Put That Kid Down

Chapter Three

The nightmares left him. He was doing the right thing. His gut hadn't led him wrong, no matter how his heart may have protested, at first. The Sheriff had been his usual weary self when they eventually called in the missing person's report, and had done only a cursory investigation – there were just too many odd things in Sleepy Peak to focus on a stressed manager of a flagging summer camp running for the hills.

Sure, David missed her sometimes, but Janette had been plotting against little kids – wanting them dead or gone. That wasn't something he could abide, no matter what destructive ideas they had about seals or spirits or whatever.

Plus, Gwen wasn't half as attentive. It made it much easier to sneak off to deal with the camp's pest problems, even if he usually returned to controlled chaos he had to mop up with a bucket and a lot of bandages. Thankfully, Max had yet to surprise him again. Mostly his escape attempts were easily thwarted since he didn't seem all that great at sneaking, at least to David's finely-honed awareness of people trying for stealth. There had been that incident with the spiders in his bed that had had him waking Gwen with a shriek, and the boy's penchant for complicated constructions usually resulting in immediate pain for David... but occasionally he made something more non-hostile and David didn't want to stifle his creativity by restricting his access to the storage shed more than it already was, so there was nothing to be done about it.

Besides, he was capable of dodging when something moved that slowly – though he'd gotten a bit sucked into it the first time, distracted by the ball rolling into the dominoes and knocking over the lamp and so on, and he was sure without his... patrolling he'd not have been half as uninjured. Ah, well. In the end he was fine.

It was during their foreign language session – High Elvish this time, thanks to Nerris, that Max piped up, "Here's an idea. How about we figure out how this camp is still up and running instead of what puntl norka means?"

"Max!" Nerris gasped disapprovingly, "We aren't anywhere near insults in the syllabus!"

He almost looked ready to protest that he had no idea he'd even spoken actual words, but shrugged and took it as a win, instead.

"Give it a rest, Max," Gwen said, not looking up from the mass of knots still entangling Harrison and his unfortunate victim – er, temporary assistant, Dolph. She gave one a particularly vicious yank and got a little yelp from each of them when they were jolted closer together.

"I could try to vanish them again," Harrison offered in that strange nasal voice of his, raising his hands entreatingly, but Gwen shook her head and pulled at another knot in the multicolored scarves.

"We're making progress; let's not backtrack," the knot unravelled, leading to yet more tangles as she lowered her voice and added in a mutter, "Or disappear Dolph."

"Well, Chucky turned up eventually and he was... fine," David pointed out, smile flickering only a little at the reminder.

"I apologized," Harrison reminded them, looking down and away, "Plus, that's... progress."

"I do miss Chucky," Max mused, smirking at Harrison as he dug in the knife, "He was the only person who really understood me."

"We all miss Chucky, but he chose to leave for a variety of reasons. Besides, Harrison apologized for his mistake and learned from it. We can't ask any more of our campers," David interjected, patting Harrison's shoulder briefly through the layers of scarf.

"It would be cool if I could tell my parents how Chucky showed up again," Harrison remarked, wincing when Gwen tugged at a knot that tightened a loop around his arm, "Maybe then they'd stop being so weird around me."