Chapter One
For the past three nights, Ellie Brannon had been receiving staticky messages from an unknown caller on the open-line portion of her radio program. The reception was so poor she could barely make out the anonymous caller’s voice, let alone the broken message. But there was something disturbing about the timing of the calls. Something unsettling about the frenetic undertone that sputtered through the white noise.
Cocooned as she was in her soundproof studio, Ellie could normally lose herself to the weird and unusual stories brought to her via her most avid listeners.
The subject matter she covered ran the gamut from paranormal activity to political conspiracies to unsolved mysteries. Unlike most talk radio hosts, Ellie refused to use a screener despite the fact that Midnight on Echo Lake was now broadcast on sixty stations around the country, as well as live-streamed on the popular internet radio network where she’d gotten her first big break.
Adjusting the microphone arm, she glanced at the clock on the wall, noting the time as she pushed the blinking button and greeted the caller.
Static once again crackled in her headphones.
“Go ahead, Caller. You’re on the air with Ellie Brannon.”
The reception cleared for a moment, allowing the woman’s urgent whisper to come through loud and clear. “He’s coming…”
Ellie ignored the shivers down her back as she kept her tone even. “I’m getting a lot of noise in my ear, Caller. Can you move the phone away from the radio?”
The voice faded as the interference rose to a deafening crescendo. Ellie fiddled with the slider on the audio console as she tried to filter out the annoying clatter. “Caller, are you still there?”
Nothing now but chilling silence.
Ellie’s hands trembled as she adjusted the controls. She didn’t know why. Strange calls were her raison d’être, but something about the persistence of this particular caller unnerved her.
Probably a prankster.
Ellie was accustomed to a fair amount of prank calls, though not as many as one might expect given the premise of her show. Most people who took the time to call in just wanted a chance to tell their story in a forum that didn’t openly ridicule or pass judgment. But from time to time, some of the local teenagers dared each other to call in with outlandish stories about alien abductions just as they’d once goaded their classmates to spend the night in the Ruins, an abandoned psychiatric hospital not far from Ellie’s studio. On a clear night, she could see the smokestack rising up through the pine trees as she trekked the short distance from her studio to her back deck. Sometimes, if she was feeling brave, she would walk down to the dock and sit with her feet dangling in the water as she traced the crumbling roofline and remembered.
On most nights, though, she hurried inside her house and locked the doors. Still. After all these years.
He’s coming…
With a start, she realized she’d broken the golden rule of radio—no dead air. Shrugging off the final caller, she queued up the closing music. “You’ve been listening to open-line Wednesday on the After Dark Network. I’m your host, Ellie Brannan, signing off from the banks of eerie Echo Lake…”
Wrapping up her callout, she turned off the mic and removed her headphones as the on-air lights winked off on her console and over the studio door.
What now?
She tried reversing the call using star-sixty-nine but nothing went through. Should she contact her brother? Tom was the Nance County sheriff. If someone was in trouble, he needed to know. But the call could have come from any part of the country. Or even out of the country. It was probably nothing more than a prank call, anyway. If someone were really in trouble, why not notify the authorities instead of calling in every night to a syndicated radio show?
Go home. Have a glass of wine, listen to some music and relax. Maybe take a long bath to unwind.
Sound advice, yet she lingered, checking the log to match the time the call had come in to the previous two nights. A screener would have required a name and location before putting the call through to Ellie, but she had nothing more to go on than Unknown Caller.
Locking everything down for the night, she left the studio and hurried along the path to her house. The moon hung low over the lake, silvering the water and casting long shadows along the bank. The eerie wail of a loon sent another tingle down her spine. At least it wasn’t the scream of a peacock, though she was used to that screech by now. Her nearest neighbor had died some time back, leaving Ellie to care for the peafowl that roosted on her property.
She was only a few feet away from her back steps when the wail segued into a tremolo, the maniacal laughing sound of a loon sensing danger. Ellie turned to sweep the water. The surface was calm and the air still, but she imagined she could hear the low grumble of an outboard motor somewhere in the distance. The bullfrogs and crickets had long since gone silent. The predators owned the night.
What a creepy thought.
She’d allowed herself to get caught up in the spookiness of her surroundings and those staticky phone calls and now she felt the thump, thump, thump of an accelerated heartbeat, the cold sweat and tightened chest of paralyzing fear. She hadn’t suffered a panic attack in years, but she recognized the signs. The old defensive exercises came back to her automatically. Take deep breaths. Find a focal point. Picture your happy place.
The techniques worked if she allowed them to, but her instinct at the moment was to rush headlong for the house. She knew better. A full-blown episode could debilitate her for hours. Or she might stumble and fall on the uneven terrain in her freak-out. Better that she take the time to ward off that dark visitor.
Drawing in slow measured breaths, she found a distant spot on the lake where moonlight gleamed down through the cypress branches, creating delicate twinkles on the surface, like the dance of a thousand fairies. Ellie pictured herself in a boat, trailing her fingers through that cool shimmering water. Drifting, just drifting…
After a few moments, her heartbeat slowed and she turned back to the path, forcing herself to take her time. There was nothing to be afraid of in the woods. How long had she lived out here alone? Five years? Or was it six now? Despite the recent spike in violent crime in Nance County, she’d been perfectly safe in her bungalow. Nothing truly scary had happened to her since—
A twig snapped behind her and she whirled, peering into the woods even as she chided herself for an overactive imagination. Had a few prank calls really put her this much on edge?
He’s coming…
Thump, thump, thump went her heart.
Focus on the shimmers…
Taking another deep breath, she turned back to the house, using the solar lights that lined the pathway to guide her to the deck steps. She went up quickly and didn’t linger outside to enjoy the night air. Letting herself in the back door, she turned the deadbolt and quickly reached for the light switch, leaning against the wall in relief as illumination flooded her tidy kitchen. She concentrated on her breathing for several more minutes until the tightness in her chest eased and she felt steady on her feet.
Opening a bottle of wine, she took a glass with her upstairs where she settled for a hot shower rather than a long bath. Shrugging into her favorite robe, she went back downstairs to replenish her drink, carrying both stemware and bottle into her cozy den where she curled up on the sectional to watch late-night TV.
She dozed. Sometime later a loud noise awakened her. She thought she was dreaming at first. Even lying with her eyes wide open, she wasn’t certain the banging on her front door was real.
Her movements were sluggish as she sat up and glanced around the room, eerily illuminated by the flickering TV. She switched off the flat screen with the remote, wondering if the sound had come from the infomercial that had taken over the airwaves since she fell asleep. Reaching for her phone, she checked the time. Then she got up, still lethargic, still mostly unconcerned until the doorbell rang in quick staccato bursts that startled her fully awake.
She bolted upright on a gasp, realizing that the pounding on her door, the flickering TV and the infomercial had all been incorporated into her dream.
She wasn’t dreaming now.
Rising for real this time, she pulled her robe around her as she moved to the front window to glance out. The moon was still up, unnaturally brilliant as its light glowed over the pine forest
She could see all the way down her driveway to the main road. No parked cars. No lurking shadows. She checked the back door, letting her gaze move across the deck and slowly down the steps to the dock. Despite the full moon, the shadows were deep along the bank. A mild breeze stirred the Spanish moss that hung in heavy layers at the water’s edge.
Retracing her steps through the house, Ellie removed a key from a carved box on the console table in the foyer. She held it in her palm for a moment before unlocking the drawer and removing the small pistol she kept there for protection. She had another like it in her nightstand drawer upstairs.
Her late father had been the Nance County sheriff for nearly thirty years. He’d made certain that she and her brother knew how to respect and handle weapons from an early age, and after the disappearances, he’d insisted that Ellie learn how to protect herself.
If she’d settled down in a more populated area, she doubted she would have wanted a gun in the house. Living alone on Echo Lake was a different matter. Out here, she was miles from town, miles from help. A stone’s throw from the place where her friends had been taken and where she’d been left for dead. Her location was by design, of course. The result of a promise she’d long ago made to herself. Stare down the monster or you’ll never be free of him.
Keeping the pistol at her side, she peered through the sidelight. The motion detector flood on her front porch had come on. She had a clear view of the steps and the yard. No one was out there now, but the light had recently been activated. Raccoons, possums and stray cats were the usual culprits, but an animal hadn’t rung her doorbell.
Another prank? A harmless game of Ring and Run?
It wouldn’t be the first time. The subject matter of her radio program invited mockery. Some of the local teenagers had started hanging out at the Ruins again. She’d seen the bobble of their flashlights along the bank lately, had heard the whoops of their laughter as she sat out on the dock. She tried not to think harshly of their mischief. She’d been a teenager once, susceptible to peer pressure and the tug of her own curiosity.
There’d been a blood moon on the night she and her friends had ventured into the Ruins, but she wouldn’t think about that right now. She wouldn’t dwell on the creaking floorboards that should have been a warning or the gleam of eyes that had watched from the shadows. She wouldn’t dwell on the lost memories of that night, the survivor’s guilt that still dogged her after all these years or the violent images that came to her in dreams from time to time.
She wouldn’t dwell on any of that, even though all of it had brought her back to Echo Lake.
She kept watch at the window for the longest time. Nothing seemed amiss. Whoever had been at her front door was either long gone or watched from the bushes to see how she reacted. Maybe if she went outside and waved her gun about, they’d turn tail and run. Might think twice about their next little game of Ring and Run.
Of course, she would never behave in such a reckless manner. She would never knowingly terrorize anyone over a silly prank.
Locking the gun back in the drawer, she returned the key to the box and told herself to turn in. Forget about pranks. Forget about those disturbing calls. Just get some rest. Everything will be fine in the morning.
The good news was, she’d managed to fend off a panic attack and she could take comfort in knowing she was stronger for it.
Even so, sleep was a long time coming. When she finally dozed off, images of a demonic face flickered across her subconscious like the strobe of an unwatched TV.
*
