Lori’s little legs carried her into the surf before Owen made it halfway. She was up to her waist when he stopped dead where the waves made shapes in the sand, disintegrating a small mound of wet earth that had once been a sandcastle. Standing at the water’s edge, Owen no longer felt the sun’s baking heat; instead, a cold, shuddering fear gripped him from head to toe.
There were creatures in the water with sharp teeth and spiny fins. There were bloodsucking leeches and turtles with vicious alligator snouts. There were slippery, slimy things that squirmed in the muck at the bottom of the lake, hideous blind invertebrates that had never seen the light.
A wind whipped his hair. He watched it swish through the trees, tilting pines and rustling the branches of enormous maples, a frown of uneasiness knitting his brow as a steel-gray cloud passed over the sun. The sunhat blew off Lori’s head. She cried out, half-laughing, chasing it further into the water.
Out where it should have been far too deep to stand, a man stood up to his calves in the lake. Owen locked eyes, and found he couldn’t look away. The man wore a white, buttoned shirt and loose-fitting black pants; a glimmer of gold flashed in Owen’s eyes from their right pocket. As the same wind caught the man’s dark hair, a malicious grin spread below his thick mustache, and the man stretched out a hand toward him…