The People in the Lake

by E Randall Floyd

  The sound of glass shattering on the other side of house jolted them into each other’s arms.

  "The kitchen!" Bit whimpered. “It’s him!”

  “Who?”

  “That bad man. That bad man with the beard and axe!”

  Bit threw herself into her mother’s arms and held on for dear life.

  Several seconds passed before Laura pulled away from her daughter and calmly said, “Stay here.” She picked up the fire poker and started down the hallway. “Don’t come downstairs until I call you,” she commanded.

  Wielding the poker over her shoulder like a baseball bat, Laura pushed down the darkened hallway toward the kitchen.

  Halfway across the kitchen she saw the back door standing agape. Wind and rain slashed into the room, sending napkins flying and dishes clattering to the tile floor.

  She hurried to close it—but stopped in her tracks when a dark form shambled out of the shadows toward her.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  "BRAD!”

  Brad Drake stood in the doorway, disheveled and hardly recognizable in the suffocating darkness. He lurched across the threshold, dripping wet, and stood facing his wife. His clothes were blood-streaked and torn, and he had the wild, lusty look of a lunatic who had spent the night crawling through a corpse-littered graveyard.

  Laura saw the look in his eye, the same crazed gleam she had seen before, and it caused her spine to contract.

  “Hello, angel face,” Brad rasped.

  The cold, cruel tone of his voice startled Laura. "I thought you were..."

  "Dead?" Brad replied, cutting her off with an eerie laugh. "Sorry to disappoint you, my darling, but here I am in the flesh.”

  He wore a black hooded parka over a black turtleneck sweater and dark indigo jeans. His face was scratched and swollen, and the tall Wellington boots he wore were caked with mud and reddish stains.

  Laura dropped the poker on the table, raced over to Brad and threw her arms around his neck. "Thank God," she moaned, pressing herself against her husband's soaking wet body. She got a whiff of something vile, like mildew or rotting moss. “It doesn’t matter now, darling,” she sobbed. “You’re here and nothing else matters.”

  Still sobbing, she held on to him for as long as she could. Then, fighting back tears, Laura looked into his blood-shot eyes and asked, "Where have you been? Bit and I have been looking everywhere for you. We…we were worried sick about you."

  Paul pulled back. A freaky grin spread across his face, one Laura had never seen before. "Hey, speaking of the little crumb-crusher, where is she?" Brad asked, looking around.

  “Asleep, upstairs in her room.”

  "Well, why don't we go wake her up? It’s about time I took her sailing."

  “What?” If Laura didn't know better, she'd think Brad was drunk. "Brad, be serious. It's the middle of the night."

  "I am serious, angel-face,” he said, grabbing Laura and wrapping his wet hands around her ass. “The little brat wants to go sailing, I say let's go sailing!"

  Laura tried to back away, suddenly frightened, but Brad held tight.. She noticed the streaks of dried blood on his face and said, "You're hurt. Let me put something on those cuts."

  "I'm fine," Brad replied in that same weird voice Laura had trouble recognizing. He pulled his lips back and grinned. As he did, she almost recoiled from the vile stench of breath that washed over her. "But you should see the other fellow."

  Laura sensed that something was wrong with her husband, something terribly wrong. She had never seen him like this before. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought she was in the arms of a total stranger, some lewd and dangerous madman. "Brad, what happened? I saw the Mercedes out in the woods. What…what’s going on?”

  Brad ran his hands up and down her body. "You ask too many questions, angel-face. Come here and gimme some more sugar."

  Laura tried to pull away. "Not now, Brad."

  Brad's lips curled in a vicious grin. "What's the matter? Thinking about your little boyfriend?"

  Laura ignored the jab. “You haven't told me where you've been."

  Brad licked his lips and smiled. "Trust me, you really don’t want to know, angel-face."

  Only when Brad reached into his parka and pulled out the long, gleaming dagger did Laura begin to understand. It looked for all the world like the same curving blade Paul had used earlier when he tried to attack her.

  "Say hello to my little sharp friend," Brad teased, slowly twirling the dagger around in his hands.

  Laura recoiled at the sight of the long knife, backing away and bumping into the counter. Brad burst out laughing. "You don't know how long I've been waiting to use that line!"

  It was starting to make sense now.

  It was Brad who had tried to kill her earlier, right here in this same kitchen. She shuddered at the cold realization he also must have been the one who had murdered pool Phyllis.

  But why?

  Laura felt herself wilting. "No, Brad, not you," she groaned.

  Brad took a step toward her. Rain dripped off his nose, slid down his parka, puddling at his feet. Still grinning, he flipped the knife from hand to hand, toying with her. Even in the dim light she could see the lethal gleam of the blade, flashing back and forth. "Surprise, surprise," he said. Then he stopped and suddenly grew serious. "Play time’s over. It’s time to get this party going."

  “Brad,” Laura pleaded one last time.

  Too late, she tried to wheel away from the counter.

  “Sorry, babe," Brad said, reaching for her with his free hand. "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Just you and me and the brat makes three."

  "Why are you doing this, Brad? Why?"

  "Can't you guess? Haven't you figured it out yourself yet?” He yanked her hard against him again. “Hell, you're a regular Phd, you can't be that dumb."

  "Brad, please let go. You're hurting me."

  "You call this hurt? This is nothing, angel face, trust me. You don't have a clue what hurt is all about. When I'm finished with you and that…that little brat upstairs, they’ll have to write a new definition for the word, hurt."

  "You don't know what you're saying, Brad. Please let me go."

  Brad twisted her even harder against him. "Just relax," he said, sliding the cold blade along her neck, down across her the swelling mound of her bosom. "It'll all be over before you know it, I promise." He threw back his head and laughed.

  Laura snaked out of his arms, backing up and banging into the kitchen table. Dishes and pots clattered to the floor.

  “Messy, messy,” Brad teased, twirling the knife between his hands.

  Laura stared straight at him. “It was you who killed Phyllis,” she charged.

  Another chuckle. “Now you’re catching on!”

  “But why, Brad, why her? What had she ever done to you?”

  “It was nothing personal, I assure you. Let’s just say she was available. Does that make sense? Actually, angel face, it was either her or you. I’m sure you’re glad it turned out the way it did.” He ran a finger along the edge of the blade, drew blood and licked it with his tongue.

  “What’s happened to you, Brad? I…I don’t know who you are anymore…”

  Brad slammed his gloved fist down hard on the counter. “You never did, bitch! In all these years we’ve been married, you never had a clue about who I really was, not a single fucking clue.” Calming, he added, “I guess that’s what I always liked about you. That’s why I let you live.”

  Laura grimaced, trying hard to figure out not only what the hell he was talking about, but how this was going to end. Then again, she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  He twisted the blade again, glared at Laura. “Let me try to explain. I owe you that much. You see, if you really knew me, sweetheart, half as much as think you do, you’d know that I have what you might call certain urges, and when these certain urges come over me, which they often do, I find it
hard to control myself. I’m kind of like a werewolf, you might say, or an bat-shit crazy addict. Only my addiction is for—how can I put this delicately?—blood. Only it’s a special kind of blood—the kind you can only find only in fresh, young females.”.

  “You’re insane.”

  Brad chuckled again. “Of course I’m insane, darling. Stark raving, raunchy mad insane. I’m looney-tunes mad, mad as a hatter mad, I'm the maddest man in this whole mad, mad world. I am, as my five-hundred-dollar-an hour therapist puts it, incurably mad, over-the-top mad, a psychotic delusional with schizophrenic delusions of grandeur. Or something like that.” He rolled his head to the side at an unnatural angle, fixed his eyes on Laura. “Only a perfectly insane person has urges like that, would murder just for the sheer pleasure of it, right?”

  It all finally came together. All those late night meetings. All those long trips away from home—Paris, London, San Francisco. The newspaper clippings she found tucked behind the bed.

  Brad saw Laura's eyes widen with understanding. "Ah, I recognize that look," he said, his tone smooth and sickly sweet. "I think it's called the light of understanding, what the ancient Greeks might have called a Eureka moment."

  He clicked his teeth, as though congratulating his wife for the horrid realization that her husband was none other than the infamous Atlanta Butcher. "What took you so long, huh? My blind old granny figured this out sooner than you did. That's why I had to rearrange her heart with my knife. Poor thing. But then, she always did have such a bad cardio-pulmonary system. Fortunately, her bank account was not in such poor health."

  Still smiling, Brad tested the blade again with his thumb. “Look, I know this is really heavy stuff I'm throwing at you, but if it makes you feel any better, just know that it's nothing personal."

  ⸙

  LAURA FELT HERSELF coming apart, slip-sliding away into some deep black hole at the edge of the universe If she didn't think fast, she knew she would soon fall into that black hole, and that would be the end of it. There was a part of her that didn't care anymore, that simply wanted the nightmare to end one way or the other. Then she thought about Bit upstairs, alone and frightened in the bedroom. What would happen to her daughter should she just give up and let Brad carve her up into tiny pieces the same way he had done to poor Phyllis?

  Brad inched closer. "In a way, I feel bad about this, angel face. Any other time, I'd say there'd be a book in this for you. Imagine that—CNN, The View, Conan. Hell, why not the Grand Ol’ Opry? You'd be famous all over the world, in all the magazines. Laura Drake, wife of The Atlanta Butcher. Too bad you won’t be around for any that now."

  Tears gushed warm and thick from Laura’s eyes. She started to say something, but the words stuck in her throat.

  Brad placed a finger to his lips. "Ssshh," he said, pressing the knife against her cheek. “Don’t try to say anything.” He smiled, and for a moment she thought it was the old Brad Drake she saw standing before her, the same handsome, sexy hunk she had married six years ago. Then he spoke: “Look, I’d like to hang around and play our little game a while longer, but, as you can see, I’ve made a helluva mess around here and need to get busy cleaning up so I get the hell out of Dodge before the Mounties arrive. Wouldn't want brother Danny coming up here next spring and finding his house looking like a nasty slaughter pen.”

  Laura finally found her voice. “Brad, please don’t. Think about what you're doing. Sweetheart,” she said tenderly, “you’re sick, I understand that now. Maybe I can help you. Please let me try…”

  “Ssshh,” Brad said, tapping his lips with one gloved finger. “We’re way past all that now, angel face.” He tried to smile, and Laura saw that it was a genuine effort. “It won’t hurt long, I promise. It’ll be over before you know it.: He stood twirling the knife long enough to say, “It’s a shame, really. Hurting you and Bit was never part of the plan.”

  Laura reeled, partly out of fear, partly out of cold anger. Her movement caught Brad by surprise, and he dropped the knife.

  As the blade clattered to the floor, Laura spun away and turned to run, but Brad was too quick. He lunged fast, grabbing her around the waist with one arm. With his other hand, he scooped the knife up from the floor and raised it high over her head. “You first, then the little brat,” he sneered, caressing her soft neck with the cold, blood-dripping blade. “I’m sorry it had to end this way, I really am.

  At that second Bit walked into the room. “Brad? Mom? What’s going on?” she called out.

  When Bit saw the knife in Brad's hand, she threw her hands up to her mouth and screamed.

  “Run, Bit, run!” Laura yelled, wrenching herself free of Brad's grasp and sprinting toward Bit.

  But Brad was faster. He dove for her leg, snared an ankle, and they both crashed to the floor. With Bit’s horrified screams filling the air, Brad twisted Laura around behind her back and held her firmly with both of his legs. Then, crawling on top of her and straddling her like a rodeo rider, he looked down and said, “Sorry, angel face.” He raised the knife high, so high it looked like it was going to touch the ceiling. “It was a blast while it lasted…”

  ⸙

  THE SOUND OF A SINGLE gunshot echoed across the room.

  A ragged red hole suddenly opened up in the center of Brad’s forehead. As Laura watched, the hole grew wider, then a volley of warm, thick blood burst forth, spraying her face.

  Brad’s lifeless eyes glazed over before he toppled forward to the floor, dead. The knife made a loud clanging sound as it bounced to the tile floor at Laura's side.

  Laura kicked frantically, finally pushing herself out from under the weight of Brad’s twitching body. When she sat up, Laura saw Paul standing next to the pantry door, his left hand in a bandaged sling, the other clutching her own still-smoking Beretta.

  Laura rose to her feet in stunned silence. "Paul," she started, unable to continue, then started to wobble.

  Paul limped over and steadied her in his arms.

  Laura gazed into the young man’s eyes, confused, unable to speak.

  Grinning, Paul said “I borrowed your gun. Hope you don't mind."

  Laura still didn’t understand. He was supposed to be dead. She had killed him, for heaven’s sake—hadn’t she?

  “Good thing you’re a lousy shot,” Paul explained, tossing the gun down into a chair.

  Bit, still clutching Anastasia and Teddy, darted across the room and collapsed into her mother’s open arms.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  LAURA STOOD AT THE FAR END of the deck, arms crossed, gazing out across the sun-speckled lake. For her it was a serene moment, far removed from the horrific drama of the previous night. She closed her eyes, savored the pine-scented breeze washing over her. In some quiet, protected corner of her mind, she could hear the gentle murmur of the waves lapping against the shoreline, see the flocks of birds gliding lazily over the distant peaks of the majestic green mountains, even though they had long abandoned the cold waters of Bear Gap Lake for warmer environs to the south.

  Was it really over?

  The morning sun felt warm and comforting on her face, but she knew there was a dark chill inside her soul that would be there for a long, long time. She prayed it wouldn't be that way for her daughter.

  Inside the house, she heard the police forensics team moving around taking notes, measuring and snapping photographs. Down on the beach, more officers prowled the shoreline, digging through the sand for clues.

  Earlier, coroners had removed the bodies of Brad and Phyllis which were now on their way to the crime control center in Gainesville. Out front, several police cruisers and ambulances sat parked in the driveway, radios crackling and red lights flashing.

  “There you are,” Paul said, limping out onto the deck and handing Laura a cup of coffee. He leaned on a crutch and wore a fresh sling around his wounded arm.

  “Thanks,” Laura replied, warming her hands around the hot cup. She took a sip, glanced up at Paul and smiled. She had to admit, h
e looked pretty darn handsome for a fellow who’d been shot and left for dead all night. “How can I ever thank you?”

  “I think you’re the one who should be thanked,” Paul replied.

  “What did I do?” Laura asked.

  “Just ask them,” Paul replied, nodding toward the lake.

  It took her a moment to grasp Paul's precise meaning. Smiling, she turned to face the deep, green lake. She tried hard to imagine what they looked like, the people out there in the lake, the ones who had so desperately tried not only to beseech her for help but also to warn her. No images came to mind—except those ghostly white forms she had seen drifting in with the fog.

  “I talked with the investigating officer,” Paul said, leaning over the railing and looking up at the ice-blue sky. “He assured me your DNR friends will have a crew of divers out here in a couple of weeks so they can begin the process of locating their bones—or what’s left of them.”

  Laura sighed, her attention still focused on the lake. “Maybe then they can be at peace,” Laura said.

  “And they will owe it all to you.”

  “Paul’s right, Mom,” Bit said. Unnoticed, she had slipped outside and now stood next to her mother. A police-issue blanket covered most of her small body. “If it weren’t for you, they’d still be trapped out there under the lake.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Paul added. “It was you who is going to tell their story, free them from their watery graves. It shouldn't take the authorities long to find their remains. Then, they'll gather what’s left of them, and they will receive a proper burial in the old cemetery back up in the woods. That's just about where their old cabin sat all those years ago. So, in a way, they'll be back home."

  Paul snapped his finger. "Almost forgot. Those old coins Bit found in the boathouse turned out to be a small fortune. At least enough to pay for the dive work and some decent markers for their graves. Oh, and there'll be enough left over to rebuild the cemetery, put a nice, new fence around the place."