Date Night
There was a term for what Herman Weeden was feeling: empty nest syndrome. It is a fairly common occurrence when the child in the family goes off to live on his or her own. A parent can suffer from depression or experience a loss of purpose in life. He had always thought that when his son and only child, Val, went off to college that it would be his wife who would feel those pangs of loneliness. Surprisingly enough, it was not Dolores, the stay-at-home mom, who was bothered by the emptiness of the Weeden family nest. It was Herman who felt as though he had lost his best friend.
It'll only be for four years, he told himself as he stood in his son's room, looking at the Little League trophies on top of the bookcase and the poster of Heath Ledger as the Joker on the wall. And California isn't exactly the ends of the earth. It's only about a six-hour flight from Logan to LAX.
Those six hours were small comfort to a father who was used to having his son under the same roof.
"What are you doing in here?" Dolores asked as she passed by the open bedroom door on her way to the laundry room.
"I was just looking around."
"I was thinking of turning this into a craft room with a sewing machine, a cutting table ...."
"But this is Val's bedroom. He isn't going to be gone forever, you know."
Dolores put down the laundry basket and put her arms around her husband's waist.
"There now, Papa Bear, Val will always be our little cub."
"I know. But he's only been gone a day, and I miss him already."
Herman always considered himself a masculine man. He had "manly" hobbies: he watched sports, he tinkered with cars and he enjoyed working with power tools. Never one to watch Dr. Phil or read Dear Abby, if he had a problem, he would talk about it with his male friends over a beer at Charlie's Bar. However, this particular feeling was something he chose not to bring up in front of his usual support group. After all, he did not need to embarrass himself by broaching the subject. It was his friend, Tino, who brought up the matter as the two men sat at the bar watching the Red Sox take on the Yankees.
"So, how does it feel having your son out of the house?"
"Different."
"I'll bet it does. I've got to admit when Mary Jo got married and moved out it hit me hard. I felt as though she wasn't my little girl anymore," Tino said, and then quietly sipped his Sam Adams.
"That was a year and a half ago. You still feel that way?"
"Sometimes, but I've gotten used to it. It's helpful that she lives in Newburyport, so we get to see her once or twice a month. Hey, did I tell you I'm going to be a grandfather?"
"Congratulations."
"Yeah. Mary Jo is due in March."
"I'll bet Ginger is excited about that."
"She's already knitting baby clothes. Speaking of wives, how's Dolores doing?"
"Oh, you know her. That woman is a rock. Nothing rattles her feathers."
"Glad to hear it because some people don't adjust well to having their kids leave the nest."
"I don't suppose there's much you can do about it," Herman said and signaled Sanford, the bartender, to bring over two more beers. "You gotta let your kids lead their own lives and get on with your own."
"Exactly," Tino agreed. "That's why once Mary Jo was out of the house, I began dating again."
Herman nearly choked on his beer. He would never have believed his friend would cheat on his wife, let along admit to it so casually.
"Every Saturday night, rain or shine, Ginger and I have a date night."
"You take your own wife out on a date?" Herman asked with a wide smile, relieved that Tino was not an unfaithful husband.
"And enjoy it! Our first date was to the roller skating rink in Copperwell. I tell you, it made us feel like teenagers again."
"No kidding?"
"God's honest truth. If you start feeling your house is too empty with Val gone, take your wife out on a date."
* * *
"What do you feel like having for dinner tomorrow night?" Dolores asked as she was writing out her grocery shopping list one morning at breakfast.
"You haven't made spaghetti and meatballs in a while."
"When Val was growing up, I made it every week. It was his favorite meal."
Herman picked his head up from the sports section of The Boston Globe and looked at the empty chair where his son had sat for close to eighteen years.
"Forget about making something for Saturday. I was thinking the two of us could out and get something."
Dolores raised her eyebrows in surprise. Over the years, they frequently dined out as a family—mostly on pizza or hamburgers—but the only time the two of them went out sans Val was once a year to Herman's company Christmas party.
"That might be nice," she said.
"Maybe we'll make a night of it."
Herman could not quite bring himself to refer to it as a date. To him, it sounded too Oprah Winfrey-ish.
On Thursday afternoon, however, with date night just two days away, Herman still had no plans for that Saturday evening with his wife.
If I were a twenty-something-year-old, single man, where would I take a young woman on a date? he wondered.
His first thought was Fenway Park, but he doubted his wife would enjoy sitting through nine innings of a baseball game. They had not been to a concert since seeing Bruce Springsteen at the Fleet Center—now the TD Garden—back in the Nineties. But even if there was a show they wanted to see, the only way to get tickets at such short notice was to pay exorbitant prices to a scalper. Besides, he hated the traffic and crowds at such events. There was Six Flags New England, but that was all the way near Springfield. It wouldn't pay to make the long drive since neither he nor Dolores enjoyed roller coasters or thrill rides.
We'd be better off going to Salem Willows and playing miniature golf or ski ball at the arcade.
For lack of a better alternative, Herman decided upon the old standby: dinner and a movie. Wondering what was playing, he thumbed to the entertainment section of the paper. Of the six films being shown in the local theater, four were aimed at a much younger audience. He doubted his wife was interested in seeing a movie featuring comic book superheroes, a slasher, paranormal activity or a cute animated puppy. The remaining two movies were not much better. One was a documentary on the growing misuse of prescription medicine and the other was a fictionalized biography of a well-known pedophile.
The only one that looks remotely entertaining, he thought, is the animated puppy. Maybe Dolores will be content to go out to dinner and then rent a DVD we can watch at home.
As he was about to close the newspaper, an article on the page opposite the movie listings caught his attention. The owners of Camp Quinnipiac, a former Boy Scout camp and the location for the filming of the movie Hell Camp, were hosting a party celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of the 1991 horror classic. The celebration was to include live music, refreshments and a guided tour of the camp, focusing on locations where key scenes of the movie had been shot. The night was scheduled to end with a showing of the movie on a large outdoor screen.
As Herman quickly scanned the article, his excitement grew. Not only was Camp Quinnipiac less than a half hour's drive from his home, but the celebration was to be held on Saturday night.
How perfect is that? he wondered. I took Dolores to see Hell Camp on our first date. Now, twenty-five years later, we'll see it again on our first date night. Even though she's normally not one for horror movies, she'll have to see it as a grand romantic gesture on my part.
His wife's reaction, however, was not one he had anticipated.
"Have you lost your mind?" she asked. "Why on earth would I want to go walking around an abandoned camp at night?"
"It's not as though we're going to be alone. There'll be lots of other people there."
"I'm sure there will be, but I'd be willing to bet we'll be the only ones over the age of thirty."
"You don't know that. A lot of people from our generation still watch horror movies."
"On their televisions in the comfort of their living rooms, which is what we should do. Why don't we just order a pizza, open a bottle of wine and watch something on Netflix?"
"But I already bought the tickets," he complained. "And they cost me a hundred bucks each."
"Why didn't you ask me first?" Dolores demanded to know, rolling her eyes in frustration.
"I wanted it to be a surprise."
"Not all surprises are good ones."
With two hundred dollars invested in the outing, Dolores felt she had no choice but to go along with her husband's plans for the evening.
* * *
"That's one good thing about the high price of the tickets," Herman observed as he and his wife waited on line to be admitted into Camp Quinnipiac. "It's not overcrowded."
"And at a hundred dollars a ticket, there are no children and only a few teenagers here."
In fact most of the people in attendance ranged in age from their late twenties to early forties. These included several hard-core horror aficionados such as Orlando Velasquez, a young man who hoped to become a special effects makeup artist, and his girlfriend, Ronnie Horwood, who saw Hell Camp so often that she could recite it word-for-word from the opening scene to the ending.
This couple, both dressed as the camp counselors from the movie, was standing behind the Weedens in line.
"Did you see the movie when it was first released in theaters?" Orlando asked the older couple.
"Yes, we did," Herman replied. "As a matter of fact, I took my wife to see it on our first date."
"Did you hear that, Orlando?" the girl asked her boyfriend. "May when you and I retire, we can go see Hell Camp again."
The Weedens were taken back by the young woman's words. Both were in their early fifties, more than a decade away from retirement. Herman turned his attention to the couple in front of him: a clean-cut young man and his pregnant wife.
"Are you a big fan of the movie?" he asked.
"I wouldn't exactly say I was a fan," replied Wilt Friedan, a rookie policeman, from Ipswich. "I did see Hell Camp when I was younger, but I'm more interested in the actual murders that inspired the film."
"I had no idea the movie was based on fact," Herman said.
"There was a campground in northwestern New Jersey where several campers and counselors were killed back in the early Seventies. My wife, Mia, lived in that area. In fact, her aunt's best friend was one of the murdered counselors."
"Did the police catch the killer?" Dolores asked.
"No. The case remains unsolved to this day," Wilt replied.
At precisely seven o'clock, a live band began playing the eerie theme song from Hell Camp, which brought applause and a chorus of cheers from the people waiting on line. The wrought iron gate creaked open, and after handing their tickets to the attendant, Herman and Dolores followed the crowd up the long dirt driveway toward the main lodge.
On the front steps of the building, wearing what looked like a Boy Scout leader's uniform, was Thor Johansson, one of the owners. Once everyone had gathered around him, the band stopped playing.
"Welcome to Camp Quinnipiac," Thor said into a microphone that broadcast his voice over the public address system. "As you all know, this was where the movie Hell Camp was filmed."
More applause and cheers followed mention of the title.
"I see there are some horror fans out there. Good because we've got a great evening planned for you. We'll be taking groups of roughly twenty-five each on a tour of the movie locations according to the times stamped on your tickets. The first group is due to leave from the basketball court at 7:15. For those who are waiting for later tours, we've got live music provided by Dead Reckoning. If you're hungry or thirsty, you can purchase hot dogs, hamburgers and an assortment of beverages in the mess hall, just across the compound. After the last tour gets back this evening, we'll have birthday cake for everyone. Now, if our first group would begin lining up, your guide will be with you momentarily. The rest of you, relax and enjoy yourselves—oh, and watch out for the killer."
When the owner turned off the microphone, Dead Reckoning began playing the theme from Psycho. It was but one of many horror movie songs of the evening.
After having a hot dog and a Coke, Herman headed toward the basketball court while Dolores made a stop at the restroom. The two couples he had spoken to earlier in the evening were already there.
"You going on the 7:45 tour, too?" Wilt asked.
"Yes."
"What about your wife? Doesn't she want to go?" Ronnie inquired.
"She'll be here any minute. She had to make a stop at the Porta Potty first. Ah, here she comes now."
"Portable toilets! Yuck!" Mia Friedan exclaimed. "That's the one thing I hated about Girl Scout camp."
"I didn't know you were a Girl Scout," her husband said.
"For three years, but then I quit. Were you in the Boy Scouts?"
"No," Wilt said. "I never even went camping with my family. We always stayed in hotels, not tents."
Orlando Velasquez and Ronnie Horwood then admitted that they had never gone to camp either.
"What about you?" the policeman asked Herman. "You ever go to camp when you were a kid?"
A look of confusion came over the older man's face.
"Not that I can recall," he said vaguely.
The younger people in the group did not find his answer odd. Perhaps they thought a man of his age often had difficulty remembering things. However, his faulty memory bothered Herman a great deal, and by the look on his wife's face it worried her as well.
* * *
Alzheimer's. The word echoed through his brain. Herman had thought he had a good thirty years ahead of him before he had to worry about signs of dementia.
As the twenty-six people in the group followed the guide along a hiking path to a collection of ten cabins, Herman ignored the conversations going on around him. He didn't care if the large tree next to the flag pole was where the third victim in the movie had been hanged. Nor was he interested in Orlando's explanation of how fake blood was made twenty-five years ago.
I remember the schools I attended, Herman thought, testing his childhood memory, and the places where my parents took me on vacation every year. If I had to, I could list the names of all my teachers. I honestly don't think I was ever a Boy Scout or a Cub Scout, but have I ever gone camping?
Since nothing immediately came to mind, he had to assume he hadn't, but there was an elusive memory that taunted him, like an itch he couldn't scratch. Still, the fact that he could remember so many other details of his past gave him comfort.
The guide suddenly stopped in front of a clearing in the middle of the ten cabins.
"This is the spot where the campers were gathered around a campfire," she told the fascinated spectators, "telling the story of the escaped lunatic who murdered four people in 1954."
"That's one of my favorite scenes," Ronnie told her boyfriend. "That was right before the killer drowned Cindy Lou in the lake."
With the exception of the Weedens, the people on the tour all took their cell phones out of their pockets and snapped pictures of the former fire pit.
"Isn't that funny?" Herman asked his wife. "Everyone's taking pictures of the ground and yet nobody took one of the dummy hanging in the tree."
"Dummy?" Dolores asked.
"Yeah. It looked just like the dead body in the movie."
"You need to have your eyes checked. There was nothing in that tree."
Believing his wife was the one who needed to see an optometrist, he followed the guide to the group of cabins.
"I'm sure you recognize this area. In cabin two, one of the camp counselors was killed with a bow and arrow. In cabin four, one of the campers was electrocuted, and in cabin seven another one was decapitated with a machete. Feel free to look inside the cabins, but please don't take too long because the next group will be along soon."
While most of the people headed for cabin two, the Weedens walked to number seven. When Herman opened the door, he saw a headless corpse lying on the lower bunk of the bed.
"Now tell me you don't see that," he said to his wife.
"See what?"
"The decapitated body."
"Very funny!" Dolores exclaimed and walked back outside.
"You must have seen it. There was a Halloween prop inside the cabin: that of a headless body."
"Please tell me you're joking."
The fear in his wife's eyes disturbed Herman more than the thought of early onset Alzheimer's.
"Of course, I am," he lied.
When they went inside cabin two, he remained silent even though he saw the body of a female camp counselor with an arrow through her heart. Dolores looked at him with concern.
"Do you see anything in here?" she asked.
"No," he lied again. "Do you?"
"No. Nor apparently has anyone else."
For the remainder of the evening, despite the terror he felt for his mental state, Herman kept silent about the grisly scenes he encountered at Camp Quinnipiac.
* * *
Sunday morning, while Dolores was still in bed sleeping, Herman went down to the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee and opened up his laptop. He tried to remember what the young policeman had told him of the campground that inspired the movie Hell Camp.
Where was it? he asked himself. New York? No. New Jersey.
He typed in the keywords camp, New Jersey and murders. There were over seven hundred thousand results, many of which described horror movies. One website, however, proved most informative.
Camp Friendship? Herman thought with surprise when he scanned the article.
As he read further, he discovered that, far from its innocent name, the New Jersey campground had a bloody history. Originally owned by a wealthy philanthropist, the land, thought to be part of an Indian burial ground, had been donated to a nonprofit organization that built a summer camp for city children. Nestled in the mountains of northwestern New Jersey, Camp Friendship offered activities such as swimming, hiking and horseback riding in addition to team sports.
The summer of 1971 began just like all other summers since the camp opened. Throughout the months of July and August, there was a steady stream of youngsters moving into and out of its cabins. By Labor Day, most of the boys and girls had gone home, their parents having picked them up early to avoid the holiday weekend traffic. Only ten children and three counselors remained.
That Monday, the official closing day for the season, when the first parents arrived, they walked into a nightmare. Nine of the campers and all three counselors had been brutally murdered. The surviving camper, an eight-year-old boy, was later found hiding in the woods. Although in good physical health, the child was severely traumatized. The identity of the killer was never discovered, and for forty-four years, the case has remained open.
"What are you doing up so early?" Dolores asked when she walked into the kitchen and found him at the computer.
"I was just reading an article on the Internet."
"About what?"
"That young police officer was right. Hell Camp was based on an actual place by the unlikely name of Camp Friendship."
Herman was waiting for his wife to question him further, but Dolores seemed to have no interest in his search.
"Want another cup of coffee? How about some eggs?" she asked.
"Yes to the coffee, no to the eggs. Aren't you interested in what I've learned?"
"No. Hell Camp was a movie, a lousy one at that."
"But it was based on fact," Herman argued.
"I don't care!"
Dolores walked to the kitchen table and closed the laptop.
"Hey, I was reading that!"
"It's not healthy to become obsessed with ...."
"Who's obsessed?"
"Maybe that's not the best choice of words, but that camp has obviously had a profound effect on you. One minute you tell me you can see dead bodies at the camp, and the next you tell me you're not being serious. But I know when you're joking and when you're not."
"Okay, so I let my imagination run wild. That doesn't mean ...."
"Give it up. Please! For me."
Dolores was frightened to the point that she was trembling. Herman stood up and took her in his arms.
"All right," he said soothingly. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"Promise me you'll forget about this Hell Camp nonsense?"
The shrill whistle of the boiling coffeepot interrupted the conversation.
"Sit down," Herman said. "I'll get the coffee."
* * *
Usually, Herman had to force himself to get out of bed on Monday mornings and start a new week. He liked to take his time getting ready for work, knowing he had to fight rush-hour traffic to get to his office. Not this Monday, however. He was up and out of the house in half the time he normally took.
No sooner did he enter his office than he turned on his computer. He then clicked on the Internet Explorer icon while he sipped his coffee.
It's not like I actually promised Dolores anything, he thought, trying to justify his actions. The coffeepot whistled before I had the chance to.
As the angel over his right shoulder argued with the devil over his left, Herman's hands hovered over the keyboard.
Besides, who am I hurting by satisfying my curiosity?
He stared at the capital "G" of Google, letting the angel and devil fight it out. Finally, the angel lost, and the devil inside him typed Camp Friendship in the search field. Then he clicked IMAGES on the menu bar. There were dozens of pictures of the campground, some taken before the murders when the camp was still in operation and others taken more recently showing the abandoned landscape. He then viewed images of Camp Quinnipiac and compared the two.
They're quite different, he concluded. Then why should pictures of Camp Friendship seem so familiar to me. I've never been there.
The devil and angel of his nature again engaged in a battle, this time over a door to a memory he had kept hidden for more than forty years. The devil sought to open the door, while the angel tugged on the doorknob trying to keep it tightly closed. Again, it was the guy in red with the horns and the pointed tail who won.
Herman continued to stare at the computer screen although his eyes were turned inward onto the past.
I saw him! he realized with shock. I know who the killer is. I just don't know his name.
The intercom on his desk buzzed.
"Sigmund from Marketing is on the line for you," his secretary informed him.
"I can't talk right now. I'm right in the middle of something. Please hold all my calls."
Without the possibility of further interruption, Herman went back to the Google search of Camp Friendship. Something, somewhere might stir his memory further and hopefully bring a killer to justice.
* * *
Dolores had just finished her morning household chores, and while the laundry was in the dryer, she made herself a second cup of coffee and sat down to read her latest Philippa Gregory novel. Ten minutes later she heard her husband's car pull into the driveway followed shortly by the sound of the back door opening.
"What are you doing home so early?" she called.
Herman walked into the room without answering. The look on his face frightened her.
"I was there."
She did not ask where; she already knew the answer.
"You promised me you would forget about this nonsense."
"I remember now. I attended camp one summer."
"I don't know where you're getting these ridiculous ideas from. You were born and raised in Massachusetts. Your parents wouldn't have sent you all the way to New Jersey ...."
"My parents didn't move to New England until after the killings. I was born in New York City. They sent me to Camp Friendship the last two weeks in August 1971 so that I could enjoy the fresh air and open spaces, not realizing the slaughter that would occur there on Labor Day weekend."
"Stop it! None of this happened. It's all in your mind."
"What Wilt Friedan didn't tell us was that the multimillionaire industrialist and philanthropist who originally owned the land went crazy and killed himself."
"I won't listen to any more of your insane ramblings," Dolores cried.
She tried to run out of the room, but her husband grabbed her by the arm and forced her to stay.
"But before he put a bullet in his head he went back to the land he once owned and murdered twelve innocent people."
"No, no, no."
"I saw his face. I found his photograph on the Internet. His name was ...."
Dolores screamed as loud as she could to block out her husband's words, but she could not sustain the wailing for any length of time.
"His name," Herman continued, "was Samson Broderick: your father. You were sent to live with your aunt and uncle after your father's suicide. You were adopted by them and given their surname."
Now that the truth was out, Dolores's demeanor changed. She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand and glared at her husband with unconcealed rage.
"Why didn't you drop it while you had the chance?" she asked through clenched teeth.
"You knew who your father was and what he had done?" Herman asked, wanting his wife to confirm his suspicions.
"Of course, I knew. Unlike you, I never buried the truth in my memory."
"And you knew that I was ...."
"The only survivor? Yes. Why do you think I sought you out? Why I married you?"
Now Herman felt the truth had gone too far, and he wished the angel over his shoulder could have kept that door firmly shut. But it was too late.
"You've been keeping an eye on me, hoping I didn't remember."
"The deaths weren't his fault. He was a sick man; he couldn't help it. And regardless of what he did, I loved my father. I won't have you blackening his name further by accusations of murder."
"I'm sorry, Dolores," Herman apologized, "but the families of those murdered children and counselors have a right to know the truth."
He turned to leave, intent on telephoning the New Jersey State Police, but he never made it to the kitchen. With her husband's back turned to her, Dolores reached for the fireplace poker and struck him over the head, cracking his skull with one blow.
* * *
Val Weeden took his parents' deaths hard, as was to be expected. Not only did he grieve their loss, but he also felt a strong sense of guilt. If he had not been away at college, he might have prevented the tragic murder/suicide.
For the remainder of his life, the Weedens' son and only child tried to make sense of his mother's actions. What had made her kill her husband and then herself? Val would never make the connection between an innocent date night gone wrong and an unsolved multiple murder in New Jersey, between Camp Quinnipiac and Camp Friendship or between a traumatized little boy who survived a nightmare and an equally traumatized little girl who lost the father she had adored.
This story was inspired by: (1) Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in Hardwick, New Jersey, the camp used in filming the original Friday the 13th movie. Still a working Boy Scout Camp, they occasionally offer tours of the camp. (2) The 20th anniversary celebration of the movie held at a large orchard/farm near Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. This event featured live music, a killer clown corn maze, a hay ride, birthday cake, a Camp Crystal Lake haunted house and a Halloween contest. Had a great time!
The last time we went camping, I forgot to warn Salem about leaving food around. At least he was willing to share his stash of Godiva chocolates with Yogi.
