The moon shone a glorious silver on the still water of the lake, a reflection of peace and serenity from a much too faraway place. The longer the boat floated, the darker the night seemed to become, the keen eye of the sky mournfully watching from above as I waited out the inevitable.

I scanned the treeline again for specters - futile in the darkness so complete I could barely see beyond the safety of the boat, the only light being the moon with the stars and their mirror image. I only knew that Adrian waited for me because his voice kept calling out, static rustling in his words as he sung my name in a broken wail, like a creaking of a rusty door with the distinct rattle of chains and morbid intentions from within the shadows.

Would morning chase away the demons or was I to wither away here, trapped in the shimmering waters of the lake, the boat an island swimming in an ocean of silver ink? I glared at my own shadowy reflection, my features indiscernible in the night but my silhouette visible. A harsh splinter of twigs pinpointed Adrian’s impatience at the treeline again and I flinched, staring out across the water at where I thought he stood.

I knew he wasn’t alone. The figure was much easier to find in the dark, the light of the moon glinting on unnatural eyes and flaring pale skin like a white glow shifting oddly amongst the trees.

Why didn’t they swim out to drown me? To drag me out of the boat and back to the lodge for whatever nefarious crimes they sought to commit? Why did we play this waiting game?

I remembered the painting of the deer at the lake’s edge and how it once been a beautiful painting of nature, and then how it had twisted to a sickly horror.

I looked down at the black silhouette I considered my own and wondered if the boat truly kept me safe, if the lake was really the barrier against the evil baring its fangs on shore.

“Charlie!” hissed Adrian, his voice almost screamed through gritted teeth. He sounded like he was pacing, back and forth, growing angrier with every passing moment.

And then silence. A stillness just as pure as the water’s surface, and yet the figure remained just out of sight, twitching at the corners of my vision so every time I turned to spot the true nature of the pale glow, it had vanished.

A distinct splash very much like a foot breaking water alerted me, my back stiff and straight as I spun, the boat rocking as I glared into the darkness. “Don’t…” I whispered. “Please, don’t....”

Then another, and another, and another - all coming from different directions as if a hundred monsters rushed across the surface of the lake towards me, bare feet hitting the water as they ran, charging at the boat waiting vulnerable at the centre.

But then once again: silence, and only a strong breeze flooded over me, carrying a waft of something evil. I gagged on the smell, the air suddenly heavy with rancid blood and decay. The silver of the water was turning, the shiny hue staining a putrid yellow as if dipped into oil.

I slid my phone out of my pocket, tapping the screen to reveal the time to be nearly three in the morning and my battery to be dangerously low, and then turned on the torch. I lifted it, letting the sole light beam across the lake with an almost pathetic range, but I could see what watched me from the treeline now.

Adrian was smiling, arms folded across his chest as he leaned against a tree as if merely waiting for an enjoyable scene to play out before him. The figure waited on the opposite side, stood behind me, long pale limbs twitching as if tugged every second by a different wire. I heard a rasp, a painful noise that rattled in fluid-filled lungs, and I turned the torch towards it.

The deer. It looked back at me, eyes rolling in its skull, head swinging low as if his great antlers were much too heavy for him now. They hung at a strange angle as if barely holding in position, clinging on by a ragged tendon as the deer sunk to the ground, his body glistening fresh and wet. The wetness dripped from his nose, from his stomach, and down his legs. Each huff and gasping breath visible with a warm, feverish cloud in the chilled night air, snorting more fluid from his nostrils with each exhale, and then throttling laboriously in his throat with each inhale.

He looked at me as if begging for help, as if begging for me to run while I still could.

Adrian smiled and the figure twitched, the mocking screech of echoing laughter surrounding us as the deer quivered under the pressure of living.

I blinked and the deer was gone. Instead...instead a person stood where the deer had collapsed, a person sunk to their knees with their head thrown back as if screaming soundlessly at the night sky. That horrid slick fluid awashed their body and tattered clothing, their entire body crisscrossed with festering wounds, flesh torn and gaping wide, the bone of ribs glistening in the moonlight.

The person lowered their head and our eyes met - my eyes.

“Run,” the person, the other me, mouthed, that fluid rasping from their lips in a mist of silvery crimson.

But where would I run? I was a deer caught in the headlights, and the headlights would track me wherever I went.

“Charlie,” said Adrian, his voice now calm. “Charlie, it’s time to come inside. It’s cold out here. We don’t want you to get ill.”

“We?” I asked, turning my torch onto him, casting half of his features in shifting shadows. “Who is we?”

He waved a hand nonchalantly towards the figure I knew still stood behind me on the other side of the lake. “We are your friends.” He mocked me with his smile, with the amused yet impatient tilt of his head as if persuading a stubborn child that playtime was over. “And we care for you.”

I looked at the figure and saw no sign of friendship. They were both hounds waiting for me to finally be in reach of their fangs, their claws ready to tear me apart just like the apparition had shown me, just like the painting.

The boat clunked beneath me as I moved stiffly, my body tired with being so tense for so long. “Why are you doing this, Adrian? If Adrian is really your name.”

His smile fell and he sighed. “Adrian is always my name. I quite like it.”

“You’ve done this before,” I said.

“You’ve seen the pictures in the cottage,” he answered, brushing down invisible creases in his perfectly ironed shirt, tugging at his sleeves as if ordering himself before a night out. “You’ll join them. It’s quite cozy, I hear.”

“To be murdered?”

He frowned, his fingers freezing on his left shirt cuff. “Murder?” He sounded mortified. “Oh, Charlie, this is not murder. Murder is so…coarse. No, this is liberation.”

“I’d like to be ‘liberated’ and go home,” I spat, eyeing the battery level of my phone as it lowered another number. Soon I’d be left in the darkness with no torch at all to pinpoint where they were.

“But you don’t. Not really. What is home, Charlie? You have no family, no friends. You throw yourself into work and your colleagues admire your tenacity, but everyone is kept at arm’s length. You don’t even have hobbies, you only work. You were so easy to claim, and we want to relieve you from that life now. Just let it all go. You’ll become part of the lodge, part of us.”

“Claim me? You...you were always going to do this to me? From the start? Am I just another victim of your lies and games? Do you move from one place to another and just take whoever you can, those with no ties? I am not yours to take - not you, not Mr Twitchy over there, and definitely not for some creepy lodge.”

“We are the lodge, Charlie. Seven days and you become one with it. Now come, join us.”

It was a command, all patience gone, but I didn’t move. Instead, the figure surged forwards, screaming inhumanly as it dived across the water, the yellow-silver surface breaking and lapping over pale, skinny limbs like acid that burned the flesh to the bone. The figure kept coming, screaming and yet not faltering as long fingers curled over the edge of the boat, the skin peeling away from the crimson muscle.

“It’s time, Charlie,” the figure growled with Adrian’s voice. “The lodge awaits.”