5
All at once, the breeze coming off the water feels colder than it did a moment earlier. I wish I’d grabbed a sweatshirt from the dry bag in my tent. Everyone scoots their chairs back to make room in the circle for Josh, who settles into a lotus pose on the sand beside the campfire.
Then, so softly I can barely hear him, he begins. “I know one of the guides who died that summer. He was friends with my older brother.”
Josh lets that sink in, then keeps going. “Seven years ago, he brought a group of rafters out here for the five-day trip on the Middle Fork. It was this very same stretch of river, same exact setup—”
“Same rafting company, too,” interrupts Allie.
Josh furrows his brow. “No. It wasn’t Rapids Unlimited. It was a company called Idaho Thrills—”
“Rapids Unlimited is Idaho Thrills,” Allie insists matter-of-factly. “They changed their name after they got sued for wrongful death. It’s all in the public record.”
The detail makes my stomach twinge. Is that true? And if so, why? I wish for the umpteenth time that I had Google in my pocket.
Josh shrugs. “I don’t know anything about that.
And it’s not like what happened is the rafting company’s fault.
But yeah, I get why they won’t want to be associated with Camas Creek.
” He lets the words hang ominously in the silence while the campfire crackles, then continues.
“So, the day before the rafting crew is due back, this seventeen-year-old kid stumbles into the gas station at the edge of the Big Basin Wilderness, stab wounds bleeding all over the place, and begs the guy at the counter to call 9-1-1.”
The fire pops loudly then, and Beth lets out a startled shriek, sending a skitter of nervous laughter around the circle.
Josh waits for it to die before he goes on.
“So this poor kid is barely coherent, losing a ton of blood, dripping water all over the gas station linoleum, but he finally gets his story out when police show up. He tells them that one of the rafting guides—Kellen Stroop—went batshit crazy on the river trip.” Josh shoots Allie a look.
“Bet you know everything about that dude, don’t you? ”
She grins, blushing, like this is a compliment. “I sure do.”
Josh shakes his head like he can’t decide whether he’s impressed or disturbed. “Kellen killed everyone—the other guides, the guests. Fifteen people, total. He thought he killed that seventeen-year-old kid, too—stabbed him in the neck and the stomach. And I guess he nearly did.”
“The kid’s name was Leo Marsden,” Allie says with authority. “The police report just called him Victim Number One, since he was a minor at the time.” She shrugs.
Josh shakes his head in amazement. “Wow. Okay, well, poor Leo only survived because he played dead at the bottom of a raft for hours—the raft Kellen Stroop used to escape the scene. And not only was he injured, but he was wedged underneath his own mom’s body.
That is, until Kellen finally decided to throw their bodies overboard into the river. ”
Josh lets out a sigh, like it pains him to tell this part of the story. Every single woman around the fire, including me, wears the same horrified expression.
It’s so much worse than I realized.
Josh continues. “When Kellen went to throw Leo’s mom overboard, Leo grabbed one of the big, heavy guide oars and hit Kellen over the head. So Kellen went overboard into the water, but he caught hold of one of the raft’s D-rings.”
Allie opens her mouth to add something, but Josh presses on, miming the next part.
“Leo grabbed the rescue-rope bag, wrapped it around Kellen’s neck, and strangled him while he pushed his head under the water.
” Another dramatic pause. “Then Leo managed to raft the rest of the river all on his own. It took him about another full day to reach the final takeout past Splinter Ridge, where he ran a mile through the woods before he stumbled into that gas station begging for help.”
Someone gasps out loud.
“So he rafted this river by himself?” Pam asks.
Josh nods. “All through the night, too. Usually the trip takes five days, but that’s with plenty of stops for meals and sleep.
If you run the river straight, it’s a lot faster.
Apparently his mom was a guide when she was a teenager.
So he actually knew quite a bit about riding rapids.
Still, this river is no joke. It’s a miracle from about eighty different angles that he survived that trip. ”
Josh steeples his hands and closes his eyes in a strange, prayer-like pose that sends nervous laughter rippling around the campfire. I stare into the darkness, listening to the distant, dull roar of the Devil’s Stairs.
After a few seconds, Bryan appears at the edge of our circle in the firelight, and I jump. He’s holding a dishrag, wiping down a plate. I forgot he was there. “Didn’t they dig up Kellen Stroop’s remains a while back to prove he’s really dead?”
Josh shoots him a look. “Finish the dishes, buddy. I’ll tell the story.”
Pam wears a confused expression that matches the one I know I have on my own face. “Hold on, I want to hear what Bryan was saying,” I chime in—partly because I do, and partly because I want to clap back at Josh for being so rude.
Josh shrugs. “I don’t know anything about digging up remains.”
Allie leans forward in her chair, eager to take the baton.
“I do! It was in that stupid Lifemark movie that got everybody all panicked. Apparently, the real story wasn’t exciting enough, so they tried to spice up the ending and make it look like maybe Kellen survived.
It turned into a total shitshow on the subreddit I moderate.
People were freaking out, thinking Kellen Stroop could possibly still be alive. You remember, right, Nikki?”
Nikki sits up taller in her camp chair, like this is her moment.
“Oh, totally. The movie tried to make it seem like the body the police recovered wasn’t really Kellen, but some poor kayaker who drowned in the same spot years earlier.
” She holds up her hands in a helpless gesture.
“I feel stupid now, but I actually thought about canceling this trip over it.”
Allie nods in agreement. “The police exhumed Kellen’s body though, so most people, including me, are satisfied he’s dead.”
“Most people?” Imani prompts.
Allie shrugs. “I mean, yeah. You’ve still got the nut-job conspiracy theorists who say the cops are saving face and don’t want to admit they identified the wrong guy … but I’ve seen the official report.” She brushes her hands together. “Kellen is dead.”
“Well, I’m still not sleeping tonight,” Deborah huffs, earning more laughs from around the circle.
“Wait a minute,” Pam says. “I’ve still got questions. For one thing, how many people were on that rafting trip?” Pam gathers her legs up onto her chair, hugging her knees to her chest. “As many as this group?”
“There were sixteen people, including Kellen Stroop and Leo Marsden,” Allie answers readily.
More hushed murmurs.
There’s a question on the tip of my tongue, and I know I’m not going to be able to fall asleep tonight unless I learn the answer. After a silence falls over the group again, I say, “But Kellen was just one guy. So … how did he manage to stab everybody?”
Josh fixes me with a serious look. “Oh,” he says. “That’s the scariest part.”