We drove past the old Granger sign at 7:43 p.m.
The wooden arch was still rotted in the corners, but someone had repainted the letters since I'd last seen them.
Still crooked.
Still wrong.
CAMP GRANGER – SUMMER BEGINS WITH FRIENDS
Lena muttered behind me from the back seat:
> "We all know summer ended here."
I didn't answer.
Because she wasn't wrong.
---
I hadn't been back since Riley disappeared.
None of us had.
But now—seven years later—Mason Rourke had gathered us up with the kind of confidence only people with no guilt ever seem to carry.
He called it "a memory trip."
I called it dangerous.
> "We need closure," he'd said on the group call two weeks ago.
"No cops, no reporters, no therapists. Just us."
I should've said no.
But part of me… the part that still dreamed of Riley's scream echoing through the pines… needed something more than silence.
---
The lodge looked smaller than I remembered.
It sat nestled at the end of the gravel path like a forgotten toy.
Two floors. Stone steps. Shuttered windows.
One porch light flickering like it couldn't decide whether to die.
I stepped out of the car and immediately felt the cold.
Not in temperature.
Just in air.
It smelled like mildew and iron.
Like something had been waiting without breath.
---
Harper was already there.
She stood on the porch in a long coat and knitted gloves, arms folded, eyes wide like she'd just seen a ghost.
Her black hair blew across her face, but she didn't move to brush it away.
> "You feel it too," she said quietly.
> "Feel what?" I asked.
She didn't answer.
---
Inside, the others had already claimed rooms.
Tyrell was raiding the kitchen for old beer.
Zane had already set up three cameras in the corner of the lodge.
Jules—who I hadn't seen in five years—stood by the fireplace holding a photo of us.
Of all of us.
Including Riley.
> "Why'd you bring that?" I asked.
> "Because no one else would."
She put the photo down.
The glass over Riley's face was cracked.
---
By 9:00 p.m., we were seated around the long wooden table, eating chips, drinking stale wine, pretending this wasn't a graveyard.
Mason raised his bottle.
> "To Riley," he said.
"To the best damn prankster who ever lived."
I didn't raise mine.
> "Don't do that," I said.
"Don't act like it was a joke. He didn't come back."
Mason's eyes hardened.
> "And whose fault was that, Ava?"
The room went quiet.
Even the wind outside stopped like it was listening.
---
That night, I couldn't sleep.
The room they gave me used to belong to Riley.
His bunk still smelled like pinewood and cheap shampoo.
I lay there, watching the shadows shift across the ceiling, wondering if the forest remembered what we did.
If it remembered what we buried.
---
At 2:37 a.m., a knock came at my door.
Not a loud one.
Just three short taps.
I got up, opened it.
No one there.
But something had been left on the floor.
A wooden box.
Black.
Unmarked.
I picked it up.
It was heavier than it looked.
Inside:
Seven paper cards.
A wax-sealed envelope.
And a note, burned around the edges.
---
"DO YOU REMEMBER THE RULES?"
EVERYONE MUST PLAY.
---
That was it.
No name.
No sender.
But the wax on the envelope had a familiar mark pressed into it.
A spiral.
Riley's old game symbol.
The same one he used to carve into the trees before we played hide and seek in the woods.
The same one I saw the night he vanished.
On his hand.
Burned in.
---
I closed the box.
Took a deep breath.
And whispered to the room:
> "This isn't over."
Then I turned, and in the mirror across the room, I saw something behind me.
A figure.
Tall.
Still.
Wearing Riley's favorite hoodie.
But when I turned around—
Nothing.
Just the cold.
And the photo from earlier, now placed on the dresser.
But this time, Riley's face was missing.
Like someone had scratched it out.