I met Julianne Gibbins in June of 1959. I was 19 and had no idea what it meant to be a camp counselor. I knew she was odd, but never even imagined she would hurt anyone. That is, until camp was almost over--that’s when everything changed.
The air was hot and sticky, like it always was in Florida. My shirt stuck to my back as I leaned over to help one of the kids fix his braided keychain. You would think that a ten year old would get the idea of crossing three strands of leather over each other, but he was clearly struggling. Someone threw a bead at me and said, “Janet has a sweaty back!” I could have beaten her, but instead I just sat and put my hands over my eyes.
Three weeks, I told myself, just three more weeks. I could do it. I just needed something to keep me sane. A large dark figure moved in the corner of my eye. “I’m finished. Can I leave now?” Julianne Gibbins stood a short distance from me, her long frizzy black hair sticking out everywhere. I glanced down at her keychain. It was literally just one string with a large double knot in it. I thought about telling her she had to stay but then remembered that she probably didn’t want to be there as much as me.
“Just…” I started. “Make sure you take the regular path back to your cabin. Don’t let any of the other adults see you. I could get in trouble. She simply turned around and began to walk away without saying anything. When she was almost out of the craft cabin, an ambush of beads flew through the air. All of the kids laughed hysterically and I stood to help her, but she left too fast. The kids were mean, yeah, but they didn’t deserve what was coming.
“She left her doll!” one of the girls yelled. I groaned. Julianne had this doll-- a little thing made of cloth and yarn—that she left sitting on the table. Again. It seemed that every place she went with it, she would just leave it there. The kids already had it in hand, ready to deface it with glue and glitter when Patty, my replacement, walked in.
“Wow!” she said. “Looks like you all have been working real hard to make all your little crafts.” The kids put the doll down and scampered to Patty to show her what they had made. I inched over to the table and scooped it up, then thanked Patty and walked out the door. Outside of the craft cabin was almost as chaotic as inside of it. The path that led there was winding and covered in tall grass. I walked for a few minutes before I spotted her, sitting on a log a few feet into the brush. She was muttering something unintelligible under her breath. I stepped closer and nearly tripped onto her. She had no reaction other than her sudden silence.
“I, uh,” I stuttered. I felt almost scared all of the sudden. “You left your…” I simply extended my arm for her to take it. She didn’t move. So I left it leaning on the log and walked away.
That wasn’t the first strange encounter I had with her. One night, after a counselor meeting that went well past eleven o’clock, I got back to the cabin late. My bed was positioned in the corner, (why they insisted on having an adult in each room was beyond me) away from the six bunk beds piled high with eleven-year-old children and their blankets and pillows. I crawled into my blankets as quietly as possible. When I was laying down I looked around the room and counted. “One, two, three, four….six, seven….eleven….” My eyes skimmed past Julianne’s bed, which was empty.
I groaned and rolled out of bed. “Jim,” I whispered. “Jim!” he opened his eyes slowly.
“What?”
“Have you seen Julianne?”
Jim shrugged. I went over to her bed. The sheets were tucked in as they were that morning. Nothing was out of place. I opened the door and stepped outside. There was a chill in the air despite it being over ninety degrees outside. I went to the I crossed my arms over my chest and began to walk nearer to the latrine. There was a rustle in the brush and I turned quickly towards the trees behind me.
I walked closer and leaned in to get a better look. “Julianne?” I asked into the darkness. The cabin door blew shut behind me and I jumped. Chills spread over my arms and I turned towards it and began to run. I shut the door tightly behind me and gasped as I sat on my bed.
I laid back onto my pillow but my head his against a lump instead. I reached back slowly and picked up the doll. I didn’t know how it got there but I could say for sure that It wasn’t there before. I looked quickly to Julianne’s bed. She was there, sound asleep as if she had been the entire night. My hands shook as I pulled the blanket over my head. I didn’t sleep much that night.

The real story starts two days from the end of camp. What happened will be branded in my head for the rest of my life. I woke up at two in the morning feeling nauseous and was barely three feet out the door before I threw up all over the pathway. In the rush to the infirmary I didn’t even bother to wake up anyone in the cabin. That was mistake number one. The light flashed on and I threw up into the sink. The nurse came frantically towards me with a rag in one hand and a cup of water in the other.
She tried to wipe the sweat off my face between the times I put my head down but everything was happening too fast. When  I finally felt stable enough to stand up straight, I glanced behind me. Three or four counselors were standing wiping the sleep out of their eyes as they stared at me.
The nurse gestured for me to sit down and then gave me a blanket. the fabric was hot and sticky on my skin but I was too weak to resist. I was bombarded with questions about what I had eaten, how long it was since I last got 8 hours of sleep and so forth. When I declined every food that could have made me sick, everyone looked at each other. I had only taken what they gave me, the same as every other camper.
We all looked at each other and I started to cover my mouth as the vomit crept up my throat. They gathered closer to me, and as if it were planned, someone burst through the door.
It was one of the head directors. She looked frantic and deprived of sleep. “The cabin is on fire!” she screamed. Tears began to well up in her eyes. There wasn’t even a moment of hesitation before we started moving.
“Janet, stay here, alright. We’re going to bring everyone inside.” I was too rushed to feel anything. I barely knew what was going on. So I sat still, and stared forward until the first group of kids started filing in. They were all looking behind them where I could make out a light orange glow coming from the tree line. There were people yelling and some of this kids were crying with shaky breaths.
I looked for Julianne or Jim or any of the other kids from my cabin, but none of them were there. Then it hit me. I stood up too fast and my head spun but I pushed my way out of the door and ran to the cabin. The smell of burnt wood filled my nose and the story-high flame licked the bottom branches of the trees. The counselors stood around it with their hands on the sides of their faces. It was past fixing and even further past helping. I fell to the ground. I was too terrified to cry.

I sat in the same spot for hours until the sun was up and the firemen were spraying the last hot cinders with their hoses. They had already taken the bodies away. Eleven of them. One was missing. Everything had come together at that point. I was the only one in the cabin with food poisoning and just happened to be gone when she did it. She spared me.
Another counselor came up behind me and patted my shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault—“
“No,” I muttered. “It was theirs.”
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
I stood up and looked her in the eye. “It was their fault. Jim and Cathy and Mary. They were mean and treated her like dirt.” My face grew hot with anger and my voice cracked as I spoke. “It was them! They drove her crazy.”
The woman looked at me with growing anguish in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Janet, I really am. I just shook my head and turned to the ash.
It burned to nearly nothing but I could still make out the edges of the beds and some blackened floorboards. It was the most disgusting and heartbreaking thing I had ever looked at. My eyes scanned every inch for the thousandth time in those last few hours. Everything looked the same except for one small object at the top corner of the cabin that I hadn’t noticed before. I took a shaky breath in and began to walk slowly around the perimeter.
I glanced up to see if anyone was watching before I reached down and picked the doll up. My hands began to violently shake as I looked it up and down. The thing was pristine—at least compared to the rest of the mess. Almost as if…I looked around the tree line quickly to see if she was near. I knew that it wasn’t there before, but how had she placed it without anyone seeing?
There was a sudden sound of voices coming my way. A police officer and his partners were walking over with caution tape in their hands. I shoved the doll in the pocket of my pajama pants and walked past them quickly, hiding my pants with the blanket. There was a group of adults talking to reporters by the mess hall. I wanted to avoid everything and everyone. There was nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.
The only thing to do was lie.