The Wildman

Chapter THREE

Arrival





“So you’re not even a little bit creeped out about going back there?”

Standing in his kitchen, Jeff hunched his shoulder to tuck the phone against his ear as he poured himself a generous shot of rum. This was his second one tonight. He never had a second shot, but he was pretty sure he needed one tonight because of the direction this conversation with Tyler was taking.

“Not really,” Tyler said after a short pause that made Jeff suspect he might really feel otherwise. “It was so long ago, you know? I can’t say as I’ve really given it all that much thought.”

“Seriously?”

Jeff narrowed his eyes and took a sip of rum, luxuriating for a moment as he swallowed. The liquor warmed his throat and stomach, and he had no doubt it was going to his head. He was already a bit unsteady on his feet.

“Really. I mean … Come on. We were just kids, and it was what? Like, thirty-five years ago.”

“Yeah, but—”

“It’s not like any of us really knew Jimmy Foster or anything. He wasn’t an important part of our lives all the time or anything. He was just like the rest of us—some kid from some town we’d probably never even heard of who showed up at camp for two weeks, and then went back home for the rest of the year.”

“Hmmm …” Jeff said. “He was gone, all right.”

“We came from all over New England. It’s not like we lost our best friend from our school or neighborhood or something.”

“I know, but—”

Jeff interrupted himself to take another swallow of rum. He knew he was getting good and buzzed, and should stop now, but he convinced himself this was a good thing. It would blunt some of the more unsettling memories this conversation was dredging up.

“Look, Jeff. I didn’t see what you saw.” Tyler’s voice dropped to a low, calm pitch … or maybe, Jeff thought, the rum was hitting him a lot harder and faster than he realized. “None of us saw what you saw. And I can understand how you might be a lot more freaked out about the whole thing than the rest of us. Christ, you were practically a celebrity because of what you did.”

“But I didn’t do anything.”

“Bull. You actually got to see Jimmy after he was dead. Do you have any idea how pissed off Bloomberg and some of the other counselors were?”

“It wasn’t that big a deal,” Jeff said, but even as he said it, he knew he was lying. The image of Jimmy Foster lying there on the stretcher—cold, pale, and dead—was seared into his brain. He had carried it with him his whole life, but it was something he simply didn’t like thinking about.

“But you can’t say it didn’t creep you out?” he said, lowering his voice as he stared at the rum in his glass. “Even after you found out what had happened?”

Tyler sniffed over the phone, and Jeff could just imagine him shaking his head.

“No one really knows what happened to him. My parents never told me what—if anything—they heard.”

“You ever ask them?”

“Hell, no. They both died quite a few years ago now, in a plane crash. I never got the chance to … if I had wanted to. I never thought about it.”

Jeff didn’t hear even the slightest hesitation in his friend’s voice, and he wondered how deeply his parents’ death had affected him.

Is it something—like Jimmy Foster’s death—that he never thought about?

Or had it affected him so deeply he doesn’t allow himself to think or feel anything about it?

“But the police came to your house and talked to you about it once you got home from camp, didn’t they?”

“Of course they did. As far as I know, they talked to everyone who was at camp when it happened—campers, counselors, staff. You must know what happened to Mr. Farnham.”

Jeff was in the middle of taking another sip of rum, and he started to choke on it when he tried to speak. The liquor burned the back of his throat and nasal passages.

“I know that was the last summer Camp Tapiola was open.” Jeff’s nose was still stinging, and his eyes started to water. “They closed the place down, but my parents told me they’d never let me go back there no matter what. Years later, I heard that Farnham was sued by Jimmy’s parents.”

“His mother, anyway,” Tyler said. “His father had died a few years before Jimmy did.”

“Really? How do you know that?”

“Jimmy told me.”

It surprised Jeff that Tyler knew something about Jimmy that he didn’t.

“Anyway,” Jeff said. “From what I understand, things got so messed up because of the legal shit-storm surrounding Jimmy’s murder he had to—”

“Whoa. Hold on a second, bucko.”

“What?”

“You just said Jimmy’s murder.”

“I did?”

Tyler grunted.

“Yeah. I guess I did.” Jeff hesitated a moment and sneaked another quick sip of rum. “But he was murdered. I saw his throat, and it was cut wide open.”

“As far as I know, no one official ever concluded that’s what happened.”

“Come on, man.”

Jeff wondered why he was getting so heated. Was it because Tyler’s a lawyer and has to have a mountain of substantiated, verifiable proof? Or was it simply too unnerving to think about Jimmy’s death, even after all these years?

“His friggin’ throat was cut, Tyler. I know what I saw!”

“He maybe had a wound on his throat,” Tyler said. “But there was never anything about his throat being cut. He went down to the swimming area, fell in, and drowned.”

“Yeah. That’s what my folks kept telling me,” Jeff said, “but I checked it out later. Some Maine newspapers labeled it murder. A murder that’s never been solved.”

“I thought you said you didn’t think about it. When’d you do all of this?”

Jeff realized he had said too much already, but now that it was out there, he knew Tyler wasn’t about to let him off the hook.

“A long time ago,” he said.

“So this has been an issue for you,” Tyler said, his voice fairly dripping with accusation.

Or is he trying to piss me off? Jeff wondered.

“Sure. It’s something I’ve paid attention to some. But I wouldn’t say it’s been an issue for me, exactly.”

“Well …” Tyler sighed deeply. “I can’t say as I’d blame you. Like I said, the rest of us never saw what you saw.”

Someone else did .. The person who killed him, Jeff was about to say, but he kept quiet and took another swallow of rum instead. The glass was already half-empty, and Jeff was definitely a “half-empty,” not a “half-full” kind of guy. He reached for the bottle to top off his drink.

“The way you’re talking, though,” Tyler said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you shouldn’t come to the reunion. It might dredge up too many of these memories for you.”

“I never said that, but … well … I dunno. I just asked if the whole idea creeped you out, and obviously it doesn’t.”

“But it does creep you out.”

“A little … yeah.”

“Good. At least you admit it.”

Jeff could easily imagine that this was the tone of voice he used when he knew he was winning a case in court

“And I, for one, would be really bummed if you didn’t come.”

“Oh, I probably will.”

Jeff glanced at the clock and saw that it was already past eleven. Six o’clock came early. He had to get to bed, so he said a quick good-bye to Tyler and hung up. He staggered a bit as he made his way slowly up the stairs to the bedroom, turning lights off behind him as he went. His head was spinning, but that didn’t stop the rush of thoughts and memories and images that filled his mind when he lay down to sleep.

Thanks to the rum, though, he drifted off quicker than usual. Still, his sleep was thin and disturbed.

* * *

Over the next several weeks, scores of e-mails and a few telephone calls went back and forth among the friends. Jeff kept going along with the plans, but he was more and more determined to ditch the whole thing once it got a little closer. He was waiting until the last minute so there would be no possibility Evan and his former friends would try to reschedule the reunion so he could make it, too.

July passed into August with another long stretch of scorching, humid weather. Then, toward the end of the month, the days began to get shorter, and the nights cooled off noticeably. “Good sleeping weather,” people called it.

During this time, work at Bayside Realty remained steady if not hectic, and Jeff felt a growing agitation. Maybe it was the upcoming reunion, but he had begun an exchange of hostile e-mails and telephone calls with Susan concerning child support for Matt. She had married someone she had known and dated back in high school, and she had relocated to California. Jeff argued that, if he was going to have full custody of Matt, she was going to have to start paying him child support.

Susan wouldn’t yield.

She insisted their divorce agreement was finalized, and it fully covered her commitment regarding joint custody and child support. There was no provision about any changes based of either one of them remarrying. Jeff countered that it had never crossed his mind either one of them would ever remarry—especially so soon—but Susan insisted that it was his and his lawyer’s fault for not planning for that contingency. No matter how many times he told her he had trusted her to do what was fair and reasonable, if only because the welfare of their son was involved, she wouldn’t budge.

“If I’m ever gonna get married again, I’ll find a woman I hate and give her a house and car,” Jeff said more times than he cared to remember. It usually made his friends at the office laugh, but he was half-convinced he meant it.

The difference was, in his case, he had kept the house and car. He wanted to keep them if only to provide Matt some illusion of stability while he was off to college, even if the house was much too big for him, now that he was living alone. The cost of upkeep made it so he had little to no discretionary income, not that having a kid in college allowed much discretionary income.

As the weekend for the reunion drew closer, Jeff began to think how it might not be such a bad idea after all to hook up with some old friends. He could really use a weekend away, drinking and reminiscing with people who had known him long before he married Susan. Evan had finally settled on a weekend—the last weekend of October, a few days before Hallowe’en. Everyone agreed this was a good time for them, and they began to make their plans to rendezvous at the landing dock on Shore Road where Evan would meet them with a boat and take them over to Sheep’s Head Island and Camp Tapiola.

For a while, Jeff had argued that going out so late in the year might be a colossal mistake. The way he remembered it, the temperature had dropped close to freezing on a couple of nights when they were there in the middle of July.

Imagine it in October? … a lake in western Maine? … sleeping in an un-insulated, unheated building? …

That didn’t sound very appealing.

If they were still kids, it might be an exciting adventure, but at their age?

No way.

The other guys—especially Evan—scoffed at him via e-mail for sounding like a p-ssy and for lacking imagination. The problem was, Jeff could imagine all too easily how things could go wrong. If—and if was still a big if—he even went to the reunion—he would be sure to bring plenty of rum to keep him warm and pleasantly buzzed for the entire weekend. Hell, maybe he’d even see if he could score some weed. That would certainly make for a fun weekend.

The month of September was rainy and much colder than usual. Jeff hoped Evan would finally see reason and call the whole thing off until next spring. But Evan insisted that, as soon as the ice was out of the lake come spring, his construction company was going to bring in bulldozers and other machinery to start tearing apart the old campgrounds. By June of next year, the island would be unrecognizable. If they wanted one last chance to see where they had spent a short but significant time of their lives … if they wanted to recapture some childhood memories, this was their one and only chance.

Do I really need this? Jeff wondered, but—somehow—in the end, he wasn’t really sure why—he made the decision to go.

Jeff offered to meet Tyler at the Portland Jetport when his flight from LA arrived. It might be a good idea not to face this entirely on his own. Besides, it would be nice to drive out to camp with one of his friends and catch up, one on one.

Tyler nixed all that, telling Jeff he planned to come to Maine a few days earlier and spend some time driving around coastal Maine before heading over to the camp. Jeff couldn’t afford to take any extra time off work—not if he wanted any vacation time when Matt was home from college on Christmas break—so that Thursday night he got packed. He made sure he took Matt’s down-filled sleeping bag along with plenty of warm clothing.

As it was, on the Friday of the reunion, Jeff had to go into the office in the morning to take care of some last-minute paperwork, so he was late getting started. The drive out of Portland was pleasant enough, even though the foliage was a few weeks past peak and the “blue-crested leaf peepers” had gone back south to their retirement homes in Florida. When he got to Gorham, he stopped at the local Shop ‘n Save where he picked up his share of the groceries for the weekend. They had all agreed who would bring what, but as he wandered up and down the aisles, Jeff kept picking up impulse items it wasn’t his responsibility to bring.

Just in case, he kept telling himself.

He also bought a few more bottles of rum at the agency liquor store next door to the supermarket. He had already packed three bottles of Myers, but he wanted to have a few more just in case the other guys wanted to partake. He was looking forward to this weekend with a curious mixture of anticipation and dread, and he definitely didn’t want to run out alcohol.

From Gorham, he drove west on Route 25 to Limington and then headed north along winding back roads toward Alden and Lake Onwego. The posted speed limit was never above 35 MPH, but there were long stretches of open road where he nudged it up closer to sixty. Late in the day, he finally reached the turn for Shore Road, which led down to the boat landing where—just like when he was a kid—he would meet the boat that would take him over to Camp Tapiola.

This far away from civilization, Arden being the nearest town, cell phone service was spotty at best, but earlier in the week, Jeff had arranged for Evan to meet him at the landing at four o’clock. Surprisingly, even though he’d gotten such a late start, he was only fifteen minutes late.

As his car bumped and rattled along the rutted dirt road leading down to the lake, a cold rush of tension started building up inside him. He was concerned that he might not recognize Evan or anyone else after all these years. They had talked about swapping photos on-line, but Evan had argued that it would be a lot more fun and surprising if they waited to see how everyone looked when they all met in person.

Besides, who else would be out here in the willy-whacks this late in the year?

Jeff was self-conscious about his receding hairline and the extra girth he carried around his middle, but he told himself not to worry. Chances were, Evan and the rest of the guys had all gained more weight and lost more hair than he had. All things considered, Jeff thought he’d held up fairly well over the years.

Lost in thought as he was, he missed the turn to the landing and drove past it when it came up faster than he had been expecting. The road that had seemed so long when he was a kid now struck him as short and actually rather pathetic.

Embarrassed by his mistake, even though there was no one there to see it, he drove a short way down the road, turned around quickly, and drove back to the turnoff. It was another half-mile or so to the landing.

When he pulled into the parking area, there were already four cars parked there—a green Volvo, a black Prius, a rusted Chevy pickup truck, and a small blue Toyota, which was obviously a rental. As he pulled to a stop beside the Volvo, Jeff tried to guess whose was whose. The only one he was sure of was the rental, which had to be Tyler’s.

Down by the lake, a person was standing on the dock next to the boat launch where a small motorboat was tied up. The sun reflected off the water behind him, so it was hard for Jeff to see the person’s face.

That’s got to be Evan, Jeff thought.

The person silhouetted against the lake looked up and raised one hand. He waved it wildly as he started walking up the slope to where Jeff had parked.

“Christ on a cross,” Evan called out, his voice light and tinged with merriment as Jeff killed the engine and got out of his car. He was parked on the crest where the steep road led down to the water.

“I swear to Christ … Who’d a thunk it?”

“Evan?” Jeff said tentatively as he pocketed his car keys and walked down the hill to meet his friend. They shook hands vigorously and then just stood there for a long moment, staring at each other. Neither one of them seemed to know what to say or do next until Evan slapped Jeff on the shoulder and asked, “So how was the drive out? You find the place all right?”

“Oh, yeah. Only a couple of wrong turns,” Jeff said. He smiled as he stroked his chin and took a deep breath while looking out over the lake. The powerful scent of pine resin—just like he remembered when he was a kid—filled him with a powerful surge of nostalgia. A stiff breeze was blowing in off the lake, churning the blue-gray water and making the waves sparkle like diamonds in the slanting sunlight. The chill in the air made Jeff shiver, and he hugged himself. Off in the distance, already darkened by shadows because of the mountains to the west, he could discern the outlines of Sheep’s Head Island and the camp, about a mile out on the water.

But as nice as this initial impression was, once again—as he had so many times right up until this moment—Jeff wondered why he had agreed to come out here. The prospect of being essentially stranded on an island for the whole weekend with people he hardly knew and hadn’t seen in so long they might just as well be strangers didn’t seem all that appealing.

“So … everyone else seems to have made it already.” Jeff nodded at the line of parked cars.

“We’re getting settled in just fine,” Evan said with a wide smile. He chuckled and shook his head as though privately amused at something. The slanting sunlight illuminated his face, deepening the thin, dark wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. “I’ve been out here for a couple of days, getting things set up for you, but I gotta tell you, man, the place has really gone to shit.”

“After thirty-five years, what d’you expect?”

“Yeah, but … still, just wait ‘till you see it. It’s so freakin’ weird to be back here.”

“It looks a lot smaller than I remember,” Jeff said simply.

“Of course it does. Everything was bigger then because we were kids. I swear to God, there are times when I’m out there, I half-expect Bloomberg to come running down to tell me to get my butt back to the tent.” Evan’s eyes took on a distant glaze as he looked out across the water and sighed. “Remember Mark Bloomberg?”

“Who could forget him?”

Jeff gave him a twisted smile. The only image that sprang to mind was the look of worry and near panic he had seen on his counselor’s face the afternoon he told his campers Jimmy Foster was missing. Even then, Mark must have known—as Jeff had known—that something terrible had happened.

“I wish he was still alive so he could have come, too,” Jeff said. “Would’ve been nice to see him.” He shivered and knew it wasn’t just from the chilly breeze. “I can’t believe he’s dead. It seems so … I dunno … surreal.”

“I know,” Evan said as a dark frown flashed across his face. “I Googled him and found his obituary.”

A strange tightness constricted Evan’s voice and grabbed Jeff’s attention. He assumed it was because Evan was as upset as he was about the death of someone who had meant a lot to all of them back when they were so young and impressionable.

“He never got married and was living in Lowell, teaching phys ed. at the high school. His obit said he was really active in Boy Scouts, too.”

“Makes sense,” Jeff said with a shrug. “He was a great counselor. I’m not at all surprised he ended up working with kids. How’d he die?”

“I’m not really sure,” Evan said. “The obituary said he “died unexpectedly,” which I’ve always assume means either suicide or overdose or something. You know, it’s either that or ‘died after a courageous struggle with cancer’ or whatever.”

“Shit,” Jeff said, lowering his gaze and shaking his head.

For some reason, the thought that Mark Bloomberg was dead was really getting to him. Granted, Jeff had only been twelve years old the last time he had seen Mark. He figured his counselor must have been—what, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old that summer? But Jeff and the other guys in the tent had idolized Mark, and the idea that even someone like Mark Bloomberg was mortal sent a shiver of frisson through him … especially, God forbid, if he had killed himself or overdosed. It just goes to show how you never really know.

“Count no man happy until he is dead,” Jeff said.

“What’s that?”

“Something from Oedipus Rex.”

“Yeah … Well. Whatever,” Evan said, rubbing his hands together against the chill as an excited glow lit up his eyes. “You have a ton of stuff to carry?”

“A fair amount.”

“Then let’s get going.”

“Did you check the weekend weather forecast?” Jeff asked as they walked back to his car. He popped the trunk open and started to grab stuff.

“Haven’t had a chance for the last few days,” Evan said. “Why?”

Jeff shrugged. “They’re saying we might have a storm coming through later in the weekend, Saturday night. That’s what they were predicting for the Portland area, anyway. They said there’s a chance of showers that might be heavy on into Sunday. You know what that means.”

“What?”

“We might get snow this far north.”

“In October?” Evan scowled and waved his hand dismissively. “I doubt it. And anyways, we’ll be fine … as long as you brought snowshoes.”

When Jeff drew back and gave him a funny look, Evan swatted him on the arm.

“I’m just f*ckin’ with you,” he said, but Jeff couldn’t help but think how strange this whole encounter was. He couldn’t deny the odd dissonance he felt, trying to relate to Evan as an adult while all he could do was try to see the twelve-year-old boy he had once been. The bottom line was, when they were kids, even though he and Evan had shared a deep and, at least they said so at the time, lasting friendship—

BFF.

—it had been so long ago it felt like it had happened to someone else.

He had no idea who this person was. Looking at him carefully now, Jeff thought Evan could be just about anybody. It took a real stretch of imagination to see the person Evan had once been. Jeff wondered if he had changed as much in Evan’s eyes. He didn’t feel much different, but you never knew …

“Well … one thing’s still the same,” Jeff said.

Evan shot him a quizzical look as he leaned into the trunk and grabbed some bags of groceries.

What’s that?”

“None of the other guys bothered to show up to help. Are they still the same old lazy crew?”

Evan indicated the boat tied up to the dock.

“Boat’s too small for all of us at once, anyway, not with all your stuff. When we leave on Sunday, we’ll have to ferry people and luggage back and forth.”

“Just like the old days,” Jeff said with a grin.

“Yeah … Just like the old days.”

It took them a couple of trips from the car to the dock to get all of Jeff’s supplies and luggage loaded into the boat. As the sun started to set, the wind picked up, carrying with it a biting chill. Jeff was glad he had packed some winter clothes. All he could think about was how he was probably going to freeze his sorry ass off, trying to sleep tonight.

Just like the old days, indeed …

Finally, once the boat was loaded, Evan fired up the engine, and Jeff cast off. He was glad he sat back down right away because Evan gunned the engine and cut a couple of sharp curves that would have thrown him overboard if he hadn’t been sitting.

It wasn’t long before the pounding of the boat on the water got to Jeff. He definitely didn’t have his sea legs back—if he’d ever had them. Gripping the gunwales, he narrowed his eyes against the wind as Evan opened up the engine, pushing it as hard as he could.

Jeff didn’t see any point in trying to carry on a conversation with the boat’s engine whining so loudly and the cold wind whistling like a banshee in his ears. He felt self-conscious, knowing Evan, who was at the back of the boat, couldn’t help but look at his back.

Maybe he was studying Jeff the way Jeff had looked at him, trying to see his childhood friend in this man he didn’t really know.

Maybe he was trying to dig past all the years and see the little boy Jeff had been back then.

Or maybe he was studying him the way he was today, trying to figure out what kind of person he was.

With the cold wind tearing at his face, making tears stream from his eyes, Jeff stared straight ahead and watched as they approached the camp. A flood of memories swept through him as he scanned the shore from left to right. It struck him as funny how the horizon hadn’t changed a bit after all in these years. There were the same sloping hills to the west and the same towering pines.

Some things never change, he thought, or, if they do, it’s at a pace too slow for anyone to notice.

Further out on the lake, the water was a lot choppier. It banged the bottom of the boat hard enough to rattle Jeff’s teeth, but he kept his jaw clenched tightly. It wasn’t long before the chill worked its way into his bones.

When they were more than halfway to the island, Evan said something that Jeff couldn’t hear above the roaring engine. Turning around and leaning closer, he shouted, “What’s that?”

Evan smiled and, with a wave of one hand, indicated the shoreline to the right.

“This will all change soon,” he shouted. “This coming spring, we’ll break ground for the first houses and condos. Eventually, we’ll have tennis courts and a swimming pool.”

“Why do you need a swimming pool when the lake’s right here?” Jeff shouted.

Evan either didn’t hear him or else was ignoring him, so Jeff smiled and nodded as if what Evan had said was a terrific thing. The truth was, he couldn’t deny a surge of sadness and even a bit of anger at Evan for everything that was going to be lost once the construction crews came in and started altering the landscape.

It was foolish, he knew, to feel so protective about a place he hadn’t bothered to visit in the last thirty-five years. If it meant so much to him, why hadn’t he come out here to have a look around? It wasn’t all that far from Westbrook—a day trip, easily.

Regardless, his childhood memories were so tied up with this lake and the camp and the land around it that he was convinced what Evan was planning wasn’t such a good idea.

“You ought to think about investing out here,” Evan shouted.

He had to say it twice before Jeff made out what he said, but Jeff just smiled and shrugged.

Here comes the sales pitch already …

He had seen it coming.

Living in Portland and working in real estate, he had knew all about Willow Creek’s plans for the Lake Onwego area. He had also seen on the news that some of the locals and some environmentalists weren’t so enamored with the plans. Since the project had first been announced three years ago, it had gotten tangled up in court with assorted land disputes. For the last year or so, there had been several instances of vandalism where the Willow Creek offices had been broken into and ransacked. Last spring, someone had tried to burn down the main office building, and many of the signs advertising the project in the area had been defaced with paint-ball shots and, in a few cases, shotgun blasts.

“Be a nice way to ensure you have a good retirement,” Evan shouted, but Jeff shrugged again, pretending he couldn’t hear him.

He turned and stared out over the churning gray water. Just like when he was a kid, it seemed to take forever to get to the island, and the closer they got, the more anticipation built up inside him. The pines were darkening, casting long shadows across the water now that the sun had dropped behind the mountains. The strip of sandy beach in front of the dining hall and what used to be the swimming area—

Where Jimmy drowned … was murdered!

—showed up like a white slash against the dark backdrop. Thirty or so feet up from the beach was the dining hall. When he saw it, Jeff couldn’t ignore the cold lump that formed in his throat.

“Amazing, huh?” Evan called out as he cut the engine and brought the boat around so he was heading into the small cove where the swimming docks used to be.

Once they were out of the direct wind, Jeff tilted his head back and inhaled the aroma of the pines. The smell instantly brought back another rush of memories. It was all too easy to imagine he was a kid again who was arriving for a two-week stay at the camp. If it had been a little warmer and if there had been leaves on the trees, the illusion would have been complete.

But there was something else hanging in the air.

Something unsettling … maybe even menacing.

Jeff had no idea how he knew it was there, but he sensed a palpable presence hovering close to him in the gathering gloom. His eyes widened as they darted back and forth, scanning the cleared areas where the other buildings—the cabins and tent platforms and the old meeting hall—used to be. But his eyes were continually drawn back to the woods where deeper shadows lurked. The feeling of a presence lurking in the woods was overpowering.

Jeff’s reverie was broken when the front door of the dining hall swung open, and three figures came out onto the porch and then started down the short flight of steps leading to the beach. Jeff raised his right arm in greeting, and the three men, now on the beach, waved back to him. He knew they were Tyler Smith, Fred Bowen, and Mike Logan, but in the deepening gloom, he had no idea who was who.

“Ahoy there, captain,” a thin, dark-haired man who looked trim and physically fit called out.

Evan cut the engine, and the boat glided up onto the beach with a soft crunching whisper of sand and pebbles against the keel. It came to a sudden stop that jolted Jeff and would have thrown him forward if he hadn’t been keeping a grip with his left hand on the gunwales.

The thin, dark-haired man waded out into the water and grabbed the bow of the boat. Leaning back, he dragged the boat further up onto the sand.

“Well I’ll be a son of a bitch,” the man said, smiling as he regarded Jeff. “I never thought in a million years you’d really make it.”

“And here I am.” Jeff said as he stood up, caught his balance, and then took the man’s proffered hand and shook it. “How’s it going, Tyler?”

Tyler had a good grip, firm and dry.

“’S gonna be one helluva weekend,” Tyler said, his smile widening as he stood back and let Jeff clamber out of the boat and onto the beach.

Jeff didn’t realize how tense he had been on the boat ride over until he was on solid land again and stretched to his full height. Hard knots tightened in his back and between his shoulder blades. He groaned as he leaned back and pressed his fist into the small of his back.

“Apparently I’m getting old just like the rest of you reprobates.”

Everyone laughed at that as Fred and Mike approached the boat. Jeff’s assumption had been right. The fat guy was Fred. The scrawny kid he had once been was all but unrecognizable beneath his fleshy adult features, but there was a youthful glint in his eye that indicated the old Fred was still in there somewhere. Mike had gained considerable weight, too, but his bulk looked more muscular than fat. He had a crushing grip when he and Jeff shook hands.

“Jesus H Christ,” Mike said. “I hardly recognize yah.”

Jeff sniffed with laughter, knowing if he had passed any of these men on the street, he would have walked past them without giving them a second glance. It was strange to think how these men—total strangers now—had once been his best friends, at least for two weeks every summer.

“Looks like you brought enough shit to last a week,” Fred said, glancing at Evan, who was already unloading the boat, piling Jeff’s things up on the sand.

“You never know,” Jeff said with a chuckle. “We might get stranded here for days, if the weather forecast is right.”

“How’s that?” Fred asked, a look of concern in his eyes. “What’d you hear?”

“Storm might be moving in later this weekend,” Jeff said. Realizing he didn’t want to start the weekend off on a bad note, he added, “But I doubt it’ll be much. If it is, you’ll be grateful I brought as much stuff as I did.”

“Long as you got plenty of beer,” Mike said.

The bag Evan had just put down on the sand made a loud clinking sound, obviously bottles, and Mike’s face brightened.

“Come on, you slugs,” Evan said once the boat was empty. “Let’s get this up into the dining hall.”

“So that’s where we’re staying?” Jeff asked.

“Unless you want to sleep out under the stars.”

“We got here early,” Tyler said, “so we’re already set up. I hope you brought a pad like one of them egg shell thingies or something for your sleeping bag, because that floor’s gonna be hard as hell otherwise.”

“It sure hasn’t gotten any softer over the years,” Mike said with a chuckle. He made a point of grabbing more stuff than anyone else and started back to the dining hall.

“Remember that night we missed the overnight because it was raining?” Fred said. “’N we ‘camped out’ in the dining hall and cooked S’mores?”

“How could I forget?” Jeff said.

With everyone helping, it only took them one trip to get all of Jeff’s stuff and supplies off the beach. They deposited it in the semi-circle of everyone else’s luggage and supplies. As he went about organizing his things, Jeff couldn’t get past the sense of total unreality that was gripping him.

Who are these people … and what the hell am I doing here? he kept asking himself.

The sky was already pitch black when they went back out to the beach so Evan could secure the boat for the night. It was much colder, too, but Jeff stopped and looked around at the old campgrounds, lit only by the stars and the wandering beams of their flashlights.

It seemed like a dream. He felt completely dissociated from himself, and he couldn’t help but question who he really was and reflect on everything he had been so stressed out about lately. Everything seemed so far away now. It was like his life up until this instant had happened to someone else, and—finally—he was back where he truly belonged.

All in all, no matter how creeped out he might feel about being here with these people, this was definitely going to be one hell of an interesting weekend.