Janelle picked up the bag and got to work. By the time Stevie had eaten her hot dog and drunk half her soda, Janelle had gotten out some industrial sticky strips and had the first camera attached under the light fixture by the door. She placed another one on the inside of the window with the hole in the screen, tucked in between the wrought iron guards. She got up on top of a dresser to put a third high up near the ceiling, pointed toward the inside of the door. She downloaded the app and had most of the setup complete by the fifteen-minute mark. She brushed off her hands and examined the feed for a moment, walking back and forth in front of each camera to ensure she was satisfied with the placement.
“That should cover all the angles,” she said. “It’s got smart detection, so we’ll know if anyone comes in. Most of the other counselors are doing orientation games. We’re the special ones, so we get to spend the day unpacking art supplies and setting things up. Apparently supplies just arrived.”
They headed over to the art pavilion, where Janelle stopped short.
“Oh my god,” Janelle said when she saw the many piles of boxes. “So much to unpack and put in order.”
The joy in her voice couldn’t be hidden.
“Do you need a moment alone?” Stevie asked.
“Maybe?”
Janelle set about her dream job, while Stevie set about to work on the problem.
Stevie took the dolls out of the box and set them on the little table in front of her. Doll Sabrina. Doll Diane. Doll Todd. All slashed with red paint. This was easy and direct enough. The message on their cabin wall was different, clever.
Since she didn’t know how the latter had been done, she switched over to asking why. Why leave the message? Why leave a box of murder dolls on Carson’s running path? What would these things do?
Well, cause fear. That seemed like the obvious answer.
It would have taken time to get the dolls, time to make the outfits, time to do whatever it was that was done to their cabin. These things hadn’t been knocked together in the short space of time between Carson’s announcement last night and when they got back to the camp. Someone had been planning this for a few days, at least.
So someone knew she was coming and had taken the time to look her up.
It was entirely possible that some people in town had gotten wind of Carson’s plans before he announced them. Did they think this would stop the podcast from happening? There was no message attached to these things, nothing that said stop making your podcast.
Maybe it was a question of how. But the how still eluded her. How did you paint a message on a wall well in advance and have that message be invisible? She spent the next hour looking up paints, dyes, and invisible inks, but absolutely nothing turned up that explained how the thing could be done.
“It had to be something with the paint, right?” she said, coming up behind Janelle and startling her as she was organizing pipe cleaners by size and color. She pulled out her earbuds, leaking music out into the art pavilion.
“The paint,” Stevie said, sitting down on the concrete floor opposite her. “It had to be something with the paint. But I can’t find any paint online that would do what we experienced. I think it was meant to freak me out.”
“And me,” Janelle added.
“. . . us out. But I mean, it also feels like a gift to me? It’s an impossible puzzle. It’s the kind of thing I’ll obsess over.”
“Maybe you have a fan,” Janelle said.
This had something to it. A fan? Some true-crime creep who wanted to mess with the student sleuth. It didn’t explain what had happened with Carson and his box, but it made a lot of sense in terms of the cabin.
“A fan,” Stevie repeated. “Someone wants to play? Then we’ll play.”
“Oh god, no.”
Stevie’s phone buzzed, and she checked her texts. There was one from Nicole.
COME TO THE DINING PAVILION, it read.
“I’ve been summoned,” Stevie said. “If I don’t come back, avenge me.”
She walked over to the dining pavilion with a vague sense of dread. Nicole was working on her laptop at a picnic table at one end.
“Someone wants to talk to you,” she said. “She’s over there.”
Allison Abbott sat alone at one of the picnic tables at the far side, pensively tapping her chin with her fist. When Stevie approached, she looked up and straightened. Stevie braced herself. The relative of a victim had come here to chastise her. She felt sick but walked on and sat down.
“Hey,” Stevie said.
“Stevie,” she replied. “I wanted to apologize for last night.”
Stevie could not hide her surprise at this turn of events.
“People always talk about this like it’s some lurid slasher movie,” Allison went on. “I lost my sister. Some bastard took my sister from me. I feel like Carson used her memory, gave us that reading room, to try to worm his way in. He can go to hell. But I didn’t mean to catch you in the crossfire.”
She leaned back a bit, taking Stevie in. Stevie was unsure what to do or say now that this announcement had been made. There was a heavy pause, full of the scent of boiled hot dog water.
“Why did you come here?” Allison asked.
“Because I got a message that—”
“I mean here, to Barlow Corners, to this camp. Carson clearly brought you here specially, which is why you were at the event last night and why he keeps introducing you to everyone as the girl from Ellingham Academy and as his partner in this project of his. I know what he wants. Why did you come here?”
Stevie considered her words carefully.
“Because . . . I want to . . . because people need answers. Because someone should do something.”
Allison cocked her head very slightly to the side. For a moment, she said nothing at all. Stevie felt a clammy nervousness brewing.
“You know,” Allison said, “I remember so much about her. So many little details. I remember sitting outside that summer, eating cherry twin pops. I rode bikes with her all over town. She drove me to the roller rink and skated with me. She helped me with my homework. And one of the last things I remember about that summer, right before she went off to camp . . . I remember sitting next to her in her room one afternoon while she played me Fleetwood Mac albums. She got up and wrapped a long scarf around herself and started doing a Stevie Nicks dance. She loved Stevie Nicks. She would have loved your name.”
“My name is Stephanie,” Stevie replied. “I’ve always been called Stevie. I don’t know why. But I prefer it anyway.”
“Well,” she said, “she would have loved it. If she had lived, she would have been great at whatever she did. She would have done it all. She was one of those people, full of life. She was a force of nature.”
She tapped her fingers on the plastic tablecloth.
“As it happens, I know Kyoko, your school librarian. We met at a library conference. I got in touch with her last night, and she told me about you. She told me about what you did at Ellingham. I read up about it last night and this morning. It sounds like you do the work, like Sabrina did. I talk to Sabrina all the time. Well, I mean, I imagine talking to her. I think about what she would tell me to do. She would have said to give you a chance. I have to get back to the library. I’m busy all this week after work, but why don’t you come over tomorrow morning? I have some things I’d like to show you.”