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It was the distant echo of the gunshot, half-heard through her dreams that woke her up.
Emily sat up in bed, listening. The side of the mattress where her sister Samantha should have been sleeping was empty and cold.
Emily shivered and pulled the blankets closer about her bare shoulders. She had told Samantha that sleeveless pajamas wouldn't be enough to keep her warm, especially when she insisted on leaving the wide, double-door windows open all night long.
When the silence wasn't broken a second time, Emily considered crawling back under the warm covers and sleeping away the other hour before she had to get up and dressed for school.
But where was Samantha?
The gunshot wasn't loud enough to hold her attention, it being September and the hunting season, it wasn't uncommon for men hunting all kinds of animals to stay at the lodge. After all, the woods came right up to their doorstep, and their father made sure that the lake was always well stocked with fish.
Emily shivered again at an ill boding crow's dreary call through the open window and slid silently to the floor.
Snatching her coat from off a chair back and zipping it up over her nightgown, she shoved her feet into a pair of boots and, not bothering to tie the laces, crept out of her room and down the stairs.
The lobby was empty, a few ash trays and champagne glasses were stacked atop one another on the counter- leftovers from last night's party that Mrs. Macardy and Delilah had missed cleaning up, no doubt.
Emily hadn't been allowed to go to the party, being just fourteen, but Sam had gone, and sitting at the top of the stairs, Emily had heard her laughing with the Lodge's guests down in the lounge.
Now Emily hardly glanced through the doorway at the room, but went straight on to the front door and slipped outside.
The air was cold and sharp and as Emily trotted down the wood walk towards the lake, her breath came out in great white puffs of warmth.
Why she headed straight for the lake she didn't know. Samantha very rarely went down to it, hating the swarms of bugs and mosquitoes that met her on it's shores, but liked instead to stand on the wide balcony at the lodge that came straight out of the lounge and faced the lake at a safe distance away from most of the pests.
She stopped a brief moment when her boots hit the sand. The lake was a brilliant, fiery red in the sunrise coupled with the orange fall leafs on the aspens reflecting on the water.
Turning, Emily began to walk along the shore of the lake, scanning the water for any canoe or boat Sam might have gone out on.
Then, a few yards in front of her, Emily spotted a rowboat beached upside down in the sand, its oars still wet from very recent usage.
Jogging over, she stopped beside the boat and instantly her young face paled. "Sam?" she whispered.
But the older girl, lying face-up in the sand, her dark hair framing her blood-drained face like a halo, her gray eyes open and staring unblinkingly up at the sky, blood trickling down from her partially-opened mouth, did not answer.
