Lake Thirteen (5 page)

Rachel blew out her breath and opened her door. “We might as well humor him, guys,” she said, sliding down to the ground, “or we’ll never hear the end of it.” She gave me another weird look and shut the door.

What’s wrong with her?
I wondered, sliding across the seat to follow Teresa out the other side. Logan shut off the engine and turned off the lights. Now the only light was the naked bulb by the screen door leading into the lodge.

The air was thick, warm and heavy, almost syrupy. Beads of sweat popped out on my arms as I walked across the parking lot to the sidewalk to the entryway.
It is humid and muggy,
I thought as I opened the screen door and went inside.
So what was all that cold down at the graveyard?

The big front room of the lodge seemed much creepier when empty than it had earlier. It was a long room, with couches and chairs scattered around a massive fireplace. The animal heads stuffed and mounted on the rough-hewn walls had seemed almost funny in their tackiness in the daylight, but with all the windows big squares of darkness, they seemed scarier and more menacing. I swallowed and sat down on one of the couches in front of the fireplace. Rachel plopped down next to me and patted my shoulder. She just smiled when I looked over at her. “How do you feel?” she asked me in a low voice.

“Fine,” I replied.
What the hell is she talking about?

“Anyone want a soda?” Logan asked as he walked over to the big red Coke cooler in the far corner of the room. He lifted the lid and some fog escaped. He came back to where we were sitting, passing out Cokes and Diet Cokes.

I popped the top of mine and took a long drink, smothering a belch as Carson started passing around our iPads. “I can’t believe they went back to the cabins and just left our iPads lying around in the game room,” he said with a scowl.

Logan rolled his eyes as he flipped open the case to his. “It was probably our parents’ idea.” He mimicked his mother’s voice. “If someone steals their iPads it will teach them a lesson about running off and leaving them out.”

“Yeah, yeah, sounds like my mom, too.” Carson rolled his eyes as he sat down in a wooden rocking chair and opened the cover of his iPad. “Everyone write down your impressions of the graveyard and what you saw,” he ordered. “Everything, no matter how unimportant it may have seemed, because you never know—coupled with something someone else saw, it could be something important.” He looked around at all of us. “Please take this seriously, guys.”

Teresa winked at me as she sat in a chair beside him, and I hid a grin. I sat down and opened the Notes app and started typing with two fingers, feeling kind of crazy and stupid.

Away from the cemetery, in the big well-lit room with the staring bears and wolf heads on the walls, I didn’t really know what to type. In the cemetery, the coldness, the sadness and the weird flag thing had seemed like proof there was such a thing as ghosts. Now, it seemed unreal, like all of our imaginations had been working overtime or something down there. But I started writing because I knew Carson was going to want us to compare notes when we were all finished.

But I didn’t mention Albert’s grave as I touched the letters on the screen.

That seemed
private
to me, like it wasn’t any of their business.

It didn’t even seem weird that I felt that way.

So I just wrote about the weird solitary flag waving, and the weird sensation of cold on my back and my arms. I didn’t mention the sadness—I was the only person who’d felt that.

I had just finished when Rachel sighed. “Okay, finished. What do we do now, Scooby-Doo?”

Carson gave her a dirty look. “You know, I don’t make fun of your bullshit interests, do I?”

“All right, I’m sorry.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Is everyone finished?” Carson asked. When everyone nodded, he had us each read out loud what we’d written down.

I went first, rushing through it as quickly as I could and putting my iPad down. I didn’t listen to any of the others, letting my mind wander back to saying good-bye to Marc last night.

Marc hadn’t gotten a job as a lifeguard this summer—we’d both gotten jobs working as stock boys at the Jewel-Osco. We’d even convinced the manager to let us work the same shifts, so I could give Marc rides to and from work, since he didn’t have a car and Mom let me take hers. It was perfect. The job itself was meaningless—all we had to do was restock the store and make sure everything was nice and neat and organized looking. It paid much better than lifeguarding, and we got to spend almost all of our time together.

It had been the opposite of last summer. This one had been almost too perfect to be true.

“I wish you weren’t going away,” Marc said as we lay side by side on my bed. “And I’m sorry we can’t…you know.” He was always apologetic about his fear of coming out, like I somehow didn’t understand why he felt that way. All it took was listening to his father rant just once about the
goddamned homosexuals
for me to know Marc was much worse off than I was. No, I knew too well Marc wasn’t ever going to be able to do anything about coming out until he was no longer under his father’s roof.

We hadn’t really thought that far ahead, of course, but I just figured we’d go off to college together, maybe share an apartment. I was looking at the University of Illinois—I really wanted to go to Northwestern, but it was too expensive, and there was no way I was going to get a scholarship. My grades were good but they weren’t
that
good.

“It’s only for a week,” I replied, trying to be brave. He squeezed my hand so hard I almost cried out.

“It’ll seem like forever,” he replied gloomily. “You better answer my texts this year.”

“I will,” I’d replied, not knowing then there’d be no cell service and limited Wi-Fi on the mountain. I squeezed his hand back and lifted it to my mouth and kissed it. “You know I’ll be thinking of you every second I’m there, and missing you so bad I won’t be hardly able to stand it.”

I’d walked him home—we’d kissed good-bye in the privacy of my bedroom—and he’d looked back to where I stood on the sidewalk one last time before he went into the house.

It felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

“Interesting,” Carson was saying as I focused on the present again. “No one else experienced the cold the way Scotty did—and neither Scotty nor Rachel heard the growling sound the rest of us did.”

“What do you think it means?” Teresa asked. She looked interested, as did Logan, while Rachel looked like she wanted to start playing with her phone again.

“It means there was a dog or something—maybe a wolf—in the woods,” Rachel said with a big yawn before Carson could say anything. “And it took off while you were on your way down to the fence. As for the cold?” She shrugged. “That I can’t explain. But it was really weird, I’ll say that, especially the way Scotty kept getting the goose bumps.” She started playing with her iPad again, and I could see the Rio version of Angry Birds loading on the screen. “That was pretty freaky.”

“You didn’t feel anything but the cold, Scotty?” All of them except Rachel were looking at me now, expectation on their faces.

Tell them, what can it hurt?
I took a deep breath. “I just felt really sad.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I felt really sad.” I swallowed. “I felt like I was going to cry, honestly. Now, it just seems weird. I don’t know.”

“And that’s all?” Teresa’s eyebrows came together. She was watching me closely, and I realized Rachel was, too. It was odd.

“Like I said, I felt like I was going to start crying.” I shook my head. “I can’t explain it any better than that—I’m sorry if it doesn’t make any more sense to you than it does to me. I just felt really sad. I even started remembering my dog Skipper, you know, the day we had him put to sleep. It was like every sad memory I ever had came back to me, and that made it even worse.”

“Ghosts—and hauntings—usually have the cold associated with them,” Carson said, more like he was just thinking out loud. “Haunted houses have cold spots in them, and people who see or experience ghosts always say it got colder right before…but it was just your back?”

I nodded.

“There was a case”—Carson burst out—“I remember reading about it—sometimes ghosts hug you from behind, and you go back…I swear to God, I remember reading something like that earlier this summer, but I can’t remember where.”

He went on, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I closed my eyes.

A ghost had hugged me? From behind? And then just held on to me?

I really didn’t like the sound of that—but I couldn’t help but wonder if it was Albert.

Carson got his recording device out and turned the volume all the way up before hitting play.

There was nothing but the sound of us walking around and whispering.

And then I heard it clearly—the growling sound. It was faint, like it was far away from where Carson was talking softly.

Carson switched the recorder off quickly. “Did you hear that?”

Even Rachel had looked up from her iPad. “That didn’t sound like either a dog or a wolf,” she said slowly, her face draining of color.

“It was human,” Logan said, swallowing. “Play it again, Carson.”

Carson fiddled with it for a moment, and then I could hear the growling again.

Rachel was right. It didn’t sound like an animal.

“Who the hell was that?” Teresa whispered.

The recording kept playing, now with the sounds of the three of them whispering to each other as they ran down the road to the fence.

“There’s nothing here,”
Logan said clearly on the recording.

“We should have brought flashlights. If we come down here again, we will,”
Carson answered him.

The quality of the recording was remarkable—not like every other time I’d heard a recording from a handheld before, where the voices sounded hollow and tinny. We heard them talk some more, and then, not hearing the growling or any other sounds, they headed back up to where Rachel and I had been standing.

“He’s cold, feel his back.”
Carson’s voice.

And then, clearly, we heard another voice say,
“Scotty.”

“Oh. My. God.” Carson dropped the recorder. “Did you hear that? It said Scotty’s name.”

We all stared at each other.

“Who said that?” Teresa stared at me. “That didn’t sound like any of us.”

“None of us said his name, I’d swear to it,” Logan replied, his voice shaky.

“Get real, it had to be one of us.” Rachel reached down and picked up the recorder. She fiddled with it for a moment and hit play again.

“
He’s cold, feel his back.”

And the voice said my name again.

It wasn’t any of us.

I closed my eyes and remembered the sadness, the way the cold had started on the back of my head and traveled down my back, the way the hairs on my arms had stood up.

It was Albert.

Who else could it have been?

Since our cabin was the closest to the lodge, they dropped me off first.

Both Rachel and Teresa hugged me before I went inside, Rachel holding on a little longer than was necessary. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she whispered as she let go and stepped back away from me, her big blue eyes round and staring at mine.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I replied, trying to laugh off how uncomfortable she was making me feel. “Really. I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

I waved after I unlocked the door to the cabin, and Logan turned the SUV around and drove out onto the road. I shut the door behind me and locked it. The door to my parents’ room was closed, but I could still hear my dad snoring anyway. I smiled.

The cabin had a big living room with a little kitchenette tucked away in a corner, with two bedrooms on either side. My parents had taken the large bedroom on the right. The place was decorated in what my mother had rather snottily described as “early American lumberjack” when we’d arrived—the cushions on the big couch and the chairs were in a matching red, black, and white flannel, and over the fireplace a deer’s head was mounted, and its big glassy black eyes seemed to always be looking right at me wherever I stood in the room. There was dark shag carpeting, and the walls were paneled in a faux-wood style that seemed right out of reruns of
The Brady Bunch.
I opened the door to the bedroom on the left and flicked the switch that turned on my bedside lamp before turning off the lights in the living room.

I shut my door behind me and leaned back against it. I was still a little spooked by everything—hearing that voice on the recording saying my name was probably the creepiest thing I’d ever heard in my life. I still wasn’t completely convinced it wasn’t some kind of trick Carson was playing on me, but that didn’t explain the cold or the weird emotions I experienced in the cemetery. The bedroom was really cold, but that was because when we’d arrived it had been warm and stuffy and I’d turned the air conditioning unit in one of the windows on high. I turned it down, shivering, and stared out into the pitch-blackness of the night for a moment before reaching up and pulling the blinds down.

I spun around and dashed from window to window, pulling down the blinds and pulling the curtains closed. There was something frightening about the darkness, almost threatening…

And I laughed at myself.
It’s just the dark, you idiot,
I reminded myself.
Are you afraid of the dark now like a little baby?

There was a door on the back side of the room that led to a small patio deck. I made sure it was locked and the deadbolt slid into place, then sat down on my bed and took off my shoes and socks. Self-mocking aside, I still felt nervous and uncomfortable.

There’s something out there that wants me and is dangerous.

I shook my head and took a deep breath as I slipped my T-shirt over my head and shivered again. It was still so cold in my room, even though the air conditioner was off. I looked over at one of the windows, thinking maybe I should open one, let some warm air in.

But I couldn’t bring myself to get up and open the window.

I shrugged off my shorts and pulled back the covers, sliding underneath.
There’s enough covers so I don’t need to open a window,
I decided as I reached for the lamp on the bedside table. I turned it off and my room plunged into darkness. I closed my eyes.

The bed wasn’t comfortable, and the pillows were flatter than what I was used to. I stared up at the ceiling for I don’t know how long before I finally was able to drift off into a restless sleep.

And of course, I had a horrible nightmare.

I was in bed, but the room was different. My eyes were open and it was bright, moonlight was shining in through the windows, so I could see the cabin I was in was nothing more than just a big room, really. There was a rough-hewn door that closed and bolted, but the windows were open, and I could see the trees and the night sky. I was underneath a beautiful red and green quilt, but even though I was warm underneath the quilt I could see my breath, and it seemed like the air was getting colder with every breath I was taking. When I’d opened my eyes I had felt safe and warm, but not anymore—there was danger, I was in danger, something was coming for me, I needed to get out of the bed and get away from there, but I couldn’t, I was frozen in place, and I could hear it, outside of the cabin, it was coming for me and it wanted me, it was evil and dangerous and was going to kill me—

I sat up in my bed, my heart pounding, gasping for breath in the darkness.

I tried to control my breathing, to get my heart rate to slow down, and I wrapped my arms around myself. It was still chilly in the room, but it was more stuffy than anything else, the air hanging heavy and damp. According to the glowing red numbers on the digital clock on the night stand, it was just after three in the morning. As my eyes adjusted, I could tell it was lighter in my room than it had been when I’d gone to sleep.

Thirsty, I slid out of bed and went into the little bathroom. I turned on the light and stared at my reflection in the mirror. My face was pale, and my eyes were red and bloodshot and swollen. I got a glass of cold water and gulped it down. I put the glass back on the sink and splashed cold water on my face.

“It was just a dream, that’s all, and is it any wonder you had a nightmare after hanging out in a cemetery all night?”
I said to myself in the mirror.

And that’s when I heard it.

At first, I wasn’t sure I was even hearing anything at all. The wind was blowing around the cabin, and I’d heard the trees in the forest just a few short yards behind the cabin rustling around ever since I’d woken up. Goose bumps came up on my arms, though, when I realized that the wind was trying to form words.

You’re really losing it.

And then I heard it as plainly as I’d heard my name on Carson’s recorder.

“Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-tiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee.”

Bertie.

Albert?

I sat down hard on the toilet and tried to stop trembling.

This was more terrifying than the dream or anything that happened in the cemetery.

You’re still asleep that’s it you’re still having the dream focus and wake up, Scotty, before you—

And then I heard it again, the voice, calling.

It sounded so sad, heartbroken and lonely. It was hollow—it sounded like what the wind would sound like if it could speak.

“Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-tiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee.”

There was so much anguish in the voice, like whoever was calling Bertie was in great pain.

I stood up and walked to the back door. I felt like I had to, I didn’t have a choice—the voice was someone suffering, someone is terrible pain, and I had to go outside and help.

I felt along the wall for the light switch I’d noticed earlier and flipped it up.

I turned the doorknob and stepped out onto the deck.

There was a light just outside the door, and the yellowish glow lit up the rough-hewn, unpainted deck and the three steps down to the uneven back lawn. The light faded just beyond the tree line, and within a matter of seconds some bugs and moths were flying around the light. I squinted, but I couldn’t see anything out there. There was nothing to see, and no one.

The air was damp and there was a slight chill to it, but it was warmer out on the deck than it was in my room. It was still so incredibly dark outside—I could barely see anything outside the circle cast by the porch light.

I could see the path that led from the back steps into the woods fairly clearly. I’d noticed it earlier, when I’d checked out the patio after unpacking my suitcases.

“Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-tiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee.”

The voice was heartbreaking.

I walked across the wooden deck to the stairs and rubbed my arms to warm them up. My skin felt moist and damp.

It was amazing how silent the night was, other than the wind, and how dark the woods were.

Surely there were some nocturnal animals? Where were the owls?

“Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-tiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee.”

The sadness I felt earlier in the evening came back, filling me up like water being poured into a glass.

I felt like I was going to start crying.

I walked down the three wooden steps to the cold, damp grass. I felt like I had to find the person who was calling, take him in my arms and hold him, comfort and kiss him until his pain went away. I wanted to make his suffering stop.

I needed to make his suffering stop.

I started walking up the path, listening for his voice to come again. I stopped once I reached the tree line, peering through the darkness. I could vaguely make out the path as it wound deeper into the woods, beyond the warm yellow glow coming from the porch light. My own shadow stretched out into the woods before being swallowed by the darkness. I stepped into the woods—

—and froze in place.

The feeling of sadness and longing was fading rapidly, pouring out of me almost as quickly as it had poured into me. The wind was beginning to pick up, the trees and bushes rustling anxiously.

I could feel the temperature start dropping again rapidly. I started to shiver, my teeth chattering, and I could see my breath.

That’s not possible.

I could sense it. There was something—something
else
out there in the woods, something other than whoever it had been calling, something dangerous and evil.

I started backing up, one foot behind the other, stepping back away from the woods and whatever was out there, my heart starting to pound faster and my breath coming in gulping gasps. I desperately wanted to turn and run, to get away from the dark and into the full safety of the light, back up onto the deck and slam the bedroom door behind me, turning the lock and sliding the deadbolt into place, pushing furniture over to block the door as an extra precaution, waking up my parents—

And tell them what, exactly? There’s a ghost or something in the forest that wants to get you? Get a grip, Scotty!

But crazy as it seemed, I knew, could sense, that whatever it was, it wanted me.

I could hear it coming, the unmistakable sound of something moving through the underbrush—the sound of branches being pushed apart and bushes being moved aside as whatever it was headed directly for me, and just like the dream I’d had, I was rooted to the spot, unable to move, just stuck there, every nerve and instinct in my body screaming at me to move, run, get the hell out of there, and the terror just rose inside of me, taking me over completely—

—and I sat up in my bed again.

It was almost seven in the morning, according to the clock, and was already light outside. I could see gray light around the blinds on the window with the air conditioning unit—that weird mix of gray and light and dark.

As I sat there, yawning, I heard it again.

“Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-tiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee.”

And then, as it faded away, the goose bumps back up on my arms again, I began to hear the normal sounds of the woods—birds chirping and cicadas humming and insects buzzing. A car drove past on the road, heading in the direction of the lodge.

Everything was normal again.

Had it all just been a crazy dream?

I swung my legs to the floor and noticed that my feet were dirty.

I threw back the covers. There were pine needles and dirty leaves in my bed.

I started trembling as I got to my feet and walked over to the back door.

The deadbolt wasn’t turned.

I swallowed.

It hadn’t been a dream. I’d gone outside, into the woods, during the night.

Maybe I’d been sleepwalking. So my mind imagined everything because I was really asleep, but I was just awake enough to be aware of what I was doing?

I slid the deadbolt into place and walked into the bathroom. I turned the shower on and brushed my teeth. The face that stared back at me out of the mirror looked tired, scared, and not really myself. “There’s no such things as ghosts,” I told my reflection firmly.

I stood in the shower for a long time, letting the hot water soak into my body, soaping up and rinsing off, hoping the hot water would leech the cold out of my bones and my muscles. The shower seemed to be returning everything back to normal. By the time I turned the water off and reached for a towel, I’d pretty much convinced myself the entire thing had been a figment of my imagination, a combination of the power of suggestion from Carson’s insistent belief in the paranormal, being physically tired from traveling all day, and emotional exhaustion from missing Marc.

After drying off and getting dressed, I went out the back door to the path. It was so strange how normal everything seemed. I could see my footprints in the dewy grass and, farther past that, my bare footprints in the dirt of the path—but they stopped halfway to the tree line.

“So I was sleepwalking and dreaming the rest,” I said under my own breath, relieved there was a normal explanation for it, after all.

Still, as far as I knew, I’d never walked in my sleep before, but that didn’t mean I never had. And both dreams had been so vivid—

—
and don’t forget what happened in the graveyard—

—and I’d heard the voice calling Bertie
after
I’d woken up.

But that was probably just a remnant from the dream, after all. The dream had been so deep and intense, I could easily have still been dreaming even as I was waking up. That made a lot more sense than it being something paranormal.

And of course, I’d heard
Bertie
because my subconscious remembered Albert’s grave.

I went back inside and closed the door behind me. The room was getting stuffy again, so I turned the air conditioner back on, and I could hear someone moving around out in the living room. I opened my door and walked out there. Mom was in the little kitchenette, spooning coffee into a filter. She was wearing gray shorts and an orange Virginia sweatshirt, her hair was tousled, and she yawned as she put the filter into the coffeemaker and turned it on. “Morning.” She smiled at me, fighting another yawn. “You’re up early.”