Yanking open the glove department box,
Ken tossed his phone inside before slamming the little door closed.
“This place sucks!”
Taking her eyes off the gravel road in
front of them, Mary glanced in his direction. “What’s
wrong?”
“ No cell reception,” he said, glaring
out the window to the thick forest flowing up and down hills on
either side of them. “And we’re in the middle of nowhere. I
should’ve known better than to let you drag me up here.”
“ It’s for a good cause,” Mary said
with a frown, looking ahead once more. “The pastor wants this place
cleaned up before they bring the kids here next month.”
Ken grunted. “Yeah, whatever. The only
reason I’m here is because you begged me, and because I’ll be
graduating soon.”
Mary’s eyes misted. “I thought you
came because you loved me.”
Rolling his eyes, Ken looked over at
his girlfriend. “I’m going to need a job, aren’t I, at least until
you graduate next year? One of the deacons is boss at an investment
firm. Anything I can do to look good in his eyes will be worth
it.”
Steering around a hole in the middle
of the road, Mary reached up and brushed away her tears. “I thought
you cared for me.”
Ken sat there in silence for a few
moments, staring at her with a look of disgust on his face. Then he
reached over and petted a shoulder. “You know I do, babe. I just
get caught up in all this stuff.”
She forced a smile and glanced at him
again. “It’ll be better once we reach the camp, I
promise.”
“ I hope so,” he said. “The others
shouldn’t be too far behind. If this place is like you said, maybe
we can get in some swim time before they show up.”
“ Maybe, but we’ve got a lot to do.
I’ll have to check in with the groundskeeper or caretaker or
whatever he is.”
“ Well, if there’s a caretaker up
there, we shouldn’t have much to do, now should we?”
Mary ignored the question as they came
to a bend in the road. She slowed and kept her attention straight
ahead.
Rounding the bend, the woods opened up
ahead of them and the road ended in a circular gravel driveway. A
rotting wooden sign on the right of the road proclaimed they were
entering “Jacob’s Bible Camp.”
“ Place looks like a dump,” Ken said as
they came to a park at the far end of the gravel lot.
Directly ahead of them stretched a
path of packed earth with bushes and tall oaks close up against
either side. Beyond in the distance could be glimpsed the blues and
silvers of flat water glinting beneath the sun.
Putting the Explorer into park and
turning off the ignition, Mary looked all around. “I don’t know. It
doesn’t look that bad to me.”
Ken groaned his disapproval and added
more rolling eyes as he climbed from the vehicle and slowly looked
in all directions. To their right was the first of several cabins
made of concrete blocks, in the back of the building another such
structure and so on and so on. From what Ken could see, there were
at least five of the buildings, each big enough to house at least a
dozen people. To their left stood a single log building, one story
but long with a flat roof. A sign on the entrance door told this
was the office for the camp’s counselors.
All of the buildings looked old and
worn, but they appeared to be in working condition. They also
appeared to be lonely, as if not inhabited in years, a sensation
added to by the eerie silence that echoed throughout the
place.
“ I thought you said there was a
caretaker,” Ken said as Mary exited the vehicle and pocketed the
keys.
She pointed off to the left of the
counselors’ building where a small trail snaked back into the
woods. “It should be over there. At least that’s what I
remember.”
“ You grew up around here, right?” He
didn’t look happy to have a girlfriend from the sticks.
Mary smiled and nodded. “The next
county over. We came here a few times when I was kid. Just to fish
and swim, though. We never stayed the
Similar Books
