by JL Bryan
The six pale hands pulled the side of the canoe down, overturning us and dropping us into the lake, the living joining the dead in the water as rain poured down and lightning cracked across the sky.
Chapter Thirty
I bobbed and flailed, my thick jammies weighing me down, though at least I was trading campground mud for lake water.
I'm a good swimmer, but the life jacket was an unfamiliar distraction. I struggled to hold onto my backpack. My flashlight was a lost cause, already a distant glimmer far below the surface.
“Paul?” Josh gasped.
A boy was climbing on Josh, one of the boys who'd tipped our canoe. He was bloated, misshapen, like a pale leech attached to Josh's back.
“You're a coward, Josh,” the dead boy said. The loose teeth in his rotten gums clicked and clacked when he talked. “You sat and watched. Stupid, crying coward.”
“Get off me!” Stacey struggled with a bloated dead boy of her own, trying to drag her underwater.
Ephraim grappled with a third dead boy. All the Bobcat boys were here, in something of a dead camper zombie apocalypse.
Stacey, Ephraim, and Josh each had life preservers keeping them up, while Nathan was trapped underwater without one. I had to help Nathan first.
“I brought you something, Gwen,” I said, swimming toward her. I had a gambit to try here, but no idea if it would work or not. Gwen's face was half-submerged in the water, her wide-brimmed hat restored to her head and casting her eyes in shadow, but she was definitely watching me.
The water beside her burbled and frothed as Nathan struggled but failed to break through to the surface.
I drew the ghost trap out of my backpack and opened it.
Then I hurled all of Carmody's grave dirt at Gwendolyn, pelting her with a hundred little bits of earth and dried plant, not that any of it really touched her. It sprinkled the water all around her.
Gwen's face rose all the way from the water and she snarled. “You!”
Nathan burst through the lake's surface and took a deep breath. I'd distracted Gwen's ghost for a moment, getting Nathan a reprieve for air, but it might not last.
The preacher, Reverend Roger Carmody, barely had time to form the thinnest, waxiest of apparitions before Gwen leaped on him and shoved him under the water. I could see his ghostly face through the surface, eyes wide as she drowned him.
Again.
“You were the one who attacked me in the bath, Gwendolyn,” I said, as though it had been a certainty on my part all along, when it had been more of a suspicion. I'd made preparations based on it, though. “I thought it was the preacher at first, but it was you. Your fingers didn't feel like they belonged to a burly ex-soldier like Carmody when you were holding me underwater. I've had time to think about that.
“You drowned the preacher, didn't you, Gwendolyn? After you died. He was your first kill as a ghost. You couldn't get to Terrance or Laurie Ann, the people who truly betrayed you, because they'd fled the camp. Once you realized what you could do, what you had the power to do in your new life as an evil spirit, it was too late. The victims you wanted were gone. The preacher was the next best thing, the only available target tied to Laurie Ann. Maybe killing him would hurt her somehow. Or maybe you just like killing. Some do, once they get a taste for it.”
Gwen stared at me. Behind her, Nathan treaded water, taking deep gasps of air.
Stacey, Josh, and Ephraim were still struggling with the trio of dead boys. I needed to move fast.
“The broken oar,” I said, “and the scar on Terrance's chin. Those made me think. I began to think, maybe you didn't kill yourself, and you weren't murdered, either. Maybe you tried to murder Terrance. You were going to knock him out with the oar, then fill his pockets with rocks so he'd sink in the lake. That way you didn't have to face the humiliation of breaking off the engagement you'd been so pleased about. Or the other humiliation of marrying a man you knew was unfaithful.”
“Terrance... total snake,” Stacey managed to gasp, from where she struggled with a badly decayed dead boy trying to drag her below.
“But it went wrong,” I continued. “Maybe you didn't knock him out. Maybe you fell out of the canoe in the storm. Or maybe there was a struggle, and he pushed you.
“However it went, you ended up at the bottom of the lake by accident, didn't you, Gwen? Your murder plot backfired and you died instead. The rocks you were going to sink him with ended up sinking you instead.
“Then later, as the ghost you are now, you killed the preacher in his bath.”
Gwendolyn glared.
“You never got what you wanted, revenge on Terrance and Laurie Ann,” I said. “But there's no reason to take it out on innocent boys.”
“They're not innocent,” Gwendolyn said, her voice like glass and ice, as harsh as her shrieking laugh. “None of them. But they are mine. I can have any boy I want. Like this one.”
She seized Nate's face again and shoved him back under water.
Smiling at me, she sank away after him.
There was no sign of the preacher; maybe the repeat of his death had sent him packing for now. I hadn't expected much out of him, but I'd hoped for more of a delay and distraction than he'd actually provided.
I swam to where Gwen and Nathan had gone under, but I couldn't see them from the surface. Reaching underwater, I felt nothing.
They were heading down deep.
I didn't have any choice but to unfasten my life jacket and slide out of it so I could swim down after them. So I did that, still wishing I'd slept in lighter clothes like Stacey, because these pajamas were a serious drag on my movements.
I went down and down, into water so cold I thought I might die of hypothermia, if I didn't drown or get struck by lightning. We'd found the deep part of the lake, the Cold Hole.
Lightning briefly illuminated this cold underwater realm, and I saw Nathan below me, still sliding away deeper as if tied to an anchor.
I grabbed him by the shoulder, and his hand grabbed my arm.
I couldn't pull him up; instead, he dragged me down with him.
Kicking and fighting, I discovered there wasn't much I could do to reverse course. I held on tight, hoping my presence was at least slowing him down, but I was otherwise useless.
A cold hand closed around my other arm.
Gwendolyn, her face swollen, bruise-colored, rotten, waterlogged, her smile wide. She was glad to have both of us, I supposed, two new souls for her collection, making her a stronger entity than ever. Her blonde hair and her khaki skirt swirled around her in the depths of the lake.
My lungs burned. My head felt like it was being crushed. The world was going dark. I refused to let go of Nate, though. I would try to save the poor guy with the last of my air, the last of my strength.
The water was freezing cold, and my movements became languid, weak, useless.
I was going to die trying to haul this kid up.
Gwendolyn's ghost pulled Nathan and me down into the cold slush of the lake's muddy bottom. We were far below the surface, and I didn't see any way out.
It wasn't completely dark down here, though. My flashlight, my trusty sidearm, had preceded us and was still glowing underwater. It only created a small spotlight in the gloom, but I was glad to find it.
I released Nathan, since my grip on him was plainly not doing him much good, and grabbed up the flashlight. Between my waterlogged pajamas and the pressure of all the cold water on top of us, I felt like I was moving in painfully slow motion.
My plan was to jab the intense full-spectrum white light into Gwen's face, because ghosts typically hate that, but then something glinted in my flashlight beam, drifted around in the mud our arrival had churned up here on the lake bottom.
I stared. It wasn't possible.
It was small. Metal.
A golden ring, inset with an impressively large diamond.
I closed my hand around it and gripped it tight.
Gwen's gaze instantly locked onto my close
d fist, her eyes bulging and mouth open. She released her grip on Nathan and charged toward me.
Nathan could have, and should have, kicked free and swam up, using whatever reserves he had left to try and reach the surface.
Instead, the Boy Scout wrapped his arms around me, trying to take me with him. I wanted him to leave, to save himself, but we couldn't exactly speak. My chest was wracked with pain from the lack of air, and my brain was going sluggish and dark; he couldn't have had more air than me, probably less since he'd been dragged under while I'd at least taken a deep breath first. Maybe he'd had a chance to do that.
While Nate tried to pull me up, Gwen's grip tightened on my bicep, her slender, sharp fingers biting into my arm. She was determined to claim at least one victim tonight. She held me down, resisting Nate's futile attempts to save me.
Desperate, I simply punched Gwen's ghost in the face, my fist closed around the long-lost ring.
She went formless, turning into a pale underwater glow, and Nathan and I were free.
We kicked off and swam toward the surface, using air and strength we didn't really have, tapping into our bodies' last resources in a desperate struggle to survive.
Something grabbed my ankle. Gwen—I recognized the grip of her slender, sharp, cold fingers by now.
Nathan continued upward. I hoped he would remain unaware of my predicament and save himself. I'd only dived down here in the first place to try to save him; if we both ended up dead, I would be seriously annoyed about it.
Gwen glared up at me, her face glowing soft and blue under the water, her teeth bared. She was beautiful, demonically so, alluring as a fallen angel.
She probably wanted the ring in my hand, but if I reached the surface with the ring in my possession, I could use it to lure her into a ghost trap. That was my new plan: step one, don't drown; step two, bait a trap for Gwen, at some point after succeeding at step one, which was definitely top priority.
Maybe she would have let me go if I'd released the ring, but I knew if I dropped it, there was little chance of anyone ever finding it again. For the sake of my clients, I needed to remove the ring from the lake, not return it into the lake's depths.
I struck at her face again; the ring in my fist seemed to give me some real power over her. My knuckles smashed into slimy, deathly cold skin and a sharp, high cheekbone.
She released me, but only to surge up alongside me, giving me a hateful smile as I tried to resume my struggle to the surface.
Her fingers closed around my mouth and nose, gripping my face.
I punched her again, but it was feeble. I had no more oxygen, no more power to put into it.
She knew it, too. I could tell by the way she smiled, her face close to mine, her dead blue eyes watching me die.
Then those triumphant eyes of hers went wide with distress.
Her chest thrust forward and ruptured, the sharp edge of an ax blade jutting out. Inky black blood crawled out like a mass of worms in the water around her, as if her stricken heart had released its inner darkness.
Gwen was dragged up toward the surface like a fish on the end of a spear.
I was limp. No air left, no strength, floating in the dark depths like a spirit between worlds, not sure whether I would sink or rise, but powerless to affect my fate. Whatever strength I'd had, I'd spent it all fighting Gwen.
Nathan had made it up, though. I had not failed in my job. I could cross to the next world secure in that knowledge.
Arms embraced me. Hands gripped me, strong and sure.
I rose rapidly through the water, hauled up by an unseen benefactor. She was female, I could tell from her touch. Her long, decorated braids of hair floated around my face, brushing me with glittering gemstones, pointy seashells, and bits of metal.
As we approached the surface, another shape swam down from above and seized me. This one was much more solid, definitely male and among the living, and he hauled me the rest of the way up into the glorious, life-giving world of air above.
I burst out above the water and sucked in a long, deep desperate pull of air, telling myself I would never again take air for granted or fail to appreciate the wonder and glory of readily available air.
Nathan, who'd dived back down and dragged me up that last leg of my journey, held me as I coughed up cold, thick water from the lake's bottom.
I looked around to see the other person, the one who'd brought me all the way up from the depths, but there was no one I could see. I'd had a feeling there wouldn't be.
Nathan took in a sharp breath. He stared, aghast, at something above us.
Gwen's apparition hung like a limp corpse, her torso impaled on the business end of an ax with a handle as long as a canoe oar.
The Trailwalker held the long ax. She stood in a canoe built from what had once been an immense tree trunk, adorned with spirals and fish shapes, a royal boat, definitely the largest craft on the lake that night. A copper breastplate gleamed on the Trailwalker's chest, etched with a horned owl emblem, its wings outstretched in flight. She looked more human than ever, though clearly still not of this world, not for a long time.
She'd caught Gwen and hauled her out of the water, and now inspected her like a speared fish bleeding its life back into the water.
“No,” Gwen gasped, twitching, looking in horror at the ancient ax head protruding from her chest, suspending her above the lake.
The scene terrified me. My fist tightened around the ring I clutched; the diamond bit into the soft flesh of my palm.
Shadows moved on either side of the Trailwalker, the dead queen's entourage standing in the ancient boat with her. They threw out dark lines of braided rope that coiled around Gwen, binding her, making her their prisoner.
“No!” screamed the ghost of Gwen, the young murderess struggling to be free. She screamed again until one of the vine ropes snapped across her mouth, silencing her.
The queen's shadowy hunters pulled Gwen into their boat and bound her tight, like a prey animal they'd caught, and would perhaps be gutting and devouring later.
Another shadowy figure rose from below the water to join the crew. I couldn't see this apparition well, but her long, heavily decorated braids told me this was my unseen benefactor who'd rescued me up from below. One of the dead queen's ghostly entourage, perhaps a soldier, certainly a great swimmer. The Trailwalker had sent her to help me. Good thing we'd restored the Trailwalker's remains to her burial site.
“Thank you,” I said to my faceless benefactor, who was so thin and shadowy I could barely see her. If she responded to my gratitude, I couldn't tell. I also thanked the Trailwalker. She looked down at me impassively. Regally.
The dead queen turned her gaze away, and her shadowy crew of ghosts dropped their oars to the water. They advanced toward Stony Owl Hill in the distance.
In another flash of lightning, they were gone.
As the lightning faded, deafening thunder echoed back and forth across the sky, like a bellowing shout ricocheting down a vast canyon.
“Are you okay?” I asked Nathan, whose arm was still supporting me.
“Not really,” he gasped. “Alive, though. My dad was...right. I should have stayed away from the lake.”
“Thanks for coming back for me,” I told him.
“Hey, you did it for me. Just so you know, I was ready to give you mouth to mouth, too, if you needed it. I've got the lifesaving merit badge.”
“I bet.” I pulled away from him, treading water on my own now.
I'd last seen Stacey, Josh, and Ephraim struggling against three dead boys. Those dead boys were still in the water, but had moved away from the living people they'd been attacking. They huddled together, shivering, no longer looking monstrous. Looking like boys who'd gone out for a night of fun and seen it turn into a spectacle of horror.
“I'm sorry,” Josh said. “Thomas. Paul. Kyle. I should have gone with you.”
“You were always with us,” one of them said.
“You still are,” said a
nother.
A fourth boy appeared among the others, paler and blurrier than the others, like a nearly forgotten memory.
“That's... me,” Josh said, as the boy figure swam closer to him. “That's what I left behind here. What I've been missing.”
The fourth ghost boy vanished as it reached Josh.
Josh took a deep breath and straightened up, as if rejuvenated, a long-lost piece of himself returned.
“What now?” Josh asked his deceased friends. “What should I do? Paul? You always had the ideas. Not always the safest ones, obviously—”
“Boys!” A stern voice called from the shore. Reverend Carmody stood there in his campaign hat and khaki camp uniform. He didn't look recently drowned, or even wet. He looked as if he, too, had been restored somehow. “Boys, we're late! Let's hit the trail!”
The three boys looked at him. They shared a little smile among themselves, then swam toward the shore, racing each other to where the original owner and director of the camp waited to guide them to their next activity, whatever that might have been.
Then they were all gone, every single ghost, leaving us five living people treading water among overturned canoes and waterlogged pajamas.
I opened my hand. The moonlight reflected off the sizable diamond on Gwendolyn Malloy's engagement ring. It must have slipped off the night she'd drowned—or perhaps she'd removed it and dramatically flung it away into the water when she'd confronted Terrance about his cheating ways with the preacher's wife.
Regardless, it had lain at the bottom of the lake all these years, an emotionally charged artifact of Terrance's betrayal, of Gwen's initial hopeful happiness at being engaged to him, followed by her humiliation at her fiance's hands, then her subsequent murderous fury. The ring might have helped anchor her ghost to the campground as she stalked its trails, restless and malevolent.
I'd been lucky to find it down at the lake bottom after so many years.
Or maybe, like my last-minute lift to the surface, it had been more than luck. Maybe the ancient local spirits had made sure I found the ring for a reason: because they wanted the cursed diamond ring gone, its dark magic removed from their sacred land forever.
