The Box in the Woods

“SO,” NATE SAID, “WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM TONIGHT, CLASS?”

They were back at camp, sitting on the gently bobbing dock, watching the moonlight spill over the water. They had a second dinner of brownies and muffins while millions of mosquitoes descended upon them, despite the best efforts of Janelle and her many sprays.

“Well,” Stevie said, brushing one from her arm, “people don’t love it when you come to town saying you want to donate a library, and then they find out that you actually want to make a podcast about a local tragedy.”

“Very good. And what did you learn, Janelle?”

Janelle looked up from her phone. She had been texting with Vi. Stevie could tell this without seeing the texts, because Janelle had a particular expression when communicating with Vi—a focus, but also a softness. Her shoulders dropped.

“That people love to put up statues of people who owned other people,” she said. “This guy John Barlow? I just looked him up. He had eight enslaved people on his property. Eight. And he has a statue.”

Oh. Not texting with Vi then. Stevie was way off.

“So what happens now?” Nate asked. “Do you think this whole thing is still going to happen? Mr. Think Jams isn’t going to be put off by criticism or public scorn, but I don’t know what that means for the podcast or whatever he’s doing.”

“I think people are going to be pissed,” Stevie said. “But I think it will still happen. It also sounds like Todd Cooper killed Michael Penhale. That’s a pretty good motive for wanting him dead. But it doesn’t make any sense to punish him for killing an innocent kid by killing three other innocent people along with him.”

“Does it need to make sense?” Janelle asked. “Does sense matter in murder?”

“Not always,” Stevie said. “But I think it does when you have one this carefully planned. Someone researched the Woodsman. Someone brought supplies. Someone chased Eric Wilde through the woods for miles. Why do all of that if you just wanted Todd Cooper dead?”

There was no answer to this question.

“You know what Patty is, right?” Nate said after a moment. “It just hit me. She’s the final girl—that’s what you call the survivor in horror movies. It’s almost always a girl, and . . .”

“Nate,” Janelle said.

“No, hear me out. This whole thing is ticking a lot of the horror movie boxes. Murder at a sleepaway camp. A serial killer. A final girl. A kid who died because some teenagers were being irresponsible.”

“But this is real,” Janelle said.

“I’m not denying that,” Nate replied. “I’m just telling you the tropes.”

“Does this mean you know who did it?” Stevie asked.

“Jason Voorhees, and like I said before, he lives in a lake. And he’s been to space.”

They let this profound insight linger in the space between the moon and the surface of the water. A gentle drizzle began to fall, and there was a rumble of thunder in the distance.

“We should probably go inside before it pours,” Janelle said.

The trio walked up the dock and back into the campgrounds. Stevie and Janelle walked Nate to the treehouse, then continued on to their cabin behind the art pavilion. Stevie had become accustomed to the dark of the woods at Ellingham Academy—winter nights in the mountains of Vermont are very long, and very dark indeed. But at Ellingham, there were always lights in the windows or a fire in the hearth, and the walls of the buildings were made of brick and stone, built to keep out the elements. Here at the camp, the veil between the outside and the inside was much thinner. There was a thick moistness to the air, gluing everything together.

And, of course, these were murder woods.

Stevie shook off the thought and followed Janelle inside their cabin. There was one overhead lamp inside, which seemed to cast more shadow than glow. They each had a small reading lamp at their bedside. It wasn’t a lot of light. They set to work unpacking and setting up their cabin. Janelle removed a stack of citronella candles from one of her bags and began placing them around the room in what seemed to be a ritualistic fashion, though they were more likely to be in the places insects could access the bunk, including under the screen with the hole in it. Stevie arranged her medications on the top of her bureau. She had learned from her Ellingham experience that sometimes she needed something to help her rest when she was in a new place or things were especially stressful. She took a pill, washing it down with the warm remains of soda in the can. She dumped her suitcase out onto her bed and shuffled through the contents, stuffing them in drawers. Janelle opened the drawers of her dresser one by one, testing them for sturdiness and sniffing them.

“These can use some freshening up,” she said. “I’m letting these air out overnight. Tomorrow I’ll make some scented liners.”

“You can make scented liners?” Stevie asked.

Janelle looked at Stevie as if she had asked her if she could spell her own name.

“I couldn’t bring my full tool bench with me, or my sewing machine, but I figured since we have a whole art pavilion to use, that would be okay.”

Janelle sat on the edge of her bed.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Today was weird.”

Stevie nodded in agreement.

They changed for bed and lay down to rest. Janelle cracked open her computer, and Stevie got out her tablet.

Outside, there was the chirp of cicadas and the occasional hoot of an owl. They cranked the fan on high, but it barely penetrated the thick air. The rain began to fall in earnest—a fresh summer rain that turned up the soil and drummed on the roof of the cabin. There was low, rolling thunder. The air was sweet with ozone and earth.

Carson had sent Stevie his entire collection of files on the case. There were over eight hundred documents, organized by subjects like SUSPECTS, CRIME SCENE, ARTICLES. She scanned through these, then opened one of the excerpts in the file marked SABRINA. It was from a book on the case.

Of the four victims that night, Sabrina Abbott’s presence in the woods is the hardest to explain.

Sabrina Abbott was born in 1960 to the town dentist, Dr. James Abbott, and his wife, Cindy. Cindy Abbott was a self-described homemaker, and the Abbott household had a squeaky-clean feel to it. Theirs was a house where there was always a casserole or a pie in the oven, where Mrs. Abbott did the dusting and the grocery shopping while Dr. Abbott saw patients. Sabrina and her younger sister, Allison, played horseshoes together in their large backyard. Allison was twelve when her eighteen-year-old sister graduated high school. They’d roller-skate together in the street or at the local rink.

“Even though I was younger, she never complained about having me around,” she said. “Sabrina loved me. She let me come into her room whenever I wanted. She helped me with my homework. She was the perfect older sister and I worshipped her. I really did.”

Perfect is a word often applied to Sabrina.

Sabrina was at the top of the graduating class of Liberty High in 1978 and was valedictorian. She had an unbroken 4.0 grade point average, was a highly proficient pianist, and was the editor in chief of the Liberty High School newspaper, the Trumpet. On weekends, she volunteered at the local library, reading to small children. She was the kind of person the teachers could count on to take tests down to the office, or to watch over a class for a moment. Sabrina was never known to say an unkind word about anyone. She was the quintessential goody two-shoes but seemed to have been widely liked.

Her boyfriend for most of high school, Shawn Greenvale, was a similarly dedicated student, though his accomplishments were not as great as Sabrina’s. At Liberty High, Sabrina was known for being talented at everything, and for being good in general.

She set the tablet down and stared up at the ceiling for a moment.

“You okay?” Janelle asked.

“Yeah,” Stevie said. “It’s just . . . the Ellingham case felt really far away. It was really far away. There was no one left to . . .”

Stevie couldn’t quite finish the thought, so Janelle stepped in.

“Feel any pain?”

“Yeah. Allison is still so raw. It’s never stopped for her. And here I am—I’m at this camp, trying to work it out. Do I have any right to do that?”

Janelle considered this for a moment as the rain strummed its fingers on the roof.

“I think it’s good that you’re wondering that,” she said after a moment. “It means you know where your priorities are. You are also the person who worked out what happened at Ellingham Academy in 1936.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah. You really are.”

“So why do I feel like a fake?”

“Because most people feel like fakes,” Janelle replied. “Impostor syndrome. It’s a thing.”

“Do you ever feel that way?”

Janelle considered this.

“No,” she said. “But what I do is different. I make things. If they work, I can see them work. If they don’t work, I take them apart until they do. I have science on my side. You’re making things you can’t see.”

It was good to have smart friends.

“The only times I feel it are when I think about Vi,” Janelle said. “Not . . . like, not about us. But now that they’re so far away . . . I can’t think sometimes. I only think about them. I think about the next text message, the next chat, the next picture. I should be more serious. I should be thinking about my project for next year, or college, and I am . . . but then I check my phone to see if they texted.”

“Isn’t that normal?” Stevie said.

“I guess. But I don’t want to be normal.”

“You love Vi,” Stevie said.

“Yeah. I do.”

“And Vi loves you.”

“Yeah,” Janelle said with a little sigh. “They do.”

“So I guess you have to ride it out.”

“I . . . I want Vi here. Vietnam is too far. September is too far.”

A silence settled over them, full of rain.

“Can you imagine how much Nate would hate this conversation?” Stevie finally said.

Janelle’s laughter rang out like a bell.

“I’m going to put my headphones in,” she said. “I listen to music to go to sleep.”

She switched out her light, and after a moment, Stevie did the same.

For the first time in months, Stevie felt complete again. She was working a case. She was with her friends. Janelle was breathing gently in her sleep. The fan ticked away like a heartbeat.

For a few moments, her mind swirled with the faces of the victims of the Box in the Woods: Sabrina, Eric, Todd, and Diane. The raven-haired girl. The boy with the blond curls. The guy with the light-brown shag. The redhead with the long, straight hair and all the freckles. They had been here, all those years ago. Slept in this place. Whatever happened to them, the answer was here somewhere. She would find it. She would pin it down. She would . . .

She slipped into sleep with the images still flowing through her mind, blending with the sound of the rain. She stirred only to swipe away some insect that was trying to fly up her nose. The next thing she was aware of was Janelle yelling her name. Stevie blinked awake. It was a moist, almost sweaty dawn. A soft light came in from around the edges of the curtain, and Janelle was standing by the bed, gazing in Stevie’s direction in horror. Stevie pressed herself upright in a second to face her friend, her heart already racing.

“What? Are you okay? What?”

Janelle pointed at the wall above Stevie’s bed. Stevie craned around, then jumped up when she saw what Janelle was indicating.

About four feet above where Stevie had been sleeping was the word SURPRISE.

July 11, 1978

9:30 p.m.

WHEN THE GATHERING IN THE CENTER OF TOWN DISBANDED, THE adults and the younger children all retired to their homes, to their television sets and bedrooms. To safety. To normality. But in the middle of the town, the teenagers, the ones who had come closest to the beast—they were awake.

They needed their own gathering, one that wasn’t powered by Jell-O salads and burgers and polite talk. The parents of Barlow Corners allowed them to go, but only in groups, and only if they promised not to leave the football field. Because if they did not let them go, they would find another way—they would sneak into the woods to talk. Better to let them go as a group, in the open seclusion of the field, where no one could sneak up on them.

So they gathered, coming from dozens of cars in the parking lot. Some arrived singly, and others in groups. Someone went into the school and switched some of the outside lights on, but these did not penetrate the middle of the field. All around, the dark curtain of the woods penned them in. Everyone knew what had happened—and yet no one knew what had happened. Just enough information had leaked to make a mess of the facts. As the days wore on, the story had whipped around in ever-wider loops, taking on new and strange qualities with every pass. You could hear all these stories passing from one person to another:

“I heard all their fingers were cut off.”

“There was a message written in blood on a tree.”

“I heard they found Sabrina’s head in a McDonald’s bag.”

Patty Horne had come with three other girls. They had been dropped off by her friend Candice’s father, who leaned against the hood of his car and watched them. Because Patty had been close to the victims, she had pride of place at this strange gathering. She sat, the understood queen of a large circle of people who spoke quietly and looked respectfully in her direction.

“What about Shawn?” she heard someone say. “He was freaked out about Sabrina. I bet he did it. He’s not even here. . . .”

Was this how it was going to be? People talking about severed heads and fingers and guessing who may have done it?

Apparently.

Candice passed her a cigarette and she accepted it. She reached into her fringed purse for some matches. Look how normal it all was—sitting here in her flip-flops and her yellow halter top and white shorts, getting grass stains on her ass and mosquito bites on her arms, smoking and talking with everyone from Liberty High here in the dark. What was real, even?

Then she saw a figure approaching, one she had been expecting. Greg Dempsey, her boyfriend. His dark shaggy hair was blown all over, which meant he had come on his motorcycle. He wore cutoffs and a beat-up Led Zeppelin T-shirt. That felt like a tribute to Diane, who’d loved the band with all her heart and soul.

Without a word, the group all shifted to make space for him next to Patty. He opened the bag he was carrying and pulled out a six-pack of Miller beer and cracked one open for himself, leaving the rest in the grass, an open invitation to Patty and really no one else.

“Your dad here?” he asked.

“No. He’s still working with the cops.”

“Doing what?”

“Patrolling or something.”

Patty’s father was a little older than most of her friends’ parents. He was one of the town’s illustrious war heroes. No one ever talked about it, but everyone knew that Mr. Horne had been a spy or something. He wasn’t a cop, but he was the kind of heavy guy who could help out when you were looking for a murderer. The town had a posse now, rolling slowly through the streets, watching the darkness at the edge of the woods.

“You want to get out of here?” Greg said quietly.

“Not allowed,” she said, nodding to Candice’s father. “He’s watching, and he’s taking us home at eleven.”

“Who cares? Let’s go.”

“Seriously,” she said.

Greg shook his head. He was almost nineteen now, and out of high school. He had never really answered to his parents before, and he definitely didn’t now. He shook his head and reached into his pocket, producing a handful of joints.

“Last ones,” he said. “Last of Diane’s rolls.”

Candice looked over at Greg as he lit one of the joints.

“They’re watching,” she said, indicating the cars and silent forms of the parents on the edge of the field.

“So? They can’t see. Looks like a cigarette.”

“What if they smell it?”

Greg took a long drag and passed it to Patty, who declined. Greg exhaled hard.

“So is this how it is now?” he said. “Who cares what they see?”

“If my dad saw me with a joint he wouldn’t pay for my college,” Candice replied.

He looked to Patty for an answer.

“You’re not going to college,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

“Excuse? I live with him.”

“For now. Are you going to live with Daddy forever? Do what he says?”

“Until I get my own place.”

Greg let out a short laugh. “When are you going to get your own place?”

Patty looked down. She had no plan, really. It was possible that, yes, she would live with her father forever and do what he said. She hadn’t thought about what would happen to her life much beyond this summer, and now this summer, while not over, was forever changed. Life would be different now.

An uncomfortable silence fell as the joint made its way around the circle. Greg pounded the rest of the beer and opened a second.

“They think maybe it had to do with drugs,” Candice finally said. “That’s what we were talking about before. Whoever Eric was buying from must have done it.”

Greg said nothing.

“You were selling before Eric,” Candice said.

“Yeah?”

“So who were you buying from?”

“That’s not important,” Greg said.

Patty plucked some blades of grass and crushed them between her fingers.

“But they think maybe that’s who did it,” she said to her boyfriend.

“That’s not who did it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know,” Greg snapped.

“How can you know?”

The rest of the group fell into wide-eyed silence, and there was a general quieting all around.

“This is bullshit,” Greg said. He dropped what was left of the joint into the beer can and stood up to leave. Patty jumped up as well and followed him toward the parking lot. Greg had parked his motorcycle at the end, as far away from the parents as he could, leaving them a long walk.

“Hey,” Patty said. “Hey.”

He stopped and turned.

“I’m not doing this,” he said. He had that tone he got when he wasn’t quite sober, a random loudness.

“My friends are dead,” she yelled, “and you’re being an asshole. . . .”

“Our friends,” he shot back. “God, you’re always like this.”

“Like what? You’re the one who hooked up with Sabrina. You cheated on me.”

He muttered something under his breath and got on his bike.

“Greg!” she screamed. She was losing it. It was all too much. Hot tears burned in her eyes. “Greg, don’t. You’re drunk. . . .”

He revved the engine to drown out her yelling and made to pull out. She stood in the way of the bike, so he walked it backward and turned out of the parking lot. She ran after the departing bike, yelling his name. She followed him all the way to where the parking lot met the road, crying and waving her flashlight. By now, everyone around was staring as she watched his bike disappear into the darkness.

Greg was barely a mile away when he left the road and went right into the trees and a wall of rock.