I’d known about the wilderness retreats long before I was torn from my bed in the middle of the night and shoved blindfolded onto that boat. Every year thousands of children are kidnapped from their homes with the enthusiastic consent of their parents and given to anyone who will take them for a good price for the supposed sake of re-education.
The premise is simple: You tear a developing child from their home and force them out into the wild with a handful of adults and force them to learn survival skills or starve in the cold.
Seems simple, hell even like it might do some good to have them disconnect from the world and learn to be human outside of the modern rat race. Of course, the kinds of kids that ended up in these retreats needed therapy, not a couple of weeks out in the sticks but that hardly mattered.
The point was fear. You scare the kids into acting right because any other behavior would bring them right back to the woods.
The sick part is that it worked.
We hadn’t even made it off the docks before the first kid caught a fist to the head. He was a little shit admittedly, but refusing to leave the docks was no reason to be drug out by your hair and tossed into the dirt. It was witnessing that first beating that had the rest of our spines straight and eyes forward.
It was funny how quickly the rest of us fell in line. You’d think there’d be some backlash or runners, but my theory was that once we saw that those adults weren’t above forcing us into submission it was easy to weigh the price of freedom versus the comfort in conformity.
If we did as we were told we would have a bed and food in our bellies rather than whatever pain came with the cold rainy woods. At the time I thought I was somewhat lucky. At least the campgrounds we were staying at had buildings and tables, I’d heard some of the other programs had kids hiking for miles with only a sleeping bag and basic supplies.
The first meal was little less than gruel, salted oatmeal and toast with water that had come from an old rusty spout and tasted like metal. It had been borderline inedible, but the looks the older kids had given us told us to eat every crumb. Afterwards they’d had us crawl around on our hands and knees to pick up every crumb left on the tables and in the dirt.
“Clean up every crumb or it will attract critters. The last thing we need is those beasts terrorizing the camp.”
From that day forward the tone had been established. I was lucky to be one of the more well-behaved kids so my chores were more along the lines of hard labor, while some of the mouthier kids they had cleaning the outhouses and butchering the game the older kids brought back from their hunts.
I’d take an axe and splinters over blood and guts any day.
Perhaps we’d been lucky, or maybe it was just those beginning days that we were too scared to test the boundaries, but the days passed with few incidents. Mostly an occasional smack or exercise that would have kids crying late into the night.
Nothing like what had greeted us that night.
It was about ten days in when we were roused from our beds. Our workout had been grueling that day so we hadn’t been eager to rise with the call of the horn that signaled for us to meet at the center of camp.
I remember thinking it was odd to have been called out when we had only just been ordered to return to our cabins but going without complaint anyway.
The sight that greeted us had sunk my heart into my belly.
Ricky was a chubby kid, shifty-eyed yet full of life. Unlike the rest of us, he was actually a good kid who didn’t belong in a place like this. There was just a hunger in him that couldn’t be sated, one that had probably stemmed from a severe deprivation of parental love.
When we found him he was covered in mud and rolling on the ground, two counselors at his side and another in the bushes behind him. I’d had to stand on my toes to see what the other was kicking at in the dirt, but the sight of the gash in the ground filled with colorful packaging told me all that needed to be said.
One of the female counselors had stood before his prone form, a smile plastered across her scarred yet pretty face. She greeted us with open arms as if it was a warm welcome.
“Look everyone, Piggy here thought it would be smart to go burying our food in his secret little troth.”
There had to be at least five meals worth of food hidden within that hole. One of the other counselors kicked at the sealed boxes, strewing food all over the ground. There was stuff there they hadn’t been shelling out to the rest of us, crackers, chips, whole sleeves of cookies.
He’d been bold in his thievery, and that’s what got him caught.
They’d already had their licks at the poor kid before the rest of us had scurried from our cabins. His lip was swollen, jaw clearly knocked out of place. Tears streamed down his face so thickly he looked sopping wet.
“Raise your hand if you think it’s fair for Piggy to steal food out of your honorable counselors’ mouths. To go sneaking his way off the permitted grounds and rooting through what’s not his.”
No one raised their hands. We knew better.
She then leaned in, as if conspiring with us like a friend. “Have you kids ever watched Matilda?” When only a few shook their head the woman let out an exasperated groan. “Fuckin kids these days.”
They’d made us sit there and watch as the contents of the hole were fully overturned, listening to their mirthful jabs and the kid’s quiet sobs. They’d gathered once it was over, taking in the sight before them with quickly fading smiles, already growing bored with their little game.
“Whatever. We’re losing light and we have a full day planned tomorrow. Return to your cabins and be prepared to clean tomorrow.”
Human empathy had me hesitant to leave him with them but self-preservation was stronger. I wasn’t a hero. I wouldn’t be here if I was.
It wasn’t until it grew dark and he hadn’t returned to the cabin we had shared that I grew worried.
“What are they doing?” I’d asked the girl on the bunk across from me.
She’d been here far longer than the rest of us in the Hound cabin, and though she’d never specified how long the dull look in her eyes betrayed the answer.
“They’re leaving him outside with the food. He’s got to finish it all before he can come in.”
“Why would they do that? Aren’t they mad he stole it?”
She didn’t respond, sinking into her bunk with her head between her knees. She looked like she was going to be sick.
Sometime later the sound of muffled pleas woke me from my rest. I’m unsure how long I could have been asleep, but it must have been hours since no light had filtered through the small window above the cabin door. It was too high for any of us to see out of without moving one of the beds or standing on each other’s shoulders and none of us were willing to risk punishment for the ability to peek out into the still night.
Our cabin wasn’t the closest to the center of the camp where we’d seen him last, but it was close enough that I’d at least been able to make out the distinct tone of terror in Ricky’s voice.
Just hearing him call out would have been enough to raise warning bells, but this had to be something entirely different. Something was very, very wrong.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to the rest of the cabin.
“They smelled the food.”
I was sure it was the girl that answered me, but before I could question her further the first scream split the air.
The screaming. Oh god, the screaming.
It called to you primally. A deep fear in your bones that demanded you hide, help, and run all at once. Conflicting signals that culminated in a shameful fear, freezing you where you were.
It took hours for the shrill screams to fade into strangled pleading. They echoed around the campground like a howling wind, carried through the dull trickle of rain that had started sometime in the middle of it all.
At times you could hear them too, when they called to one another or quarreled over their meal. Their roars were unlike anything I had ever heard in my life, hoarse yet sharp and loud. My mind made a name for them even if I couldn’t see what the calls belonged to.
Bears. It had to be.
I remember reading once that bears took time to kill their prey. Unlike other predators, they don’t have a kill bite, just an instinct to maim and maul. As big as they are it makes sense, most things would run from creatures like them and those that didn’t couldn’t fight back.
A soft thing like Ricky didn’t stand a chance.
None of us slept the entire night. We all sat and listened until the air went silent then filled with the sounds of the night once more, the calls of the bugs and the birds returning as if the sounds of death were no more than a sharp snap of a branch to be acknowledged and forgotten. To everything else this was a part of the cycle, as it would soon become to us as well.
It was dawn when the horn rang out once more. We hadn’t needed to reach the center of camp before we saw what was left of the poor boy.
It stretched out over the entire center of camp, pieces left on tables and strewn on the grass. The rain had washed away most of the blood but you could still see the worst of it in the places they’d taken their time. The biggest parts still clung to the bits of rope tied around the base of the tree next to where he’d stashed his food. Bits of bone, flesh, and colorful wrappers were now stained a pale pink on the dark earth.
It was unrecognizable. The only parts you could tell belonged to a person were the open ribcage and shredded clothes.
It smelled like the butcher’s hut.
I didn’t throw up. Not like the rest of them. I’d wanted to just from the smell alone but I’d known that’s what they wanted. They wanted me to break, I could see it in their eyes, barely older than our own yet holding a cruelty I’d never seen outside of pictures.
I refused.
They noticed.
“You.” One had pointed at me, a man in his late twenties who I’d come to learn was one of the true authority figures in the camp. “You’re a sturdy dog, come with me.”
The rest of us were dismissed to their duties, refused breakfast for the first time in what would be a two-day streak to make up for what was lost the night before. Not that any of us could have stomached the food if we wanted to.
Before we left they had me scrape what was left of Ricky onto an old tarp for me to lug over my shoulder as we began our day-long hike. It was barely fifty pounds, but as the hour grew later and breaks came few and far between it started feeling like I had the whole kid weigh as heavy on my back as he did on my shoulders.
I’d known we weren’t taking the main path back to the docks, but I’d never ventured beyond the point where the paths narrowed off the main trails. Those were for the older kids, and we were never to cross onto them without good reason. I’d wondered where he was taking me, if there was some unknown facility hidden in the woods where things like this might be reported to our parents in the outside world, one of my few naive dreams.
It wasn’t until we emerged onto the opposite side of the island and the thick scent of rot burned my nose that I gave up the last shred of hope I had. I staggered at the smell, taken off guard and brought to my knees as my body began to heave and my eyes pricked with tears.
It felt like losing to fall there, after stone facing my way through the sight of my friends ennards strewn across the place where we ate. Only the sharp boot in my ribs had me coming back to what’s right after I’d managed to empty myself dry.
“Only a couple more steps. Throw the meat over the cliff,” he’d said, looking entirely unaffected by the wretched scent.
I didn’t want to get any closer, in fear I’d confirm what I had suspected would be down there, but of course I didn’t have the option to reject the order.
Half crawling, I moved myself to kneel over the side of the short cliff.
There was too much of it to grasp as any one singular description. A pile? A mound? Shades of browning red over bleached white, animal and human melted together by decay. There had to be hundreds down there, fuck, maybe a thousand bodies. There was so much that there was no edge to where the cliff led out to the sea, only the wet sludge where the water came close enough to lap at the foot of it.
It wasn’t one summer worth of bodies, probably more than a decade. However long this place had been running the pile had been growing along with it, consuming the runoff of what became of its sister’s inhabitants.
Something in me compelled me to speak. Maybe it was seeing the sight of all those bones that had given me some spine, or maybe it was the realization that my actions submissive or not would not result in me getting out of here any sooner.
Not when I’d seen what I’d seen.
I’d found my voice, small and raspy with fear. “We aren’t going to bury him? Won’t his parents want to know what happened?”
“God no,” He’d laughed. “You think you lot would be here if your parents cared? No, you came here to rot like the rest of them. Toss the fuckin meat.”
-
I’ll leave you with this:
This is not a cry for help. There is no help coming. I’ve seen what happens when someone gets an SOS out there and the result is not pretty.
They want us to die, either physically or in every other way that counts. Bad kids don’t get mercy.