Gianfranco Mancini’s Reviews > Kill Hill Carnage > Status Update

Seth placed a foot on the first step. A hollow clang echoed throughout the stairwell and farther down the hallway. He raised his foot and planted it on step number two, but Jenna put her arm across his chest. He turned to her, narrowing his eyes. She wagged her head. Behind them, in the distance, perhaps hallways away, something scurried, scratching its nails along the metal walls.

The beast’s persistence concerned Seth. How much longer until it realized it couldn’t break through? Intelligence was clearly not its finest attribute, though he knew what was—killing. BANG. BANG. They waited. The wait between hammer-fists lengthened. BANG. Then there was nothing. Seth and Jenna sped off down the hallway, toward new horrors.

The wooden banner running across the top of the entry gate, engraved with CAMP CHRISTOPER and lacquered to shiny perfection, had some new décor, not put there by the people in charge. KILL KILL KILL painted in dark maroon stretched across the hand-finished marquee. Dried, runny-red letters Bennett assumed was blood. Actual blood or a syrupy mixture resembling blood.

Head for the woods, he told her. Maybe they could lose the monster in the thicket. There were plenty of places to hide there, beyond the trees. Darkness was their friend. But it had also become their enemy.

This surprised him. Most of the other murder sites they’d visited were usually clean, scrubbed meticulously, not a speck or clue about what had happened there. But not Camp Christopher. This place was tainted, a forensic investigator’s wet dream. Warren cursed himself for not visiting sooner. This place was fucking awesome.

As the horror hit his bones, Randy realized something—the five of them weren’t alone in the murk. There was something else. Something darker. Something evil. Something that polluted the lake, infecting the watery walls around him. Something that ripped eyes from the sockets of children. Suddenly, the surface didn’t seem like such a bad place.

“We’re sleeping here?” “Um . . . yes. We’ve gone camping and this is a campground. Where’d you think we’d sleep?” Jenna shrugged. “Motel Six?” Fiona giggled. Jenna surveyed the land. “Seems dangerous out here. Unprotected.” “Babes,” Fiona said, sighing, “nothing is out here but us and good ol’ Mother Nature.”

Frank kicked the thing in the abdomen. Black fluids leaked from the hole in its head, down the muddy bank and into the bubbling brook. He thought about pushing the corpse into the water, then decided against touching it. Whatever unholy disease it had, Frank Harmon wanted no part of it.

“She needs someone with experience, mope.” His lips twitched, either by impulse or design. Seth couldn’t tell which. “Plus . . . she’s vulnerable. Vulnerability is a stinky perfume and she’s given me a nose full.” “That sounds like something a rapist would say.” Dave didn’t argue. Instead, he threw his head back like a wolf under a full moon and roared with laughter. “Oh, Sethie. You were always the funny one.”