Myrtle Lake was a calm, peaceful little town. As the name suggests, directly in the middle of the town was a large, open lake, where families gathered each day of Summer to laugh, play, and enjoy the sunshine.

I had only moved here recently, came from the city after a bad break up, and I was desperately searching for a new start. My best friend, Linda, owned a flower shop here in Myrtle Lake, and she promised me a job and a room until I got back on my own two feet again.

The town was beautiful and peaceful, nothing bad ever happened here. But also, nothing happened here, pretty much at all. Because of this, the neighbors were usually up in everyone’s business, gossiping, debating, speculating, the usual things people tend to do in a small town to help pass the time.

I didn’t like that, of course. I preferred it when people kept their noses in their own business, but the minute I showed up here, I felt like people had begun attaching backgrounds to me that weren’t true in the least.

“I heard she’s a hooker from NYC who’s come here on secret business for her pimp.”

“I think she’s a housewife who came here to get away from her abusive husband.”

“No, she’s definitely a political official in disguise, just look at those calves, those are political calves.”

I’ll admit, their theories were entertaining at times, but I hated the fact that rumors were being spread about me. But I suffered with social anxiety, and would rather let the rumors come and go rather than correct anyone.

That morning had started so peacefully. Linda had given me the day off work, and I figured I could get some reading done down by the lake, so I brought a folding chair down onto the sand and pulled out “All These Little Perfect Day,”  my favorite novel.

I was skimming along the pages to find the chapter I had ended at, when suddenly I heard a blood curdling scream.

“Help! Someone, please help!” I looked in the direction of the commotion to see a woman, watching in horror as a man pulled a body out of the lake and onto the shore.

Some of the scattered lake-goers began crowding around the body, most of them gasping and looking away, others were grabbing their children and closing their eyes forcefully while walking them towards their cars.

I began running towards the crowd, equally curious as well as concerned.

Once I had reached them, I found an opening and looked at the body.

It was a young boy, with skin a light shade of blue. His bones were visible in many areas of his body, his eyes were sunken and his face looked like small fish had been feeding on him for quite some time. He appeared to have severe bruising as well, including strangulation marks around his neck. This had to have been a homicide. 

I felt sick, I couldn’t look at him much longer.

The police arrived not long after, and had begun questioning everyone. The boy had been dead for days, he was the son of a woman in the city where I came from, which was about two hours from here, and he had been missing about a week.

I watched as they wrapped up his body in a black bag and took him away, feeling saddened and worried. Who would do this to a young boy? He was innocent, surely he never did anything to deserve this death.

I began walking home, not being able to shake the eerie, unsafe feeling that this experience had given me.

I told Linda about what had happened, and she was shocked. I told her that I wasn’t feeling alright, so I told her goodnight and went to bed.

During my sleep, I dreamt of a man in a black hoodie outside in the rain, staring at me. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel his deep gaze.

In front of him was the boy, dead on the ground, a rope around his neck, bruises on his arms and legs, blood trickling down his cheek from his eyelid.

The hooded man reached down and grabbed the rope, then he began walking away, dragging the boy by the neck.

I followed the man, not very closely, but just enough to try and see where he was taking the body.

The rain began to clear slightly, and I could see that we were walking along a street.

The street that I lived off.

The hooded man began walking off the road, and behind a house.

Linda’s house.

I could hear his footsteps now, getting louder as we passed by the outside of my bedroom. My heart began racing as I realized that I wasn’t nearly close enough to be hearing his footsteps so loud.

I realized that if I was hearing him this clearly, then it must mean that he was walking directly outside my window.

I shot up out of bed, terror in my bones, my blood coursing through my veins at top speed as sweat made my body feel cold against the midnight aura. I was panting heavily, and felt like a child who desperately did not want to look out her window, lest the monster be staring me in the face the moment I do so.

I didn’t hear anything but the sound of my own breathing, but nevertheless, I braved myself to pull back the curtains and reveal whatever was waiting for me on the other side.

Nothing. No hooded figure, no body, no rope.

But when I adjusted my focus, there right between my eyes, lay a single splatter of blood.

I jumped back, and felt a warm body behind me. I quickly turned around, and there stood Linda, with an absolutely terrified look in her eyes, and a baseball bat in her hands.

“Someone is in our house!”

“What?”

“I saw someone walk through our backyard, and then I heard the front door open and someone came in. I felt so scared that I froze until I couldn’t hear anyone anymore. I called the cops but I had to come check on you before they came.”

We sat on my bed together, listening for noises, any sign that whoever was here was still here.

The cops came and searched the house. No sign of forced entry, so one of us must have forgotten to lock the door before bed, a mistake we wouldn’t be making again.

The basement had an unbroken padlock on it, and no other way to get inside, so they didn’t bother checking there.

They told us it could have just been a confused drunk who entered the wrong house and quickly corrected his mistake. Other than that, they said we should be fine and if anything seems suspicious or out of place to call them again.

Things seemed to be normal, for a few days or so I would say. I didn’t have anymore nightmares, and Linda didn’t see anyone else in the backyard at night, and she’d been staying up late to make sure. While the air didn’t exactly seem clear, things did at least feel alright.

Until the day the smell came.

It began gradually one evening, a gentle waft of something gone bad in the trashcan. But quickly, throughout the day, it escalated into the scent of decaying flesh, strong and present all over the house.

We figured a rat had died in the wall, so we called an exterminator to have him check things out.

What he found shocked us all.

Laying in a chest in the corner of our hardly visited basement, was the body of a young boy, his ears stapled shut from the lobe to the skull. He was badly beaten, and his wrists were slit open.

We called the police, they took the body away, and took us in for questioning, since the body was found in our locked basement.

But they knew we didn’t… couldn’t… have done such a horrible thing to an innocent child, a little boy who didn’t do anything wrong.

We were just two women, two innocent women ourselves.

The padlock had been broken, and replaced with a new one. The killer was a planner, he knew what he was doing…

Linda was incredibly shaken by this. She told me she didn’t want to stay in the house anymore, she wanted us to move far away from Myrtle Lake.

We stayed in a hotel for about a week, finally feeling calmer as we discussed what we would do with the house.

“We’re going to sell it, and leave. Or tear it down, I don’t care. Nobody will probably want to live in a house where a little boy was found dead anyways.”

I agreed with her, and decided to leave our room for a bit to get some fresh air outside.

As I walked down the hall, I turned around and saw a little boy coming towards me. He looked up at me, and smiled as he walked by, and then suddenly…

I blacked out.

When I came to, I was covered in a warm, sticky liquid. I could feel two firm, soft, marble-like objects in my hands. I couldn’t see anything, it was extremely dark, but when I turned around, I could see a window, my old window from my bedroom in the old house.

A hooded figure walked by, and stopped right in front of the room, looking in to see what was laying on the bed.

I walked closer towards it, what looked like just a black mass at first quickly became a body, bloodied, beaten, and dead.

It was the body of a boy, and his eyes were ripped out.

I cried out in horror before looking down into my hands and seeing his eyes staring up at me.

I dropped them down and covered my mouth, before looking up into the window again, and instead of seeing a hooded figure,

I saw my own reflection.