These Bad Things

There were five parts to this story, but one of them got lost. It was difficult to keep each strand in her mind, even as it was happening, and then later—no. 

To begin with, they were camping. This whole story happens at night. It’s the first night of their first camping trip of the season. It’s only mid-March but hot as June, so they booked a site at a campground in the Ozarks. Actually, she booked the site, picking this park because it boasted three promising trails they could choose from in the morning: one that took them past the remains of old mining operations for barite, one with dolomite bluffs, and one that wound through a field with Mississippian petroglyphs. “The location of mysterious prehistoric rituals,” she read aloud from the website. But they couldn’t leave until after their son’s swim practice on Friday, itself after school, so they didn’t get to the campsite until basically dinnertime. The sky was a dull gray. Her husband wrestled the tent and she was unpacking the cooler when the custodian of the campground drove up in a golf cart. “Hunting mushrooms?” he asked, nodding toward their son, who was just then disappearing into the woods behind the site. “I think he’s gathering kindling,” she said, though she didn’t know, just wandering off, probably looking for rocks. “Can’t do that,” said the man. “Not supposed