Camp Nowhere (6 page)

“Did they slide into the water?” Charlotte asked.

We turned and stared downriver. No canoes bobbing in the water.

Marty and David ran farther along the bank, searching both sides of the river. They stopped when they reached the tiny falls and came walking slowly back.

“No canoes,” David said.

“I don’t see them anywhere,” Marty called.

David shook his head and frowned as he stared at the brown river. “Do you think someone
took
them?” he asked.

“No way,” I replied. “Who would take them? There’s no one around for miles.”

“Except for Ramos!” Erin exclaimed, her eyes flashing. “I’ll bet he sneaked back here through the woods. Waited for us to leave. Then he hid the canoes to pay us back for our little joke.”

I bent down and examined the sand. “No way,” I
said. “There are no tracks in the sand. Check it out.”

We all stared at the sandy ground. No slide marks from the canoes.

No tracks at all.

Erin’s mouth dropped open. “And no footprints,” she muttered.

“She’s right,” I agreed. “If Ramos had returned, he would have left footprints.”

“Whoa! Wait a minute!” Marty exclaimed. He pulled off his baseball cap again and squinted down at the ground. “Where are
our
footprints?”

We all turned to Marty.

“Our footprints are gone, too,” he said. “This is where we started walking, right? When we tried to follow Ramos? Well? Where are our footprints?”

I gazed down at the ground. Marty was right. The sand was totally smooth.

A chill prickled the back of my neck.

What is going on here? I asked myself.

I gazed at the smooth, sandy ground, thinking hard. “It means we’re standing in the wrong place,” I said. “This isn’t where we left the canoes. Let’s keep walking.”

“But this
has
to be the spot,” Charlotte insisted. “Look. The falls.” She started to point—and let out a startled cry.

“Oh, wow,” Erin muttered.

We all saw it at once. The tiny, trickling falls had vanished!

“But that’s impossible!” Erin gasped. “First our canoes. Then the falls…”

“We’re definitely in the wrong place,” Charlotte muttered.

“We’d better start walking,” Marty said. “I’m starving already. And we left all the food at our campground.”

Charlotte kept staring at the flat river. “I just don’t understand…”

Erin grabbed Charlotte’s hand and pulled her away from the edge of the bank. “Come on. Forget about it. We have a long walk. We’ll be able to think better after we have some lunch.”

We huddled close together as we walked along the shore once again, following the river upstream. A few minutes later, we came to the same gnarled tree we had seen before. Only this time it was
on the other side of the river
!

“Whoa! I don’t believe this!” I cried. “That weird tree—it was on
this
side!”

“You’re right,” Charlotte agreed. Her eyes bulged in disbelief.

All five of us stared across the narrow river at the gnarled tree and the wall of vines covered with blackbirds.

“Totally weird,” David muttered. “Did we cross the river? How did they get on the other side?”

I turned and saw Erin staring at the water, her eyes wide. She bit her bottom lip. And pointed. “Hey,
you guys. That bridge…”

A narrow wooden bridge crossed the river.

“We were here before—right?” Erin asked.

“Yeah. Of course we were,” I replied.

“But that bridge wasn’t here,” Erin insisted. “Does anyone remember seeing that bridge?”

Silence.

We all stared at the old bridge, its boards weathered and cracked.

“I—I never saw it,” I whispered. “This…this is so creepy!”

“Give me a break!” David shouted. “We’re all just freaking out here. Because we’re hungry or something. We’ve got to get it together, guys.”

“We must have crossed the river,” Charlotte said. “We crossed the river and started walking in the wrong direction.”

“But we
didn’t
cross!” Erin said. “Everything is…messed up! Everything!”

My chest suddenly felt fluttery. I gazed at the narrow bridge…at the wall of vines…the gnarled old tree…the smooth sand—no footprints. No footprints at all…

“I—I don’t like this,” I whispered.

“This is totally freaking me out,” Erin said. She crossed her arms tightly around herself. “We have to get out of here. Really.”

“But which way?” Charlotte asked.

“We know that all our stuff is upstream,” I said. “So we have to follow the river up.”

“But nothing looks familiar here,” Marty said.

“We can’t just stand here, talking about this!” Erin cried shrilly. “I’m really freaking here. No kidding. We have to go now!”

She was hugging herself tightly to stop her trembling. Charlotte put an arm around Erin’s shoulders. She led the way upstream, and we followed.

“Let’s just keep going,” Charlotte suggested softly. “We’ll come to something. We have to.”

“I am really starving,” David muttered. “Why did we leave all our stuff?”

“We thought we’d be back there by now,” Marty said. He handed David a stick of gum. “Here.
Take it. It’s all I’ve got.”

As we followed the river upstream, low clouds rolled over the sky, blocking the sunlight. The sand and rocks gave way to mud.

“Yuck.” Erin made a face as her sneaker disappeared into wet mud. “It’s a swamp here.”

Charlotte helped tug Erin away from the shore. “Let’s try walking up there.” We followed her toward the woods.

But the ground was just as marshy away from the riverbank. We slogged through the mud for at least an hour. No one said a word.

The sky grew darker. The river curved to the right. The ground became rocky again.

“We should be very close to the campground,” I said.

Erin sighed. “If we’re heading the right way.”

“I think I remember those tall evergreen bushes,” I said, pointing.

David shook his head. “I never saw them before in my life.”

“No. I think I’m right,” I insisted. My heart started to pound. I began to feel hopeful. We were nearly there.

“Right around this bend,” I said. “I think we’ll see our stuff.”

Without another word, we all started to jog. We followed the curve, trotting in a tight group. Our mud-covered shoes thudded on the hard ground.

We made the turn and came out in a wide clearing of tall grass and swaying reeds. The river split in two here. Two narrow channels of water ran through the tall grass.

“Where are we?” Erin moaned. “You said—”

“I was wrong,” I said softly.

“Does the river end here? How come it gets so tiny?” David asked.

“This doesn’t look right at all. We’ve never been here before,” Charlotte said.

“So where should we go? What should we do?” Erin cried, her voice shrill with panic.

I dropped wearily onto the grass and crossed my legs in front of me. Then I rested my head on my hands. “We’re lost,” I said. “We’re totally lost.”

Should we keep walking? Or should we wait here to be rescued?

We talked and argued and finally decided not to move.

“Ramos will be searching up and down the river for us,” Marty said. “He’ll probably find us before dark.”

I wasn’t so sure Ramos was still nearby. I guessed he had taken the supply canoe back to camp to tell everyone what had happened. And to gather a rescue party.

If I was right, he wouldn’t be back for at least another day.

Luckily, the low clouds rolled away, and it didn’t rain. When night fell, we gathered firewood and built a campfire. I lit it with my plastic lighter.

My stomach kept growling. We were all hungry. But we couldn’t figure out a way to get food.

David and Marty tried fishing in the river. They
didn’t have strings or hooks or anything. They planned to grab the fish in their hands.

But the river was so dark and muddy at this point, they couldn’t see any fish. After half an hour or so, they trudged back to shore, wet, cold, and unhappy.

As the night grew cooler, we huddled around the campfire. We tried singing songs for a while to take our minds off how hungry we were. And then David suggested we take turns telling jokes.

But no one felt much like laughing.

Before we went to sleep, we piled sticks and logs on the fire and hoped it would keep burning and keep us warm all night.

I folded myself into a tight ball on the ground. Staring at the tall, dancing flames, feeling the fire’s warmth, I quickly fell asleep.

I was awakened sometime later by the soft
thud thud
of drums.

I pulled myself up slowly. My body ached from lying on the hard ground. My left hand had fallen asleep. The fire still burned, but the flames were low and purple.

I listened….

Yes. The soft, steady beat of Indian drums.

Trying to shake the pinpricks from my left hand, I sat up and gazed around the fire. Did anyone else hear the drums?

David and Marty were sound asleep, curled on their sides close to the fire. But I could see that the
two girls were awake.

I crawled over to them. “Do you hear them?” I whispered. “The drums?”

They both nodded.

I let out a sigh. I’m not going crazy, I thought. The girls hear them, too.

Erin shivered. “Where is it coming from?”

Charlotte tilted her head, listening hard. “It seems to be coming from all around us.”

“But there
are
no Indians in these woods,” Erin insisted. “Who would be playing Indian drums?”

Thud…thud…thud…thud…

My heart pounded with each drumbeat. I turned and saw that David and Marty were still asleep.

And behind them…something caught my eye behind them in the woods. A flicker of orange light.

“What’s that?” I asked Erin and Charlotte, pointing.

The light glowed dimly through the dark trees. “Is it a fire?” Charlotte asked. “It’s very far away.”

“Yes. Maybe it’s a campfire,” Erin said, squinting hard. “Maybe someone else is in the woods. Someone who can help us.”

I stared at the flickering dot of light. “It could be Ramos,” I said. “He might still be here, searching for us.”

Charlotte climbed to her feet. She brushed herself off quickly. “We have to go see.”

Thud…thud…thud…

The steady drumbeats seemed to grow louder.

“Maybe it isn’t safe,” Erin said. “Maybe we should stay here.”

“But if it’s Ramos, or someone else who can help us…” Charlotte said.

“Whoever it is might have food!” I exclaimed.

Across the fire, David and Marty stirred. “What’s up?” Marty asked, stretching his arms. “Did someone say
food
?”

“There’s a light,” I said. I pointed. “In the distance. We think someone else is in the woods.”

They scrambled to their feet. “Let’s check it out,” Marty said.

“But what if it’s a UFO?” David asked. “What if aliens from another planet are secretly landing in the woods, and they zap anyone who disturbs them?”

“But they might have
food
!” Marty exclaimed.

“Yeah. Let’s check it out!” David said.

Into the woods. We kept close together. But sometimes the path through the trees was so narrow, we had to squeeze through single file.

Clouds covered the moon, and we had no flashlight. Marty suggested we use my plastic lighter for light. But it wasn’t really bright enough to show the way. And I knew it wouldn’t last long anyway.

We stumbled over rocks and twigs and upraised tree roots. Low branches scratched our faces, scraped against our clothes.

The flickering light grew brighter as we came near.

“It’s definitely a fire,” I said. “A pretty big one.”

Thud…thud…

The drums kept up their steady rhythm. The sound surrounded us as we made our way through the woods.

And then I heard voices over the drumbeats.

The voices bounced off the trees. Echoed through the woods.

Boys’ voices.

I couldn’t make out the words.

The fire glowed brightly ahead of us. The drumbeats faded.

We stepped out of the trees into a broad clearing.

I gasped as I saw small wood cabins. A basketball court. A pile of canoes. A campfire.

Yes. A blazing campfire in a circle between the cabins. And sitting around the fire, a group of campers. Boys. All boys.

“It’s—it’s a camp!” Charlotte whispered. “Yes! Another camp!”

“We’re saved!” Erin cried.

And the five of us took off, trotting toward the dancing fire, moving into the light into the warmth of the tall flames.

At first, the campers didn’t see us. A tall, dark-haired counselor wearing white shorts and a white T-shirt stood before the fire, motioning with his hands as he talked.

“Hey!” Marty called breathlessly as we ran. “Hey!”

A boy on the edge of the circle turned at the sound of Marty’s cry. And his expression turned to horror.

The boy jumped to his feet. He spun around and frantically pointed at us.

“Ghosts!” he shouted. “Look! It’s the ghosts!”

Cries of surprise. Startled shouts. The campers all jumped up. The counselor froze, his face red in the firelight.

Ghosts? Why did he call us ghosts?
I wondered.

I didn’t have time to think about it.

Silent now, the campers came at us. Walking tensely, spreading out.

I counted at least two dozen boys. They were all dressed in white shorts and white T-shirts.

The shirts had a green symbol on the front. As the campers drew closer, I could see that they were trees. And I could read the words:
CAMP EVERGREEN
.

“Hey, guys—” I called out.

They didn’t look friendly. Staring at us, not making a sound, the campers formed a tight circle around the five of us.

And then the circle closed in, holding us prisoner.

“We—we’re lost,” I told them. “You see, our canoes are missing, and—”

“Yeah. Our camp is up the river,” Marty broke in.

A man pushed his way through the circle of boys. He was big and wide. His Camp Evergreen T-shirt was stretched tight over a huge stomach that bulged over his shorts. He had a thick, football player’s neck and a round red face topped with prickly, short blond hair.

“Easy, guys,” he said in a booming voice. He stared at my friends and me with little round black eyes. “No problem here.”

He laughed. “These aren’t ghosts,” he announced to his campers. He grinned at us. “We were telling ghost stories. Believe it or not, we just finished a story about five ghostly campers who came out of the woods—and there you were!”

The campers relaxed. They backed up a few steps. They started to talk among themselves.

One of them slapped a short, dark-haired camper on the back. “Gary, you jerk. You really thought they were ghosts?”

“The story seemed so real,” Gary protested. “And then they came running out of the woods!”

Several campers laughed.

“You got everyone freaked!” a kid yelled at Gary.

“I guess Will is too good a storyteller,” the big man said, grinning at the tall, dark-haired counselor who had been talking.

He turned back to us. “Sorry if we all acted a little weird. We don’t get many visitors in the middle of the
nights. How did you find us?”

“We—we saw your fire,” Charlotte said. “We were camping by the river. We’re lost, I guess. Our counselor—”

“You’re lost? It’s lucky you found us,” the man said, scratching his beefy arm. “The woods can be dangerous at night.”

“We were on a canoe trip,” Marty explained. “But it…got messed up.”

“Everyone calls me Uncle Brian,” the man said. “I run this camp. Camp Evergreen. Ever heard of it?”

We shook our heads. “We didn’t know there was a camp nearby,” I said. “Do you know Camp Hawkwood? That’s our camp.”

He frowned. “No. I don’t know it. But I’d better phone them and let them know you’re okay.”

He took a few steps, then turned back to his campers. “Lights out, everyone. Get going. Back to your cabins. You can hang out with these
ghosts
in the morning.”

Lots of laughter and joking as the campers made their way to the cabins around the circle. A few of them turned back to stare at us one more time before disappearing into their bunks.

“Did you guys have dinner?” Uncle Brian asked.

“No! We’re starving!” Erin cried.

Uncle Brian turned to Will, the storyteller. “Think you can find them something?”

“Maybe some sandwiches,” Will said.

“See what we have,” Uncle Brian instructed. “I’m going to try to reach their camp. And then we can put them up for the night in those two empty cabins near the lake.”

He trotted off, his stomach bouncing in front of him.

“Welcome to Camp Evergreen,” Will said. He flashed us a toothy grin. “You don’t look like ghosts to me. I don’t think ghosts get hungry—do they?”

We followed him to the mess hall, a long, low building at the top of a grassy, sloping hill. He pulled out turkey and tuna sandwiches from the big fridge in the kitchen. And we gobbled them up as fast as he pulled them out.

Uncle Brian came in to say that he couldn’t reach our camp. No one answered the phone. He said he’d try again first thing in the morning.

“We made up the two cabins by the lake for you,” he said. “Will can show you where to go. Make yourselves at home, guys. You can swim and join in anything you want tomorrow. Then we’ll get you back to your camp safe and sound.”

We thanked him and went back to our sandwiches.

“We lucked out,” David said, chewing hard. “We really lucked out.”

“At first, I thought those boys were weird,” Charlotte said. “But when we came running out of the woods like that, I guess we gave them a good scare.”

After we pigged out, Will led us back outside. The cabins were dark and silent now. Purple embers glowed in the dying campfire.

He pointed the way down the hill to the cabins. “You should have everything you need,” he said. “Sleep tight. See you in the morning.”

We started down the hill. “Wow, this is great,” I muttered.

“Better than sleeping on the ground,” Erin said.

We were passing a dark cabin near the end of the path, when a boy jumped out at us. He wore the camp uniform—white shorts and Camp Evergreen T-shirt. He was short and very skinny, with long dark hair flying wild around his face.

“Shhhhhhh.” He raised a finger to his lips. “Don’t let them see!” he whispered.

“See? See what?” I asked.

He waved us frantically to the side of the cabin. “Hurry. Get over here. My name is Drew. I can’t let them see me.”

“Why? What’s up?” Marty said.

“Are you okay?” Charlotte asked him.

He looked frightened. His eyes were wild. Sweat rolled down his forehead. “Listen to me,” he whispered. “I’ll tell you the truth. I’m the only one who will tell you….”