The campsite looks like it wants to eat them. A fire pit yawns in the middle, an ashy-grey mouth ringed by rocks like rotting teeth. The trees crowd in, sizing them up, knifing the daylight. One gulp of that smoke-and-pine air, and Henry shudders head to foot.
He wanted to go to soccer camp.
But he’s already cried twice in the car—first when Courtney broke his Gameboy, then when Jake punched him—so he swallows a wriggly ball of tears and helps Mom and Dad load out: coolers, camping chairs, firewood, tent. It helps spotting other tents through the trees. As Henry crawls into his sleeping bag, he figures if he can find other kids to play with, he’ll make the trip pass quick enough.
When he unzips the tent in the morning, the car’s gone.
The fire pit’s still there, exhaling ashes, and the firewood heaped beside. Their coolers stand dutifully on the picnic table. But there’s bare grass where the car used to be. Bare trees, too, like the other campers cleared out without telling them. Henry listens hard, but there’s only a stillness like the breath you hold right before something lunges for your throat.
“Our car’s been stolen!” Courtney cries, sounding delighted.
Dad says bad words, which makes Jake cackle, but Henry keeps tugging Mom’s arm. “Mom, the neighbours—”
“Did you lock the doors, Scott?”
Henry tugs harder. “Mom, the other tents are gone.”
She doesn’t even look at him. “The camp office can file a report …”
Dad takes two purposeful steps and then stops dead. As they gape at the silent trees, Jake elbows past Henry. “We’re all alone.”
“That’s what I said,” Henry says sulkily. Jake grins.
For a minute, Mom and Dad just stand there—Henry’s guts clench again, seeing them so uncertain. At last, Dad says, “Take me twenty minutes to walk to the camp office—easy as pie.”
“I wanna come,” Jake butts in, before Henry can.
“I don’t think …” Mom starts, but Dad’s already telling Jake to fetch his shoes.
Encouraged, Henry grabs his sneakers too, but Dad shakes his head. “You stay here.”
“But Jake gets to—”
“Jake’s older.”
“Thirteen,” Jake drawls, socking Henry in the shoulder.
So while Jake and Dad set off, Henry flops on the grass behind the tent. At the picnic table, Mom and Courtney play Go Fish, but Courtney always cheats and he’s too mad to pretend to have fun. Around lunchtime, Mom builds up the fire and they roast hot dogs. Just as Henry’s chomping on his, rustling breaks out in the brush behind them. As leaves tremble and twigs snap, Mom grabs the fire poker, but only Dad and Jake stumble out of the woods.
“What did they say about the car?” Mom demands, but Dad’s gone pale.
“How’d we end up here?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“We followed the road straight the whole time, never left it—right, Jake?”
Wide-eyed, Jake nods.
“You must’ve gone round in circles,” Mom says. “People lose their sense of direction all the time, in the woods. Which is why we’re staying at the campsite,” she adds, to Henry and Courtney.
Dad doesn’t say anything. A few times that afternoon, he ducks into the woods by himself—but he always comes back straightaway and his frown’s deeper every time.
“What are we going to do, Dad?” Henry asks.
“A big campfire tonight,” Dad says, too heartily. “And tomorrow, we’ll figure it out.”
Hot dogs for dinner. Mom whispers something to Dad about whatever spoils first, but they pull apart when they notice Henry watching. Sunset bleeds through the trees, but once the last reddened light trickles under the horizon, only the firelight keeps the prowling darkness at bay. Henry doesn’t like sitting with his back to the woods—he imagines eyes driving like needles into his spine—but he hates staring into the bottomless night more, so he stares at the fire with one hand on a big stick, just in case.
He’s getting sleepy when Dad says, “Whoa, buddy, who are you?”
Henry snaps awake. Someone’s walked right up to their campfire: a guy, Henry thinks, his arms hanging loose at his sides, dressed all in black, though it’s hard to tell what exactly he’s wearing—first it looks like an open jacket over straight-cut jeans, then he takes another step and Henry swears he’s in robes. Without speaking, the Stranger settles himself in an empty camp chair and Henry runs cold.
Either the Stranger doesn’t have a face, or Henry’s brain doesn’t want to see it. Against a pale oval, zigzags tremble like the lights Henry sees before a migraine. The harder he looks, the more details slip away, and the stronger a sick feeling takes root in his gut.
“What are you doing here?” Dad asks again.
If the Stranger hears him, he doesn’t show it. Dad shakes his shoulder. “I’m talking to you!”
He might as well shake a tree branch. The Stranger keeps still. Courtney begins to cry.
Mom hushes her. Then she turns to the Stranger. “Are you lost? We’ve been trying to find the camp office, too.”
The Stranger doesn’t react to niceness either. Or to Jake accidentally stepping on his foot. Eventually, they give up and leave him be. While Mom and Dad fall into another whispered conversation, Henry creeps closer with a burnt hot dog. He puts it in the Stranger’s papery hand, and the Stranger’s fingers curl around it.
“I have to pee,” Courtney announces.
“Nature’s our toilet now,” Jake says.
“Ew, Jake! You’re gross!”
“Let’s all go before bed,” Mom says, wearily.
They’ve only brought two flashlights. Courtney and Mom take one; Henry and Jake take the other. Dad keeps an eye on the fire and Stranger. But when it’s his turn, Dad tells Mom, “Take one and check the coolers—the kids can have the other,” and he goes into the darkness by himself. As Dad passes the firelight’s soft orange ring, the Stranger shifts slightly.
For a long time, Henry lies awake in his sleeping bag, watching the firelight’s glow play across the tent walls and listening hard, but he never hears Dad’s footsteps and Mom never comes to bed. When he gets up in the morning, the fire’s still burning, and Mom sprawls half-asleep in a camping chair, the fire poker in her hand. The Stranger’s vanished, like he was a bad dream they all shared.
So has Dad.
“Where’s Dad?”
“Hey, the bread grew back!”
“I have to pee again …”
Mom sits them all down at the picnic table to go over things. Her voice stays high and light and Henry hates it, like she’s wearing a papier-mâché mask for them instead of her real self. But he doesn’t exactly want to look Mom’s worry in the eye either, so he traces knotholes in the tabletop and tries to push his own dread aside.
First of all—no one leaves the campsite by themselves. That’s a new rule. Also the most important rule. Even Mom and Jake have to follow it.
Second—Dad maybe took a wrong turn finding privacy, but maybe, just maybe, he found the right road and he’s at the camp office making calls. Either way, everyone’s staying put and no one’s allowed to panic.
Third—no one knows how their half-eaten loaf of bread is whole again, or how all the hot dogs they ate yesterday reappeared, or how the firewood replenished itself, but that’s one less thing to worry about, so Mom doesn’t want to hear any smart-aleck comments about it.
“Did the Stranger do it?” Henry asks.
Mom shakes her head. “I was up with the fire all night, keeping it going for your father. Whoever he is, that Stranger never moved a muscle.”
“Then how’s he gone?”
She doesn’t want to hear smart-aleck comments about that, either.
All that day, they pretend to read and play cards and no one admits how scared they’re getting. Once, Mom and Jake venture down the road, calling Dad’s name, but they stay within sight the whole time. As evening slants bloody through the woods, Mom gets the fire going. A bigger blaze, this time, roaring scarlet and angry, flickering blue.
Darkness swells around the campsite. When stray sparks leap like fireflies into the yawning void, the Stranger joins them, as silently as before. Mom leaps to her feet, but then her shoulders slump.
“Oh, Scott,” she murmurs.
The Stranger settles in Dad’s favourite camping chair. He ignores Mom’s questions, Jake’s jibes. At first Henry thinks maybe the Stranger’s watching him—though it’s impossible to tell through the pinwheel wrongness—but he changes his mind because no one ever pays him attention anyway, so why should the Stranger?
Eventually, the pop Henry drank at dinner starts partying in his bladder. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he tells Mom.
She nods absently, not taking her eyes off the Stranger.
The flashlights are lying by Courtney and Jake, so Henry figures he’ll go far enough into the trees that no one can see him, but he can still see the campfire. His toes are just pushing into the darkness when a cold clamminess grips him. The world flips, sickness hooking him low behind his belly button.
Stifling a shout, Henry spins around—and yes, yes, now the Stranger’s watching him, and for an awful, wrenching moment, Henry swears he sees the Stranger’s eyes, and it’s like pitching into the screaming nothingness between the stars. Henry’s knees go watery, and he jerks backwards, into the firelight.
The badness, the wrongness, it all disappears. Immediately. Completely. Like someone turned the lights on. Trembling, Henry shuffles around the campfire and picks up a flashlight.
This time, in its stark beam, nothing happens. The Stranger turns away, and it’s like Henry doesn’t exist again. He stands in the flashlight’s harsh shine while he zippers his shorts, wondering if the batteries got refilled along with the food.
Dad doesn’t return the next morning. The hot dogs, buns, and pop do. Mom rests her elbows on the cooler and buries her face in her hands. Courtney starts crying, stretching her arms out for a cuddle, but Henry drags her to the grassy patch behind the tent, because even he can tell that Mom just can’t right then. The worst part is, the sun’s pouring down like melted butter through the treetops, and it smells warm and earthy, like you could sink right down into the ground. Any other time, Henry would be plunging into the woods to look for weird bugs and gross mushrooms. The worst part is, he half-wants to. The worst part is, a sliver of blue sky’s gleaming through the thick leaves, bluer than any summer sky Henry’s seen before, and he needs to dig his fingers into his thighs to keep from chasing after it.
Courtney’s sobs dwindle to snuffles. She shreds dandelions while Henry wishes they had the car so they could drive as far away as the gas could take them.
The car was outside the firelight, that first night.
Henry bolts upright.
The tent—inside the firelight’s glow. The coolers—same.
The car—nope.
Dad—nope.
Henry’s mouth dries. He doesn’t tell Mom, though. Not right away. If he’s wrong, he’ll never live it down; he’ll have to move to another family. So that night, he lobs a bottle of relish outside the firelight. Not far—he doesn’t hear it hit the ground, but once daylight breaks, it should be lying on the grass, right where the car was.
It isn’t.
He checks the cooler: not there, either.
Now he tells Mom. Her mouth goes thin and pinched. “I’ve been looking for the red flashlight all morning,” she says, quietly. “Courtney left it behind the tent, before supper.”
They both look at their single, remaining flashlight, resting on the picnic table. It comes with a carabiner that attaches to a loop at the bottom. Carefully, very carefully, Mom clips the flashlight to her belt.
That night, she sends them all into the tent when the Stranger arrives. For hours and hours, Henry listens to her talking to the Stranger—her tone cresting and breaking, but always too soft to pick out the words. Crushing silences answer her.
The morning, she looks ten years older: thinned out, sagging. But she won’t tell them what she said to the Stranger. Henry’s not sure whether that makes it worse.
The sun rises the same every morning, gilding the forest like a summertime dream, and they eat their bread and apples and hot dogs, and then Mom builds the fire and they huddle in its light, the Stranger always present, the Stranger always silent. The flashlight’s beam hasn’t dimmed or wavered, so the batteries must replenish after all—they just have to go to the bathroom one at a time.
The first time Mom has to go, Henry bites back a protest and even Jake’s chin quivers. What if the Stranger moves then? But they all creep a little closer to the fire and hold their breaths until she returns. Soon enough, the knife-edge scariness dulls into normal.
Normal as the rank upon rank of pine trees and the useless road. Normal as the Stranger’s shifting, painful face. Normal as the hot dogs—sometimes Henry burns his on purpose, just so it tastes different.
Normal as the fact that no one talks about Dad anymore.
The night they first arrived, Henry brought a backpack full of books and games into the tent. He feels like a hero, even if no one says it. In the late afternoons, when the sun first dips towards the horizon, Mom reads aloud from The Boxcar Children and The Hobbit, and even Jake listens. At first, Henry looks forward to it, but eventually they’ve got the words memorized so well, they can rattle them off faster than Mom can read them.
So she suggests they act the stories out instead. “We can put on plays for each other!” she says, too brightly.
They all join in—once or twice. But then Courtney whines that it’s stupid and goes back to ripping up dandelions, and Jake withdraws to the edge of the campsite to play with Dad’s utility knife, and Mom lies down in the tent, leaving Henry all alone at the picnic table, clutching the branch he’d found to play Gandalf.
It is stupid. Dad should play Gandalf. He throws the branch away and curls himself over his knees.
Days pass. Days pass. Days pass. Days pass.
And then one day, he drops the flashlight.
It’s such a small thing. His undone shoelaces trail across the dirt, and while Mom is yelling at him to stop and tie them up, he steps on one, loses his balance, and tumbles forward. The flashlight breaks his fall. A horrible crunch chills Henry to the core.
Mom screams: a raw outpouring, like an animal speared. Before Henry can gather himself, she’s pushing him aside, cradling the flashlight. A jagged crack splits the glass bulb. Mom jiggles the switch, up and down, up and down, but nothing happens. It lies there, dead.
“Nice going,” Jake sneers. Dark circles ring his eyes, he looks gaunter, meaner. “Now we’re goners, dingus.”
“I don’t wanna be a goner,” Courtney wails.
“I didn’t mean to!” Tears press hot against Henry’s eyes. “It was an accident, I—”
“Guess we can never pee again.”
“But I want to pee!” Courtney cries louder.
“Shut up!” Mom shouts—and they all freeze. She’s never said that to them before. The flashlight trembles in her hands. “Shut up, all of you! We will pee again.”
“But how?” Courtney whines.
“I don’t know.” Mom swipes her hand across her eyes, but the tears are leaking too fast down her face. “Don’t ask me, not now. Please, just let me—let me stay in the tent awhile.”
“Nicegoing, loser,” Jake hisses, as Mom zips herself in. “You made Mom cry.”
Henry stands rooted to the spot. He doesn’t remember feeling so terrible in his whole ten years. “It was an accident.”
“Yeah, well.” Jake hurls the broken flashlight into the trees. “Tell that to the Stranger.”
No one has water or pop with dinner, even though Mom half-heartedly reminds them that it’s important to stay hydrated. “Not thirsty,” Jake grunts, and Henry agrees. Courtney fidgets in her seat and then crawls into Mom’s lap.
“I want to go home,” she stage-whispers into Mom’s ear, like it’s a secret. Henry can’t bear to see Mom’s reaction, so he slips off the bench and starts arranging kindling for the night’s fire.
No one stirs when the Stranger arrives anymore. However many nights it’s been, the Stranger never speaks to them, never moves unless they find themselves too near the firelight’s edge. Even his impossible face doesn’t faze Henry anymore, it just hurts to look at.
Usually Mom talks a little, asking about everyone’s day like they haven’t spent the last eon together, but that night, everyone stays quiet, wrapped in themselves. The fire crackles and flickers, white-hot logs collapsing to coals. Henry adds another log to the fire, coaxing the flames to leap higher, the light to stretch further. He’s gotten good at fires—important, since he, Mom, and Jake take shifts through the night to keep it going.
Courtney’s already squirming when the Stranger arrives. Then she starts balling her fists up, humming under her breath, jiggling back and forth. Mom doesn’t ask. It’s like she’s pretending not to see.
“Mom,” Courtney whispers. “Mom.”
Mom adds another log to the fire as well.
“Mom. Mom. I have to. I have to go.”
Mom closes her eyes.
“Please, Mom.”
“We can’t build the fire any higher,” Mom says. “Or we’ll run out of wood before morning. Courtney, go right where the firelight stops. Just there. Not one step past it.”
“But you can see me!”
“Just do it, Courtney.”
Her face all squeezed up, Courtney hops to the edge of the light. Henry stares at the coals. Like a nest of dragon’s eggs, seething, pulsing red. Fabric rustles. Courtney grunts.
“I see your butt!” Jake calls.
Courtney shrieks in dismay, and Henry glances up just in time to see her arms wheeling, her shorts around her ankles as she steps back to steady herself, steps back and—
Her shriek cuts off. The Stranger straightens in the camping chair.
“Courtney!” Mom yells.
Silence.
“Courtney!”
Jake’s gone flat, his expression like a shark. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you—” Mom grabs a branch from the pile of wood. She thrusts it into the fire, sets the tip alight. Whirling around, she hisses, “Stay there. Don’t move a muscle.” As the firelight leaps across her face, it carves shadows under her cheekbones, her eyes, and she might’ve stepped from the cover of The Hobbit herself, wilder and more ferocious than Henry’s ever seen her. “I’m getting her back.”
Holding her torch aloft, Mom sprints into the trees. It blazes like a falling star, a fierce fist of light against the crowding dark. The Stranger’s still sitting erect, alert, and Henry drags himself to the rim of the smouldering light, Jake creeping next to his elbow. Their breaths rasp over the fire’s humming as they watch that tiny, raging flame weave itself across the night, Mom’s shouts echoing back to them.
Eventually, the torch goes out. Silence returns.
Henry rests his forehead on the dirt and cries. Big, ugly, baby sobs, the kind that shake his whole body and wring him out. When he finally pulls himself upright, the Stranger’s relaxed again and Jake’s feeding the fire, his mouth set in a grim line.
“Just you and me, now,” he says.
Days pass. Days pass. Henry starts sitting beside the Stranger at night, because it’s better than sitting next to Jake. Since the darkness took Mom and Courtney, Jake’s smouldered like the fire: his thundercloud face scares Henry into quietness. He makes himself small, draws himself in, and counts and re-counts the logs in their stock. With only two of them to keep the first burning all night, no one sleeps much.
Henry doubts he’d sleep much anyway. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees that small fierce light going out.
Days pass.
Jake starts sitting with his back to the fire. He won’t eat the hot dogs that Henry still dutifully roasts, no matter what Henry does to make them interesting: scorching them in different patterns, tearing them into bite-sized chunks, dissecting them on the point of Dad’s knife. They fall to ashes in Henry’s mouth, but Mom would tell them to keep their strength up. When he explains this to Jake, Jake smacks the hot dog to the dirt.
“No one asked you.”
So Henry spends a lot more time curled in his sleeping bag, or leaning against the Stranger’s legs. He never thought he would miss school, but he tries to imagine himself there, going through a whole day, smelling fresh notebooks and forgotten lunches, hearing the squeak of chalk on the blackboard and kids yelling on the playground. Sometimes it nearly works, enough that he’s startled when Jake shakes him for his turn watching the fire.
He stopped crying a long time ago. So did Jake.
“Is this forever?” Henry asks one night, his voice rusted.
Jake’s crouched on his haunches, his eyes pink with smoke. “Nah, I figured it out. We’re not stuck. Not at all.”
“What do you mean?”
Jake’s grin chills him. “Dad got out. Mom and Courtney. Right?”
All Henry’s blood drains to his toes, and then it shoots like ice to his fingertips. “Jake, no!”
“Can’t be that hard. Gotta be better than this.”
Henry tries to yank him nearer the fire, but Jake shoves him away. Towering over Henry, he lets a string of drool drop from his lips. It misses Henry by inches, and Jake snorts.
“You can stay if you want,” he says, “but I’m going.”
With that, he turns. Giving the Stranger a sarcastic salute, he strides into the darkness. The forest devours his footfalls, leaving only the wind in the endless trees, and the shrinking circle of light around Henry and the Stranger.
Now Henry splits himself in two. Daytimes, he spends in the sleeping bag, drifting between dreams and fantasies. He pretends he went to soccer camp after all, invents all the friends he would’ve made there. Their conversations feel so real, he can’t separate out what really happened anymore.
Dad doesn’t feel real. Neither does the camp office, if it ever existed.
Around four in the afternoon, he drags himself out and gets the fire going. With no one to relieve him, he stays up all night, huddled in the camping chair beside the Stranger, pinching the inside of his arms to stay awake. Dream and imagining blur in the smoke, pierced biting shafts of loneliness.
Days no longer pass. They meld one into the next, until Henry can’t remember Mom’s face anymore. No matter how far he casts his mind back, he sees only that small, failing torch.
He’s so tired his chin keeps drooping to his chest. The fire gutters, a few desultory flames rippling over the coals. Shaking himself, Henry rises from the chair, the next log dangling loose from his hand. He takes a staggering step forward, even as he wonders whether it’s worth it.
Just you and me, now.
The Stranger raises a hand. He gestures for the wood. Henry lets slip a soft little sigh that might be a soul succored and might be a soul pushed past its reckoning, and he sinks back into the camp chair.
“Don’t worry, Henry,” the Stranger says. “I’ll mind the fire.” Together, they watch the embers burn low.
