Police cars clogged the parking lot of Camp New Horizons, formerly known as Camp Rolling Hills, their blue dome lights casting an unearthly, shifting glow over the disused cabins and dining hall. The law enforcement officers said vehicles belonged to were currently standing around, not doing much of anything. Their job, such as it had been, was now done. Several ambulances had already departed the scene, carrying a cargo of death. At the start of the week, twelve teenagers had come there for what had been called "An Experiment in Sharing," but one of them had been a psychotic killer, the same one who had been a counselor at the camp the year before. During the last couple of days, she, Angela Baker, otherwise known as "The Angel of Death," had disposed of most of the other campers, leaving only two alive, and finishing the job by killing all three counselors, one of whom, Barny Whitmore, had been a police officer himself. In addition, Angela had upped the bodycount by one more by killing Tawny Richards, the reporter who had come to the camp on opening day to film a story on the so-called "Experiment in Sharing," which had, in reality, simply been a way for the two head counselors, Hurman and Lilly Miranda, to flece as much money as possible from as many people as possible, and spend as little in the process as possible whilst still attempting to make it look as if an actual effort had been made.
Angela, however, had not gotten away clean this time, as she had the previous summer, during which she had killed 19 people, and had then simply disappeared without a trace. One of the surviving campers had attacked her and left her for dead. She had been taken away in an ambulance, and as far as the officers at the camp were concerned, she was no longer their problem. Their problem, such as it still was, was that of crowd control. People remembered the Camp Rolling Hills murders, and the other murders Angela had committed at near by Camp Arawak in 1982, and when news got out, they would be coming in literal hoards to simply stand and gawk, or worse, hunt for some Souvenir left behind by either one of the campers, or by Angela herself, and since this was technically speaking, a crime scene, that couldn't be allowed.
And as the officers watched, here came the first car into the parking lot.
The car in question wasn't by any stretch of the imagination, a police car, state or local. It appeared to be a privately owned automobile, and the driver didn't appear to be connected with the law in any way, apart, possibly, from breaking it. As the car slowed, one of the officers looked at another and said, " Oh, shit. we haven't even started nailing down the crime scene and already we've got one of these morbid assholes coming to see how much blood, how many dead bodies, and how much shit got torn up."
The officer to whom he had spoken looked toward the car and replied, "I'll get him outa here."
"Alright," the officer who had decided it was his job to deal with the unwanted intruder called as the car stopped and the driver's side door opened, "you can just get right back in that auto and get right back out of here. We've got a situation on our hands and we can't afford to have people like you fucking things up for us."
"I was totally unaware," replied the car's driver in a decidedly English accent, "that you asked anyone to fuck things up."
"Alright, smartass," snapped the officer, "enough of your fucked up sense of humor. Get out of here before I arrest you for..."
Before the officer could finish his sentence, the car's driver handed him what turned out to be a business card.
"You're a little late Dr. Simool," the officer said after examining the card, "there are no psychos around here. The only one who was is already gone, and probably dead by now."
"I know," Dr. Simool replied, "I'm not here to see her. I'm here to find out what happened."
"That's fucking obvious," the officer said through gritted teeth, "Angela Baker went fucking nuts and killed a bunch of people."
"But why here?" Dr. Simool inquired, "of all the places she could have finished up, why here again?"
"I don't know," the officer replied, "she's just a fucking nutball. I don't think she really cares where she kills."
"But I think she does," rejoined Dr. Simool, "she was missing for a year after the massacre here last year, and during that time, nobody died by her hand. It's only here that she kills. Here and nowhere else."
"Oh, for Christ sake," the officer groaned, "that's all we need, a fucking amateur detective. Stick to your headshrinking and leave the killers to us."
"Do you mean you're not even a bit curious as to why Angela only kills here and nowhere else?" inquired Dr. Simool.
"You've got it," answered the officer, "and now that you've had a look around, I'd appreciate it if you put an egg in your shoe and beat it."
Without another word, Dr. Simool got back into his car and exited the parking lot. None of his original questions, such as why Angela had killed most of the campers the previous year, when at Camp Arawak, she had only targeted people who had hurt her in some way, had been answered, and now that Angela had struck again, he had a great many new ones to go along with them.
In the ambulance carrying Angela Baker, a heated discussion was taking place between the police officer who had decided, seemingly for no reason, to accompany this particular emergency vehicle, and one of the paramedics.
"She's still alive," the paramedic observed after checking Angela's pulse.
"She doesn't deserve to live," replied the police officer, who looked as if he'd only been on the job for a few months before finding himself in a situation he would most likely have referred to as a "kettle of warm crap," that is if he had currently been anywhere else, such as one of the local bars and off duty and out of earshot of his superiors at the time of speaking.
"What are you talking about?" inquired the paramedic.
"Let's kill her," responded the officer.
"What?" the paramedic, who felt as if he'd just ended up in the Twilight Zone without being informed of his sudden change of residence, asked in disbelief.
"Come on," the officer almost shouted, "she's a fucking maniac!"
"It wouldn't be hard to do," the paramedic said after a moment's thought.
"It would put an end to it once and for all," rejoined the officer.
"Where are we?" inquired the paramedic, who had decided that maybe the cop had just had a supremely good idea and didn't want to finish up arriving at the hospital in the middle of disposing of Angela.
"I'll get the map," the officer said, and began hunting through the conglomeration of just plain stuff in the back of the ambulance.
As this was happening, the paramedic bent over Angela and prepared to terminate her life. Before he could even get started, however, Angela's right hand closed around a syringe which someone had left lying around, possibly for later use, and in another moment, said makeshift weapon was sticking out of the paramedic's left eye. The police officer, now mere seconds away from the end of his own life, spun around, just in time to catch the syringe in his own eye.
As her potential killers fell dead, Angela attempted to rise from the stretcher she had been lying on, but she had no more strength left. She gave up after a moment, but before she could assume a somewhat comfortable position, if there was such a thing on a stretcher, a voice spoke from the front of the ambulance.
"Hey, what's going on back there?"
Angela looked in the direction of the voice, not noticing that there was a third body in the back of the ambulance, one hidden carelessly beneath the stretcher she was lying on, and with the last of her strength, said, "just taking care of business."
Dan Thorn turned from his inspection of the surrounding landscape and toward the sound of Angela's voice. He knew, before seeing the carnage in the back of the ambulance, what had happened, and that his time had come at last.
"Angela," he said softly. There was no response.
After another moment, spent surveying the surrounding area, Dan Thorn pulled the ambulance back onto the rode, but took a different course than that he had previously been traversing. He had his own ideas and none of them involved Angela being taken to a hospital. His time had come, Angela was his now, and no one would stand in his way.
Angela's eyes opened and she looked about. She was still in the ambulance, the bodies of her latest victims were still where they had fallen, but she noticed almost immediately that something was wrong. The ambulance was making its way through darkness. There were no city lights to be seen.
"Angela," said a voice from the front of the vehicle, "what are we gonna do about them?"
Angela, knowing that she couldn't simply pretend to be unconscious, said, "I don't know. I was thinking about killing you and taking this baby to Canada. Just a thought."
A laugh issued from the man in the driver's seat, punctuated by a sound Angela had heard before.
"You have a gun?" Angela inquired, "isn't that a little strange for an ambulance driver?"
"Perhaps," replied the driver, holding his gun up to the dome light, revealing it to be a .357 Smith and Wesson, "it's not the most powerful handgun in the world, but can you just imagine what it could do to that pretty little face of yours, or other parts?"
"You're crazier than I am," Angela said softly.
"Maybe," responded the driver, "but I'm the one with the gun. As a result, we do things my way."
"God must love crazy people," Angela thought, "that's why he creates so many of them."
Then, for Angela, the lights went out, and remained out for a while. When she awoke, it was to a situation in which she, not someone else, was the captive, and in which she, for the first time in years, would taste true fear.
The ambulance drove on through the night, its passenger once again wrapped in the blackness of unconsciousness, its driver once again wrapped in his own dark thoughts. It had been eight years since he'd been incarcerated in Blue Skies Sanitarium, eight years since he'd committed an act the law had said made him a criminal, eight years since his sister hadn't given him what he'd so desperately wanted from her, eight years since he'd closed his fingers around her throat, choked the life from her, and fucked her, quite literally, to death. A year after his coming to Blue Skies, Peter baker had been admitted. At first, Thorn hadn't even given the new arrival a second look, but that had been before the operation that had changed Peter into Angela. Then Thorn had noticed her. Then he'd wanted her, but her release had made anything between them impossible.
Now, though, things were different. She was his and she wouldn't escape. No more women who only looked a bit like her, no more dead-end one night stands. No more acting. Now it was the real thing.
Beside the road, a homeless man watched in astonishment as an ambulance, "a fucking ambulance," drove by, the blue lights on top flashing merrily away. The tires of the vehicle kicked dust up from the soft shoulder, covering the bum's already considerably dirty clothing. The "bo" as some people called such men, crawled deeper into the brush which grew thickly on both sides of the road, wondering what the hell an ambulance was doing this far away from the town of carpenter. There were, to the best of the bo's knowledge, no hospitals out this way, and then he got it.
"That crazy asshole Thorn's at it again," he thought, "takin' his work home with him."
A moment later, the bum's eyes closed in sleep, and when he awoke the next morning, he remembered nothing at all of the incident. After all, it was just more of carpenter's inherent craziness, of which there was a great deal. First and foremost, there'd been the business that had gone on at the old camp across the lake, Arawak, hadn't it been? Then there'd been the hearing at which the killer's crazy aunt, who had only happened to have been a Doctor, had been stripped of her medical lisence thanks to some sort of incident involving trying to turn some kid from a boy to a girl. Then there'd been the time a bunch of kids had just disappeared without a trace one summer. Then there'd been the time some guy had blown a hole in his daughter whilst trying to shoot her boyfriend. The boy in question had gone crackers and had been put in Carpenter Receiving's psych wing and was probably still there to this day. Abuse of all kinds had a habit of going on more there than almost anywhere else, murder was at an all-time high, as were robbery, rape, and all other types of violent crime. The going theory was that there was something in the water, but people said that about every place in which things had a habit of happening. Carpenter had a hell of a lot of craziness going on in it alright.
If one looked further back, there were incidents of whole families killing each other, people going nuts for no damn reason, and a consistently high rate of incidents that could only be described as out of the ordinary than the amount that went on in the surrounding towns. In that light, crazies driving ambulances wasn't too much of a big thing.
Angela awoke slowly, discovering two things right away. The first was that her wounds, one on her left shoulder caused by an ax and several on her chest and stomach caused by a knife, had been tended to. The second was that she was firmly tied down. She could tell by the surface she felt beneath her that she was still on the stretcher. She could also tell that the things restraining her were ropes, and strong ones at that.
"Ah, you're awake," said a voice from above her, "you can open your eyes, Angela. There's no need pretending. I know."
Angela's eyes opened and she saw Dan Thorn standing over her.
"So, what's the plan?" Angela inquired tiredly.
"I gotta get back to work, but I won't be gone for too long. We'll talk more when I get back."
"We haven't talked at all yet," Angela observed.
"That'll change," Thorn responded, walking over to one of the small tables arranged in various areas of the room, picking up a TV remote and bringing it over to Angela.
"I don't watch TV," Angela said, eyeing the remote.
So start. See you in a bit," Thorn replied, bending and kissing Angela's right cheek, after which he left the room.
After she was sure Thorn was gone, Angela began attempting to free herself from the bonds that held her to the stretcher. After a few minutes of totally wasted effort, she gave it up as a bad job and picked up the TV remote.
"Anything's better than this," she said as she thumbed the power button and the TV screen came to life.
On screen, a reporter Angela had seen before stood in the foreground. behind her, police cars idled, their blue lights creating an uneasy shifting glow. As the reporter began to speak, Angela became interested in spite of herself.
"A young woman was discovered dead in an abandoned house not far from Camp New Horizons this morning. The woman was identified as Angela Baker, the woman who was responsible for the deaths of at least 10 people at Camp Arawak in 1982, 19 people at Camp Rolling Hills last year, and 14 people at Camp New Horizons this past week. Till early last night, Baker remained at large. In a press conference this morning, before her body was discovered, the sheriff of Carpenter County announced that Baker is extremely dangerous and that residents should report any suspicious persons that match the following description: Caucasian, female, brown eyes, reddish brown hair, five foot five, 115 pounds. He went on to say that a reward has been posted for any information that leads to her capture and continued with a controversial statement that Baker should be, and I quote, "killed on sight following recognition." This statement elicited outrage from humanitarian groups nationwide. And in other news, Denise Muller, a receptionist who worked at Carpenter Receiving Hospital, has been missing for three days. She is around 5'5" in height, weighs 115 pounds and has dark black hair. If you have seen her or know of her whereabouts, please call..."
Angela once again thumbed the power button, cutting off the reporter in mid sentence. She was beginning to realize just how bad her current situation was, even if nobody else currently watching the early morning news had a clue. Dan Thorn was indeed crazier than she was and he'd probably been responsible for the murder of the missing woman, the woman everyone thought was her. The only thing she didn't yet know was why, but she knew that she'd probably figure that out during the conversation Thorn had hinted would take place following his return.
Her strength gone, Angela settled back on the stretcher and attempted to sleep while she could, but her dreams were haunted by vague, and sometimes not so vague, visions of blood, death, killing, and pain.
She woke periodically and attempted once again to escape the stretcher, but had no more success than her original attempts had afforded her. But she continued, as she didn't want to be here when Dan Thorn returned, that was unless she was free and able to mount some form of offensive against her captor, something she couldn't do whilst tied and helpless.
From outside, she heard the wind suffing around the corners of the house, the occasional call of a lone bird in the yard, and the far off barking of a dog. She heard no sounds associated with human activity of any kind, which brought her to the realization of just how completely alone she was. If Thorn decided to kill her, or whatever he was planning on doing to her, nobody would know.
No matter what the temperature was outside on any given day, the carpenter county Morg was always cold, as was the case with all places of its kind. The center of the main room was, at the moment, taken up by a body on a slab, which was also usual, but this particular body was, according to all reports, the body of the serial killer Angela Baker. The mortition finished his examination of the body, raised the sheet up to just below the body's chin, and turned away.
"Well, looks like we're almost done here," he said to himself..
The door leading to the other areas of carpenter Receiving hospital, those areas reserved for the living, opened, and Dr. David Simool entered, allowing the door to close behind him. The mortition, a man in his late 50s, jumped in surprise.
"What the fucking hell!" he exclaimed, whilst at the same time attempting to convince himself that he was not about to have a massive heart attack and finish up as one of his own borders before another sunset arrived on the scene.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spook you," Dr. Simool said reassuringly.
"For someone who didn't mean to spook me, you just did a damn good job of it!"
"Well, is it her?" Simool inquired.
"I think so. We're just waiting for the results of the dental check," the mortition replied.
At that moment, the door opened again, admitting a man who was quite clearly the assistant mortition. With no preliminary attempt at conversation or to figure out who the extra person in the morg happened to be, he came straight to the point.
"No dice," he said.
"What do you mean?" Simool inquired.
"It's not her. Angela Baker's dental records don't match this corpse, but I've found some that do," replied the young assistant.
"Whose?" Simool asked.
"The name that I came up with is Denise Muller," replied the assistant, "she went missing a few days ago. Looks like someone went to work on her with a knife."
""The sheriff's gonna have a cow when he finds out," groaned the mortition, who looked at that moment as if he were wishing he were anywhere but here.
With the setting of the sun, Thorn returned home. his first action, after parking his ambulance and entering the house was to move Angela to the bedroom. He untied her just long enough to move her from the stretcher to the bed, but the ropes went right back on after the move, and he still had the gun, which made Angela's situation not exactly the type from which she could hope to escape unharmed, or for that matter, alive.
Angela looked around the room, noting that it was pretty much what she'd come to expect, considering the rest of the house. Thorn may have been many things, but house-proud wasn't one of them. Clothes lay scattered over the floor, the carpet appeared to be covered with about a month's worth of dirt, and a bag on the night stand that had once contained takeout from some restaurant or other was busily growing a crop of something Angela didn't want to think about.
"Put about 5000 volts through that and you'd have something that'd make the blob look tame by comparison," she thought.
Looking a bit further, she noticed that the walls were covered with pictures, mostly of young women who bore a striking resemblance to her. All were tied and helpless, all were naked, and all were probably dead.
"You wanna clue me in on what's going on?" she asked.
"Sure. You're a celebrity around here," Thorn replied.
"Me?" Angela laughed, not really feeling like laughing, but not able to help herself. She'd heard the expression "laugh or go crazy" but she'd never expected to find herself in such a situation, although she supposed she was already crazy, so maybe she was improving a bit.
"Yep," Thorn answered, "see, if I were to take you back to the hospital, they'd surely have caught you. But now, they think you're already dead. I just traded your body for one that was already in the morgue. They're gonna bury it after going over a couple things."
upon saying this, he held up that day's issue of the Carpenter daily and pointed to the headline on page 1.
"Camp Slasher Put To rest."
"What did you do?" Angela asked, believing she already knew the answer, "I saw the news. That wasn't a body from the morg, was it? You found someone who looked a little like me and killed her, didn't you?"
"The world believes Angela Baker's dead," Thorn continued as if he hadn't heard Angela's question, "isn't that the greatest cover you could hope for?"
"I guess so," Angela responded, but that still doesn't explain what all this is about."
"I was in the facility where Peter Baker was incarcerated," Thorn explained, "when Peter became you, I thought you were the loveliest girl I'd ever seen in my life. I want you Angela. I've wanted you since 1984 when you first appeared. And if we could, you know... I'll send you back to the camp and you can go back to work with a clean slate."
"So that's it," Angela thought, taking note again of the pictures of the women who looked a bit, or in some cases more than a bit, like her.
"That's disgusting!" she cried aloud, "you shouldn't even think of such a thing. It's totally out of the question. It's like my aunt always said: "Keep your morals strong and you'll never go wrong.""
"Maybe I'm not making myself clear, Angela," Thorn said with a laugh that sounded about as sane as the Mad Hatter and held up the gun, his thumb resting near the safety catch.
"Oh, so, it's like that, then?" Angela asked after briefly taking note of the fact that Thorn appeared to be within an ace of blowing a very large hole in her.
"Oh," Thorn responded, "absolutely."
"Alright," Sighed Angela, "climb on, you son of a bitch. But take these damn ropes off."
Thorn began removing his clothing, whilst at the same time considering the situation. If he released Angela from the ropes, she could attack him, but on the other hand, he had the gun. If she tried anything, he could shoot her, not to kill, but to disable her whilst he had his way with her. After all, that was how he liked them, nice and helpless. Tied was a plus, but even untied, there were so many things that could be done to render them helpless. So many possibilities.
The wind stirred the bushes outside the bedroom window, causing the branches of a tree in the yard to cast long, shadowy fingers across the window. The sound of a dog barking was carried on the night air, a sound that called to mind images of death, a death that predated humanity, a death that was to be mourned, and was, by those forms of life that could sense it. And death was indeed loose on this night, death, insanity, a mind so twisted that any who encountered its owner met their end. A full moon hung in the sky, casting a bone-white light over everything. An owl hooted from the deeper shadows, counterpointing the howling of the dog. All things sensed death on the wind and reacted to it.
Thorn was atop Angela, and had already forced himself into her. He'd taken the ropes off her, as per her request, but the gun was still near at hand. If she tried anything, he'd blow her face off and finish with her corpse. He almost hoped she would. After all, how many people could say they'd fucked Angela Baker's dead body? He found the possibility arousing. But his preoccupation both with what he was currently experiencing and what he was currently thinking was to prove his undoing.
The gun, which had been placed carelessly on the pillow was moving with the rocking of the bed, and its course was toward Angela's right hand. She sensed its closeness and slowly, very slowly, she inched her hand closer to it. Another moment, and it was in her grasp. Her fingers closed over the grips and she slowly drew it even closer to her, taking care so as not to allow the crazy currently raping her to see what she was up to.
In her mind, voices warred with each other.
"Keep your morals strong, and you'll never go wrong," said one.
"Your Aunt never said that," said the other, "she never said that and you know it! Look at you now. Being raped by a madman. You'd never have been here if not for ..."
"Your Aunt Martha did say it!" interrupted the first voice, "she said it, and it's because of the evils in the world that this is happening."
"Shut up! Shut up!" the second shouted, "shut up or you'll die here!"
As Thorn continued to thrust into her, she squashed the voices within her and came to a decision. Either she was to act now or she was to die.
"Dan?" she said breathlessly, hoping she sounded as if she were enjoying the experience.
"Yeah?" Dan Thorn said from above her.
"You about to blow your wad?" Angela asked, her finger tightening on the gun's trigger and aiming it at him, being careful at the same time to keep it aimed far enough from her so as not to injure herself when she fired.
"Yeah," Dan Thorn responded, sounding even more breathless than he had before.
"Me too," Angela said, all breathlessness gone from her voice. She pulled the trigger and the gun bucked in her hand. At the same moment, a shower of blood and bone fragments rained down on her and Dan Thorn's body jerked above her. She shoved him violently toward the foot of the bed and his swollen penis came out of her. She shoved again and the corpse toppled to the side, freeing her. She examined the bullet wound in the back of the body's neck, taking note that the entrance wound was, in itself, pretty impressive, and then she got a good look at the exit wound which replaced the body's entire throat. She also saw that the bullet had continued its flight and buried itself in one of the bedroom walls.
"I guess they're right," she said to herself, "size does matter."
Fifteen minutes later, she had dressed, the Camp New Horizons sweater was ruined so she'd taken one of Dan Thorn's least dirty shirts to take its place, and had pulled the ambulance to the back door of the house, the one closest to the bedroom in which she'd nearly died.
She'd also taken the liberty of bringing the stretcher from the living room and had placed Thorn's body on it. She intended for whoever found the ambulance to also find all who'd ridden in it, apart from her, that was.
As she pulled out of the driveway, the howl of a dog reached her ears. She drove for nearly two miles and stopped the ambulance. She was beginning to feel the weakness associated with blood loss. She looked down at herself and noticed that the wound in her stomach was bleeding freely, the bandage not doing anything to keep even minor problems under control. She knew she'd have to get out and do something about that before she finished up just as dead as everyone else in the ambulance.
She pulled over to the side of the road, turned off the engine, opened the driver's side door, went around to the back of the vehicle, climbed in, and wrestled Dan Thorn's corpse to the front of the ambulance and placed it in the driver's seat, after which, she placed Thorn's gun into his now stiffening hand. She didn't want to look at it any more. She'd nearly died as a result of its presence and had been raped whilst looking directly at it, after all.
She exited the ambulance and made her way into the woods which bordered the road on both sides.
As she moved off the road and into the woods, she reflected as to how quickly life could change. One moment you were going along, your world view totally secure, and the next, you were thrown into a situation in which all things you thought you knew were shown to be unreliable. A voice in the back of her mind continued to inform her that her Aunt Martha had never told her "keep your morals strong, and you'll never go wrong."
"Then who told me that?" Angela asked the voice, "if not her, then who? I didn't know that many people growing up. After all, Aunt Martha had a secret to keep and it wouldn't have looked very good if too many people knew me."
"Then why'd she send you to Camp Arawak in the first place?" the voice rejoined.
"cause it'd have looked strange if I didn't go eventually," Angela replied.
"That's not really the question though, Angey," the voice returned, "the question is, who told you all that about morals? It sure wasn't her. But thanks to whoever it was, you killed dozens of innocent people."
"They deserved it," Angela began but the voice cut her off.
"At Camp Arawak, you only killed when directly threatened or attacked," it said, "but last year and this year, you've been killing kids those crazies called the New Saints of the Eternal Word would have considered immoral. Maybe ..."
but there was no more. Silence closed in around Angela, broken only by the sounds of late crickets in the woods, the nearby hooting of an owl, and further away., approaching sirens. Someone had apparently spotted Dan Thorn's ambulance pulled off the road and had called the good defenders of the law and asked them to come out and kindly figure out just what in the hell was going on around the outskirts of Carpenter tonight.
Angela sat down on a dead stump, opened the first-aid kit she'd taken from the ambulance, and began sorting through it. She was bleeding again, apparently Dan Thorn hadn't done a complete patch up job on her, and she needed to stop it before she finished up bleeding to death in the woods.
She selected what she needed from the kit, put it down beside her, picked up a stick, stripped the bark off one end, put the stick in her mouth, and prepared to restitch herself and do it right. She removed her breastplate-like undergarment, reached for the bandages Thorn had put on her, and pulled them free. The pain rocketed up from her abdomen all the way to her head. She bit down on the stick for all she was worth and recalled something she'd said a year ago.
"Once I start a task, I always finish."