Bitch Factor – Chapter 16 – and a Free Book
Saturday, August 1, Camp Cade, Texas
“I heard it again,” Courtney whispered.
“Heard what?” Her bunk mate’s voice, thick with sleep, rose from the darkness.
“Lisa, someone’s creeping around outside.” Courtney held her breath in the muggy dawn, listening for skulking noises. At dinnertime around the campfire, and later, walking back to the cabin, she’d gotten a feeling – a scary feeling.
“It’s probably someone going to the latrine.”
“The latrine’s not around here.” In fact, it stood in the middle of camp, near the counselors’ quarters. Their own cabin lay farthest out, farthest from the lake.
“It’s nobody. Go back to sleep.”
But Courtney knew she hadn’t imagined it. In nearly two weeks at Camp Cade, nothing like this had happened. She wasn’t in the habit of imagining things.
“I heard someone – or something – creeping around. There it is again. Listen!”
Outside the window, something rustled, like dead leaves. The cabin sat in a clearing, away from the jutting pines and dense underbrush of the woods, but dry bark had been spread in the flower beds as mulch. Someone must be standing in the flower bed, trying to look in.
Courtney peered hard at the window nearest her bunk. Had the shadow shifted outside the pale curtain?
“Probably a raccoon.” Her bunk mate’s voice sounded more alert. “Who would be creeping around this late?”
“A chain-saw killer.” Courtney watched the shadow, waiting to see if it moved.
“There’s no such thing as a chain-saw killer, except in the movies.”
Maybe. But other kinds of killers were real enough. Like Mr. Parker Dann. Out on bail, Daddy Travis had said, not locked up like murderers ought to be.
Courtney’s eyes felt gritty. She needed to blink, but she didn’t want to miss –
There! The shadow moved. Didn’t it?
“I’m going to wake up Miss Bryant.” Bryant was the nicest of their three counselors, the one least likely to get mad at being awakened before reveille.
Slipping over the side of the bunk, Courtney dropped quietly to the bare wooden floor.
“Courtney, you’re not going out there? Suppose it really is someone?”
“Shhhh. If you keep quiet, maybe I’ll find out.”
She sounded bolder than she felt. She didn’t want to go out there like some dumb chucklehead in a TV movie. When told NOT TO GO IN THE ATTIC, where did they always go? To the attic, of course, to get beheaded by the Rhinestone Ripper or gutted by the Shadylane Stabber.
Somebody had to go out there, though. Some had to alert a counselor.
“But, Courtney—”
“I don’t want to lay awake till breakfast worrying about someone chopping us up in our sleep.” She shuddered at the thought and glanced back at the curtain swaying gently in the breeze of the ceiling fan. Was the shadow still there? Maybe she had imagined it. Or maybe the killer had moved on to chop up someone in another cabin. These girls were all her friends.
She pulled on her bathing suit, then her T-shirt and shorts. She’d planned to get in a few early laps anyway.
“You… um… want me to go with you?”
Courtney sat on the lower bunk to put on her shoes. Lisa’s round brown eyes and chubby cheeks reminded her of Ellie.
“No, stay here. If I don’t show up for chow,” she made her voice spooky, “send someone to look for my mangled, beheaded body.”
“Courtney! I don’t think you should—”
“Shhhh! Like you said, it’s probably just a raccoon.”
She slipped out the door. The sultry darkness enveloped her as she turned toward the window where she’d seen the shadow. The rustling came again, then footsteps sounded in the dirt.
Rounding the corner, Courtney saw white running shoes flash in the moonlight as someone darted behind the next cabin in the clearing. Something about the person’s shape looked familiar. Willing her feet to hit the ground softly, Courtney followed the muted footsteps… away from the cabin… into the thicket surrounding the lake.
Then she slowed down.
It was dark under the trees, and the footsteps had stopped.
In the overlapping shadows, someone could be hiding, ready to pounce as she walked past.
Courtney waited, holding her breath again, listening.
Behind her something shifted in the grass. She whirled, her throat tight with fear; but it was only a frog.
All right, ‘fraidy-cat, why did you come out here if you were just going to freak out when you got to the scary part? Now suck it in and get MOVING… moving… moving…
Slowly, she edged forward toward the lake, peering around each tree as she passed it, casting frequent glances over her shoulder.
Something splashed in the water.
Probably just a fish, she thought. Just a fish… a fish… a fish…
When she emerged into the moonlight, Courtney quietly exhaled and looked out over the inky lake, shrouded now in fog. Nothing moved, not a sound, not a fish, not even a breeze.
But there, in the soft dirt beside the pier – a shoe print.
She crept closer, squatting for a better look. A heel print, under the sign announcing today’s swim meet: SATURDAY, 1:00 P.M., VISITORS WELCOME. All week Courtney had been swimming laps before breakfast, out to the diving platform and back. The counselors would croak if they knew she swam alone, but how else could she get enough practice? In the afternoon race she planned to knock Queen Toad off her pedestal.
The person she chased must have stopped beside the pier. To read the sign? Or was it one of the other girls, trying to spook her?
Courtney stood up and carefully fitted her sneaker into the heel print. It was too big to be one of the girls’.
Yet the shadow had seemed vaguely familiar.
The sky was already turning from black to gray. Soon there’d be fingers of pink jutting above the trees. Courtney walked to the end of the pier and sat down to wait for sunrise.
Join me right here next week, same time same place, for another Bitch Factor chapter.
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