Page 11

He was too close! Only a few steps away.
Kara redoubled her efforts as he took a swipe at her.
Crrrrraaaacccck!
She felt a shifting and saw, to her horror, the ice fissuring beneath her feet. First a single jagged line, then cracking like a giant spider web beneath her.
He froze. “Shit!”
The web splintered.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Stop!”
In the back of her mind, she thought about the fact that she could barely swim. She didn’t move.
But it was too late.
Another loud, ominous crack, almost a moan, reached her ears.
Then, in an instant, the ice beneath her feet shattered.
Screaming, Kara fell through, plunging deep into the frigid depths that swallowed her whole.
She sank like a stone into the darkness, into the lake’s frigid grasp.
Flailing wildly, fighting panic, she tried to swim through the air bubbles and chunks of ice to the surface, where she spied the moon through the layer of ice above. Lake water swirled around her and filled her throat.
Still, if she could reach the surface and—
More of the thin ice splintered, the water around her roiled and she was tossed about as the man fell through, his huge body, so close to hers, creating waves that pushed her away from the dark space free of ice, away from the air she so desperately needed.
No, no, no!
She tried to bob up, kicking to get back to the ice-free surface, while he, too, was struggling to get to air, his heavy clothes and boots like dead weight on him. But he saw her and reached out.
He reached for her and she slipped out of his grasp, trying to swim, flailing frantically, panicked as she searched desperately for the surface, for the moon riding high in the night sky. Instead, she found darkness. Water all around her. Her lungs on fire.
Swim, Kara-Bear. Swim!
She heard Marlie’s voice in her head.
But it was no use.
What little air she had in her lungs escaped in a rush of towering bubbles, and her lungs ached and burned.
This dizzying black world of the lake was spinning around her.
She coughed only to lose air and gain water.
She kicked and flailed, but it was no good. She couldn’t find the hole in the ice, didn’t know what was up and what was down.
Don’t give up, Kara, don’t!
Marlie’s voice. Distant and faint.
Kara’s lungs were near bursting when she let go. Her panic subsided as she spun in lazy circles and was only vaguely aware of arms surrounding her in the gathering darkness. The world turned eerily black and surreally quiet and then . . . then, as if from a faraway place, she heard the slow, sure strains of the music again.
“Sleep in heavenly peace.”