Nice. It was a nice, normal spot. A good spot for a picnic, or to hang out under the stars with your friends. Its remoteness almost added to the feeling of security. It was padded by woods—a nook. A little oasis. Sabrina, Eric, Todd, and Diane had come here, set up their blankets and music and snacks, set about their rolling and talking and having fun. Someone had waited, perhaps behind one of these very trees, for the right moment.
“What are you thinking?” Carson asked.
What was she thinking? What was the feeling? What was it, this little sensation, like a finger tracing its way up her spine?
“I knew it was out in the woods,” she said, “but I guess I thought it was closer to the camp. This is remote. And it’s so . . . it’s not a place you’d stumble upon. You’d have to know where to go. There were four of them. Four teenagers. One was a football captain, but it sounded like they were all physically fit. So a lone murderer, or even a pair, they’d
be outnumbered. How do you subdue four young adults in a remote place like this, that they may know better than you do?”
“Gunpoint,” Carson said. “That’s one way.”
“But they were all stabbed. If you have them at gunpoint, you shoot them.”
“And there were drugs in their systems, but they weren’t sedated or anything like that,” Carson said.
“So they’re maybe high or drunk, but they’re conscious—conscious enough that Eric could run four miles in the dark. Probably not gunpoint. Maybe you separate them, or they’ve separated themselves. You go two by two. Lots of killers have taken on couples.”
“Like Zodiac,” Carson said a little too eagerly. “Make one tie up the other.”
“Creepy man, creepy man,” Nate sang under his breath. “This is a creepy, creepy man.”
“Another thing,” Stevie said. “There were no other tire marks, right?”
“Right.”
“So this person or these people probably came on foot. That’s a lot of night hiking in the woods. Whoever it was came with supplies. Someone went to a lot of trouble to kill four camp counselors. Who does that?”
“Besides Jason Voorhees,” Nate said.
“This is my question,” Carson said. “There’s something messed up in Barlow Corners, something no one’s ever
gotten to the bottom of. Someone has to know something. The answer is here, if we look for it. I’m a disrupter. I like to make things happen. We’re going to disrupt this situation and crack it open.”
“Oh my god,” Nate said in a low voice. “I gotta get in my tree.”
July 11, 1978
6:00 p.m.
NOTHING HAPPENED IN BARLOW CORNERS. OR, NOTHING WAS SUPPOSED to happen in Barlow Corners. It was the kind of place where things were always okay—not great or terribly exciting, but okay. There was a gentle hum of boredom that teenagers hated and adults came to love.
You could get everything you required on the main strip along Beechnut Street and Maple Avenue. There was the Ben Franklin five-and-dime and Unity Hardware for all your basic household needs. The Dairy Duchess, the local diner owned by the McClure family, was good for a quick bite or a family meal. Anderson’s Grocery and Deli provided day-to-day food items. For your bigger weekly shop, there was the A&P grocery two miles down the road. There was even a nod to the younger crowd in the form of a boutique called Zork’s, where the teenagers bought their Tshirts, posters, and lava lamps.
On a fine summer night like this one, most of the town would stroll along with an ice cream or a Popsicle, the kids would ride their bikes, and there would be horseshoes on the
green. But it was not a normal summer night. When faced with a tragedy of this proportion, the residents of Barlow Corners did the only thing they could think to do—they threw a town-wide potluck picnic.