CHAPTER ELEVEN
Michaela woke up and stared hard into the darkness. What had woken her? She strained to listen, but the only sound right now was Trisha’s steady breathing. She cast her eyes around the room, watching while the darkness resolved itself into a lumpy grayness. The hairs on the back of her neck were prickling. Something had woken her.
She slipped from the bed and silently cursed the cold floorboards. A white toweling robe hung from the back of the door, looking washed out and limp. Michaela wrapped herself in it and left the room, walking through the cabin towards the front door. The fire was a pile of embers in the grate and the light took on a reddish tint.
She couldn’t see anything through the window. But something had woken her. What had it been? A sound? Or just some dream she couldn’t now remember? She chewed her lip, thinking about it.
Not a dream, she decided and reached for the doorknob. It was cold in her hand and she turned it, pulling the door open just wide enough for her to slip through.
The chill air pressed against her in a damp embrace. She paused on the porch, listening. Nothing. She couldn’t see anything either. Her boots were on the porch where she’d left them. Bending down, she pulled them on and walked down the steps and past the rental car. She found the gap in the darkness that was the track down to the lake and listened to her footsteps as she walked down to the jetty.
The water lapped against the pilings like a dog at its dinner bowl. The lake, perfectly shaped like a basin, spread out in the darkness in front of her and she sensed rather than saw the ripples on its surface. She strained to look out over the water, into the trees, wishing the moon was out. What had woken her?
Then, finally, there it was again, and she recognized it immediately from the tattered ending of her sleep. Laughter. Out of the blackness of the night, the laughter rang with childish glee. Michaela shivered. An eerie sound it was if ever she’d heard one. A child’s laughter, evoking games of hiding and seek, parties and birthday cake, but Michaela shivered again. There was something wrong about it. She peered into the darkness but all she could see were shadows and dim reflections. And the laughter carried on.
It didn’t seem so innocent now, the laughter filling with its shadows; was that an edge of fear to it? What was happening?
Michaela stared down the lake, wanting to see something, anything. Was there a child down there? Why would a child be running around at this time of night? Michaela pressed the light button on her watch and the dial flashed green. Three o’clock. No child would be playing outside at this time.
The laughter rang out again and Michaela started. It was darker laughter now, the innocence and joy gone, replaced with edgy horror. Michaela took a step backward off the jetty, acutely aware all of a sudden that she was standing out here alone in the dark, wearing nothing but a toweling robe and a pair of boots. She stumbled back off the jetty and up the path towards the cabin, the laughter ringing in her ears.
She looked back when she reached the path, just a glance. And reached out to grasp the nearest tree. There was the light again. She swallowed, heart, beating rapidly. The light wasn’t over the water this time, but flickering in and out of the trees, as though playing hide and seek. Michaela turned and ran.