by Kieran Scott
He turned the blade. Hannah saw a drop of blood on Jacob’s neck.
“Hannah!” Katie shouted.
All at once, it seemed, Hannah saw where Katie was looking—saw the baseball bat leaning against the porch railing right next to Hannah’s hand. Hannah reached out and wrapped her fingers around it, flinging it to Katie as Katie shouted:
“Jacob!”
Jacob drove his elbow into Colin’s side, and Colin doubled over. He dropped the knife and Katie grabbed the bat, turned around, and swung like an all-star player just as Colin was straightening up.
Crack!
Colin’s skull made a sickening sound as the bat struck home. He slumped forward over the porch rail like a dead fish. As he fell, his feet kicked the knife. It clattered across the porch and dropped off the side into the brush.
Katie grabbed Jacob by the shoulders.
“Are you okay? Are you okay?”
Jacob nodded like a bobble-head toy. “I’m f-f-f-fine,” he said.
Hannah stumbled down the steps, dropped to her knees, and searched through the mess of plants and leaves until she found the knife. Her hands shook as she picked it up, her palms slick. When she stood up again, Jacob took one look at the blade and staggered backward.
“It’s okay! We’re all okay!” Hannah put the knife behind her. She didn’t know if she was okay, but she was acting on pure adrenaline now.
Katie began to shake so violently, Hannah was worried that her stepsister was broken. She reached out her free hand carefully and touched Katie’s arm. Katie flinched, but otherwise didn’t move.
“Katie, you did good,” Hannah said. “You knocked him out.”
“He … he tried to kill Jacob,” Katie said, sucking in air so hard her bottom lip disappeared for a second. “He tried to—”
“I know, and you took care of me,” Jacob said, looking her in the eye and squeezing her arm, still trembling himself. “You took care of all of us. You saved us.”
Katie blinked. She seemed to come to at that statement, like she was waking from a stupor. Her gaze focused on Hannah and she took in a deep breath.
“I saved us.”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “But now, we have to go.”
“Go?” Katie’s eyes trailed along the ground until they found Nick’s body. She stared at it. “Go where?”
“Katie, look at me,” Hannah said. She grasped Katie’s hand. Katie did as she was told and Hannah set her jaw. “You’re gonna have to get in the canoe.”
“There’s a reason we don’t use the canoes anymore,” Jacob whispered to Hannah as he helped her carry the first one to the shore. “My dad says they’re so old he doesn’t trust them.”
Hannah glanced back at Katie to make sure she hadn’t heard that. “We’re gonna have to take our chances,” she whispered back.
They got the canoe into the water and Hannah placed the knife, which was lined with dried blood—Nick’s blood—onto the floor of the canoe.
Don’t think about Nick. Don’t think about Colin.
Colin—the murderer.
Hannah’s stomach turned and she handed Jacob a paddle. Unlike the rowboat, the canoe didn’t have any brackets to rest the paddles in. You had to paddle on your own, digging into the water on one side and then the other, so the paddler could switch back and forth. They were both going to have to paddle if they had any hope of making it out of here alive.
“Why aren’t we taking the Jet Ski?” Katie asked, wading toward the canoe.
“No keys. Not in the ignition anyway. I checked,” Jacob said. “And it’s only for one person anyway.” He paused, his face going ashen, and he locked eyes with Hannah. “This isn’t going to work, H. This thing will never handle our weight, either. It’ll sink if we all try to get in it.”
“Sink?” Katie said tremulously.
“We don’t have a choice. We can do this,” Hannah said firmly as Katie settled gingerly onto one of the two small benches in the canoe.
“We do, actually,” Jacob said, handing his oar to Katie as he stood in the shallows. “You guys take this one and get a head start. I’m going to go get the other canoe.”
“Jacob, no! We’re not leaving you behind,” Hannah hissed, glancing back at Colin, who was still out cold on the porch.
“Yes! You are!” Jacob countered, and to prove his point, he shoved the canoe off into the water. Katie screamed, clinging to her paddle with both hands like a battle staff. “I’ll be right behind you!” Jacob called.
Hannah glared at Jacob, but she knew he was right. This thing was barely seaworthy as it was. There was no way it could handle all their weight. Jacob turned and ran for the shed to get the other canoe.
“Hannah?” Katie whimpered.
“It’s okay, Katie,” Hannah said.
“Where are the life jackets?” Katie asked tremulously.
“No life jackets.”
Katie moaned. “What about the thing in the lake? Hannah, this is crazy. There’s no way we’re making it out of here alive.”
“I don’t know about you, Katie, but I’d rather take my chances getting around the thing in the lake than stay on dry land with an actual homicidal maniac.”
Katie fell silent and Hannah knew she’d won the argument. She couldn’t indulge Katie’s fears right now when she was overwhelmed by her own. Colin was clearly insane, and if he woke up and came after them, she had no idea how they were going to defend themselves out on the open water. Plus, Katie was right—they still had to contend with the lake monster. She had no idea what that thing was, but it was real. She’d seen it. Alessandra had been attacked by it.
Whatever had happened to Alessandra that night, it hadn’t been Colin’s fault. He’d been standing right next to Hannah when it had happened. He’d screamed just as hard and as long as the rest of them had.
Was that what had done it? Had watching his friend get pulled under by the lake monster pushed him over the edge—made him go crazy? But no. If Nick was right, and Colin had something to do with Claudia’s disappearance, then she’d been flirting with a murderer—kissing a murderer.
Kissing someone who had just been waiting for his next opportunity to kill.
Hannah shuddered. Her first kiss. The guy who had given her her first kiss had murdered someone in cold blood. Maybe more than one someone. Hannah cleared her throat before the horror could suffocate her. She could cry as much as she wanted to later, once she and Katie and Jacob were safe.
“You paddle on your right side,” she said over her shoulder, trying to make her voice firm. “I’ll paddle on the left.”
“I can’t. Hannah, I can’t.” Katie’s voice broke.
“Katie, you’re one of the strongest people I know. You can do this.”
“How are we even going to see where we’re going?” Katie asked, looking around her at the fog that enveloped them.
“We’re just going to have to do our best,” Hannah replied. “Besides, I think the fog is starting to break up. The sun is peeking through, see?”
Silence. Katie didn’t move. Hannah cursed under her breath.
“Look at it this way: We either find a way across this water, or we go back there and Colin tries to kill you. Which is it going to be?”
The canoe was drifting back toward shore. If they didn’t do something soon, they were going to be caught in the shallows. Hannah was going to have to get out of the canoe to push off again, or Jacob was going to have to waste precious time helping them. Hannah looked back over her shoulder toward the house to check on Jacob, but the fog had moved in between the water and the shore. She couldn’t see anything.
After a breath, Katie placed the paddle halfway into the water and gave a tentative shove.
“There you go!” Hannah cheered.
She put her own paddle in the water and pushed. At first, their work was uneven and spotty and they were going more sideways than forward, but then, slowly, they found a rhythm. Katie began to match her strokes to Hannah’s and they
started to move. Between Hannah’s swim training and Katie’s softball training, they had two good sets of strong arms, and the canoe began to skim the water. Hannah’s hair pulled back from her face as they picked up speed.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Katie said as they paddled together. “Is Colin out of his mind?”
“I don’t know. He must be,” Hannah said. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he …” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words kill Nick. She couldn’t bring herself to believe them.
“And what was all that stuff about Claudia?” Katie asked. “Who’s Claudia?”
Suddenly, there was a tingling sensation at the back of Hannah’s mind. Everything Colin had said on the beach seemed to filter through her thoughts. What Claudia saw in him, I have no idea. And Claudia still had feelings for him.
Was Colin jealous of Nick and Claudia? Had he liked Claudia? Was that why he liked Hannah? Was that why he’d asked Jacob to invite her up here—because he’d seen her picture and she looked like the girl he liked, but couldn’t have?
Hannah thought of Claudia’s journal, of the boy she’d called S.B. That couldn’t have been Colin, could it?
“Hannah!” Katie’s terrified shout yanked Hannah out of a trance brought on by her thoughts and the nonstop rhythm of her strokes.
“What?”
Hannah whipped around and immediately saw the reason for Katie’s panic. The canoe was filling with water. Something bumped her ankle and she looked down to see that the knife was floating there. Her feet were covered by three inches of lake.
They were going under. And fast.
Hannah stared across the lake toward the far shoreline. The fog was so thick, she couldn’t see the parking lot of the Dreardon Lake docks. But she could hear car doors slamming and a truck beeping as it backed up. Someone’s laughter carried to her briefly across the water, but then it was lost. Hannah thought about screaming, but what good would it do? If she couldn’t see the people and their cars, they wouldn’t be able to see her, either. With the way sounds echoed around this water, they’d never even be able to tell which direction the screams were coming from. She glanced over her shoulder to search for Jacob, but saw nothing aside from the fog.
Please let him be out on the lake behind us. Please don’t let Colin have woken up and—
Hannah refused to finish the thought.
She grabbed the knife and placed it on the bench next to her to keep it from nicking her legs. The water was up to her ankles now. They weren’t going to make it. And if the canoe went down, Katie would certainly panic and flail like she had the other day.
They could both drown.
“Hannah … ?” Katie asked. She sounded desperate.
“We’re going to the island,” Hannah said, making a snap decision. “Mystery Island.” She shoved her paddle into the water and turned the canoe, her arm muscles straining with the effort. “It’ll buy us some time … give us someplace to hide. Maybe some fishermen will come close in their boat and we’ll be able to flag them down.”
“Maybe?” Katie’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard. “What about Jacob?”
“Jacob … Jacob’s just gonna have to fend for himself,” Hannah said. It was the only plan she had. “Now paddle!”
Katie did as she was told, but with the canoe rapidly filling with water, it was getting harder and harder to inch it forward. Hannah’s shoulders quivered and sweat ran down her brow, pooling above her upper lip. Katie started to cry quietly as the canoe grew heavier and heavier and their progress slower and slower. They had gotten themselves close, but they were still a good fifty yards from the island’s rocky shoreline.
Hannah dropped her paddle and said, “We’re going to have to swim.”
Then Katie began to cry in earnest, her shoulders shaking with every sob.
“It’s okay,” Hannah said in a soothing voice, refusing to let herself think about the lake monster, about Alessandra, about the blood. “I’m going to put you in a lifeguard’s hold and get us both to shore.” Hannah was so physically spent and emotionally exhausted at this point, she wasn’t entirely confident she could do it. But she wasn’t about to tell Katie that. She grabbed the knife, turned it blade-side out, and held it between her teeth.
“Nick’s blood is on that knife!” Katie wailed.
Hannah glared at her. She knew Nick’s blood was on the stupid knife, but what was she going to do? Leave it behind? It was the only weapon they had.
“I’ll take it,” Katie said.
She reached out and grabbed the knife’s handle. Her hands shook as she gripped it.
“Thank you,” Hannah said.
The canoe sank beneath them and Katie reached for Hannah with one hand, clutching her and digging her nails into her flesh.
“It’s okay, Katie,” Hannah said. “I promise it’s okay. Just … try to keep the knife away from me.”
Katie nodded mutely. Hannah locked one weak arm around Katie’s chest and started to tread water as the canoe dropped away entirely. Katie’s legs and arms thrashed and Hannah held her tighter, keeping one eye on the bloody blade.
“If this is going to work, you have to stay calm. You have to stop moving,” she said in Katie’s ear as she began to inch toward shore. “Just trust me, okay? I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“But you hate me,” Katie said, going limp. Her voice was such a quiet whisper Hannah barely heard her.
“I don’t hate you,” Hannah replied. Swimming with one arm was so maddeningly slow she wanted to pull her own hair out. “Besides, if I let you drown, your mother will definitely divorce my father and then my dad will hate me forever. And that’s not happening.”
Katie actually snorted a laugh, and Hannah thought, Everything’s going to be fine. At least for the moment.
The water was cold, and slimy weeds tugged at Hannah’s legs as she pushed herself forward. She tried not to think about the other things living beneath the surface. Of Alessandra and how she’d perished. Of the other people who had taken their own lives here. Somehow she found an extra reserve of energy and swam with every ounce of it until her feet hit the bottom of the lake.
“Put your feet down. You can stand,” she told Katie, releasing her.
Katie spluttered and threw her arms out until Hannah reached down and hauled her up. When Katie finally stood, she was shaky, her wet hair plastered across her forehead, the knife clutched in one hand. She half walked, half ran out of the water, stumbling up the wet rocks of the beach. Hannah followed more slowly, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth in an attempt to catch her breath. She turned around and saw the two paddles floating on the surface of the water. The canoe was completely submerged.
Where were the police? Had Colin even … ? But no. Of course not. He’d never even gone to town, had he? The realization was like a stab. Colin had probably put-putted a few yards along the shoreline, docked, and waited for them to go to bed. Then he’d crept back through the woods, lured Nick into the mist somehow, and murdered him.
He’d murdered Nick. In cold blood. Had Nick been scared? Had it hurt very much? Had he known what was happening?
Had she been standing there, on the porch just a few feet away, when Nick had died?
Oh, God. She had. The shadow she’d seen lurking in the mist—that had been Colin.
Suddenly Hannah was overcome with emotion. It built up inside her head, then exploded. She doubled over from the force of it, crying hard and snotting down her face. Poor Nick. He was just a kid, like her. And he’d come out to the cottage to try to warn them and she’d basically thrown him out so Colin could kill him in cold blood.
“I kissed him,” she said out loud, the words broken.
Katie put an arm around Hannah’s back. “Shhh, Hannah. It’s not your fault.”
“I … I kissed him, and he killed Nick! And he tried to kill Jacob,” Hannah said, shoving the back of her hand across her nose. “And—” she
said, horrible realization hitting her. “He probably killed Prandya! I kissed a murderer.”
Hannah thought of the way Colin had looked at her on that trail, the way her heart had skipped around like a kid with a jump rope when he’d brought his lips to hers. She turned around and vomited into the weeds. There was nothing left in her stomach, though, so all that came out was spit and tears.
“Are you okay?” Katie asked quietly, once Hannah was finished.
Hannah stood up straight; managed a nod. “No,” she said. She reached out, took the knife from Katie, and pushed it into the waistband of her shorts. The steel was cold against her backside, but it was also comforting to have it near her somehow. Besides, she couldn’t look at it anymore. “We have to figure out a way to town. We need the police.”
“Maybe we should walk to the other side of the island,” Katie suggested, pushing her hair off her face. “It seems like more people fish and stuff on that side. We might have a better chance of getting rescued.”
Hannah didn’t hate the idea of putting the island between them and Colin, either, just in case he woke up and figured out where they’d gone. Every bit of distance would help.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
They started up the slope and into the woods. It was only then that Hannah realized she’d kicked off her flip-flops back at the house. Katie was barefoot, too, and they both winced and cursed as they stepped on sharp branches and rocks. Otherwise, neither one of them spoke. They just kept moving, cutting as straight a line as they could across the small island. At some point, Hannah realized they were close to the spot where she’d found the mountain of rocks and the lockbox. The box with Claudia’s diary. She couldn’t think about that now.
Finally, the lake came into view again on the far side. The mist was so thick on its surface, Hannah couldn’t see more than ten yards offshore.
Were there people trying to fish in this? Was anyone out there?