Chapter 19 Tiffany #2
She was making good progress across the lake—doing swimmingly, she thought with a smirk—when her foot kicked something hard. Wincing, she bobbed to a treading position, her toes prodding for the object she’d struck.
“Ow!” Her toes found a sharp point. What the fuck? She peered into the lake. A peaked monolith lurked beneath the surface. She dove under the water to confirm what she was seeing.
It was undeniably a canoe. The canoe that came with the Slasher cabin. She recognized the scratched green exterior and the dent at the bow. She and Jen had made that dent when they’d drunkenly crashed it into some rocks in high school.
The canoe was filled with concrete blocks, which had shifted to one side, forcing the canoe to tilt. One end jutted out like a mountain’s peak. That was the part she’d kicked.
The back of Tiffany’s neck chilled as she came up for air. Someone had intentionally sunk the canoe in the middle of the lake. Holy shit. Russ hadn’t meant for any of them to leave the cabin.
She was about to set off again when a broad-shouldered figure emerged from the trees and onto the shore opposite the summer camp.
Terror scrambled her brain. But then she remembered he couldn’t attack her here.
Not in the middle of the lake. She just had to keep going.
Even if Russ dove in after her, he’d never catch up to her now. Could he swim holding an axe, anyway?
To her surprise, her name echoed across the lake like a skipping stone. “Tiffany!”
She glanced back. The figure ran onto the dock and started to jump up and down, waving wildly with both arms. That didn’t seem like something a killer would do.
Was it Jason? No, she would recognize him anywhere.
The build was similar, though. Mikey! She raised an arm and waved back.
Thank goodness he was okay. Jason and his family would be devastated if anything happened to him.
Mikey kept jumping up and down and yelling her name. Fuck, he was going to draw that axe-wielding maniac right to him.
“Mikey, be quiet! Russ is out there with an axe!” she called out. “I’m getting help!”
She was trying to, anyway. She struggled to tread water, confused by the sudden difficulty. The lake, so smooth and compliant before, was working against her, growing increasingly choppy.
She’d gotten her wish. She was no longer alone.
Tiffany’s yelp was drowned out by a rumble as a motorboat came zipping from the eastern end of the lake.
The Mary Lou. She hadn’t heard the approaching engine due to the roar of her pulse in her ears.
She prayed she’d been wrong, and the boat belonged to a local fisherman.
Maybe she could ask him to go to the summer camp and get help from Uncle Vic.
Tiffany’s hope died when she saw the boat’s occupant.
A hooded figure sat tall in the driver’s seat, wearing a white mask that gleamed in the moonlight.
Mikey had been trying to warn her.
Tiffany recognized her error. Of course one could never be too pretty to die. Pretty dead girls made the best tragedies. She was so pretty, people said sadly at funerals, gazing at the open casket, or staring at photos on the news. She had her whole life ahead of her.
A loon soared over her head, flapping its wings in alarm as the motorboat grew closer.
If only she could fly away that quickly.
She didn’t have wings, but she hadn’t placed first in the girls’ 100-meter freestyle in regionals for nothing.
This was just another heat, she told herself. A race, albeit one for her life.
The dock on the summer camp’s side was visible. She could make it. She didn’t even care that she was leading Russ straight into a camp full of kids. Her best friend Fear was telling her to go, go, go. Whatever happened could be sorted out later.
She spared one last glance for Mikey, who was still yelling her name on the dock. The waves kept coming, as if the boat were trying to pull a watery rug out from under her. The Slasher bore down and turned the boat to cut Tiffany off.
She pumped her arms like she could swim out of her skin.
He continued to circle her, his masked face flat and expressionless.
A shark focused on catching its prey. Tiffany gulped brackish lake water as she fought to keep her head above the turbulent surface.
Her arms and legs burned, and her sprained ankle felt like it had swollen into a lead balloon.
The boat swung around again behind her. What was he waiting for? Tiffany choked again on lake water, daring to look over her shoulder.
She wished she hadn’t.
The Slasher’s right arm disappeared inside the boat.
And reappeared with an axe.
Tiffany pushed her aching muscles harder.
The summer camp’s dock was so close. The rope and buoys that marked off the swimming area were nearly in reach.
If she could slip under one of those, the boat couldn’t follow, could it?
He’d have to switch off the outboard motor or else the rope would get tangled.
The boat roared, a wild beast closing in for the kill. Tiffany’s skin went white-cold with terror. The Mary Lou tore through the water, eating up the distance between them.
The shark was done playing with his food.
As the Slasher stood and raised the axe, Tiffany screamed and launched herself into her award-winning front crawl. Her right arm came up over her head—and never made it down.
Not in one piece, anyway.
Tiffany floundered, suddenly off-balance, tasting her own blood in the water as pain seared across the jagged stump where her right forearm should’ve been.
Panic blinded her, or it could’ve been the fathomless darkness of the surrounding lake and the sky.
Was she even going in the right direction anymore?
She kicked violently, a desperate mermaid trying to writhe away from the shark. From the greedy bite of the axe.
It was no good.
The axe came down again, and again. Carving off pieces of her with its hunger. Her swollen ankle, sheared off like dead wood. Her right leg at the knee, making a shockingly sharp crack that echoed all around them.
The blood-steeped lake filled Tiffany’s throat as she gasped.
Her body fought to go in one direction but the waves tugged her in the other, pulling at her partially severed right leg.
She nearly passed out as it dragged from the fractured knee socket, the last thread of skin stretching and tearing like taffy.
And finally her left arm, the fingers of her hand forming a claw above her head like she could drag herself across the water as if it were carpet.
The blade soared and her delicate wrist split like a wishbone, weakly spraying her face with warm blood.
Or maybe it was actually lake water, splashing up her nose as her struggling slowed.
Her last thought, as the blade buried itself in her back, was that it was a shame her funeral would be closed casket.