by Brian Harmon
ENERGY’S STRONGER BY THE LAKE
Eric frowned at the phone. “You okay?”
I’M FINE. JUST GET MOVING
He glanced up at the sky. The stars were shining bright, but more and more of them were being blotted out by clouds. “Hang in there,” he told her. “Probably won’t be long now.”
He turned left as he scanned the water with his light. Then he cast it onto the path ahead of him. Immediately, he jumped at the appearance of a small figure standing in his path.
It was Jordan.
HOLY SHIT PLEASE TELL ME I WASN’T THAT CREEPY THE FIRST TIME YOU SAW ME
“Not quite,” gasped Eric as he tried to catch his breath.
“You’re talking to yourself every time I see you alone,” Jordan told him.
“What are you doing out here at this time of night?” he asked, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
“I like being out late. Especially on full moon nights. It’s so pretty out.”
Eric glanced up at the sky. The moon was just visible above the trees. It really did cast a pretty light over the lake.
“It’s going to rain, though,” added Jordan, glancing at the clouds that were rolling in from the west.
“I heard,” said Eric. “Does your mom know where you are?”
“She’s resting now,” replied Jordan, managing to look cross. “I told you already she wasn’t well.”
“Wouldn’t she be worried about you wandering around so close to the lake at night?”
“I’m old enough to look after myself,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him.
“Are you, really?”
“Yes. Really.” She furrowed her brow at him and said, “What about you? Where’re you going so late?”
Eric considered telling her it was none of her business what he was doing, but he didn’t really want to be mean. She wasn’t really doing anything wrong if her own mother hadn’t forbade her from wandering around the woods at night. Instead, he simply replied, “I have to talk to Jonah Fettarsetter.”
She made a face. “I don’t like him.”
That seemed to be the prevailing opinion. “Why not?”
“He’s not nice.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “He’s always looking for things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“I’m not sure. He spends hours walking in the woods and out on his boat, taking measurements of stuff.”
Mrs. Fulrick said something similar about him spending a lot of time in the woods and on the lake. “What does he measure?”
She cocked her head to one side, almost theatrically. “I’m not sure. I don’t get too close. Mostly I watch him from the woods while he’s in his boat. Where he can’t see me.”
Suspicious behavior. If this were an episode of Scooby Doo, Eric would promptly dismiss him as the far-too-obvious suspect, the one you’re supposed to think did it so you don’t notice what the other characters on the show are doing. In the end, he’d turn out to just have a secret passion for nature photography or some other obscure hobby. But this was the real world, where he’d found that a creep was almost always a creep.
Something splashed in the water. Eric turned his flashlight onto the lake, but was too slow to see anything more than distant ripples.
“Fish,” said Jordan. “They jump. They do that. You’re really edgy. You know that, right?”
“I have my reasons,” he said, his eyes lingering on the lake for a moment.
“I’ve heard people say there are really big fish in there.”
“I’ve heard that, too.” He recalled Owen telling him that there was some sort of enormous creature lurking in the water that was big enough to overturn a boat. He pushed the thought away and turned his attention back to Jordan. “It’s really not safe out here. You shouldn’t be wandering around alone.”
“I’m not alone. I’m with you.”
“You were alone before I got here.”
“So were you, but you were still talking like you were with somebody.”
She didn’t appear to be willing to give up on that subject. “I do that sometimes,” he replied. “But I’m serious.” He lifted his hand and showed her his bandages. “Something hurt me out here earlier.”
She frowned at his hand. “The dog?”
“No, not the dog.”
“Because he’s never hurt anyone before.”
“So you said. But I still think he would’ve hurt me.”
“I still think you probably smelled like something bad.”
“Right.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. If this were one of his students, he’d advise her to join the debate club. She was a natural.
“But he didn’t do that to you?”
“No. This was something else. Something in the lake.” Again, his gaze drifted out over the water.
Jordan nodded. “Oh. Yeah. That can happen.”
He snapped his attention back to her. “What?”
“Sometimes things come out of the water. But they don’t get far. Most of them are already dead when they wash up.”
Eric recalled the news clippings Pete showed him. The strange animals that were found on the shore of the lake. It didn’t take much imagination to realize that those things had probably come from the same place as the jellyfish monster. He looked at Jordan again. “How do you know all these things?”
“I live here,” she replied, as if she’d never heard a sillier question in her life.
“But it’s dangerous.”
“Not for me,” she insisted. “I’ve never seen anything that could hurt me.”
“But people have—” He stopped himself, but Jordan finished his sentence anyway.
“Died here? Yeah. Hundreds of them. And they don’t leave, either. It’s different when you die here. There’s something in the lake that won’t let you go where you’re supposed to.”
He stared at her. “How do you know these things?”
“I live here,” she said again.
Eric was completely bemused. It didn’t make sense. People had vanished without a trace in these woods. It’d been happening for decades. Centuries, even, according to Mrs. Fulrick. He recalled the terrible things the bloody woman revealed to him. A blood-spattered cabin. An enormous predator in the forest.
Jordan smiled. “It’s okay,” she told him. “It can be a lot to take in.”
“It’s not a lot to take in,” returned Eric. “It just doesn’t make sense. It’s dangerous out here.”
“People come here all the time and nothing happens. Like those UFO guys.”
Specter Ten? That was a valid point. They’d wandered all over these woods for days without a single supernatural encounter. (Unless they counted him, he supposed.)
“There’re people like them here all the time, hoping to take a picture of a ghost or a flying saucer. Nothing ever happens to them. Not to mention all the hunters and fishermen.”
“Really?”
“There’s a fishing boat out there now,” she said, pointing out over the water.
He looked. She was right. A set of lights floated on the water way out by the far shore.
“And there’re hundreds of people who live on the lake. There’s a little town over on the far side.”
“Huh…”
“If you lived here, you’d understand it.”
Would he?
Now she giggled. “What, did you think everyone who came around here fell off the face of the earth?”
Eric stared at her. Now he was thoroughly confused. “But…then what happens to the people who do disappear? How does it happen?”
Jordan’s smile faded. “I don’t know,” she said. “They just…get lost.”
Eric cast his gaze out over the lake. He scanned the forest. They were still alone.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll walk with you to Mr. F.’s house. But I’m not going in. The guy’s a butt.”
Chapter Twenty-S
ix
“Do you give out a lot of homework in your class?”
Eric sighed. “Yes. Homework is a mandatory part of the curriculum.”
“So you’re not one of those cool teachers, then.”
“I teach literature to teenagers. They’re not going to learn anything unless they actually read the things I’m teaching about.”
“But you’re a teacher. You’re supposed to teach. If we have to do it by ourselves, what’s the point in even having you? I mean, they might as well not even hire you. They should just give us the books and then send us home. Education wouldn’t be nearly as expensive, then.”
“What do you know about the cost of education?”
“Isn’t that what you teachers are always going on about? You’re always talking about school budgets and things getting cut to save money and how you don’t get paid enough.”
“This is why I don’t teach little kids.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t think you’d be very good at it.”
Eric’s phone rang. “Thank God,” he muttered.
“There you are,” said Paul.
“I am here,” he agreed.
“I couldn’t get ahold of you earlier. I was getting worried.”
“I’m okay.”
“Is that your brother again?” asked Jordan.
Eric nodded.
“Anything good happen?” asked Paul.
Eric thought back. Last time he talked to Paul was shortly before his encounter with the jellyfish monster and that whole possession business. It wasn’t anything he cared to revisit right now, so he simply said, “Not really. You’d be bored out of your mind.”
“I’ve already been bored out of my mind.”
“Still?”
“No, I’m okay now. I’ve got beer now. We’re at the hotel bar. Me and Kevin.”
“I keep forgetting he’s old enough to drink now.”
“Yeah. We can finally hang out properly together. But he only gets one drink. I need him sober to make sure I find my way back to the right room tonight.”
In the background, Eric heard Kevin tell him just what he thought of that plan. He didn’t catch all of it, but the key word seemed to be, “bullshit.”
“Where’s Monica?”
“Who’s Monica?” asked Jordan.
Eric ignored her.
“Relaxing at the pool,” replied Paul.
“Nice for her.”
“I guess. Said she was exhausted. Like it wasn’t her fault we stayed out so damn long… When I thought we were finally getting to come back to the hotel, I find out we have to take her mom out shopping! Didn’t have the right shoes for tomorrow or some shit…” He made a sound that was half a growl and half a groan.
“Sucks to be you.”
“No shit it does. So what about you? Did you figure out what’s going on out there?”
“It’s still weird.”
“See any more ghosts?”
“A few…” He recalled the dozens of lifeless souls that appeared to him in the forest, just before his mishap with the jellyfish creature, and barely held back a shiver. He swept the trees to his left with the flashlight, but the forest wasn’t currently being haunted by visible specters.
“Agents?”
“I think so. But I’m not sure. I could be wrong. I’m going to see him now. He definitely seems like the kind.”
“Those guys’re bad news.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Paul grunted. “I guess I don’t.”
“And you should really rethink going to that wedding tomorrow with a hangover.”
“Why? I’m just going to get drunk again at the reception.”
“Unless they run out of beer again.”
“God, they better not…”
He heard another splash and jabbed his flashlight toward it, as if he could stab whatever it was with the light before it could jump out of the water at him.
“Another fish,” said Jordan. “You should learn to relax. At your age, being that jumpy isn’t good for your heart.”
Eric shot her a dirty look, but didn’t dignify the comment with a retort.
“So what’s the deal, anyway?” asked Paul. “Is it, like, another fissure?”
He searched the area around him again. Nothing had attacked him for a while. He was overdue for a fright. “Isabelle says no.”
“She can tell?”
“She thinks she’d know if it was.”
“Huh.”
Another splash. This time, Eric kept walking. Fish, he told himself.
“Everything about this place is confusing,” he explained. “They call it the Hedge Lake Triangle. Like a mini Bermuda Triangle. And every conceivable legend you can think of to associate with a triangle is attributed to it. It’s like a whole bunch of people with overactive imaginations have been making up stories and swearing by them for years, and everyone else believes every word. There’re aliens, ghosts, lake monsters, land monsters, cross-dimensional portals, gates to hell…you name it.”
“Sounds like a lot of crap to me,” said Paul.
“Exactly. Except almost everything I’ve heard about has turned out to be true.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I get it, there’s weird stuff out there. I’ve seen some of it myself. Mutants. Monsters. Invisible buildings. Witchcraft. More than enough to believe you when you say you’ve seen ghosts and golems and genies and shit. So nothing should surprise me. But all of those things? In one place? It sends up a lot of red flags. If it wasn’t you I was talking to, I’d call bullshit.”
“So would I,” admitted Eric. “It’s just too much.”
“There’s got to be some kind of connection, doesn’t there? Some common thread?”
Eric flashed back to his first meeting with Owen and Pete and Owen’s dramatic exclamation of, “It’s all related!”
“Have you at least figured out what you’re supposed to do to stop this hell thing from happening tonight? Or at least where you have to go?”
“Not really. There’s some kind of hidden path, I guess. But it doesn’t make sense. It sounds like the thing I need to find is under the lake.”
“Under the lake? What, like underwater?”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thanks.”
Another splash from the lake. No… Not a splash, exactly. More of a slosh… More like…
“Eric!” squeaked Jordan.
Eric turned his light out onto the water and saw two eyes reflected back at him. They were big and set wide apart. They were about twenty yards out. “What the hell is that?” he yelped.
“What the hell is what?” asked Paul.
The eyes blinked once, then began moving toward him.
Eric took a step back.
“What’s going on?” asked Paul.
“Something in the water,” replied Eric. “I should probably go.”
“Wait! Don’t just hang up. What is it?”
“That’s not right,” said Jordan. “It’s not supposed to get this close to people. Eric, we should go!”
The thing stood up then, rising out of the water, a dark shape splashing toward him in the flashlight’s beam. It had a wide, flat head, like a great toad, with an enormous, tooth-filled mouth that yawned open, spewing a faint steam that wafted away in the breeze. It had short, stubby arms that ended in long, gleaming claws, broad shoulders, a long, narrow waist and what looked like reptilian scales running the length of its long belly. All over its body were long, pale scars that shined silver in the pale moonlight.
He knew this thing, he realized. It was a lot bigger than he first envisioned, but it was just as Pete had described, a sort of lizard man, walking on two legs in the shallow water. “Shallows walker…” he breathed.
“What?” asked Paul.
“Is every crazy thing people say about this lake true?�
� yelled Eric.
“Come on!” shouted Jordan as she ran past him. “Follow me!”
“I’ve got to go!” he shouted into the phone, and then ended the call. To Jordan, he said, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it come so close to people before.”
“You know about that thing?”
“It’s supposed to be harmless! It was always shy before!”
“Well it’s definitely not being shy right now!”
Jordan stopped abruptly. In front of her, two glowing red eyes hovered in the darkness.
“What is it?” hissed Eric as he stepped up behind her and aimed his light forward. The beam didn’t quite reach far enough to reveal what the eyes belonged to.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
The thing was moving toward them. Slowly, it came into view. Head down, teeth bared, a hellish glow rising in its throat, it advanced. Its empty eye sockets looked like burning embers.
The hellhound.
With extra hell, no less.
“It’s different,” observed Jordan. “I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”
“We should get out of here,” suggested Eric, glancing back over his shoulder. He could still hear the shallows walker splashing closer to the shore.
She nodded. “I think you’re right. Come on. There’s a place nearby.”
Eric followed her into the woods. She didn’t run, which impressed him, but neither did she take her time. She was quick and agile, and he had to struggle to keep from tripping himself in the dense foliage.
Behind them, the glowing eyes and smoldering maw of the hellhound slunk through the darkness, stalking after them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Eric hated the woods. It was a dirty, mosquito-infested place fit only for wild animals, loggers and axe murderer victims. And those little branches kept slapping him in the face. Worst of all, a quick look behind him revealed that it did very little to slow down the pursuing hellhound. Those evil, glowing eyes were always there, looming in the darkness, watching his every move.