The Last Time I Lied_A Novel

by Riley Sager

  I take a deep breath. I slip under the water. I stare at that gold-and-pink light and start to swim toward it.

  41

  Swim.

  That’s all I need to do.

  Swim and try not to think about how much my ankle hurts.

  Or that the tunnel may slowly be closing in on me.

  Or that I’m not even a quarter of the way through it yet.

  I need to do nothing else but swim. As hard and as fast as I can. Straight toward the light like the little girl in that movie that gave me nightmares when I was nine.

  Swim.

  Don’t think about that movie and its creepy clown and fizzing TV or how the silt from the lake water clouds my vision and stings my eyes.

  Just swim.

  Don’t think about how the tunnel really is getting smaller or how my shoulders skim the walls, scraping away mossy blooms of algae that make it even harder to see.

  Just fucking swim.

  Don’t think about the algae or the shrinking tunnel or how each flick of my right foot sends pain screaming through my ankle or how the pressure is building in my chest like a balloon that’s about to pop.

  I swim straight into the light, blinded by it, the glare forcing my eyes shut. My lungs scream. My ankle screams. I’m on the verge of screaming myself. But then the tunnel falls away, slipping from my shoulders like an unzipped dress. My eyes open to the sight of water everywhere. No cave. No walls. Just blessed open lake glowing yellow in the ever-brightening dawn.

  I shoot to the surface and gasp, gulping down precious air until the ache in my lungs subsides. My ankle still hurts. As do my exhausted, limp-rag arms. Yet I have enough strength to stay afloat and keep my head above water. I might even be able to swim back to camp after some rest.

  Hopefully it won’t come to that. Hopefully people are looking for me.

  Sure enough, I hear the hum of a motorboat in the distance. I rotate in the water until I can see it—a white skiff, one of two normally moored to Camp Nightingale’s dock. Chet sits by the outboard motor, steering the boat across the lake.

  I swing an arm out of the water, waving to him. With what little air I have in my lungs, I scream his name.

  “Chet!”

  He spots me, his face bright with surprise to see me floundering in the lake. He cuts the motor, grabs a wooden oar, and paddles my way.

  “Emma? My God, we’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  I resume swimming. He keeps paddling. Together we finally meet, and I latch on to the side of the boat. With Chet’s help, I climb aboard and collapse inside, panting, too tired to move.

  “Did you find the girls?” I ask, panting out the words, still catching my breath.

  “Early this morning. They’re dehydrated, hungry, and in shock, but they’ll be fine. Last I heard, Theo was going to take them to the hospital.”

  I sit up, buzzing with alarm.

  “Theo’s back at camp?”

  “Yes,” Chet says. “He said he found you with the girls and that you attacked him before vanishing in the woods.”

  “He’s lying.”

  “That’s crazy, Emma. You know that, right?”

  I keep talking. Setting the crazy free. “He hurt those girls, Chet. He can’t be near them. We have to call the police.”

  I reach for my phone, amazingly still in my pocket and in working order. There’s even a bit of battery left. I start to dial 911 but am halted by a shadow crossing the screen.

  Chet’s reflection, as warped as a funhouse mirror.

  Gripped in his hand is the oar. I see that reflection, too. A faint glimpse of wood swiping across my screen right before Chet swings it into the back of my head.

  For a slice of a second, everything stops. My heart. My brain. My lungs and ears and eyes. As if my body needs a moment to figure out how to react.

  In that thin sliver of time, I assume that this is what death must feel like. Not a drift into deep slumber or a slow edge toward a warm light. Just a sudden halt.

  But then the pain arrives. A screaming, nerve-jolting pain that floods every part of me, telling me I’m still alive.

  The dead don’t feel this kind of pain.

  It hurts so much I envy them.

  Anguish takes over, rendering me helpless. My vision blurs. My head rings. I belch out a grunt of surprise as the phone springs from my hands, and I collapse to the bottom of the boat.

  42

  I come to on the floor of the boat. I feel the scruff of fiberglass against my cheek, smell the fish stench, hear the echo of the water below.

  The boat is moving now. The outboard motor hums like white noise. Occasional sprays of lake water mist my face.

  I’ve landed on my side, my left arm pinned beneath me, my right one twitching slightly. My left eye is closed, smushed as it is against the floor. The lid of my right eye keeps blinking, the sky and clouds above flickering like an old movie. Rather than breath, I hyperventilate—short, gasping breaths that huff out air as quickly as I take it in.

  I’m still in pain, but it’s no longer all-consuming. A steady drumbeat instead of a clash of cymbals. I’m surprised to learn that I can move, if I really put my mind to it. That twitching right arm bends. Both legs stretch. I wiggle my fingers, marveling at the accomplishment.

  The clarity of my thoughts is another surprise. I know what’s going on. I’m not struck dumb or deaf or blind. I assume Chet pulled back on the swing of that oar right before striking me. Or else I’m just very lucky. Either way, I’ll take it.

  When the sound of the motor ceases and the boat slows, I’m able to flip onto my back, pleased to learn that my left eye also works. I see Chet standing over me. The oar is back in his hands, although he switches between holding it too tightly and almost letting it fall from his grip.

  “I can’t believe you had the nerve to come back here, Emma,” he says. “Even though it was my idea, it still surprised me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you came back. I just didn’t think you’d be that stupid.”

  “Why . . .” I pause to take a dry-mouthed swallow, hoping it will help get the words out. Each syllable is a struggle. “Why ask me back?”

  “Because I thought it would be fun,” Chet says. “I knew you were crazy. Theo told me all about that. And I wanted to see just how crazy you’d get. You know, trap a few birds and put them in the cabin. A little paint on the door and an appearance at the window. A little peek in the shower.”

  Chet pauses to give me a wink that makes my stomach roil.

  “I totally didn’t expect you to run with it, though. I thought it would take a lot more work to make you look guilty. But all that talk about seeing Vivian? That alone made everyone think you’d snapped.”

  “But why?”

  “Because of the real reason I wanted you back here. Girls from your cabin go missing, and to put you at the scene of the crime, I drop something of yours into an empty canoe with a broken pair of glasses and set it adrift. That bracelet of yours worked wonders, by the way. When I snapped it off your wrist outside the Lodge, I knew it would be perfect.”

  He flashes me a twisted smile. It’s the grin of a madman. Someone far more insane than I ever was.

  “After that, all I needed to do was delete any surveillance video of me near your cabin and change the file name of the one showing you leaving Dogwood yesterday morning. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Em. The girls didn’t sneak out five minutes before you woke up. They’d been gone at least an hour.”

  I sit up, using my elbows for support. I tremble a moment before locking my arms and steadying myself. That small movement wakes me up a bit, gives me some lift. I hear the newfound strength in my voice as I say, “All that effort. I don’t understand.”

  “Because you almost ruined our lives,” Chet says with a snarl. “Especially Theo’s. So much
that he tried to kill himself. That’s how much you fucked him up, Emma. When you destroyed his reputation, you destroyed ours as well. When I got to Yale, half the school wouldn’t even talk to me. They saw me as the kid whose brother got away with murder because we’re filthy rich. And we’re not. Not anymore. All we have left is my mother’s apartment and this godforsaken lake.”

  Even though my skull is stormy with pain, I finally understand.

  This is his revenge.

  An attempt to make me look as guilty as I had made Theo look. He wants me to live under the same cloud of suspicion. To lose everything.

  “I didn’t want to kill you, Emma,” he says. “I would have much rather watched you suffer for the next fifteen years. But the plan has changed. You made sure of that when you freed those girls. Now I have no choice but to make you disappear.”

  Chet grabs me by the shirt collar and hoists me off the floor. I don’t struggle. I can’t. All I can do is wobble precariously as he plops me onto the edge of the boat. The motion jars still more energy into me.

  Now that I’m off the floor, I can see we’re in a part of the lake I don’t recognize. A cove of sorts. Trees crowd the shore, ringing the water like walls of a fortress. Muted light seeps through them, doing little to burn away the fog that rolls across the water.

  Something sits in the mist, jutting out of the water a few feet from the boat.

  A rooster weathervane.

  It’s the same weathervane I’ve seen in pictures, perched atop Peaceful Valley Asylum. Only now it’s edged with rust and crusted with barnacles. And the asylum it sits upon rests deep beneath Lake Midnight. I peer into the water, getting shimmery glimpses of its mud-caked roof.

  It’s still here. Right where it’s always been. Only now covered by the lake. That part of Casey’s story is true.

  “I had a feeling you’d recognize it,” Chet says. “You knowing about this place was another surprise. Little nosy Emma has really been doing her homework.”

  Judging from the ring of dried mud along the shore, I suspect the lake is usually high enough to completely cover the weathervane. It can be seen now only because of the current drought.

  “I found it when I was a teenager,” Chet says. “No one else knows it’s still here. Not my mom. Not Lottie. I guess they think old Buchanan Harris razed it when he bought the land. Instead, he just left it here and flooded the place. And now no one will know to look for you here.”

  My heart gallops. Blood pumps to my brain, making me more alert as well as more afraid. Rather than silence me, the fear sparks my voice. “Don’t do this, Chet. It’s not too late.”

  “I think it is, Em.”

  “The girls didn’t see you. They told me so. If you want me to tell the cops I did it, I will.”

  Words are my only defense. I have no strength to fight him off. Even if I did, I’d be no match against another swing of the oar.

  “No one will know you did it,” I say. “Just you and me. And I’m not going to tell anyone. I’ll take the blame. I’ll plead guilty.”

  Chet transfers the oar from one hand to the other. I think I’m getting through to him.

  “You want to see me suffer, right? Then imagine me in prison. Think how much I’ll suffer then.”

  I’m hit by a flash of memory. Me leaving Camp Nightingale fifteen years ago. Chet was there, calling after his brother, his face tear-streaked. Maybe that was the moment he decided he needed to get revenge. If so, I need to remind him of the boy he was before that.

  “You’re not a killer,” I tell him. “You’re too good of a person for that. I’m the one who did something bad. Don’t be like me. Don’t become someone you’re not.”

  Chet raises the oar, ready to bring it down once more. I lurch forward before he can do it, slamming myself into him. The strength comes out of nowhere. A coiled energy ignited by terror and desperation. It sends Chet stumbling against one of the boat’s seats. His legs catch on it, and he tumbles backward. The oar leaves his hands, clatters to the floor. I reach for it, but Chet’s faster. He grabs the oar with one hand and slaps me with the back of the other.

  Spikes of pain sting my cheek. But the blow also zaps one last bit of adrenaline into me. Enough to let me scramble to the front of the boat and crawl onto the bow.

  Behind me, Chet’s on his feet, oar in hand.

  He lifts it.

  He swings.

  I close my eyes, screaming, waiting for the blow to connect with my skull.

  Instead, a shot rings out, the sound careening across the cove. My eyes fly open in time to see the oar explode into a thousand splinters. I shut them again as wood sprays my face. I duck, trying to avoid it.

  The boat tips.

  I tip with it, tumbling backward, over the side of the boat and into Lake Midnight.

  43

  My fall through the water is brief. Just a quick, disorienting drop before I slam into something a few feet from the surface. Wood, I think. Slick with moss and algae and a hundred years of lake water rising and falling.

  A roof.

  As I’m realizing this, the wood beneath me buckles, giving way. Soon I’m falling again. Still underwater but now also surrounded by walls, encased within them.

  Peaceful Valley Asylum.

  I’m inside it, dropping from the ceiling to the floor below. I brace myself for another smash through it. It never comes. Instead, I bounce off the floor and drift upward.

  Faint light trickles through algae-streaked windows. It’s enough brightness for me to see an empty room taken over by mud. Everything is tilted—walls, ceiling, doorframe. The door itself has come off its hinges and now sits askew, revealing a short hall, stairs, more light. I swim toward them, struggling to make it through the doorway, across the hall, down the steps.

  At the bottom, the front door gapes open. The door itself sits on the floor, all but blending in with the lake bottom. To my left is a sitting room. There’s a hole in the wall where bricks and floorboards and scraps of wallpaper have tumbled out. A striped bass circles the room. I swim out the open door, passing from inside to outside, even though it’s all part of the same watery landscape.

  Pain pulses through my body. My lungs burn. I need air. I need sleep. I start to swim upward, heading to the surface, when something catches my eye.

  A skull.

  Bleached white.

  Jaw missing.

  Eye sockets aimed at the sky.

  Scattered around it are more bones. A dozen, at least. I glimpse the arch of ribs, the curl of fingers, a second skull a few yards from the first.

  The girls.

  I know because nestled among the bones, shining faintly in the muck, is a length of gold chain and a locket in the shape of a heart. A tiny emerald sits in its center.

  Something enters the water behind me. I feel it more than see it—a shuddering of the lake. An arm reaches out and wraps around my waist. Then I’m tugged upward, away from the girls, toward the water’s surface.

  Soon we’re breaking through Lake Midnight. I see sky, trees, the camp’s other motorboat bobbing on the water a few yards away. Within it stands Detective Flynn, his gun trained on Chet, who drops the decimated oar.

  And I see Theo. Swimming next to me. Arm still around my waist. Lake water sloshing against his chin.

  “Are you okay?” he says.

  I think of Vivian, Natalie, and Allison lying directly below us.

  I think of all the years they spent down there, waiting for me to find them.

  So when Theo asks again if I’m okay, I can only nod, choke out a sob, and let the tears flow.

  44

  I sit in the front seat of Detective Flynn’s police-issued sedan, the hospital a distant memory in the rearview mirror. I ended up being more bruised and battered than I initially thought. The doctor’s diagnosis was startling. A concussio
n from the oar. A sprained ankle from the fall. Lacerations, dehydration, a persistent headache.

  I ended up spending two days in the hospital. The girls were there for one of them. I shared a room with Miranda, and we spent that time complaining about our sorry states, giggling over the ridiculousness of it all and gossiping about the handsome male nurse who worked the morning shift.

  Visitors streamed in and out. Sasha and Krystal from the room next door. Miranda’s grandmother—a whirling dervish of Catholic guilt and smothering hugs. Becca dropped by with a book of Ansel Adams photographs, and Casey brought apologies for ever thinking I had tried to hurt the girls of Dogwood. Marc arrived with a stack of gossip mags and the news that he’s back together with Billy the librarian. Even my parents flew in from Florida, a gesture that touched me more than I expected.

  We plan to head back to Manhattan later this afternoon. Marc is going to tag along. It’ll be an interesting drive for all parties involved.

  For now, though, I have unfinished business to attend to, as Detective Flynn reminds me.

  “Here’s what probably happened,” he says. “Based on what she wrote in her diary, Vivian, like you, assumed the worst about Peaceful Valley, Charles Cutler, and Buchanan Harris. She found the location of the asylum and took Allison and Natalie with her to get proof of its existence. From the way you described it, it’s probably very easy to get disoriented down there. They went into the water, swam around the wreckage, never came back up. Accidental drowning.”

  Just because I had assumed exactly that doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. Not when I now know that Vivian died the same way her sister did. It’s too tragic to comprehend.

  “So there’s nothing to suggest Chet killed them?” I say, knowing it’s impossible.

  Flynn shakes his head. “He swears he didn’t do it. I have no reason to doubt him. He was only ten at the time. Besides, there’s still quite a few bones at the bottom of that lake. It’ll take a while to find them all. Until then, we won’t know for certain it’s your friends down there.”