Dead Lake

by Coates, Darcy

  DEAD LAKE

  Darcy Coates

  Cover © The Cover Collection

  DESCRIPTION

  Keep the door locked...

  A week's visit to the remote Harob Lake cabin couldn't have come at a better time for Sam.

  She's battling artist's block ahead of a major gallery exhibition. Staying at Harob Lake is her final, desperate attempt to paint the collection that could save her floundering career. It seems perfect: no neighbours, no phone, no distractions.

  But the dream retreat disintegrates into a nightmare when Sam discovers she's being stalked.

  A tall, strange man stands on the edge of her dock, staring intently into the swirling waters below. He starts to follow her. He disables her car. He destroys her only way to communicate with the outside world.

  And Sam is beginning to suspect he's responsible for the series of disappearances from a nearby hiking trail.

  Stranded at Harob Lake, Sam realises she’s become the prey in the hunter’s deadliest game…

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sam’s breath caught as she stepped back from the car, jacket in one hand and a luggage bag in the other, and turned to face the densely wooded hills behind her. The strangest sensation had crawled over her, as if she were being watched.

  That was impossible, of course. The lakeside cabin was the furthest from civilisation Sam had ever been. Nestled deep in Harob Forest and situated at the edge of a large lake, her uncle’s property was a two-hour drive from the nearest town. Her Uncle Peter had said hiking paths snaked through the forest, but only a couple of them came near his part of the lake, and they weren’t used often.

  Despite that, Sam couldn’t stop herself from running her eyes over the dense pine trees and shrubs that grew along the rocky incline. Only a colony of birds fluttering around a nearby conifer and the steady drone of insects broke the silence.

  Sam turned back to the two-story cabin. The sun caught on the rough-hewn wood, making it almost seem to glow. It sat as close to the water as it could without compromising its foundations, and a balcony overlooked the lake. The rocky embankment rising behind it merged directly into the mountains, which grew more than a kilometre into the sky.

  Peter had built the cabin nearly a decade before as a hobby to keep himself occupied on the weekends. He was proud of it, and rightfully so; Sam knew Peter made his living as a woodworker, but she hadn’t expected him to be so proficient at it. The cabin looked as natural as the rocks, as though it could have sprouted out of the ground fully formed.

  Sam shifted the luggage bag to her left hand and approached the front door. Her key fit into the lock and turned easily, and a grin grew across her face as the door creaked open.

  The cabin’s lower level was a single large room. A fireplace sat to her right; a stack of kindling waited for her near the soot-blackened hole, with a bracket holding aged firewood and an axe beside it. Two stuffed armchairs stood on thick animal furs, facing the fireplace. A polished wood table and chairs sat to Sam’s left, near the kitchenette that took up the back part of the room. A stairway above the kitchen led to the upper level.

  Sam dropped her bag beside the open door and marvelled at how clean the room was. Peter said he visited it at least once a month, and he must have been scrupulous with its maintenance. Sam felt in her jacket pocket for the letter he’d given her then unfolded it to re-read the characteristically abrupt chicken-scratch scrawl.

  Sammy,

  Have fun at the cabin. Don’t get eaten by bears.

  The lake’s good for swimming. There’s a canoe in the shed. And dry wood. Light a fire when the sun goes down—it gets cold at night.

  There’s no electricity or phone reception, so don’t get into trouble, but if you do, there’s a two-way radio in the kitchen cupboard. I wrote the most important codes beside it.

  Don’t go on the dock. (This line was underscored twice.) The wood’s rotten. I’ll fix it next time I’m up there.

  There’s food in the cupboards. Eat it. You’re too skinny.

  Love,

  Petey.

  Smiling fondly, Sam tucked the note back into her pocket. The drive from the city had taken most of the day, and the sun was already edging towards the top of the mountains surrounding the lake. Sam hurried back to her car and began bringing in the rest of her luggage.

  An easel, watercolours, oils and acrylics, a large wooden box full of mediums, charcoal and pencils, copious brushes, sketchbooks, and a dozen canvasses had filled the boot and both back seats of the car. Sam brought them inside with significantly more care than she’d shown her travel bag, which held only clothes and towels. She placed most of her equipment on the table then opened the easel in the empty space in the room’s corner.

  Sam adjusted the angle of the easel so that it caught the natural light from the window, and set a canvas on it. It looked good there, she thought. Like an artist’s dream retreat. If this doesn’t get you back into your groove, nothing will.

  The sky was darkening quickly, and Sam knelt in front of the fireplace. She found matches and clumsily lit the kindling in the grate. She hadn’t started a fire since her parents had taken her camping when she was a child. She used up most of the kindling before the blaze was strong enough to catch onto the larger pieces of wood.

  Satisfied that her fire wasn’t about to die, Sam went to explore the second floor. The steep, narrow staircase turned at the corner of the room and led straight into a bedroom, which, like the ground floor, was open-plan. There was something resembling a bathroom at the back wall, with a sink, cupboard, mirror, toilet, and a bathtub—but no shower. The sink and bathtub had plugs, but no taps. On examination, Sam found a pipe coming out of the wall, with a drain and a bucket underneath it, set next to a hand pump. She guessed it was connected to a rainwater tank behind the cabin.

  Of course. No electricity and no running water.

  That meant she would have to heat the water over the fire if she wanted a warm bath. It wouldn’t have bothered Peter. He was a mountain man through and through; he loved hunting, fishing, and woodworking, and he probably relished icy-cold showers, too.

  A large double bed took up most of the room. It held several layers of thick quilts, topped with animal furs. Sam hesitated, felt the furs gingerly, then folded them up and placed them in the cupboard opposite the bed. Sleeping under the skins of dead animals seemed strangely macabre.

  The door leading to the balcony stood to her left. Sam opened it and leaned on the sill to absorb the view. The sun had set behind the mountains, but most of the sky was still a pale blue, with tinges of red showing just above the tops of the trees on the west mountain. The glassy lake, which seemed to stretch on forever, reflected the patchy white clouds. Peter’s cabin was set at one of the lake’s widest points, but to her right, it narrowed and curved around the sides of the hills that cradled it.

  The dock protruded from the shore below the cabin, running twenty meters into the lake. Something large and misshapen sat at its end; Sam squinted in the poor light, trying to make out what it was, then her heart faltered as the shape moved.

  It was a man, on his knees, bent over the edge of the dock. His broad shoulders tr
embled as he stared, fixated on the water below.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sam’s mouth had dried. She squeezed the balcony’s bannisters so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Her mind, shocked and panicky, struggled to pull information together. Who is he? Peter had said there weren’t any other houses within walking distance. Is he a hiker? Why’s he on our dock?

  She was suddenly acutely aware of just how remote the cabin was. If she went missing, no one would know until she failed to return home a week later. The police would take hours to reach her, even if she could call them, which she couldn’t. Any defence would have to come from her own hands.

  The man wasn’t moving, except for his shoulders, which twitched sporadically. Sam backed away from the balcony, barely daring to breathe, keeping her eyes fixed on the man until he disappeared from sight, then she turned and ran down the cabin’s stairs.

  I need a weapon—something to intimidate him with or use in self-defence. Sam wrenched open the kitchen drawers, searching for a knife, but she came up with only two small blades that were useless for anything more than chopping carrots. She turned to look about the room, bouncing with anxious energy, and a glint of silver beside the fireplace caught her eye. The axe. Yes, that’ll do nicely.

  Sam gripped its wooden handle and raised it to head height. She gave it an experimental swing and staggered as its weight threw her off-balance. Anxious sweat built over her back and palms as she turned towards the door and licked her lips.

  He’s probably just a hiker who’s gone off the path to have a closer look at the lake.

  He was trespassing, though, on what was clearly private property. Worse, he had to know someone was staying there—the car parked out front and the fireplace’s glow leaking through the windows were impossible to ignore.

  The doorknob felt unusually cold under Sam’s fingers. She took a breath to brace herself then shoved the door open and staggered outside, her shaking hands squeezing the axe’s handle so tightly that they ached.

  Be strong. Be intimidating. Show him that he doesn’t want to mess with you.

  “Hey, punk, this is private property,” she yelled, hoping he wouldn’t hear the frightened squeak in her voice. No answer came. Sam squinted at the dock, which was becoming increasingly hard to see in the rapidly failing light. It was empty.

  Sam swivelled to look down the length of the shore then turned towards the straggly edges of the forest. The thick shadows created a kaleidoscope of light and darkness. She couldn’t see him, but that didn’t mean he was gone.

  “Did you hear me?” she called, louder this time. “I have a gun and a career in karate.”

  Complete hyperbole, of course. As a child, she’d had all of two karate lessons before she dropped it in favour of painting classes. The intruder didn’t need to know that, though.

  Sam listened hard, straining to hear the telltale crunch of footsteps on dry leaves, but, though the woods hummed with the sounds of birds settling down for the night, she couldn’t hear any man-made noises. She turned in a complete circle before letting the axe drop to her side, then she returned to the safety of the cabin.

  That should have been enough to scare him off, anyway.

  Sam took one last look at the lakeshore and the dock then closed the door with a quiet click. The fire had grown nicely, but it had consumed most of the wood, so she dropped the axe back against the wall and knelt to shove fresh logs onto the crackling flames.

  The appearance of a stranger in the one place that was supposed to guarantee solitude had shaken her. For all she knew, he could be the only other human for kilometres, and she had no idea who he was or why he’d specifically come to her cabin—or, for that matter, what fascinated him so much about the water at the end of the dock.

  Sam rubbed her hands across her face and stood. Worrying wouldn’t help her; the man was probably embarrassed at being seen and was already halfway back to his trail. She wouldn’t let the fright ruin her first night at the cabin.

  As Peter had promised, the kitchen held a large collection of tinned foods. Sam sorted through them, wrinkling her nose at the twelve cases of Spam before picking out a tin of chicken soup. She found a set of pans hanging beside the sink, and spoons in one of the drawers. Unable to find a can opener, Sam eventually resorted to using one of the small knives to cut a hole in the top of the tin to shake the soup through.

  She settled back in front of the fire, using thick oven mitts to shield her hands as she held the pot over the flames. Night had well and truly fallen, and the birds were finally silent, giving way to the bats, owls, and other animals of the night. Their calls, alien and jarring, echoed through the woods behind the cabin. The fire was her only source of light, and when the soup was warm enough, she snuggled into one of the armchairs to watch the mesmerising flames while she ate.

  The quiet crackle and pop of the fire, the warm soup, and the plush chair conspired to lull her into a comfortable daze, and she didn’t even realise she was falling asleep until the spoon fell out of her hand and hit the floor with a loud ping.

  “Jeeze, Sam, wake up,” she mumbled to herself, and stretched out of the chair. She took the pot and spoon to the sink and, after a moment’s confusion, figured out how to get a burst of water from the hand pump. She rinsed her utensils, set them to drain, threw the empty tin into a large garbage bag, then turned to the canvas in the corner of the room.

  Tiredness weighed at her limbs, but the week was supposed to be a chance for her to focus on her art, and she wanted to start it on the right foot. The canvas, one of the larger ones in her collection, seemed horribly imposing. She squinted at it, stupidly hopeful that inspiration would appear before her eyes, but all she could think about was how close the exhibition’s deadline was and how pulling out a week before the showing would kill her career before it even started.

  The more she thought about the deadline, the harder it was to come up with ideas. She turned away from the canvas, blocking the intimidatingly empty rectangle from her sight, and riffled through the cluttered table until she found her sketchbook.

  It had been eight months since she’d last drawn in it, and flipping through the pages was like reliving half-forgotten dreams. There were pages full of hand practice—where she’d agonised over getting the knuckles, fingernails, and veins just right—then the page full of water textures and lily pads, followed with a pencil drawing of a curious lizard who’d sat outside her window.

  She recognised the point where she’d received the invitation to show her work in the prestigious Heritage Gallery: the pages were suddenly saturated with colours, and the pencil lines became a little too wild to convey their shapes properly. Then there were pages and pages of ideas for her showing. Sam flipped to the last page she’d drawn in, which was full of eyes. That was what she’d almost chosen for her gallery: an array of oils featuring eyes gazing out of teacups, eyes blended into nature, eyes appearing in the cracks of sandstone chimneys…

  There was one incredibly familiar pair of eyes: her mother’s. Sam had drawn them when they’d spent the afternoon at a little café, talking about the show, the possibilities it would open up, and what it meant for Sam’s career. And she hadn’t even once thought to ask why her mother looked so thin.

  Sam slammed the book closed as a bitter taste filled her mouth. The fire was growing low in the grate. If she wanted to stay awake any longer, she would have to add more wood.

  No. I’d better to go to bed. I’m probably just worn out from the drive and the stress. I’ll start working tomorrow, when I have a clear head.

  Sam threw a final regretful look at the empty canvas then returned the sketchbook to the table before climbing the stairs to the bedroom. Heat from the fire had risen to take the worst of the chill out of the upstairs room, but Sam still brushed her teeth feverishly quickly before wriggling under the multiple quilts, fully clothed.

  She could see the stars through a gap in the curtains. They were so much brighter than in the city and clus
tered so thickly that it was almost impossible for her to think she was looking at the same sky as the one she could see from her apartment window. As she closed her eyes and felt the sluggishness of sleep grow over her, her mind returned to the man she’d seen on the dock and the way his shoulders had quivered as he gazed into the water.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thunk.

  Sam jolted awake. Her mind was still half-full of scattered dreams, and she couldn’t immediately remember where she was. Pale light streamed through the balcony’s glass door, painting colour across the wooden floor, and Sam struggled to get out from under Peter’s layered quilts.

  What was that noise? It wasn’t part of my dream.

  The icy early morning air assaulted her feet as soon as soon as she swung them over the edge of the bed. Sam gasped and pulled on her sneakers with quick tugs. She wished she had a jacket, but all of her clothes were still in the suitcase on the ground floor.

  Then the events from the previous day flooded back to her, dispelling the sleepy haze, and Sam lurched to her feet. Her skin prickled as she turned towards the stairwell.

  The noise had come from the ground floor. Sam edged towards the stairs and tried to remember if she’d locked the cabin’s door. She didn’t think so. Her mind immediately went to the man on the dock. There’s no way that guy hung around overnight.

  And yet, something had broken through her sleep. It hadn’t been a quiet noise, either; it wasn’t something that could be explained by the house’s wood flexing in the cool or the early morning chatter of birds. Sam wished she’d had the fore-thought to bring the axe upstairs.

  She crept down the steps, keeping her breathing and footfalls quiet. When she reached the bend at the corner of the house, she ducked her head to get a look into the lower room. It was empty.

  Thank goodness.