Doom in the deep, p.1
Doom in the Deep, page 1
Dedication
Saundra: I dedicate this book to Josh Berk.
Josh: I also dedicate this book to me.
Map
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
1. Wake ’em Up!
2. Happy Camper
3. Minefield and Soft Shoes
4. WMIA: The Voice of Camp Murderface
5. Ditto
6. Sweet Dreams Are Made of Knees
7. Osmosis
8. I Hate Feelings
9. Operation Floppy Disk
10. For My Eyes Only
11. Scary Mary Scared
12. “Morning, Cuties!”
13. Charleston Calhoun Cumberland and the Oak Camp Lads
14. In Camp Murderface, Nobody Can Hear You Scream
15. Best Camp Day Ever?
16. Farewell, Flopsy
17. Run!!!!!!!
18. Gordon Lightfoot and the Peaches of Doom
19. Bedtime Rocks
20. Contrast in Nature
21. The Winch Clinch
22. On Top of Confidence Tower
23. Eggs Over Squeezy
24. Whatever’s Out There Wants In
25. Dead, Silence
26. A Tall Frosty Glass of Elmer’s
27. Patient Pants
28. Legitimate Research Purposes
29. Mail Crime, Federal Jail Time
30. I Told You So Radio
31. Hypnosis in the Boys’ Room
32. An Extraordinary Feat
33. The Battle Begins
34. Everything Is Terrible, and Nothing Is Good
35. It’s Time
36. Devilwood Rising
37. Sending Out an SOS
38. A Blazing Message
39. Meeting Astrid Mechant
40. A Three-To-Four-Armed Fighting Machine
41. I Think I’m a Ghost Now
42. Not on My Swatch
43. A Little Help from the Other Side
44. The Nowhere Place
45. Vic-Vic-Victorious
46. Okkameedees
47. Local Legends
48. Hello
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Wake ’em Up!
Tez
There’s a new normal at Camp Sweetwater, and that normal is normal.
Ghosts don’t appear in our bonfires now, screaming for justice. All the lifeguards at the lake are actually alive. There are no cryptic French whispers at night. And extremely important: shower curtains, towels, razors, and blackened wood just sit there, not doing anything.
Corryn Quinn, my best friend, and I made sure of that.
She and I vanquished the evil. We helped three missing campers go home—metaphysically, anyway. Sure, we had to find them in a bone pit of doom, and nearly die ourselves. But we did it. Together. And now the worst thing that happens here is Scrap Dinner Thursdays.
Don’t ask. It’s indescribable.
Gavin, our counselor in the Oak Camp boys’ cabin (we’re technically Oak Camp, Group A, subsidiary to Camp Sweetwater, but I’m learning to be more casual), throws open the door and greets us with a rattling belch. His sandy hair falls in his eyes. I think he’s going for a pompadour. It makes him look like a confused rooster.
“Get your kit on, you tossers!” he shouts, his British accent thick enough to spread on toast. I’m not sure why most of the counselors here are from Europe. I’m also not sure how Gavin and Scary Mary—the girls’ camp counselor—keep their jobs.
But! Their neglect and incompetence are normal.
Knees rolls off the top bunk across from me. That’s his new action-hero trick. So far, he’s managed to land on his feet exactly no times. He doesn’t let that dissuade him, though.
I, on the other hand, use the ladder to climb down very slowly. No three-point hero landings in my future, nope. Tez Jones is the brains of the operation, not the brawn.
Nudging past me, Bowl Cut (who remains sadly shorn, although he’s starting to show a little bit of ginger peach-fuzz) grabs his bathroom bag from the cubby. He’s quiet; he even seems thoughtful.
It’s hard to believe he’s the same kid who flashed us a full moon and farted into our fan as an introduction. But I guess getting your glorious mop shorn by an unseen evil can do that to a guy.
“Hey,” Nostrils says, stripped down to tighty-whities and standing without shame in the middle of the cabin. He drums on his scrawny chest, throwing his head around like he’s a lion. His black bangs quiver with anticipation. “Chickenlips, gimme one of those wake-’em-up drops!”
Ah yes, Chickenlips. The camp name Gavin bestowed on me, despite the fact that chickens have no lips. He threatened to do worse, so I accepted it. I’ve even, kind of, started to like it. And I secretly love that Nostrils insists on calling my sweet li hing mui “wake-’em-up drops.”
They’re salted plums that my grandmother Nani sends us from Guam. They’re about the size of a grape, dehydrated in salt, then coated in a sweet-and-sour powder. I shared them with the cabin once, and now Nostrils is addicted. He’s never had candy with flavor, I guess.
Since I’m running low, I hand one precious plum to him. I lick the delicious, tangy dust from my fingers. Then I fold the bag and put it back in my cubby. Mom hasn’t sent a care package in a while, so I need to ration.
Nostrils pops the plum into his mouth. “Yeahhhh,” he says, because the plums start out sweet. Then he groans, flapping his arms and slapping his own chest. When the sour kicks in, he stomps his feet. The cabin shakes a little, and everybody gets out of his way. We know what comes next.
Windmilling in the space between our bunks, Nostrils bounces off both beds, one wall, then ricochets past us. He jumps over the box fan. No, he tries to jump over it but knocks it on the floor. Plaintive, the fan whumps as Nostrils bursts out the front door and into the sunlight.
Still in his tighty-whities.
Okay, that part was new! Two angry Brits yell; Nostrils disappears from sight. Laughter fills our cabin. Knees doubles over with it. Bowl Cut shakes his head and snickers. And I slap a hand to my forehead.
“He ran outside,” Bowl Cut says in disbelief.
Knees gasps out, “Did you see that?”
“He hit the door running,” I exclaim.
“He’s crazy,” Knees says.
Bowl Cut creeps to the door to peek out. When he sticks his head into the sun, it shines like a beacon. “I think he’s running to the latrines!”
“If he jumps in, he’s banned from the cabin for life,” Knees says firmly.
“He’ll be legendary, though,” I say.
“Oh yeah,” Knees agrees, and Bowl Cut nods. “Totally.”
I take a deep, fresh breath of cabin funk and put on my camp shirt. Carefully, I tuck it into my khaki shorts. Then I pull on the tube socks with teal stripes at the top. They go all the way up to my knees, nice. Tennis shoes, double knotted, and I run a comb through my hair.
All that’s left is a stop at the shower house to brush our teeth before breakfast, and voilà!
I’m ready for another great unhurried, unhaunted, de-eviled day at Camp Sweetwater! Oh yeah!
2
Happy Camper
Corryn
Hairspray lets out a primal scream.
Nobody in the shower house looks twice. The damp, mildewy walls trap the sound of her cry, and it’s not like the Oak Camp girls’ cabin hasn’t heard this about fifty times this week.
She wails, “It’s empty!” then shakes her can of Aqua Net hairspray. Beads inside it rattle furiously, but nope. They’re not mixing up any more bang glue for the buck. That can has shooshed its last shoosh.
We’d hold a funeral, but eh. If we started holding funerals for stuff that dies at Camp Murderface, we wouldn’t do anything else. There would be no time for lanyards, no time for Scrap Dinner Thursdays. Now, if we were allowed to set the Aqua Net on fire . . .
“Are we done?” I ask, because I’ve been done for a while now. All I had to do was polish the ol’ chompers. My hair does what it wants. We have an agreement: it does its thing, I do mine. The two zits I have don’t need toothpaste on them, and I’ll bite anybody who comes at me with a mascara wand. It looks too much like a bug. No thank you.
Dumping her stuff into her bag, Ew says, “I’m done. We can drop this back at the cabin and head to breakfast if you want?”
“Rad,” I say, and we head out together.
The shortest out of all of us, Ew is also the nicest out of all of us—me included. And since she was the one most directly touched by the evil in camp, I feel protective of her. The rest of the cabin is all right, I guess. They believe freaky stuff happened. They’re on the team. Still, they’re not on alert like me and Ew.
Because, see, I know me and Tez helped those missing camper girls go home. Like, home-home. To the great beyond in the sky. Heaven. Nirvana. Whatever your tradition happens to call it. But Tez thinks now that they’re saved, it’s over.
I do not agree. I think this is intermission.
Tez keeps pointing out how normal everything is, and I’m happy for the kid, really. He has a bad heart, and I guess his parents keep him in a cage full of books most of the time. Camp Sweetwater is the most freedom he’s ever had.
But I have my spying eye tuned to high alert. I’m ready to notice anything out of place. And yeah, nothin g has been out of place since the night the police came and took away the “remains” (HUMAN BONES!) we found in the giant pit (FILLED WITH A MEGA TON OF REMAINS!).
But come on. We uncovered the truth about some crazy cursed French guys who tainted a whole lake for hundreds of years, and we’re supposed to think they’re done because we sent three of their victims into the light?
Pshhyeah, right.
“I think they’re supposed to do activity sign-ups today,” Ew says after we toss our kits onto our bunks and make our way down the path to the Great Hall. “I wonder if we’re going to do a camp play.”
I hold out my arms a little to balance when the path gets narrow near the C cabins. “You’re into that?”
Ew nods with a little smile, her wispy blond hair floating in the wind. “Yeah. I got to play an angry elf in our school Christmas play last year. It was tons of fun.”
With a laugh, I try to imagine her as an angry anything. I can’t get the picture in my mind. All I end up with is Ew in a green tunic and those swirly-toed shoes. “Cool. So let’s ask about the camp play.”
“Awesome,” she says decisively.
And even though we’re talking and walking and it’s a beautiful morning to be outside, we’ve got our heads on a swivel. Ew covers her side of the path and the canopy of trees above us. I cover mine and all the dark places underneath. It’s a system. To keep us safe.
In my field, there are lots of pine cones and pine needles, branches and mushrooms. I bet if I told Tez I was gonna eat one, he’d give a two-hour lecture about poisonous mushrooms. And I’d sit through it, just so I could say, “I just thought you would be a fungi to hang with.” Then I’d explain the joke to him. Fun guy! Fungi!
“There’s a garter snake,” Ew says.
We slow and, yup, sure enough, a little green danger noodle squiggles back into the brush. We get too close, and he beats a serpenty retreat. I lean over to try to catch one more glimpse, but he’s gone.
“We’ve been seeing a lot of snakes, huh?” I say.
Ew splays her fingers out and counts. Then she nods at me. “Yeah, like eight since the weekend.”
“At least we’re seeing them outside.”
“Seriously.” People would notice the screaming from our cabin if a snake got in. But now that Ew mentions it . . .
Are snakes like cicadas? Do they have a season? Huh. I wonder what my dad would say. I miss all the camping and hiking and outdoor stuff he knows. I miss leaning against his shoulder, roasting marshmallows on a little fire in the middle of nowhere.
I wonder how much more of that I’m gonna miss, since my parents are obviously getting a divorce. They sent me here to distract me from everything that I know is going on. Meanwhile Tez and I are slaying vampire devils at camp.
Ew shudders. Her bangs ruffle, and she nods. “Ew. No snakes in the cabin, please.”
Definitely. No murderfacing snakes in the murderfacing cabins, thank you.
“Ooh, get the good table!” Ew exclaims as the Great Hall comes into view. Seniors pour out of it, most of them trudging behind their counselors.
Yes! We’re here just the right amount of early! See, there’s a meal schedule that we have to stick to. The seniors eat first, then clear out to start their day. Then Oak Camp eats—that’s us—followed by Elm Camp. Finally, the diaper babies in Bantam Camp get to eat.
If we get to the Great Hall too early, the lunch ladies (who also serve breakfast and dinner—does that make them meal ladies?) send us back to our camp group to wait. If we get there too late, all the good tables are taken.
Here’s a good table: one by the giant fireplace they never light. There’s air from the outside coming in, so you don’t have to smell everybody, and the meal ladies can’t see what you’re doing. Perfect.
The bad tables are the ones crammed back by the kitchen. They’re constantly under observation, and they smell like camper sweat and canned chicken. They also have this slightly greasy film all over them. You can spill a whole glass of water, and it just beads up and rolls onto the wooden floor.
Thanks to me and Ew, we have the best table waiting when the rest of the crew rolls in. Knees and Nostrils appear first, karate-chopping each other the whole way. For all the practice they get in, the only thing they’ve ever managed to break with their kung fu grip is Tez’s nose.
Knees slides in next to Ew and says, “Heyyy.”
She stares at him, kind of like he’s from another planet, and says nothing.
Before it turns into a thing, the rest of the gang piles in. It’s nice to see Bowl Cut getting a little color on his bare head, and it looks like Hairspray managed to coax one more desperate shoosh from the can into her hair. The bangs are standing, just not as mightily as usual.
Braids practically sits on top of Nostrils, forcing him to move down. And that leaves just enough room for Tez to slide in next to me.
“Morning,” he says brightly. “It’s another gorgeous day at Camp Sweetwater!”
I mean, look at that beautiful nerd. Just look at him. So full of optimism. I don’t wanna break his spirit or anything. But I do kinda want to remind him that the camp tried to kill us. Like, just a couple of weeks ago? That thought squirms in my guts like a handful of earthworms. There’s evil here. It might try to kill us again. We don’t really know. Cursed camps don’t come with a guidebook!
But man, Tez has had the cheer button turned to ultra since the ghost girls disappeared. Reaching for the orange juice, he smiles. Tearing open a mini-box of Frosted Flakes, he beams. As Knees describes Nostrils breaking free and streaking down the camp, Tez chews and grins at the same time.
He’s the smartest kid I know, but jeez.
That doofus is literally a happy camper.
3
Minefield and Soft Shoes
Tez
Breakfast was so invigorating that I walk expeditiously to Arts & Crafts.
The sun beats down, bright and clear, from a sky that is exquisitely cloudless. The gentlest breeze threads through the woods, so there’s a soft hush everywhere I go. It’s almost conversational, like the forest is talking to the sky.
I take this walk on my own. This is a secret part of my day; even Corryn remains in the dark about it. When everybody else in Oak Camp is doing Confidence Course or Tree Climb Race or . . . basically anything super physical, I help with the Bantam campers. Corryn affectionately calls them Diaper Babies, but you know what? These little guys are awesome!
When I open the door to the A&C building, the Bantam campers are already sitting in their places. Well. They’re already squirming in their places. They remind me of my little sister, Hypatia, Hi for short. She has too much energy for her tiny little self, so it comes out in wiggles and squiggles and sometimes random shrieking.
And just like Hi, these baby campers are all six and seven; they also have the attention span of one half-Nostrils, so the place is buzzing!
I smile when Soft Shoes (real name: Seok Jin) almost falls off his stool waving at me. He’s the tallest kid in Bantam, and his black hair is cut into a killer baby Mohawk.
My smile is big and genuine; I wave back.
Picking up a craft packet, I circle the table and sit down between Soft Shoes and Minefield (real name: Tasha). I get hugs. They’re excited to see me, and they actually want me to sit next to them!
The beads on the ends of Minefield’s black braids chatter as she moves. She has her own percussion section wherever she goes! Her brown eyes sparkle, like she’s always having the best time ever.
And you know what? I love that Minefield almost knocks me off my stool and always talks right into my ear. It’s part of her charm.
Puffed up, I make sure that I spread myself around so nobody feels left out.
“All right, what are we making today?” I ask out loud, opening the craft packet. It contains a paper tube, a baggie of beans and popcorn kernels, some construction paper, and a small bamboo stick. I don’t need instructions to figure this one out. Or any of them, really.
All their crafts are big and easy to make. They decorate the Bantam shelves: lots of messy yarn God’s eyes and friendship bracelets, strings of fat uneven beads they rolled from clay, brilliantly bright castanets made from cardboard and bottle caps.
“Can you guess? Are we making a telescope?” I put the tube to my eye and peer at Soft Shoes and then Minefield through it.
