Monster Camp by Sarah Henning

Author:Sarah Henning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2023-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

What’s Going to Work? TEAMWORK!

Everyone got a sack lunch on Tuesday and instructions to follow Master Gert into the woods for a Group Fang “teamwork opportunity.” Which, of course, Chad insinuated while gnawing on a fresh side of raw cow in the middle of the trail, was because they were “losers” from the day before.

In the back, Sylvie just pointedly ate her apple, surreptitiously checked her fangs in her compact—straight and neat—and kept walking with Vera through the ever-creeping brush and shadows clawing at her ankles. Luckily, Master Gert’s apparently stellar monster hearing caught what Chad was getting at and corrected him.

“Group Fang,” Master Gert announced, deftly walking backward over the rocks and roots with a swish of their cape. Sylvie could swear the forest jumped away from them as they moved… completely opposite of how the surely sentient woods treated her and Vera. “I assure you that Group Fester did this very same teamwork opportunity this morning under the watchful eye of Scott and myself.”

“Where is Scott?” Milo asked, like he’d had that question bottled up for quite some time now.

“He’s preparing the course for us.”

The course? That didn’t sound good.

Vera looked just as stricken as Sylvie felt, which Sylvie took as a nonverbal cue that, no, they hadn’t done this the year before either.

“We’ll meet him there. Come along now.” Master Gert swished back around, magically avoiding a slim tree trunk that had planted itself toward the middle of the trail as if on accident. It was like the director had eyes in the back of their head, and Sylvie realized with a start that could be true.

A few minutes later, they arrived at another clearing. Master Gert waited patiently for all of them to emerge from the trail and into the clearing before beginning their explanation. But as Sylvie arrived as the group’s caboose, it wasn’t Master Gert who spoke first, it was Scott—yelling from far away.

“Hey there, Group Fang!” The manticore waved, his scorpion’s tale wiggling at his back from his spot all the way on the other side of the clearing, up on some sort of structure that put him a good twenty feet in the air. He tossed both lion’s arms (legs?) wide and yelled some more. “Welcome to the Boneyard!”

Scott’s voice echoed a little, and a lot in Sylvie’s head.

She recalled a sign on the flagpole labeled “Boneyard” but, honestly, after their trip to the cemetery the other day, she’d just figured that was what it referred to.

Looking around now, she realized her assumption was very, very wrong.

The clearing was a final resting place.

A skull as massive as Cabin No. 7 was to Sylvie’s left, its jawbone sucked into the soil like a bare foot in wet sand on the beach. Beyond the skull, jutting from the earth at varying levels of exposure, was the rest of what appeared to be a massive, intact skeleton. It was lying stomach-side down, from the curve of a spine to a splintered cage of ribs poking in all directions to an extended tangle of femurs and tibias.

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