The Ghost of Danny McGee Read online

  praise for

  “Grim’s novel is mostly a quiet, slow-moving reflection on second chances, the ethics of cloning, the privileges of the rich, and what it means to be human. The story’s perspective alternates between that of Sam and Logan, exploring the experiences of the campers and the counselors, by turns. There’s a tinge of unreliability to their narration that gives the tale a compelling, evocative, and uneasy feel. The author also cleverly weaves in the ever changing story of a ghost who supposedly haunts the camp—the eponymous Danny McGee—adding an extra layer to the story in which everybody’s repeatedly told to ‘Stay on the trails.’

  “Quietly insightful speculative fiction that will appeal to fans of Westworld and Black Mirror.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  “Twisted, sinister, and wildly inventive, Quinlan Grim delivers a chilling campfire story that will keep you up past lights out.”

  Mary McCoy

  author of Camp So-and-So

  Reactions from NetGalley

  “I absolutely loved this! It was so well written and engaging whereas the plot was unique. I can’t wait to recommend this to friends.”

  •••

  “I never wanted this book to end. It felt like I was at Camp Phoenix. This would be a great summer read and I definitely plan on rereading it when it comes out.”

  •••

  “This was an incredible read.”

  Quinlan Grim

  A California Coldblood Book

  Los Angeles, Calif.

  THIS IS A GENUINE CALIFORNIA COLDBLOOD BOOK

  Los Angeles, Calif.

  californiacoldblood.com

  Copyright © 2022 by Quinlan Grim

  ISBNs

  Paperback: 978-1-955085-04-5

  Ebook: 978-1-955085-05-2

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic.

  Set in Minion

  Cover design by Dale Halvorsen

  Printed in the United States

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Grim, Quinlan, author.

  Title: The ghost of Danny McGee / by Quinlan Grim.

  Description: Los Angeles, CA: California Coldblood Books, 2022.

  Identifiers: ISBN: 978-1-955085-10-6 Subjects: LCSH Camps--Fiction. | Identity (Psychology)--Fiction. | Murder--Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | Science fiction. | Thrillers (Fiction) | BISAC FICTION / Science Fiction / General | FICTION / Psychological | FICTION / Thriller / General Classification: LCC PS3607 .R5548 G46 2022 | DDC 813.6--dc23

  Dedication

  For Charlie.

  week one

  Sam

  The hat on the dashboard is crumpled and dusty. It sits against the corner of the windshield, the visor facing out, frowning at her. Sam frowns back at it. She lets the car idle in the parking space and chews on her lip. Even here, with her eyes on the hat, her head is still in Paris.

  It’s the first day of June, and the sky is a hard, suburban blue. People loiter in the lot around her in cargo shorts and sundresses, leaning up against their pickups, clutching their canvas bags of barbecue supplies. A pack of kids parades by on scooters and roller blades. Sam shuts off her engine and reaches for the hat in the windshield. She fished it out from under the back seat of her car this morning, where it has been stuffed, forgotten, for nearly a year. The insignia on the front is stained, stitched in white over sun-faded green: two crossed pine branches, topped with a bird’s nest.

  Hesitantly, Sam puts on the hat. She nods at her reflection in the mirror, tugging the visor down over her eyes. Then she grunts, tosses the hat back onto the dashboard, and pushes herself out of her car.

  She mumbles through her packing list as she crosses the grocery store parking lot. Sunscreen, toothpaste, disposable razors. Socks—last summer, she always ran out of socks between laundry days. Sunscreen. The good kind: the lotion, not the spray. She juggles a growing mound of toiletries through the aisles. As she stands under the fluorescent lights and air-conditioning, her feet in sandals, hair in a ponytail, it strikes Sam that she hardly left at all.

  If she’d had it her way—if the scholarship extension had been granted to her—she would still be in Paris. She had a summer internship in mind, an apartment of her own, mornings spent sipping coffee and smiling at strangers in sunny cafés. In Paris, she was a real adult. The scholarship board asked if she had access to a summer job at home, and she had to answer honestly: yes. Now, browsing the cosmetics aisle of her old neighborhood market, she is just a kid again.

  It’s only temporary, Sam tells herself. Eleven weeks at Camp, then she’ll be back in Paris. It’s just a summer job. She thinks again of the hat in her car, the dusty smell of it, and her stomach squirms in a funny way. Bug repellent, she remembers suddenly, turning on her heel and dashing back down the aisle.

  In no hurry to drive back to her parents’ house, where her bedroom has been remodeled to a home office and her little sister has grown a nasty attitude, Sam lingers in the parking lot. She leans against the hood of her car and lights a cigarette. In Paris, smoking was an appealing, sexy habit—one she never quite got the hang of. Here, it’s a satisfying act of rebellion. As she puffs on the cigarette, she jangles her keys in her fist and stares down at her legs. She wonders how long it has been since she last wore shorts in public, and when, exactly, she got so pale.

  “Sam Red!”

  Sam blinks up, squinting into the flat sunshine. It seems inevitable; a childhood friend has spotted her from across the parking lot and now charges toward her, arms spread wide. She drops her cigarette, realizing she doesn’t actually want to get caught. “Hi.”

  They haven’t seen each other in years. He was a few grades ahead of her in school, an awkward, lisping boy. Once, bored at a neighborhood barbecue, she was dared to kiss him. He has a full sleeve of tattoos now and a grimy toddler in tow. “Wow.” He smiles at her. “You look great.”

  Sam nods. She tilts her chin in a practiced way, letting his look run over her. The past year has made her thinner, sharper. Her hair is longer and darker than it used to be, the baby fat drained from her freckled cheeks. She knows her own charm as she sees it in those up-and-down glances.

  “Where have you been, again? England?”

  “France.”

  “France? What made you run off to France?”

  Sam eyes the kid at his knees, who has begun to pout and pick at scabs. His little hands are streaked with dirt. Unease rises in her chest. Not waiting for an answer, her old friend carries on, telling her all about his job and his truck and his new craftsman home.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry, Danny,” Sam cuts him off after some time. “I kind of have to get going. It was great seeing you.”

  “Well, how long are you here for? You want to—I mean, are you twenty-one yet?”

  “I’m leaving in a couple of days, actually. I have a job. At a camp.”

  “A camp.” His eyes widen. “Oh. I heard about that. You’re going back there?”

  Sam nods again and, with a few awkward pleasantries, manages to detangle herself from the conversation. She ducks into her car, fumbling with the keys.

  “What’s it like?” he asks, leaning on his arm over her open window. “Do they actually look like . . . you know, like kids? Do you get to see it all happen? How do they do it?”

  The radio blares when the engine turns over. Sam flashes him a vapid smile and nods. “It was great to see you!” she calls over the music. At the exit to the parking lot, she glances back through the rearview mirror.

  In Paris, no one asked her about Camp Phoenix. She looks at the hat on the dashboard and thinks anxiously of scabs, and sunburns, and small, dirt-streaked hands. She has a long summer ahead of her.

  Socks, Sam remembers with a groan, hitting her blinker. She’ll have to go to another store for socks.

  Logan

  Logan’s fingertip hovers over the screen. She hesitates, sighs, and lets it fall to replay again.

  It begins with a shot of a boy in swim trunks running across a broad green lawn. His hair flops back on the breeze, his face screwed into a fierce, determined look.

  Do you remember what it felt like to run? To climb? To fight? To play?

  The scene changes with each suggestion to a slow-motion clip of children engaging in the named activity. The setting is sunny and natural. The children are pretty boys and girls, peppered with token diversity. Low music swells behind the narrator’s voice.

  To laugh freely? To cry openly? To be loved—(here, a shot of a young woman holding a little girl on her lap, their faces both thrown back in laughter)—unconditionally?

  The tone of the video shifts. Traffic, office windows. A couple arguing soundlessly. A lock of white hair brushed back by a wrinkled hand.

  Do you remember being carefree? Do you remember the life you once had? Do you ever think . . . The narration pauses over a woman staring solemnly at a framed photograph. . . . about going back?

  The video fades to black, and the familiar bird’s nest insignia melts into view on Logan’s screen. Camp Phoenix, she reads, in bold white text. Go Back. Again, her finger leaps to replay.

  Logan pauses, shakes her head, and lowers her hand. She pushes herself back
from her desk, blinking some of the bleariness from her eyes. She doesn’t need to watch the promotion again. It isn’t exactly good—clichéd, even. Still, something about it coos to her. Go Back. They make it sound so simple.

  “Mrs. Gill?”

  She lifts her head from her screen. “Adler-Gill,” she corrects the intern in her doorway. It’s a recent change. She has to correct people more often than not. She hears the whispered rumors in the hallways, murmurs of divorce, of her descent into spinsterhood. Why hyphenate, they mutter, when she’s just going to drop her husband’s name entirely? The change has nothing to do with her husband, of course—it’s a little thing, only for herself.

  “Sorry.” The girl blushes. A pause stretches before she gets to what she needs, stammering through her question. Afterward, she lingers at the door for a moment until Logan looks expectantly back up.

  “Something else?”

  “Did, umm . . . did you hear the news today?”

  Logan laughs, although there is nothing really funny about it. Whatever else may be happening in the world, Hugo Baker is all anyone ever wants to talk about. “Yes, I did.” She shrugs, all too aware of the stiffness in her shoulders. “You know, just being out on bond doesn’t mean he won’t be convicted.”

  A gossipy smile creeps over the intern’s mouth. “You don’t think he’s innocent, do you?”

  “I’ve never heard of an innocent man paying his own bail.”

  The girl gives a surprised snicker, and Logan smiles. She smooths down her blouse and wonders absently, with a nudge of her old self-consciousness, what she thinks of her.

  “Close the door behind you, hon.”

  It’s a chilly evening, for early summer, and growing dark by the time Logan can leave her office. She clutches the collar of her jacket tight to her throat as she hurries to her car. There is a lot on her mind; only a few more days until they leave, and too much to be done before then.

  She’ll miss Emma’s bedtime if she stops at the co-op. Money has been tighter since they paid their Camp tuitions, though, and she can’t justify the delivery fee just for oat milk and Merlot. Standing in line at the register, her eyes drift to the community corkboard on the wall. There, tacked alongside the lost puppies and garage sale announcements, is the same poster she has seen all over the city in the past few weeks. A beaming Hollywood headshot, darkened, with a single word scrawled across the eyes in oozing red. Murderer.

  “Did you hear the news?” the cashier asks her. Logan nods.

  She gets home after dark. The nanny sits on the sofa watching a music video show on low volume. Vintage, Logan notes with a chuckle. She thanks the nanny and sends her home, swallowing her guilt, again, about being so late. In her daughter’s room, about a ream of white cardstock has been scattered across the floor. Each sheet is a canvas for sparse rainbows and loopy flowers and bloated, stork-legged people floating in space. Logan takes a moment to study the pictures. It’s funny—Mommy and Daddy always seem to be drawn in red and blue crayon, respectively, but Emma depicts herself in a whole spectrum of colors, constantly changing.

  Her little girl is fast asleep beneath the comforter, mouth open. Logan crouches at the edge of the bed and wrestles the urge to wake her up. She wants to know what she is dreaming about. Instead, she leans down and leaves a kiss on her temple, lingering there, measuring the steady pulse against her lips.

  Downstairs, she fills a wineglass and disintegrates into the sofa. The TV is still on. Logan stares blankly at the old music video. She must have been about the nanny’s age when this song came out, she thinks, watching Poppy Warbler strut across the screen in leopard-print spandex. She wasn’t exactly a fan at the time. Bad music is like that, though—it only gets better with age and nostalgia. She bobs her head along to the tune. The empty house is lonely at night, even a little spooky.

  Her husband is across the city. They aren’t supposed to have any contact in the weeks leading up to the consciousness transfer. The idea, supposedly, is to weaken their memories of each other, to avoid any sense of familiarity when they first meet at Camp Phoenix. Logan thought it was ridiculous at first. Now, she is alarmed by how rapidly the details of her spouse’s features are fading from her mind’s eye. She can’t quite place the freckle on his throat, the scar at his hairline, the rings of gold in his irises. Memory is a fragile, terrifying thing.

  The glass in her hand is half empty when he calls.

  “Hey, Loges.” He sounds tired. They shouldn’t be speaking, technically, but at the pace of their lives, it’s simply impossible.

  “Hi. You’re a little late. I just put her to bed.”

  “Did you see the news?” His tone is hard and heavy, leaning forward.

  Logan laughs, somewhat clunkily. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

  A long sigh fills her ear. “This isn’t right. We should call someone, see if they’ll reconsider. I don’t think we should support them now.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Again, he sighs. “Are you in the living room? Look.”

  Logan watches the TV screen. The sentimental music video cuts out, and the clip he has sent her appears. She looks at the same handsome headshot she saw in the co-op, now undefaced. Open collar, silver hair, notorious smile. Logan adjusts the volume skeptically. It’s a talk show—a gossip show, really, not the kind of thing either of them would normally watch. A snide, excited debate carries out across the image.

  . . . innocent until proven guilty. In this country, someone is innocent until they are proven guilty.

  Logan scoffs.

  I agree, and I’m not saying he’s guilty. We can’t know yet. But just because he might be innocent, should that mean that he gets to just drop out of reality while he’s out on bond? I mean, by letting him into that place, the execs at Phoenix Genetics are really showing us there’s nothing money can’t buy . . .

  “What?” Logan breathes aloud. The image on the talk show shifts, from Hugo Baker’s photo to a sunny forest, a rustic log cabin, a child-sized pair of muddy sneakers on a porch. Next is another headshot of another smiling, gray-haired man.

  . . . and listen, we couldn’t get Byron on the phone tonight, but if you ask me, he’s just looking at Baker as another paying client. We’re talking about the ethics of a man who manufactures human children, for God’s sake . . .

  She forgot she was still holding her phone to her ear. His voice, when he speaks up again, makes her jump. “He’s going to be there, Logan. He’s going to be there with us.”

  Sam

  Early in the morning, on the third of June, Sam leaves for Camp Phoenix.

  She pulls out of her parents’ driveway just before sunrise. The drive will take about ten winding hours, but she doesn’t mind—a week of sitting still in suburbia has left her twitchy and restless. She sings along with the radio as she merges onto the freeway, happy just to be moving again. By noon, the landscape has flattened around her, and the road ahead is clear. Her high spirits slowly give way to nerves.

  A year ago, when she made this drive for the first time, she had no idea what she was heading toward. They found her online. She was exactly the sort of person Camp Phoenix was looking for, the message in her inbox said: a college student, driven and enthusiastic, good with kids—Would she be interested in a unique, high-paying summer job? Sam assumed it had to be a scam. Camp Phoenix was an international scandal in her childhood, a millionaire’s unethical playground; there was no way they recruited their staff through social media. Desperate to afford her exchange program in Paris, she sent the application on a whim, anyway. Six weeks later, she was driving up this freeway with a single backpack and a head full of wild expectations.

  The summer was intense. Sam’s memories of it now are vibrant and somewhat painful, but vaguely distant, as if she watched it all happen through a screen. She swore, back in August, that she wouldn’t come back. Now, she wonders what it will be like to see the place again, to see her friends. She wonders if they have all grown as much as she believes she has.