Page 4 of It Happened on the Lake

She had shown up!

But no.

Not Beth.

On closer inspection she realized the vision wasn’t her friend.

Instead, a woman appeared through the fog.

Ghostly.

Dressed in white.

The mist climbing around her in the unsteady moonlight.

Harper blinked, trying to focus, the world seeming woozy.

The apparition remained.

With long dark hair curling down her back.

“Mama?” she whispered, blinking, a blackness pulling at her consciousness.

The ghostly woman looked like her mother. But Mama wasn’t home, she remembered, her thoughts thick.

Why would Mama be on the dock staring out to the dark waters of the lake? The lake that had been called Lake of the Dead by the native tribe that had once lived on its shores. At least that’s what Gram had told her. Only later when it was settled by white people like her ancestors had the name been changed to Lake Twilight.

“More calming, don’t you think?” Gram had said with a raspy chuckle as she’d imparted what she’d called one of her little fun facts. “Though if you ask me Lake of the Dead is so much more intriguing.”

But it was creepier.

And fitting for a night like tonight.

All Hallows’ Eve. The night, according to Evan, where all the evil beings ever to exist returned to the earth in the forms of devils, ghosts, demons, and zombies. It was a night when those horrid, wicked creatures came to steal children before feasting upon them.

She didn’t really believe him.

Evan was a big, fat liar.

But still . . .

Squinting, Harper saw that the woman was still at the edge of the dock and wobbling as she gazed into the water’s dark depths.

Harper stumbled out onto the terrace, one of the cats slinking through the open door to dart toward the tram that was parked at the side of the house. The mechanical beast could scale the steep cliff from the house to the dock if you didn’t want to bother with the stairs.

She made her way to the railing, where she heard the soft flutter of bats’ wings over the gentle lap of the lake against the shore. Though her thoughts were heavy and scattered, she focused on the specter of the woman.

Something was wrong about this.

Very wrong.

Something evil.

Her hot skin crawled as she remembered what she’d learned about hell and the demons who resided there, as well as the dark fallen angel, Lucifer himself.

She shivered, though she was burning up inside.

Mama shouldn’t be out there . . .

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