The Box in the Woods

STEVIE CHOSE THE PLACE FOR THE MEETING—THE UNUSED TREEHOUSE, the one that was meant to be Nate’s home for the summer. His bunk sat ready for his arrival behind a thin wooden wall.

Now that she had seen this place, Stevie felt like the treehouse thing was maybe overselling it. It was really a second-level building, accessible via a set of wooden steps, with an open area below for storing excess sporting equipment. Mostly it was a screened-in box with a bunch of empty shelves under the windows, and bench seats that had probably had cushions on them at one point. It was next to a tree, which was likely how it got the name. It was a hot, spidery mess lit by one ineffectual overhead light.

“See,” Janelle said to Nate when they entered. “You’re not missing out on much.”

This had not cheered Nate up.

Stevie sat on the least cobwebby window seat and watched the ground below, waiting for her guest. She finally saw him approach, dressed in flowing orange harem pants and a Box Box T-shirt. Carson came up the steps two at a time.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Sounds important.”

“I know who left the message on our wall,” Stevie said. “And the box on your path.”

“Oh! Oh, great!” He nodded, but his eyes darted a bit and he tucked his hands into his slouchy harem pant pockets.

“You did,” Stevie said.

This much she had already revealed to Nate and Janelle, who looked at Carson with unimpressed faces.

“Me? I . . .”

“I wouldn’t recommend whatever you’re planning on saying,” Janelle said, joining Stevie on the window bench.

“I would.” Nate was sprawled on the floor, picking at the splinters. “I like it when Stevie goes feral.”

To his credit, Carson said no more. He sat down on the floor and crossed his legs in a full yogic knot.

“Now will you tell us the how?” Janelle said. “That’s more what I want to know.”

“Sure.” Stevie stretched out a bit and her neck made a loud crack. “We knew from the start that the message was put on our wall in advance. We know that because it was dry and because there was paint under my bed. Also, we went all over the cabin to see how someone might get in. The screen windows have metal grates over them, the door was locked from the inside, and the floor is made of concrete. Impossible, right? But there was one way—there’s a hole in the screen on the window, only an inch or two big. And tonight, when I saw Dylan stick that entire hot dog roll in his mouth, I realized how someone could use a hole that size to gain access to our cabin.”

“Not what I expected to hear you say,” Nate said, “but okay.”

“You can get something large through a small opening if it’s soft,” Stevie went on. “The hot dog roll was soft, so Dylan could shove it in his mouth. So what might go through a little hole in a screen? Maybe something like this.”

Stevie held up the reusable bag Carson had given her. She made an okay gesture with her right hand, and with the left, pulled the bag through the circle made by her fingers.

“Fabric,” she said. “And who has a lot of fabric in custom, photorealistic patterns?”

“Oh no,” Janelle said, shaking her head. “Oh . . . you have got to be kidding me.”

“There’s an entire wall of it at the Bounce House,” Stevie said. “All you’d need to do is make a wood pattern. It was probably up there on the wall. You painted the message on the wall—kind of high up, so it was more in line with the window, and more in shadow. You let the paint drip, but not too much, because you had to make sure the message fit under the piece of fabric you were going to use to cover it. You wiped away any extra so it wouldn’t show. When it was dry, you covered it up with the piece of fabric, attaching it with some tape.”

She held up the piece of tape she’d found under the bed. She had gone back and retrieved it before this meeting.

“All you needed to do then was attach some thread or fishing line or something and string it out the window. Sometime in the night, you gave the string a tug and the fabric slid out through the screen. I think it must have brushed against my face as it came down. I thought what I felt was some kind of insect. And that was it. A message mysteriously appears on our wall. Then, of course, you prepared the box of dolls and claimed to find it on your run.”

“Yes!” he said, breaking into a huge grin. “Yes! You”—he pointed at Stevie—“are the real deal. That was nuts! That was so good! I knew I made the right decision.”

“Was this supposed to be some kind of test?” Nate asked.

“I don’t think so,” Stevie said. “It was for the show, wasn’t it?”

“Sometimes you need to prime the pump,” Carson said. “A little drama to get things going.”

“And your plan was to freak us out and make us feel like someone was sneaking into our cabin and leaving threatening messages?” Janelle said.

“You were never in any danger!” Carson said.

“How did we know that?”

“But you weren’t,” he said a bit less enthusiastically.

“So the plan was to fake this message thing and then what?” Stevie said. “Have it be part of the case? Make it seem like someone was trying to stop the podcast?”

“Well, yeah,” he said.

“And you didn’t think people might be annoyed by that?” Nate asked. “Like, people listening? To know that you faked threats against yourself?”

“Well, the idea was for no one to know . . .”

“When were you going to tell us?” Stevie said.

He reached deep into his messenger bag and pulled out a balled-up bag in a wood pattern.

“Have one. It’s the bag from the wood pattern in your cabin. I was going to tell you soon, because I knew you were alarmed. See, I even brought the bags.”

He tossed one to Stevie, who let it land on the ground.

“I’m going back,” Janelle said, shaking her head. “I have to talk to Vi.”

She looked to Nate.

“Oh, I’m staying,” Nate said, settling in. “This is absolutely my Think Jam.”

Stevie faced off with Carson, who looked altogether too happy for someone she had just busted for leaving creepy messages. He had the glowing contentment of a man who fully believed that he was one with the cosmos, feeling all the feels.

“So we’re clear,” Stevie said, “I’ll still work on this case, but I do it my way, which means never faking stuff.”

“No, I’ve got it, I—”

She held up a hand.

“I’m doing this on my own,” she went on. “I’ll talk to people.”

“And then we’ll—”

He just would not stop.

“I’ll,” she said, “tell you if I find anything. But these are real people. Janelle and I are real people. I know you have the money and you own this place, but you don’t own this town or their pain. We’re supposed to be helping. You’re not helping.”

If Carson was embarrassed by being dressed down by a seventeen-year-old girl at his camp, he certainly didn’t show it.

“I hear what you’re saying,” he said.

Nate shook his head in warning.

“Now you’re going to answer some questions,” Stevie went on. “Were the floors of the bunks always concrete?”

This clearly threw Carson for a loop.

“Always,” he said. “In case of flooding. Sometimes the lake spills over the banks.”

“Were they redone, or are these the originals?”

“They were redone . . . I think in the sixties?”

“But they were like this in 1978?”

“Yep,” he said. “Why? You think there’s something encased in the concrete or something?”

“No,” she said.

“Then why—”

“No,” she said again.

Carson shut up. He unfolded himself from the floor.

“I made the right decision with you,” he said. “I was trying to disrupt the narrative, but I promise you, I won’t do anything like that again.”

“Wow,” Nate said when he was gone. “Wow. If you don’t want to be a detective, I think you have a future in domination. He’s shorter now.”

Truth be told, Stevie had enjoyed it. She glowed with warm pleasure.

“What was the concrete thing about?”

“Sabrina’s diary,” Stevie said. “I wanted to know if there was any chance it could have been concealed in the floor. I guess not.”

“You know there’s basically no chance that thing is still around, right? If they haven’t seen it since 1978 and have already looked?”

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “If she was going out into the woods to buy pot, she wouldn’t bring her diary with her. It’s not like she was going to be sitting out there in the dark writing, ‘Dear diary, here I am, buying weed for the first time.’”

“No,” he said. “I guess not. What about in a tree? People do that a lot in books—stash something in a hollow tree.”

“Possible,” Stevie replied. “Seems risky, though. It could be destroyed by weather, or someone might find it. You’d want it to be in a safe, dry place that only you knew about.”

“Okay, what about someone obsessed with the case? Souvenir collectors. If someone found that diary, it would be huge.”

“True-crime people aren’t serial killers—they don’t want secret trophies. If someone had that diary, they’d want to tell everyone. That’s the whole point.”

Nate nodded in acceptance of this fact.

“So it seems like the diary is your main thing now. Is this because you feel like the case itself can’t be solved?”

“I don’t know if the case can be solved,” Stevie replied. “I don’t know if I’m the one who would be able to do it if it could be. It’s probably going to come down to DNA or something. But looking for the diary is something I can do to help someone who’s still around.”

“You didn’t tell Carson that.”

“Carson doesn’t need to know,” Stevie replied. “Screw Carson.”

“Agreed. Also, I think it’s a good plan. I don’t mean to sound like it’s not. It just seems like it also might be hard, but less hard than tracking down a serial killer from 1978.”

They fell into silence, listening to the chirp of the crickets or the cicadas or whatever it was that chirped all night in the summer. Some kind of chirping thing.

“People had so little to do back then,” Nate said meditatively. “Before the internet, I guess you had to keep a diary or something. How else would you remember what happened?”

Stevie hmmmmed.

“There will be children here tomorrow,” Nate said. “Children. With their little child fingers.”

“Child fingers?”

“I’m saying we won’t be safe anymore. This other counselor better stop being sick really quick.”

As Stevie walked into her cabin later, Janelle was wrapping up a call with Vi. Stevie could see their short silver hair on the screen, and their pink-tinted round glasses. Whatever lovey-dovey talk they were engaged in cut off quickly. Stevie said hello, then went over and flopped on her bed. It was not a particularly forgiving sort of bed, and the springs squeaked in protest. There was a pungent chemical smell in the air, and the message on the wall was gone.

“You got it off the wall,” she said as Janelle finished the call.

“Yeah, I used some denatured alcohol to soften it, then I scraped it off.”

“Denatured alcohol?”

“They use it for camping stoves, so there was some around. The smell will go away soon.”

“I don’t know if I want it to,” Stevie replied. “That’s probably the only thing I’ll solve all summer.”

She waited for Janelle to jump in and say no, of course not. Janelle was always encouraging, but she was also realistic. Her silence confirmed Stevie’s worries.

However, there was something that changed her mood immediately. A text from David popped up on her phone:

Got off work a day early. See you tomorrow.