Phil and the Ghost of Camp Ch-Yo-Ca (17 page)

YOU AND JOHN LUKE GO OUTSIDE
to search the camp. He’s right
 
—that’s the only reason you came in the first place. You head to the lake but don’t find anything there. Then you circle back around the cabins and notice some more strange noises deep among the trees. You’re familiar with a number of small trails throughout this forest, so you lead John Luke down the closest one, navigating with a flashlight.

“Think we’re going to find anything?” John Luke whispers.

“Something’s in these woods,” you say. “I don’t know what. But you heard it just like I did. Some kind of loud banging goin’ on.”

John Luke stays quiet.

“You’re not nervous, are you?” you ask your grandson.

“No.”

“You shouldn’t be. Remember whose idea this was.”

“But hearing this weird stuff is just kinda . . .”

“Just kinda what?”

“Weird,” he says.

You keep walking with the flashlight pointed straight ahead, revealing the path and any other strange things you might come across.

“You know, when I was a kid, I hated the dark,” you tell John Luke.

“No way.”

“Oh, sure. And my father told me to picture the worst sort of thing I could imagine.”

“Why?”

“Because then, if you never ran into it, you wouldn’t have to worry about anything else.”

“So what did you imagine?”

You laugh. “Oh, mine makes no sense. But for some reason, it terrified the life out of me. I was a boy
 
—ten or eleven.”

“What was it?”

“It’s gonna sound crazy.”

“What?”

You stop walking for a minute and let out a sigh. “A koala bear.”

“A koala bear? Really?”

“Takes a proud man to admit he’s terrified of a koala,” you point out.

“Why? They’re the sweetest animals in the world.”

“Actually, no, they’re not,” you say. “They
look
like the sweetest animals in the world. But they’re still
wild
animals. They have long, razor-sharp claws on both their hands and feet. And they’re strong enough to cut you if they want to.”

“A koala bear?” John Luke’s still in disbelief.

“Opposable thumbs,” you add. “Know what that means?”

“No, sir.”

“They can grab you and hold down something they’re trying to pry open all while squeezing their claws into your leg, chest, or whatever. So not only do they have sharp claws, but they’ll grip on to you and it’ll be painful.”

“Are they mean?”

“I think I heard someone telling me a story about an angry koala bear when I was young,” you say. “So that’s what I thought of. I had nightmares about them. But ever since, I’ve never worried much about anything. Cause I’ve never encountered a koala bear.”

You keep leading him into the woods.

“You ever been back this far?” you ask John Luke.

“I don’t think so.”

Both of you walk in silence for a few minutes.

“So what’s the scariest thing you can think of?” you finally ask.

John Luke thinks for a minute before answering. “Cindy Rommel.”

“Cindy Rommel. Who is that?”

He chuckles. “She’s this girl I know from school. She just . . .”

“She likes you?”

“No. It’s more than that.”

“What? Why?”

“She
named
my dimple. Seriously. She has a name for my dimple.”

“Is she not the sharpest crayon in the box, this Cindy Rommel?”

“No way.”

“So what does she call your dimple?”

“She calls it her little Dim Dim. And that was just the start. She was sorta harassing me. She was an upperclassman.”

“Her little Dim Dim?” you repeat. “Yeah, she sounds like a lot to handle.”

You’ve just started to head up a hill when you hear something in front of you. It sounds like a low growl or bellow.

“Did you hear that?” you ask John Luke, stopping and shielding him.

“Yeah.”

Then you hear this high-pitched laugh.

“And I heard
that
too,” he says.

You’ve both come too far to turn back now.

“I don’t know about this, John Luke.”

“Just picture the worst,” he tells you.

You keep walking hesitantly until you reach the top of the hill, where you scan your surroundings with the flashlight.

The good news is you no longer have to imagine the worst because it’s standing directly in front of you.

The bad news is some pretty, blonde-haired girl with strange-looking eyes is standing there holding a koala bear in her hands.

You take a quick step back. “John Luke . . . is that
 
—?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Go!” you shout, and you both turn tail and run.

Nothing so un-scary has ever been this scary.

THE END

Start over.

Read “The Shadows That Follow Us: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”

A BOX OF MATCHES SPILLS OUT
of the Jeep onto the ground. Then you smell the gasoline on John Luke.

That’s when you notice the seat behind him. There’s a can of gas resting there.

“John Luke,” you begin.

“No!”
he shouts in a voice that sounds a lot lower than it usually does. “It’s in me! It’s in me!”

You’ve never seen or heard John Luke acting like this.

“What are you talking about? What did you do?”

He shakes his head, waving at something that’s not there, squinting his eyes. “The bats. They’re back. The bats.”

“Come on, talk to me now.”

John Luke steps out of the Jeep. Behind him, the burning cabin fire rages on.

“What did you do, John Luke?” you say in a loud voice.

“A bat bit me,” he announces. “When I was just a boy. I was only six! And you thought I might have gotten rabies, so they had to kill the bat.
They killed my little bat friend
!
”

“What’d you have for dinner? Why are you acting like this?”

“The bat. It’s the bat. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? I’m not just a human anymore, Papaw Phil. Something happened. Something changed in me.”

He’s clearly delirious. “John Luke . . .”

“Don’t you see? I have the blood of the bat flowing in me!”

“You have something flowing in you,” you tell him. “But I think it’s a bad fever.”

Then John Luke is gone.

And you’re left there stunned, your mouth open, without a clue to where he went.

Unsure what to do, you walk over to the burning cabin. Did John Luke really do this? And what in the world was he babbling about the bat for?

You hear something fluttering and see a bird fly by you.

Then it bites you, and you realize it’s not a bird at all.

It’s a bat.

And now so are you.

Batman’s got nothing on me.

So much for solving this mystery.

To the Batcave!

THE END

Start over.

Read “The Shadows That Follow Us: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”

“PAPAW!”

You feel a hand on your shoulder. It’s John Luke shaking you awake. You were searching the grounds of Camp Ch-Yo-Ca for so long that you lay down for a little rest, and you must have fallen asleep by the swimming pool.

You look up and notice how bright the stars are. You were dreaming that they were so close you could touch them. And that wasn’t the only thing. For a second you thought you were Si on your way to Mars. What a crazy dream.

You remember what you were doing now. The camp director asked you to investigate strange events here. The mattresses in the cabin you were staying in were randomly stacked on top of each other while John Luke was telling you a ghost story at the campfire. The two of you went out in search of the culprit. The door to the fenced-in pool was open, and you
thought the vandal might be in there, but no. He didn’t even leave a message
 
—nothing was floating on the surface of the still water, and the deck around the pool appeared normal.

“I think whoever was messing with us is gone,” John Luke says.

“Yeah, maybe. Who knows.”

Then you see something bright cascading through the sky.

“Look at that
 
—you see that falling star, John Luke?”

He looks in the direction you’re pointing, and you expect it to disappear. But it keeps getting brighter and brighter.

“Whoa, what is that?” John Luke asks.

It’s getting bigger now, and it’s coming right at you.

You hear an explosion, and fire rains from the sky. For a moment you’re about to haul out of there with John Luke, but you wait.

The flames and bright glow have dispersed, and the object is now plummeting toward you with smoke streaming behind.

“A meteor is coming right at us!” John Luke screams, tearing away from you and heading for the woods.

You don’t think it’s a meteor. It looks like something else.

When the object is close enough to see, a parachute deploys, and you realize it’s definitely not a falling chunk of rock. The parachute slows it down, and soon it glides right over you.

The oval-shaped object splashes directly into the pool in front of you. You stand to the side, ready to clear out of there at any second. Especially if Martians climb out of that thing.

But when the hatch opens, a familiar face peers up at you.

“You wanna help an old man out or something?”

It’s Si, dressed in an astronaut suit. Somehow this doesn’t surprise you. All you can do is shake your head. “
Where
in the world are you coming from?”

“Hey, listen, Jack. I just saw half the universe, and now I gotta go to the bathroom. Help me out of here.”

When his capsule drifts over to your side of the pool, you grab his arm and pull him out. He climbs onto the pool deck, and you notice that his white spacesuit is covered in something. It looks like it could be blood.

“What’s all that on your clothes?”

He shakes his head. “I’m tellin’ you
 
—I saw the dark side of the moon, that’s what I saw. And it’s pretty dark. It’s too long of a story and if I don’t go soon, I’m gonna explode.”

You step aside, but Si stands motionless for a moment, staring into the distance. “It’s good to be back on Earth,” he says. “What are you doing here anyway? You look bored.”

Before you can reply, Si wanders off to find a tree.

You simply want some sleep. You’re too tired for another long, crazy story.

THE END

Start over.

Read “The Shadows That Follow Us: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”