Once, the red letters would have stood out starkly against the white background of the sign. But years of exposure to the elements meant the words were almost illegible now, a faded memory, but Charlie could still make out what they said.
CAMP CLOSED
DO NOT ENTER
He was here. He’d made it.
As his eyes followed the trail ahead and spotted the wooden sign that had once read ‘Reception — Ahead’, the last thirteen years seemed to collapse. He was twelve again, on a bus crammed with children, and he was filled with both excitement and dread at the prospect of another school camp. Lush greenery surrounded the bus on all sides, and it seemed to Charlie that they were stepping into an entirely new world. Reece was beside him, grinning. We’re here!
The vividness of the memory passed, and Charlie looked around a little more. The trees were thicker now. The foliage seemed denser, like an unkempt beard, and the colours seemed less vibrant. Muted.
‘I can’t believe you came back here, Char.’
He looked without surprise to see Reece standing next to him.
‘I always wanted to come back,’ Charlie said. ‘It was just… things always got in the way.’
‘I knew you would.’
‘You did?’
Reece gave him a quizzical look, one eyebrow raised. Then he smiled. ‘We’ve been friends a long time Charlie. I think that means we’ve basically got a whole twin thing going on.’
Charlie laughed, and for a moment he was looking at Reece as he remembered him. Twelve years old, wearing his favourite blue t-shirt and black shorts with an inordinate number of pockets, a perpetually excited look on his face. Just a moment, and then he saw the grown Reece again.
‘What?’ Reece asked.
‘Nothing. Let’s keep going.’
Most of the camp had decayed over the years. The reception building was a ruin. A nearby tree had fallen, crushing one end of the wood cabin and leaving the insides exposed to the elements. The part that reminded standing had rotted and sagged, looking almost like it had melted. Charlie laughed softly as they walked through the camp.
‘What’s so funny?’ Reece asked.
‘It’s just that this place is probably in better shape than my life is right now.’
‘Don’t say that Charlie,’ Reece said softly.
‘It’s true though,’ Charlie said, shrugging.
‘Is that why you came back?’
Charlie didn’t answer him. Eventually, they came to the old bunkhouse that Charlie and Reece had once shared. There was a row of them, short, squat things raised slightly off the ground to avoid being flooded when it rained. Charlie had expected them to be a wreck like the other buildings, but they’d fared much better.
When he tried the door, he found the handle was stuck, rusted in place. He tried again, and this time the handle moved with a squeal of twisting metal. Charlie let go and shook his hands, then tried again. This time he used all his strength to force the handle to move. Eventually, it gave way completely and the door flung open.
A strong musty scent greeted them, washing over them in a powerful wave. The smell unlocked so many memories in Charlie’s mind. He’d thought he had remembered this place well, but something about the woody and vaguely smoky smell of the cabin made him remember in vivid detail all the crumbs of memory he had dropped over the years. At night, after the kids had all been sent to bed, the camp supervisors would often gather around the fire to talk. Charlie had never really been able to make out what they’d been saying, but the sounds had been strangely comforting. He and Reece used to have whispered conversations with each other, determined to stay awake but eventually succumbing and slipping away into sleep, the soft voices near the campfire like white noise.
The two bed frames that had been built into either corner of the cabin had survived the years, but the mattresses were long gone. The only other furniture were two sets of drawers at the foot of each bed. It was all made of the same wood. Charlie felt strange. Everything seemed to have shrunk over the years. He knew it was only the fact that he’d grown up and was no longer seeing the world from the dimensions of his twelve year-old self, but it was still jarring to experience. It was like he was trying on a jacket that had once been his favourite, only to find that it didn’t fit anymore. It was too tight, the sleeves too short. A sadness picked at the edges of his mind.
He felt Reece beside him. Charlie wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come to him, so they stood in silence for a long time. He felt that he and Reece were both lost on the same currents of memory, helpless to fight against it. At one point, Charlie thought he heard the soft voices of people gathered around a campfire in a summer night. He closed his eyes, and the memories bloomed stronger. When he finally opened his eyes again, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He turned to Reece.
‘Let’s go.’
They were heading towards the river now, but Charlie wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings. He was falling into a pit of memory in his mind and wasn’t sure he wanted to find a way out. He thought he heard the sounds of camp life as a comfortable buzz around him: a boy stood outside one of the cabins and yelled for someone inside to hurry up. From inside the cabin, another called back saying he was trying to find his shoes.
Reece remained silent as Charlie walked towards their ultimate destination: the place beyond the river that waited for them. Charlie remembered how they found it; he was reliving the experience in his mind at the same time he walked through the abandoned camp. One morning after breakfast, they had managed to sneak away from everyone else after one of the activities that had been planned that morning had been cancelled. So they had the morning to themselves, but were told that they needed to stay within shouting distance so they could be called back for the next activity when it started. They’d looked at each other and, in one of those moments that could be described as telepathic, instantly knew what the other was thinking.
When they reached the river, the sounds of a bustling camp had faded, replaced instead by a soft summer morning ambience. Charlie knew it was going to be a hot day, but it was still relatively cool. Birds sang in the distance, and they heard a splash of something further upstream.
Reece’s eyes gleamed with barely restrained excitement. The last few days had been fun, but in a controlled manner. Reece, like Charlie, longed to be allowed to roam free, to run beneath the sun, swim in the river, head into the forest alone. To explore; to be boys for just a little while longer. Because it would soon be time for them to go home, and then they’d have to go back to the real world, that boring world in the city, with school and chores and, for Charlie, a father who had never been able to accept the death of his wife.
‘Let’s go along the river and see if there’s a narrow part we could jump over or something,’ Reece said.
‘Which way should we go?’ Charlie asked, looking left then right.
‘Right,’ said Reece.
‘Left,’ said Charlie, for no reason other than fighting over such pointless things was what they did.
‘Paper, scissors, rock?’
Charlie came out the winner, so they went left. If they had gone right, the tragedy that followed might never have happened. But they turned left, and no matter how many times Charlie would wish it otherwise, he could not go back and change their decision.
There is no other tale to tell.
They eventually found a way across, and Charlie felt like he’d crossed the boundary into a different realm, a lawless territory away from the protection and watchful eyes of the adults. A slight unease flared in his chest, but then he looked at Reece, who grinned at him, and the feeling was snuffed out instantly.
At first, their exploration was aimless. They just roamed the bank and picked up rocks and sticks and threw them into the river. But when they ventured deeper into the forest, they soon found a steep cliff, almost hidden by the thick greenery. At the bottom, they could see an entrance to what looked like a cave. When they realised what they had found they could hardly contain their excitement.
‘Holy shit, Charlie.’
‘I know!’
‘How do we get down there?’
‘I don’t know. It looks really steep.’
‘There has to be a way.’
Charlie felt uneasy as he watched Reece look for a way down. He felt like a mother watching her child try something potentially dangerous, and he felt silly for it.
But then, in a moment that was simultaneously lighting quick and excruciatingly slow, Reece slipped, lost his balance, and fell over the edge. Charlie heard someone gasp, not knowing whether it came from Reece or from himself, and then suddenly he was alone.
He rushed over to where Reece had fallen, careful to not slip as well, and looked over the edge. His stomach fluttered when he saw how far down it was to the ground and how steep the cliff was. He couldn’t find Reece at first, but after a few frantic moments of searching he saw the faded blue shirt. It was streaked with something dark and wet.
In that moment, the world dimmed. Charlie could no longer hear the sounds of the birds and the crickets in the summer morning. He felt cold despite the harsh sun. Colour seeped from the world as a grey shroud drifted across his eyes.
He looked at Reece.
‘You never told anyone what happened,’ Reece said quietly. ‘You just left me here, Charlie.’
‘I—’ Charlie began, but his voice failed him and he swallowed, his dry throat clicking as he did. ‘I was so scared, Reece. I didn’t know what to do because one minute you were there and the next you were… just gone.’
Reece held his gaze for a long time, then looked away, down into the steep hole in the ground. It looked much like it had when they’d been kids, only the trees and bushes were thicker now. Charlie followed his gaze and saw something amongst the greens and browns. The faint shape resolved into the small white bones of a child.
He looked at Reece, and now saw him as he had been on that day before everything had gone wrong. He saw past the illusions his mind had conjured up to make it easier to come to this spot, saw past the man he imagined Reece would have become, and saw him as the child he remembered, the child who’d been his friend. The child he would forever remain.
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie said. He had begun to cry and felt the tears run down his face. ‘I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell them—your dad. But I was so scared. I felt like I’d caused it, like I’d fucked everything up, and I thought that if I told them what happened they’d think that too.’
Charlie put his face in his hands, too ashamed to continue looking at Reece. ‘You were my best friend, Reece. I’ve regretted the choice I made every day of my life since then, and would have given anything to make it right. But I can’t.’
He lifted his face out of his hands and stared out into the forest. He had always remembered this as a place of horror, but now that he was here he saw that it was peaceful, calm. A gentle wind rustled the tops of the trees and a bird sang sweetly in the far distance.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Reece said in a low voice.
Charlie looked at him.
‘Would it be so bad, Reece?’
‘I don’t want that for you. What happened to me is done, but you still have a life to live.’
‘My life is a mess. That’s why I came here.’
‘It’s still a life.’
Charlie wanted to argue. Everything had become so difficult, and he just wanted it to be over.
‘Can’t you see why I want this?’ he whispered.
‘Sure I can,’ he heard Reece say. ‘But it doesn’t mean I want you to do it. My life is gone, Charlie. Neither of us had any idea about what was going to happen that day. There’s no reason for it, it just happened. But the fact is that you’re alive, and you should at least try.’
Charlie didn’t answer.
‘I’d give anything to have the chance to try again,’ Reece said. ‘Don’t waste it.’
Charlie didn’t know how to respond to this. He wanted so badly to let it all go, make an end to it at last. He stepped up to the very edge of the pit and looked down to the rocks and the bushes below. Turning back now would be so difficult. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to do it. He turned back to look at Reece, but he was gone.
Alone in the forest, he raised his head to look into the clear blue sky, listening to the birds and the rustling of the wind in the trees.
He took a breath.
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