Budget Cuts

In late August on Lake Kiswet at Camp Weet’agogoga, you can smell the green fumes of drying pine needles shimmering up through dusty shafts of hot sun. A fine red silt lined the banks, constricting, cracking in the heat as it strangled the shores. You can smell the caustic, oily tar of hard sap oozing from scared roots that twisted into the dusty sand laying in the shade along the bike paths, until it was kicked up and carried away on a breeze in a wispy murmur.

When night fell the smells were not wiped away, only subdued, suspended in the cold of the dark, waiting for the warmth of the morning sun to release them to twist across the noses of tomorrow's intrepid pioneers. Though tomorrow’s youth have yet to rise. 

The flames of the camp fire flickered in the breezes that breathed off the lake. Camp Counselor Chad knelt down, falling into a whispering timbre as he panned across the wide-eyed gaze of the campers, letting the moment land before delivering the final question.

“And do you know where the killers are now?”

The children, all except Mike, held their breath in anticipation.

“Right here at Camp Weet‘agogoga.”

The children covered their mouths, shocked. In the silent moment of surprise a rustle came from the bushes. All their firelit faces, save Mike’s, turned to the crunching leaves and jostling branches. A moaning figure burst from the bushes, clad in an orange prison uniform and a thin mask. It yelled out as it raised a stick, waving it back and forth as it wailed. 

Most of the children gathered around the campfire, leapt from their seats, screaming as they fled toward the cabins. A handful cowered, covering themselves and bracing for the worst, eventually looking up through squinted eyes and splayed fingers and scrambling to their feet to follow the others. A few stragglers squealed in delight, desensitized to scary things, before realizing it was all a ruse and sauntering off to join the others.

Mike watched them go, indifferently. The assailing figure pushed his mask back with a belly laugh as he sidled up to Chad and slapped him on the shoulder. It was Rusty, another of the camp counselors. The two of them shared a battery of conspiratorial chortleings, poking fun at the scaredy cats. Mike was unscared and unamused, more focused on the ghost that stood over Chad’s shoulder, the ghost’s arms crossed disapprovingly as he listened to Chad butcher the story, adding his own and mostly unheard corrective commentary that he had begun to direct toward Mike when he realized the boy could see and hear him. As the commotion died down Mike added a measured comment. “I heard it happened differently.” 

“What?” Chad continued to laugh, pushing Rusty and slapping hands with him.

“It wasn’t a prison.”

Chad still wasn’t quite listening. “Huh?”

“The killers,” Mike continued calmly. “They didn’t escape from a prison.”

“Oh, no?”

Rusty nodded toward the cabins. “I’ll go check on ‘em.”

Chad gave him a quick nod, and turned a suspicious eye on Mike. “Yeah, cool.”

Mike watched Rusty saunter off before adding, “It was a mental institution,” and turning his attention back to Chad, “and they didn’t escape. They were let out.”

“Let out?”

“Budget cuts.”

“Budget cuts?”

Mike wrinkled his nose. “Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”

Chad scowled. “What are you talking about?”

“Your story. It’s a lie.”

“It’s not a lie. It’s a ghost story.” He waved toward the cabins where the kids had run off, “for the kids.

“I don’t think they liked it.”

“I don’t know, they seemed pretty scared to me.”

“It wasn’t the story, it was Rusty, popping out of the bushes and yelling at them.”

“That’s part of the whole thing.” he waved at the bushes where Rusty had popped out. “That’s how they told it to me when I was a kid. It’s all made up.”

“Not all of it.”

Chad raised his chin. “Oh, yeah?”

“They really were all murdered. But it wasn’t back in the sixties, it was in eighty-six. Still, almost thirty years ago now.” 

It looked to Chad as if Mike was looking off into the distance over his shoulder as he talked. He couldn’t see that Mike was listening to the ghost standing over Chad’s shoulder, and after a short pause Mike continued. 

“This wasn’t a summer camp back then. It was a logging camp run by Pollard Mills. At the time there were more than fifty Jacks in the camp. Everyone of them died at the hands of only two men. Brian Falls and Patrick Smith, and they didn’t break out of prison. It was a mental institution, and they didn’t escape, they were released. Budget cuts. By the late eighties, the government had defunded mental healthcare so aggressively that all but a handful of mental health facilities found themselves with next to no funding and were forced to close down.”

Chad scrutinized him. “How could you know all this?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Mike disregarded his concern with a wave of his hand and continued. “Anyway, some of the inmates gravitated to the cities, bolstering the homeless populations, others committed terrible crimes and were absorbed into the prison system. Brian and Patrick gravitated to the logging camp that used to operate right here. Brian was a genius and Patrick was a giant. During their time, institutionalized together, they’d formed a bond and had become a formidable team. Brian always had a brilliant plan and Patrick was physically unstoppable. Had they not been released when they were, some kind of massacre would have undoubtedly taken place at the hospital.”

Chad narrowed an eye on the boy.

“At first they pilfered goods at night, watching from the outskirts of camp, until Brian had the brilliant idea of picking one of them off so they could use their clothes to move about the camp more freely—they, of course, still dressed in their hospital whites. After that they picked off one after the other until they had killed over half of the Jacks.”

“How didn’t they notice?”

Mike stared over Chad’s shoulder for a long moment before answering. “I guess disappearances weren’t as uncommon as you would think. Between animal attacks and logging accidents a man gone missing was not entirely unprecedented. Eventually, though, the camp foremans grew concerned and held a meeting to address the situation. They came to the conclusion, because of the fact that they hadn’t recovered any bodies, that there must be a maneater stalking the camp, a hungry grizzly stealing them away when no one was looking. They made plans to form a hunting party and beat the bushes to flush out the beast. On the eve of their hunt, Brian and Patrick set fire to their bunks. They hid in the shadows and slew the few that managed to escape as they fled the flames. That night they killed every last man.”

“Geezus,” Chad, wideeyed now.

“Yeah, pretty messed up.”

“You’ve got one sick imagination, kid.”

Mike nodded and shrugged, knowing that it was a waste of breath to try and convince him that he was hearing all this for the first time too.

“Did they catch these guys? Brian and uh…”

“Patrick,” Mike finished for him. “Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“Well,” Mike stared over Chad’s shoulder for a quick moment, nodded, and added, “they got Brian, but Patrick, hard to believe as it is, is still at large.” Mike chuckled. “At large. Good one.”

A rustle came from a berm of overgrowth. Before Chad could look to see what it was Mike caught his attention. “You know what’s even scarier than a ghost story, though?”

Chad lifted his chin in thought, distracted from the continued rustling, “No. What?”

Mike lowered his voice to an ominous, earnest timbre. “A failing healthcare system.”

The rustling reached a snapping crescendo. Chad turned just in time to see a gargantuan figure burst from the bush and come lumbering toward him. Chad wasn’t exactly quick on his feet, but especially in the shock of what he was seeing he was frozen, though there had been plenty of time to scream before the figure closed the distance between them, grabbed Chad’s head in its baseball glove-sized hands, lifted him off the ground, and gave his neck a cracking twist. It held Chad’s head for a moment longer, examining his expression; a burgeoning confusion on his brow and a forming question behind the part in his lips. It let go, the body slumping into a lifeless pile next to the camp fire, the flames dancing in the growing dullness of Chad’s eyes.

Up close the assailant was a hulking mass of muscle, breathing deep calm breaths as he stared down at the crumpled counselor before turning an eye on Mike.

Mike gave him a quick wave. “Hi, Patrick.”