July 27, 2003
Ten Cent Shower - Part 24
Emma was tired of running back and forth across the camp, but Brian was one of the few people who had made an effort to help her. Or at the very least not to maim her. She could find Gregg later.
She followed Crazy Bob through the woods, trying to be as silent as possible. Bob wasn’t very good at stealth, so Emma’s efforts were wasted. They passed a sign tacked onto an old tree:
STEAM ROOM à
“Is there really a steam room here?” she asked. Bob nodded.
“This used to be a posh summer spot for families until the depression, then it all just got run-down and abandoned. Those girls lived here with their father until something wacky happened in the forties and they all ended up stuck here. And us… we just drifted in over time.” He fingered his lapels lovingly and looked down at her flared jeans.
“Chicks used to wear stuff like that when I was a kid. When’re you from again?”
“I’m from 2003 – but all this retro stuff is in again. You would be at the height of hipster fashion, Bob,” she laughed.
Crazy Bob was pleased. And if there’s one thing you want to do in your life, it’s keep people with the moniker “crazy” somewhat pleased.
They came close to the area where Bea liked to wander, near the ramshackle group of cabins. Sure enough, she and a group of other girls were congregating in the center of the cabin area. Gregg stood off to the side, looking lost and distracted. Someone screamed and Gregg put his hands to his ears to block out the sound.
It was Brian, lying in the center of the group of girls. It looked like they were taking turns poking at him with their fingers. Each time a girl’s finger made contact he yelped.
“I don’t know where she is!” he wailed.
Neither Emma, nor Bob could get to him without being assaulted by all six sisters. Bob nudged his head in the direction of Gregg instead. They didn’t need to be that quiet while walking over to him through the forest. The girls’ shouting and Brian’s screams covered their noise. Emma got behind Gregg and whispered to him.
“When I run past, you and Bob grab your brother and head for the nearest patch of fog.”
Before he could protest, Emma had sprinted into the dirt path and caught the eye of two sisters. They squealed and alerted the other four. As she had hoped, all of them moved toward her at once, leaving Brian writhing in the dirt alone.
She led them into the forest where her longer legs were at an advantage. She looked over her shoulder to see Bob and Gregg lifting Brian and bringing him toward the fog wall. She looped around, keeping the girls many yards behind and jumped in at the approximate spot that the guys had entered.
Many hands poked through the fog wall and everyone backed up as much as possible in the space. Every now and then a girl braver than the rest would poke her face in, only to wince as she was carried down the wall with the current.
Brian was not in good shape, but he could speak. Emma leaned down, keeping an eye out for stray hands coming near them.
“Tell me about this map,” she panted, holding the map above him.
“It’s… the spots where… people came in,” he gasped. “Dates on back.”
Emma held the paper in her hands and for a long moment she forgot about the furious little girls trying to grab at them. Gregg leaned in.
“The fog is not a circle around the camp. It’s a huge spiral. Everything heads toward this spot,” he pointed to a star on the map. It was just about where the ravine was located. “But you can’t you just follow the spiral outward. The outside layer of the spiral is huge – like miles -- and the opening is very small. It’s constantly moving.”
Emma finished the thought.
“But with the map, we can calculate where the opening will be based on past locations. We can map the trajectory.”
Bob broke in, “But you’d need like a physicist or something to get those numbers right.”
Emma raised one eyebrow and grinned.
“How does a physics grad student sound to you?”