My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(111)

“Ever done this before?” Jade asks. “Pedaled across?”

“We’ll make it,” Letha says, and pedals harder, surging them forward for a few feet. “Isn’t this where… you know,”

she asks, sort of.

Jade rotates her left wrist up so her scar’s right there.

“It didn’t want me,” she says. “The lake, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“There’s this preacher Ezekiel down there, purifying the water,” Jade says. “It makes this a Christian burial ground, and, you know. I’m Indian.”

“You and your dad.”

To try to head this off, stop Letha’s accusations before they can rev up, Jade says, “I’m sorry about your—your stepmom,”

Jade says. “She didn’t deserve that. None of them did.”

“I should have burned the whole place down months ago,”

Letha says. “We never should have come here.”

“I’m glad you did,” Jade can’t help but say. “I mean, tragedy aside and all.”

Letha’s hand comes off the steering egg, finds the top of Jade’s for a quick sisterly squeeze. Jade looks across the dark water to Camp Blood, lurking on Indian Lake’s shore like an infection, like a bad memory.

Theo Mondragon’s about to be walking through it, isn’t he?

And maybe pulling all its ghosts in behind him.

“Along with my axe,” Jade adds to that visual.

Letha comes back with, “Say what?”

Jade shakes her head no, nothing. It’s just what she thinks would look coolest, dragging behind a slasher who’s limping across the narrow whiteness of Glen Dam: the heavy long-handled two-bit axe she buried over there, once upon a runaway night. But, axe or no, if he’s going to make it, he needs to get to hopping to make an appearance before the movie’s over, right?

Even in this ridiculous swan boat, they’re getting there a half-hour ahead of him. At least half an hour. Which doesn’t mean they’re exactly skipping across the lake. First, they’re bucking the breeze. In town, it never seems to matter. But try to row against it—or pedal—and it stands you right up. Even Letha.

“Gonna be dark,” Jade says.

“I’m trying,” Letha says back.

Jade tries to help with the pedaling but seems to slow things down more than actually contribute to their forward motion.

“Look,” Letha says.

It’s the inflatable movie screen.

Chrissie is running across the dunes, leaving her clothes behind her.

“Hey!” Letha screams, standing to wave with both arms, the swan tilting back and forth.

“They crank the sound all the way up,” Jade tells her, holding on.

Behind the screen, by decree, Proofrock is inky dark. And there’s no phone screens glowing on: nobody wants to douse them when their boat tumps, or when they find themselves in the middle of a splash fight.

“Y’all do this every year?” Letha asks, out of breath.

“Halloween for boats,” Jade says. “I mean—everybody dresses their boat up like a parade? Hardy even looks the other way about beer.”

“He really cares for you, you know?”

“I remember going in third grade. One of the high schoolers was dressed up as Jigsaw, and I—”

“He from Bay of Blood?”

Jade pretends that didn’t just happen, rolls on: “I couldn’t stop watching him.”

“Or her.”

“Jigsaw’s a him. When you’re in that mask, you’re a him.”

“Until two, yeah,” Letha says. “And what about four?”

Jade looks over in wonder and Letha shrugs, the boat drifting a bit under them.

“The fuck’s your problem?” Jade says, straight from the movie.

“You’re my problem,” Letha quotes right back, quirking her mouth just perfect.

“I thought you didn’t—”

“That… the night of Banner’s party?” Letha says, pedaling again, having to haul hard on the egg to try to control their drift.

“The bonfire,” Jade says as if from a dream. “The Dutch boy in the lake.”

“That’s what we were watching in Banner’s garage,” Letha says. “But we didn’t get to finish, and my—my therapist said it’s unhealthy to leave a narrative incomplete. That it’ll haunt me if I don’t finish it, especially taking into account the… the trauma of that night.”

“Y’all were watching the first one, then?”

“I told my dad I needed to finish it in my room. He sent all seven.” Letha shrugs as if embarrassed.

“You dog,” Jade says, impressed.

“It’s nothing like… like back there, though,” Letha says.

“Who do you think did that to those elk?”

“Supposedly a bear.”

Letha looks over like waiting for Jade to say what she thinks: it was Theo Mondragon, either trying to do the killer version of masturbating—animals, not people—or he was out there giving his shiny killing implements a run, seeing if he really had the nerve to go blade-on-skin. He’d have had to drug them first, a little ketamine in the salt lick, but…