Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/massive fucking coincidence is.
Tag Line: Where your worst fears hide.From the Back of the Book: The past can't hurt you. It can kill you. Almost everyone at Camp Silverlake is afraid of something: bugs, snakes, swimming in the lake. But there's a deeper, darker fear some of the counselors share. The fear that their terrible secret will be discovered. For seven years, they've kept it hidden - ever since that summer when they were campers together. The summer one camper didn't make it home alive. Now someone is using their secret - and their fears - to play a frightening game of vengeance. A game that could turn deadly.
This book was published in 1993 and
I've read it.....I don't know.....six times at least. Mostly back in
the 90's but I did love it enough that it earned a spot on my keeper
shelf and survived multiple purges. Not many books do that. I
haven't read it in probably 10 years though. I'm hoping I don't end
up hating it now. (((F in the chat for Trick or Treat.)))
We begin with a prologue as we so often
do. It's just before dawn and a group of 10/11 year old campers and
their counselor are about to go on a search for twigs to make the
campfire that will provide breakfast for the rest of the campers.
It's a rotating chore and it's their turn today. It's the last day
of Camp Silverlake's 3-day wilderness hike and they're all looking
forward to getting back to their cabins instead of roughing it out in
the woods.
It had rained the day before and they
have trouble finding dry twigs to make the fire. They end up much
deeper in the woods than usual. One camper slides on some pine
needles and goes over the side of a gully. He lands beside the dead
body of another camper and the prologue ends.
That was pretty painless, really.
Chapter one picks up seven years later.
It begins with a bad guy paragraph which is not ideal. The person
says that they were sure that the others would feel something but
they're all just laughing and talking like they don't have a care in
the world.
Once that section is done, we finally meet our
protagonist Rachel who is sitting around a campfire with her
fellow counselors. They all seem awake and lively but she can't stop
yawning. A guy named Jordan offers her a marshmallow, telling
her the sugar might help keep her awake. Also sitting at the
campfire are camp clown Steve, arrogant Mark, serious
Paul, friendly Linda, homesick Terry and diva
Stacey. There are two adults present to supervise: Tim
and Michelle. More adult counselors will be arriving close to
opening day, but for now it's the two adults and eight teenagers. It's way too many characters to develop any of them effectively. I hate it when authors do this.
They've all arrived at camp a week
early so they can do things like paint, repair boats, clear trails and
plan activities. Rachel is feeling a little nervous. She doesn't
know any of them but Stacey, Jordan, Mark, Steve and Paul know each
other because they all went to camp together years ago. They don't
really seem like friends, though.
So how did they all end up there at the same exact time to be counselors? I mean, I know it's the first year they qualify to be counselors but it just seems like an odd coincidence.
In case you lost track, and I wouldn't blame you if you did because there's too many fucking characters in this book, Rachel, Terry and Linda are the only
ones who didn't go to Camp Silverlake previously.
They start to reminisce a little and
Steve brings up the creepy caretaker Mr Drummond. He
apparently still works there which freaks Stacey out a little
bit. Rachel gets a little nervous about it but Paul reassures her
that Mr D is actually harmless, he's just tall and bald and has a really deep voice so he seems scary. Steve recounts that they used to make kids go out in the
middle of the night to see if Mr D was lurking around and it would
scare them all silly. He said they drew straws for awhile but then
they made sure that.......but he never finishes the sentence. Paul
asks him what he meant but he refuses to answer and the others look a
little uneasy. Rachel concludes that they all have a secret.
They all decide to head for bed then.
The boys are staying in one cabin, the girls in another and
Tim/Michelle are staying in the lodge. Rachel ends up walking beside
Jordan for a bit and she thinks he's pretty cute but his mood changes
too much for her tastes. He peels off to go to the boys' cabin and
then she realizes she's all alone out there. She hears some
footsteps off to the side and then the form of a person appears.
It's only Mr D but Rachel freaks out anyway and runs to the girls'
cabin. She tells the others that he's out there and Stacey pretty
much freaks out. Linda asks if Mr D ever did anything to make Stacey
fear him and Stacey says no but she's still freaked out by him.
To change the subject, Stacey teases
Rachel a little about Jordan. Both Terry and Linda reveal that they
have boyfriends. Linda shows around a snapshot and Terry has a
picture of hers in a frame that she puts above her bed. Stacey tells
Rachel that they have their pick. She describes Steve and Mark as
“fun” and Jordan as cute but a little “wishy-washy”.
Rachel challenges the assessment of Mark as fun and Stacey shrugs it
off. She says Mark is an actual genius and it makes him come off as
stuck-up sometimes. The only thing she really has to say about Paul
is that he's serious which Rachel already knew.
Linda makes some comment about the five
of them (Stacey, Mark, Jordan, Paul and Steve) being “happy
campers” together and Stacey says she doesn't really know them.
It's been seven years and everyone has changed so much in that time.
Then they all just go to bed.
Rachel wakes up a little while later.
The night is pretty quiet but then
she hears it.....footsteps sneaking around the outside of the cabin.
At first she thinks it's just Mr D keeping an eye on things but then
she realizes the footsteps are too light and quiet for the massive
caretaker. It must be someone else.
Chapter four begins with two more
paragraphs from our bad guy. They had to go out for a walk in the
middle of the night to clear their head. They wonder if anyone heard
them. They can't wait to put their plan in action and to hear people
scream.
We 100% don't need these little glimpses into the bad guy's head. In fact, there would have been more tension without them because we would have been wondering if something was really going on at the camp or if the campers were just paranoid. These stupid paragraphs add nothing at all to the experience of this book.
We land with Rachel again. She's tired
because she didn't sleep well after hearing the footsteps. She tried
to stay awake so she'd hear if they came back but she ended up
falling into a restless sleep. In the light of day, she feels silly
for getting so scared by them. Clearly it was one of the guys trying
to play some kind of prank. It's what 18-year-old guys do when at
a camp full of 18-year-old girls. You know, if they aren't in a Pike and can't have sex.
After her shower, she rushes to the
lodge where everyone else has already gathered for breakfast. They
all tease her for sleeping so late but most of them still look
half-asleep themselves. Rachel sits across from Paul and they make
small talk as they eat. She decides he might be more interesting
than she first thought. He has a really nice smile.
After breakfast they all get their
first assignments. Linda, Terry and Mark head out to clean up the
cabins that the kids will be staying in later. Steven, Jordan and
Paul are on boat duty – they have to make sure the boats are in
good repair and the dock is safe. Stacey is assigned to work in the
“rainy-day building” and make sure there are plenty of supplies
for the campers to do activities when it rains. Rachel is assigned
to do a bulletin board in the lodge. Tim and Michelle drag out
several boxes of photographs from previous years for her to go
through and tack up.
Rachel tries to find photos that stick
out and aren't like all the others. After some digging, she finds
one of Mark, Steve, Jordan and Stacey. She decides to find one of
Paul too so they can all be up there for the new campers to look at.
While she's digging for that, she finds one of a boy alone on a dock
staring out at the water. She thinks it's a beautiful picture
because of the reflection of the trees in the lake and she decides to
hang it up too. She makes a frame for it out of blue paper and hangs
it right in the middle of the bulletin board.
Right after she hangs it up, Mr D comes
in and startles her. He looks at the picture on the bulletin board
and then gives her a suspicious look, asking if she's ever attended
the camp before. She says she hasn't and he seems to relax. He
tells her it's a good picture and then leaves abruptly. She has no
idea what that was about but shrugs it off and goes back to looking
for a picture of Paul. She's just found one of him jumping into the
lake when someone screams and the chapter ends.
Um......excuse me, Ellis, you're not
Stine. This behavior is beneath you.
You know I have to do it.
Ellis' cliffhangers tend to be more
legitimate, though. I'll give her that.
The screams are coming from the lake,
so Rachel runs that way. Linda, Mark and Terry are just ahead of her
on the path as they all race toward the dock. Stacey is in the lake
screaming and floundering around. Steven and Jordan are nearby in
another rowboat but they've lost an oar and they're having trouble
reaching her. Mark is confused because he says that Stacey knows how
to swim and he can't figure out why she's panicking like that. Paul
ends up rowing another boat out to Stacey and pulls her in. They
come back to shore.
Stacey is furious. She asks Mark if
he's in on it and he just gives her a look like she's gone batshit
crazy. Terry and Linda seem fascinated by the whole scene. Rachel
goes over to Paul who is tying up the boat and asks what happened.
He says Stacey went out on the boat with Steve and Jordan willingly.
Then Steve threw her in as a joke and she panicked. Rachel is
surprised Stacey was able to get a job as a counselor if she can't
swim but Stacey says she can (as Mark already told us), she's just
afraid to swim in bodies of water where she can't see the bottom.
Steve and Jordan make it back to shore
and apologize but they're both smiling and don't seem very sincere.
Terry seems more concerned about what will happen if Stacey is asked
to supervise the campers swimming and Stacey says she's the arts and
crafts counselor so she doubts it will come up. Terry doesn't seem
too appeased by this and Stacey begs her not to tell Tim and
Michelle. She doesn't want to get fired.
Stacey is so pissed that the boys don't
seem very sorry that she announces to the rest of them that Steve is
super phobic about snakes. I don't know why she does this. She says
she's trying to humiliate Steve but I think Ellis couldn't figure out
how to work his phobia in there more naturally. It was kind of a
clunk.
They all go back to what they were
doing. Jordan catches up to Rachel before she can get too far. He
says he doesn't want her to have the wrong impression of him. He'd
forgotten how afraid Stacey was of swimming in the lake and he
thought she was having fun until she started screaming. He gestures
toward her hand and asks her what she's holding and she realizes
she's still carrying the picture of Paul. She hides it from him so
he can't see and tells him that she's preparing a surprise for them.
It will be a “blast from the past” that some of them might not
want anyone else to see. Of course, she's referring to the pictures
of them when they were 11 and kind of awkward but Jordan gets all
weird about it and demands to know what she's talking about. She
shows him the pic of Paul and says she's putting pics of all of them
up on the bulletin board and he relaxes a little. She can't get over
how weird it was, though.
Rachel spends the rest of the morning
putting up the bulletin board. Tim and Michelle come back from
buying supplies just as she finishes and she helps put all the food
away. She's washing some apples when Linda comes in. She tells
Linda that there's pics of Paul, Stacey, Mark, Steve and Jordan on
the board when they were little kids and Linda goes out to look. A bit
later, Rachel hears someone come in again and assumes it's Linda but
it's Mark. He asks her if she had fun with the bulletin board. He
seems off but she just assumes that his arrogant ass doesn't like a
pic of him from his awkward stage stapled up for everyone to see.
The others file in after him, though, and they all seem tense and
cagey. Rachel is surprised and tells them that if they hate the
pictures of themselves so much, she'll take them down and replace
them with something else. For some reason, they all relax after that
but no one requests their picture be removed.
They all have lunch and discuss what
they're going to do for the rest of the day. Rachel notices that
Terry seems tense and upset which is odd because her picture
definitely wasn't up on the bulletin board. She finally asks Terry
what's wrong and Terry replies that she thought Rachel might have put
the old pics of the others up to embarrass them. They clear that up
and move on. Everyone decides to check the hiking trails that
afternoon so they can get out and walk a bit. Rachel is grateful to
get out in the fresh air for awhile.
She ends up walking toward the back of
the group with Paul and they make small talk. She asks him why he
decided to come back as a counselor. Paul tells her he spent two
summers here as a kid. The first one was awesome but during the
second one a boy died. The boy she put in the center of the bulletin
board in the lodge. Rachel is beyond shocked. She realizes that's
why everyone reacted so weird to it. They probably thought she was
trying to stir up shit on purpose but she honestly didn't know
anything about it.
Paul and Rachel catch back up to the
others. Rachel is actually a little annoyed because no one bothered
to explain to her that she'd put a dead boys' picture up on the
bulletin board. They hike until they come to a little clearing and
then they sit down to rest and hydrate. They all talk about how they
remember this trail from when they were kids and one of them mentions
that there's a lookout just ahead where you can stand on a rock and
see for miles. Everyone wants to go check it out except for Mark who
wants to rest some more.
They all end up heading toward the
lookout. Rachel is deep in thought and almost trips over Mark who
has suddenly knelt down in the path. He tells her he needs to tie
his shoe and she should go ahead. She decides to wait for him but he
doesn't seem very thankful for her company. He keeps telling her to
leave him and go on ahead and she's just getting angry because she
thinks he's being a dick. Finally she catches sight of him and
realizes his face is pale, his pupils are dilated and he's breathing
really fast and hard. It finally dawns on her that he's afraid of
heights and trying to hide it. Rachel decides to leave him be and
continues along the path to join the others.
Later, they all find Mark lounging in
the clearing where they'd rested earlier. He looks calm now. Rachel
ends up walking with the girls on the way back and she blabs about
Mark being super afraid of heights. Linda offers that she's scared
of bees and Terry says she's afraid of bugs in general. Stacey asks
Rachel what she's afraid of and Rachel says she gets really bad stage
fright. Then she tells them about hearing someone sneaking around
the cabin in the middle of the night and offers her theory that the
boys might be planning a prank. She suggests they prank them really
fast instead. They all like the idea.
The next chapter starts with a bad guy
POV. They're celebrating the fact that they were provided with the
perfect methods of revenge without having to work very hard for it. This is the only useful one in the entire book because it lets us know that they didn't really have a plan before.
So the girls' big prank is for a couple of them
to make weird noises outside the boys' cabin in the middle of the
night so the boys will come running out. Then one of them will
sneak into the boys cabin and fill their sleeping bags with wet,
disgusting leaves. One of them will stay behind in their own cabin
to defend it. Rachel volunteers to do that part because she already feels bad about playing a prank on the boys.
They make it back to camp and go their
separate ways. Mark and Steve go swimming while Stacey wades around
the water close to shore. Paul takes a boat out. Terry and Jordan
volunteer for supper duty and Linda goes back to the cabin to rest.
Rachel considers swimming but decides to go back to the cabin too.
She finds Linda reading a letter and wonders how she got mail
already. Then she realizes that Linda's boyfriend must have written
it to her before she even left. She thinks it's sweet. Linda
mentions her boyfriend's name is Dan and then asks Rachel whether she
likes Jordan or Paul better. Rachel says she's more into Paul but
she can't tell if he's into her.
Rachel tells Linda about the boy who
died years ago and how she accidentally put his picture up on the
bulletin board. Linda reassures her that it wasn't her fault and
there's no way she could have known but Rachel still feels bad.
Linda then suggests that one of them dress up as the boy's ghost for
their little leaf raid that night. Rachel tells her that's a really
fucked up thing to say and Linda retreats on the issue.
Dinner goes well. The food is good and
then Paul plays the piano while everyone has a bit of a sing-along.
Jordan asks Rachel to take a walk with him so they can talk and get
to know each other a little better but she declines, saying she wants
to stay in the lodge with the others. He seems a little annoyed and
then he just moves on to talk up Terry. Rachel knows this is doomed,
however, because Terry has a boyfriend she seems pretty devoted to.
We skip ahead to later that night.
Around midnight, the girls start getting ready for their prank.
Everyone but Rachel puts on black clothes so they'll be harder to
see. Terry lets them know that she pre-warned Mr D that there might
be some weird noises going on around the cabins tonight and he
shouldn't worry. Stacey, Terry and Linda take off with their bag of
leaves. Rachel stays behind and latches the cabin door so the boys
can't run over and retaliate when they discover the prank. She's
only going to open it when she hears their coded knock. She turns
out the light so it looks like they're asleep and lays down in the
darkness.
Rachel tries to picture their progress
in her head. Linda and Terry are supposed to bang on the sides of
the cabin to get one or more of the boys to come out. They're going
to let the boys see them and then run off into the woods, making the
boys chase them down. When the boys are out of the cabin, Stacey is
going to go in and fill their sleeping bags with wet leaves. The
whole process shouldn't take very long and Rachel begins to get
worried when more time passes than she thinks should. She finally
decides to go check on things but then she hears someone sneaking
around outside the cabin. She waits and listens but there is no
knock and eventually the sounds fade away.
Rachel goes outside to check but sees
no one. It's been more than 30 minutes since the girls left and she
decides to go looking for them. For some reason, she leaves the
cabin door completely open. This makes no sense whatsoever to me.
Not only will the boys have easy access to the place, but so will
every raccoon or skunk in the woods. Especially since Stacey has the place loaded with junk food. Rachel goes towards the boys'
cabin but then gets spooked by some noises in the woods. She runs
back towards her cabin but gets freaked out by the open door. (That she left open. 😒) Eventually she decides to go to the lodge and wait there.
She runs towards the lodge, pretty much
scared out of her mind now even though I can't really figure out why.
She really spooks very, very easily. A figure steps out of the
trees and she collides with it. She freaks out more and starts
hitting and clawing but it's just Paul. She accuses him of
tormenting her (when was she tormented?????????????) and he tells her
he was just in the lodge eating cookies. He says they all went just
before midnight and she realizes that the boys left right about the
same time the girls left. He says Mark left first and then Jordan
and Steve but he stayed behind to clean up or something. She asks
him if he saw any of the girls there and he says he didn't.
Suddenly they can hear laughter coming
from behind them and everyone else shows up. The boys are kind of
prodding the girls along ahead of them and Rachel realizes things
apparently went tits up somewhere along the way. Luckily the boys
seem pretty amused by the whole thing and the two groups split up to
go back to their cabins.
Rachel asks the girls what happened.
Apparently they'd just gotten to the boys' cabin when all the boys
came out on their way to raid the cookie jar in the lodge. The girls
panicked and ran off in all different directs. Linda says she saw
they were going to the lodge and doubled back but she couldn't find
the others. Stacey ran to the boys' shower cabin and hid there and
Terry took off into the woods. Eventually they all came out of
hiding and met up again and then the boys found them.
They barely make it back to the cabin
when they hear someone scream in pure fear. It happens again and
they realize it's one of the boys. Stacey doesn't want to go back
outside but the others take off running so she follows, not wanting
to be alone in the cabin either. As they approach the boys' cabin, they
can hear Paul telling everyone to stay still and Steve whimpering
that he doesn't think he can. Rachel and the girls peek into the
cabin. There's a rattlesnake in the middle of the room and the boys
are pretty much trapped.
Terry and Stacey run to the lodge to
get Tim, Michelle and Mr D. Poor Steve is in the middle of a panic.
He's sweating and crying and making this terrible keening noise that
gets on Rachel's nerves. Paul tells everyone to just stay still and
hang on. Within minutes they hear Mr D approaching with his trusty
shovel. He enters the cabin quietly and lunges at the snake, cutting
it in half. He scoops up the pieces of the snake and takes it from
the cabin, not saying a word.
As soon as he's gone, Steve jumps up
and grabs Stacey. He starts shaking her back and forth and accusing
her of putting the snake in his sleeping bag. His reaction is so
violent that it takes Tim, Michelle, Mark, Jordan and Linda to
separate them. Stacey is naturally upset and says she didn't put the
snake in his sleeping bag. He doesn't believe her at first but then
accepts that the snake wasn't part of the girls' prank. Everyone is
really shaken up by the snake and Steve's reaction.
The girls go back to their cabin and
check everywhere to make sure there are no snakes. Then they talk
about everything. Terry says Steve is probably worried about being
teased tomorrow because of his extreme reaction. Rachel thinks that
Stacey, Mark and Jordan probably would tease him but she can't see
Paul joining in. She encourages them all to pretend like nothing
ever happened. Stacey is worried that someone DID target Steve with
the snake. It's too much of a coincidence that it just happened to
end up in the sleeping bag of the person that was terrified of
snakes.
Rachel wakes up the next morning, still
troubled by the events of the night before. She just can't imagine
that anyone would be “crazy” enough to put a rattlesnake in
Steve's sleeping bag. When she says as much to Terry, Terry tells
her that you don't need to be “crazy” to play a stupid prank.
THANK YOU! For some reason this seems to annoy Rachel and she takes
off toward the lodge for breakfast. Paul rocks up along the path and
she asks him how Steve is doing. Paul says he's being really quiet
this morning. As they go into the lodge, Terry and Linda are coming
out. How the hell did Terry get ahead of Rachel? AND it says that
Terry is in her robe with her hair wet because she took a shower. So
she somehow got ahead of Rachel AND managed to take a shower in the
time it took Rachel to walk to the lodge. This makes no sense at
all. Shame on you, Ellis.
Today they all have to clean out the
cabins. When they're done with that, they're going to boat across
the lake and have a picnic. After that, they'll be free. Rachel
volunteers to do the dishes after breakfast and then she searches for
a new picture to put on the bulletin board. When she goes to replace
the picture of the boy who died, she discovers it's missing. She
wonders who took it and why. As she's adding a new picture to the
blank space, she sees that the picture of Steve has been altered.
Someone has drawn circles around his face like a bullseye. It makes
it more certain that he was a deliberate target.
We skip ahead to the picnic across the
lake. Rachel is fretting about the target on Steve's face. She
hasn't told anyone about it and she pretty much suspects them all of
doing it. Mark notices she's acting odd and asks her about it but
she evades the question. They eat, they swim and then the adults get
back into one of the boats and row back to camp. Linda suggests a
hike and everyone but Stacey decides to go. She wants to take a nap
but Mark is worried that she'll get a horrible sunburn. Paul tells
her she can lay in one of the boats that they tied to a log because
it's mostly in the shade. I'm not sure why she needs to lay in a
boat to be in the shade. If the log is in the shade, wouldn't the
ground there be in the shade too? Whatever.
The hikers eventually get separated.
There isn't much of a trail and everyone seems to follow their own
path instead of sticking together. Rachel ends up alone which she
isn't too mad about but when she spies Paul's shirt through the
trees, she calls out to him. She wouldn't mind HIS company. He
joins her and they decide they've had enough talking. They decide to
sit for awhile and then head back.
Rachel tells him about the missing
picture and the circles around Steve's face. Paul seems genuinely
concerned but he doesn't offer any theories. Rachel asks him if
he'll tell her some more about the boy who died. Paul says his name
was Johnny Danard. For some reason everyone picked on him and
played pranks on him. The worst were Steve and Mark but they usually
got Jordan and Stacey to follow along. Johnny was in a cabin with
Mark/Steve/Jordan so he didn't have much of a chance.
Rachel asks him how Johnny died and he
says it happened on the wilderness hike. For some reason Johnny left
the tent in the middle of the night. Paul says it had been raining
and things were slippery. The theory was that Johnny had gotten lost
and started running because he was scared. He either slipped over
the side or ran over the side and broke his neck. Paul was with the
group that found him the next morning.
Rachel and Paul go back to the beach
and find it empty. They start cleaning up the picnic stuff and
eventually Linda, Mark, Terry, Jordan and Steve show up. Steve is
the only one who wasn't in the woods. He walked along the shore
instead to avoid any snakes. They all go for a swim and don't even
notice that Stacey is missing until they get ready to head back to
the camp.
Jordan is the one who notices first.
He asks around and no one has seen her. They figure she must have
gone into the woods to look for them. Everyone but Rachel decides to
go back into the woods to look for her. Rachel is floating in the
lake and can't be bothered. After awhile, she notices the old,
wooden rowboat they brought along is drifting out on the lake. It's
listing a little and she can tell it's taking on water. She figures
they must have put a hole in it when they dragged it onto the rocky
shore. She's about to head back to the shore when she notices that
the boat isn't empty. Stacey is sleeping inside.
Stacey has clearly just woken up and
Rachel can tell she's already panicking. She yells for Stacey to
hang on and she'll swim out to her but Stacey stands up in the boat
because she's not thinking clearly. Her foot goes through the hole
and gets stuck. She can't get it loose so she's stuck in a sinking
boat.
Rachel swims out to the boat where
Stacey is pretty much incoherent with panic. She tells Stacey that
she's going to dive beneath the boat to try to pull the wood free
around Stacey's foot. She finds it harder than she thought it would
be. She tries to pull the wood but she doesn't have any leverage at
all and doesn't think she made any difference. When she resurfaces,
though, she finds that Stacey was able to get free and Mark and
Jordan are on their way out with another rowboat, summoned by
Stacey's panicked screams.
They tow the damaged boat back to camp
and Rachel goes to take a shower. She's completely exhausted and
ends up going back to her cabin for a nap. She wakes up starving at
7:30 and decides to go to the lodge to eat. She walks right into an
uproar. Stacey is yelling that they need to call the police but Tim
is saying that she's really overreacting. That's the worst way
possible to calm someone down. It always makes things worse. Tim
eventually leaves to go talk to Michelle about some missed deliveries
and Rachel sits down with some food.
They quickly fill her in on what she
missed. Stacey is sure that someone sent her adrift on the lake on
purpose. The boat was securely tied when she got in it to sleep and
there's no way it untied itself. She's sure that someone is out to
get them all. She thinks it's Mr D which Paul thinks is ridiculous.
Stacey says maybe there's a prison or a mental institution around
that someone escaped from and that's even more ridiculous. Terry is
the one who points out that the person is using their greatest fears
against them. For some reason it hadn't occurred to anyone else. And since the person knows their greatest fears, it must be one of them.
Before she leaves, Rachel goes to check
the picture. Sure enough, someone has drawn a target around Stacey's
face.
The next chapter starts with a word
from our bad guy. They are feeling pretty smug about the success of
the boat thing. They didn't know it was damaged but it turned out
perfect and they're feeling pretty powerful. Useless again.
That night, Rachel has a nightmare
about Johnny drowning and she screams so loud she wakes up here
entire cabin. Terry asks her why she yelled out the name 'Johnny'
and Rachel tells them that she was dreaming of the boy who died the
last time Stacey/Mark/Jordan/Steve/Paul were at the camp. Stacey is
super pissed at her for bringing it up but Terry is curious because
she's never heard the story before. Rachel doesn't want to get into
details and just says that Johnny died in an accident. Terry and
Linda try to get more details but all Rachel will say is that he
fell. Stacey gets even angrier and tells Rachel that they don't need
all this talk about the past when there's so much crap going on in
the present and everyone goes back to bed.
The next morning starts out subdued.
Tim and Michelle assign them their daily chores – cleaning the
shower cabins and painting some of the sleeping cabins. Rachel
spends a couple of hours scrubbing one of the shower cabins until it
practically sparkles. It gives her plenty of time to think and Ellis
gives us yet another review of what we've already read. I swear this
happens every other chapter and it's completely unnecessary.
Rachel goes back to the cabin to change
out of her dirty, sweaty clothes after she finishes the shower cabin.
On her bed is the dead rattlesnake and a knife buried in her
mattress. She looks around for some kind of bag to put the snake in
and spots a paper bag sticking out from under Terry's bed. She's
reaching for it when Terry comes into the cabin and asks what she's
doing. Terry isn't happy to find Rachel using her things without
asking but Rachel points out the snake and tells Terry she was just
trying to get a bag to put it in. Terry is distressed at the sight
of the snake and the knife and ends up running back out of the cabin.
Rachel puts the snake in the bag and
then pulls the knife out of her bed. She goes to ask Mr D where he
put the snake after he killed it and he tells her he put it in the
trash can. Rachel asks for a shovel so she can bury the snake. He
offers to do it for her but she wants to do it herself so she knows
it's buried deep. She takes care of it deep in the woods.
Rachel is suspicious of everyone at
lunch. Every time someone makes a comment or even looks at her
weird, she assumes they're the bad guy. It's kind of exhausting.
They all decide to check out another one of the trails that
afternoon. Rachel is thankful to get away for awhile. The trail
needs a lot of clearing and they all have blisters and scratches by
the time they reach the clearing. They stop to hydrate and rest and
then decide to move on.
Mark and Steve disagree about where the
trail goes after the clearing. Rachel asks Paul and he says he
thinks Steve is right. Stacey and Jordan agree so Mark is outvoted.
He sticks to his guns though and convinces Jordan and Linda to go his
way with him while the others take Steve's trail. It doesn't take
long before they realize that Steve was definitely right. Rachel
wonders how long it will take for Mark to admit he's wrong.
The day darkens a little and it seems
like a storm might be brewing. They start to yell for Mark and the
others so they can make their way back. Linda yells back and they
follow her voice. As they approach, they can hear her begging Mark
for help but Mark keeps telling her to wait for Jordan to come back.
They stumble out of the brush and almost go over the side of a rocky
ledge.
Linda clearly went over the side.
She's standing on a ledge, holding her ankle as if it's injured.
Mark is below them but above her. He's so scared that he's paralyzed. He can't
help her because of his fear of heights. Rachel tells Paul that Mark
needs more help than Linda does and Paul takes her word for it.
Steve says he'll climb down to Linda and then he'll help her go
downward instead of upwards because it will be easier. They'll
follow the gully back around to meet the others.
Paul brings Mark up and Steve brings
Linda around. Jordan emerges from the trees and they all meet up.
Mark apologizes to Linda. He says he tried to climb down to her
because he wanted to help but once he got a little ways, he just
froze up and couldn't continue. Linda forgives him and they all move
on.
By supper time, the storm has arrived.
Rachel is the last to get to the lodge as usual and walks in to hear
Stacey pitching another huge fit. Paul is waiting for her by the bulletin
board and pointed out the fact that a target has been drawn around
Mark's face. She's confused because that was an accident but Paul
points out that maybe the bad guy is content with Mark's total and
complete humiliation.
Rachel goes to help Mark with dinner
and when they get back to the dining room, they find Linda gone.
Stacey says she went out for a walk and Rachel is immediately
concerned because of the weather. They decide that they need to go
look for her but Terry decides to stay behind. She's afraid of being
in the woods during a storm. I'm pretty sure Terry is the only one
with a brain.
Rachel thinks she should check the
cabin in case Linda went there. Paul says they'll wait for her at
the start of one of the trails and if she doesn't come back with
Linda in a few minutes, they'll check the trail. He tells her to
just go back to the lodge if Linda isn't there. There's no reason
for her to be out in the storm. Rachel gets back to the cabin and
when she opens the door, papers go everywhere. The cabin is empty
but she decides to just stay there instead of going back to the lodge
because she doesn't want to go back out in the weather. She takes a
step and her foot slips on a piece of paper. She picks it up to read
it.
It's a letter to Linda from Johnny.
The letter talks about how mean Mark/Steve/Jordan/Stacey are to him
and how he wants to come home. Apparently their parents are on a
trip of some sort but he begs her to get him home somehow. Rachel is
shocked to realize that Johnny was Linda's brother. She finds more
letters and the missing picture from the bulletin board.
Rachel grabs a flashlight and runs
toward the woods, hoping to catch up with Paul and the others. She
hears Mr D yell something at her from the distance but she doesn't
stop. She can see where the others went through the woods before her
by all the broken branches and muddy footsteps. As she gets closer,
she hears Linda screaming that she wants to know what happened to
Johnny that night. Rachel turns off her flashlight and approaches more
slowly. Down in a gully, Mark, Steve and Stacey are huddled
together. Up above are Paul, Jordan and Linda. Linda is holding a
gun.
They start explaining. Steve says that
he and Mark forced Johnny to go out that night and check for Mr D.
They told him if he went this one last time, they'd leave him a lone
for the rest of the camp. Johnny left that night and somehow he
ended up dead. They tell Linda that they never intended that to
happen. Linda just laughs at them and then she tells Jordan that he
needs to choose. Either she shoots the three down in the gully or
she shoots Paul. He has to make the decision who lives and who dies.
Rachel knows someone is about to die.
She throws her flashlight at Linda which distracts her enough that
Paul is able to grab the gun from her. And then it's over. Mark,
Steve and Stacey climb out of the gully. Mr D comes out of nowhere
and takes charge of Linda. As he walks her away, he tells her that
her brother was a very nice boy. Mark/Steve/Jordan/Stacey huddle
together and follow Mr D and Linda out of the woods. They're all
pretty shaken up. Paul comes to Rachel and hugs her close, making
sure she's okay. They talk about how tragic it all was and how awful
it was that Linda carried this grudge for seven years and then the
book ends.
So........there was no possible way Linda could have known that Jordan/Mark/Stacey/Steve would be there that summer. Did she go just to see the place and then lucked out that they all happened to be there? And what are the fucking odds that they'd all return for the first time at the same time? This book makes no logical sense. I never even thought of it before before but there's no way it should have even worked out that way. It would have made more sense if it was some kind of a camp reunion or something. Having all of them decide to go at the exact same time without prior knowledge that the others would be there is just too much of a coincidence for me. There's only so far disbelief can be suspended.
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