I lean over and dip my hands in the icy water to wash them, then jerk back with a yelp, rocking the canoe.
‘Hey! Watch it!’ protests Iggy.
Did I imagine it?
I did imagine it. I look again: it’s just a log, submerged below the surface. There’s a branch coming off it that sort of looks like an arm, and in my head the whole thing became a floating body and I thought it was Tammy, and it wasn’t. It was just a log, and my mind playing tricks on me.
‘Shall we go back now?’ I say, trying to keep the tension out of my voice.
We paddle back, letting out the thick line as we go.
And so we wait on the jetty. And wait. I look up at the sky, which is much darker now, and I think I should be going back.
My phone’s clock tells me that we have been here for more than an hour, and frankly, I am bored, cold and still a bit shaken by the log-that-was-just-a-log.
And then the buoy moves.
‘Did you see …’
‘Yup.’
We scramble to our feet and stare out over the lake to where the buoy is once again still, with tiny ripples expanding from it.
‘What do you think?’ I say, but Iggy just takes off his cap and runs his fingers thoughtfully through his messed-up red hair, looking at the water.
We stay like that for several minutes then he says, ‘I think we need to check’ and he starts to reel in the line. ‘Perhaps the bait’s been taken, or fallen off. Dammit.’ The line is jammed. ‘Might have got caught on weeds, or a log.’
The more he tugs, the tighter it gets. ‘Come on,’ he moans, getting into the canoe. ‘We’ll have to free it.’
‘We?’ I murmur, but I get in anyway.
Iggy whistles to Suzy, just like you would to a dog, and she hops in obediently after us. Iggy pulls his cap down purposefully, pushes his glasses up his nose, and we begin to paddle back out towards the bobbing buoy.
Before we reach it, the massive splash comes.
It’s huge – like a car has been dropped into the water from a great height over on the other side of the reservoir.
Obviously, it isn’t a car. But – equally obviously – I don’t think it’s an invisible spaceship either, because I’m not completely mad.
But that is what it turns out to be.
After that splash about two hundred metres away, comes another one a few seconds later, slightly smaller but still enormous, and closer to our canoe. In the light of the rising moon, the water droplets glisten as they cascade back down. Seconds after, there is a third splash, then a fourth, all getting closer to us in a straight line, as though a massive, unseen stone is being skimmed across the surface. By the time the fifth splash comes, only about six metres from the boat, the resulting waves have started to tip our little canoe violently from side to side.
‘What’s happening?’ I wail.
Then the spray soaks us and we both cower in the bottom of the rocking boat. I feel, rather than see, something pass overhead very close to us, causing Suzy to squawk with alarm.
‘What is it?’ I shout.
Iggy makes no attempt to answer.
I raise my head to see the sixth splash on the other side of the canoe. The seventh is much smaller. Whatever is causing it is becoming less forceful. There’s an eighth splash, then a swoosh of water that washes over the jetty then … just nothing. Nothing but the darkening sky, the purple lake, the black-green of the surrounding forest …
… And silence, broken only by the slapping of rippling waves on the side of the canoe.
Eventually, Iggy straightens up and says ‘Good Lord! Did you see that?’, but I don’t know what we saw so I just end up moving my mouth without making any sound.
There’s nothing to see now, anyway: whatever caused the splashes must have sunk, but only about ten metres from the shore, where the water is shallower and fairly clear. Together, we paddle towards the spot: perhaps, despite the gathering darkness of the afternoon, we’ll be able to shine a light into the water and see something?
As we get closer, I hear a humming noise, and we stop, allowing the canoe to drift as I turn my head to hear better.
‘Listen,’ I hiss. ‘That’s it! The noise I heard on the night that Tammy disappeared.’
There it is again. A low hommmmm like a bee trapped behind a window, but almost inaudible.
Staring again in the direction of the sound, the surface of the water appears disturbed, and sort of indented, as though a huge glass plate is resting on the lake near the jetty, but it’s hard to make out in the half moonlight.
Then, as we drift closer to the shape in the water, the nose of the canoe bumps into something. Probably another floating log, I think, but when I look there’s nothing. Nor is there a rock. I take hold of the paddle again and stroke it through the water, but we are stopped again with a bump, by some kind of object we can’t see. From the sound the canoe makes, it’s as if this object is in front of us, sticking out of the water, but that’s impossible because we can’t see anything but air.
‘What is that? What’s stopping us, Tait? What are we hitting?’
When the canoe bumps into nothing for the third time, I decide to change the route and paddle around the triangle of smooth water. I stop before the canoe reaches the shore, then I turn back to look.
‘Pass me the spinner, Tait,’ says Iggy.
He takes the large fishing lure from me carefully, avoiding the vicious hooks, and pushes a tiny button on it, activating the laser light that is supposed to attract fish. He points it in front of us, towards whatever it is that we’re not seeing.
‘Oh my word. Would you look at that?’
I’m looking. The green beam of light heads straight out across the lake, takes a sharp left turn, then curves around to go straight again. Iggy moves the light and it does the same – deflected by something we cannot see.
I find a pebble on the floor of the canoe and toss it towards where Iggy is pointing the light. There’s a dull ping and it bounces back towards me, landing in the water with a plop.
It is exactly as though it had hit a pane of glass, only there’s no glass there. I throw another pebble and it does the same. Opening Iggy’s fishing tackle bag, I take out a big lead weight and throw that, hard. Same result.
We’re both freaked out by now. Then the humming lowers in tone, the water before us seems to churn up slightly, and the shape on the water heads towards our canoe.
‘Move! It’s coming for us!’ yells Iggy.
We both reach down for the same paddle, causing the canoe to lurch sharply to one side. In one smooth movement, Iggy and I are tipped into the dark water and we don’t even have time to shout out.
The cold doesn’t hit me immediately, but as I plunge beneath the surface I suck in half a lungful of water, and come up spluttering and weighed down by my heavy jacket and sweater. I’m just able to keep my face above the surface and that’s when I gasp at the