Chapter 8 Serenity Lake
Serenity Lake
Iwoke, my eyes still closed, imagining Tom’s arm wrapped around me. My cheek nestled against his chest. The first night we met, it was Kelly who introduced us. He’d barely looked at her; he only had eyes for me. He told me later that I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
I wondered what he’d be doing now. Getting ready for work, or doing some between-the-sheets exercise before he rose? With Kelly, my best friend. My ex-best friend.
The thought hit like a lightning bolt to my chest.
I was in this new place, I’d come here for a fresh start, I felt like my mind needed to forget and move on, but my body craved his arms. Craved him. Craved the life we had. How easily he had let it go.
I rubbed my face roughly with my palms and sighing, I forced myself to rise.
I needed to run. I’d always loved running.
For me, it was a form of meditation; the steady influx of breath and the rhythmic slap of my feet took me into a trance-like state that soothed my mind.
It was vital for my mental health. God knew I needed it now.
I stepped out onto the porch just as the sun emerged over the tip of the mountains, bleeding into a graveyard of gray.
It would be dark under the shroud of the forest, and a thought landed as briefly as the brush of a feather across my cheek, it’s not safe to run alone at night.
But it should lighten soon enough, and man was the biggest threat to a female jogger, no one would be around given how remote I lived.
I headed right, away from the neighbors, along a well-worn track that wove around the edge of the lake and disappeared into the towering tree line.
It felt good to be running, the fresh scent of pines kissing my nostrils.
The craggy, ashen limbs of giant firs branched out over a majestic landscape of shrubs, rolling patches of short grass, and stone.
Occasional pockets of sun sprinkled through the canopy of leaves, stabbing wispy citrine slices across the floor.
My feet crunched against the hard ground.
Above, a lone crow squawked. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the gentle burble of a stream.
It’d been a bit over a week since I last ran, but it felt like a month. It wasn’t long before my legs and lungs burned. My heart pumped furiously. Sweat stuck my ponytail to the nape of my neck like a wet rope. An image of my father’s angry face invaded my mind.
“You’re not my child, and if you don’t like the way I live, get the fuck out.”
It was not him telling me to get out that hurt so much; it was when he’d said I wasn’t his child.
He was the only father I’d ever known. He took me in, gave me a permanent home, loved me like his own.
But it was all smoke and mirrors, shattering after my mom’s death and the truth was a fist slamming into my heart.
I surged forward faster.
Tom’s face landed with a gut-wrenching jolt behind my eyes.
For as long as I could remember, I’ve had the ability to replay anything I’d seen, like it was recorded, and I was watching it again on TV.
The details were always crystal clear. I could stop, pause, rewind, fast forward.
This ability was a blessing; it was easy to learn anything.
But now, it felt like a curse.
The scenes came back in fragments, like a hellish slideshow.
The grind of Tom’s hips.
I pushed harder.
Kelly’s moans.
I gritted my teeth. My feet slapped against the ground.
Their shocked faces.
How long had it been going on for? Did he have her there every night I worked and send her home before I walked in the door?
Did they sneak off into the hospital somewhere and screw?
How could I not have seen something, anything, that alarmed me?
Sure, Kelly was a flirt, but she flirted with every half-decent male, so I thought nothing of it when she smiled widely at Tom, placed her hand on his arm, and batted her eyelashes.
I gave them both my love, my loyalty . . . my devotion. I was there when they needed me. And they’d done that to me as if I meant nothing to them.
Their betrayal scorched my veins.
I came to a sharp rise as every muscle in my legs screamed.
My throat seized and thinned to a pinhead.
Each breath came in and out with a pitiful whine.
My eyes burned. The forest path blurred.
I pushed on, chest heaving, muscles burning, heart breaking, until I reached the top of the incline.
The sharp claws, which had clutched me relentlessly over the past few days, ripped, pulling and tearing at my heart until the torment overwhelmed me.
My legs buckled. Sharp rocks sunk into my knees, but I barely registered it; there was no pain more powerful than the silent agony of a screaming heart.
I cupped my hands over my face and began to sob. Deep, gut-wrenching, ugly sobs.
The whole world seemed to darken and fall away.
The birds fell silent. The trees stopped moving as if they, too, were caught in the depths of my despair.
All that surrounded me was pain and a terrible emptiness.
A feeling of isolation so deep I may as well have been sealed inside a coffin, lowered into the ground, and covered by six feet of heavy, dank soil.
I’m not sure how long I stayed there, sobbing.
It could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been an hour—there was no way of telling—but slowly the world trickled back in.
My sobs dimmed, then finally ceased. I drew in a deep, agonized breath, drained of energy, and rubbed my hands over my weary face, telling myself to get it together.
I felt it first—the energy of the stare. A shiver of inexplicable dread crawled over the nape of my neck. I jerked my head up, scanning the climbing sea of trees and rocks. Nothing out of place, nothing of concern.
And yet . . . I felt it. That terrible sensation of being watched.
Forests were normally a place of sanctuary for me, but suddenly this one had become as vaguely disconcerting as a New Orleans cemetery. Lurking, hidden amongst the trees was . . . what? Not the dead—the dead didn’t lurk. Maybe I was being paranoid?
Regardless, I fumbled for my phone, my fingers hot and sweaty as I yanked at the zip of my pocket and pulled it out. I glanced down at the screen. It stared back blankly, devoid of bars. I clutched it in my palm and stared hard into the wilderness.
I tried to tell myself it was just my imagination, it had always been vivid; alongside being able to recall events with detailed precision, I could also conjure up all kinds of hallucinations.
Always at night. Always in the dark.
Never in broad daylight. I was being foolish—there was nothing there.
Christ, get it together, Amy.
I placed my phone back in my pocket and wiped my sweaty palms on my leggings.
Ahead. A dark blur of movement.
A thought rammed through my mind: Shadow Man.
I tried not to panic. It was just a dream, not a premonition, if there even was such a thing. It was probably a deer, or a bird. I squinted into the shadowy depths of the woods. I could make out something. Something deeper than the shadows.
Something jet black.
My heart stuttered. My eyes bulged. I’d read somewhere that in times of terror, human eyes actually bulged to allow for a wider, lighter visual field. I strained to get a better look. The shadowy outline pulled into focus.
The image landed like a sledgehammer.
A wolf. A gigantic fucking wolf.
Horror overwhelmed me.
Oh shit, shit, shit.
The missing faces on the board . . .
I’d heard stories of injured hikers attacked by hungry wolves, although it was extraordinarily rare.
They were timid creatures by nature. They traveled in packs, so where there was one, there would be more, and if they were to circle me, I was down, defenseless.
I realized my knees were bleeding with a sudden flare of panic.
The blood had trickled out onto the gray boulder I had dropped on.
The scent was probably what drew him, even though there wasn’t much.
I considered trying to rise and shout to scare him off, but maybe if he saw me as a threat he’d switch to aggression.
With a wolf that size, I’d hold no hope of fighting him off.
I could lower my body in submission, but he might attack.
My mind scrambled with what to do. When no answers were forthcoming, I sat there frozen, mute, and terrified.
There was something strange about his eyes. They were amber and seemed to shine, and the way he looked at me was as if he held some kind of awareness, an understanding that belied his feral nature. It was an absurd notion—
I noted with relief that his tail was low, not high, as was often a sign of aggression.
The hair on his back was flat, and he wasn’t snarling.
He didn’t move. His golden eyes held me transfixed.
Strangely, the fear slowly trickled out of my bloodstream.
We stared at each other for a long moment.
He continued to regard me with reserved interest .
. . or was it the appraising of a future snack?
Maybe he was waiting for me to move, so he could chase down his prey.
Because I couldn’t think of anything to do that wouldn’t elicit my demise, I said in a wavering, low voice, “Hey there, boy.”
He stiffened. My heart stopped.
And then he spun and took off. His dark shadow shimmered into the undergrowth, and he vanished. My heart rebooted and thudded loudly in my chest. I dragged in a deep, relieved breath and climbed to my feet, my legs shaking and rigid as I stared after him with a perplexed, trembling awe.