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they were arguing over marbles. “Calm down, Mike. And give us a hand, will ya?” Steve said, raising his hand for a lift.
    Grabbing their outstretched hands, Mike pulled Aaron and Steve half-way to their feet. The loose dirt was crumbling beneath the sole of Mike's sneaker and then, without warning, he found himself veering downwards–all three now tumbled over, sliding down a steep slope of long grass and slick mud.
    A haze of green blades whipping passed their faces. The murky palette merged with the shadows as the boys crashed through the brush at the end of the slope. Their collective yells broke the silence of a small clearing, an old campsite, which they entered en masse, with flailing limbs and mud-smeared clothes.
    Aaron leapt to his feet in a cat-like reflex, checking himself for cuts and bruises. The right knee of his designer jeans were torn on a branch on the way down. “Just perfect.” Yet, then Aaron quickly thought to himself that the rip had actually improved the look of the jeans ten-fold. He smiled inwardly, as Mike got up and walked to a fire pit in the center of the clearing, full of sooty grey ash.
    Mike turned in a circle getting his bearings. Tall pine trees towered over the clearing, and little sunlight peeked through. In the sparse light, Mike could see a derelict lean-to with a shanty-style corrugated roof and an old upturned canoe scattered to the left of the otherwise empty clearing. The ground was littered with brown and red leaves, dried to crisp fall perfection. The leaves crunched underfoot, and a breeze sent a few flying in a beautiful fall dance of life and death. “What is this place?” Mike asked, finding his voice again.
    “Looks like a hunting camp,” Steve groaned as he lifted himself using a broken branch, dusting his jeans with his other hand.
    “In Pineville?” Mike frowned.
    “Or maybe one of those old hobo camps when the trains were running,” Steve suggested, pointing back up the embankment to the train tracks.
    “Hobos had canoes?”
    “They could have portaged,” Steve quipped.
    Aaron laughed. “Portage? Where do you come up with that shit, Steve?”
    Steve and Mike made a beeline for the canoe, as Aaron picked up a long stick, ideal for roasting marshmallows on a cold starry night, and he started poking around in the ashes. From absentminded jabbing, Aaron's mind trailed away and he drew a couple of matchstick men in the gray muck. He mumbled, partly as the words formed in his head, “I heard those guys yelling from over here when I saw the van. This must have been their hideout.”
    “Do you think we can portage this all the way back, Steve?” Mike and Steve weren't listening. Too busy examining the discarded canoe shell.
    “How about I portage your face?” Steve said, punching Mike in the arm.
    Suddenly, Aaron's stick caught on something beneath the ash–he raised it out of the dust. A pair of wire-framed glasses. “Hey guys.” Mike turned around, followed by Steve, to see the mangled glasses dangling from the end of the stick. “Looks like they burned a body here.”
    Mike looked horrified and was immediately on edge. “Seriously?!”
    “There are some pieces of rags. or clothes, too.” Aaron continued to shake the stick through the fire pit, unearthing burnt pieces of clothing.
    Steve elbowed Mike in the ribs. “Jeez, you're gullible. It's just a bunch of junk thrown onto a fire by a hobo,” Steve scoffed.
    A crack of a gunshot obliterated their jovial mood. Steve's face dropped in an instant. Mike froze. Aaron dropped the stick back into the ashes. There was an echo around the clearing as the shot continued to ring out for a couple of seconds–it was from somewhere close.
    “They're back!” Aaron hissed in a stage whisper.
    Another gunshot, closer than before, succeeded by a crippling scream of pain. A man. Crying out in agony.
    “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…” Mike broke into hysterics. He and Steve scrambled to the edge of the