When The Lake Calls

Chapter Seven: The Rumour Mill

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AFTER THE INCIDENT - Spring '19

Flash. 

Murky lake water, green with seaweed. 

Flash. 

Five dead logs, adorned in bathing suits. Branded. Flames licking their skin, devouring their bones. 

Flash. 

And the blood. It started in trickles, before the lake swelled with it, pregnant and pulsing. 

A hand clamped onto my shoulder and I gasped, springing upwards. A scream ripped through me, raw and primal. Zayn rushed to cover my mouth, her eyes wide. She looked like a dumpster fire, her eyeliner smudged all the way down her cheeks. I took a deep breath and wiped the tears from my face. 

Tears that smelled like the brine of lake water. My hair fell in wet tangles around my face, curling over my damp jacket. I was soaked, right the way through. My skin squished when I moved, and when I rubbed my hands together, I felt the pruning on the tips of my fingers. What happened to me? The last thing I remembered, I'd fallen into the darkness. There was a lake. There were Yana and Dylan and Emily's bright eyes. There was death and the shine of sharp teeth in the dark.

Shuddering, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to get myself together.

"What happened to you?" Zayn said. She tugged on my jacket and I let her take it off. "And what did you put in here? Feels like you just put a brick in your pocket."

 I watched, vaguely remembering the red book, as she shook it out and placed it on the dried grass beside her. I blinked. We were outside with sand and the open sea spread out before us. A sparrow, somewhere, called in the half-light.

"I don't know," I said. She narrowed her eyes, even as she wrapped a large blanket around me. She must have stolen it from Emily's room. "Sometimes, ever since that day, I- I fall asleep. When I wake up half an hour has passed and I'm left feeling dead." I shook my head and tilted back to look up at the night sky. "I don't usually end up so wet, though."

Zayn hummed a soft sweet thing that sounded like cotton candy. She swept my hair up into a bun and settled down beside me. I could feel her warmth through the blanket. 

"Things are really going great for you, huh?" She smiled. It looked as alive as I felt. "First, your so-called friends die and now the ghost of some dumb lake is terrorizing you."

So-called? They'd been like the cool, older siblings I'd never got to have.

I shrugged. I'd never believed in ghosts, ghouls or demons. Papa was so level-headed, he'd not let anything interfere with the hard facts of science. Not even our family. He'd left without so much as a goodbye, off to his Physics and Engineering company with his swanky new girlfriend. My birthday cards stopped years ago. Sometimes Oliver got new paints or sketchbooks in the mail, all anonymously sent.