Chapter 2: Lake Sylvia
The water of Lake Grendel was black as oil under the gathering twilight, its surface perfectly still. From the end of the moss-slick dock, Lexi could hear the others—the shrieks and laughter, the slapping of water against skin. They were out past the buoys, shadows against the deeper dark.
Pierre and Anderson were wrestling, a tangle of limbs. Carol floated on her back, her pale breasts breaking the surface like two moons. Shelby and Brittany were whispering, treading water close together, their fingers brushing underneath. It was all so normal, a last gasp of summer recklessness before the dread waiting back at the cabins settled in for good.
Lexi sat with her legs drawn up, her chin on her knees. She wore a thin cotton t-shirt and shorts over her swimsuit. She hadn’t taken them off.
The dock boards vibrated with footsteps. Malcolm, her boyfriend, water sheeting from his lean body, dropped down beside her. He smelled of lake and sweat.
“You’re missing the party, Lex. Water’s perfect. Not even that cold.”
“You know I’m not a strong swimmer,” she said, not looking at him, her eyes on the tree line across the cove. “I’ll sink like a stone past my waist.”
“I’d save you.” He bumped her shoulder with his. “Come on. It’s weird you just sitting here, watching.”
“I’m not watching. I’m thinking.”
“About Chris.” It wasn’t a question.
“About everything.” She finally turned to him. Droplets clung to his dark eyelashes. In the fading light, he looked younger, softer. The asshole charm was dialed down, leaving something almost genuine. “This whole thing. It feels like we’re waiting for a bus that’s already crashed.”
Malcolm was quiet for a moment, watching the others. Anderson had dunked Pierre and was whooping. “When this is over,” Malcolm said, his voice lower. “The cops figure it out, or… whatever. When we can leave. You wanna come back to my place? My dad’s cabin up near Traverse City. It’s empty until Labor Day. We could just… go. For the rest of the summer.”
Lexi turned the idea over. A different lake. A different set of walls. No missing counselors, no bloodstains in the pine needles. No John being a goody two shoes and never letting them have any fun. Just Malcolm, who was mostly an idiot but could be sweet, and who fucked her with a focused intensity that made her forget other things for a while.
“Yeah,” she said, a slow smile touching her lips. “Yeah, that could be fun.”
He grinned, leaned in, and kissed her, his mouth tasting of lake water and the beer he’d drunk earlier. His hand slid up her thigh, under the hem of her shorts. She allowed it, even arched into it slightly, the tension in her shoulders unwinding a fraction.
That’s when she saw it.
Over Malcolm’s shoulder, in the thick bracken where the pines met the beach, a flicker of movement. A face, pallid and indistinct, framed by dark leaves. Myles. The groundskeeper. He was just standing there, watching. Not the lodge, not the woods. The dock. Them.
Her body went rigid. Malcolm felt it and pulled back. “What?”
She stared hard at the spot. The leaves shivered in a breeze that hadn’t been there a second before. The face was gone.
“Nothing,” she breathed. “Thought I saw something. A raccoon.”
“Probably.” Malcolm’s hand resumed its journey, his fingers finding the edge of her swimsuit bottom. “Forget the raccoons. Come back to my bunk tonight. I’m so fucking wound up from all this. I need you.”
She was about to answer when a shadow fell over them.
“Get a room, you two,” Anderson’s voice boomed, dripping with false cheer.
Lexi jerked her shorts down, batting Malcolm’s hand away. Anderson stood behind them, dripping on the planks, completely naked, his body gleaming. He had a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.
“We’re fine right here, asshole,” Malcolm said, but he was smiling too. The tension broken.
“Lexi’s fine right here because she’s too chicken to get in,” Anderson taunted. “Scared of a little water? Or scared you’ll see my big dick and realize what you’re missing with this guy?”
“Fuck off, Anderson,” Lexi said, but it was automatic, thin. Her eyes darted back to the bushes. Empty.
“Prove it,” Anderson said, his grin turning sharp. “Take a dip. Just a quick one.”
“I said no.”
He moved faster than she expected. One moment he was standing, the next his hands were on her back—big, wet, and impossibly strong. He shoved.
Lexi pitched forward with a choked gasp. The world upended. The dark water rushed up to meet her.
Then it swallowed her.
The cold was a shock, a fist punching the air from her lungs. She plunged down, the muted sounds of laughter vanishing into a deep, gurgling silence. Her clothes instantly became heavy, dragging her deeper. Panic, pure and electrifying, seized her. She flailed, legs kicking at nothing, arms clawing upward toward a surface she couldn’t see. Her mouth opened on instinct and lake water, thick and sour, flooded in.
Her thrashing grew weaker. The blackness at the edges of her vision pulsed.
Strong hands grabbed her under the arms, hauling her upward. She broke the surface retching, water spewing from her mouth and nose in great, hacking coughs. The world was a blur of sound and panic.
“I’ve got you! Lexi, I’ve got you, stop fighting!”
It was Malcolm. On her other side, Brittany appeared, her face tight with concern. “Easy, easy! Just breathe, you’re okay!”
They half-dragged, half-carried her to the ladder at the dock’s edge. She collapsed onto the rough wood, shuddering, water pooling beneath her. The other counselors had gone silent, treading water, watching.
Anderson was still on the dock, his grin wiped clean, replaced by a sort of stunned confusion. “Shit, Lexi, I was just kidding around. You okay?”
Malcolm vaulted out of the water and was on him in two strides. He shoved Anderson hard in the chest. “You fucking moron! You know she can’t swim! What is wrong with you?”
“I didn’t think she’d just sink!” Anderson shot back, but the defiance was weak.
“She wasn’t sinking, you pushed her under, you prick!” Brittany snapped, climbing up to kneel beside Lexi, rubbing her back. “Are you okay?”
Lexi nodded, still coughing, her chest on fire. The fear was receding, replaced by a shaking, white-hot rage. She fixed Anderson with a stare that made him take a step back. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.”
A low rumble of thunder rolled across the lake, long and final. The perfect stillness of the air shattered. A wind kicked up, chilling their wet skin.
“Storm’s coming,” Pierre said, his voice carrying across the water. “A big one.”
The mood was broken, ruined. The reckless fun was gone, washed away by the lake water still draining from Lexi’s lungs and the first fat drops of rain that began to patter on the dock.
“Fuck this,” Carol muttered, swimming quickly toward shore. “I’m not getting struck by lightning.”
They all moved then, a silent, hurried exodus. They gathered their discarded clothes from the beach—jeans, t-shirts, underwear—pulling them onto damp bodies without ceremony. No one suggested going back to the counselors’ cabin. The thought of that dark, waiting building, the empty beds, the ringing phone they couldn’t hear, was suddenly unbearable.
“Lodge has the big projector,” Shelby suggested, wringing out her hair. “We could raid the kitchen for popcorn. Watch something stupid until the cops call.”
It was the only plan that didn’t sound terrible. A group decision made without words. They moved up the path as the rain began in earnest, a cold, steady drizzle that promised worse to come. Lexi walked wrapped in a towel Malcolm had fetched, her sneakers squelching. She didn’t look back at the lake, now pocked with rain, its black surface inkier than ever.
She didn’t look at the bushes where Myles had been watching.
But she felt it. The sense of being observed followed them all the way up the hill, through the swinging doors of the main lodge, and into the dark.