Jake Hollis had been dead for eighty-five years. He was fifteen years old when he died, and he was buried in a now deserted and forgotten Quaker cemetery in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. His funeral was on August 27, 1925, at 10:00 on a fairly cool, beautiful morning. His father and mother, ashen faced, shocked, mute, stood at his grave. His mother held the hand of Jake’s eight-year-old sister while his brother, thirteen, stood alone. A forgiving breeze stirred the trees but would not dry their tears. Jake’s only aunt would stay with the family another two months to help manage the household.

In a box full of photographs and crinkly memorabilia of a long defunct boys’ camp called Camp Forest Hills, there is a picture or two of Jake Hollis. This box is one of a collection of five boxes located in a modest mansion in Concord, New Hampshire. How the photographs ended up there, no one seems to know, but in Mrs. Abigail Bishop’s spacious and organized attic the photos of Jake have rested for thirty-seven years. When she died, her family donated the five boxes, as well as two trunks and a sled, to the New Hampshire Historical Society.

After looking through the contents, David Flanders, the curator at the Society, decided to mount an exhibit. The boxes contained a wealth of fascinating information on the history of the boys’ camps that flourished in the state from 1900 to the present. Not just Camp Forest Hills, but wild sounding camp names like Camp Pasquaney, Camp Asquam, and Camp Mowglis. The boxes were filled with old letters from camp children, menus, daily schedules of the camps, tax receipts and even old yearbooks. There were sixty-four sepia colored and black and white photographs: boys playing sports, boys swimming, hiking, sitting in their tents. Boys staring into the camera, engaged in rifle practice, or working on projects in the woodshop, posed for eternity.

Jake, the boy who died, was in two of the sixty-four pictures. The first was a group photograph of the campers at Camp Forest Hills of 1925. Jake is in the second row, the last boy on the right: bent down on his right knee, arms crossed, as were all the others, and he stares at the camera intently. While the boys are wedged together, shoulder to shoulder, he is slightly, just slightly, apart. His dark hair falls across his forehead. 1925 was a different time when there were no Doritos, no McDonalds, no quick and easy greasy chicken. The boys look healthy, well fed, and muscular. Jake weighs 147 lbs. He is 5 feet 8 inches tall. Had he lived he would have grown taller. He would have gained more weight. There is no smile on his face: but there are no smiles on anyone’s face. The boys were told to do that: showing the seriousness of these summer camps, these camps that taught young boys how to survive, how to be mature men for the future. But Jake didn’t survive. He died. During that summer, his first time at the camp, he died.

The second picture of Jake is the camp’s baseball team. He is standing, again a little away from the other campers, on the left. He’s gripping a baseball bat, but the bat is touching the ground, as if Jake is about to raise it for a swing. He’s leaning against a cabin and his left arm is looped over the railing. He grins. Perhaps he and the team are about to start a game. He’s wearing a baseball uniform. The other guys don’t have uniforms; they’re dressed in shorts and old shirts. Jake’s uniform was a gift from his dad, something for the camp adventure he was about to embark on.

For thirty-seven years, through summers and winters, these two simple, quiet pictures of Jake Hollis stayed in that box in Mrs. Bishop’s attic. Today, carefully, respectfully, Mr. Flanders removes all the photos, separates the materials and creates the Historical Society’s new exhibit. Mr. Flanders thought it was the perfect exhibit for the summer months and early fall, as the Society was overrun with tourist visitors during that time of year. The two photos of Jake will go up on the wall. The exhibit is on the second floor of the New Hampshire Historical Society. The building, which opened in 1906, is across the street from the State Capitol in Concord. It will take a visit by a very special, sensitive boy named Andy Mackpeace to look at these photos, and Jake will finally, finally, after eighty-five years of being silent, speak to the living.

Chapter 1

Andy Mackpeace was sitting on the steps of the Historical Society with his friend Miranda Roberts and the rest of his Eighth Grade Social Studies class. They were eating lunches and the late September sun was shining on their faces. His summer tan highlighted his blond hair and his blue eyes. He had gained some healthy, muscled weight over the summer too which was beginning to catch up to his vanity.

“Have you spoken to Roger lately?” Miranda asked. Roger Stanley was Andy’s best friend who had moved to Montana three weeks ago.

“We email each other almost everyday, but since he’s tried out for football, I usually don’t hear from him until late at night.” Andy stuffed the remains of his plastic wraps and brownie crumbs into his paper bag and basketball dunked them into the recycling trash bin. “Other than that, he’s doing great. Montana is a whole new world for him.”

Mr. Flanders opened the main door and waved a hand to the teacher outside. “Whenever your class is ready…”

Mr. Hahn grouped his class together. “Ok, you have your worksheets: the photos you are about to see will help you answer the questions.” For Andy and Miranda, Social Studies for that year meant learning about their home state: a complete New Hampshire History. Andy thought the whole idea was insane, and sounded boring, but Mr. Hahn was one of those teachers who brought it all to life, making the little struggles and triumphs of New Hampshire seem like a day at the UN.

Their field trip was an exhibit: a study of the boys’ camps that flourished in the state and continued to do so even today. Andy had never gone to one; Miranda had been to a girls’ Field Hockey training camp, but since they both lived in Silver Lake, a small town, it was sort of pointless. The camps were for the rich kids from Boston and New York who wanted to get out of the heat of the city. “Now, I don’t have to remind you to stay quiet in there,” Mr. Hahn said as the group went filing into the doors. “You’ll have forty-five minutes to do your research.”

The troupe marched up the wide marble stairs swooping up to the second floor. At the top, on the left, was the entrance to a large room with a banner that read:

BOYS’ CAMPS, CULTURE, AND
THE NEW HAMPSHIRE EXPERIENCE:
1898-PRESENT

“These stupid camps have been around this long!” Miranda said, passing under the banner. “Oh, and of course, the girls’ camps aren’t even represented here!”

The room was filled with make-shift walls that contained photographs, printed materials and camp flyers arranged chronologically. She and Andy strolled through the turn of the Twentieth Century camps, names like Camp Pasquaney, Camp Asquam, and Chocorua, looking at the old style clothes and haircuts.

“Check out what the counselors are wearing!” Miranda whispered. College-aged men were sitting outside on the grass wearing jackets and ties and long pants and shoes.

“That was for the photographer,” Andy said. “That’d be ridiculous to wear that all day!” He was right. Other photos showed the counselors in shorts, hiking boots, loose shirts and old hats. “Question 1: List several differences in the style of clothing throughout the span of the century”. Andy and Miranda began writing the answers to their questions.

As Andy rounded the corner of one wall and entered the area marked 1920-1940, he came into a group of photos showing a camp called Camp Forest Hills. There was a hand-drawn cartoon map of the camp. Camp Forest Hills had been situated at the base of a small mountain, with a lake at the top. The base contained the playing fields and some buildings with a road winding up the hill, through the pine trees, to the lake. Along the road were smaller drawn shapes, presumably camp cabins, which ended at the small lake shaped like a pair of glasses. “Spectacle Pond”, the map read. According to the map, the lake had a long dock built on it stretching from the beach out into the water.

Andy examined every inch of the map. He turned his head to stare at the first of several photos regarding daily life at Camp Forest Hills. The first showed a row of boys and counselors standing on that long wooden dock, and they looked about ready to dive off. The caption read: ‘Diving and Swimming are an intricate part of learning survival techniques at Camp Forest Hills. Boys are taught to swim and dive and compete in healthy, active games.’ Andy laughed to himself. Learning survival techniques?

His eyes moved to the next photo: a group shot of the counselors and the boys. The caption read: ‘Camp Forest Hills, Groton, New Hampshire. Boys and Counselors, Summer of 1925.’ Andy looked at the faces of those non-grinning people from eighty-five years ago. He started with the top row of, clearly, the counselors and an older man there too who looked like a doctor or perhaps the owner of the camp.

Andy wondered about who these people were, their names, their lives, if they were happy, what they ate for breakfast, what time the photo was taken. He imagined their homes, what it was like to live as a rich kid. He kept thinking and pondering as his eyes moved toward the second row.

He began at the left and guessed the ages of the camp kids. They looked around thirteen, fourteen. Some were older, perhaps fifteen and sixteen. One boy’s two ears stuck straight out while his mouth pouted in a “Jeez, do we have to be doing this!” frown. Andy laughed out loud.

His eyes roamed through the row, from the shorter boy peering out between two heads, the bright blond haired kid, past the taller guy with a shock of hair combed straight back, all of them glaring at the camera. His eyes roamed across the row to the right, studied, absorbed, when they rested upon Jake Hollis.

“Who killed me?” Jake said. “I died here. I was murdered.”

The words vibrated through eighty-five years of time and landed on the first person able to hear them. Andy spun around to see if someone else had heard the strange voice. No one was paying him any attention, and even Miranda had raced ahead to look for any sign of a girls’ camp. Did the picture really talk? No, that’s impossible, Andy thought. But there was energy. Energy zinging at him from the photograph. Something was being said to him.

Andy stared at the boy: he was the last kid on the right in the second row: he was kneeling on his right knee, arms folded across his chest, looking straight into the camera. He had thick, dark hair that wasn’t parted or pasted back on his skull. It was straight hair with bangs that completely covered his forehead. His shoulders were broad for a boy his age, and his eyebrows were dark too, giving his eyes a callous, obstinate look, enhanced by a square jaw and a strong nose. He appeared to be about 5’7” or 5’8”; since he was kneeling, it was hard for Andy to tell. The boy was average in weight. He was wearing shorts and this short-sleeved camp shirt, just like many of the others, and his face had a feigned hardness that was rehearsed. Despite the coldness in the eye, Andy felt he looked like the type of guy whom you could depend on, you could trust.

“Who killed me?” Jake’s voice said again. “Who killed me?”

Like the ripples a lake makes when you throw a rock into it, the words pulsated out from the picture and into the room. Goose bumps slithered across Andy’s arms, and a shiver went up his back. His palms were sweaty and he rubbed them on his pants. He turned around because one of his classmates was peering over his shoulder. Andy was about to say, “Hey, did you notice that?” when the classmate wandered off, bored.

Andy returned to the picture again. The vibrations got stronger.

“I was murdered here.”

The energy came from that boy: the last boy on the right in the second row. It filled Andy’s head. He tried to diffuse the energy by looking away. He stared out the windows and focused on the light from the sun. He counted to twenty, pretended to read his assignment sheet. But, the temptation was too strong. He raised his head toward the innocent photograph, and every time he put his eyes back on the boy, the dark words came through. Stronger. Insistent.

“Who killed me?”

Andy’s head got lighter and the room started to spin. Jeez, it’s happening.

“I was murdered here.”

The lunch in his stomach started its movement upward.

“Who killed…”

“Stop!” Andy yelled and he keeled over toward the display. He grabbed for the wall, missed, hit a menu board instead and knocked over a table of brochures. The racket was like a cannon shot, and Andy bolted. His stomach turned to mush. The young boy ran as fast as he could out of the exhibit, out of the stuffy air and those god-awful vibrating pulses. He flew down the stairs, dropping his notebook and his pen. He saw the Men’s room at the bottom and pushed open the door. It crashed into the wall with a BANG! the noise echoing across the lobby and up the stairs into the photo exhibit. The door stayed open. Andy headed for a toilet, but his brain knew he’d never make it. He reached a garbage can instead and hurled up his lunch. His retching reverberated through the building, and everyone, from the research librarian in the back room, to the entire Social Studies class on the second floor, heard every chunk of his sandwich and brownie hitting the bottom of the empty can.

Chapter 2

Miranda saw Andy knock over the brochure exhibit, and she was a few steps behind him when he raced down the stairs. She ran into the Men’s room and as the gagging and the retching came to a close, she grabbed some paper towels, wet them and wiped Andy’s forehead.

“Miranda!” Andy said after he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, “You’re not supposed to be in here!”

“Oh for God’s sake, Andy,” Miranda said, “You’re puking up your pepperoni. Who cares where we are.” She led him to the sink where he ducked his head under the faucet and got a drink of water. “Andy, what happened up there? Your lunch looked okay to me…”

“Miranda, it’s the picture,” he panted, splashing water on his face, “It…”

Mr. Hahn rushed into the bathroom and stopped short when he saw Miranda. He did a double take with the girl and he checked the sign on the door to make sure it read ‘MEN’. He stepped aside from the door entrance and motioned for Miranda to leave. “Thank you Miranda, I’ll look after Andy.” Andy heard her footsteps echo back to him as she retraced her path to the second floor. Mr. Hahn put his arm around the pale looking boy. “Are you alright? Do you feel like throwing up again?” Mr. Hahn was a good man who prided himself on his care and concern for all his students: be it if they were not doing well in school, or not doing well at home.

“No, I’m fine. There’s nothing left inside me anyway.”

Mr. Hahn guided Andy outside and told him to sit on the steps in the sun. The rest of the class would be down in about twenty minutes. After checking in with Andy one more time, Mr. Hahn left him alone. Andy put his head between his legs and closed his eyes.

“Jeez Grandma, what was that!?” Andy said aloud to his dead Grandmother Geri. She had died earlier that year, yet often Andy had conversations with her. Just as often, Andy heard her answer back, as a small still voice in the center of his head. He knew somehow, she was with him. Not in person, not ever again in person, but always and forever in her spirit, in her guidance.

“It’s proof that you are a very sensitive b… excuse me, man, now Andy.” Grandma Geri said. “Did you notice how no one else in the room heard him? No one was aware of that kind of vibrating pain?”

“I’m such an idiot though, Grandma. I can’t even stay in the room! My stomach starts to hurt and I throw up like a weakling!”

“Nonsense. It’s your guidance system talking to you, telling you to listen. Help the boy. He wants closure.”

Closure. Andy remembered that word. He heard it many times when he used to talk to Grandma Geri in her living room. Grandma Geri had been a medium, a psychic, a healer.

When Grandma Geri talked about spirits, she used to tell him, “Some spirits don’t know how to cross over; they may not know they have died, so they hang around wondering what happened to them. Other spirits realize that they’re dead, but something keeps them here: some injustice, or some pain. They’re more connected to that pain than they are to leaving and finding closure.”

“So what do you do when that happens?” Andy asked.

“Well, sometimes my job is to talk to them, help them understand that they can move on now, move forth in peace. ‘Pax tecum’, I say. It’s Latin, it means ‘Peace be with you.’ With a little coaching, a little reassuring, they leave behind their hurt, their revenge, their resentment.” She smiled her benevolent smile. “They cross over. They’re at rest.”

Andy snapped his head up when he heard people talking behind him. His class was returning and Miranda headed straight for him. “Any more puke?” she said, looking over the side of the stone steps into the bushes. “Want an ice cream? How about a nice Italian sausage?”

He gave her a slight shove. “The picture,” he whispered, “Did you see that one picture?”

“The only thing I remember seeing of any consequence,” Miranda said as they boarded the bus, “Was A): the lack of information on girls’ camps which will be duly noted in my homework, and B) the inside of a Men’s Bathroom with an enormous amount of undigested brownie spewing from your mouth.”

Chapter 3

“Psychometry,” Andy said the next day while holding a dictionary open to the ‘P’s’ and reading aloud. “Divining knowledge about an object or about a person connected with it, through such contact with the object.” He closed the book. “You see, I’m not nuts!” Miranda was eating a protein bar on the living room couch in Andy’s house. Her feet were tucked underneath her and her long brown hair was pulled back. Andy’s parents were not home from work yet, and he had finished recounting his episode with the vibrating picture. “The picture had the ability to send me a message, I mean, that boy had the ability to use the picture to send me a message.”

“Which picture was it again?” Miranda asked unwrapping more of the protein bar. She was a Field Hockey player and liked eating nutritious foods. “They started to look alike after awhile.”

“The Group shot, Camp Forest Hills!” Andy said for the second time that day. “Miranda, I don’t know how to explain it any more than I did: he called out to me; he kept saying, Who killed me? I was murdered here. How can I make up something like that? It came zooming at me from out of the picture. My grandmother used to do that once in a while.”

“What, zoom at you through your scrapbook?” Miranda said smiling.

“Very funny. No, I mean, someone would give her an old scarf or a quilt, and she could interpret the energy that was coming off of it. She could tell if there was some awful situation connected with the object.” He gestured to the dictionary. “Psychometry.”

“So, what do you want to do about it? Call the Historical Society? Tell them they have a haunted photograph that talks to people?”

“Go back with me.” Andy sat down next to her. “Mr. Hahn said because of what happened, I could finish my assignment over the weekend and hand it in on Monday.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Miranda sighed, “Go get the paper, I’ll give you the answers.”

“No, that’s not the point. Go with me, on Saturday, and I’ll show you the photograph and see if the same thing happens to you.” Andy was determined to figure this out. “I want to see if that feeling comes back. You won’t be distracted by the other kids or a paper. Just open up to it and see if that kid, that dead kid, talks to you. If you won’t go Miranda, I’ll go by myself. I can’t forget this and let it drop.”

Miranda touched her friend on the arm. “Alright,” she said, “what time?”

“9:30.”

“9:30! Are you nuts! It’s Satu…”

“I know. I know. But, I want to get there when it first opens, before it gets crowded.”

“Grrrrrgh,” said Miranda as she headed out the door to go home, “Alright, although who in their right minds would want to see that exhibit is beyond me, but I’ll be there.”

On Saturday, Miranda and Andy once again climbed the stairway leading to the Exhibit. The banner was still there and everything looked exactly as it did before; however, there was a silence that permeated the area. No other people had entered the gallery yet; the only sounds were their footsteps reverberating on the stairs. The sky was grayer this time, so when the two friends entered the exhibit, there were no sunshine patches on the carpet, no warm yellow spots breaking up on the window panes. The room was darker; the overhead track lighting wasn’t very strong and the heat in the building hadn’t reached the second floor.

Andy led Miranda to the destined area: 1920-1940. He passed the first group of camp shots, and headed toward the little sign that read: Camp Forest Hills. He stopped ten feet from that particular exhibit and went no farther. He looked straight down at the floor and pointed his finger. “It’s over there,” he told Miranda, “see the Camp Forest Hills sign? Now, look for the group photo.”

Miranda, for all her bravura, wasn’t foolish. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” she said. “Ok, here goes.” She approached the pictures like a cat creeping up on a snake. They hadn’t been moved or re-arranged, they were in the same location as before. She stepped closer, scanning the wall for a group photo.

“There’s a group of boys about to play baseball, is that it?” She was studying their faces, looking for signs of trouble.

“No, it’s a big group photo,” Andy responded keeping his face glued to the floor. “They’re standing and kneeling in rows, and the older counselors are on the top row.”

Miranda swept passed the baseball picture, the swimming and diving picture and… “There it is. I found it. Now, you said, look at the last boy on the right in the second row.” Her voice had a tinge of a quiver in it. “If this dead kid started screaming at me, I’m going to scream right back.” Her eyes roamed to the end and she found the boy with the dark hair and the crossed arms. “Ah, there he is. He’s kneeling a little bit apart from the other kids, right?”

Andy’s stomach did a flip. He reenacted the memory from two days ago and he willed himself not to be sick.

Stay calm, stay cool.

“Yes,” his voice cracked, “That’s him.”

“Wow, hey, wait, I recognize him: he’s in the other picture. There’s another picture of him on the baseball team. He looks much happier playing baseball,” Miranda said, turning to face Andy who was looking at his sneakers. “Andy, you can look up, there’s nothing here. I don’t hear a thing.”

“He’s in another picture? Where is it?”

“Yeah, he’s in a smaller group shot, he’s holding a baseball bat, and he looks like he’s having a good time.” Miranda walked back to Andy. “Maybe he just didn’t like getting his picture taken.”

Andy gave her a ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ look.

“I know this sounds stupid,” he said, “but…”

She took his hand and led him to the baseball picture from the Camp Forest Hills display. There, at about eye level, was Jake. He was gripping the bat as it touched the ground, and he was standing off to the left. He was smiling and the entire team looked like they were ready to win the World Series. “Ya see?” she said, “They look like camp wasn’t so bad after all.”

Andy gazed into Jake’s happy-go-lucky face. From far inside the picture, the vibrations started again. Like a faint beating heart that grew in intensity, the energy got stronger. It was an earthquake that began far away and traveled directly to Andy’s feet.

“He’s talking again,” Andy whimpered, and he fell to his knees. “He’s not stopping.” The vibrations got louder. The voice got louder. That pulsing grew as the energy zinged through time landing in Andy’s chest.

Boom.

“It’s getting louder!” he said.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Miranda was on the floor next to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “What’s he saying this time?”

And as Andy listened to Jake’s repeated requests, he waited until the words were a mantra, a mantra he picked up and chanted with Jake so that the two boys’ voices were indistinguishable:

“I was murdered. Who killed me?”

Chapter 4

“Well, well, so I am talking to a real live psychic!” Roger said. Roger and Andy were IMing the next night. “So psychic man, what’s going to be my grade on my test tomorrow in history? MONTANA history?”

“I’m not kidding,” Andy responded. “I’ve picked up this ability to hear this guy talking to me from the photograph. It’s called psychometry. He doesn’t stop. I can’t exactly turn it off. I didn’t even turn it on!”

“Well, the exhibit is over soon, right? Soon they’ll pack it away in some box and that’ll be the end of it. No more voices.”

“True,” wrote Andy. “But, I don’t know… there’s something about that voice that I can’t ignore. Just because it goes into a box doesn’t mean the kid stops talking.”

“What’s he going to do? Come crawling over to your house? Andy, you have a gift, I believe that. You can use your gifts for other things. Have you looked into any history of this camp, what was it, Camp Forest Gump?”

“Camp Forest HILLS!”

“Ok, ok. Maybe there’s a record of this incident, maybe the killer was arrested long ago. Maybe the guy did his time and is in a grave somewhere. Have you looked online? Check police reports? Email the librarian in the area up there near the camp? You know? There’re lots of ways to see what happened to this guy without wigging out over it. Tell you what: I’ll do some of the web searching if you contact the locals and see what you can uncover. It just might be done and over with, and all you have to do is find out who the killer was, go back to the photograph and, I don’t know, TELL the kid the guy’s name. Just do it on a day where there’s no one around so they don’t lock you up for talking to pictures.”

Andy laughed. Roger was so pragmatic about events, life. He was able to see the puzzle, look at it upside down and backwards, and figure out a solution. Of course, the Internet. Do the research, find the answer, and tell the picture. Then the voice would stop. He was sure it would.

“Ok, you got a deal,” Andy wrote. “See what you can dig up (no pun intended), and I’ll start sending emails. Thank you for not thinking I was nuts.”

“You, nuts?” Roger wrote. “Hell, you’ll always be nuts, and that’s why I like talking to you. I’ll keep you posted. Over and out.”

“Bye.”

Roger was gone. Andy sat back in his chair and stared at the empty computer screen. It’s not the same.

“I miss you,” he said aloud. He looked out the window at a yellow birch. For all the easy wonderfulness of technology, the real Roger was gone.

* * *

A week went by. Andy sent emails and one letter to a library with no website, and Roger did his research. On Thursday night, at 7:05PM, the phone rang. Andy’s father answered the phone.

“May I speak to Mr. Mackpeace, please?” The voice sounded like a mature woman in her 40’s.

“This is he,” he said. “May I help you?”

“Mr. Andrew Mackpeace?”

“Well, that’s not me,” he said. “That would be my son; one moment, please.” He put the phone down and gestured toward Andy. “For you…” he whispered. “A woman, an older woman.”

Andy turned beet red, but his father smiled and hit him on the arm. “Hello?” he said, trying to sound much older than his thirteen years.

“Mr. Mackpeace, this is Caroline Paulino from the Groton Library. You wrote me a letter asking about Camp Forest Hills.”

“Yes! Hello!” Andy’s voice broke. “Do you have any news?”

“Well, I have to admit I got a secret thrill from doing this research, it doesn’t happen everyday! I came across some old newspaper clippings about a death at Camp Forest Hills in 1925. A boy named Jake Hollis drowned over in Spectacle Pond. That was where the camp was. Apparently, he was swimming late at night, got a cramp, and drowned.”

“Swimming at night? Did they do that back then? Didn’t they have some kind of camp schedule they had to follow, you know, be in bed by eight?”

“Yes, you’re right about that.” Ms. Paulino laughed. “The articles didn’t report too much, so around here, sometimes it’s better to ask the older locals. The man who fixed our poles out on the front porch told me he remembered hearing about it years later, after the camp had closed. You see, the camp had only been open three years when this death happened; two years later it closed for good. Nowadays, there’s nothing left of the place. They tore down all the camp buildings, built some second home log cabins up there, and well, there’s still the pond, of course. Anyway, the man confirmed the newspaper: the boy had drowned.”

“So, what happened then?”

“The next morning they found him, floating near the beach, stuck on a rock. I guess he got cramps or tired or,” Andy heard papers being shuffled on her end of the line. “No, I was mistaken! He had his clothes on! That’s what was weird about it. The boy had his clothes on when they found him, so they figured he fell into the lake and hit his head or panicked. The newspaper clippings didn’t make too much out of it. Accidental death, a really sad case. Jake Hollis was from New York; the father had to drive up here and get his son.”

Andy couldn’t slow down his breathing. Finally a thread to piece together this awful gut feeling. “So,” he whispered slowly, cautiously, like he might be letting out a terrible secret, “he wasn’t murdered?”

“No,” Ms. Paulino laughed a bit in a serious, understanding way. “Sorry to burst your CSI bubble, but no, he wasn’t murdered. He just drowned, it happens sometimes, out here in these camps.”

“Do you know what month this happened?”

“August,” she said, “August 23, 1925. They found him around 6:30 in the morning. Right after reveille.”

“Ms. Paulino, you’ve been a great help. Thank you for doing all of this and for calling me.”

“You are welcome, Andrew,” Ms. Paulino voice glowed in that librarian way after doing a job well done, “I hope this helps you!”

“Yes, it does, thank you again. Good bye.”

Andy hung up the phone and wandered back to the table where his father had been sitting. Andy was thinking and thinking so much, he banged into the chair.

“Well, talking to older women can do that to a guy,” his father said. “Who was that? Anyone I know?”

Although Andy talked to his dad about many things, he didn’t feel comfortable about this one. “A librarian,” he answered. “She was helping me with some history research.”

“Oh, research,” Andy’s dad smiled to himself. “Hmmm.”

Chapter 5

Andy went upstairs to his bedroom, his sanctuary from the world, and flopped on the blue quilt that covered his bed. The darkness outside surprised him: the clock read only 7:22 PM. It was getting colder already and many leaves had turned their colors. Andy opened his window a bit and smelled one of his favorite smells: the pretense of Fall. Late September. If Andy had been blind he would have known what month it was just by the richness of the cool, autumn night. The last little hint of summer still lingered in the pines from the sun, but the newer odors of a dying earth instilled a sadness in Andy that was impossible to overlook.

Roger was gone, the summer was gone, the freedom was gone (!), but, at the same time, he enjoyed the newness of school. The new year, the new classes, the new books. Something new to learn. He reviewed in his head all his homework, and he mentally checked off everything he had accomplished. His eyes wandered around the room for a moment, and he saw his closet and remembered the incense sticks. Grandma Geri’s legacy.

It was only three months ago, but those incense sticks had taken him, Roger and Miranda on a time travel adventure that had almost cost them their lives. He had burned two of them, and there were eight sticks left in the tiny box. He opened the closet, and felt way in the back, underneath his winter sweaters. His fingers touched the box; he grabbed it and pulled the box out. He opened the lid and the sticks were exactly as Andy had left them. No one had been in his closet, touching, snooping. He tipped over the box to let the sticks out: they were different colors, red, yellow, green. If the brown one had taken them to Georgia, and the cranberry one had taken him to Boston… he tried to imagine where the others would lead. Yellow is for Corn? Native American? Green is for Ireland? Appalachia? Green Mountains… Good night! Andy thought, you mean to say this green one only gets me to Vermont? The next state over?

The boy laughed and put the sticks back where he found them. The last one was gray in color and Andy suddenly had a flash of inspiration. What if he could control the stick? Instead of lighting it and seeing where the stick takes him, maybe he could light the stick and tell the stick where to go!

Yes! Maybe that was possible! “Grandma Geri?” Andy said out loud. “Are you there? If we have an intention, and we’re sincere about it, then it doesn’t matter how we carry it out because it’ll speak for us, it’ll manifest itself. Right?

Silence.

“Hello? Grandma? Am I right?”

Nothing. Nothing confirming him, nothing negating him.

“I know I’m right,” Andy said as he jumped off the bed and turned on the computer. “Please be online, Roger!” Andy sat in his computer chair while the machine turned on. Roger was there.

“Roger! Have you got a second?” Andy typed as fast as he could.

“Yes, Andy. I’m here.” Roger had emailed Andy the night before about his research, but his paltry results were not as juicy as Andy’s.

“I just got an idea. I want to try something. The librarian said Jake Hollis had died by an accident, but I don’t believe that. So, I’m going to mail you a bit of Grandma Geri’s gray incense stick, and I want you to meet me at the camp. Now, hear me out.” Andy kept typing into the IM so that Roger couldn’t interrupt him. “We synchronize a time, light the sticks, and meet at the camp. We find this kid Jake, tell him that on August 23rd he’s going to get killed and to stay away from the lake. It’s our intention, don’t you see?”

Roger was sitting at his desk, in Montana at 5:27 Mountain time, doing some math. He was in the middle of a car driving 80 mph going west while another car was driving 50 mph going east when Andy started babbling about time travel. He put the math book aside and slid the keyboard over. He read Andy’s message twice.

“Hello??” Andy broke in, “you there?”

“Hang on a sec…” Roger read it a third time and thought about the situation. “Ok, let me get this straight. You want us to light one of the sticks at the same time and go to the camp and find this guy and warn him about his death.”

“YES!!”

“The other sticks took us somewhere, how are you so certain we can take the stick somewhere else?”

“I know, it sounds weird, but I have a gut feeling that if you and I concentrate, really, really hard, then light the sticks at the same time, we can control where we go. If our intention is honest, pure, solid, strong, and if we both think only about going to Camp Forest Hills, then the stick has to obey. It has to go where we tell it to go. Roger, it’s worth a try! If we end up someplace else, well, we can light them and come back. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“Ok, Lewis Carroll, but what do we do if it really works? Andy, think for a second. You want me to go to some WASP camp, in 1925, an all WHITE camp and tell some white dude he’s about to be killed. Andy, I love the fact that you’re color blind, but, let me tell you something, they sure as heck won’t be. I’m black. You have to remember where you’re going. I could get beat up, jailed, hauled off the property, thrown out on my butt for even stepping foot on the place! Besides, how are you going to get this kid to believe he’s going to die on August 23? You can’t control things like that Andy. I mean, suppose someone came up to you and told you not to go swimming next Thursday because you were going to die. Someone you didn’t know! You think you’d believe him? This guy Jake isn’t going to believe you either. I hate to disappoint you old friend, but I think this is just one case that will have to be packed up and left to history.”

Andy stopped. He read Roger’s side of the story and he knew his friend was right. There were too many factors to be considered here and the last thing he wanted was to get Roger in any trouble, like last time. “So, what do we do now?” he typed.

“Let it go. Make peace with yourself and let it go.”

An hour later, after signing off with Roger, Andy called Miranda. “What are you doing tomorrow after school?” he asked. “How’d you like to go on a little trip?”

Chapter 6

At exactly 3:35, Miranda Roberts walked into Andy’s bedroom. Andy’s folks were at work, yet Andy and Miranda knew from before, in their other time travels, that time, although it takes them backwards, doesn’t go forward. When they return, it will still be 3:35.

Miranda was dressed in jeans, two layers of sweaters, and good hiking shoes. When she sat down, she pulled out of her knapsack packets of food, a bottle of water, and some matches. Andy stared at her. “Where do you think we’re going, Mount St. Helens?”

“I just want to be prepared. If I get hungry, I know I can eat!”

“But you know your clothes are going to change when we arrive,” Andy said. “Girls didn’t wear that stuff back in 1925!”

“But maybe I will. I can be a trend setter, can’t I? It’s time to liberate those people. They got the vote five years before, now they get the pants!”

“You are too much,” he said, and he sat her down on the floor. “Okay, here’s my plan. Let’s talk about it. We think really hard about the Camp, intensely, intensely hard, and then we light the stick. I’ll give you half and we will light them together. If we get separated when we arrive, you can always return on your own.” He looked at her pile of supplies. “God knows, you brought enough matches!”

Miranda pushed him and they laughed. “And,” she said, “if we arrive in the wrong place, we light the sticks and come straight home, right?”

“Right. No exploring. The point is to get to Camp Forest Hills, so if we don’t get there, we come back and shoot for Plan B.”

“…and what is Plan B?”

“Minor details. Any other questions?”

“Andy,” Miranda thought for a moment, “we’re going to an all boys’ camp. Who am I? What am I doing there?”

“I thought about that. You’re my sister, visiting for the day. They must have had Visitor’s Day once in a while back then.”

“Andy, I know you have a mission, I can see that in your eyes. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in this, but, Andy, we’re going back in time to tell this boy that he’s going to die. Is that our responsibility? To control the way history goes? To prevent something that… “

“…that can save a guy’s life!” Andy interrupted. “Miranda, I don’t know what else to do. It’s an attempt, that’s all. I just think, that with your help, with Grandma Geri’s help,” he pointed to the stick, “I may be able to prevent this kid from having an awful death. Drowning can not be an easy way to go. Struggling to breathe, and trying to get air, and,” Andy shivered, “it must have been terrible for him. So if I can prevent that from happening, then I’m going to do something about it. If you’re scared to go, then I can go…”

“I’m not scared, Andy,” Miranda stopped him. “You know that’s not the issue. We’ve done this before. I’m quite surprised at how calm I am. You have a mission, we have a mission; I just want to settle all the kinks before we get there. Wouldn’t want us to be arguing over ethics there, now would we, bro?”

Andy had the gray stick in his hand. He broke it in two and gave Miranda the one half. They stared at their sticks, and Andy started to chant: “Take us to the Camp, take us to the Camp!” He forced, with every ounce of will in his head, to get that stick to listen to him.

Miranda joined in. “Take us to the Camp! Take us to the Camp!”

They kept repeating it when Andy lit a match. Miranda angled her stick to meet Andy’s, and he touched them both with the flame.

“Take us to the Camp, take us to the Camp!”

The smoke curled up; Andy smelled a chilled air that reminded him of camping in the woods after dark. An outdoor fire smell also invaded his nostrils, and Andy had visions of campfires and tents and canoes and pine trees. They breathed in the smoke.

Purchase this book or download sample versions for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-22 show above.)

Free EBook Samples: Free ebook sample of "The Time Of His Life" by J Lee Graham