He took the first step down, then the next, and limped off the porch. The ax blade gleamed in the bone-white moonlight. He carried the heads by their hair.
When his boot touched the gritty earth, the frogs and crickets stopped singing. The owl cut short her beckoning hoot. The woods fell completely silent, and the pine boughs trembled.
The fog raced fearlessly toward him.
He limped toward shrouded Shadow Lake. His bones ached. He had been through so much. He had to get it right this time, so he could finally rest.
He had tied his old dinghy to a desiccated tree trunk that lay half submerged in the water. It looked like a bloated dead giant. The heavy fog gave it the illusion of floating in midair; it bobbed and tugged against the moor line as if it wanted to escape.
He knew the feeling.
He deposited the ax and the heads in the bow of the boat. They rolled together, then rolled apart, their eyes staring at him blankly. They were old friends. Friends he needed now, hopefully for the last time. He winked at them with his right eye. They did not wink back.
Then he held onto the tree trunk and stepped cautiously onto the slightly curved bottom of the dinghy. The craft wobbled as he found his balance. When he had first lost his arm, simple things like this had been nearly impossible to accomplish. But he had surmounted many hardships to achieve his ends. He had an iron will . . . and he didn’t take failure lightly.
He clenched his jaw and slowly sat down on the seat of the boat. Then he cast off, drifting into the fog. From the bottom of the boat, he grabbed his paddle. A set of oars were useless for a man with one arm.
The flat wooden paddle cut through the water like a knife as he glided through the phantom layers of mist to the secret spot. He had hidden it well.
His single eye ticked downward through the fog to the lake, the final resting place of his hopes and dreams. If only they knew what lay beneath the surface of Shadow Lake. They’d be surprised. But all that belonged to the lake now.
Behind him, safely distant, the owl hooted long and low. He’s gone. It’s safe to come out, they seemed to be saying. The forest creatures skittered and darted. The woods heaved a sigh of relief.
He lifted his chin in the direction of the highway that sliced through the landscape beyond the hills and trees. It was the road they would take.
“This time, I’ll get you.”
And he knew that once he’d finally achieved his ends, he would disappear from Shadow Lake forever.
chapter ONE
Dear Grace,
Nat here! I am writing you from the bus, which is why my handwriting is so sguiggly. I’ve tried to text you a gazillion times on my cell phone, but the reception up here is not happening. I guess it’s so remote here in rural Pennsylvania that they don’t have a lot of can-you-hear-me-now guys making sure our phones work.
Alyssa’s on the bus. Tori, too. She flew in last night so we could hang in New York together. Lyss, as usual, is writing and sketching in one of her notebooks. Tori bounced a couple rows back to talk to some kids about crops. I have no clue why she thinks that’s interesting, but I’m sure she’ll fill me in later. Our hot, stinky Tri-City charter has been chugging along forever, but we’re almost at Camp Lake-puke. Guess how I know! We’ve hit that super-extra-bumpy part of the road. See? You can tell by my even worse handwriting. Plus, we just zoomed past the sign that says “Camp Lakeview 10 Miles.” Witness my mad detective skills! LOL.
I wish I had brought my iPod to drown out the noise. Everyone except Lyss, Tori, and me is singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” for the fifth or sixth time. It’s more like yelling. Even Paula Abdul would admit that the tune got lost about a hundred and thirty bottles ago.
I can’t believe it’s my third summer at this crazy-fun place. Do you remember our first summer together, when my mom forced me to “broaden my horizons” and shipped me out here while she went off on an art-buying trip to Europe? Remember how I freaked out? No air-conditioning, ginormous spiders and vampire mosquitoes, and camp food? I was ready to go back to Manhattan that very first day!
But you were so funny and friendly that I actually forgot to be miserable. Now you are one of my best Camp Lakeview Friends (CLFs for life!), and I had to actually talk my mom into letting me come this year instead of going with her to Asia on her art-buying trip.
Seriously, Grace, I can’t wait to see you. I’m so glad you only have to miss the first two weeks of camp. You’ll breeze through summer school, wait and see! English will not defeat you! After all, you passed history!
Tori’s in da house! She just came back to sit with us. Now I will hear about the crops.
Oh! She wasn’t listening to a conversation about crops, she was listening to a story about someone called Cropsy. She says this is the sixth year of some hideous tragedy that takes place every six years at Shadow Lake! She’s going to tell Alyssa and me all about it in gory detail. Mwahaha! If it’s any good, I’ll give you the full 411!
See you in two weeks!
TTFN,
Nat
“Okay, I have confirmation on the dark secret of Shadow Lake.”
Tori plopped down into the empty seat behind Alyssa and Natalie and leaned over their sweaty shoulders. “The story I heard is the story they heard. And it’s all true. So, are you ready to be scared out of your wits?”
“But of course! Bring it on,” Natalie said, blowing tendrils of wavy brown hair off her forehead. Despite the open windows—or perhaps because of them—it was hot and muggy inside the bus. Tori’s original seatmate had gone to cram herself in with her buds at the front of the bus, so Tori had her seat all to herself. Alyssa, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun, was sitting in front of Tori with Natalie, and they turned around to face her so they could chat.
Tori launched into her so-very-terrifying story. “Okay, so this homicidal maniac—”
“A what?” Alyssa asked, cupping her ear. “I can’t hear you.”
“It’s about a homicidal maniac,” Tori repeated, raising her voice.
Trading excited looks, Natalie and Alyssa leaned even farther over the seat to listen, and Tori noticed how much they’d changed in the last year. All three of them were definitely growing up. As ever, she and Natalie were way ahead on the trend curve in the hair and makeup departments. Tori had stylish blond Paris Hilton hair and a black T-shirt with CHIC written on it. Natalie was up-to-the-minute in her polka-dot bubble top, and they both had on fancy flip-flops decorated with bows and charms direct from Nordy’s.
Alyssa appeared content to stay with her artist look of a torn T-shirt and paint-splattered jeans (in this weather!), her dark eyelashes accentuated by lots of heavy black mascara and dramatic ebony butterfly earrings. But Natalie and Alyssa’s faces were a little longer and thinner, Tori noticed. More mature. It was both cool and scary at the same time.
Like my story.
“I originally heard this from my Pennsylvania cousin, Nicole,” she began. Then she frowned when she saw that they were still straining to hear her. She figured it was best to unravel her creepy tale of death in a hushed, spooky tone, but two-thirds of the bus was still determined to count beer bottles backward, in song.
“I really should wait to tell it,” she ventured, but both Natalie and Alyssa made sad-puppy faces.
“You can not stop now,” Natalie insisted. “We will die of curiosity.”
“You will not,” Tori said, laughing. “I haven’t even started!”
“Okay, maybe we won’t die, but we will get very sick,” Natalie insisted. “Please, please, please?”
Alyssa, the more subdued one, raised her eyebrows in a silent request.
“All right,” Tori relented. “My cousin Nicole—she’s way older than us—used to come here. Every summer. Then six years ago, something terrible happened . . . and she never came back again.”
A Fair to Remember #13 Page 11