Still Waters
Authors: Emma Carlson Berne
Tags: #Social Issues, #Love & Romance, #Horror, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Fiction, #Recovered memory, #Horror stories, #Juvenile Fiction, #Adolescence
SOME SECRETS ARE MEANT TO STAY BURIED.WATERS Hannah can’t wait to sneak off for a romantic weekend with her boyfriend, Colin. He’s leaving for college soon, and Hannah wants their trip to the lake house to be one they’ll never forget.
But once Hannah and Colin get there, things start to seem a bit . . .off. They can’t find the town on any map. The house they are staying in looks as if someone’s been living there, even though it’s been deserted for years. And Colin doesn’t seem quite himself. As he grows more unstable, Hannah worries about Colin’s dark side, and her own safety.
Nothing is as perfect as it seems, and what lies beneath may haunt her forever.
Also By Emma Carlson Berne
Hard To Get
SIMON PULSE
Simon & Schuster, New York
Cover designed by Cara E. Petrus
Cover photograph copyright © 2011 by
Getty Images/Photonica/Clay Patrick McBride
EMMACARLSONBERNE.COM
STILL WATERS
ALSO BY EMMA CARLSON BERNE
Hard to Get
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
First Simon Pulse paperback edition December 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Emma Berne
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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Designed by Karina Granda
The text of this book was set in Caslon.
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berne, Emma Carlson.
Still waters / by Emma Carlson Berne.— 1st Simon Pulse pbk. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Hannah and her eighteen-year-old boyfriend
sneak off to a broken-down old cottage at a deserted lake for the weekend,
things do not go at all as planned.
ISBN 978-1-4424-2114-1 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-4424-2115-8 (eBook)
[1. Recovered memory—Fiction. 2. Horror stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.B455139St 2011
[Fic]—dc22 2010053303
For Holly, my friend and companion
Hannah Taylor leaned her finger on the doorbell of Colin’s house, listening to the silvery chimes echo inside the sprawling Victorian. The July sun was setting behind her, firing the sky orange and lending a soft pink glow to the stone and clapboard house.
No answer. Her boyfriend’s shiny Ford pickup was parked in the driveway, so he had to be home. Colin had even told her to stop by after dinner. Hannah rang again and tried the door. Locked. She pressed her face against the side window, but all she could see was the darkened foyer. Finally she tipped up a flowerpot of pansies at the corner of the porch. There was a key taped to the bottom. She unlocked the door and stepped into the Oriental-carpeted foyer. Over her head, a vaulted ceiling soared to the second story. The downstairs lights were off, and the purple twilight shadows filtered through the windows.
Hannah set the spare key down on the antique farmhouse
table cluttered with piles of mail. “Hello?” she called into the quiet. There was a rustle and a thump from the back of the house. Hannah’s heart gave a little skip. “Colin?” she called again. She padded into the darkened dining room.
Suddenly the foyer blazed into light. Hannah squeezed her eyes shut against the glare. When she opened them, Colin Byrd was standing in the doorway, his hand on the light switch. His hair was rumpled and a book dangled from his hand. “Oh, hi. I fell asleep.”
Hannah exhaled and went over to embrace him. “It’s so dark in here.” She followed him back into the den, where the deep suede couch still held the imprint of his body. She flopped down on the couch, leaning her head against the back. Colin put his book on the coffee table and stretched out on the floor, interlocking his fingers behind his head.
“My mom and dad went to some cocktail thing. How was dinner with the fam?” he asked. He started doing sit-ups.
Hannah blew out her lips. “Fine. The usual. Just me and David.”
“Did you cook?”
She nodded. “Tuna casserole this time. I should teach David how to make it. Ten is old enough to cook, right?” She rocked her head back and forth, feeling the kinks in her neck. “My mom had to stay late. Cleaning up the stockroom.” Her mother’s new job at a big chain bookstore had great benefits, but it also meant that she worked about fifty hours a week and was rarely home before nine.
“Nineteen, twenty,” Colin counted. “What’s David doing?” He switched to crunches.
Hannah leaned forward and grabbed the book Colin had set down. It was a big volume of black-and-white photos. “I told him he could watch a movie after his homework was done.” She paged through some shots of factories from the 1940s. “Where’d you get this?”
Colin looked over from his prone position on the carpet. “Oh, it’s great. I checked it out from the library. Look at this one.” He sat down next to her on the sofa. Hannah felt her pulse increase at the warmth of his body next to hers. Even after a whole year of being together.
Hannah thought of the very first day she saw Colin, at the beginning of her junior year, alone in the art room at school, holding a strip of negatives up to the light. She’d stood across the room, forgetting the ink drawing she was supposed to be putting on Mr. Walter’s desk. Instead her eyes were riveted to the play of the muscles in his broad shoulders, and the span of his big-knuckled hands holding the film. Then a group of obnoxious guys had passed by the hall, the big, bluff types who seemed to take up all the air in the hallways when they swaggered by on the way to classes.
“Colin!” a big blond guy in a Yankees cap had called in. “Get your ass out here!”
Hannah’s heart sank. He was one of them.
Colin wheeled around, and his face was momentarily angry. Then, as Hannah watched, he laid the negatives down with
a resigned sigh and headed toward the door. Hannah wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed her on the other side of the room. She’d perfected being invisible since freshman year. But just before he left the room, he turned around and met her eyes squarely.
Her breath caught. And then he’d been gone.
Now, Hannah smiled at the memory and gazed at her boyfriend’s bright blond head, which was bent over the book as he flipped through the pages.
She examined the picture he pointed out. “Cool lines in this one.” But Colin didn’t answer, and she looked up. He was watching her and his earnest expression made her stomach clench in anticipation. He was going to say it again.
“Hannah, I love you.” His voice held just the slightest pleading note.
Hannah’s fingers tightened on the book spread across her lap. She gazed down at it. “I know,” she mumbled. A panoramic shot of Detroit stared up at her.
A little silence stretched between them. She heard him swallow. “You still can’t say it? I thought, maybe you’d had time to think it over by now.”
Hannah rose to her feet abruptly, and the book slid splayed onto the carpet. She crossed the room to the upright piano and tapped out “This Old Man.” She focused on her fingers pressing each shiny key so she wouldn’t have to look at Colin’s wide, hurt eyes.
“I still need some time,” she mumbled to the piano. “The moment has to be just right, okay? Maybe if we could be alone.”
“I’m leaving for Pratt orientation in a week.” The frustration in his voice was palpable. “Anyway, we’re alone right now.”
Hannah turned around. “No, I mean like really alone. Not here at your parents’ house. Not in your car. I feel like every time we turn around, someone’s”—a car door slammed outside—“interrupting,” she finished.
Hannah saw Colin’s jaw clench. “Damn it. I thought they’d be home later.” They heard the front door open.
“It was a stupid thing to say, Carl.” Colin’s mother’s voice cut into the quiet like a rasp.
“Don’t talk to me like that, Brenda.” His father’s words were slightly slurred. There was a clank and then a muffled exclamation. “Who put that chair there?”
“That chair has always been there, Carl.” Hannah heard the creak of the coat closet door. “Honestly, I was embarrassed—”
“Excuse me!” Colin’s dad roared thickly. “I don’t need you to play cop with me.”
Colin stood up and grabbed Hannah’s hand. “The fun never ends.” He didn’t look at her. “Come on, let’s go out.”
They stood up, but two forms suddenly blocked the light in the doorway. Hannah’s heart sank, and she felt Colin stiffen beside her. Not fast enough this time.
“Oh, Colin.” His mother’s refined voice was higher than usual, as if she’d been tilted off balance. She gave a little laugh and smoothed her blond bob. “I didn’t realize you were here. Hello, Hannah.” Colin’s silver-haired father stood beside her, swaying slightly on his feet, breathing alcohol fumes into the room.