Into The Lake: A gripping psychological thriller

by LK Chapman

  He sat down on the grass and she made a sound of exasperation.

  ‘Gareth–’

  ‘I’m tired. I just need to sit down, I won’t talk to you if that’s what you want.’

  ‘You know, I’m going to tell my mum about your house and how you’re living. You shouldn’t be there. One of my mum’s friends is a social worker–’

  ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re an interfering bitch?’ Gareth asked casually.

  ‘At least no one can say I’m a freak,’ she spat back. ‘Not like you. I’m only trying to be kind. How do you expect anyone to help you if you throw it back in their face?’

  ‘I don’t need help from you. I don’t need help from anyone.’

  She laughed. ‘Really?’ she said.

  ‘Are you going to swim, then? Or maybe you’re so perfect you can just walk across the water.’

  With a furious glance at him, she turned her back and then sat down on the bank, slipping her feet into the water. Gareth watched her closely. He had the feeling that if he hadn’t been there she would have thought twice about her swimming idea, but with him watching, she inched her way further in, finally flinging herself away from the shore and gasping as the water covered her body.

  Gareth stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘it’s too cold. I’ll help you get out.’

  Once she’d stopped gasping, Mikayla choked out, ‘I’d rather drown than have you touch me.’

  I’d rather drown than have you touch me. It was obvious Mikayla was still drunk and emotional to have said something so stupid. But the words set a flame flickering inside him. The same flame that shoplifting had used to set alight, though the excitement of that had long since dulled.

  Gareth stripped off his own clothes, down to his underwear, as Mikayla stubbornly thrashed her way further from the bank. He wandered down to the water, watching her closely. She had swum further out, her black hair fanned out around her. But then she started struggling, her head dipping below the water for a moment.

  ‘Help,’ she gasped as she bobbed up again. ‘Help me!’

  He jumped in and swam awkwardly over to her. He’d never learned to swim very well, and the water was bloody freezing. It took his breath away, and he was alarmed to find his feet couldn’t touch the bottom. Mikayla had bobbed below the surface again, and then she popped back up as he reached her. She tried weakly to put her arms around him, but he stopped her. Their eyes briefly met, terror and panic filling hers as he gently pushed her shoulders into the water, down until her head went below. He was getting pretty cold and scared himself now, but the excitement was stronger than all that. Her struggles were weak, and his body hummed with electricity. And besides, she didn’t want his help. She’d rather drown than have his help. Isn’t that what she’d just said? Just like his mum would rather drown in her piles of festering junk than have Gareth help her.

  Abruptly, he grew scared. His head whipped round to the clearing. Could he have been spotted? Nobody was there. No, wait. There was movement. He froze, then choked as the icy water rose up to block his mouth and nose. Was that – Mum. His mum was there. Only for a fleeting second, and then she disappeared again. Excitement surged through him, taking him aback with its force and intensity. Now she knows what she’s turned me into.

  He kept his hands on Mikayla’s shoulders a moment longer, but she began to float away from him. She was gone. A tingling thrill swept through his body, but equally strong was the cold seeping into his bones. The water seemed to be trying to grab him, to pull him down too. He quickly thrashed his way towards the shore, and heaved himself out onto the bank. While he pulled his clothes back onto his body, the electric feeling surged back again as he relived the moment; that moment when she’d realised he wasn’t going to help her. That moment she’d realised she was going to die. He couldn’t help but grin as he stuffed his numb feet into his shoes, and then he ran back to the path, and towards the campsite.

  Natalie

  71

  ‘Your mum saw you do it?’ Natalie said.

  ‘She did. I’d told her I was going to leave home and she was so upset she came to the lake to talk me out of it, but instead she saw me with Mikayla. Not that we ever spoke about that. But she was always nervous around me. She turned away when I looked at her. She never questioned me, or tried to get me to do anything, she just left me alone.’ He laughed. ‘Perhaps she knew I was going to kill her too. Because I did. Not until a good few years later, but she got what she deserved.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Natalie croaked, her mouth drying, ‘about what happened with you and your mum when you were young.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I told you before. You shouldn’t have gone through that.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have gone through that,’ he said, turning the words over as if he found them quite intriguing. ‘What should I have gone through?’

  ‘I just – your mum wasn’t well. It wasn’t good for either of you. But you were only a child, it was a lot for you to deal with–’

  At this Gareth grabbed her by the throat. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he spat into her face. ‘Don’t you dare try to tell me about my own life. You don’t have a fucking clue.’ He let go of her abruptly and sat back down, crossing his legs and leaning back comfortably. ‘I can tell you about my life, though, if you want. Would you like that, Natalie?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Anything to buy some time.

  He nodded indulgently. ‘Where should I start? Well, Josh thinks his family was bad. And it was. But I think I could make a good case for mine being worse. I think things were always weird. You don’t realise when you’re a kid how weird stuff is, not until you get older and realise other people’s lives aren’t like yours. I used to be pathetic like my mum. We’d just hide away amongst all the crap she bought, like we were in some sort of nest. It felt nice, and cosy, and safe. Or she’d take me to the shops, and she’d be so excited. So ridiculously excited – like buying this one more thing would change our lives. But it’s all an illusion. My dad would come back, and our nest of belongings couldn’t protect her from him, could it? He’d get so furious with her about the state of the house. About how she’d never sort anything out. About how she was spending all of their money on stuff we didn’t need.’

  ‘I didn’t realise–’ Natalie said.

  ‘Why would you realise?’

  ‘I just mean, I didn’t know quite how bad things were.’

  ‘Neither did Josh. This was before I knew him; before I moved to his school. We lived in this nice house – it should have been nice, anyway. It was nice to me, I didn’t know any different. I knew it was hard to play or to get around, or find anything, but like I said, it was our nest, and I was just a little kid. And there was this big garden that wrapped round three sides of the house. I could run wild in there. Anyway. One day my mum took me out after school and bought a load of stuff for redecorating the living room; paint, curtains, a new lampshade, cushions. She was on such a high. I was excited, too, because she said I could help. But when my dad got home from work and found all of our supplies, he went mental; he said she would never actually do the redecorating – which was true, of course, she never actually did any of these little projects. And he started taking things out and throwing them in the street outside – new stuff, old stuff, he didn’t even look at what he was grabbing. Things were smashing and breaking. My mum was terrified. Crying. Screaming. I didn’t want him to keep upsetting her – like I said, I was still a bit soft back then, I guess I was only about seven, maybe six. I picked up one of the pots of paint by its handle and just swung it into him while he was going out of the front door to chuck some more stuff into the street. It hit him somewhere stupid like his arm, nowhere that could do him any damage, but it caught him off balance, and he fell over and hit his head on the ground.’

  ‘Gareth–’

  ‘I didn’t really know what was going on. There was all this blood, and his head was messed up, and Mum was h
ysterical. But I don’t think I really felt anything about it. I never meant to kill him – I didn’t get into any trouble, obviously, I was only little and everyone knew he was a nasty piece of work. I was only trying to defend my mum. Only, Mum wasn’t grateful for the fact I’d tried to help her. She hated me, because the old bastard was the love of her life. She never outright said it, but I knew she blamed me. Somehow she forgot all the bad shit he used to do, and she’d go on and on about the handful of nice or romantic things he did, even though it really was just that – a handful.’

  Natalie’s skin prickled. ‘Wasn’t there anyone you could talk to?’

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ignoring her, ‘I got pretty used to life by myself. She loved the stuff far more than she loved me. I learned that the hard way.’

  ‘Gareth, you know that’s not–’

  He held a finger up. ‘Just shut up and listen.’

  ‘I need the toilet,’ she said. She did, a bit, and maybe if Gareth took her to the bathroom there was something she could do to escape. Could she hit him? Or if he left her alone, could she get out of a window? But she wasn’t surprised by his reply.

  ‘Good job I’ve put the plastic down then. There’s going to be all sorts of spillages.’

  ‘Gareth, please,’ Natalie said, ‘killing me isn’t going to make anything better.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you can guess what else happened after he died,’ Gareth continued, ignoring her again. ‘Not a single thing he ever wore, owned, touched, could ever leave. She told me eventually that she first started hanging on to things after she had a baby that died – a baby that would have been my big sister. Hoarding all her baby things was when she started getting bad. So of course when she lost somebody else, it just spiralled. We ended up having to move, she couldn’t afford the nice house on the nice street – she hated that, having to leave her home. But all the shit came with us. And then it wasn’t even logical any more. She just kept everything. Even rubbish, sometimes. She injured herself falling in the house and couldn’t work any more, so she’d spend all her time combing through charity shops, day after day, building up her hoard.

  ‘The house soon got pretty fucked up. She couldn’t get in and out very easily, so she stopped the charity shopping and started ordering stuff from catalogues, and online. People barely saw her. I think some people even suspected she wasn’t there at all, with how the house looked from the outside. She barely spoke to me, unless I threatened to throw some of her shit out. She’d get up from her filthy old armchair and talk to me then. I suppose, to give her credit, there were some times she said she regretted how things were, or she’d make a show of asking me about my day, about what I liked, who my friends were, or she’d remind me how close we used to be. But I’d shut her down pretty quick when she started that. I started to think perhaps it would be good to kill her. Not by accident, like my dad. On purpose. I could be, like, a self-made orphan. I thought that would be pretty cool.

  ‘The thing was, it was risky. She still took care of some stuff, and the school would realise. She needed to put in an appearance occasionally. Sometimes people serve functions. I was smart enough to realise that. Like Josh. Once I’d met him, he was a good distraction for me. I liked the whole thing he had going on with Toby. Not the way Toby treated him, I thought that was distasteful. Just a bully, like my dad. But I liked trying to get inside Toby’s head and weird him out. Those were some good times. Then, later, of course, there was Hearts, and Josh came in very handy for that.’

  ‘What about Mikayla?’

  ‘Mikayla was just there. Right place, right time. I had to kill somebody. I thought about it all the time. Day and night. I knew it couldn’t be Mum; not then. I was going to get away from her anyway when I eventually managed to move out, so I knew I could bide my time on that one. But Mikayla just made it so easy. She was irritating, interfering, and she would have had no idea it was coming. The buzz from it lasted me for years. It was incredible.’

  ‘And then?’ Natalie breathed, a chill making her shiver. How long could she keep him talking for? She’d been gone hours. She closed her eyes briefly. Just keep asking questions. Keep him talking.

  ‘Well, then the buzz ran out, several years ago now. I knew I was entering a new phase. I planned for a time, and then when I was ready, I went back to where it all started. I turned on the gas on Mum’s old deathtrap of an oven and I blew the whole thing off the face of the earth, her included. Then, I really got down to business. That’s when I started looking for my special girls. The ones I found on Hearts.’

  Josh

  72

  ‘That’s her car!’ he said, as they drew close to Gareth’s house.

  Josh stopped a little way away, keen not to be spotted, and parked in a muddy clearing in front of a farm gate. Toby had called the police on the way and told them the address, but they both immediately got out of the car and crept towards the house, not wanting to leave Natalie in danger a moment longer.

  ‘How should we do this?’ Josh whispered. ‘If we make any noise trying to get inside he’ll just realise we’re here.’

  ‘Get as close as we can, and try to look through some windows,’ Toby suggested. ‘Perhaps we’ll be able to see where they are and what’s going on.’

  Josh nodded. ‘Okay.’ Slowly, they picked their way towards the house, Toby going around the right hand side, while Josh went left.

  Josh soon came to a window near the back of the house where the curtains were drawn. He crept closer. Could he hear voices inside? He couldn’t make out the words. But if they were talking, that meant Natalie was alive!

  He jumped as Toby appeared around the back of the house, and quickly made his way over. ‘Are they in there?’ Toby whispered.

  ‘I can hear talking.’

  ‘So she’s alive?’ Toby asked urgently.

  ‘Yes. She must be.’

  ‘How can we get inside? He’s going to hear us–’

  At that moment, the voices inside stopped abruptly and then, piercing through the silence around the house, Natalie screamed.

  Natalie

  ‘No!’ she shrieked as he lunged at her. ‘No, please, no!’ In her violent struggles, the chair overturned and she crashed onto the floor, narrowly avoiding Gareth’s attack. Hysterical now, she carried on screaming and crying, thrashing uselessly as he grabbed her, until they both heard a loud crash from the kitchen. Gareth’s head whipped around in shock. Knife in hand, he made his way towards the kitchen door, only to be thrown backwards as it burst open and Josh and Toby were there. She let out a huge sob of relief. Thank God, thank God!

  Gareth was so taken by surprise that Toby managed to hit him before he could react, and Josh made a grab for the knife, cutting a huge gash across his palm in the process. Running to her, he used it to cut the tape from her wrists and ankles, before throwing the knife well out of Gareth’s reach. Toby hit Gareth again, sending him crashing into the dining table, where he then flopped down to the floor.

  ‘Nat, are you hurt?’ Josh said quickly, checking her body for wounds. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘Just my head when he hit me,’ she said. ‘Get me out of here, Josh. Get me out of here!’

  Toby and Josh helped her up between them, leading her away from Gareth’s crumpled body. ‘You’re going to be okay,’ Josh said. ‘It’s over, Nat, it’s over.’

  Just as they were making their way out into the living room and towards the front door, Toby cried out, and they turned. Gareth was holding the knife he’d stabbed Toby with, blood dripping down the handle. ‘Oops,’ he said, flashing a smile. ‘I have all your knives, Josh, remember? Looks like you’re going to be responsible for a massacre.’

  Josh lunged at him, but Gareth took a swipe with the knife, narrowly missing cutting Josh’s face.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Josh cried, his words full of fear and betrayal. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Because I know the truth, Josh. People are nothing. Family is nothing. Re
lationships are nothing. The only thing that’s real is when you have someone in the palm of your hand and they know that it’s up to you whether they live or die.’ He laughed. ‘My mum would stress for months over whether to throw away a piece of rubbish. I can decide in a heartbeat to take somebody’s entire life. And it is never a difficult decision. It’s no different to when I used to go shoplifting, only to throw away everything I stole. Nothing means anything. Only the thrill means anything. But you know how it is, Josh. Diminishing returns. The risk has to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. On the topic of which, did you find my message for you?’

  Natalie stared at Josh, while Toby sagged against her. ‘Josh!’ she cried, seeing that he was getting sucked in, desperate to understand the actions of his former friend. ‘Don’t listen to him!’

  Josh turned to look at her, and Natalie screamed as Gareth took the chance to grab him and hold the knife against his cheek.

  ‘Let him go!’ Natalie screamed.

  Gareth cried out suddenly and dropped his knife, blood streaming from his hand where Josh had bitten him. Josh lurched over to her, taking Toby’s weight from her. ‘Go,’ he told her, ‘open the door, I’ve got him.’

  ‘What are you doing, Josh?’ Gareth asked. ‘Helping Toby? I’ve done you a favour! Let him die.’

  Natalie paused. Josh and Gareth’s attention was fixed on each other, Gareth looking triumphant, proud, thinking he had won, while Josh was angry, heartbroken and sickened. His eyes were shiny, but his face was set hard with fury.

  ‘I thought you hated how Toby picked on someone weaker than him,’ Josh said. ‘And yet, you’re using Hearts–’

  ‘The women I meet on Hearts aren’t weak like you are. That’s why it’s fun. They’re strong. They think they’re out to have a good time. And they do, right up until I decide it’s time for me to have my fun.’