The Adventure at
Camp Bloodrock
Filosofia sat in the passenger seat, reading a Massachusetts map folded to show the Berkshires. In the back seat rode Emily, a friend of Filosofia’s visiting from Austin, a young woman with a fondness for large metal-bodied cameras which she carried around in a huge canvas bag.
“Filosofia, it’s called Camp Bloodrock. Doesn’t that make you a little suspicious? Somewhere in your undead-hunting training?…” Emily began.
“I haven’t had any undead-hunting training. But I did read a book — How to Kill the Undead for Living Dummies. Hella helpful.”
“I think she’s putting us on,” whispered Emily.
“There it is! Camp Bloodrock,” I said, as a large sign, painted with badly-smeared fake blood drops hove into view. I nosed the car into the gap between two crumbling stone walls and through the heavy wood main gates.
The Arrival
We pulled up in front of the administration cabin amid a cloud of dust.
“It’s amazing,” said Filosofia. “It’s like totally beautiful.”
The sun had started to set, and the whole camp was bathed in an orange light. A tennis court poked up from behind a patch of brush, to the left; beyond it lay a pond; and all along a thin clearing there stretched cabins and larger buildings. Other than a whiporwill in the woods, we could only hear the wind.
“Where is everyone?” asked Emily.
“Welcome to Camp Bloodrock!” called a man as he descended from a tree.
“God!” Emily stage-whispered to me, “Was he up there this whole time?”
“I am Mr. Stutters, the Camp Director,” said the man. He extended his hand to us.
“Hi. I’m Filosofia Cheltenham, here for my interview.”
“Your — your interview?” asked Mr. Stutters.
“My interview for the basketball coach position. I saw your job posting. Then we talked on the phone,” said Filosofia.
“Ah, yes, the basketball coach position. We — we must do something about that. We must speak briefly.”
“The woman I talked to was really anxious to see me,” Filosofia said. “Who was she?”
“That — that is of no — of no consequence,” said Stutters. “I will speak with you. Let your friends go — go elsewhere.”
A second man swaggered out from behind a stand of trees.
“You are visitors,” said the new arrival. “Welcome. Shall I make small talk?”
“This is Anders,” said Stutters. “He liks his small talk.”
“Small talk. All of you are still wearing MASS MoCA admission stickers. That means that you must have been at MASS MoCA. How nice,” said Anders.
“Pretty terrible, really,” I said, “Though Filosofia here got excited about the tigers.”
Emily shuddered. “Hated them.”
Evidently Stutters had little use for small talk. “Let me keep you no longer,” he said. “We should get on with the — with the matter at — at hand. I have so much to learn about — about running a camp.”
“But I thought your camp was forty-five years old?” asked Emily.
“I was — brought here only — recently,” said Stutters. He stared at the distant mountaintop for a few seconds, then continued. “Circumstances — demanded it.”
Emily glanced at me for a moment.
“Why don’t you guys, like, go for a walk?” suggested Filosofia.
Anders joined in. “Yes, you should walk around the camp. It is a beautiful area, full of countless natural amenities. It is very enjoyable, and you should feel free to walk anywhere you wish. Only stay out of the woods, and be sure to keep well away from the stone circle behind the dining hall. And do not try to peer into any of the locked buildings. You should feel right at home.”
“Come, we will talk,” Stutters said to Filosofia, leading her and Anders into the administration cabin.
Filosofia’s Job Goes Down in Flames
“Just about every building is locked,” Emily grumbled, as she jumped down from the porch of yet another of the tree-shaded cabins. We had been walking around the camp for forty-five minutes, watching the sun set, and prodding at all of the tightly-shut buildings. Each of us had a feeling that we saw eyes behind the occasional windows, but the watchers hid before we could look properly.
“Where are Filosofia and the two comedians?” Emily asked.
“I saw them walking around half an hour ago, but I haven’t seen them since.”
“All right. I’m going to smoke. I can’t keep waiting like this and be denied my cigarettes,” Emily said, sitting down on the edge of the porch and lighting up. “Keep an eye out so that no one sees us.”
I felt that one vice demanded another, and fished the whiskey bottle out of my bag.
“Damn, McKellar,” said Emily, tossing her cigarette butt onto the ground and lighting another.
We sat there unsupervised, quietly enjoying our circumvention of the basic summer-camp rules, until I knocked the whiskey bottle over. The shimmering pool of spirits quickly spread across the dry boards and dribbled off the edge into the grass, where it met the little tendril of smoke from Emily’s cigarette butt. The blue flames arced backward much more quickly.We tried to stamp the fire out, but the blaze quickly billowed upward and engulfed the cabin’s roof.
Emily and I retreated toward the center of the clearing in order to escape the flames and heat.
“Oh — my — God, what have we done? Think they’re going to notice?” said Emily.
“Looks bad, doesn’t it?”
Then an explosion blew away the cabin’s roof and sent colored flares and white streamers of smoke flying all over the clearing.
“Fireworks!” I shouted, as we ran farther back. Smaller secondary fires started where the rockets had landed, then grew, feeding from the dry grass and the ancient pine-shingled cabins. The whole row of cabins burst into flame, one after the next.
Over the camp loudspeakers system, an alarm bell tinkling, and suddenly a flood of long-haired men and shaven-headed women in crimson robes filled the camp. They darted about from building to building, their robes flowing behind them.
Then Stutters appeared in front of us, backed up by two assistants.
“This is most grave. We will have to perform a purification ritual,” he said. He stepped toward us, followed by his assistants.
Emily punched Stutters in the gut. He doubled over in the tall grass. I picked up a burning piece of wood and waved it at the assistants. They seemed to shrink from the fire, and they gave quiet chuttering noises whenever the flames passed near. They steadily backed away as I advanced. Then they stumbled over a log hidden in the grass and tangled themselves up in a garden hose wielded by a flustered party of crimson-robed colleagues.
Stutters started to get up, and grabbed at Emily’s leg, but she hit him on the back of the head with her Kiev camera, and he went down again. Emily and I ran for the entrance where we had parked the car.
“Where’s Filosofia?” I shouted.
“Don’t know!” said Emily. “But no one’s following us! I think they lost us in the smoke!”
We dodged behind the dining hall and came up onto the administration cabin.
Then we heard a shout.
“Hey! Up here!”
We looked around and saw Filosofia waving at us from a partly second-story window.
“Come on guys, get in here! Quick!” she shouted.
“We can get up if we climb on the porch pillars,” I said.
I pulled myself onto the porch, then helped Emily up. Between the two of us we clambered onto the porch roof, and found our way outside Filosofia’s window.
“It doesn’t open any farther. Nailed from the inside,” said Filosofia.
“Stand back,” I said, kicking the windowframe with my heel and splintering the wood. Then we slipped inside.
The Rescue
The small room inside was dim and extremely humid. Emily and I crowded onto a single army-style footlocker, all trying to sit down at once. Filosofia was too excited to stay seated.
“They’re a lot of cultists!” Filosofia hissed, shaking both of us in turn. “They were going to send me away, but I started to, like, figure things out, so they went and locked me up here. I’m glad you’ve escaped.”
Emily and I looked at each other. “Escaped?” I asked.
Filosofia caught our eyes glancing at the door. “Locked from the outside,” she said.
“Um, then why have you brought us in here?” Emily asked Filosofia. “Since we’re locked in and everything.”
“No, let’s stay here a bit,” Filosofia said. “It’s the last place they’ll look for you. And I want to get out through the building. I’ve got an idea that I want to check out. Hella cool, isn’t it?
“Hadn’t we better get going out the window, then?” I said.
“No. Emily — got your lockpicks?” said Filosofia.
“Lockpicks!” Emily said. She dropped her bag, rummaged though piles of tissues and tic-tacs, and finally produced a thin black leather wallet. “I’ve got them.”
Emily started gently prodding at the keyhole as Filosofia and I cleaned up the contents of her bag.
“I wonder how they could manage to run a camp like this for years?” Emily asked as she worked on the locks, lips pursed. The din outside continued. Someone had shut off the alarm bell, but shouts and the roar of flames carried through the splintered window, and
“It’s a quiet part of the Berkshires. Probably none of the locals care,” I offered.
“There! Last tumbler. I got it!”
The three of us ventured out into the hallway, treading softly and trying to avoid the squeaky spots.
Filosofia’s Idea
We halted outside a door just down the hallway, just above the stairs.
“I think I hear voices behind that one,” I said.
“This is what I’m looking for! Lockpicks again, Em,” Filosofia called.
In a few minutes, Emily opened the door, revealing a room filled with perhaps two dozen people, teenagers and others twice their age, all wearing “Camp Bloodrock Staff” clothing.
“It’s the real camp staff!” I said.
They looked back at us.
“What do you want? We won’t help you in your evil scheme,” declared a woman wearing a pink “Camp Directors Do It In Tents” t-shirt, gray hair showing under her floppy-brimmed Camp Bloodrock hat.
“Hey. I’m not one of the cultists. This is a rescue,” said Filosofia. The camp staff were slow to move, only gradually getting to their feet and shuffling toward the door.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Filosofia — I’m supposed to be your new basketball coach.”
“Aren’t you a little short to be a basketball coach?” asked the grey-haired woman.
The grey-haired woman quickly took charge. “George, go grab the equipment from the — from the disciplinary locker.”
A broad-shouldered man bowed silently, summoned two of his colleagues with a brisk snap of his fingers, and set off with them toward the administration cabin.
“Thank you for freeing us,” said the grey-haired woman, leading the way downstairs. “We will take care of the intruders from here on. They took us by surprise before — at the New Counselors Initiation Circle, off all times — but we have them now. You may go sit on a porch, in the shade.”
A Few Conclusions
We watched the battle from a porch of a cabin that had escaped the conflagration with only superficial scorch marks. It was a calming experience, really; at one point, one of the silent staffers walked up and provided us a tray of non-alcoholic mint juleps. Within twenty minutes, the disciplined and well-armed camp staff drove the screaming cultists into the camp pond, which hissed gently and raised puffs of steam as they entered. (“Must be full of holy water!” Filosofia said.)
Soon after the war-cries died down, and the gray-haired woman and her assistant approached our porch.
“That wasn’t so bad — the last cult invasion was much harder to repell,” said the gray-haired woman.
“This group didn’t put a guard on the disciplinary-equipment locker,” said George.
The gray-haired woman eyed us for a few minutes. No one spoke. Then her smile tightened. Five more yellow-shirted counselors hove into view behind her.
“You must stay to let us thank you,” she said, floating silently toward us, “We must arrange a special festival tonight in your honor!”
“Thanks, but we really — must — be going!” I said, pulling Filosofia and Emily toward the car. We ran to the parking lot at full tilt. After we piled in and locked the doors, I started the engine and set us barreling down the entrance road. The camp staff tried to slam the gates against us, but I floored the accelerator and sped through the gap.
Homeward Bound
We drove on in silence, until we had passed through several towns, and it became clear that no one had followed us. Soon we saw a sign for the Mass Pike.
“Guys, I hella shouldn’t be working in a camp,” Filosofia said.
“I agree,” said Emily. “Are there any graphic design jobs in your future?”
“There’s just this one. It’s a guy from Jamaica Plain who needs stationery and a brochure. He’s working on renovating an abandoned Masonic temple that’s sitting on top of a mound… .”