Catch A Rabbit
Ivy On The Trail: Episode Five
Ivy On The Trail is a supernatural adventure novella, serialized in ten projected parts. This is Episode Five.
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Previously, Ivy helped out on a hike with the littles, and noticed some strange behavior from the counselors.
In this episode, Ivy tries to solve a mystery and ends up stumbling into a camp emergency.
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“It’s not a good idea, Ives. It’s a bad, bad idea.”
Bailey and Ivy approached the back door of the camp kitchen, whispering against the hush of night. It was after dark, an hour or so before midnight, and the purloined maintenance key in Bailey’s fingers glimmered in their flashlight beams.
“I need to know what’s going on with Willow and Loki,” Ivy replied, watching as Bailey unlocked the kitchen door, opened it, and held it ajar with her foot as she carefully slipped the key back into her shorts pocket. Then, the two of them entered the kitchen, flipping the light switches on their way in.
Ivy added, “Don’t you want to know? Especially if it’s something weird?”
“Sure,” Bailey said. “But there’s got to be a better and less illegal way than snooping in their files. They’ve got like…addresses and Social Security numbers and stuff in there. We would probably go to jail.”
“We wouldn’t go to jail,” Ivy said, although at sixteen she wasn’t really sure whether looking at someone’s personnel file without asking did constitute a criminal charge.
While she pondered this, Bailey disappeared into the industrial freezer; Ivy held the heavy door open. When Bailey re-emerged, she was holding two ice cream bars still in their crisp wrappers. She handed one to Ivy and then they hopped up onto the counter, wrestling the wrappers open.
“Do you have a better idea?” Ivy asked. “I’m all ears.”
Bailey fell silent, pointed, crunching into the chocolate shell of her ice cream.
“Thought so. Anyway,” Ivy added, “it would basically be the same thing we’re doing right now.”
Bailey grimaced and shook her head. “No it wouldn’t. Sneaking into the camp kitchen at night and taking snacks isn’t even close to sneaking into Maia’s office and reading official legal paperwork. Maia leaves this maintenance key sitting out all the time. There are so many identical ones all over the place that she doesn’t care. But her office keys…that’s different. She’s going to miss those.”
“Then we probably can’t swipe them. We would have to come up with a good reason for needing them, so we can ask her,” Ivy said.
Bailey shifted, visibly uncomfortable. “I don’t know, I don’t like it.”
“Maia won’t find out that we read the files, Bails. You won’t get in trouble.”
“It’s not that.” Bailey lowered her ice cream, eyeing it like it might bite her back. “Don’t tell her—or anyone else—I told you this, but Maia’s already on kinda thin ice with this job. The Park Director, her boss, he’s been a real dick about Maia for some reason. He cut the camp budget this year, refused her recommendations for better staffing, new equipment…it’s like the guy wants her to fail. No idea what’s up with him, but it’s not good.”
Ivy’s heart squeezed. Maia’s enthusiasm, her work ethic, her desire to make it all work…Ivy hadn’t considered before this that it might come from somewhere other than Maia being so cool and seemingly effortless. Maybe it came from a bit of healthy spite, a desire to prove to herself, her boss, and the world that she could do this.
Who does that sound like? she thought, without humor.
“I just worry that if we’re caught, Maia will get in trouble,” Bailey continued. “I would hate myself forever if she took the blame for something we did.”
“I get it,” Ivy said, and she did get it. Bailey was often the voice of reason when Ivy was planning to do something on the edge of stupid. But Ivy couldn’t quite shake the disappointment from her shoulders, anyway.
Bailey hadn’t been there on the trail with Loki and Willow. She hadn’t seen the weird way the two behaved, the switch-up in their behavior when they thought danger was close. Bailey wanted to protect Maia, and that made sense, but if there was something deeper going on…wasn’t it worth exploring?
Not to mention Ivy’s dreams about the old derelict cabin, the low whistle on the road after the prank, and the literal apparition of a little girl that transformed into a rabbit before her very eyes. Ivy hadn’t even bothered to explain any of these things to Bailey, not because she worried that Bailey wouldn’t take it seriously, but because she worried that Bailey would. Ivy didn’t want to find herself explaining Jack The Rabbit to someone like Maia. What was Ivy going to say? That she believed in the Woodmother, a made-up camp story about a ghost who takes kids?
Ivy cleared her throat and said, “There’s obviously something weird about Loki and Willow, that’s for sure. You saw it, right? At the Circle?”
Bailey didn’t answer.
“It doesn’t make sense for them to pretend not to know each other. It just doesn’t. Think of it this way: if we uncover something important, won’t Maia get the credit for it? And wouldn’t that be a good thing for her her boss to see?”
Bailey shrugged, but still didn’t answer.
“It’s a gamble, for sure,” Ivy continued, emboldened, feeling that she was getting through to Bailey. “But the good stuff really does outweigh the bad stuff. The bad is we admit that we used Maia’s key to do something wrong and get in a little bit of trouble; it would be our fault, right? But the good is that we uncover the truth and Maia looks amazing and responsible to her boss. That’s not a bad thing, right?”
Ivy was dimly aware that she was mischaracterizing the situation ever so slightly. She knew enough to know that adults have a weird propensity for blaming each other for kids’ behavior, and the likelihood was strong that Maia would get into serious trouble, even if it was all Ivy and Bailey’s fault.
But she needed to see those files. And she needed Bailey to get on board.
Bailey finally said, gesturing sternly with the popsicle stick, “We can’t get caught.”
Ivy shook her head and crossed her finger over her heart, a promise. “We won’t. I swear.”
Bailey sighed. “Okay,” she said. “As long as we don’t get caught and we keep Maia out of it, I’m in.”
Then she pitched the stick into the nearby trash, still with some ice cream stuck to it, as if she’d lost her appetite.
*******
The plan was fool-proof. Simple, but effective.
After breakfast the next morning, deep in the chaos of dismissing cabins to the ballfield for the next activity, Ivy approached Maia. She leaned in, keeping her expression solemn, even a little despairing. What her elderly neighbor at home called a hangdog face.
“Hey, Maia, um…can I ask a favor?” she asked.
Maia—mind and hands full—didn’t even look at Ivy, just continued to direct camper traffic. “What’s up?”
“I really need to call my parents,” Ivy said. She strained her voice and tipped the corners of her mouth down, trying to look subtly distressed. Her days in Drama Club were coming in handy.
This got Maia’s attention. She glanced down. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just…I just really need to talk to them.” Ivy didn’t really want to have to specify why. As soon as you get specific with a lie it’s easier for someone to pick it apart. She hoped her worried, ashamed face would suggest all kinds of problems. Homesickness. Needing something embarrassing that she forgot at her house. Checking in about an unspecified family drama.
Maia looked at her watch and sighed, but not unkindly. “I really need to head to the ballfield right now. Can you wait, or…?”
Ivy shrugged a yes, but made sure that her face said No, I can’t wait…I’m withering away in front of you. I am in desperate need of imminent rescue. Help.
Maia seemed to weigh something out, then reached for her keys, removing one from the ring. She handed it to Ivy and made stern eye contact.
“Guard this with your life,” she said. “And bring it back right after you’re done. Got it?”
Ivy took the key, cold in her fingers, and nodded. “Got it.”
“Okay.” Maia gave her a slight smile—but was that the tiniest hint of suspicion behind her dark eyes?—and then followed a gaggle of campers out the door, herding them with out-stretched arms and her enthusiastic camp-hype voice.
Key in hand, Ivy found Bailey and the two of them hurried away from the crowd that was heading to the ballfield. They went back around the corner toward the offices where Ivy unlocked Maia’s office door and pushed it open. Bailey stood guard just inside.
“You need to put everything back exactly how you found it,” Bailey said over her shoulder. “And I mean exactly.”
“I know, I know,” Ivy said. The office was sterile and professional, very little to suggest any sense of personality. Probably so her jerk of a boss doesn’t have anything else to complain about, Ivy thought. She crossed to the squat three-drawer file cabinet beside the desk and gingerly pulled at the handle of the top drawer. To her surprise it slid open easily in her grip, unlocked.
“Yes,” she murmured, under her breath, but then she was immediately faced with so many more files than she thought would be there. There were files for everything: budget stuff, kitchen stuff, maintenance stuff, tax stuff, each thick with folders and documents.
Ivy looked through the label of each folder in turn, but didn’t see any employee files. She slid the drawer closed and reached for the second drawer down.
This one slid open too, but was completely full of printouts and handouts, manuals and reference materials, camp maps and fliers and brochures. Promotional material for the camp and forms galore. Not what she needed at all.
She closed this one and reached for the third, holding her breath.
It thunked. Locked.
“No,” she muttered. “Oh no no…” Ivy looked around, wondering if the key was somewhere in the office. She looked under a paperweight, gently lifted a stack of papers, opened the slim desk drawers. No sign of a key.
Then, Bailey shifted by the door.
“Someone’s coming!” she hissed. “Ivy, someone’s coming!”
Panic seized Ivy’s body. She made sure all the file drawers were clicked back closed, rearranged anything she had touched back into its proper place, and then slid into Maia’s office chair and picked up the phone, holding it to her cheek as though she was deep in conversation…right as Maia came hurrying around the corner, eyes steely and muscles tensed.
“Ivy, I need the phone,” Maia said. Her voice sounded strange. Snappish, severe. Ivy had never seen her like that before.
Ivy put the phone back down on its cradle and stood from the chair, her legs vibrating from the adrenaline. Maia did not acknowledge either girl at all, simply crossed to her desk, picked up the receiver, dialed a few numbers, and waited.
Ivy couldn’t move. Bailey was transfixed by her sister’s change in demeanor.
“This is Maia Greene over at Fort Ferris Summer Camp,” Maia said. “I need to report a missing camper.”
*******
Her name was Kiley. She was eleven years old and staying in Peppa’s cabin.
That morning, everything had gone wrong for Peppa. The girls in the cabin had stayed up late the night before and were impossible to wake up the next morning. Peppa had been in a hurry to get them awake, imploring them to get dressed and out the door, and important aspects of protocol had been dropped. Namely, Peppa didn’t take a headcount before marching her unruly line of grumpy campers down to breakfast.
And in the chaos and the crowd, Kiley had dropped through the cracks.
Peppa didn’t realize it until breakfast when another camper pointed out the empty seat at their cabin’s table. Panicked, she left breakfast to search, running back to the cabins and firepit, over to the ballfield, back down to the lake…everywhere it made sense to check.
No Kiley.
Peppa returned to the main camp building breathless and in tears, and told Maia what had happened.
After that, it was all a blur. The remaining campers were counted carefully—thankfully, all were accounted for—and then taken back to their cabins to wait in lockdown until this was all sorted out.
Maia called the authorities and initiated the camp’s safety plan. The park rangers gathered at the camp along with Mr. Grant’s groundskeeping team. A contingent of Island Police arrived within minutes, along with a rather unusual pair of investigators: Captain Reyville, who worked for the island’s Harbormaster office and often served as a Search & Rescue coordinator, and Caroline Phelan from the Seavend General Store.
When Caroline’s car pulled into the camp parking lot, Ivy felt her heart leap in her chest. She and Bailey had been allowed to stay with Maia at the office and wait for the authorities to show up, and seeing Caroline and the Captain filled her with no small measure of hope. The two of them had spent the last decade helping folks around Ferris Island with all kinds of strange situations and problems; they were the closest thing the island had to experts in the paranormal. Ivy had spent many a rainy and slow afternoon after school sitting at the counter of the Seavend General Store, eating a slice of pie, doing her homework, and listening to Caroline tell tales of their adventures.
But the fact that they were here meant that someone suspected the possibility of the supernatural in Kiley’s disappearance. Or, at the very least, it wasn’t ruled out.
On Ferris Island, it was never ruled out.
Ivy ran to meet Caroline and the Captain as they climbed out of Caroline’s car. Caroline’s tight black curls were pulled away from her face and her dark eyes swept the chaos of the parking lot with a former journalist’s skill for taking in detail.
“Hey, you,” Caroline said, giving Ivy a smile. “You okay?”
Ivy nodded. “Yeah, but I’m glad you guys are here.”
Reyville tipped his felt fisherman’s cap at Ivy and greeted her. He had a scar on his mouth that tugged his lip ever so slightly, gave his blond-bearded smile a funny shape, but his blue eyes were always kind. All business, he strode straight over to talk to Maia, who was standing in the lawn with a small group of police officers and rangers, answering questions, making a plan for combing the park to look for Kiley.
Caroline left him to it and stood instead with Ivy and Bailey.
“It’s been a while since a child went missing from this place,” Caroline said. “Five years, if memory serves.”
“Did they find the kid back then?” Bailey asked.
Caroline shook her head. “No. They didn’t.”
Ivy’s gut twisted within her at the awfulness of that idea, the uninvited image of the Woodmother lurking in the trees. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes, it is.” Caroline’s mouth was set in a firm line. “The camp shouldn’t have even been open back then. It was during the pandemic. Staffing was hilariously low, the safety protocols were sloppy…”
She trailed off, but she clearly wanted to add more to the list.
Ivy dimly remembered that summer. It was her first summer living on Ferris Island, and she had visited the park for day-camps, but not for the week. She had no idea a camper had gone missing that year; her parents never told her.
“Do they think someone took Kiley?” Bailey asked. “Like, kidnapped her?”
Caroline shrugged. “We can’t rule anything out, that’s the tricky part. Have you two seen anything weird going on? Anything at all?”
Ivy thought about all the strange things she had seen, things she hadn’t told Bailey. Hadn’t told anyone, yet. “Um, maybe,” she said. “I mean, yes. Kind of. But it could have been nothing.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many ‘coulda been nothings’ end up being really important somethings,” Caroline said. “What have you seen?”
Ivy thought it through. Most of the stuff she had been disturbed by was just her own hunches, her own fears. There was nothing inherently paranormal about rabbits stuck in wire, decrepit cabins, or someone playing a prank on her by whistling in the woods to scare her.
But Jack. Now that was unusual.
“There’s this…ghost story,” Ivy said. “A tradition here at camp. The Woodmother. It’s just a stupid story, but she was a real woman a long time ago, who lived around here and tried to steal children and she raised rabbits. People think…people think that children who go missing from here have to do with her.”
Caroline nodded and glanced over at Reyville, who was giving orders to the rangers. “He probably knows that one, I’ll get the details from him. Have you seen any evidence of her lurking around?”
“Um,” Ivy felt Bailey’s eyes on her. “Not her, exactly, but…I did see a ghost, or something. Yesterday on the trail. It was a little girl.”
Ivy couldn’t look at Bailey’s face. She knew Bailey would be annoyed that Ivy didn’t tell her. Betrayed, even.
But Caroline took this information in stride, something Ivy always loved about her. You could tell Caroline pretty much anything and she wouldn’t flinch. “Okay, then. We’ve got potential ghosts. That’s good to know.”
Maia came over. She looked exhausted, but her body language was still poised and solemn, ever the professional. To Ivy and Bailey she said, “I’m walking you two back to The Row. You’re going to wait there in the house while the sweep is going on, until I tell you it’s safe. Got it?”
Ivy nodded. She glanced at Bailey; her friend’s face was grave.
Before walking over to meet Reyville and begin the search, Caroline smiled and patted Ivy on the shoulder. “We’ve got this. Don’t worry. This mess is in good hands.”
The confidence. Ivy craved that kind of confidence. The way Caroline and Reyville showed up and made everyone feel at ease. The way they just knew things, through hard-won experience and a lot of grit. Ivy didn’t know or care much about influencers or celebrities, but to her, Caroline Phelan might as well be the most capable and confident person on the planet.
She wanted that. She wanted that so badly she could taste it.
Ivy gave Caroline a grateful wave and followed Bailey and Maia back up the hill to The Row.
*******
It was maddening, knowing that things were happening out there in the woods but being unable to help. In her mind’s eye, Ivy could see the rangers and police combing the area, Caroline and Reyville keeping an eye out for anything paranormal. She craved the excitement of being needed.
Ivy lay on her bed staring up at the underside of Bailey’s empty bunk. Bailey was reading in The Row’s small living room, as if trying to avoid being near Ivy. It had only been an hour since Maia had brought them up here, but the time was passing so, so slowly.
Ivy wanted to text Jake. She wanted to call her parents for real. She wanted to listen to music, or go for a walk. Something. Anything.
She thought about Kiley—missing for a couple of hours now, though no one knew how long she had been gone—and wondered if she was okay. But then the thought of the child from five years ago going missing and never coming back made her feel a bit sick and she decided to think about something else.
As she lay there, trying not think about Kiley, about missing kids, about Bailey’s annoyance, about the Woodmother…the back of Ivy’s neck tingled with a feeling of being watched.
She sat up and looked over at the window. There was nothing there, just a breeze wandering in through the screen, but she climbed out of bed and looked out.
There in the dappled shade of the trees that grew all around The Row was a rabbit, sitting in the grass.
A rabbit with a crooked left foot.
Ivy and the creature locked eyes and regarded each other. Ivy could still hear its screams as it writhed against the wire, the too-knowing way it had looked at her when she helped it. That first carefree day here at camp felt like a million years ago, and the week had barely begun.
“Do you know where Kiley is?” Ivy whispered before she could stop herself.
The rabbit’s nose twitched. It rose up, resting on its haunches, crooked foot leaning out at an angle.
Then, it turned and limped to the treeline, in no hurry at all. But before it could disappear into the salal, it stopped. And turned. And stared straight at Ivy.
As if it said, Follow me.
Ivy looked over her shoulder. Bailey was still in the living room, her foot tapping as she read her book. Ivy thought about asking Bailey to come along, but she knew what Bailey would say: “We’re not supposed to leave. We’ll get in trouble. We’ll get Maia in trouble. It’s a bad idea. Why do you keep coming up with such stupid ideas?”
Ivy usually appreciated that Bailey was the voice of reason, but there was no time for that now. She carefully and quietly pushed aside the screen on the window. She grabbed her sandals from beside the bed and threw them out onto the overgrown grass, then hitched herself up on the sill and climbed out, landing lightly. She replaced the screen, put on her sandals, and looked for the rabbit with the crooked foot. It was still there, waiting for her. But as soon as she was close, it took off into the woods.
For a creature with an injured foot it moved surprisingly fast, and Ivy struggled to keep up as it dodged and slipped through the trees, following hidden paths only the small things know. She followed it as closely as she could, but every time she fell behind the rabbit seemed to slow a bit, to let her catch up.
She was so busy trying to keep up with the rabbit that she didn’t realize what direction she was traveling in, until something materialized in the trees ahead of her.
It was the sagging back side of the old Cabin Three, surrounded by its cloak of gloom.
The rabbit limped its way up to the building, put its front paws on the porch steps, and twitched its nose up at the door.
“It’s locked,” Ivy said, trying to get her breath back. “I tried it before.”
But the rabbit didn’t move. Simply stood like a pointer-hound, nose twitching at the door.
Ivy climbed the rotting steps, creaking dangerously under her feet, and crossed the porch to the front door. The heavy padlock was gone from the door. She reached out to test the doorknob and found that it twisted under her grip a little too easily. The door swung inward, and a breath of musty, mildewy air swept out as Ivy stepped into the dark, abandoned cabin.
And despite it all—all of her fear, all of her nightmares, all of her imagined danger in this place—that’s all it was. An empty room. No furniture, no bunk beds, no lamps, nothing. Just an old and empty room in a long-neglected building, carpet curling at the corners and mildew stains on the walls.
But in the middle of the room was a girl, curled up, asleep on the floor in pajamas covered with a dachshund dog pattern.
It was Kiley.
Ivy kneeled beside the little girl and gently shook her shoulder. Kiley stirred, opened her eyes, and looked up at Ivy.
“Is it time for breakfast?” the little girl asked, voice thick with sleep.
Ivy shook her head. The walls of the cabin seemed to lean inward, listening. “What are you doing in here, Kiley?”
The little girl sat up, rubbing at her eyes, and looked around her, bewildered. “I don’t know. I was sleeping. I went to bed. Where is this?”
“It’s a little tough to explain,” Ivy said. “But let’s get you out of here, okay? There are a lot of people who are really worried about you.”
Kiley let Ivy take her by the hand and lead her out into the sunshine, away from the thick miasma of mold and rot so they could go and find the nearest member of the search party, to let them know that Kiley was safe and sound.
The rabbit with the crooked foot was gone. But Ivy couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched as she led Kiley through the trees and back to camp.
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