The House Across the Lake(83)

“Yes,” I say, seeing no point in lying. He wouldn’t believe me if I did. “That’s what I intend to do.”

“And what if I refuse?”

I set the glass on the nightstand, next to the lamp that continues to flicker. It’s like a strobe light, plunging the room into microbursts of darkness and light as my hand once again moves toward the knife. “Then I’ll kill you anyway.”

“I don’t think you want that much blood on your hands, Cee,” Len says, pronouncing the nickname with an exaggerated hiss. “I know from experience you won’t hesitate to kill me. But it’s your other victim that should give you pause.”

“What other victim?”

“Katherine, of course.”

He doesn’t need to say anything else. I now understand exactly what he means.

If I killed him, I’d also be killing Katherine Royce.

Riding on the coattails of that revelation is another bit of clarity. One that’s more hopeful, if no less complicated.

“She’s still there,” I say.

Len doesn’t get a chance to respond. He’s blocked by another screaming wind outside.

Coming closer.

Swooping in.

It rams against the house and everything shakes, me included. I reach for the nightstand to steady myself. In the hallway, something falls to the floor and shatters.

The nightstand lamp stops flickering long enough for me to see the rattling bourbon glass, Len straining against the ropes, the smug grin on his face.

Then the lamp, the room, and the entire lake house go completely dark.





The plunge into darkness is so sudden and quick it makes me gasp. The sound of it slithers through the room, made louder by the all-encompassing blackness. Now this is darker than a coffin with the lid shut.

I remain on the bed, hoping it’s just a blip and that power will return in just a few seconds. When a minute passes and the lights remain out, I resign myself to the task ahead—finding flashlights and candles and making the place as bright as possible.

While I don’t trust Len in the light, I trust him even less in the dark.

I stand and leave the room, using muscle memory from a thousand nights here to navigate between the beds and out the door.

In the hallway, something crunches beneath my sneakers.

Broken glass.

A pool of it spreads across the hardwood floor. I try to step over it, accidentally nudging the source of the glass—a picture frame that fell from the wall when the house shook.

I keep moving to the stairs. Rather than walk down them, I sit and scoot step by step to the bottom. By now, my eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough for me to make my way to the den, where an emergency supply of flashlights and candles is kept. I find an LED lantern, a flashlight, and several fat candles that can burn for hours.

And I find a lighter.

One that’s likely been here for ages.

At least since last summer.

And since Len was the person responsible for gathering and keeping track of the supplies, he knew of its existence.

That son of a bitch.

I turn on the lantern and carry it from room to room, lighting candles along the way. Some are from the emergency stash. Others are decorative ones in glass jars that have accumulated over the years, unlit until this very moment. Their scents mingle as I make my way through the house. Spruce and cinnamon, lavender and orange blossom. Such pretty scents for what’s become a very ugly situation.

Upstairs, I light a candle in the master bedroom before returning to the room where Len remains tied up.

I place the lantern on the bed and put a candle on the nightstand. I flick the lighter and hold it to the candle’s wick, which lets off a small sizzle as the flame takes hold.

“You wanted me to find those driver’s licenses, didn’t you?” I say. “That’s why you sent me down to your tackle box and not to the lighter with the storm supplies. You wanted me to know what you did.”

Len shifts on the bed, his shadow large and flickering on the wall next to him. The candlelight paints his face in shifting patterns of brightness and shadow. In each snatch of darkness, I think I get a glimpse of Len in his true form, almost as if Katherine is mutating into him. A cruel trick of the light.

“It was more of a game,” he says. “I knew there was a chance you could find them, just as I knew you could completely overlook them. It was exciting trying to figure out if you did or not. I found out eventually.”

“Not until it was too late for you.” I lift the glass of bourbon to my lips and take a triumphant swallow. “But it’s not too late for Katherine, is it? She’s still present.”

“She is,” Len says. “Somewhere deep. I thought you understood that.”

He’s wrong there. I still don’t understand any of it. Not just the perversion of nature that allowed the situation to happen, but how it works.

“Is she aware of what’s going on?”

“You’d have to ask her,” Len says.

“Is that possible?”

“Not anymore. It was back when she still mostly had control.”

My thoughts drift to my few interactions with Katherine. Talking in the boat after pulling her from the lake. Downing her husband’s five-grand-a-bottle wine. Drinking coffee the next morning, bemoaning the state of her marriage. That was all Katherine. Or most of it. I presume that sometimes Len broke through, like when he saw his binoculars sitting on the porch or texted me even though Katherine didn’t know my phone number.