Consuming Fire

Prologue

Though he knew the water would be terribly cold, Jack had to be brave. After all, his sister and his cousins were watching him. The lake that stretched before him glittered in colors of green and brown and blue, teasing him as the wind rippled across the surface and upset the water. The forest pines shadowed the shallow edges of the water and the little picnic spot his family had worn through over the years. Their holiday spot.

Jack clung to the rope with all he was worth and turned his head once more to the shallows where Clare was waving at him and his older cousins Todd and Mike were laughing at his fear. Jack was never one to shy away from danger, and he’d swung the rope into the lake many times before. Yet this time his feet remained planted on the tree root, unwilling to jump. There was a deep fear swirling inside him that had never been there before. A dark fear.

Come on, he urged himself. Don’t chicken out. Clare will never let you live it down.

So Jack took a deep breath in, clenched the rope tightly and kicked off the tree. He soared through the air with flailing legs and swung low over the surface with his toes dipping into the cool lake. It was colder than ice. But he couldn’t turn back now, so Jack opened his mouth and shouted their famous jungle call before releasing the rope and landing in the lake with a splash even bigger than chubby Todd’s.

Jack had been swimming in the family lake for as long as he could remember. He knew the waters; he swam so often in the summer when they camped that he could open his eyes and wait, pretending he had drowned. Inside he chuckled to himself as he floated in silence, staring into the cold and murky waters that engulfed him.

Then suddenly, Jack saw something strange through the glare. It was a flash of red, about three feet away. Nothing was ever clear in the lake, but Jack did not doubt his own eyes. It could have been seaweed, or perhaps a fish of some sort, only it was bright red like a fire truck. Jack swam towards it with blind curiosity, but the moment he blinked it had vanished.

Woosh!

Jack spun in the water as the red thing flashed like a bullet right past him. Now he was sure it was not a fish. It looked like hair. Red hair.

Scared and bewildered, Jack kicked to the surface. When he broke it and gulped in a lungful of air, he realized it was no longer daytime and his family had left. The moon was high above his head, stars twinkling down upon him. He shivered in the dark water and twisted, trying to understand what was happening. I must be dreaming, he thought.

Then he saw her. Through the rippling waters, near the other side of the lake with her head bobbing eerily above the surface as she stared at him, he saw a haunting face.

The girl with the red hair.

“Jack,” she called to him in a soft and melodic voice, a mere whisper across the water.

“Who are you?” he shouted. “Where am I?”

“Jack,” she called again. “I’ve come for you Jack.”

She chuckled and then disappeared under the water.

Jack’s heart threatened to leap out of his chest. He started swimming to the shore, his arms slashing at the water. Fear of what lurked in the black depths around him made him cough and splutter in panic. He had a strange and sudden feeling that he was about to die.

Before he had swum even a few meters, a hand closed around his ankle. Jack screamed for help, but the woods were empty and they watched his struggle in silence. The hand that held him burned through his skin, pulling him down, down beneath the surface where there was no air and no way to find the sun. Where there was nothing, only darkness.

Only darkness.