Page 1 of It Happened on the Lake

H arper knew better.

Of course she did.

Even though she was only nine.

She shouldn’t leave the house and had promised Daddy she wouldn’t.

But under the covers of her bed, she’d crossed her fingers. So it wasn’t really a lie. She was sick, running a fever and coughing. Daddy had given her three big spoonfuls of the cough syrup with codeine, and she was drowsy.

Even so, she couldn’t sleep.

Wouldn’t.

It was Halloween.

“I’ll be just downstairs, sweetheart,” Daddy had said, leaning over her bed and pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’ll pass out candy if anyone comes.”

“No one ever does.”

“That’s okay. I’ll watch Danny Thomas, okay? Zsa Zsa Gabor is on his show tonight.”

“Who’s she?” Harper had asked over a staged yawn.

“Possibly the most beautiful woman in the world.” He’d smiled then.

Harper asked, “Isn’t Mama the prettiest?”

Something had flickered behind his eyes, and his smile had seemed to waver a bit. “Of course she is. Now, Harper, you go to sleep. I won’t bother you. Call if you need me. I’ll be right downstairs.”

But he’d lied.

She’d seen Bandit, her dog curled on the end of the bed, raise his scruffy head, his ears perking up as the front door had creaked open. Groggy as she was, Harper had heard the engine of Daddy’s Aston Martin turn over. She’d seen flashes from its headlights as he’d driven away.

He’d lied?

To her?

She understood that he sometimes lied to Mama, but he’d never told her anything that wasn’t the truth.

She wondered how long he’d be gone. But she didn’t care, even though she felt horrible from a flu bug that had been going around school and her parents had decreed that she couldn’t go out with her friends. Tonight. On Halloween.

It just wasn’t fair.

Every one, including her jerk of a brother, was going out trick or treating. And even though it was a Monday, Levi Hunt’s parents were letting him have a party!

Harper’s only consolation was that her best friend had promised to share her candy. “I’ll get two of everything,” Beth had promised. “Even from Old Man Sievers!”

That had been another lie. Old Man Sievers was Beth’s neighbor, a creepy old guy who kept to himself in a house surrounded by a huge fence and guarded by a massive dog that looked like a wolf.

Beth wouldn’t go near his front door.

No one would.

But it didn’t matter.

The plan had been for Harper to wait until she spied Beth crossing the lake in her mom’s kayak and then meet her on the dock.

That’s where the candy switch was going to take place, Beth bringing over the duplicates she’d picked up and Harper giving her some of the candy that Gram always bought despite the fact that the mansion received no trick-or-treaters.

Ever.

Still, Gram bought dozens of big candy bars like Butterfingers and Big Hunks and Baby Ruths, all left in a huge bowl near the front door.

Harper knew just where to watch for her friend.

Even if she had to lie to her folks.

So Harper broke the rules.

And snuck out, leaving Bandit in her room.

Big deal.

It wasn’t the first time.

She didn’t bother with a jacket, just slipped silently down the stairs, out the back door and around the house.

Then, glancing back only once, she dashed through the thick mist to the open gate where gargoyles huddled on their posts.

Barely noticing them, Harper ran across the narrow, wet bridge leading to the private island where the huge house loomed.

Coughing as she opened the door to the garage, she slid inside and hurried to the staircase that curved upward to the attic space where the gardener sometimes lived.

At the landing she stepped through a small door that opened to the second floor of the main house, an entrance used by servants.

It was dark inside, only lamplight from the first level illuminating the narrow, winding staircase.

But she knew the way.

Already she had found and pocketed the extra key to the tower room, her grandfather’s private domain. Armed with a weak-bulbed flashlight, she swept past the third floor where Mama sometimes stayed and wound her way up the narrow steps to the turret.

At the top step, her leg brushed against something soft.

“ Rrawr! ” one of Gram’s cats shrieked.

Harper jumped back, her foot slipping.

She caught herself on the rail, dropping the flashlight.

It tumbled down the flight, sending its yellowish beam reeling over ceiling, walls, and stairs.

The wide-eyed cat, that miserable Diablo, crouched.

Then, with an irritated hiss, he flashed his needle-like teeth before quickly scurrying away, his long gray tail trailing after him as he skulked down the stairs.

Harper froze. Afraid someone might have heard the commotion.

But the only sound was the thudding of her own heart, pounding loudly over the whisper of air in the heat ducts.

She blinked several times, straining to listen, disregarding the fact that she felt hot.

But there was no noise from the servants’ quarters. They all had the night off. And Harper knew her grandmother was passing out baskets of candy at St. Catherine’s Hospital and Orphanage, so Gram wouldn’t be back for a while. Gramps was at his gentlemen’s club in Portland.

She silently stole down the stairs to the third floor, retrieved her flashlight at the door to the room Mama claimed.

Her “sanctuary” whenever she and Daddy had a fight.

The door was ajar and Harper peered inside, caught a glimpse of the Bible on the night table and the crucifix with bleeding Jesus on the cross positioned over the bed where several of Gram’s weird dolls had been propped.

Another cat was curled on a pillow, a fat silver tabby who lifted his head briefly.

Harper left him where he was and mounted the stairs again.

She was feeling worse than ever, but she used her purloined key and stepped inside a room that smelled of tobacco and English Leather cologne.

She didn’t bother with the lights, just made her way to the telescope mounted near the windows overlooking the lake.

Though this room had windows all around the turret, including the small bathroom, Gramps’s leather chair was positioned near south-facing panes and the wide expanse of black water.

Here, high above the trees, he had a wide view of all of Lake Twilight, illuminated tonight by a nearly full moon shrouded by the ever-shifting fog.

Seated on the edge of the chair, Harper ignored her pounding headache and adjusted the scope to peer through the eyepiece.

The telescope was already focused directly across the lake to Beth’s house.

But she didn’t spy Beth. Instead, through the rolling mist, she caught sight of Mrs. Leonetti in her bedroom.

Alaina was taking off her blouse and bra before stepping out of her slacks.

She’d been a model, Beth had confided in Harper, and a “Playboy Playmate” for Playboy magazine.

The centerfold! Like that was a big deal or something.

Harper’s mother had overheard the conversation, and Mama’s lips had pursed as she read from her True Confessions magazine.

Her eyebrows had risen, and she’d muttered something about fake boobs and “falsies” in obvious disapproval before turning the page.

Harper didn’t know about any of that, and she wasn’t interested in Alaina’s bare breasts, but she thought she might see Beth.

No such luck.

No sign of her friend.

So she turned her attention to the neighboring house where Levi Hunt was to have had his party.

But she spied no kids on the dock, where grinning jack-o’-lanterns glowed, their ghoulish reflections barely visible on the dark water.

Obviously the party was well over, the costumed kids let loose on the surrounding neighborhood.

Harper had thought she might spy her jerk of a brother at the Hunts’ house. Evan was friends with Chase Hunt, Levi’s older brother. Evan, Chase, and Rand Watkins, another neighbor, were always together. “Thick as thieves,” Mama had said. Not that Harper cared what Evan was doing.

Where was Beth?

Still out with all their friends?

Beth had mentioned that she had to take her brothers out trick or treating in the neighborhood, three-year-old twins that Harper thought were cute and annoyed Beth to no end. But it was late. Shouldn’t Bobby and Billy be in bed?

So...

She slipped off the chair and found Gramps’s binoculars. They weren’t as high-powered as the telescope, but she could search the dark water quicker standing on the window seat and swiveling.

She scanned the water, but she saw no boat through the rising mist. No sign of her friend.

Harper felt more lonely than ever.

And a little dizzy, her head thick and pounding, her legs a bit wobbly, her chest tight.

Weird.

She should go back to bed.

Before Dad got back and decided to check on her.

Besides, she knew Beth wasn’t coming.

This was a dumb idea.

Now she crept down the staircase, her flashlight catching in the eyes of several of Gram’s cats, who stared at her with unblinking gazes.

“I’m leaving,” she told them, her throat raw.

But...

There was another telescope on the main floor in the parlor, and seated next to it was one of Gram’s dolls.

She had a million of them, and Harper had been warned not to touch them unless Gram supervised.

As if she’d hurt any of the creepy things.

Most of them were old, dressed in clothes from a different era.

As Harper walked into the parlor, she picked up an ancient doll with a hard face and eyes that rolled up.

If you pushed on its belly, it let out a pitiful “Ma-ma.”

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Gram had said with pride. “Her name is Maude.”

Well, she wasn’t all that pretty. One eye barely opened, the brushy eyelashes thick, her pinafore very old-timey. Harper listened as the doll wheezed, “Ma-ma.”

The truth of it was that Harper didn’t much like dolls.

She was what Mama called a tomboy at heart, and she preferred being outside, climbing trees or swimming, or playing war with Evan and running along the trails that crisscrossed this island.

What she really wanted was a horse that she could ride forever.

So far, Mama and Daddy had refused to get her one, even though they promised Evan a motorbike when he turned sixteen.

It wasn’t fair.

Again.

Angrily she tossed icky Maude back into her chair and was rewarded with a final “Ma-ma.”

On the off chance that Beth was still coming, Harper tiptoed to the foyer with its marble floor, massive chandelier, and split, curved staircase.

She eased across the tiles to the center table where a huge bowl in the shape of a pumpkin was set, then stole a handful of candy bars before she made her way back to the parlor, where the calico cat was seated on Gram’s favorite chair.

It stood and stretched, as if hoping for Harper to pay it some attention.

Not tonight.

Not feeling as crummy as she did.

Instead she looked out the window once more, staring across the terrace to the black waters of the lake.

But her vision was off, her own watery reflection seeming to wobble in the window.

Steadying herself, she was about to peer through the telescope when she saw movement near the boathouse on the dock below.

Beth!

She had shown up!

But no.

Not Beth.

On closer inspection she realized the vision wasn’t her friend.

Instead, a woman appeared through the fog.

Ghostly.

Dressed in white.

The mist climbing around her in the unsteady moonlight.

Harper blinked, trying to focus, the world seeming woozy.

The apparition remained.

With long dark hair curling down her back.

“Mama?” she whispered, blinking, a blackness pulling at her consciousness.

The ghostly woman looked like her mother. But Mama wasn’t home, she remembered, her thoughts thick.

Why would Mama be on the dock staring out to the dark waters of the lake?

The lake that had been called Lake of the Dead by the native tribe that had once lived on its shores.

At least that’s what Gram had told her. Only later when it was settled by white people like her ancestors had the name been changed to Lake Twilight.

“More calming, don’t you think?” Gram had said with a raspy chuckle as she’d imparted what she’d called one of her little fun facts. “Though if you ask me Lake of the Dead is so much more intriguing.”

But it was creepier.

And fitting for a night like tonight.

All Hallows’ Eve. The night, according to Evan, where all the evil beings ever to exist returned to the earth in the forms of devils, ghosts, demons, and zombies. It was a night when those horrid, wicked creatures came to steal children before feasting upon them.

She didn’t really believe him.

Evan was a big, fat liar.

But still . . .

Squinting, Harper saw that the woman was still at the edge of the dock and wobbling as she gazed into the water’s dark depths.

Harper stumbled out onto the terrace, one of the cats slinking through the open door to dart toward the tram that was parked at the side of the house. The mechanical beast could scale the steep cliff from the house to the dock if you didn’t want to bother with the stairs.

She made her way to the railing, where she heard the soft flutter of bats’ wings over the gentle lap of the lake against the shore. Though her thoughts were heavy and scattered, she focused on the specter of the woman.

Something was wrong about this.

Very wrong.

Something evil.

Her hot skin crawled as she remembered what she’d learned about hell and the demons who resided there, as well as the dark fallen angel, Lucifer himself.

She shivered, though she was burning up inside.

Mama shouldn’t be out there . . .

She leaned over the railing, the world spinning as she clutched the wrought iron.

The woman below teetered on the edge of the dock.

“Mama,” Harper mouthed, and felt her knees buckle.

Her fingers slipped. Scrabbling awkwardly for the railing, she dropped the candy bars she’d forgotten were in her hand.

She caught a glimpse of movement—a shadow darting through the fog, springing onto the dock, toward Mama!

One of the demons!

Let loose on Halloween night!

She tried to scream, but she could only croak out a raspy warning that seemed to die in the night.

The world spun.

For a moment she caught glimpses of the moon peeking between the branches of a fir tree as she fell shivering onto the wet flagstones, the candy bars scattered around her.

Though her mind was hazy, she heard it.

The sound of sobbing whispering through the night.

Tortured, ragged sobs.

Just before the splash.