Prologue
Seventeen years earlier . . .
The house at the end of the lane was filled with darkness and night. That wasn’t right, Irene thought.
Her parents always left the lights on for her.
“Don’t be mad, Irene.” Pamela stopped the car in the driveway. The convertible’s headlights blazed a short distance into the thick stand of fir trees that loomed beside the house. “It was just a joke, okay?
Hey look, the lights are off inside your place. Your folks are in bed. They’ll never know you got home after curfew.”
Irene pushed open the car door and scrambled out of the convertible. “They’ll know.
You’ve ruined everything.”
“So tell them it was my fault,” Pamela said carelessly. “I lost track of the time.”
“It was my fault. I made the mistake of believing that you really were my friend. I thought I could trust you. My folks only have two rules. No drugs and no driving to the other side of the lake.”
“Give me a break. You only broke one rule tonight.” In the lights of the dash, Pamela’s smile was very bright. “I didn’t even have any drugs in the car.”
“We weren’t supposed to go beyond the town limits, and you know it. You just got your license. Dad says you haven’t had enough experience behind the wheel yet.”
“I got you home safe and sound, didn’t I?”
“That’s not the point and you know it. I made a promise to my folks.”
“You are such a good girl.” Disgust and exasperation were thick in Pamela’s words.
“Don’t you get tired of always following the rules?”
Irene took a step back. “Is that what this was all about tonight? You wanted to see if you could make me break the rules? Well, you succeeded, so I hope you’re satisfied.
This is the last time you and I will do anything together. But that’s probably just what you wanted, isn’t it? Good night, Pamela.”
She turned toward the darkened house, digging into her purse to find her key.
“Irene, wait—”
Irene ignored her. Key in hand she hurried toward the front door. Her parents were going to be furious. They would probably ground her for life or, at the very least, for the rest of the summer.
“Okay be that way” Pamela called after her. “Go back to your perfect, boring, good girl life and your perfect, boring little family. Next time I pick a best friend I’ll choose one who knows how to have fun.”
Pamela drove off very quickly. When the convertible’s headlights disappeared, Irene found herself alone in the night. She was very conscious of the chill in the air. That was wrong, too, she thought. It was summer. The moon was shining out on the lake.
She and Pamela had put the top down on the flash ew sports car this evening. It shouldn’t have felt so cold.
Maybe this was what it was like when you discovered that you could not trust someone you though as a friend.
Morosely she watched to see if a light came on in her parents’ bedroom at the side of the house. They must have heard Pamela’s car, she thought. Her father, especially, was a light sleeper.
But the house remained dark. She felt a small flicker of relief. If her folks did not wake up tonight, she could put off the inevitable scene until morning. Breakfast would be soon enough to find out that she had been permanently grounded.
She could just barely make out the front porch steps. Her dad had forgotten to turn on the light over the door. That was really weird. He always left that light and the one at the back of the house on all night. It was another one of his rules.
She paused, key in hand. Her parents’ bedroom was directly to the right of the entrance. They would almost certainly hear her if she went in through the front door.
But if they were still asleep, they migh ot notice the sound of the back door being opened. Going in through the kitchen would give her a sho t sneaking down the hall to her bedroom without arousing her folks.
Turning away from the front porch steps, she hurried around the side of the house.
It was so dark. Too bad she didn’t have a flashlight. In the silvery moonlight the small dock and the little boat that her father used for fishing were almost invisible.
She was startled to discover that the light was off over the back porch, too. In the dense shadows, she tripped on the bottom step, stumbled and nearly fell. At the last instant she managed to grab the railing and right herself.
What were the odds that her dad had forgotten to turn on both porch lights?
Something was really strange here. Maybe the bulbs had burned out simultaneously.
She fumbled the key into the lock and turned the knob cautiously, trying to open the door without making any noise.
The door resisted her efforts to push it inward. Something heavy seemed to be blocking it from the inside. She shoved harder.
A terrible, stomach-churning smell wafted out through the opening. Had some animals gotten into the house? Her mother would have a fit in the morning.
But a part of her already knew that things were horribly wrong. She started to shiver violently. It was all she could do to move one foot across the threshold and grope for the switch on the wall.
The lights came on, dazzling her for a couple of seconds. Then she saw the blood on the kitchen floor.
She heard someone screaming. In some remote corner of her mind she understood that she was the one who was uttering the high, desperate, frantic cries of grief, horror and denial. But the sound was distant and far away.
She had traveled to some other place, a realm where nothing was the way it was supposed to be; where nothing was normal.
When she returned from the journey, she discovered that her personal, private definition of normal had been altered forever.
* * *
E-MAIL MESSAGE
p. DATE: March 7
FROM: PWeb O: IStenso UBJECT: The pas i, Irene:
I know this e-mail is coming as a huge surprise. Hope you didn’t dump it straight into your deleted file when you saw the name of the sender. But I hear you’re a reporter now, and reporters are supposed t e curious types so, with luck, you’ll read this.
Hard to believe that it’s been seventeen years since we last saw each other, isn’t it? I realize that, given what happened, you would have been quite happy to go another seventeen years without hearing from me. But I have to talk to you, and I have to do it soon.
This is about the past. What I need to tell you can’t be done in an e-mail or over the phone. Trust me,
this is as important to you as it is to me.
I’ve got a few things to take care of before we meet. Come up to the lake on Thursday afternoon. I should have everything ready by then. Give me a call as soon as you get into town.