Camp Creepy Time_The Adventures of Einstein P. Fleet Read online

  Cha p te r

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  Day One — 7:30 A.M. e could not imagine a worse way to spend the summer. It  would begin with a torturous, three-hour excursion in a   broken-down school bus to the middle of God-knows-where,  surrounded on all sides by a tribe of screaming lunatics. If he  survived the ride, the next eight weeks would be spent with the  same group of misfits in the equivalent of a maximum-security  prison. Days would consist of a strict diet of inedible meals,  strenuous physical exercise, and “special activities” normally  reserved for patients committed to mental institutions. Nights  would pass without the comfort of a bed, sleeping outdoors  and being eaten alive by an unspeakable assortment of blood- sucking insects. No Internet, no blogging, no e-mail, no cell  phones, no video games, no iPods, no television. The rules were  quite clear. The boy braced himself for what lay ahead. As the  motor exploded to life, his fellow inmates burst into song. The  first day of his eight-week sentence had officially just begun.  He resigned himself to his fate and stepped into the vehicle.

  Einstein P. Fleet was headed off to summer camp. As Einstein’s parents watched the bus door close behind  their oversized son, a sense of relief washed over them. “Well, he’s off,” Einstein’s father announced, waving good- bye to the back end of the bus with a rolled-up brochure in  his hand.

  Norman Fleet opened the brochure and stared at the sce-nic picture on the front cover. Recently refurbished and under  new management, the place was too good to be true. It looked  more like a luxury resort than a sleepaway camp. Horseback  riding, hiking, swimming, canoeing, and kayaking were just a  few of the things that the camp had to offer, including a small  lake, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a fully equipped  arts and crafts center. The cabins were rustic but charming. The  brochure boasted a gourmet chef and a menu that was enough  to make one’s mouth water. Leaving nothing to chance, the  new owners had even built a state-of-the-art infirmary with  a professional nurse on staff twenty-four hours a day, seven  days a week. It just didn’t get any better than this, Norman  decided, especially with a special introductory offer of fifty  bucks a week.

  “Camp Creepy Time will never be the same.” Einstein’s  mother giggled.

  “That’s for sure,” Norman agreed.

  Holding hands, they watched the yellow bus disappear into  the distance, enjoying their first real time without the obliga-tion of being a parent in thirteen years. Though neither of them  was willing to admit it to the other, the break was long over-due. Einstein was not exactly a problem child, but he was no  angel either. There was the time that he “accidentally” locked  his art teacher in the supply cabinet and conveniently lost the  key in order to determine the effects that solitary confinement  had on the human psyche. She spent six hours in the closet  before the fire department finally arrived and freed the poor  woman. Then there was the time that Einstein invented a new  type of super epoxy and glued half of his science class to their  seats to demonstrate how it worked.

  The fact was that these scientific and social experiments  were not isolated incidents, but more of a daily routine. As a  result, Einstein and his principal were on a first-name basis.  And, after five years of dealing with their son’s oddball antics,  Mr. Hearst had suggested to the Fleets that the boy was in dire  need of a change of scenery, preferably to another school dis-trict. Einstein, however, had reassured them that he was sim-ply misunderstood and that they should not let the politically  correct attitude of one public school bureaucrat sway their   God-given right to raise their own child as they saw fit and in  the location of their choice.

  For the most part, however, Einstein spent endless hours  locked away in his room, blogging with others on his computer  about any number of conspiracy theories. He even had his own  website—The Smoking Peashooter. The site had attracted a large  number of visitors and a cultlike following. Einstein and his  fellow bloggers discussed everything from corporate cover-ups  to political plots.

  The main problem with spending eight weeks at camp was  that it meant spending eight weeks without a computer. Ein-stein had fruitlessly argued that summer camp could wait, but  the conspiracies that plagued the world demanded constant  monitoring. He had even questioned his parents’ motivation  for sending him away for the summer. Norman and Shirley  countered that the world could survive for one summer with-out him and that this conspiracy was not up for debate. The  boy did not speak to them for days.

  “He really looked upset,” Norman said to his wife, having  second thoughts. “Do you think he’ll ever forgive us?”

   “We’re sending him to summer camp, not to prison,” Shirley  replied, nudging her husband playfully. “Besides, a little fresh  air and some exercise won’t kill him.”

  “That’s not how Einstein sees it.”

   “Don’t you worry about Einstein,” she said with authority.  “That boy’s gonna have the time of his life.”

  Cha p te r

  E

  Day One — 7:35 A.M. instein stood at the front of the bus and shook his head in  dismay. All of his fellow inmates were dressed up like clas-sic monsters from old black-and-white horror flicks. A sea of  mummies, vampires, and werewolves were wedged into their  seats, singing camp songs and swaying in unison. Suddenly, the  little monsters stopped singing and stared directly at Einstein. The silence was deafening.

  A familiar pit formed in the bottom of his belly, and he  started to feel sick. Einstein briefly recalled a recurring dream  in which he stood up in math class to answer a question only to  discover that he wasn’t wearing any pants. He quickly checked  to make sure that he hadn’t made the same mistake in real life.  To his relief, Einstein’s shorts were in place, his fly was up, and  he had remembered to wear his underwear. It took a moment  or two before he realized the real problem. Einstein was the  only cam
per on the entire bus who wasn’t wearing a costume.  He had not been away from home for five minutes and he was  already the official camp outcast.

  “Where’s your costume?” the surly bus driver demanded, as  if Einstein had committed a federal offense. “You’re supposed  to wear a costume.”

  “What on Earth for?” Einstein inquired. Befuddled by the boy’s response, the bus-driving troll pointed  to a slogan on his T-shirt that read have a creepy day in big block letters that were wrapped around a bright yellow  smiley face symbol, except the face wasn’t smiling. “The open-ing day ceremony? Didn’t you get an orientation package?” he  asked gruffly.

  His father had given him the orientation package, but Ein-stein never bothered to read it. He had simply tossed it into  the pile with the rest of his homework and promptly forgotten  about it. The bus driver seemed upset, so Einstein decided to  employ the same tactic that he used when one of his teachers  asked him about an assignment that he had ignored. Einstein  shrugged at the man and played dumb.

  “You were supposed to dress up like your favorite monster.  That’s how we decide which cabin to assign you to for the  summer.”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other?” Einstein  asked.

  The bus driver looked at Einstein and shook his head. “You  filled out the questionnaire in the brochure, didn’t you? Were-wolves stay with werewolves, mummies stay with mummies,  vampires stay with vampires, and so on and so forth. We want  you to live in a cabin of your peers.”

  Einstein never saw a questionnaire, let alone filled one out,  but he had a sneaking suspicion about who had—his father. No  doubt the bargain-basement price tag of fifty bucks a week  was worth spending a few minutes on the Internet to fill out  the questionnaire and assure Einstein a seat on the bus. Obvi-ously his father had decided to omit a few small details about  Creepy Time, like the ridiculous dress code. He eyed the bus  full of costumed campers and firmly clasped his head with  both hands. “Somebody shoot me and put me out of my mis-ery,” he muttered.

  Einstein noticed an odd look on the bus driver’s face and  decided that the man might actually be considering his re-quest. Taking no chances, he quickly made his way down the  aisle and squeezed his ample frame into a seat next to a pint- sized camper who was masquerading as a vampire.

  “I vant to drink your blood,” Vinnie the Vampire snarled,  threatening Einstein with a fake set of fangs. The baby-faced  vampire wore a starched white shirt under a long black cape.  His jet-black hair was greased back and formed a tiny widow’s  peak at the top of his forehead. With his high-pitched voice,  the boy reminded Einstein more of Eddie Munster than the  legendary Count Dracula.

  “You want to suck my blood,” Einstein corrected, trying to  be helpful. “Vampires don’t drink, they suck.”

   “You’re wrong!” Vinnie hissed. “Obviously you know noth-ing about vampires.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive,” the boy said with authority. “I’ve seen every  vampire movie that was ever made at least a hundred times.  I’m an expert on the subject.”

  “If you say so,” Einstein conceded. He offered the boy a  Twinkie, hoping to smooth things over.

  “No, thanks,” the vampire replied, baring his plastic fangs at  Einstein. “I don’t eat sweets. They rot your teeth.”

  “Are you an expert on oral hygiene too?” Einstein asked. “Sort of,” Vinnie replied, eyeing the Twinkie with desire.

  “My dad is a dentist.”

  “Well, your dad isn’t here, is he?” Einstein replied as he

  reached into his backpack and extracted a golden brown treat

  still freshly wrapped in cellophane. “Have one, my man. It’s the

   Rolls-Royce of pastries.”

  The little vampire’s eyes froze with fear, which was not the

  reaction that Einstein had expected. As best as he could recall,

  vampires were afraid of crucifixes and wooden stakes, not junk

  food. Either the boy was taking his role-playing a bit too far or

  he was too much of a wuss to disobey his daddy the dentist. As it turned out, it wasn’t the Twinkie that Vinnie was afraid

  of at all; it was the pack of snarling werewolves standing di-

  rectly behind Einstein. They were dressed in plaid flannel shirts

  and gray cotton pants. They all wore the same variety of dime-

   store rubber wolf masks and rubber wolf feet, which made a

   flip-flopping sound as they slapped against the floor of the bus.

  Einstein wondered if they had called one another before the

  trip to coordinate their outfits.

   “You’re  sitting  in  my  seat,  chubby,”  the  leader  of  the

  pack said to Einstein, stripping him of the Twinkie. “Move it

  or die!”

  It wasn’t the sharp curvy claws that protruded from his rub-

  ber feet that made Billy Armstrong menacing. It was the foul

  stench. His feet smelled like moldy cheese. Perhaps it would

  go unnoticed if they were outside in the fresh air, but in the  crowded bus the odor was unbearable. Einstein held his breath

  and prayed for divine intervention.

  “Sit down,” the bus driver screamed at the werewolves.

   “You’ll have plenty of time to kill each other later.” “Count  on  it,”  the  werewolf  threatened,  eyeballing

  Einstein.

  Billy took a big bite out of the stolen Twinkie to emphasize

  the point, and then zinged the rest at an unsuspecting mummy

  who was sitting at the back of the bus, reading a vintage copy

  of Famous Monsters of Filmdom Magazine and minding his own

  business. Einstein watched the mummy wipe the goo from his

  eyes and slide down in his seat. The pack surrounded the boy

  and howled, then moved on to work on a vampire that was in

  a heated debate with a portly mummy about whether Abbott

  and Costello Meet Frankenstein should be considered a horror film

  or a comedy. Unfortunately, they did not notice the pack until

  it was too late. Billy grabbed a fistful of bandage and lifted the

  mummy out of his seat.

  �
��Let’s spin him until he pukes!” Billy shouted. He pulled hard

  on the thick strand of gauze and, as the bandages unraveled,

  the mummy began to twirl in circles. The harder Billy pulled,

  the faster the boy twirled, until he was spinning like a top. Things continued like this for the next hour or so as the

  sprawl of the city disappeared and was replaced with the empty

  nothingness of the Mojave Desert. Einstein contemplated the

  odds of jumping from the moving bus and surviving the fall.

  Surely he would be better off taking his chances out in the des-

  ert despite the obvious dangers. If the fall didn’t kill him, he

  had no doubt that the man-eating desert vermin would. Scorpi-

  10 ons, snakes, lizards, and a wide variety of other creepy crawlers  lived in this hostile terrain, including his least favorite creepy  crawler of them all, the spider.

  Einstein had never been fond of the insect species on the  whole, but he was terrified of spiders. One had once crawled  up his leg and taken residence in his underwear, never to be  seen again. Einstein was convinced that it was nesting inside  him, planning to hatch babies and eat him alive from the in-side out. Actually, he had gotten the idea from an old B movie,  but the concept was plausible. He had been terrified of the   eight-legged freaks ever since. The mere thought of them made  him shudder. He could feel their spindly little legs tap dancing  across his body and began to squirm. As they sank their razor- sharp fangs deep into his shoulders, he screamed.

  “Why aren’t you, like, wearing a costume?” the spiders   demanded.