The House Across the Lake(76)

Len suddenly began to cry. Not out of guilt or remorse. These were selfish tears, bursting forth because he’d been caught and now had to face his punishment. Bawling like a child, he leaned toward me, arms outstretched, as if seeking comfort.

“Please don’t tell on me, Cee,” he said. “Please. I couldn’t control myself. I tried. I really did. But I’ll be better. I swear.”

Something overcame me as I watched my husband cry for mercy after showing none for others. An internal realignment that left me feeling as hollow and ablaze as a jack-o’-lantern.

It was hatred.

The seething, unquenchable kind.

I hated Len—for what he’d done, for deceiving me so thoroughly.

I hated him for destroying the life we had built together, erasing five wonderful years and replacing them with this moment of him weeping and begging and grasping for me even as I recoiled.

I hated him for hurting me.

But I wasn’t the only victim. Three others suffered far worse than me. Knowing this made me hope they had at least tried to fight back and, in the process, brought Len some amount of pain. And if they hadn’t, well, I was now able to do it on their behalf.

Because someone needed to make Len pay.

As his angry, deceived, now-ruined wife, I was suddenly in a position to do just that.

“I’m so sorry, Cee,” Len said. “Please, please forgive me. Please don’t turn me in.”

Finally, I relented and pulled him into an embrace. Len seemed to melt as I wrapped my arms around him. He put his head to my chest, still sobbing, as a thousand memories of our marriage passed through my thoughts.

“I love you so much,” Len said. “Do you love me?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

Then I pushed him over the side of the boat and watched him vanish into the dark water.





You killed me,” Katherine says again, as if I didn’t hear her the first time.

I did, but barely. My whole body is vibrating with shock. An internal hum that gets louder and louder, building from a whisper to a scream.

That’s what I want to do.

Scream.

Maybe I am screaming and just don’t know it, the noise still rising inside me so loud it eclipses all outside sound.

I bring a hand to my mouth and check. It’s shut tight, my lips flattened together, my tongue still and useless. The inside of my mouth is dry—so parched and numb from surprise, fear, and confusion that I begin to wonder if I’ll ever be able to speak again.

Because there’s no way Katherine could know what I’d done to Len.

No one knows.

No one but me.

And him.

Which means Tom is right about Eli’s campfire tale being true. Even though it’s utterly preposterous, it’s literally the only explanation for what I’m experiencing right now. Len’s soul or spirit or whatever the fuck was left of him after life fled his body remained in Lake Greene, waiting in the dark water, biding its time until it could take the place of the next person to die there.

Who happened to be Katherine.

She was dead the afternoon I went out to rescue her. I’m certain of that now. I hadn’t reached her in time, a fact the state she was in—that lifeless body, those dead eyes, her blue lips and ice-cold flesh—made clear.

And I’d believed she was dead.

Until, suddenly, she wasn’t.

When Katherine sprang back to life, jolting and coughing and spitting up water, it was like some kind of miracle had occurred.

A dark one.

One that only the people Eli talked about seemed to believe.

Somehow, Len had entered Katherine, bringing her back to life. In the process, he’d resurrected himself, albeit in a different body. Where Katherine—the real Katherine and everything that makes her her—is now, I have no idea.

“Len—”

I stop, surprised by how easy it is to use his name when it’s not him I’m seeing.

It’s Katherine. Her body. Her face. Everything is hers except for the voice, which sounds more like Len’s with each passing word, and her attitude.

That’s all Len. So much so that my brain flips like a switch, making me think of her as him.

“Now you get it,” he says. “I bet you thought you’d never see me again.”

I don’t know which one of them he’s referring to. Maybe both. It’s true on either count.

“I didn’t,” I say.

“You don’t look happy.”

“I’m not.”

Because this is the stuff of night terrors. My worst fear made real. My guilt manifested into physical form. It takes all the strength I have not to faint. Even then, specks of blue buzz like flies across my vision.

I literally can’t believe this is happening.

It shouldn’t be happening.

How the fuck is this happening?

A hundred possibilities run through my shock-addled brain, trying to land on something remotely logical. That it happened because Len’s ashes had been scattered in Lake Greene. That there was a combination of minerals in the water that kept his soul alive. That because he died before his time, he was forced to roam the depths. That the lake, quite simply, is as cursed and haunted as Eli and Marnie say it is.

But none of those are possible.

It can’t be real.