He edged toward me, slowly, like any sudden moves might cause me to stop breathing again. Finally, he lowered himself onto the bed next to me. Reaching out to cup the back of my head, he pulled me up toward him, pressing his lips against mine.
“I think we’re even now,” he murmured when we pulled apart. “If you would kindly stop trying to die on me, I’d appreciate it.”
His attempt to make fun of the situation didn’t fool me. He had been absolutely terrified. Wrapping my arms around him, I held on tight.
“Serves you right,” I whispered. “You started it.”
He laughed, but the sound was strained. When he released me and leaned back, I found a tear rolling down one cheek.
“Tate,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
He nodded, swiping at his face with the back of his hand. “I know, but … for a second there, I wondered what the hell I was supposed to do with my life without you in it. I didn’t like the outlook one bit. So, you can’t die, okay? Don’t ever leave me.”
Stroking his hair, I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere. And now that we’re alone, I can tell you my theory on what caused me to stop breathing. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the ghost from the lake.”
He frowned. “What happened?”
“I had a dream, and I think it was the ghost trying to show me what happened to her,” I began. “It felt so real … as if I became her. I saw and felt everything just the way she must have on the day she died. She was on a date with the boy—the one whose smile I saw when I got pulled into the lake. They were parked out there in a pickup truck. While they were making out, the boy tried to take things too far and when she told him no, he got violent … smashed her head against the dashboard a couple of times. He must have thought she was dead, or wanted to cover up what he did … because next thing I know, he’s dragging her into the lake.”
Tate sucked in a sharp breath. “Shit.”
I nodded. “Date rape gone wrong … it was brutal. I don’t know how I know this, but she couldn’t swim. She was conscious when he threw her in, but she never stood a chance.”
Wrinkling his brow, Tate reached up to rub his chin. “You actually dreamed about being thrown into the water, right?”
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s where the water must have come from. There’s no other explanation that makes sense medically or physically. The supernatural is the only other way it fits. I felt myself being pulled out of it when they used the defibrillator on me. Then I started breathing again, and the water came up.”
“Maybe something happened to you when you went into the water,” he mused. “You started seeing the images, then shortly after had this dream. It’s like the ghost wants you to know what happened to her, to see and feel it the way she did. She thinks you’ll be more likely to help.”
“That would explain why all the others drowned when I was allowed to come back up,” I whispered, realization hitting me. “I was the first one who saw her … who saw the pieces of the puzzle. Just like Camila and Isabella, she knows I can see her and she wants my help.”
Tate scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Does she have to try to kill you in the process?”
“I don’t know if it was intentional,” I argued. “Killing me accomplishes nothing. But that doesn’t change the fact that me going into that lake seems to have set something off. Some sort of connection between me and her. Which means only one thing.”
“What?” he asked.
“We no longer have a choice in this,” I said solemnly. “Either we solve this thing, and do it fast, or what happened this morning is going to happen again. And next time, there’s no guarantee I won’t die.”
Tate’s jaw hardened and something flashed in his eyes—a sort of determination I’d never seen in him. “That’s not happening. Forget what I said last night. We don’t have a choice anymore … not with your life on the line.”
With a sigh, I leaned back against the pillows. “Dust off your magnifying glass, Watson. There are games afoot.”
“Why do you get to be Holmes?” he grumbled, folding his arms over his chest.
I raised my eyebrows. “Because I almost died today. You have to give me whatever I want.”
“Fine,” he huffed. “But you only get one thing. And next time, you have to be Watson.”
“Is this her?” Tate asked, turning the screen of his tablet toward me.
Glancing up from my phone, I studied the photo from the article he was reading. Shaking my head, I sighed. “No,” I replied. “But she has to be in here somewhere.”
We’d spent the past two hours researching the drownings that had been happening at Lake Blackshear since last summer, seeming to hit a crescendo as the various school districts and colleges had their spring breaks. With the lake being a popular vacation spot in the state, people had been coming in from all over, many of them never making it home again.
Tate had reluctantly left me long enough to take a taxi back to the cabin, shower, shave, and change into clean clothes. He’d returned to the hospital with a bag of both my things and his, along with his tablet, which had been left on the charger in our room. With him on the tablet and me using my phone, we were able to comb through more of the news stories faster. It had become frustrating, as we hadn’t yet come across the story about our ghost—which would give us a clearer idea of when she’d died.
“You know what I don’t get?” Tate asked, gaze still fixed on the tablet screen as he scrolled with his finger.
“Hmm?” I mumbled absently, still combing through articles on my phone.
“How the ghost managed to drag you into the lake … or rather, how the lake itself seemed to attack you. I mean, how does a tree root get beneath a lake?”
“Actually,” I said, glancing up at him. “That’s one of the interesting things about Lake Blackshear. It’s manmade, created when they built a dam back in 1930 off the Flint River. The people who worked to pave the way for the dam didn’t make much of an effort to cut down the cypress trees in the area, thinking all the water flooding it would eventually kill them. But in some places along the lake—which spans twenty miles—you can actually see the tops of the cypress trees growing out of the lake. Some of them died, but never fell down; others are still thriving.”
Raising his eyes to meet my gaze, he shook his head in amazement. “Did you research this place before we came?”
I shrugged. “There was a book about Georgia history in the library … the dam they built happens to be the first county-owned, constructed, and operated power dam in U.S. History.”
“Right,” Tate murmured, going back to his phone. “What about this girl?”
I shook my head at the photo and went back to my phone. “Nope. We haven’t found her yet, and I’m almost past the date that the rise in drownings began.”
“Me too,” he agreed. “Maybe we need to switch gears here. Let’s backtrack. You said they were making out in a pickup truck.”
“Yes,” I said. “Like maybe they’d had a date or something. She seemed really nervous, so it was probably a first date.”
“So, the guy takes her out, then they go park. He obviously thinks he’s going to get lucky, but gets pissed when she tells him no…”
Going silent for a moment, Tate stared off into space. Then, suddenly, he looked back at me, his jaw dropping.
“We’ve been looking for the wrong news story this whole time,” he said. “She didn’t drown.”
Scoffing, I recalled the water spewing up from my throat when I’d awakened this morning. “I beg to differ.”
“No,” he said shaking his head. “What I mean is, no one knows she drowned. He threw her in to dump her body, thinking he’d killed her. Which means we aren’t looking for a news story on an accidental drowning.”
“We’re looking for a missing person story,” I said with a gasp. “Oh, my God … why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re really Watson,” he murmured under
his breath.
“I heard that,” I grumbled.
We fell silent again, going back to our respective devices to renew the search. It didn’t take long for me to find what we were looking for. The third story I opened featured a photo of an Asian girl who couldn’t have been older than seventeen. She was adorable, her black hair cut into a layered bob. Around her neck hung a silver necklace with a half-moon pendant dangling from it. Even though I hadn’t seen the face of the ghost for long, I recognized her as this girl.
“Jackpot,” I said. “Amy Liu … sixteen years old. Went missing six weeks ago. According to the story, she’s believed to have been kidnapped right out of her bedroom late at night, and was never found again.”
Tate studied the picture when I turned my phone toward him. “Cute girl … such a shame. If they believe she was kidnapped, then that means she snuck out to see the guy who killed her. Otherwise, her date would have been a suspect.”
“Makes sense,” I replied. “I’m not seeing anything about a suspect or person of interest. I’ll search her name in the local and state news to see if any follow-up stories pop up.”
After about another half hour of searching, I discovered nothing except that the police seemed to have stalled in their search. No person of interest or suspect had been taken into custody, and it was still believed that Amy had been kidnapped—her parents insisting she would never have run away.
“Anything about a boyfriend?” Tate asked once I dropped my phone and flopped back against the pillows with a sigh.
I shook my head. “No. It just says she was a good student and had a loving family—two little brothers and her parents. She was on the debate team. All-around good girl. She didn’t deserve this.”
No girl deserved this, but having been inside Amy’s head made me feel a kinship to her. I hated not knowing how to help her.
“If she’s still presumed missing, then her body has been in the lake the whole time,” Tate said after a moment of silence. “That’s how we get justice for her.”
“How do we do that?” I asked. “It’s not like we can walk into the local police station and say ‘Hey, officers, the body of Amy Liu is in the lake. We know because her ghost came to us.’”
“Accidental body discoveries happen all the time,” he replied. “We just have to make it look like we just happened to stumble on her.”
I tapped my finger against my chin. “Too bad we don’t have scuba diving equipment.”
Tate perked up and grinned. “We don’t, but they have that stuff at the marina for rent. They have canoes big enough for two, and everything.”
“That’s a good idea, but that stuff’s gotta be expensive,” I countered.
He raised his eyebrows, his smile widened. “I have my credit cards with me.”
I rolled my eyes. “You mean the ones your dad pays the bills for?”
“Hey,” he retorted. “The guy neglected me for most of my life. He owes me.”
It was another one of those things that became easy to joke about now that things were better. Tate and Douglas had done a lot to repair their broken relationship. A lot of the bitterness Tate had once displayed when talking about his dad had disappeared.
“True,” I agreed. “Besides, he knows about ghosts. He’d think of this as a worthy cause.”
“Exactly,” he said. “It’s getting late, so we won’t be able to go until tomorrow. Hopefully, they’ll go ahead and discharge you since all your tests seem to be coming back clear.”
I sighed. “Let’s hope I don’t have more crazy dreams tonight … or at least not the kind that will have me waking up in the morning, coughing up lake water.”
Standing, Tate shut off his tablet and slipped it back into the bag. “It’s about time for them to bring you dinner. I think I’ll run down to the cafeteria and grab something for me. Want anything?”
“A chocolate pudding cup?”
He stretched and groaned, the sound of the muscles in his neck popping making me cringe. “One pudding cup, coming right up. In case you were wondering, if you happen to be pregnant, I’ll be great at this whole supportive-baby-daddy thing. Look how easy it was for you to get a pudding cup out of me.”
Reaching for one of my pillows, I whipped it at him, unable to help a little laugh—even as the reminder of my other pressing problem made my stomach tremble.
“Pudding cups will be the easy part,” I said as he caught the pillow and laid it on the foot of the bed. “Just wait until I weigh eight hundred pounds and have swollen ankles.”
“I’ll still love you and bring you pudding cups,” he declared, leaning against the door and studying me pensively. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve mentioned being pregnant without looking like you’re going to hurl.”
“Well,” I said, glancing down at my hands, folded in my lap. “I think I’m in the acceptance phase now. If the test comes out positive, then we have some planning to do and decisions to make. And you were right before, to be so confident in us. I believe we can get through anything together.”
Reaching for the doorknob, he gave me a little wink and a smile—one of those little things that made my stomach flutter no matter how many times he did it.
“You’re damn right we can,” he said. “Be back, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, leaning against my pillows and closing my eyes.
After a long day of tests and research with Tate, I was exhausted. It was barely six o’clock and my dinner would be delivered soon, but the moment I closed my eyes, I knew I didn’t stand a chance.
Tate was barely gone five minutes before I drifted off to sleep.
***
I opened my eyes on the bank of the lake, the night air warm on my face, still humid despite the time of day. The moon loomed high in the cloudless sky, reflecting off the water. Glancing down, I found that I was still myself—the dark skin of my bare legs contrasting against the thin, white hospital gown. As I glanced around, a soft breeze rustled my hair and the leaves of the massive trees nearby.
Taking a deep breath, I approached the water’s edge. Amy had brought me here, I realized … and she’d done it for a reason. There was something else she wanted me to see. Pausing with the water lapping at my toes, I held perfectly still and listened, my eyes scanning the area for anything that might stand out.
Suddenly, a soft splash drew my gaze downward, where something long and pale was emerging from the shallows. I backpedaled from the water, watching as the white thing bent toward the ground. Another one emerged, and I recognized it as an arm. The fingers attached to the hands sank into the mud and dragged the rest of the body attached to them from the depths.
Fear sent my heart galloping in my chest, but I sank my toes into the mud and held my ground, knowing that running would be pointless. I clenched my shaking hands and forced myself to breathe as a head appeared, wet tendrils of midnight-black hair hanging down over the face. The emaciated body followed, held low to the ground as she began to crawl toward me, the joints in her arms and legs popping and snapping with every movement.
The sound of her breath sent a chill down my spine, like a low, raspy whisper. It didn’t matter how many times I came face to face with a ghost—the sights and sounds involved never ceased to make my stomach roil.
Her head snapped up with a loud crack, her hair parting to reveal her face. Wide, black eyes bored into mine as the blue lips parted to emit another sound, matching veins pulsing through the ghostly skin of her face and neck. Mud and sludge covered her limbs, a torn and tattered sundress practically falling off her body.
I gasped when I noticed the silver half-moon pendant hanging from around her neck.
“Amy?” I whispered, crouching to look her in the eye. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Pausing within arm’s length of me, she rested on her belly on the ground, her arms supporting her weight. Holding my stare, she nodded, the bones in her neck crackling.
“You wanted them to see, didn’t you?” I a
sked, a tear slipping down my cheek as I remembered what had happened to her as if I had gone through it. “You didn’t mean to hurt anyone … you just wanted someone to see you.”
She stared at me in silence for a long moment before nodding again, a bead of moisture rolling down her cheek. A tear? I hadn’t thought about the fact that ghosts might be capable of crying.
“Is your body still somewhere in this lake?”
Amy responded by using one arm to support her body, turning so she was staring out at the lake over her shoulder. Using her other arm, she swiveled it with a resounding crunch and pointed out at the water.
Then, turning back to me with more of the gut-wrenching sounds, she held a hand out and dug into the mud. Wrinkling my brow, I leaned closer to see what she was doing. Head down, she kept digging until she’d gone a couple of inches into the sludge. Glancing back up at me, she pointed down into the hole she’d made.
Keeping a wary eye on her, I edged forward, wondering what she could be trying to show me. I held my breath while reaching into the hole, never taking my eyes off her. My hand closed around something solid in the wet soil, and I pulled it up. A leather wallet, I realized once I glanced down at it.
“Is this his?” I whispered to Amy, glancing from the wallet to her again. “The boy who killed you?”
She nodded in response and went on watching me.
Opening the wallet, I glanced down at the contents. A few paper cards had been eroded by the water, but the plastic driver’s license was still intact. The seemingly unassuming face of a murderer stared back at me. White, eighteen years old, brown hair and blue eyes … it was him. I remembered his face from my dream.
“Brandon Williams,” I read out loud. “I found you.”
The air around me began to shudder and vibrate, and I felt as if invisible hands had grabbed onto me, attempting to pull me away.
“I think my time is up,” I said to Amy. “But I will be back. I won’t let him get away with this.”
Amy simply stared at me in silence for a moment before beginning to backward crawl into the lake. Her gaze remained fixed on me until the top of her head disappeared beneath the water. Then, the world around me faded to black.
Bellamy and the Haunting Page 4
