The hardest part was getting the blood. Emerson didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of the women, but inwardly he grimaced as he pulled the blade of a small paring knife across his palm. After the first, sharp pain, the cut eased into a dull throb. He smeared the blood across the tent flap, the truck’s door handle and the canoe, which he and Sally had put into the lake. Finally, he ground his palm against the surface of a largish rock, wincing at the renewed smart. All of them were wearing gloves that Sally had purchased along with the brogans she had found at a discount store. It wouldn’t do for his own fingerprints to be on the rock, they told him. It would look as if he’d bashed himself in the head.

     Sally and Phae next pulled the heavy work shoes over their own Keds and told Emerson to lie down next to his tent. From there, Sally said, they would pull his body to the lake’s edge and hoist him into the canoe.

     “Do you have to do that?” Emerson groused. “Isn’t just dragging me to the thing enough?”

     “We’ll need fibers, hair, that kind of thing on the seat and bottom,” Sally argued. “Lie down.”

     Emerson obeyed, feeling ridiculous. “Phae, grab his feet,” Sally commanded.

     “I thought you wanted his heels to drag, leaving a path,” Phae countered.

     “Oh, right. Grab an arm, then.”

     “Wait a sec. I’ll be right back.” Phae ran to the camper and re-emerged a second later. “You took pictures of every other place we’ve been,” she said. “I want a photo to commemorate this adventure.”

     “Don’t be silly,” Sally snapped, looking up, but the flash went off anyway.

     “Whoops,” Phae said. “I forgot about the flash. I thought I had it set for low light.”

     “I just hope no one saw it and comes to investigate,” Sally said, now worried. “Let’s get this over with.”

     Emerson allowed himself to go limp as the two women dragged him to the lake’s edge and manhandled him into the canoe. Then Phae helped

Sally clamber in. Picking up the paddle, Sally calmly maneuvered the canoe with its limp burden several hundred yards from shore. By now, Emerson had sat up and was admiring the play of her sturdy muscles in the moonlight.      Without warning, Sally tipped the canoe over.

     Emerson felt himself go under. Instead of struggling to regain the surface, he let himself drift. The shock of the sudden immersion in the cold water had done something he hadn’t thought possible: the quarreling, intrusive voices in his mind were momentarily silenced. In an eerie calm, he let himself sink to the bottom. Face to face with mud, stones and tiny, waving stems of weed and grass, he dimly enjoyed the sensation of utter thoughtlessness. This was what he had wanted – nothing. All he had to do was take a deep breath, and it would be over. The phantasms would be quieted forever. It didn’t matter to him that Emerson Chadwick would face the same fate.

     He felt a sharp yank on his scalp as he was lifted upward. His head broke through and he took the breath he had been holding in a shuddering gasp.

     “What the hell is wrong with you?” Sally asked. She had let the canoe float away. They were both standing chest-deep in the lake.

     Emerson didn’t answer. He started wading toward shore. After a minute, Sally followed, shaking her head.

     Emerson’s calm had not evaporated, but had become focused. He had been wrong, the voices had not been silenced, but had been banished to some dark recess of his brain. He thought he heard a whimper, then nothing.

     I have been baptized, he thought. Satan has been banished from my soul and I am reborn. I am at last free to be who I am.

     He staggered as he reached the shore, lifting his feet from the clinging mud. He could hear Sally splashing behind him.

     Phae held out a towel. “Emerson,” she said, “are you all right?”

     He accepted her offering. “I’m fine,” he said. “But my name is Ross.”

To read Chapter one, click here