Camp Slasher

By Dan Padavona

Lost in the dark woods. Stalked and butchered. Head severed and tossed into the bushes. She is the first to die. The body count will grow.

Slasher horror in the vein of Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

A group of young counselors set out to rebuild the vacant Camp Black Bear. But a bloodthirsty killer stalks the woods. 

Now two counselors must survive the night in the forest. The killer is hunting them. He won't stop until they are dead.

And the nearest town is ten miles away.

Where is the sheriff who promised to keep them safe? Can the counselors evade the killer until help arrives?

More victims are found murdered in the woods. The vehicles are destroyed and the radio disabled. No escape.

Footsteps in the dark. The killer is coming.

Classic slasher horror that will leave fans of Stephen King, Friday the 13th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre breathless. Fans of true slasher horror should get to know Camp Slasher. 

Start reading now!


Praise for Dan Padavona:

"One of the most exciting writers to burst upon the scene in quite some time." - Brian Keene, Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author

"Dan Padavona is at the top of my short list of must-read authors, and he's just getting started." - Thomas T

"Padavona cements his own as a powerful voice in modern horror." - Michael W

"Dan Padavona is a rare find. This author makes you FEEL like you are IN the story which is very rare!" - Annamaria B

"Padavona filled my mind with visions that made my skin crawl and my heart race." - Ima Kitten

"Stunning prose." - Ginger Nuts of Horror

"Dan Padavona can flat out write." - Alan N

"He is becoming one of my favorite authors." - Ron B

"Another thrilling read by the master." - Review

"Page turning, pulse-pounding entertainment." - Richard

"A foray into the believably creepy. Recommended." - Xtina

"It takes a lot to make me squirm, but Padavona does it here." - Russell C

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Padavona
• Release date: Oct 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386705048

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Lake Road

Lake Road

11 PM

June 27

Bethany wondered why the young boy was alone in the forest, hiding between two leafy elms along the side of the road.

Night fell down around her, nothing but trees and darkness for as far as the headlights could travel. Which wasn’t far. The beams burrowed into the steep, rocky incline and died as the Civic’s motor purred.

She’d driven out of Timber Corners looking for the county road and taken the wrong turn. The front-wheel drive car had climbed the hill for three miles before she determined this was certainly not the road she wanted. The road trapped her to either side with deep, ravine-like ditches through which water trickled and glimmered with moonlight. Nowhere to turn around.

She wasn’t about to back down this godforsaken road. Bethany was a skilled driver, but not crazy enough to try.

When she’d crested one wave in the undulating climb, the headlights picked him out running across the road. His clothes were torn rags, shirtsleeves hung from his arms like wallpaper bleeding down old, moldy walls.

Now she couldn’t see him at all.

She knew the boy was still there. Back pressed up against the bark, the white glare of her headlights splitting around the elm in parting rivers.

A boy in the woods. Alone.

She couldn’t just leave him here. He might be lost or hurt. If tomorrow she opened the newspaper to learn a search party found a missing child dead in the woods, she’d never forgive herself.

So she sat with frozen stillness, breathing inside the safety of the car, fingers gripped to the steering wheel as the seconds ticked past.

Bethany’s fear of being lost in the forest whittled away at her, and her phone hadn’t displayed a service bar inside Timber Corners and surely wouldn’t up here in God’s country. Bad things happened in the middle of nowhere. She might run out of gas or put a tire into the ditch.

To hell with it.

She rolled down the passenger side window, leaned across the seat, and called to the boy.

The crickets shrilled back at her.

Please answer me. I won’t hurt you, I promise. Come out from the trees. Let me take you back to your parents.

Above her, trees extended long, leafy arms over the road. Ahead grew a black tunnel of forest she had no intention of driving into, though Bethany had no idea where the road led.

She called once more. Again the boy didn’t answer.

There had to be a scenic lookout point or campsite where one could safely reverse direction. Otherwise, any car which started up this hill would be forced to follow the road to its black, unknown conclusion, and roads which led to nowhere didn’t seem plausible in a modern world where everyone was connected by technology and social networks and light. Yes, light. By God, what she wouldn’t give for a brightly-lit room. She inched her foot toward the gas pedal.

No. She wouldn’t abandon the boy. Helping him was the only choice she could live with, even if it took all night…

She didn’t have all night. The conference began at 8 AM sharp in Syracuse, New York, a good hour’s ride from Timber Corners. These back roads were slow and treacherous at night, easy to lose one’s way as she had.

She stretched an arm below the seat and rooted out her purse, which contained a small bottle of pepper spray. Pulse drumming in her ears, the purse clutched protectively to her ribs, she opened the door. The popping static from a faraway radio station poured out from the car. She slammed the door shut, a loud, angry sound amid the trilling insects and gurgle of stream waters.

Frightened, she stepped into the car’s headlights. Her shadow grew monstrous against the hill. She couldn’t see the boy yet.

Are you there?

No reply.

My name is Bethany. Bethany Thomas. I’m a schoolteacher in Watertown. Do you know where that is?

It jostled her to hear her own voice after so much silence.

I have a daughter named Kim. She’s in the first grade. You look older than Kim, quite a bit older, actually. Maybe you have a little sister?

Gravel crunched under her feet. She kicked a stone and heard it bounce over the precipice and fall a long way before it thudded against the hillside. A reminder of the dangerous game she played.

Bethany shielded her eyes from the light shooting off to either side of her. The headlights aimed straight up the road, the dichotomy between light and dark making it difficult to see what lay beyond the ditches.

You’re such a brave boy. Do you know that? Alone in the forest, alive and strong. Most people wouldn’t last very long on their own—I know I wouldn’t—but you’ve made out just fine. Your parents will be so relieved to get you back. I bet the television stations will all want to interview you, want to know all about how you survived in the woods by yourself. You’ll be a celebrity. Maybe even a hero.

An owl hooted loudly from the woods. Her heart did gymnastics.

Easy now. Don’t scare him away.

Except she was the one who was scared, sensing they weren’t alone in the darkness. A subtle prickling of the neck hairs warned her someone was behind her.

The purse strap slipped down her arm. She nervously readjusted it. Looking over her shoulder, all she saw was the silhouette of the car and the blinding light rushing at her.

Then the boy said something.

Da.

The noise came so unexpectedly that it made her jump. Da? Not a word at all but a grunt, unless she’d misheard. It made her think the boy might be simple, perhaps mentally handicapped.

The clock closed in on midnight.

A scarred and scabbed arm slipped behind the trunk. There he was. She caught another glimpse of the tattered clothes and worried he must have taken a fall or tore himself up in bramble.

I can see you, she said, walking into the unknown as fast as she dared. Oh, dear. You’re hurt. I’m almost there.

Da!

Louder this time. Almost a duck’s call.

As if to distract her, the boy came out from the trees and straddled the ditch. His face was a mass of blisters and welts. The boy’s mouth opened to an awful grin. Blackened, serrated teeth. Eyes tiny and gray and hateful.

Rocks scuffed in the road behind her.

Someone was back by the car.

She swung around and saw the pale ribbon of dirt road falling away. Nobody. Yet she’d heard—

Da!

Stop saying that, Bethany said, unsure why the boy’s gibberish upset her so.

Then a devil’s scream that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

The night took form. Darkness rushed at her from out of the ditch.

Bethany ripped the purse open.

Trembling fingers felt blindly for the pepper spray as the black shadow closed in on her. She heard the the boy crying, "Da! Da! Da! Da!" with fiendish glee as she thought of Kim asleep at Grandma’s…Kim who was unaware her mother was alone and frightened and lost and about to die…and the shape grew larger now…smashing out of the brush like a monstrous leviathon…and there was no time…no time at all to react before the machete gashed her neck and sent Bethany twitching and screaming to the ground.

She dropped to the filthy earth, her neck connected by shredded bands of bleeding sinew. The machete ripped across her hand, severing her fingers, lifted and slashed the small of her back. His other hand produced a serrated hunting knife, which he plunged into her shoulder blade.

The boy was on her now. His teeth gnashed into her spurting neck, tearing clumps of flesh, licking hungrily at the gore soaking her hair.

Bethany’s blood washed over dirt and stone.

CHAPTER TWO

The Walrus

Camp Black Bear

9 AM

June 28

Kirby Watkins—the walrus, as his summer employees called him behind his back, because of his ample belly and mustache—knelt on crackling knees and picked up the bucket of nails. Pushing the glasses up the bridge of his nose, he coughed, unfurling both ends of the drooping whiskers which earned him his moniker, and cursed the pollen.

The summer help, the college-age kids he envisioned as Camp Black Bear’s first counselors, were still asleep in their cabins after staying up late, drinking and blearing rock-n-roll. Alcohol was forbidden on the grounds, and some of the kids weren’t of drinking age, but he’d been their age not too long ago, about fifteen years to be exact, and didn’t want them thinking of him as a wet blanket. At least not any more than they already did. Still, it would’ve been nice to see them awake, working and earning their pay. It wasn’t as if he’d force them out of bed at the crack of dawn. This wasn’t the military. But it was nine o’clock, for Pete’s sake, and the workday lasted from nine-to-three. At this rate, he’d have the day’s work finished before they wiped the crust from their eyes.

He was still fuming. At this time yesterday, he’d driven into Timber Corners and phoned Gerry Weston at the Department of Transportation.

What do you mean by a few snags? Kirby had asked, wearing a groove into the sidewalk as he paced outside of Smitty’s Tavern.

What I’m saying, Mr. Watkins, is the county budget—

Don’t give me that line, Gerry. With what I pay in gasoline taxes there’s no excuse for you guys coming in over budget. You promised me that road would be built inside of three years.

I never promised anything. What I said, and I’m paraphrasing here, is the county recognizes the potential long-term benefit from new commerce. The issue is we’re talking fifteen miles of forest to level. By the time the road is finished and new housing is developed, it might take decades before businesses move in.

What about my business? I’m already here, dammit, and I’m five figures in debt. This abandoned camp is an embarrassment and an eyesore for the entire county, but the rebuild will be finished by the end of summer. Gerry, I plan to start advertising in September and fill the cabins next summer.

And you’re doing great work, Gerry said.

All that’s out here now is swampland, trees, and a couple of half-assed hiking trails, and none of it is making the county a bit of money. I’m willing to swallow deficits for two or three years, you know that. Build my road and the entire area, not just Camp Black Bear, will open to Syracuse, Ithaca, Watertown, and Rochester. Renege on the deal, and I’ll never recover the losses. You’re bankrupting me, Gerry.

Slow down. I didn’t say the county was reneging, only that these things take time and not everyone is on board.

Then tell me who I need to get on board. I just dropped another two grand to hire Karin Brighton.

Who?

I told you this months ago.

Remind me.

Kirby let out a long breath. He wanted to end the call by throwing his phone across the street.

Karin Brighton spun up the Wolverine Adventurer’s Club in Fair Haven ten years ago.

Hey, I know that place. My brother’s kids went there last summer.

Of course, you know it. It’s the best camp in Upstate New York. Don’t you want the area’s best camp to be in your own backyard? Because I can make that happen.

Yeah…well.

During the ensuing pause, Kirby felt his neck twitch.

Hey, Gerry. What do you call 20 politicians in 20 feet of quicksand? Not enough quicksand.

Karin was due to arrive any minute now, so Kirby cut through the grass and weeds with hammer and nails in hand. The placid waters of Black Bear Lake, a football field’s length to the west, sparkled blindingly.

Kirby watched as a red-tailed hawk flew from a giant oak and glided kite-like over the meadow, where it perched beside the amateur radio antenna affixed to his cabin roof. Kirby’s antenna was a cheap, brittle monstrosity that barely covered the county, as bargain-basement as his threadbare t-shirt, the Wal-Mart Nike sneaker knockoffs, and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he’d stuffed into a plastic sandwich baggie for lunch.

The woods bordering the campground stood vibrant and secretive. Animals scurried through the brush and scampered up trees. He’d encountered fox and bear droppings along the forest perimeter and heard what he believed to be a gray wolf howling from a long way off, a cautionary tale for the unwary.

A giggle came from the first counselor’s cabin. One of the girls was awake. Brie or Sarah.

No sound came from the second cabin, where the boys slept. In combination with Kirby’s cabin, the three counselor cabins formed a sickle moon around the clearing, where Kirby imagined an archery range would stand one day. Trudging through switchgrass, he gave a horsefly a wide berth and fought his way toward a small stand of trees.

The two children’s cabins, longer than they were wide and each spacious enough to house twenty or more campers, were visible through the branches. Someday, he thought, boys captured by burgeoning sexual curiosity would sneak from one cabin to the next to spy on girls. For now, both of the children’s cabins were ghost towns.

The cabin on the left held a wasp nest in the far corner. Since his ragtag staff had shown no interest in tackling the nest, perhaps he’d ask the new boy, Caleb, to remove the nest. If Caleb ever arrived. The boy was already a day late.

Despite his unease over hiring someone with an assault conviction, Kirby had brought Caleb aboard out of pure desperation—the camp employed only two other boys, and Preston was thin enough to fly away in a stiff wind. Caleb was free labor, serving community service time, too good of a deal for Kirby to pass up.

A baked wood scent rolled out when he opened the cabin door. The wasps were already awake and ricocheting angrily between the nest and ceiling. His eyes landed on a pile of twigs and leaves against one wall, and he wondered how the debris had gotten inside the cabin. After rechecking the windows for broken panes, he itched his beard. The pile looked like a nest used by a prehistoric bird.

Teenagers? You couldn’t overestimate the creativity of kids when partying was involved, even if it meant driving ten miles into the wilderness and hiding out in a derelict cabin.

He swept the mess out the door.

CHAPTER THREE

Sarah

Sarah Barlow stepped quietly through the glistening grass and felt dew seep through her sneakers.

Through the branches, she could see Kirby enter one of the children’s cabins across the clearing. After waiting for the door to close, she climbed over a fallen log and hurried toward the counselor cabins, one eye watching for the camp leader. Kirby didn't allow the student workers to wander the forest by themselves, but she'd needed the walk to clear her head.

Caressing her belly, she moved her palm in cautious circles across smooth skin, as if rubbing too hard might crack something fragile. And maybe it would.

A wet, earthy scent hung in the air, one that once conjured memories of forest hikes, lazy summer days, barbecues, and baseball. Now it would forever associate itself with the May evening she had sex with Stephen D’Antonio in the backseat of his Corvette.

Though it was much too early to feel a bulge, the morning sickness had begun a week ago.

Sarah didn’t expect Stephen to return her texts. She’d repeatedly written him after it became obvious the missed period was more than happenstance, and finally, after much contemplation which made her feel hopelessly alone, Sarah wrote Stephen two words.

I'm pregnant.

No response. Stephen might be in witness protection, he was so impossible to locate.

They began dating in spring as trees budded, the world in bloom, and despite the fact that she didn't love him and Stephen certainly didn't love her, their bodies fit together like soft puzzle pieces, and she felt breathless at his touch.

He owed her, the son-of-a-bitch, and needed to know the baby was his. He shared responsibility.

She redialed his number and received a connection error. The network strength rested at zero bars.

I should have considered Camp Black Bear’s isolation before accepting the job, she chided herself. At least the job would be over at the end of July. By then she might be showing. The baby would be born during spring semester. Then what? Second semester, third trimester—it had a fatalistic ring.

She was almost out of the woods when she caught scent of the carcass. Flies swarmed as she approached with her nose pinched shut. She stared at the dead thing before realizing it was a bobcat, nothing remaining except blood-crusted fur, bones, and spilled innards, black beetles skittering over the mess.

Seeing the cat recalled an unwanted memory. At the age of six, she’d been playing behind Uncle Morgan’s house with Nala, a gray-and-gold-striped tabby kitten, when it suddenly screeched and bolted from her arms at the sight of a big alley cat slinking around the corner of the shed. Nala’s screech was a territorial war cry. The alley cat came rocketing through the grass, hissing with fangs bared. Knowing Nala didn’t stand a chance against the larger cat, she grabbed the kitten, who turned on her and sunk its needle teeth into the flesh between thumb and forefinger. Somehow she ended up between the two warring cats, and by the time her father and uncle responded to the tortured screeching, Sarah’s bare legs were clawed open from knee-to-ankle.

Her mother came running when she saw the fight through the kitchen window. Morgan chased away the alley cat and kicked Nala off Sarah’s leg.

Didn’t I tell you never to play with that nasty animal? Constance Barlow gathered her screaming daughter into her arms, then glanced over Sarah’s shoulder at her husband. Let’s just hope that cat wasn’t rab—

Elliot cut her off with a reproachful glare. What the hell was she thinking, bringing up rabies in front of Sarah?

At the hospital, eighteen stitches sewed her skin shut. The scars were faint now, manifested in white tiger stripes down both calves which refused to tan.

Sarah turned away from the carcass and hurried for the cabin.

***

You ever heard of the Japanese giant hornet? A-Train grinned as Sarah entered the cabin.

Examining herself in the mirror, Sarah plucked dead leaves from her hair and wiped a dirt smudge from her cheek.

A-Train lay on the top bunk with his head propped up on his elbow, Brie curled beside him, her dreadlocks splayed across the pillow.