The Mystery of Camp Ferrier & The European Cure

By Nathan Tarantla

Do werewolves like head cheese?
 

It was an easy job. Make some money. Enjoy the countryside. Do some fishing on a deserted lake. But it wasn't so simple. What made people disappear? What is hiding in the forest? What's in the water? What were the locals hiding, and who was behind it? A story of fear, fur, and fishing.

What would you do for revenge?

They took away his family and his face. How could there be a normal life for a man such as he? Maybe normal would forever be out of reach, but when the chance came to become super-normal, who can blame him for taking it? A tale of resurrection and revenge. And a lot of killing. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Tarantla
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201495237

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The Mystery of Camp Ferrier

and

The European Cure

Two Tales of Werewolf Terror

by

Nathan Tarantla

Copyright © 2021 by Nathan Tarantla

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, audio recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

Any similarity between persons or places depicted in this work of fiction to any real person, living or dead, or place, is entirely coincidental.

Re-selling this eBook without permission is punishable by law.

ATTENTION: This production contains coarse language, adult situations, and instances of violence and gore.

The Mystery of Camp Ferrier

It was supposed to be an easy job in an old summer camp on a deserted lake. Lots of fish, miles of trails. How was I to know that by the end of the weekend I'd be fighting for my life against things that shouldn't exist? All the head cheese and pickled eggs in the world weren't enough to satisfy their hunger. They wanted me!

IN THE SUMMER OF MY youth I worked for a man who owned a company that specialized in residential construction. The work took us all over the State of Michigan. There were more than 50 of us on the crew when I was there, some professionals and some not. I was in the latter group, a young man learning new skills and making an acceptable paycheck at the same time. An employee who knew how to keep his mouth shut.

There were several crews. I can only speak for mine.

Our site boss, Joe, was a great guy and I got along with him well enough. He sometimes visited hookers at lunch, but not too often. The carpet guys were goofy in the head, heavy drinkers who were often hung over or fucked up from sniffing carpet adhesive, or both, I think. They doubled as roofing guys on some jobs. (One of them was murdered by his wife while sleeping off a drunk.) The drywall guys and plumbers were always coughing and sick with some kind of respiratory ailment. The carpenters were dependable and I did most of my work with them when I wasn't cleaning up after someone else. I was OK at measuring and cutting wood, following directions, and moving shit around. Career building stuff.

We ended up on a job in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, home of fatty fried foods, deer flies, cold lakes and warm country girls. Our assignment was to rehab an old summer camp. The work included everything but major plumbing and electrical work that no one on the crew had the proper skills-on-paper to perform. For those tasks we hired local contractors.

Camp Karin was built in the early 1930s as an expensive retreat for children of the well-heeled. Clients included (if you believed all the rumors) underworld figures from Chicago, New York, and the west coast. They were not alone. The spawn of bootlegging and gambling mingled with the offspring of politicians and the upper crust of high society, kids with names like Ford, Getty and Rockefeller. The camp became popular with scouting troops and naturalists.

The first recorded incident happened in 1949, when a group of campers went hiking on one of the longer trails. After they checked out the scenery, had their picnic, looped around Lake Karin, and arrived back at camp near sundown they noticed Denny McBride was missing. First they searched the camp, then the little islands on the lake. Then they searched the woods. They brought in tracking dogs. They dragged the lake. No trace of the 12-year old boy was found.

Fall arrived and with it deer hunting season. While tracking a deer a hunter found a shoe with the remains of a small foot inside, 12 miles from the trails of Camp Karin. A search was organized again, dogs were brought in again, and this time they found enough remains to identify the boy.

Denny McBride's parents sued the camp owners while the locals put on hunting festivals. A bounty was placed on wildcats and wolves, but no wildcats or wolves were ever found. Three wolverines got dug out of their dens and shot full of holes, and some hunters bagged a few unlucky black bears.

Clark Winston, owner and operator of Camp Karin, was found guilty of negligence and child endangerment and ordered to pay $20,000 to the parents of Denny McBride. Soon after that he hung himself.

The property passed from one Winston family member to another, until one of them decided he didn't want anything to do with the place and stopped paying taxes on it. The State of Michigan took possession of Camp Karin and its 26 dilapidated buildings. Over the following years a few acres were sold off, until the bulk was purchased by the Lightfoot-Hand Corporation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They cleaned the place up and marketed it as a summer camp and a retreat for writers, artists, and other professionals in the winter.

Thousands of kids have wonderful memories of Camp Karin. For a time it was popular and profitable, and the owners were expanding the place with new cabins when the next tragedy hit. Amelia Barrows, of the Topeka Barrows, Kansas ranch owners who supplied 1/3rd of the chipped beef served in US Navy mess halls at the time, went missing one night.

Amelia, a blue-eyed blonde 11-year old standing just shy of four feet, was last spotted asking a cafeteria worker for a waffle and ice cream around eight o'clock the previous night. Normally this was not permissible since the kitchen was not officially open at that time, but like most adults Lita Sanchez was happy to bend a rule to please a child, especially when they had wealthy parents.

Lita, a 38-year old widow with dark brown hair and brown eyes, had a spotless work record. She had been employed in the cafeteria since the camp opened. As cook and acting manager in the morning, her tasks started in the pre-dawn with a trip to the market. After fetching goods for the day, week, or month, she prepared breakfast with the help of five assistants, friends who all came from the same region of Mexico. After that came prep work for lunch and dinner. Friendly and outgoing, a chef of more than adequate skill in her own right, Lita was well liked by almost everyone at the camp.

Employees who knew them both would tell you Arny Jones, the day cook, just liked doing things his own way. He didn't like change, and he didn't put up with anyone getting in his way. When people mentioned Lita's cooking he claimed to have taught her everything she knows about American food. When she added a spicy tomato condiment to the menu one morning and he got wind of it, he almost got her fired.

Arny's friends would tell you he was a great guy, salt of the Earth, a friend to all mankind, a good American and an officer of the guard at the local chapter of the Grand Dragon Society. He was a helluva guy after a few beers, and he told the funniest jokes, mostly the kind you don't tell around women or your mamma. Evenings usually found him at one of the two local taverns.

There was a big window of opportunity between eight o'clock the night of the disappearance and seven o'clock the next morning, when Cabin Eight reported the missing child. While the counselor had made a bed check at 8:00 pm, the time prior to 9:00 was treated as soft time, when the kids were left on their own to chat, tell ghost stories, play games and socialize, etc. They weren't supposed to leave the cabin.

Mrs. Margaret French of Parma, Michigan, the counselor for Amelia's group, said she remembered seeing the little girl in the cabin at nine o'clock. None of the children could corroborate her story. They remembered Amelia leaving for ice cream and wanting some of them to go along. No one did. Two girls thought they heard the front door open and close after 9:00, and another girl heard someone moving around the bunks in the dark, but no one saw who it was.

After finding no sign of Amelia anywhere in camp the police brought in tracking dogs. The dogs led them to Loop Trail.

At one time Loop Trail went completely around Lake Karin, but since the purchase of a wedge-shaped piece of land across the lake it was cut into two pieces that did not legally connect. Signs nailed to trees and posts told hikers when to return to Camp Karin, but there was no fence or physical barrier at the border of the two properties. Law abiding hikers turned back at this point. Those who did not were mostly careful to respect the property and never strayed from the path. No one lived there anyway, so a call to the owner—if anyone cared—would have to be routed through the police department in Druf Mills. No one wanted to do that. It was a good system.

The dogs followed Loop Trail for the first mile around the lake and then veered into the forest. Now and then they'd bunch up on a spot and wander about, unwilling to go further until urged on by their handlers. Nothing was found at these places and the