6
After that cliffhanger, nobody moves. It’s like we’re holding our collective breath. The fire spits smoke into our faces, and the river rushes behind us, but all I can hear is the hush that settles over the group. We wait for Josh to keep going, but he just sits there, eyes fixed on the flames.
Suddenly, he’s unfolding from his lotus pose and turning to Bryan, who has paused in drying the clean dishes to wipe his brow on his swim shirt. “Hey, Flip-Flop, why don’t you tell them this part, since you’ve got a show-and-tell?”
Bryan drops his dishcloth, startled. His perpetually red, round cheeks quiver above his beard, like he doesn’t know whether to smile or scowl. “What? Me? I don’t have anything to show them.”
I catch Pam’s eye, and she furrows her sculpted brows. The new-guy hazing was light-hearted at first, but now Josh seems genuinely pissed. From the way he’s glaring at Bryan, it’s almost like the rest of us have disappeared.
“I’m going to get ready for bed,” I say loudly, sort of wishing I’d turned in for the night when Macy and Gracie did.
But it’s like no one’s heard me. Josh keeps going even when I stand to leave. “Then why did you bring that knife with you?” he asks Bryan. The hush is replaced with gasps from several women.
Bryan drops a dish into the bin, where it clatters. “Because we’re—all the guides are supposed to have a pocket knife, it’s on the packing list,” he says miserably.
“Just a pocket knife, huh? Here’s mine.” Josh reaches for the green fanny pack strapped across his bare chest and pulls out a standard-issue red Swiss Army pocket knife. “Now show them yours,” he demands, shooting a look at Allie.
Bryan mutters something under his breath that sounds like “dick,” but to my surprise, he obediently produces an object from the zip pocket of his swimming trunks.
I can’t see much in the dark, just the glint of metal and the shifting shadows. I should go to my tent, but my feet stay planted in the dirt, curiosity getting the better of me. I lean forward, neck stretched, trying to catch a better look.
“Bring it into the firelight,” Josh insists, motioning the other guide forward.
Bryan makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and trudges over, bleached hair flopping as he ambles, holding the object out for everyone to see.
It doesn’t look like much to me, but it’s larger than the typical pocket knife—as big as a hunting knife. The hilt is camouflage-patterned, with three inlaid pearl crosses that glimmer in the flames.
Allie stands from her chair and crouches closer. She gasps. “Holy shit. That’s the knife.”
“It’s not the knife,” Bryan argues, his pitted cheeks flaming.
He shoves the knife back into his shorts pocket and crosses his arms over his chest. “I got this at REI, four weeks ago. How the hell was I supposed to know it looks like Kellen Stroop’s?
Besides, from what I’ve heard, most of the rafters didn’t die from stabbing anyway.
” He glares at Josh with a look of pure hatred, then stomps back to the dish station.
“Can we get back to the story?” Deborah urges. “How did Kellen manage to stab all those people with a knife like that?”
“Nobody knows,” Bryan calls over his shoulder as he retreats. He resumes toweling off the rinsed dishes, then roughly slamming them back into the bin.
Reluctantly, I sit back down in my chair. For a women’s retreat, there’s sure a lot of male energy taking center stage. But as long as the chest-beating is done and over with, I’m all ears.
“What do you think happened?” I ask Allie, making a point of avoiding eye contact with Josh.
“There are a lot of theories,” Allie offers, surveying Josh warily as if waiting to get cut off. But he just shakes his head and closes his eyes, downshifting from outburst back to lotus pose, all in a matter of seconds.
Allie, gaining confidence, goes on. “People argue about this stuff on my Reddit boards all the time, but the general consensus is that only the first victims were stabbed to death. Stroop first attacked one of the female guides in the middle of the night. Her screams woke everybody up, but by the time people rushed to her tent, it was too late.”
Before I can wrap my head around this, she continues without missing a beat. “It was total chaos at first. Nobody knew who’d killed the guide. Everyone was wandering around in the pitch dark.”
Allie pauses for dramatic effect. “And then, suddenly, Stroop jumped out from behind a boulder, holding his knife.” She points at Bryan, even though he’s already put his knife back into his pocket.
“Can you even imagine? From all accounts, Stroop was an incredible river guide. But something in his brain must’ve just snapped. ”
I try to picture it: the dark, the confusion, everyone stumbling out of sleep straight into panic. A blitz of terror and adrenaline. No time to think, just the river roaring and the rafts bobbing in the blackness. Nowhere to go but the cold, black water.
I shiver hard, even though the fire is blazing so brightly that my shins are hot to the touch.
“Everyone totally panicked,” Allie says.
“Even though it was pitch dark, people were piling into the rafts to get the hell out of camp. Leo and his mom made it into the last gear raft, but Kellen caught up with them and stabbed Leo to death—or at least, he thought he did—and then killed Leo’s mom.
And according to Leo’s police statement, one of the other guides was brave enough to try to fight Kellen.
It bought everyone else some time to escape, but Kellen was in a frenzy and stabbed that guide to death, too. ”
“But what about the other rafters and guides?” Imani asks. “The ones who escaped in rafts. What happened to them?”
I nod, about to ask the exact same question.
Allie furrows her brow and looks at Nikki, like she isn’t quite sure how to answer.
Nikki pipes up. “Authorities say they still don’t know exactly how the other victims died. And neither did Leo, because he was playing dead at the bottom of a raft under his mom’s body. Can you imagine?”
Everyone grimaces or groans at the horrifying mental image—being pinned under the literal weight of the most extreme grief and terror. A claustrophobic feeling creeps up the back of my neck.
Nikki shakes her head in disgust. “Leo couldn’t see anything. And all he could hear were distant screams from the other rafters. Nobody knows what happened to them, but the police eventually found most of those bodies spread out several miles downriver from Camas Creek.”
She shudders. We all shudder. “Recovering them was … well, it wasn’t easy.
You’ve seen this canyon. It was a logistical nightmare getting Search and Rescue divers in here, let alone finding remains.
By the time they managed to get all the victims extracted from the river, they were in pretty bad shape.
Eyes and skin picked clean by fish, bodies wedged between rocks and held down by a zillion gallons of water pressure … ”
As Nikki trails off, it’s that final mental image that drives the claustrophobic feeling to squeeze my chest. Even though the victims were dead, their remains were trapped. Just like Parker was.
“Do you think they flipped their rafts while they were trying to escape downriver?” Deborah interrupts breathlessly. “Is that how they died?”
“Maybe,” Allie says uneasily. “It was almost impossible to determine the cause of death. The coroner declared drowning for some, since there was water in their lungs. But some of the injuries were … really strange.”
I gape at Allie and Nikki, marveling at the ease with which they rattle off these nightmares.
How could they be so familiar with all these details and still want to come on this trip?
It seems possible they came here because of their fascination with the Camas Creek disaster, not in spite of it. Like some kind of morbid ghost tour.
“You said their injuries were strange?” Deborah presses, her voice trembling. “How?”
“You don’t want to know,” Bryan’s voice interjects from the darkness, where he’s stacking the clean dishes. “You won’t be able to get it out of your head.”
“I want to know,” I insist. At this point, I need closure to this story. “Out with it.”
Allie grimaces but continues. “A couple of the rafters were missing their hands. Like, sliced off, down to the bone. One had such a deep gouge in her abdomen that all her internal organs were picked clean by crawfish. So, probably not just a knife wound. But the only weapon ever recovered was that camouflage and pearl-handled pocket knife, found with Kellen Stroop’s dead body.
” She swallows, then adds, “Two people were … well, they were missing their heads.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. Some of the guests were missing their heads? I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but not that.
“What the hell?” someone bursts out.
“Um, I don’t think I want to hear any more before bed,” says a younger woman, who is still wearing her swimsuit. “I came out here to relax. This is the ‘find yourself in the wilderness’ trip, not ‘scare yourself shitless in the wilderness’ trip, right?”
A few others murmur in agreement and shift in their chairs, looking to Josh for some final direction. Bryan hovers awkwardly on the fringes of the group, like he might be afraid to go to sleep alone, too.
Allie holds up her hands in a guilty gesture. “Sorry, sorry. It’s not all blood and guts, though. I was telling Nikki earlier that there’s actually a new controversy brewing about—”
“Nope, no way, sis,” Imani says, jumping out of her seat and laughing. “I’m already going to have to take an Ambien tonight.”
“I sure hope y’all do background checks now,” Deborah mumbles to Josh as she stands.
Josh cocks his head, looking offended. “They do background checks on all of us guides. But background checks only work if you have a criminal record. Kellen Stroop didn’t.”
“It happened seven years ago,” Pam says with finality, crossing her arms. “Today’s a new day, and so is tomorrow. I, for one, would desperately like to know what we’re having for breakfast in the morning!”
Josh smiles as relieved laughter ripples through the group. “Campfire quiche, crispy Idaho potatoes, fresh cherries, and some good strong coffee because—if you’ve forgotten—we’re going over the Devil’s Stairs first thing, so we’ll need the fuel.”
Deborah cheers. “That’s the kind of campfire story I’m talking about, ladies. Bring it on, and bring on Satan’s stairs!”
Allie smiles and glances at Nikki. “Sorry if we scared anybody.” She jerks a thumb toward Bryan. “But seriously, you should really get a different knife, dude.”
Bryan sighs and hangs his head, and I feel bad for the guy again. Then he forces a smile at Allie. “Trust me, I’m gonna replace the damn thing the second I get off the river at the end of the summer.”
Josh chuckles as he stretches. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow. Sweet dreams, ladies.”
Some of the women trail off into the darkness, but most of us linger in our seats a few minutes longer, processing. I feel a little sick to my stomach. It’s not fear, exactly—Kellen Stroop is dead. If Allie and Nikki don’t doubt that, neither do I. But any curiosity I had is more than satisfied.
The fire is little more than a bed of smoldering coals by this point. As I watch a trail of smoke swirl toward the inky sky, I get the same feeling I do when I’m watching a movie, and I just know something awful is about to happen.
I push the feeling away forcefully.
There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.
“Well, I’m going to bed,” I say finally, tilting my head up one more time to see the heavy half-moon and the stars sprayed across the sky. They wink back at me like pinpricks through a cloth, hiding the heaven I wish I still believed in.