Page 59 of Fate Fiction

“Now what’s the plan for tomorrow for you two? More canoodling in the lake?” Sue wriggled her brows dramatically.

“SUE!” I shot her a glare, Evan giggled. Giggled!

For once I did have a plan, I was going to show him the best of what the camp had to offer. We could escape from prying eyes a bit. “Actually, and I hadn’t asked Evan yet, but I thought we could hike Elephant Ridge.” I turned to him to explain further, “it’s not as long as the falls but it’s more strenuous, but it has the best view of the lake, and you can see the other mountains and lakes beyond.”

“Works for me,” Evan shrugged, “I’m just happy to be here.”

Sue in particular was charmed by his affable and easy-going nature, always getting excited when he wanted to do anything at camp at all. She gave me another not-so-subtle wink from her place at the table, and Randy redirected the conversation to how much he’d have to spend to repair the roof of one of the cabins.

“You’re not actually friends with Robert Pattinson, right?” I stopped Evan as we walked out of the kitchen.

“Ha, no, we have a handful of mutual friends and I’ve met him a few times but definitely not close enough to text him that masterpiece, as tempting as it may be.”

I was audibly relieved, the sigh puffing out of me and echoing across the lake. Still, being two degrees away from Edward Cullen himself was enough to put a pit in my stomach. “I try to forget that version of me existed.”

I had traded one form of fandom for another through the years, and in hindsight all of them were embarrassing, not just the most recent one.

“Sue clearly hasn’t. And trust me, I have equally—if not more so—embarrassing instances from middle school. Being a Tim Burton and Twilight fan is a rite of passage for a quirky teenager in the late 2000s.”

“And if I told you Edward Scissorhands was my first crush?”

Unfortunately, a true statement. How I went from my sexual preferences being the sweet goth with blades for hands to the literal hero of a fantasy realm was beyond me.

He cocked his head and assessed me, searching for any hint of a joke. “I’d be sorry that I could never compete with him,” he winked.

There was too much cloud cover that evening to make stargazing worthwhile, but Evan and I remained at the fire pit until it became a pile of glowing embers. We had built the fire together with the hope that we could have some quiet alone time out on the beach, but Sue managed to invite herself, and neither of us had the heart to decline her.

I knew exactly what she was doing, Sue was a meddler at heart and now she had her entertainment for the week. Sue had never liked Nick all that much, though she had never said so explicitly. I was a quick witted free spirit and Nick stifled me in a way, at least that’s how Sue would see it each time we came to camp. In hindsight, she was right, of course she was. I finally shed his dead weight, and was lighter now. Now I had my other opportunity, a literal handsome knight on a white horse, who I still didn’t know what to do with. Sue, I’m sure, wanted me to seize this opportunity.

Evan and I chose to sit a few chairs apart, keeping up the appearance of being separate guests at the same place who were friendly with one another, even though Sue had seen us wrapped around each other hours before. We were making mindless conversation, talking for the sake of talking and hoping that Sue would somehow get the hint that we wanted to be alone.

“What’s over on the other side of the lake?” Evan asked.

He didn’t realize the Pandora’s box he was about to open.

Sue’s mouth spread into a sly smile as she pinpointed another victim to frighten with the lore of the lake. She never told these stories with the purpose to scare anyone off entirely, she allowed it to serve as a test of sorts, if they were truly cut out to be at camp. She leaned in closer, letting the amber flames illuminate the shadows on her face.

She recounted her carefully rehearsed story, “ours is the only camp officially on the lake, and it’s been here for about a hundred years. Randy and I bought it thirty five years ago with the understanding that there would be no homes or camps built elsewhere on the water or in the surrounding woods. During our first summer running the place there would be smoke coming from the far end of the lake, just about there,” she gestured to the left side of the lake behind the bend.

“Randy wanted to investigate, he knew it would be too far to take a canoe out himself so he tried fixing up the old motorboat they had left us so he could go check things out. I, on the other hand, had a feeling that whoever was there didn’t want to be found. So next time I went into town I began asking around, eventually that led me to learn the story of the lake hermit.” She was building up the suspense.

“Apparently it happened a few years before Randy and I bought the camp, a gentleman had found his wife and baby dead in their home and he couldn’t stand the grief, so he ran. He stayed around town for a few days and gathered some supplies, and then he all but disappeared. The old owners of the camp noticed smoke coming from that same place a few days later, and they called the game wardens to investigate, thinking a hiker or boater was lost and in need of rescue. What the game wardens found was a rustic camp, and a very angry man who ran out of the woods at them with a gun. From then on the consensus was to leave him be, it wasn’t worth the risk of trying to apprehend him. Still though, some people tried to get too close, or accidentally found themselves at his camp. We had one guest, a fisherman, who would go out further and further on the lake each day until one day he didn’t return. The game wardens found his canoe intact, with no one inside it.” She waved her fingertips for dramatic effect. “No one knows if he still lives there or not, and I personally think that even if his body has left this mortal plane, his soul resides there still.”

Sue looked to Evan, who looked nothing more than a little intrigued by the tale. I had to admit, the story was far more frightening when I was younger. Even still, there were some evenings where I got nervous to walk back to my cabin alone at night out of fear the hermit may have meandered down to this side of the lake.

I decided to build upon the lore and leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms, “I heard a gunshot from across the lake once in the middle of the night, years ago after Sue told me this story. It certainly wasn’t hunters, and I still can’t explain what else it could have been.”

“Are you positive this isn’t Camp Crystal Lake?” Evan laughed nervously.

“What’s that?” Sue asked sincerely about the camp, as if it were a real place.

“From the movie, ‘Friday the 13th,’ you seriously have never seen it?” I asked.

“Can’t say I have.” Sue shrugged, somehow this added more legitimacy to the story.

Almost on cue Sue slapped her knees and said “whelp, guess I should turn in for the night, you kids enjoy yourselves, hope the hermit doesn’t crash your party.” She made her way back toward her house, and Evan and I waited until her silhouette all but disappeared into the darkness before making any moves.

Evan slid into the chair next to mine, pensively looking around him.