Page 69 of Serenity Falls

‘Probably. But here’s the thing—’ Milo leaned forward. ‘I also heard Lucy boasting about how she’s going to hold a secret party out at Harold’s cabin.’

My eyebrows shot up. Every town has a creepy, deserted house. A building with a macabre history that everyone says is haunted; somewhere kids are told to avoid and teenagers dare each other to visit.

In Serenity Falls, it was Harold’s cabin. Pretty much every kid in school had a story about it, something passed down by older siblings. It was an urban legend. And like most urban legends, there were so many conflicting stories that it was hard to know what was true and what was bullshit.

‘For real?’ I asked Milo now. ‘She knows the way?’

Plenty of kids boasted about going out on a boat and finding the derelict property. Funnily enough, every single story described the cabin in a different way, in a slightly different location. That’s how I knew most of them were crap.

‘She thinks she does,’ Milo said. ‘But they won’t make it. They’ll go the wrong way, get lost and then go get shitfaced in the park and lie to everyone about what a cool, creepy time they had.’

I’d given him a quizzical look. ‘How are you so sure they won’t find it? I mean, if the place even exists and hasn’t fallen down by now.’

Milo smiled, and I’d like to say that I had a shiver of premonition. A bad feeling. A fleeting shimmy of ice down my spine. But I didn’t. There was nothing. Even when he delivered his coup de grâce:

‘Because everyone is looking in the wrong place.’

‘What? How d’you know?’

He reached into his backpack and took out a book. It was A4-sized, like the textbooks we got at school, but it looked ancient. The dust jacket was faded and torn, the spine literally coming apart at the seams. I could just make out the title: Serenity Falls – Geographical Guide.

‘Looks riveting,’ I said as he put it down on the table.

‘It is. It contains town plans and maps of Serenity when the town was built.’

He opened the book and pushed back in a couple of pages that were slipping out.

‘Here.’ He jabbed his finger at a map spread over two pages.

I wasn’t too good with maps, but even I could make out downtown, the green of the park and the blue area of the lake.

‘This is an original map of the town, the park and lake area.’

‘It doesn’t even have the hotel on it.’

‘No, that was built a year or so later. Now’ – he took a pen and leaned closer over the map – ‘most stories about the cabin mention a narrow, twisty river that flows out of the lake going north. You can see here that there’s a larger tributary that flows into the lake and two narrow rivers that flow out, but this is the only one that twists in the right direction. He points at it. ‘The cabin is supposed to be quite a way along, which would put it about here.’ He makes a cross on the map.

He pulled another book from his backpack. It looked newer. The title read: A Guide to Serenity Falls.

‘This has the most up-to-date map of Serenity Falls.’

He opened the guide to a fold-out map and placed it next to the older map.

‘Here’s how they show the lake now.’

I looked between them. The difference was obvious. In the later version the lake was smaller, only one tributary ran in, and one ran out into the woods.

‘This could just be a less detailed version,’ I said.

Milo shook his head. ‘I walked around the lake and took some photographs. You can see from certain markers that the lake has shrunk. It’s a part man-made, part natural process. I mean, it’s still a big, deep lake. But the wetlands are essentially less wet.’

‘Meaning?’

His smile widened. ‘Going by the newer map, the only river north of the lake is this one.’ He pointed at the only significant blue line on the map. ‘Most people believe that Harold’s cabin lies somewhere along here. But it’s the wrong river. The right one has dried up. Look, I made a tracing of the old map so you can see.’

He produced a piece of tracing paper and laid it over the newer map. He had marked out the lake and the rivers and put a cross where he thought the cabin was.

I looked between the two maps. He was right. The X was way off the remaining river.