Page 5 of It Happened on the Lake

She leaned over the railing, the world spinning as she clutched the wrought iron.

The woman below teetered on the edge of the dock. “Mama,” Harper mouthed, and felt her knees buckle. Her fingers slipped. Scrabbling awkwardly for the railing, she dropped the candy bars she’d forgotten were in her hand. She caught a glimpse of movement—a shadow darting through the fog, springing onto the dock, toward Mama!

One of the demons!

Let loose on Halloween night!

She tried to scream, but she could only croak out a raspy warning that seemed to die in the night.

The world spun.

For a moment she caught glimpses of the moon peeking between the branches of a fir tree as she fell shivering onto the wet flagstones, the candy bars scattered around her.

Though her mind was hazy, she heard it.

The sound of sobbing whispering through the night.

Tortured, ragged sobs.

Just before the splash.

October 1988

The Present

Chapter 1

The past is unforgiving.

The nagging voice just wouldn’t stop. Harper set her jaw and kept driving, her eyes focused on the narrow, winding road, the illumination from her Volvo’s headlights shimmering against the wet pavement.

You’re not wanted.

She shifted down. The wagon shimmied a little as she took a corner too fast. Water splashed as she tore through a puddle.

You shouldn’t be here.

“Stop!” she said, angry at her self-doubts as the mansion came into view. “Enough already.”

This is a mistake!

Harper ignored the voice in her head that had been nagging her since she’d slid into her Volvo in Northern California about ten hours earlier. Her eyes were gritty, she needed a shower, and she did not need her guilty conscience pricking at her.

Not just a mistake, but a mistake of epic proportions!

“Oh, give me a break. I’m going back, dammit, and I’m going now.”

Sometimes her inner thoughts, riddled with guilt as they were, bugged the crap out of her. Like now. On this dark, dreary Oregon night.

She stepped on the accelerator and her Volvo shot forward, hitting a pothole, the whole wagon shuddering. Harper’s fingers tightened over the wheel.

You’re going to regret this.

“I’m not going to be here long,” Harper argued aloud. “I’m leaving again. Satisfied?”

Of course not.

Her deep-seated doubts were never sated.

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