She tells me, “It’s not good if it’s not burnt.”
There are two kinds of people in the world: the burners and the toasters. I look around at everyone in Oak Camp and realize there are only two toasters—me and Ew. That might be a bad thing. I may need to reconsider my stance.
Corryn waves the stick until her weenie fire goes out. Then she bites at the scorched bubbles with relish. “All right, wood,” she says, looking at me expectantly. “I found a big, gnarly log on our nature walk. It was black and . . . gnarly. What is it?”
That wasn’t a lot to go on. Squinting at her, I ask, “What kind of bark did it have? Was it smooth or rough?”
Corryn shrugs. “Smooth, I guess. It was cold. And heavy.”
“Did it smell like anything?”
With that, Corryn takes a half step back from me. She looks me over with annoyance, then shakes her head. “Never mind.”
“I’m not messing with you. That’s a serious question!”
“I’m not a wood sniffer,” she says. She seems both offended and like she’s holding out. Like she wants to say something else but is afraid to ask me any more questions. Mostly because the next one could be, What did it taste like? I don’t say anything. I’m not going to accidentally call her a wood licker too.
“Right, you box of knobs,” Gavin shouts. “Last of the wood; finish the wieners and marshmallows, or get out of our faces and go to bed!”
A happy chorus echoes in our camp. Flaming sugar before bed! Everybody’s hyped, but Corryn grabs my arm. Hard. She spins me to look at Gavin and gives me a shake. “That kind! That! What’s that?”
Gavin tosses a strange, twisted branch into the fire.
She described it perfectly, and I shudder as it rolls and settles into the flames. Suddenly queasy, I still do my best to identify it. There’s a soft hiss that rises to a whistle. Then the branch pops. It spits embers into the air, and this time, everybody squeals.
“It’s the vampire devils!” Ew exclaims.
The wood snaps and belches up some pale gray smoke. Bluish flames lick over the log, like they’re trying to find a way inside.
“It must be wet,” I say. That’s the only explanation for the popping and spitting and blue fire. I’m about to diagnose it as belonging to spruce or pine, but then it screams.
The wood screams!
The sound shrieks out. It tears across the lake and drains all the heat from my skin. It’s a sound so deep and terrible, it feels like it has clutching, grabbing claws.
When the scream dies, everybody but Corryn and me laughs. I sit down hard on my stump-chair.
That wasn’t the sound of wet wood making funny noises. It was something alive . . . and terrified.
It screams again: human sounds, wrenched from throats and tongues and teeth. It’s like kids screaming, and not from joy. This is terror; petrified souls howling into the night.
I probably only think that because, I swear to Darth Vader, I see something in the smoke and swirl of the blue fire.
In the heart of the fire, in the hottest part of it, three floating faces rise from the embers. They look old-fashioned, with funny hairdos and high-necked collars. For a second, it’s like a daguerreotype photo in flames.
They’re so real, so present, that I reach toward them.
The heat bites my fingers; I jerk my hand back.
It was the wrong thing to do. It’s like I angered something, reaching for them. It’s like I set off something evil.
The screaming rises again. The faces change.
To skulls.
Only skulls. Mouths wide open. Dark sockets staring back at us.
The scream dies, and suddenly, it’s silent as the grave.
According to the Camper’s Guidebook, there’s always supposed to be a counselor on duty.
That’s probably why Gavin threatened to gut us if we told anybody when he snuck out a moment ago.
No chaperone means no showers for our cabin tonight. That’s both a good and a bad thing. We won’t have to hike half a mile down the path with flashlights to get to the showers. But we hiked all day, then baked in the stink of sweat and smoke at the bonfire.
The bonfire—which I am desperately trying to forget.
This is a problem, because the cabin is narrow and small, and smells like hundred-year-old wood. (And the four of us smell like summer sausage.) The bunks are built in and the windows have these shutters that barely open. We have a box fan for ventilation. All it does is spread our stench around.
We get ready for bed in our own personal ways.
Me? I’m writing notes in my field journal about the bad stick that turned the fire into a horror movie. If I write it down on the page, I’ll have a better chance of getting it out of my head. I’d be more scared, but the lights are on.
Knees throws himself on his bunk. Not to sleep—to kick the mattress above him. It’s just a thin, plastic-covered pad, and every time he kicks it, it wheezes. Kick, whuup, kick, whuup. It’s hard to concentrate on dread evil with that going on.
Bowl Cut strips down to his underpants and sits in front of the box fan. His skin is incandescently white. It’s almost blue; I can practically see his veins between his millions of freckles. He has a lot of confidence, displaying himself this way. It’s probably a side effect of his legendary haircut.
Turning to point the fan at Nostrils, Bowl Cut asks, “So, what are you?”
Looking to me, Nostrils rolls his eyes but answers. “Korean. But I was born in Philadelphia. Before you start, Godzilla is Japanese, egg rolls are Chinese, and you don’t know anything Korean but me.”
That’s the best answer I’ve ever heard for that question. I give Nostrils two thumbs-up and say, “Kimchi and yubu chobap.”
“You know cho—”
“Chickenlips!” Curiosity only stretches so far for Bowl Cut. He turns the fan toward me. “What are you?”
In the future, I’ll probably steal Nostrils’ answer. But since he’s sitting right there, I say what I always say. “My mom is from Indiana. My dad is from Guam.”
Bowl Cut digests this. “Then you’re Guamanian.”
“No,” I say. “I’m half Chamorro.”
“Whatever, Guamanian,” Bowl Cut replies. Then he turns the fan to Knees. “Hey! What are you?”
Baffled, Knees shrugs. “I don’t know. Generic American black dude?”
“Me too,” Bowl Cut says. “I mean, American white dude. But yeah.”
Everybody goes quiet, so I guess the census is done. That means the floor is open for new business. Abandoning my field journal, I stand up in the middle of the cabin. “Okay, show of hands. Who saw three screaming skulls in the fire?”
I raise my hand. Knees replies with a pillow to my gut.
“Don’t even try that,” he warns. “I’m not scared of vampire devils, and I’m not scared of fire.”
Quickly, I try to clarify. “I’m not afraid of fire either. I was disconcerted by the faces in the fire. There were three of them. All scary and gahhhhhhhhh.” I pull my fingers down my face and roll my eyes around; it’s the best impersonation of screaming fire ghosts that I’ve got in my arsenal.
Knees frowns at me. “That’s not cool, man. It’s gonna be lights-out soon.”