The Girl in the Lake Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Kate Hall

  This edition published 2019

  Cover Art © 2019 Kate Hall

  Published by Lost Window Publishing

  Neosho, Missouri

  United States

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  eBook ISBN:978-1-950291-25-0

  Jacket Design by Kate Hall

  Interior Design by Kate Hall

  Chapter One

  There are two types of rain in Missouri. There’s the torrential downpour, the kind that makes you run for cover and hope a tornado doesn’t whip your house into oblivion. It’s the most dangerous kind, but it usually only lasts a couple hours tops. But the one we hate most—in Ginger Hills, at least—is the unrelenting steadiness of a summer rainfall. It can last for days, weeks even, without breaking. Heavy, fat drops that drag you down through the ditch and into the river, muddy water blinding you until you can’t find your way out of this miserable state. But at least that gives us a reprieve from the oppressive heat that keeps us down in the dirt.

  It’s another one of those wildly rainy days when I find myself down by the lake. Our property backs right up to the water, which is hidden by a copse of trees behind the horse pasture. The pasture used to go all the way to the lake, but the horses learned to swim and kept either escaping or getting eaten by the creatures that dwell beneath the surface. I climb through the barbed wire, methodically detaching the back of my t-shirt from the tiny spikes that cling to it. My long hair is tucked up under my dad’s old fishing hat, and my legs scratch against the bottom wire because I decided to wear shorts today.

  The water is deceptively calm, but I know not to trust it. During summer, on nice days, hundreds of people flock to the water, wake-boarding or skiing or just cruising out on the water. When the sun is out, I tend to lower Dad’s jet ski into the murky water and go out to cruise with my friends—Janna’s mom bought a new boat last summer and gave her the old one as a sweet sixteen present, so all summer Janna and Kyle and Rodney will be on the lake, pulling each other on skis or boards or tubes. On days when I meet them, we board behind Dad’s jet ski because the boat is harder to stand behind and we can do more tricks behind the jet ski.

  “Why don’t you just call it your jet ski?” Rodney asked last summer while we tethered the jet ski and boat together for the big Fourth of July party.

  I was glad to be avoiding his gaze, because I teared up. “There’s still a chance he’ll come back.” Rodney didn’t push it, just adjusted one of the buoys and went back to Kyle for a quick peck on the lips.

  Today, I stay far enough from the water’s edge to avoid being seen. There are things in this part of the lake, hungry creatures with searching eyes. Always ready to gobble you up if you slip in, even just a dip of the toes. That’s how Kyle’s sister Alyssa died.

  Allegedly died.

  I’m supposed to say allegedly even though, two years ago, I saw her going to the water on a rainy day - her property is just across the water from us. She put her legs over the edge of her dock, and the instant her toes grazed the water, she was gone. She slipped from her tenuous hold on the metal bars that are supposed to keep people safe from falling over, hitting her head on the way down. The body was never found, and sometimes, I imagine I can still see the blood she left behind.

  I climb onto our dock even though I know it’s a bad idea. Mom always tells me, “Just stay away from the water on rainy days. Period.” I’m half tempted to get on the jet ski and see if I can go slow enough to keep from getting splashed. To ride until I’m closer to Shell Knob, the safe area. Ginger Hills isn’t safe. The water by Ginger Hills is full of monsters, and everyone here grows up knowing that. It’s hard to tell how many of them believe it, but even the boys who make fun of the myths avoid the water on a rainy day.

  A splash a few feet from the dock freezes the blood in my veins. I want to investigate, to see what made the sound, but I grip the railing with white-knuckled fingers and hold myself there.

  Another splash.

  A gasp of air. A very human gasp.

  I go over slowly, tiptoeing as well as I can in a pair of dollar flip-flops.

  A girl is clinging to the ladder. My ladder. On my dock. Her hands are pale and her skin has a sick green-yellow pallor, like she hasn’t seen the sun her whole life. Her cheekbones are sunken, and her eyes are muddy green and brown, the color of the lake. Still, even though I’ve never seen her like this, and it’s been years, I recognize her instantly.

  “Alyssa,” I breathe.

  Her foot slips on the rung of the ladder, but she claws at the wooden boards.I run over and drag her out, but she doesn’t stand. Instead, she collapses onto the dock. When I fall to my knees to help her, she wraps her arms around my waist and buries her face in my lap.

  “Don’t make me go back,” she begs, her voice liquid.

  There’s something so wrong about this moment, something I can’t place a finger on. Something sickening, something that leaves a thickness in my throat that I can’t make go away.

  “You’re safe,” I say, staring into the field of black eyes just under the surface, daring them to come out and take her back. The worst part is, I almost want them to.

  Alyssa Stephens is the first person to ever escape the lake, and bile rises in my throat when I consider why.

  Chapter Two

  The last day of class is a sunny Friday in May, and half the school isn’t even here. Still, everyone is watching me. Rodney, Alyssa’s twin brother, keeps my hand in his in solidarity—we’ve been fake dating since Freshman year when we came out to each other simultaneously. Him as gay, me as bi. In this redneck town, it’s safer this way. Kyle’s eyes trace over Rodney longingly. Just one more year before they can graduate and move to New York where nobody cares about this sort of thing.

  “How is she?” Rodney asks, leaning against my locker while I clean it out. He and his parents met us at the hospital, but Alyssa had refused to speak to them.

  When she was released with a clean bill of health, she clung to me, burying her face in my shoulder. “Too bright,” she mumbled. She’d come home with me instead of going with her parents.

  “Better,” I lie. She hadn’t slept all night, sometimes waking me with her whispers. It had all been nonsense, but I shiver just thinking about it now. When I left this morning, Mom had promised to look after her. Mr. and Mrs. Stephens arrived just as I pulled mom’s ancient tan Camry out of the driveway on my way to school this morning. “Have you heard from your parents today?”

  Rodney shakes his head, his eyes downcast. I nudge him with my shoulder. “We don’t know what happened,” I say. “She’ll get better.”

  He sighs, and the bell rings.

  “Mr. M wants us in class for the last day,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’ll see you after school. Mom gave me the car.”

  He kisses me on the cheek, and I can practically feel Kyle’s jealousy rolling off him. I want to tell him how sorry I am, that of course it means nothing. It doesn’t matter, though. He should be the one getting affection, spending time with Rodney.

  One more year.

  Ginger Hills’ one history teacher, Mr. Magnus, is about ten thousand years old and hates teenagers. I’m sure, if he could, he’d throw us all in the lake. He adjusts his toupee before he starts speaking and goes over our summer homework. He’s the only teacher who gives us homework over summer, and he grades it harshly.

  “Twenty page essay on the effects of civil war reparations on the South,” he says. He even puts quotes around the phrase “civil war.”
His truck has a wrap around it that makes it look like the confederate flag, and someone spread a rumor that he was at the KKK rally in Springfield a few months ago. Half the students here hate him, some are indifferent, and the small amount remaining idolize him. The fact that he’s even allowed to teach her sends nausea rolling through me.

  Toward the end of the day, the secretary who does her nails in the front office walks in, a girl trailing behind her, arms wrapped around herself. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t place it. She’s small and drawn into herself, and her eyes remain downcast the whole time. Still, something nags at the back of my mind.

  When the bell rings and we’re finally released, I meet my little group of misfits at my car, shaking the strange new girl out of my head. Janna is waiting in her Mustang, parked right beside Mom’s Camry, and Kyle and Rodney are leaning on the hood, just far enough apart to seem straight. A twinge pulls at my heart.

  Kyle and Rodney ride in the backseat of Janna’s car—it has tinted windows, so nobody can see them holding hands or kissing in there. They follow me back home, weaving through back roads until we pull up the gravel driveway to the stone house my great-great-grandma built with her own two hands.

  Alyssa is standing on the concrete porch we added before Dad left us, pulling like a wild dog whose been suddenly leashed. Her mom’s hand is gripped tightly around her wrist, but when Alyssa jerks again, it slips.

  I skid in front of the house and put the car in park, leaving the keys in the ignition as I leap out of the vehicle.

  All the yelling and movement on the porch ceases—it’s clear that Alyssa’s parents were trying to drag her to their SUV.

  “Where are you taking her?” I demand. When I was five, I was reprimanded for being so demanding of adults, but in this moment, it throws them off. Alyssa slips out of her mom’s grip and runs over to me, lacing her fingers through mine and burying her face in my hair.

  Mr. Stephens runs a hand through his greying hair. When I was twelve, I had a crush on him because he looks more like a movie star than a dad. I told Rodney this, and he pretend-gagged while Alyssa squealed and giggled. Now, I just want to punch him for whatever he’s doing to make Alyssa so scared. “We think it would be best if our daughter was put somewhere safe. We don’t want her to hurt herself or others.”

  It takes a moment for what he’s saying to click.

  “She doesn’t need an institution,” Rodney says, clambering out of Janna’s red sports car before I can answer.

  Mom is leaning against the thick stone pillar, watching fearfully between us all. She’s never been good with confrontation—that’s why she didn’t fight when Dad told her he couldn’t stand this town anymore, taking off in his pickup truck.

  At some point in the day, Alyssa changed out of the sheer white dress she’d been wearing when she came out of the lake, and now she’s wearing a scratchy grey sweater that I only wear on especially frigid winter days. I can’t imagine that she’s comfortable on this sweltering summer afternoon. The lumpy sweater should hide her emaciated figure, but it only highlights her sunken cheeks and the wideness of her eyes. Her full lips are open just so, like a fish. Everything about her makes me think of the lake, the darkness that took her.

  “We’ll keep her here,” I offer. I haven’t asked Mom about it, but now that I’ve said it, I can’t take it back.

  The Stephenses look at each other and then back to me. I tighten my fingers in Alyssa’s delicate ones.

  I continue, “Besides, you’d have to take her to a hospital in Branson. Do you think anyone there would be able to help her with what she’s been through? Do you think they’ve trained to help girls taken by the lake?”

  Mr. Stephens is a practical man—always has been. He didn’t grow up in Ginger Hills like Mom and Dad and everyone. He never believed in the creatures in the lake. Looking at his daughter, though, he has to. She’s practically a part of the water herself.

  After a moment of deliberation, he throws his hands in the air. “Fine. Fine.” He and his wife don’t even say goodbye as they climb into the SUV and leave.

  “Fine,” Alyssa whispers, her lake-deep eyes boring into mine. The tiniest bit of a smile crosses her face, although her eyes are encased in sadness.

  Mom doesn’t confront me when we file into the house. I lead Alyssa to the basement, back to my room. We don’t have any spare bedrooms in the house, so she slept on the ratty old couch in there last night. I have the whole basement to myself, but it’s mostly open ceilings and concrete floors. Cold and damp, but private.

  Rodney keeps his eyes firmly planted on his twin sister. They have the same sharp jaw and high cheekbones, and they used to have the same piercing brown eyes. Now, though, Alyssa’s are different, changed by the lake, and her features are sharper than his.

  Predatory.

  The word slips into my mind without invitation, and I push it away as quickly as it comes. She’s still Alyssa. It’s not like she’s a monster.

  “Where have you been?” Rodney demands without warning. He’s my best friend, but he’s never really believed in the horrors that reside in the lake. Even after his sister was taken, he was convinced she’d simply drowned.

  She opens her mouth, eyes wide. Closes it again. Opens it. She reminds me of a trout taking in water.

  She finally says, “The lake.” Simple as can be.

  His elbows are resting on his knees, and he buries his face in his hands in frustration. “I mean all this time. Where. Were. You?”

  She narrows her eyes, challenging him. I’m almost afraid that she’s going to strike. “The. Lake. But I guess you always thought you were smarter than me. Why don’t you come up with an answer that you like better?”

  I suck in a sharp breath. This is the first time she’s referred to her former life, and it’s a vicious attack against her brother.

  Silence envelopes the room. Rodney keeps going to speak before shutting his mouth again and again. Somehow, though, he doesn’t resemble a fish the way Alyssa does.

  “I’m going to grab snacks,” says Janna. Sweet, mild Janna who can’t handle conflict. Kyle follows her up the stairs, their footsteps amplified through this cavernous space. That leaves just the three of us.

  I ask, “Alyssa, if you remember everything before, why didn’t you go home? With your parents?”

  Her eyes rest on mine, and I drown in the deep muddiness of them. “Because you know. You saw me.” I bite my lip and look away, focusing on a water stain on the wall where the basement tried to flood last winter. After a long moment, she continues, “Not just that day.”

  “What is she talking about?” Rodney demands, boring his eyes into the side of my skull. I can feel it.

  Before either of us can respond, Janna and Kyle come banging down the stairs, their arms full of chips and cookies and soda.

  “Ooh, Oreos!” Alyssa exclaims. “I’ve missed Oreos so much!” She hops off the couch, and her bubbly movements remind me of the Alyssa I knew before she disappeared. We used to swim across the way to each other’s docks and spend hours together, jumping on a floating trampoline her parents bought or hopping off the docks into the water. I’m thrown by this spurt of personality returning from the whispering creature who stayed at my house overnight.

  We spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out, chatting about nothing important. “Greg and Tammy got married?” She gasps at the news that my nearest neighbors, each half a mile on either side of my house, have committed. “They’re only, what, sixteen now?”

  “And a half,” Janna says, rolling her eyes as she imitates Tammy’s whiny tone.

  For a moment, just a moment, it’s like she was never gone, and everything is okay.

  Chapter Three

  The first day of summer vacation, I wake early in the morning, when the light is just turning the gray-blue color of pre-dawn. Alyssa is sound asleep on my couch, and everyone else went home late last night. My eyes don’t want to open, and I groan when my clock r
eveals that I only slept for three hours.

  Still, I tiptoe up the basement stairs, thankful they don’t creak. I glance down the hallway, and Mom’s door is shut.

  I sneak a few cans of chopped tomatoes and half a loaf of bread that’s about to go bad out of the pantry - all things that nobody will miss. Then, I walk out to the pasture, which is covered with a gentle fog. Baby, our old gray roan mare, nickers at me gently. In exchange, I give her the end piece of bread that nobody has eaten. After that, she goes back to eating the round bale of hay. The rest of the horses must still be in the barn, sleeping and swaying to the gentle breeze.

  I shove my canvas bag full of food under the barbed-wire fence, and, this time, I’m careful to make sure my hoodie doesn’t snag.

  Today, I’m not afraid. There’s nothing in the water that wants to hurt me, to take me. It’s not raining, so it’s safe.

  I dangle my legs off the dock and begin to sprinkle breadcrumbs into the water.

  Soon enough, the first of them comes.

  A giant catfish floats to the surface, nabbing a piece of bread before rushing back under the dock. It must be as big as me, if not bigger. Still, I’m not afraid. Another fish, this one a carp, comes up, which brings a whole swarm of them. They watch me warily, their eyes dark.

  Some people come to Ginger Hills just to catch our legendary huge fish, but they rarely do. They’re easy to spot, but near impossible to catch.

  And I love them more than anything.

  I know the name of every fish, twenty in total. The big catfish with a dark brown mark like a heart is Winny, and she’s always the first to arrive. The three carp with scars all along their back and a slower pace are Gertrude, Beatrice, and Sandy. There’s also Ramona, Dav, Penelope, Nan, Vincent, Ash, Cat, Theo, Oscar, Xan, Lyla, Jack, Mikey, Sidney, and Kells. My favorite doesn’t show up, but I think nothing of it. That one won’t be here.