The Lady of Dark Lake

by Raven Snow

“We did indeed.”

  “Was it Riley?”

  “Riley?” Conners repeated, eyebrows raised.

  “I don’t know him. I don’t even know his last name. I just know he’s been missing.”

  Conners picked up a pad of paper from the corner of his desk with one hand and a pen with another. He began to jot something down, which Lady found more than a little annoying. It felt like she had said something wrong, something incriminating.

  “What is it that makes you think this Riley person is missing?” asked Conners.

  Lady hated talking to authority figures. They made her feel small and wrong, like she was in high school again. “I think I saw a picture of him out there on a cork board.” She motioned over her shoulder. “And…” Lady trailed off, not sure whether or not she should say the next part. She decided it would be foolish not to. “I’ve been spending time with Andrea. I know she’s got a boyfriend named Riley who went missing. She’s been worried.”

  Conners nodded and jotted down something else. “The body hasn’t been officially identified yet, so I can’t say who it was with any certainty, but…” The way he trailed off said he was certain anyway. “Riley Rodgers is the only missing person in Dark Lake right now, and the body found has an uncanny resemblance to him. Not that I’m an expert on these things.”

  “Poor Andrea.” Lady wondered if she had heard yet, if she had accepted it or if she would be in denial until the body was identified. Geez, she hoped Andrea wasn’t the one forced to identify the body.

  “The two of you are close, huh?”

  “I’m not really close to anyone here. I’ve only been here for a few days.” Even so, she shrugged. “She and I clicked though, I guess. She seems nice.”

  “Have you heard anything that might be relevant to the case?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you heard anything about Riley? About what Andrea thinks might have happened to him?” Conners tapped his pen against the pad in front of him. “Or Destiny for that matter. If I remember correctly, Riley spent a great deal of time down at the marina. He would have interacted with both girls.”

  Again, Lady found herself hesitant to fill him in on everything she had heard. “I know that Andrea and Destiny got into a fight over Riley last night,” she admitted. It seemed smarter to come right out with the truth. If Conners did any digging at all, he would find out about the fight. Heck, he might know about the fight already.

  “Did it come to blows?” There was a slight smile on Conners’ face that seemed inappropriate.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You got in the middle of it, huh?”

  “What?” Lady was bringing a hand up to her black eye when the door opened.

  “Here you go,” said Shannon, sitting a coffee in front of Lady and then a handful of creamer and sugar packets. “I forgot to ask how you take it.” She pulled something from her back pocket and sat that on the desk as well.

  The door was already closing before Lady realized that the third object Shannon had brought for her was a compact. “Do I still have that gunk on my eye?” She groaned and opened the compact to confirm that, yes, she still had mushed up herbs all around her eye-socket.

  “I wasn’t sure if you were going for some new and exciting look or not. I don’t stay up to date on the latest trends.” Conners smirked as he handed her a box of tissues.

  Lady took him up on the tissues. She scrubbed at her face with a handful even though the pressure made her black eye throb.

  “But back to the matter at hand.” Conners could switch gears quickly. His smile was gone and his expression was serious again. “Can you tell me where this fight took place? What was said?”

  “It happened at the, um…” Lady had to think for a second to remember the name of the bar. “We were at the Albright. I don’t know what started the fight. I was there with Andrea. Like I said, we kind of hit it off. Destiny happened to be there too. They ended up fighting in the parking lot. I don’t really remember the exact words they used. I know Destiny said Riley had slept with her. She said it had happened more than once. I’m not sure if that was true or if she was just saying it to get a rise out of Andrea. Either way, Andrea was mad. She said he loved her, that he wouldn’t ever do something like that.” Lady hesitated. Something was odd about what she had just said, but she wasn’t sure what.

  “Was anyone else there hearing all this?” asked Conners, eyes on his paper.

  “A few people came out of the bar to watch, but they didn’t stay for long. Dom ran them off. He was trying to break up the fight between Destiny and Andrea too. He probably did a better job of it than I did. It’d be hard not to.”

  “I don’t know. Unintentionally knocking out a relative stranger is a good way to put an end to a fight.” Conners offered her a smirk that Lady didn’t find much comfort in. “Dom was there, though. Did the two of you talk?”

  That was an awkward question to answer. Lady looked down at her coffee. She hated coffee. Sugar and creamer didn’t help. When she drank coffee, she drank it fast, like medicine. “I was talking to him when the fight broke out, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Lady took a swig of her coffee and immediately burned her lips, mouth, and throat. She almost dropped the cup entirely as she placed it back down on the desk. She continued immediately, trying to act like that hadn’t just happened. “He wanted me to hurry up and skip town. He offered me a ride and some money to do it. He seemed to think me being here would just complicate things.”

  “Did he say how you would complicate things?”

  “I dunno. You’d be better off asking him. He doesn’t think I understand what goes on here enough, and he’s kind of right. This place is weird, and the people in it are twice as weird.”

  “Did Destiny also suggest that you leave?”

  Lady had no reason to defend Destiny. It wasn’t like she had any great fondness for her, especially not after she had punched her in the face. Accident or not, that hurt. “Yeah, she made it pretty clear she wanted me to leave too.”

  “Did they threaten you?”

  “I thought maybe they were going to, but if that was part of the plan, they never got that far. Mainly, they just tried to bribe me.”

  “I see. And—” Conners was cut off when his phone began to ring. He picked it up and frowned at the screen for a moment before answering. “Yeah?” He sighed wearily. “Yeah… Yeah, okay. Give me a second here.” He placed a hand over the receiver as he lifted his head to address Lady. “Go out there and have an officer help you make a statement about the fight last night. There’s some stuff I have to do. I won’t ask that you stay here at the police station, but I do ask that you don’t leave town for the time being. Give me a call if someone threatens you. Got that?”

  “I got it.” Lady stood with her coffee, leaving the creamer and sugar in a pile on Conners’ desk. She left his office.

  ***

  Conners had been right about his officers. They were pretty useless. It took the concentrated efforts of all three men to make a statement. In the end, they couldn’t even find the right paperwork. She ended up writing everything on a yellow legal pad that she signed and dated. She wasn’t sure how well it would hold up in court, but that wasn’t her problem. What was her problem was the fight that kept replaying itself in her head.

  Lady handed the compact back to Shannon on her way out the door. “You take care, honey,” she called after her. Lady raised her hand in a halfhearted wave. She had a feeling they would be seeing each other again and soon.

  Ms. Poole was still in the car, in the driver’s seat. Wisps of her grey hair were blowing in the breeze from the AC. She closed a thick, hard-back book when the passenger side door opened. “All finished?”

  Lady wished she was all finished. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “You can ask.”

  Lion hopped onto the dashboard and out of Lady’s way as she sat down. “Will you drive me to the ma
rina?”

  “Why do you need to go there?”

  Lady thought back to precisely what Dom and Destiny had asked her not to do. “I think I need to complicate things.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ms. Poole was surprisingly okay with rolling along with Lady’s whims. She didn’t even ask for an explanation. Maybe she had the gist of what was going on already since she had heard about the body. Not that that would account for her being so willing to go down to the marina herself.

  Lady didn’t want to open her big mouth and talk herself out of a free ride, but she couldn’t stand driving in silence. “So, you have a boat down at the marina, huh?”

  Ms. Poole kept her eyes on the road. “I do.”

  “That’s cool. What kind is it?” Lady didn’t know anything about boats. The look Ms. Poole gave her seemed to suggest that this was obvious. “Do you go out on it much?”

  “No.”

  “Does your family go out on it?”

  “Crispin can’t stand the water.”

  Lady wondered if that meant Crispin was Ms. Poole’s only family or if she had disowned everyone who wasn’t him. Knowing what she did of the old lady, it could really go either way. “So why do you keep a boat?”

  “Because I own a boat and pay for it to be kept at the marina.”

  “Ah, okay. That makes sense. That’s cool.” Lady looked out the window for the rest of the drive and thanked her lucky stars that it was a short one.

  ***

  When Ms. Poole parked, Lady hopped out. She was surprised when she heard the car door on the driver’s side open as well. “Why are you getting out?” she asked Ms. Poole.

  Ms. Poole raised a sparse, gray eyebrow at the girl. “Am I not allowed?”

  “No, I mean, I just thought you would wait in the car.”

  “I feel like stretching my legs.” Ms. Poole walked on ahead. She cut an odd figure with that long skirt of hers swishing through the pine needles. Lady sure wished she would stay in the car.

  At Lady’s feet, Lion mewled inquisitively. He had gotten out of the car as well, it seemed. “Yeah, sure, why not. The more the merrier, right?” Lady shut the door and hurried down toward the docks.

  She only allowed herself a cursory glance at the office building as she passed it by. For once, there was a closed sign in the window. No surprise there. No one was supposed to be working at the marina today. The most Lady could hope to find would be the police, maybe some divers still lingering around to help collect evidence. She didn’t know how these things worked.

  There was police tape in a perimeter around the docks. It fluttered in the breeze where an end had come loose from where it was once tied to a tree. There weren’t any police that Lady could see. Dark Lake did seem to be understaffed, and they had already found the body. It wasn’t like they could shut down the whole lake and every stretch of land within swimming distance.

  Lady jogged out onto the pier, past the boat house. She didn’t stop until she was at the very edge, staring out at the water and its undulating waves. She could hear the gentle splashing of water crashing up against the wooden pillars beneath her feet. Dark clouds were moving in. It smelled like rain.

  “Were you hoping to find someone here?” asked Ms. Poole. Lady had jogged fast enough to pass her by. She had nearly forgotten about her in the time it had taken the old woman to catch up.

  Lady glanced over her shoulder. Ms. Poole stood only a few feet away. Lion sat just behind her, peering out around her ankles, tail swishing.

  “Kind of.” Lady looked back out across the water. Who had she expected to find, though? Destiny? Andrea? If that was the case, why hadn’t she called them first?

  Realization came over Lady as suddenly as if someone had taken a bucket of lake water and dumped it over her head. Everyone talked to Lady like there was something fundamental about Dark Lake that she didn’t understand. As long as she failed to understand, she was incapable of being anything but a burden to the town, a complication.

  Why did she even care? Why didn’t she just hop on the next bus like she had been planning all along? Heck, maybe Dom’s offer still stood. She could get a ride to the next town over and some cash out of the deal.

  The truth of the matter was too loud to ignore. It sat heavy on Lady’s chest, anchoring her to Dark Lake. If she left now, she would be haunted. It wasn’t just Riley’s death either, it was the whole town, a town made of a million little mysteries that needed solving.

  “You’re still unsure about what you saw that day,” said Ms. Poole. It wasn’t a question, though Lady answered it anyway.

  “Yeah.”

  “So why don’t you take another look?”

  A cold chill shot through Lady. Just what was Ms. Poole implying. “What? Like go in the water again?” She couldn’t think of anything she would like to do less.

  Ms. Poole nodded. “Stay near the dock this time. I’ll be right here. I’ll help you get out should anything happen.”

  Uncertainty made Lady laugh. How was Ms. Poole, of all people, going to save her from drowning? More importantly, “What am I supposed to see down there? They already got the body. Not that I would have been able to see it from the pier. You can’t see two feet in front of you in that water.”

  “Why did you come here then?” asked Ms. Poole, and it was a question that Lady still couldn’t quite answer.

  That was a good question, and the longer Lady thought about it, the more conflicted she became. “Fine!” She’d had it. So much for acting like a sane human being. Dark Lake was clearly a place where sanity was not rewarded.

  “What are you doing?” Ms. Poole asked, mild alarm in her voice.

  “I’m not going to jump in with my clothes on.” Lady stripped down to her underwear, having immediate flashbacks of the last time she had done so on the pier. “If I die, use my cellphone to call my foster parents. Tell them this is all their fault. Ultimately, I died because I wanted to keep a stupid cat.”

  Ms. Poole didn’t grace that statement with a reply. The last thing Lady saw before jumping in was her rolling her eyes.

  The water was cold, but Lady’s body adjusted quickly enough. She let her arms float at her sides, let her impact pull her down. She opened her eyes as her downward momentum slowed. Bubbles moved past Lady’s face and slivers of light only just made it through the lake’s surface. Slowly, very slowly, she began to float upward.

  This was stupid. What was she even looking for? She had said it herself, you couldn’t see a darn thing the water was so dark.

  Lady felt silly, but she purposely pushed those feelings down. What was the point of them? What did she care if she looked stupid now? She had already jumped in with both feet. Why not go for it?

  Lady opened her mind to the possibility that she had seen something that she could not have seen. She had seen a disembodied arm with skin like a human fly trap. Lady opened herself up to the impossible and that was when she saw it. The impossible. Rushing at her.

  A pale shape was moving toward lady, cutting a humanoid shape in the water. Wait, was it humanoid? Lady could see hands reaching for her, but she saw something else too. A green mane? Hooves?

  Lady’s heart pounded in her chest. She kicked her feet madly for the surface of the water. She wasn’t going to make it in time. There was a kelpie in Dark Lake and it was going to kill her.

  Lady’s head popped above the waves and she flailed her arms upward at the dock. “Help!” She swallowed water when she took a breath to yell again. She coughed and sputtered. “Help!”

  “Calm down,” sighed Ms. Poole. She adjusted her skirts around herself as she crouched down. “This is rough on my knees, you know.”

  Lady didn’t care about her knees! She was going to die! “There’s something in here! H-help!”

  “Of course there’s something in there. It would be awfully silly if I’d encouraged you to jump in there when we both knew full well there was no point to it.” Ms. Poole began to reach down and offer Lad
y a hand, but she paused. “Why don’t you just swim to the shore? I’m afraid you’ll pull me in thrashing around like that.”

  “I’m going to die.”

  “Then you better hurry and swim to the shore, hmm? Go on now. I’ll bring your clothes.”

  Lady wasn’t going to waste her time arguing. She swore and started flailing again, heading for land as fast as her arms would take her. She probably could have gone faster had she not been panicking, but remaining calm was out of the question.

  As soon as Lady’s feet hit rocks and mud she started running. She slipped once, skinning both knees and one elbow. She kept going anyway, not stopping until she was on dry land. She dropped onto the rocks and the dirt, chest heaving. Chills ran up and down her body from both the cool air and adrenaline.

  “I wish I had thought to bring a towel.” Ms. Poole stopped nearby, Lady’s clothes folded in her arms. “I may have one in the trunk.”

  Lady didn’t care about towels or her clothes. She looked at Ms. Poole and knew immediately that she would be unable to adequately communicate all the anger she was feeling through her voice. “I almost died!”

  “Did you now?” Serious Ms. Poole was smiling. Smiling. She would choose the most offensive time to start exhibiting a human range of emotions. “And what almost killed you?”

  “A-a monster! A-“ Lady stopped, realizing how stupid those words sounded. Of course it wasn’t a monster. It couldn’t have been. Monsters weren’t real. “I don’t know! Like… a big mean fish!”

  “A big mean fish?” Ms. Poole repeated, eyebrows raised. “I’m not going to tell you what you did or didn’t see, but I’m very doubtful it was an overly large fish.” She handed Lady her clothes. “What I can tell you is that Dark Lake is home to a lot of things that defy logic. They can’t hurt you if you don’t let them. You were perfectly safe with me here. I’m good with water. I’m very much in my element here at the lake.”

  Lady stared up at Ms. Poole. She wanted to stand but wasn’t sure that her legs would support her weight. They felt like jelly. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s understandable.” Ms. Poole looked out across the water. “Dark Lake is hard to explain. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say that things exist here in a capacity they might not in other parts of the world. Here, the monsters you read about in myth and folklore are very, very real.”