The men continue to tag team what Jessie assumes are bathroom breaks, nap breaks, or something else. But they’re never gone long, and whoever remains guard straddles an ATV while doing so, watching her, ready to fire it up and intercept her wherever she thinks of landing.
In the late afternoon sun her body finally warms, but not overly so. The July day is breezy and cool, the temperature likely never reaching the 70s.
Jessie recalls packing with Blake, how they’d decided to pack mostly warm clothes after checking the weather app. As far as Jessie can recall, their whole vacation in the Catskills will never be especially warm, the temperature dropping severely at night.
Hooray, she thinks miserably.
Her eyes want to close, her mind and body stretched too far with the strain of what she’s been through, but knows falling asleep could mean capture. Could mean death. Annoyed at doing nothing, however, she debates another break to shore (to at least make the assholes work a little).
Before she can lower the oar handles, however, Brad reappears, something large hoisted over one shoulder.
Jessie realizes what he’s carrying and can’t control the sob that breaks from her lips. She slaps a hand to her mouth, eyes burning, and in doing so nearly loses one of the oars as it rattles in the oarlock, slipping through into the water. “Shit.”
She grabs it at the last second, pulling it toward her and bringing it back into the boat.
Hoisted over Brad’s shoulder is Blake’s lifeless body.
She’s wrapped in a sheet—likely the very sheet she died on—but Jessie can plainly see long blonde hair falling from one end of the makeshift cocoon, pale feet protruding from the other.
Jessie is shocked at how brazen he is. Even here, far away from anyone, for him to just waltz out the back door with a dead woman over his shoulder…it sickens her. Worse, it breaks something in her mind. In her logic, her way of thinking. Her sense of what’s real, and of what’s impossible.
There is her best friend, who was horribly murdered in front of her eyes, being carried like a sack of worthless meat over her killer’s shoulder.
Tom and Brad talk for a few moments, and then, seemingly, come up with a plan.
Jessie watches in horror as Tom runs to a shed at the side of the house. After several minutes he returns with what appears to be a small tarp. Brad drops Blake to the ground and the two of them begin working on the tarp. Taking turns ….
Sweet Jesus. They’re inflating it. It’s a fucking raft.
After ten minutes or so, the old, crappy one-person raft—an ugly mustard color so dirty Jessie wonders how many years it’s been since it was actually used—is relatively inflated. Brad strips to nothing, unfazed by the cool day and, to Jessie’s eternal disgust, moderately erect. He drags the body toward the lake, walks into the shallow water. Together, the two men manage to settle Blake’s body on top of the raft and slowly, carefully, Brad begins swimming from the shore, pulling the floating corpse behind him.
Jessie watches all this, so stunned by the scene that it takes her a few moments to realize this could be her best chance for escape.
If he keeps swimming, it’ll just be Tom. And if it’s just Tom meeting me—one-on-one—at the other end of the lake, it may be my only shot of living through this. Yes, he’s a killer, and my odds aren’t great. But how much longer can I wait?
Thinking through her options, Jessie watches Brad goes closer … closer. Not wanting to draw Tom’s attention, she slowly moves her hands to the oar handles, grips them tight. She takes stock of her surroundings, realizes she’s pretty much in the middle of the lake. She’ll need Brad to swim farther if she wants the timing to work.
She can’t help but watch as Brad swims twenty, thirty, forty feet from the shore.
Finally, he stops, looks around, then locks in on Jessie.
“Anything you’d like to say?” He grins while treading water. “No last words? Okay then. Bye-bye, birdie.”
And with that he tips the raft. Blake’s corpse tumbles into the water and sinks. Jessie watches the spot where her friend entered the lake, and a horrible thought enters her head: How many?
How many bodies are down there?
How many women have they fed to this lake?
She’s startled out of her thoughts as a sharp CRACK splits the air.
Jessie looks up, sees Tom standing on the dock. He’s holding a rifle.
You’ve GOT to be kidding me ….
There’s a flash from the gun—another air-shattering CRACK—and Jessie screams as wood flies up from the rowboat’s front railing. She throws herself into the floor of the boat, curling her legs into a fetal position so at least her body won’t be visible. But she knows good and well if Tom hits the boat in the right way, the right place, not only will the bullet carry into her, but it could potentially damage the boat to the point where it takes on water.
Either way, she’s dead.
Another gunshot splits the air, and then Brad is yelling angrily. Tom yells back and Jessie risks looking up for a moment. She sees Brad leaving the water, dragging the partially deflated raft with him, naked as a baby, and screaming at his friend. Jessie doesn’t know if he’s pissed because the gun is too loud or that Tom didn’t wait for him to begin this new cycle of torture, but she guesses the former when Tom shrugs, walks off the dock and casually leans the rifle against the side of the house.
They have a fucking gun. Because of course they do.
Jessie watches as Tom, now sulking, walks back to the patio and into the house. Moments later he returns with a bottle, one that reminds her of the bottle they shared when they’d all first arrived. Brad towels off and gets dressed, gives a look out toward Jessie, waves, then joins Tom on the deck.
Hope you two get good and drunk, she thinks, somehow knowing they’re not quite that stupid, although she wishes like hell they were.
Lying back, Jessie stares up into the already reddening sky. Her stomach grumbles, and the first chilled wind of the oncoming night drifts across her skin. “I want to go home,” she says quietly, whispered without conviction, like a prayer she knows will not be answered, into the bottom of the small wooden boat.
Her salvation. Her coffin.
PART FIVE – A FRIEND
