Dead Lake

by Coates, Darcy

  Motion inside the cabin made her freeze. There was a silhouette—a man’s silhouette—barely visible in the window closest to the door. He swayed slightly as he faced the cabin’s entrance. He must have gotten into her cabin while she struggled with the car, and he was waiting patiently. Waiting for me.

  Panic boiled over into full-blown terror. Sam crept backwards, towards the forest, keeping her body low and staying within the shed’s shadows in case the man looked in her direction. When she reached the edge of the woods, she turned and ran.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sam’s lungs burnt, and every muscle in her legs ached as she forced herself up the incline at a blistering pace. Every few minutes, she paused and held her breath, listening to the forest for signs that she might have been followed. There were none. Not so far.

  She’d had to choose between keeping to the paths or striking out into the woods. She would be harder to find in the forest, but also in greater danger of becoming lost and turning into another victim of Trail T-1. She kept to the paths.

  Sam had no idea who, or what, had been inside the cabin, but she was certain she didn’t want it following her. Whether Uncle Earnest had been right about the poltergeist or not, the thing in her cabin had almost certainly cut her fuel line and had been hiding in the corner of the room that would be hidden from view of anyone opening the door.

  A torch in the dark night would stand out like a beacon, so Sam kept her light off. The moonlight penetrated the trees in sparse splotches, offering just enough light to find her way. The light was not quite enough to save her shins from being barked and her arms from being snagged and scratched by the vines, though.

  She rested only once, when she reached the clump of rocks halfway up the hill. She collapsed onto one of the stones and dragged in thick, sticky breaths as she listened to the forest; rustling trees, bats, insects, frogs, and even the occasional small mammal competed for her attention. She heard no human sounds, though, which she was immensely grateful for.

  The ground looked lighter up ahead, and Sam pressed forward, ignoring the stitch in her side and the way sweat stuck her shirt to her body, despite the cold air. She pushed through another patch of weeds and finally broke onto the main path. Trail T-1.

  She turned right, towards the clearing that held the map. The ranger’s office wouldn’t be open, but Sam was banking on the idea that her stalker wouldn’t expect her to go there, and she could wait by the front door for the morning shift to arrive. It’s not that far from dawn, anyway. This’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.

  Sam half-walked, half-jogged down the trail. It felt endless. Just when she was beginning to panic that she’d taken a bad turn and was on a completely wrong path, she nearly tripped over the chain barrier. She let her breath out in a hoarse cheer and ducked under the blockade.

  Visibility was much better in the clearing. She increased her speed, ignoring her aching legs and thundering heart in her eagerness to reach the sign.

  “Okay,” Sam whispered, turning her light to examine the large map. “Okay, this is good. We’re good. Let’s find the ranger’s office and get out of this place.”

  She started with the You Are Here tag and circled out. She found landmarks, lookouts, and intersections, but not the office. Sam’s heart dropped as her circles became wider and wider.

  “Damn it, where are you?”

  She turned her torch towards the symbols key in the map’s corner. A tree shape represented noteworthy plants, a sun hovering over a ledge was for lookouts, and exclamation points indicated difficult sections. Nothing for the ranger’s office.

  “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Sam took a step back and turned her light across the board again. It’s got to be somewhere!

  Then she saw it: a note at the base of the map, written in neat cursive.

  Need emergency help? Rangers patrol these woods during the day. The park office is located at the entrance to the park, on the corner of Harob Forest Road and Mindy Lane.

  “The entrance to the park…”

  Sam slumped against the sign and cradled her head in her hands. The entrance was a full two hours’ drive away. How long would it take me to walk?

  If she’d brought her walkie-talkie, she’d have been able to call for help. But of course, she hadn’t; she’d left it nestled amongst her art supplies in the cabin, which was playing host to a stranger.

  And it wasn’t just the walkie-talkie that was missing. She was desperately thirsty, but had no water. More, she wore only her light jacket, and the night chill was seeping through the thin fabric, making her shiver. It would get worse closer to dawn.

  I’ve got no choice except to return to the cabin… or freeze to death in the forest.

  She sat for a moment, basking in the noises of the night. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t brush them away. Instead, she pulled herself to her feet, swallowed the metallic taste that had developed in her mouth, and turned to the cordoned-off trail.

  “You’ve got to be strong, Sammy,” her mother had whispered during those last few hours on her deathbed. Her voice had rasped horribly as her eyes stared, unfocussed, at the off-white ceiling. Sam had squeezed her hand, but her mother didn’t seem to feel it. “You’re going to have to face a lot of things without me. Be strong, like I know you are. Be brave.”

  “Be strong,” Sam echoed, forcing her feet to move her body onto the trail leading to the dock, the sabotaged car, and the thing waiting for her. “Be brave.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Thirst became an increasingly pressing issue as Sam retraced her path through the woods. She tried to ignore it, but the hike had left her mouth dry, and her head was starting to pound.

  I should be passing the rockslide soon. Then it’s just another hour—or a bit more—to the cabin. And maybe the thing inside the cabin’s moved on by now. Maybe it’ll be safe again.

  She stumbled over branches and rocks, staggered through a clump of vines, and hesitated. I don’t remember the path being this choked on the way up. I haven’t taken a wrong turn, have I?

  Sam paused and turned in a semi-circle. Nothing looked familiar… not that unfamiliarity meant anything. She wouldn’t have recognised anything except major landmarks, and there weren’t many of those in her part of the forest. The path definitely seemed narrower and more cluttered than she remembered it, though.

  Keep calm, Sam told herself as anxiety began to rise in her. This whole place is like a giant bowl. As long as you’re walking downhill, you’ll reach the lake eventually, then you can just follow the beach until you find the cabin.

  She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it or not, but she thought the sky was in the early stages of dawn. There was definitely some sort of light ahead, at least.

  Wait… that’s not natural light.

  Sam squinted through the trees at the faint, flickering glow. Is it the cabin? Did I find my way back by accident? Her heart rose for a second before she tamped down the excitement. No, that’s impossible. I’m still a long way from the beach.

  And yet, something was glowing through the trees like a beacon. Sam moved forward, fighting through the tangled growth, and found herself in a clearing.

  Ahead stood a cabin. It was worlds away from the tidy, orderly house Peter had lent her. Squat and dark, it looked as though it had been constructed by hand, then repeatedly repaired and patched as it slowly broke down. A tarpaulin was strapped over one side of the roof, and the windows had no glass.

  Behind the cabin, in a tangled vegetable patch, weeds fought the tomato plants for dominance. Beyond that was a makeshift hutch that, judging by the faint clucking sounds, housed fowl. The light Sam had seen was coming from the cabin’s window, where a single candle flickered on the sill.

  Prudence told her to turn around and disappear back into the forest. Necessity, though, was far more insistent. If there’s a house, there’ll be water.

  Sam hesitated for just a second before stepping out from the
shadows of the trees. She didn’t like the cabin’s appearance, but it seemed empty, and she was in no position to reject a chance to drink. Especially if I’m lost. I have no idea how long it might take me to get back to the lake.

  One of the fowl fluttered inside the enclosure, and Sam jumped. The bird didn’t look like any sort of domestic hen or duck, so Sam guessed it might be a wild bird.

  Who could possibly live here? They can’t have permission from the government, surely, or they would have built their cabin by the lake like Peter did. It couldn’t be someone on the run from the law, could it? Or… is it related to that thing at the lake?

  Sam approached the door. She was almost completely certain the cabin was empty, but that didn’t stop her from calling, “Hello?”

  Only the very faint ticking of a clock answered.

  Sam glanced behind herself, where the clearing was still and dark, and then, ignoring the anxious palpitations in her chest, she pushed on the cabin’s door.

  The cabin’s single room looked a lot like the outside: well used and slowly falling apart. A layer of compact dirt covered the floor. The furniture—a table, a single chair, and a large collection of oddly shaped shelves—appeared hand-made and took up most of the room. A brick fireplace stood in the corner. Unlike Peter’s fireplace, it was small, grimy, and looked frequently used.

  Trinkets and knickknacks covered the shelves, ranging from compasses and maps to melamine bowls, crockery, a mug that smelt faintly of whisky, an old-fashioned clock, and a stack of mismatched cloths.

  Sparkling silver caught Sam’s attention, and she turned to see a board hung above the table. Two dozen nails had been crudely hammered into the wood, and from each one hung a knife.

  Some were small—just paring knives, no larger than the ones Peter kept in his kitchen drawers—but others were long and serrated. Two were butchers knives. The bench below them was stained red.

  Nausea grew in Sam’s stomach. She staggered backwards and bumped into something leaning against the wall; turning, she saw a row of axes and a chainsaw.

  Calm down, Sam told herself, as cold sweat built across her body. This house belongs to someone living in the woods. Of course he’d have to catch and kill his own food. It’s nothing abnormal.

  There’re so many knives, though. At least twenty. Surely one person doesn’t need twenty.

  Sam squeezed her hands into fists as she rotated on the spot. The anxious feeling in her chest was exploding into terror.

  “Calm down, calm down, calm down,” she muttered to herself, willing her mind to unfreeze. “Just find the water and get out.”

  There was no kitchen, tap, or sink. A large bowl sat on the bench, half-filled with liquid, but Sam cringed away from it. She had no idea if it was drinking water, used for bathing, or something else.

  There’s got to be clean water somewhere.

  A cupboard near the fireplace caught her eye. It was the only storage unit with doors, which made it look like a kitchen pantry. Sam pulled open the doors.

  Unlabelled bottles crowded the shelves. Some looked as though they were full of jams. Others seemed to contain pickled vegetables. Two held some type of dried meat jerky, and others were full of a brown-tinted liquid that she suspected was alcohol. Behind everything else was a stack of water bottles.

  There were close to fifty of them. Most of the seals were broken, and they had clearly been refilled multiple times, but Sam spotted a small cluster of unopened bottles near the back and took one.

  She pushed the rest of the jars back into place and reached for the cupboard’s handles to close the doors, but she hesitated. Another row of containers stood on the highest shelf, lined up far more neatly then the bottles below them. They each had one small, long item floating in clear liquid.

  Curiosity got the better of Sam. She shoved the bottle of water into her jacket pocket then took one of the jars.

  Floating inside, gently bouncing off the glass walls, was a woman’s finger.

  A horrified gurgle escaped Sam’s throat, and she shoved the container back onto the shelf. The jars each held a single finger. All index fingers. All from different hands.

  She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the horrific sight. There were so many types of fingers—slender and feminine, gnarled, stubbly, or wrinkled—all preserved with care.

  Sounds filtered through Sam’s panic, and she became aware of leaves crunching and twigs snapping as someone moved through the forest. Sam turned towards the window that overlooked the path she’d come down.

  It looks familiar, somehow…

  Fresh adrenaline shot through her as she recognised the scene. She was horribly familiar with the sick, twisted trees lining the dirt path. It’s the image from my painting. Any second, the grey-eyed man’s going to come into view, carrying an axe as he returns home—

  A figure was materialising out of the darkness, catching faint glints of moonlight as he moved into view. Sam shrunk away from the window, barely daring to breathe as she searched for an escape. The door faced the man’s path, making it impossible to slip outside without attracting his attention. But there was nowhere to hide inside the one-room cabin.

  The footsteps grew closer. Sam’s eyes landed on the window at the opposite side of the room, and seizing the only option available to her, she clambered onto the bloodied bench and slid over the sill.

  She misjudged the size of the window and fell into the bushes outside with a muffled whump. She thought the footsteps paused for a moment, as though the man had heard her. Then his pace increased, and the cabin’s door was pulled open.

  Sam tried to shrink into a ball and squeezed her eyes closed, hoping the spindly bushes would conceal her. She heard the man walk through his cabin, slowly and ponderously, then come to a halt not far from the window.

  A horrible realisation hit Sam, and her stomach dropped. I didn’t close the cupboard doors.

  The cabin’s entrance opened with a bang. Sam shrunk farther into the bushes, aware that their patchy branches did a poor job of masking her. The footsteps drew closer, coming down the side of the cabin, and Sam held her breath, squeezing her shaking hands into fists, as her stalker rounded the house and came into view.

  The moonlight hit his face as he paused barely ten feet from her hiding spot, and she saw the familiar grey eyes, the salt-and-pepper stubble, and the vicious, healing scar on his cheek.

  Just like in the paintings. They’re so accurate that I could have been creating them from a photo.

  The man scanned the woods behind his cabin. Sam didn’t dare inhale, even though her lungs ached and her head throbbed. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears, and she felt certain that the man would be able to hear it. He wasn’t looking in her direction, though, but faced the forest. Sam caught a brief glimpse of an axe—uncle Peter’s axe—clasped in his hand before the man stepped towards the trees and disappeared between them with unexpected litheness.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sam didn’t move for a long time. Her heart beat frantically, and she struggled to draw breath. Even though the forest was still, she kept imagining she heard footsteps heralding the man’s return.

  Gotta get moving, Sam. Get to your feet. Get away from his house.

  Movement seemed impossible, though. Her limbs were locked up with terror, and her body couldn’t draw in oxygen quickly enough. Then a fat, heavy insect landed on Sam’s face and broke the trance. She jolted to her feet, fighting her way out from the bushes, and staggered through the clearing. One of the fowls squawked in alarm as she passed the hutch. Sam glanced behind herself once, searching between the trees, but the only movement came from the trembling leaves. She turned towards the woods that would lead in the direction opposite to the way the man had taken.

  Terror had given her strength, and Sam ran as quickly and as silently as the dense woods would allow her to. She didn’t dare turn her torch back on. Instead, she held both hands ahead of herself to protect her face from the worst of the scratching branche
s and focussed on moving her feet in long, careful strides. She didn’t know which direction she was going, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was to be away from the strange cabin and away from the man, to keep him from adding any of her fingers to his sick collection.

  The woods cleared, and Sam stumbled to a halt on the edge of a drop-off. Her legs were weak, and her lungs ached, so she let herself slump onto the rocks to rest. Dehydration taxed her body, setting up a pounding headache behind her eyes. Remembering she’d pocketed the bottle of water, Sam felt for it in her jacket. To her surprise and relief, the bottle had survived her fall out of the window. She tugged the cap off and drained it.

  Dawn was still at least half an hour away, and the moon bathed the area in its pale light. Trees coated the slope ahead of Sam, which dipped until it met the lake. Dense fog hid the water from sight. Sam thought she saw a faint glow on the beach. Peter’s cabin. Should I be going back there?

  I don’t think I have a choice.

  As soon as she’d stopped moving, the cold had begun biting at her in earnest. She didn’t have nearly enough layers, and she knew the temperature would continue to drop until dawn broke.

  Besides, there’s the radio in the cabin. If I go inside for just a minute to grab the radio, the codes, some water, and my heavier jacket, at least I’ll have a proper chance of getting out of here.

  With any luck, Sam thought, the man would either still be searching the woods or have returned to his cabin to check that nothing had been stolen. Sam didn’t think he would wait for her in Peter’s house a second time.

  She crumpled the empty water bottle and tucked it inside her pocket before climbing to her aching legs. She’d found her way to one of the steeper parts of the mountain and had to slow to a crawl to climb down the cliffs to the shore.

  A hint of light dissolved the stars near the opposite side of the lake as the sun started its daily climb over the mountain ridge. The cold increased as Sam moved lower. By the time she stumbled onto the beach, uncontrollable shivers wracked her. She didn’t dare remove her hands from where she’d tucked them inside her jacket, even though the condensed fog dripped from her nose. The cabin’s fire, burnt down to embers, provided a faint glow to guide her to the cabin.