counselor, and a group of other new people. Stevie held up a hand of greeting and pointed, indicating that they were going back to their cabin.
“Bag of cameras,” she said, handing it over to Janelle when they got back to their cabin. “How quickly can we get these up?”
Janelle examined the packages.
“Give me twenty minutes,” she said.
“There’s more,” Stevie said, presenting the other bag to Janelle. “Carson found this when he went out for a run this morning.”
“Oh god,” Janelle said. “What? Stevie . . . this is messed up.”
“It’s crafty, though. Anything you notice about them?”
Janelle grimaced but peered inside the box, then removed the Sabrina doll and examined the clothing.
“Well,” she said, pinching the material and looking at the stitching, “looks like a pretty well-made doll outfit.”
She examined each doll in turn, checking cuffs and seams, looking inside and out.
“No labels,” she said. “I think these are custom-made.”
“So someone would have to know how to sew.”
“You can buy them,” Janelle said. “Off Etsy or other places. People sell doll clothes. It would be easy enough to ask for a few outfits. The logo looks like it was painted on the shirt with fabric paint, and not very well. You could probably source all this stuff pretty easily. But why would you do this to us, and also to Carson? Has to be the podcast.”
There was a tinge of anger in her voice now.
“You seem mad,” Stevie said.
“I am mad! We need to find the freak who did this.”
“Cameras,” Stevie said, taking the box of dolls and closing it up. “And you have to hide them as best you can so Nicole doesn’t see them.”
Janelle picked up the bag and got to work. By the time Stevie had eaten her hot dog and drunk half her soda, Janelle had gotten out some industrial sticky strips and had the first camera attached under the light fixture by the door. She placed another one on the inside of the window with the hole in the screen, tucked in between the wrought iron guards. She got up on top of a dresser to put a third high up near the ceiling, pointed toward the inside of the door. She downloaded the app and had most of the setup complete by the fifteen-minute mark. She brushed off her hands and examined the feed for a moment, walking back and forth in front of each camera to ensure she was satisfied with the placement.
“That should cover all the angles,” she said. “It’s got smart detection, so we’ll know if anyone comes in. Most of the other counselors are doing orientation games. We’re the special ones, so we get to spend the day unpacking art supplies and setting things up. Apparently supplies just arrived.”
They headed over to the art pavilion, where Janelle stopped short.
“Oh my god,” Janelle said when she saw the many piles of boxes. “So much to unpack and put in order.”
The joy in her voice couldn’t be hidden.
“Do you need a moment alone?” Stevie asked.
“Maybe?”
Janelle set about her dream job, while Stevie set about to work on the problem.
Stevie took the dolls out of the box and set them on the little table in front of her. Doll Sabrina. Doll Diane. Doll Todd. All slashed with red paint. This was easy and direct enough. The message on their cabin wall was different, clever.
Since she didn’t know how the latter had been done, she switched over to asking why. Why leave the message? Why leave a box of murder dolls on Carson’s running path? What would these things do?