.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” shesays.

“You weren’t in a truck?” heasks.

“No.”

“How did you get here?”

“I ran,” she says. “I ran from the camp. I’m trying to tell you. They needhelp.”

“Not the people who were in the crash?” he asks.

“No. The people who have beenmurdered.”

Glad that the rain is finally calming down, Officer Bill Carter swipes the beam of his flashlight back and forth through the trees. It’s dark as hell and there’s enough undergrowth in these woods to take down an elephant. But at least he isn’t also dealing with the rain pounding down on him or the thunder cracking along the horizon. Bill hates thunder. He hates the way it rumbles like it’s under the ground before the deafening snap overhead. He hates the way it tastes in his teeth. Like metal and heat. At least he knows if the rain has stopped, the most violent of the thunder won’t come anymore. There might be soft growls in the distance, but a quiet sky holds the worst atbay.

He shouldn’t go any further into the woods by himself. He asked for backup and another cruiser should be here soon. But he can’t just sit in his car waiting. That’s not why he decided to become a cop. Something is going on here, and he doesn’t want to waste time. The damage to the truck is extensive. It appears to have skidded off the road and run into a tree. One of the first things Bill noticed when he examined the truck was the blood inside, and then within just feet of where it came to rest there was more blood smeared across atree.

Someone who was involved in this crash is hurt, perhaps seriously. If they are out there and need help, he isn’t just going to sit around in his car and wait for someone else to come so that they can use the buddy system. He needs to do something.

He takes another cautious step, paying close attention to where he’s putting his feet so none of the dense growth coming up from the ground tangles around his boots and trips him. He’s still close enough to the road that the flashing lights on top of his car supplement his flashlight to brighten the space between the trees and highlight obstacles in his path. But they won’t have that effect for much further. A couple more yards in and the trees will blot out the light.

Behind him, he hears the sirens of his backup coming. It emboldens him to take a few more steps. That’s all it takes.

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