The Box in the Woods

TRAINS RUN THROUGH COUNTLESS MURDER MYSTERY NOVELS. PEOPLE are pushed off them or vanish when they move between the cars. When trains pass through tunnels, at least one passenger will get an axe in the face in the dark. People who seem to be asleep on trains are dead, victims of strange poisons in their tea. If you’re not murdered on a train, you’ll probably end up as a witness, seeing something out the window as you speed by—a man with a gun creeping toward a house, a strangling in a window. Train times always mattered. Jasper couldn’t have been on the 7:14 from London because it doesn’t run on Sundays!

Stevie had never actually taken a train anywhere. Her family went places by car only, as trains had a vaguely European and suspicious air about them. It turned out that the train was a pretty quiet and kind of boring tube where you mostly heard other people’s phone conversations or smelled their sandwiches.

It had been a few frantic days. Once she got permission to go to Sunny Pines, she had to scramble to gather up her friends, while Carson moved some things around and got them all jobs that suited their abilities.

At Ellingham, Stevie had lived in a small house called Minerva, with three students on the first floor and three on the second. By the end of the school year, this number was down to four, for various unfortunate reasons. Stevie was one of the four, as was David. The other two were Janelle Franklin, her next-door neighbor, and Nate Fisher, who lived upstairs.

She began with Nate.

Nate Fisher had written a book when he was fourteen, a fantasy novel that had gotten so popular online that a publishing company picked it up. The thing he created to keep himself away from people accidentally launched him into the world at large. The publisher wanted him to go on tour, to make videos, to smile and promote, and—most important—to write a second book.

Nate was always “working” on his book, which meant that Nate was never working on his book. He went all the way to Ellingham not to write his book. Nate would go to Mars if it meant that he didn’t have to write his book. It was never clear to Stevie why he didn’t want to write it; he must have liked writing in order to write a book in the first place. Sometimes she would try to get him to explain, but it always ended with him saying something like “That’s not how it works” before windmilling his arms around and disappearing to his room. She sensed it was something to do with performance anxiety, which she understood. Or maybe it was as simple as not wanting to do something that other people wanted you to do, which was also something she understood.

Nate was the only person in the group who would hate the idea of camping more than Stevie, but she was sure that when offered the chance to reunite with his friends and not write, he would leap at the chance. She was right.

Carson had found the perfect job for him. There was some kind of treehouse library at the camp that wasn’t used very often. Nate could be the camp librarian, which wasn’t really a position. He even arranged to quickly build a bunk space up there out of plywood so that Nate could stay up there all he wanted.

“I get to live by myself in a tree, doing some bullshit job for no one?” Nate said when Stevie told him. “This is my dream, Stevie. This is my dream.”

So Nate was in.

Next was Janelle. Janelle was the person Stevie considered to be her best friend. She was the person Stevie could go to in the middle of the night when she had a panic attack. She was the person who pushed Stevie to acknowledge her feelings. She had met her partner, Vi, on the first day of school, and the two had been together since. Janelle was a budding engineer, a maker, a crafter—someone who was only happy when she had wires in one hand and a hot glue gun in the other. Whether you needed to build a miniature drone or make a dress, Janelle was your woman.

Unlike Nate and Stevie, Janelle was fine with the idea of camp but wouldn’t be content with a pointless job with no responsibilities. Carson shuffled some things around and returned with the perfect gig—Janelle could be head of arts and crafts.

“It’s going to be a lot of crafting,” Stevie explained to her. “And there will be so many supplies to organize.”

This gave Stevie her cover job. She would be Janelle’s assistant. The two of them would share a bunk behind the art pavilion that usually went to senior staff.

Not everyone could make it. Vi, Janelle’s partner, had gone to Vietnam for the summer to visit family. This was part of the reason Stevie thought Janelle would come—she was lonely without Vi, without her friends.

This left David. That conversation had not gone how Stevie had expected. Stevie thought he would accept. His campaign position, while not voluntary, was low paid. It was the kind of job that needed you more than you needed it, and it was clear that he and Stevie missed one another.

“I want to . . .” he said. Stevie felt her chest rising, but there was a weight hanging off the end of the sentence.

“But . . .”

“But . . . this work I’m doing now, it means something to me. I didn’t apply to college yet. I’ve committed to this, and I . . .”

A strange constellation of emotions came upon her. There was a damp rush of sadness—then an urgency of feeling, something like panic, but with a duller edge. Then a punch of soft-boiled anger. Back to sadness again, with a goose egg blooming in her throat. All of this happened in about five seconds.

“You there?” he asked.

She coughed softly.

“Yup. Yeah. No, I get it.”

“I mean it,” he said. “I really want to come be with you. It just . . . it feels like I’m repairing some of the damage my family has caused by doing this work. I really hate saying no. It sucks saying no.”

Even though the answer still felt like a blow, there was a lot of feeling in his voice. She could tell he meant it. She picked at a small hole in her T-shirt.

“Sure,” she said. “You have to do this.”

It came out a bit dry, because Stevie didn’t really know how to have sensitive conversations.

“Don’t sound so sad,” he said sarcastically.

“No, I . . . I do. I get it.”

They hung on a moment in silence.

“But . . . ,” he said. “I can take a little time off to visit. I’ll be there. We’ll camp. Oh, we’ll camp.”

And so Stevie found herself on a train heading toward the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. Camp Wonder Falls, or Sunny Pines, was located about an hour outside Springfield, not far from Amherst, in the green and rolling landscape dotted with lakes.

The camp had provided an exacting list of things to bring: a set of twin sheets, a pillow, a blanket, three towels—all with your name on them. Flip-flops, sneakers, sturdy socks that were at least as high as the ankle, either a one-piece bathing suit or trunks and a swim top, bug spray, bite cream, a high-powered flashlight, at least one pair of long sweatpants or similar exercise pants, a long-sleeved sports top, a hat . . .

Ellingham had also set a list of things to bring to school, but the specificity of this one spoke volumes. The sturdy socks at least as high as the ankle meant there was some kind of hiking in the future. The sweatpants and long-sleeved shirt had an ominous ring to Stevie, hinting at activities in wild places where protection would be needed, or maybe walks at night to go raccoon-poking.

She reminded herself that she was not required to poke raccoons. While she was technically going to be a camp employee, Carson had promised that her position was special. She would have the camp experience without the camp requirements.

In the rush to get ready to go, she had little time to learn about the Box in the Woods case. She knew the basics, of course—all true-crime fans did—but she didn’t know the case in the way she had known the Ellingham Affair. She’d spent over a year researching that case before she wound up at Ellingham. She watched everything, read everything, participated in every message board, listened to every podcast, so that by the time she arrived at the scene, she could navigate without a map and quote half the books.

Not so this time. She powered through podcasts as she packed and read as much as she could at night. Her old friend anxiety started bubbling inside her, ready to party. This time, it was too much, too soon. She was going to fail, and that would mean she was a failure. She would never solve anything else. Never be a detective. Her life would go nowhere.

The texts from Nate came at a good moment.

Stevie.

STEVIE

THERE IS A TRAPEZE IN HERE

This confused her enough to defuse her internal situation.

When she reached Springfield (she had been lurking in the metallic vestibule of the train for two stops, paranoid she would miss it), she dragged her heavy, wheeled suitcase into the terminal.

Another text, this time from Carson, who had arranged to meet her.

Outside.

She stepped outside and saw a man, not much taller than her, leaning against the wall, typing furiously on his phone. He clearly worked out a lot—he had muscular arms and a six-pack that he showed off in a snug black T-shirt. The bottom half of his body was adorned in flowing yoga pants in a purple-and-green mandala pattern. His head was shaved completely bald. He had the word CARBON tattooed in huge letters down his left arm, and the word BASED down the right.

“Hey!” he said, waving to her as if they were old friends. “Stevie! Stevie!”

As she got closer she noticed that he reeked of burned sage. Not yoga studio levels—more like he’d been in a brushfire on a sage farm.

“My car’s out this way,” he said.

Stevie continued behind, dragging the bag toward the green Tesla that he was opening. The inside of the car was a creamy pale tan leather that was probably called “latte” or “toasted coconut” or something like that. A set of wooden meditation beads hung from the rearview mirror, and there was a pink crystal in the cupholder. The sage smell was much stronger inside the car, and Stevie found herself hungry for air.

“Barlow Corners is about an hour’s drive,” he said, pulling the eerily silent car out of the parking space. “Your friends are already here.”

“They said there’s a . . . trapeze?”

“Oh yeah. They’re in the Bounce House.”

Stevie could not bring herself to ask why it was called the Bounce House, and it didn’t matter. She knew he was about to tell her.

“I call it the Bounce House because that’s where I host all kinds of creators and we bounce ideas around. We call them Think Jams.”

She resisted the impulse to open the car door and jump.

“Tonight you’ll all stay in the guest rooms there,” he went on. “Tomorrow I can drive you through town and take you over to the camp. Might as well get in one night with air-conditioning and hot water, right? Also, no snakes.”

Anxiety is very accommodating. Minutes ago, Stevie’s anxiety was all about failure. It neatly converted itself into worry about places called Bounce Houses and not having hot water or air-conditioning. It was perfectly ready to bring the snakes to the party. It’s a big tent. All problems are welcome.

“Snakes?”

“I mean, there are some around the lake, but not at the camp.”

“The camp is on a lake.”

“Yeah, but the snakes are . . . I mean, they’re around, but over on the other side. No snakes at the camp.”

There were for sure snakes at the camp. It was entirely made of snakes. Why hadn’t she thought of the snakes?

“Tonight I thought we could have a meeting,” Carson said, “to go over the details of the case. And tomorrow I have something really special planned.”

The snakes slithered to the side of her thoughts.

“What?”

“A big event, sponsored by Box Box. See, I donated a children’s reading room to the town library, so I’m having a big picnic to open it, with free food and entertainment. I’ve made sure lots of people will be there, including some who were there in 1978. You’ll be able to meet some of the witnesses and even some of the suspects. We’ll start our work off right. The Box in the Woods—finally solved!”

“If it can be solved,” Stevie said.

“Of course it can. With everything available now? Someone just has to put some pressure on, get things moving, look into all the stuff that’s been ignored for decades.”

“But people have been doing that.”

“Not people who own the camp,” he said with a smile.

She had to admit, he had a point.

A ridge of gently rolling green hills appeared in the distance. Buildings became more scarce, and the land opened up like a blank page waiting for a story. He turned a corner between two sprawling fields. Every road got smaller and deeper into the trees. It reminded her a little of the drive to Ellingham Academy, except that drive was up, up, up. This drive was more gentle, the terrain far less imposing. Everything had the soft veneer of Americana—flags, farm stands, screened porches. There were thick green canopies of trees along the roads, under which people walked dogs or rode bikes or took purposeful runs while listening to headphones and squinting at an invisible finish line.

The first sign they had entered Carsonland was the stone Buddha next to the green mandala-covered mailbox. They turned up a short drive, past a trampoline, a pool, and a small field with three goats. Stevie stepped out into a peaceful place bordered by a burbling creek, nestled in the trees. There were piles of rocks out in the shallow water, delicately balanced on one another.

“This is the Bounce House,” he said, pulling her bag toward a barn—or what had probably been an old barn at some point. Everything about it looked fresh and new, from the electric-blue paint to the massive windows with the hot dog mustard–yellow sills.

“That’s my house over there,” Carson said, pointing through the trees to a large purple house with an eye painted where the front of the house met the peak of the roof. It gazed down on Stevie sleepily.

The door to the barn opened. There was a high-pitched noise, and then Janelle Franklin came soaring over as if on winged feet and grabbed Stevie in an embrace.

“You’re wearing your lemons,” Stevie said.

“Of course! We’re all here! Almost all here!”

Janelle loved lemons, and when she wore her lemon-print dress, it was a sign that she was happy. She had wrapped her braided hair in a matching yellow scarf and complemented the whole look with a sunny yellow eyeshadow that popped cheerily against her black skin. This is what Janelle was like—always dressed to express. She understood how things went together, how makeup was applied, how to be perfectly together and make it all look easy. It probably was for her. She did calculus in her head, for fun.

Behind her was Nate, his lips twisted into a wry smile. Even when he smiled, Nate’s expression suggested that of an old-timey fisherman resignedly watching his boat being devoured by a sea serpent. His hair was always a bit scruffy, and his clothes a little too big for him. At school he usually wore beat-up cargo pants or corduroys—for his summer look, he had exchanged these for beat-up cargo shorts. He wore the same T-shirts that he had in school; this one read SHRIMP OPTIONAL.

“I’ll let you guys catch up,” Carson said. “I have evening meditation. I’ll be back in an hour. Everyone good with vegan pizza?”

There was a polite pause.

“Or I can get some dairy pizza. See you in a few. Make yourself at home, Stevie.”

“Oh,” Nate said in a low voice, opening the wide barn door, “wait until you see home.”

The first thing that struck Stevie was the vibrant orange color of the walls—it made her eyeballs wobble in her skull.

“Restful, isn’t it?” Nate said.

There were no chairs or tables. Everywhere you looked there were fancy beanbags made of some NASA-quality foam that made you feel like you were floating and supported you in any position. Thick ropes hung from the ceiling with knots tied in them, so you could climb or swing. There were yoga balls, and regular inflatable balls, and a partially deflated human hamster ball in the corner.

“Welcome to the house that boxes built, I guess,” Janelle said.

As reported, there was indeed a single trapeze suspended high up in the rafters.

“How do they trapeze in here?” Stevie said. “There’s not enough room to swing, at least, not very far. And what if they fall?”

“We’ve been wondering about that for the last few hours,” Janelle replied. “We think they use a hook to pull the trapeze over to the loft, then they must jump off really gently and kind of hang there. They probably use that to get down.”

She indicated a large rolled-up tarp against the wall.

“So they just hang from the ceiling and fall into a tarp?” Stevie asked.

“Yeah. It’s not really a trapeze as much as it’s a . . . dangler?”

“He calls them Think Jams,” Nate said, allowing himself to sink deeper into the beanbag. “Did he tell you that? Think Jams.”

“I mean, the thing is, I don’t hate it,” Janelle said. “And that fact makes me hate myself.”

Along the side of the main room there were hundreds of inch-square pieces of fabric, little flaps of them in a grid pattern, attached to the wall with tape. It wasn’t art, Stevie was pretty sure.

“We have no idea what those are for,” Janelle said. “Maybe he’s really into quilting.”

Stevie flopped into one of the massive beanbags, which caught her in its space beads or foam or whatever was in it.

Funny how the world shifts when you’re in the same space with your friends. The air is energized, the light is warmer. The two weeks they had been separated evaporated, and they began to talk as if they had finished their last in-person conversation moments before.

“I’m so ready for this,” Nate said. “I love summer camp horror movies, so I rewatched a bunch of them last week to prepare. Do you want to hear about summer camp horror movies?”

“Nate . . . ,” Janelle began.

“You cannot deny me this,” Nate said. “This is a murder story at a camp. It’s how I want to go. My favorite is called Sleepaway Camp. It makes the least sense. First of all, the campers in this movie are, like, eighteen years old. Not the counselors. The campers. Everyone in this movie is terrible. They spend pretty much all their time trying to have the sex. Obviously, though, in terms of the killer, Jason is still the best. He lives in a lake and commits murders in space.”

“Are you done?” Janelle asked.

“Do you live in a lake?”

“Okay,” Janelle said, getting up and smoothing out her dress. “I have to call Vi. I won’t be long—we have to schedule because of the time difference.”

“How’s Vi?” Stevie asked.

“They’re good. They like Da Nang. It’s a lot of family stuff. They’re mostly working on their Vietnamese, plus learning more Mandarin. It’s . . . you know. Really far, though. I’ll be right back in. Okay? Right back!”

“Do you have to make a romance call?” Nate said when Janelle was gone.

“No,” Stevie replied. “We don’t have a schedule.”

“How is David?”

“Good,” she replied with a shrug.

One of the things that made Nate and Stevie such good friends was their mutual hatred of sharing emotional things. Somehow, they managed to have a deeper bond by staying on the surface—as if they were snorkeling their feelings, floating along side by side, observing all of nature’s wonders without getting close enough to be stung by something under a rock.

“So here we are again in Murder Town,” Nate said. “Where you live.”

They both gazed up at the trapeze, suspended from the ceiling. It was an innocent-enough object, meant to be fun, but in that moment it reminded Stevie of another Nutshell Study, one called Attic, which featured a hanging.

“What do you think?” he asked.

He didn’t need to explain. Stevie knew what he meant, because he meant a lot of things. How was it to be back on a case? What did she think about this case?

“I don’t know yet,” she replied.

“I think it’s going to be great,” he said. “Murder camp, living in a tree, not seeing anyone. This is my summer. This is when I shine. I’m going to achieve peak me. And there are no tunnels here, so you probably won’t get trapped underground. I feel good about it. I think?”

That Nate was feeling so positive should have served as a warning, but people rarely recognize signs when they appear.

July 7, 1978

8:05 a.m.

SHERIFF ELLIOT REYNOLDS AND HIS DEPUTY, DON MCGURK, TURNED down the drive into Camp Wonder Falls. Don tapped absently on the passenger’s side window.

“What do you think it is?” Don asked. “Drowning?”

“I hope not,” Sheriff Reynolds replied.

“Can’t be someone dead. Eight in the morning at the camp?”

It didn’t make sense to Sheriff Reynolds either. From the sound of the confused message he had gotten over the radio, something very bad had gone down. A serious accident, no ambulance needed. But, as Don pointed out, it seemed unlikely that there was a dead person at the camp on a sunny weekday morning.

Then again, since Michael Penhale, Sheriff Reynolds had felt something turn in Barlow Corners. Of course, accidents happened everywhere. But that business—it had tainted things, tainted his reputation. A barely perceptible but inescapable whiff of rot had taken over this once-pristine little corner of America.

Damn that business. Damn it to hell. Everything about it was terrible—but what was the point of ruining a young man’s life like that? Who would it have helped?

No. He really did not want another dead kid in Barlow Corners.

Susan Marks was waiting for them by the camp entrance along with a weeping Patty Horne. The look on her face confirmed the worst. When he stopped the car Susan immediately opened the back door and shooed Patty inside, then followed.

“What’s going on, Sue?” the sheriff asked.

“One of the counselors is dead. Eric Wilde. He’s been murdered.”

“Come on,” Don said.

“I’ve just about been able to keep this place under control. He’s up on the path toward the woods. Keep going and this road will join up with it. Hurry.”

Sheriff Reynolds didn’t have to be told twice. He started up the road with as much speed as he could manage without risking hitting a wayward camper.

“There’s more,” Susan said. “We have three more missing. Apparently they went out into the woods last night.”

“Who’s missing?” he said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

“Diane McClure, Todd Cooper, and Sabrina Abbott.”

“Sabrina Abbott? And Todd Cooper?”

“Shit,” Don said quietly.

The sheriff shot him a glance.

“Patty,” Susan said. “Explain to them what you told me.”

Patty burst into a torrent of sobs.

“Come on, Patty,” Susan said firmly but not unkindly. “We can’t waste any time. Tell them.”

Patty heaved, then brought herself under enough control to speak. “They went out around eleven. . . . They go out . . . Eric gets the . . .”

“Gets the what?” the sheriff prompted as he turned the car slightly to merge onto the dirt path.

“I . . . I can’t . . .”

“You can,” he said. “I don’t care what was going on, just tell me.”

“He . . . gets the grass. In the woods. They went out for the grass.”

“Shit,” Don said again, but he managed to keep it under his breath.

“Stop here,” Susan said. Don remained in the car to coordinate over the radio and watch Patty. Susan and the sheriff hurried down the path. The morning was eerily silent, the campers all gathered in the dining area. It was a stunning morning, soft and sweet, birdsong in the air. It made the sight of Eric’s discolored and lifeless body all the more grotesque. Magda McMurphy, the camp nurse, was with him, though it was immediately clear that there was nothing she could do aside from shoo away the flies.

“He’s been dead for some time,” Magda said. “A few hours at least.”

The sheriff squatted down next to the body.

“Let’s turn him over,” he said to Magda.

They rolled the body carefully, and the full extent of the carnage was now clear.

“What in holy hell happened here?” the sheriff said in a low voice.

“I can count six stab wounds,” Magda said. “There may be more. It’s hard to tell. He’s also got a massive head wound.”

Sheriff Reynolds took a long, steadying breath and sprung back to stand.

“Come on,” he said to Susan, then broke into a run back to the car. Susan paced him easily. He threw open the back door to the cruiser, where Patty Horne sat with her knees tucked up to her chest, her long hair pulled over the sides of her face like she was trying to cocoon herself away from the horror.

“Patty,” he said without any preamble. “Where do they go to get the grass?”

“In the woods. Up the road.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Once.” She nodded heavily. “I don’t know where, it’s just . . . in the woods somewhere.”

“Do you walk or drive?”

“Todd drives. We take his Jeep.”

“About how far up the road? How long do you drive?”

“I don’t know,” she said, still weeping but maintaining control. “Five minutes?”

“Stay here with Susan.”

Patty slid out of the car, looking terrified.

“Keep all the kids together,” he said to Susan. “I don’t even want them going to the bathroom by themselves, got it?”

Susan nodded, and he knew she was more than up to the task. He got back behind the wheel, where Don regarded him in bafflement.

“What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a dead kid with half a dozen stab wounds to his chest.”

“Shit,” he said. “Do we call the mayor if Todd’s involved?”

“No,” the sheriff said, stepping on the gas. “We’re not getting him involved again. Keep him the hell out of this as long as we can. We call the state police and head out now, see if we can find the others. Get them on the horn.”

They took the bumpy road through the woods at a good pace. It didn’t take long to find Todd’s Jeep. Patty’s estimate had been correct—it was about five minutes up the road, parked off to the side on a slight diagonal. The sheriff pulled the cruiser up behind it. He retrieved his gun and holster from the locked glove compartment. Guns weren’t usually required in Barlow Corners; he’d only pulled it once in his career there, during a suspected robbery that turned out to be a raccoon in the wall.

“Get the rifle from the trunk,” he said to Don.

Once armed, the two men began to scan the area. There was nothing around to suggest a rendezvous spot.

“Todd!” the sheriff called. “Diane! Sabrina!”

There was no reply.

“Footprints this way,” Don said as he scanned the dirt. “Looks like they went in this direction.”

They tramped into the trees, pushing back branches, calling all the while. Birds scattered, but no one replied. They came upon a small clearing, with a blanket on the ground and the smoldering remains of a fire, now just a tiny smoking glow under a pile of smoked-out logs. There was a tape player sitting on one of the logs by the fire. The blanket was a sleeping bag that had been unzipped and spread out, and an open can of Coke sat on a log. Three unopened beers were on the ground nearby, along with a cafeteria tray that contained a McDonald’s bag, some small papers, and some kind of green substance.

“Marijuana,” the sheriff said, examining it. “They were here. I don’t know why they’d leave this behind if they weren’t in trouble.”

He scanned the ring of trees around them. In a clearing like this, you were vulnerable. There were ample places to hide, and someone could approach from any direction. In the dark, this place would have been terrifyingly easy to attack a group of teenagers.

He pulled his handgun from its holster.

“Todd Cooper is a big kid,” Don said, as if having the same thought. “He’d fight. So would Diane.”

But there was no sign of a fight. The area was neat. It was as if they had simply walked away from their camp, leaving the fire, the tape player, and a significant amount of grass spread out on a tray.

The sheriff and Don made a slow circuit of the area, looking at the spaces between the trees, examining the ground.

“Here,” the sheriff said. “Something’s been dragged here.”

They picked their way between the trees. Don reached for a branch with a piece of torn dark green fabric and a tuft of white filler clinging to it.

“Looks like it could have come from a sleeping bag,” Don said.

They continued on, and about a minute later came upon a sagging hunting blind. Beside it, neatly rolled, was the sleeping bag with a tear in the side. The woods were velvety quiet as they approached the box. The sheriff opened it slowly. The smell hit first, seconds before his brain could process the hideous jigsaw that was before his eyes.

“Oh god,” Don said. “What the hell . . . what . . .”

There was a single-word message, roughly painted on the inside of the lid in white paint. It read: SURPRISE.