What Waits in the Water

by Kieran Scott

  “No. I didn’t mean cute like baby cute. I mean …” He glanced out at the lake, at a loss for words, which somehow made him more attractive. “It’s nice, you know? You own who you are. You’re not like everyone else faking it all the time, trying to act cool.” He paused and looked her in the eye. “You’re cool just the way you are.”

  Hannah pressed her lips together. She wasn’t sure how he could think that he knew her so well after barely twenty-four hours in each other’s presence, but it was a nice thing to say anyway.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Colin’s smile lit up his whole face. “You’re welcome.”

  He slipped his hand into hers again and for a moment they simply stood there, smiling goofily at each other.

  “I guess we should be getting back,” Colin said, looking past her in the general direction of the house. “Thanks for coming out here with me. I was too scared to come alone.”

  “Okay, now you’re mocking me,” Hannah said with a laugh.

  He raised his free hand. “Me? Never.”

  Hannah followed him off the beach, chuckling under her breath. As they came around the big evergreen, there was a loud splash nearby and she flinched. She saw ripples in the water, very close to the shore—close to where she was walking. Up ahead, Colin was whistling as he walked, oblivious to everything else. Hannah held her breath and ran to catch up to him, telling herself it was all in her head.

  When they came around the bend, Nick was hurrying toward them, blotchy and out of breath. He stopped so abruptly he skidded forward on the gravel and almost hit the ground.

  “What’re you doing here?” Colin asked.

  Nick caught his balance and glanced from him to Hannah. “Nothing. You’re back.”

  “Way to state the obvious, dude,” Colin said. Then he slapped Nick on the back and tugged Hannah forward. Hannah could have sworn Nick muttered a curse under his breath as he saw their entwined fingers pass him by.

  Nick. N.

  That was it. Hannah had to know more about Claudia and Nick’s relationship. She was going to read the rest of that journal the second she had the chance.

  Dear Future Me,

  Tonight was really weird. N texted me asking me to meet him at our special place. It was after midnight and he knows I’m not supposed to leave the house, but of course I did. I snuck out the window and climbed down the dogwood tree and then jogged to the docks (2.5 miles in 20 mins, thank you very much), and got our kayak out of the boathouse and ROWED all the way over there. But when I got there he would barely even look at me. I’ve never seen him act like that before. It was like I wasn’t even there. And HE asked ME to come! For the longest time he just sat there drawing lines in the sand with a sharpened stick. I sat next to him and tried to get him to talk, but he basically ignored me. I got so angry I was shaking. I mean, does he have any idea how long I would have been grounded for if I’d gotten caught sneaking out? My dad would kill me! No, he’d kill N and then he’d kill me. Whatever. There’d be a lot of bloodshed.

  And then I noticed he was writing a word in the sand. Not drawing lines—writing a word. And you know what that word was? MIRANDA. I’m not even kidding. He was sitting there writing some other girl’s name in the sand right in front of me? What kind of crap is that???

  Anyway, I got so mad I finally stood up to go and that’s when he finally said something. He said, “Don’t go.” And I said, “Really? Why not?” And he said, “Because I have something to tell you.” Well. Here’s what he told me.

  He told me that his family moved here last year because he got thrown out of school. And he got thrown out of school because he stopped going to class. And he stopped going to class because he had this girlfriend named Miranda who died in a car crash.

  Yeah. I just about died. Sorry. I guess that’s the wrong thing to say. But I did. Anyway, tonight was the two-year anniversary of her death and that’s why he was sort of freaking out. He said it was just a freak accident—another driver ran a stop sign they claimed to not have seen and that person walked away fine, but Miranda’s neck was broken. He said they went on a date the night before and they had the best time and she was all smiling and saying she loved him and stuff (I know—LOVED!) and then the next night, she was dead. I can’t even imagine what that must be like. I mean, what if I woke up tomorrow and N was just gone? Forever?

  Oh, God. Why is so much of my life about death lately? I had no idea what to say to him. I just felt so bad. So I put my arm around him and he put his arm around me and we just sat there like that for a really long time. By the time we left to go home I was almost too tired to row the kayak, but I couldn’t leave it there. N had his Jet Ski and he put-putted along beside me and then drove me home. But even then I couldn’t fall asleep. I was too wired and full of his story. And then I was so exhausted this morning I passed out in math class.

  What do I do to make him feel better? I mean, seriously. What do I do?

  Hannah was only half asleep, phrases and words from the journal scrolling through her mind, when something yanked her awake.

  She blinked a few times, trying to figure out where she was. It was still nighttime. Her eyes focused in on the cut-glass doorknob of the closet and she remembered. She was at the lake house. In Jacob’s parents’ room.

  But what had woken her up? She lay very still, listening, breathing quietly. Nothing. Then she realized she was cold. She flipped over. The other half of the bed was empty, the blankets undisturbed. Katie was still downstairs.

  Hannah thought back to the rest of the evening. Raj and Nick had left after all the s’mores had been eaten, and Hannah had felt a zillion times better once they were gone—Nick’s constant staring had made her super self-conscious.

  Then she, Jacob, Katie, Alessandra, and Colin had come inside and played Apples to Apples at the dining table. Hannah kept losing because nobody agreed with her matches except for, occasionally, Colin. She’d finally gotten completely fed up when she’d matched “tool” to “computer” and Jacob, who had been the judge, had gone with Katie’s match—“orange.” His reasoning? That oranges were like apples and Apple was a computer company.

  That was when Hannah knew for sure that this was not her weekend. She’d faked a massive yawn and headed upstairs. She’d gotten into bed and read a little bit more of the journal until her eyes got too tired to stay open. Now, she rolled over and checked her phone. It was 12:45 a.m. Which meant Hannah had come upstairs almost two hours ago. Where the heck was Katie?

  Slowly, Hannah sat up. Dead. Silence. There was no TV on. No videos playing on phones. No voices. She put her feet down on the cool wood floor and stepped up to the window. The lake outside was flat, black, motionless. Then, in the distance, something moved. Hannah leaned forward, holding her breath. Something was moving across the lake swiftly, soundlessly. A shadow. But then she blinked, and it was gone.

  Bang!

  Hannah whirled around with a gasp. She instinctively grabbed the baseball bat Katie had used earlier and moved forward on her tiptoes. Her door let out a long, low creak as she opened it and she winced, but nothing happened. No monsters lunged at her from the darkness. Nothing swooped out of the rafters to attack. The hallway was still, but there was a sliver of light coming from a half-open door across the way. The door to Jacob’s room.

  Hannah heard a giggle. Katie’s giggle. She lowered the bat.

  No freaking way. Katie was in Jacob’s room. Hannah glanced over her shoulder, knowing she should just go back to bed. That she should pretend she hadn’t heard anything—didn’t know anything. Whatever was going on in there, she didn’t want to see it … right? But she couldn’t seem to make herself turn around. Instead, she walked over to Jacob’s room and, ever so slowly, ever so silently, pushed open the already ajar door.

  They were sitting on Jacob’s bed, facing each other. Katie’s legs were crooked over Jacob’s and he was playing with her fingers, looking into her admiring eyes. It was so intimate, so innocent, it made
Hannah want to cry. They were so wrapped up in each other, they didn’t even notice her standing there.

  And then someone screamed outside. And this time, it was no bird.

  Hannah gasped. Jacob and Katie both looked up and found her watching them, in her pajamas, with a bat in her hands.

  “What was that?” Jacob was the first to recover.

  “That one was definitely a person,” Katie said.

  Gripping the bat even tighter, Hannah turned and ran for the stairs, the two lovebirds right on her heels.

  * * *

  The scream had come from Prandya, courtesy of Colin and Alessandra. They were all in the lake, splashing and messing around, and Prandya was screaming as Colin and Alessandra turned their attacks on her.

  “I don’t understand. Two seconds ago there was no one out here,” Hannah said, leaning the bat against the outside wall on the porch.

  “Well, they’re out here now,” Katie replied. She smiled but sounded frustrated. Hannah was sure her stepsister was annoyed at having her private moment with Jacob interrupted.

  “What’s that saying? If you can’t beat ’em …” Jacob stripped off his shirt, sprinted down the dock, and cannonballed into the water, which made Alessandra and Prandya shriek some more. Hannah noticed that the fire in the fire pit was raging again and that a black kayak was tied up to the end of the dock. Prandya’s, she was sure. That was probably what Hannah had seen out the window a few minutes earlier—Prandya’s stealth approach across the lake. And the bang must have been Prandya’s kayak bumping into the dock.

  She had to admit to herself, she felt marginally better having a reasonable explanation for that shadow.

  Katie, social being that she was, sauntered down to the end of the dock and sat, dangling her feet in the water and immediately joining the jovial conversation. Jacob splashed her and she laughed, then kicked water back at him. Hannah watched, feeling awkward and unnoticed—maybe even unwanted.

  She had thought that she and Colin had … connected earlier. She hadn’t imagined that starry walk to the beach. But maybe it hadn’t meant anything to him.

  Jacob and Colin started pushing each other under the water in that super mature way guys had of trying to exert their prowess. Prandya and Alessandra shook their heads and Alessandra swam farther out, toward the third buoy, while Prandya went the other way and pulled herself up next to Katie on the dock. Prandya whispered something to Katie and Katie let out a loud laugh.

  Hannah frowned. It was so easy for Katie. She never even questioned her inclusion in any group. If there was fun to be had, she joined it. The idea that she might not be welcome never even occurred to her—which made sense, because Hannah had never witnessed a situation in which Katie was not welcome.

  “Dude! Hannah! Are you just gonna stand there?” Jacob shouted over to her.

  Hannah flinched. It wasn’t exactly an open-armed invitation, but it was something.

  “I’m going to go get my bathing suit,” she replied.

  And that was exactly what she was going to do. She was going to get her suit on and join them, darn it. She was going to prove to Jacob and Katie that it didn’t bother her that they were hanging out together in the middle of the night—even though it did. She was going to prove to Colin and Alessandra and Prandya that she could be spontaneous and fun—even though it went completely against her nature.

  She was just about to turn and go inside when something near the far buoy caught her eye.

  The moon’s reflection shone silvery white against the surface of the water. But something about the reflection was changing. It looked like the water was moving, which didn’t make sense. There was no wind at all. Hannah squinted, and then her heart slammed against her rib cage so hard it almost left a painful dent.

  The silvery-white celestial reflection was turning … red.

  Hannah automatically glanced up at the moon, as if the hunk of rock itself was changing color, but it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. There the moon hung, innocent and bright as ever. Which meant it was the water that was changing. The water of “Drowning Lake” was turning red.

  And the red was … growing. It blossomed out from the buoy in all directions, undulating and flowing, reaching its eerie tendrils out.

  Hannah screamed and ran toward the water.

  “Get out of the lake!”

  “What?” Alessandra asked, shoving sopping curls out of her face. She was pretty far from the others now, and closer to the strange red stain than anyone else.

  “Get out of the lake!” Hannah screeched. “There’s something out there! Jacob, look!”

  Katie and Prandya scrambled to their feet on the dock. “Oh my God,” Prandya said quietly. Colin and Jacob glanced around, submerged in the water from their shoulders down.

  Colin saw the red liquid and his eyes widened. “What the—? What is that?”

  He turned and began to swim toward the dock.

  “Swim!” Hannah screamed at Jacob and Alessandra. “You guys! Come in!”

  Alessandra turned around, searching the lake, and didn’t seem to see anything, and Hannah wondered if maybe it wasn’t visible from her angle somehow. Colin, meanwhile, got to the dock first, reaching his strong arms up to hoist himself out, and then Prandya and Katie bent down to help Jacob up out of the lake. Alessandra just stayed where she was, treading water as if everything was fine.

  What if the red stain reached her? What would happen if it touched Alessandra’s skin?

  Hannah ran toward her, splashing into the shallows, gesturing for her to swim in.

  “Alessandra! What’re you doing? Come on!”

  “What are you screaming about?” Alessandra asked. “There’s nothing here!”

  The others ran down the dock toward Hannah, their footsteps pounding the old wood boards that creaked and sighed under their weight.

  “You don’t see it?” Hannah screeched, gasping for air. “The water around you! It’s all red! It looks like—”

  She paused, unable to say it, wishing Alessandra would just listen to her.

  “Like what?” Alessandra said, starting, at least, to move toward shore.

  Like blood, Hannah thought.

  And then Alessandra stopped swimming. Even from a hundred yards away, Hannah could see the fear cross her face. She’d swum right into the undulating red water.

  “What was—”

  Suddenly, Alessandra jerked. Her head whipped back.

  “Hey! What!” she yelled.

  “Ali?” Colin shouted. “What’s wrong?”

  Terror contorted Alessandra’s face. “Omigod! What the—”

  Her arm flew up, then splashed, and then she screamed as her whole body went under.

  Something out on the island screeched.

  “Alessandra!” Prandya screamed.

  Katie grabbed Hannah, her fingernails digging into Hannah’s flesh. Hannah’s heart pounded in her throat. She wanted to run into the lake and help Alessandra, but she couldn’t make herself move. The red stain had grown, polluting the water for several feet all around the spot where Alessandra had gone down.

  “Alessandra!” Colin shouted, running into the water. “Ali!”

  “Colin, no! Don’t go out there!” Katie yelled.

  Colin looked back at her, wild-eyed. “What do you expect me to do? She’s drowning!”

  “You guys?” Jacob’s fingers clutched his head on either side. “What just happened?”

  Suddenly, Alessandra’s face came up, a look of horror twisting her features. Blood ran from her nose and smeared over her lips.

  “Help!” she cried. “Help! Me!”

  Colin didn’t hesitate this time. He dove into the water as Katie and Prandya screamed. Hannah was still frozen in shock.

  Alessandra went under again. Silence. Bubbles surfaced. There was a beat. Two. Three. In the distance, something let out a low, mournful howl. Then more red bloomed in the spot where Alessandra had disappeared.

  Horror gripping he
r heart, Hannah grabbed Katie by the hand and ran for the house.

  This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening. Hannah’s feet pounded. Her heart bruised itself trying to hammer through her rib cage. Katie was in hysterics, sobbing and choking and gasping for air as they stumbled up the porch steps.

  Help! Help! Me!

  What had happened to Alessandra? Where was she? What was in that water?

  Katie tripped on the top step and doubled over, her knees hitting the porch floor, and Hannah’s foot caught on her arm, sending them both sprawling. Hannah’s throat was dry and her pulse throbbed in her ears, so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised if her eardrums had started bleeding. She reached for the door handle, but the world spun around her as she sat up, and she couldn’t see straight. She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead and tried to focus, but she couldn’t stop seeing it—the terror on Alessandra’s face, the unnatural angle of her arm as she went under, the bubbles coming up, up, up. And then the blood.

  Her jaw and cheek thrummed with pain. Jacob and Prandya raced toward them, Prandya crying so hard snot ran down her face.

  And then, behind them, Colin emerged from the lake. He looked so pale his skin shone like wax.

  “Colin!” Hannah shouted.

  “Where is she?” Prandya cried. “You didn’t find her?”

  Colin moved slowly at first, as if stunned, and then started jogging toward them.

  “What happened? Did you see anything?” Jacob demanded.

  Colin fell to his butt on the bottom step and wiped water from his face with both hands. He was shaking all over, his teeth chattering noisily. Everyone stared at him, but Hannah stared at the water. It looked perfectly normal now. Undisturbed. It was as if Alessandra had never been there.

  “There was nothing,” Colin said finally. “I saw nothing.”

  “What happened to her?” Prandya demanded. “What happened to Ali?”

  “I don’t know!” Colin snapped, his eyes flashing with anger and terror. “She’s just … gone.”