Moonlight Lake

Moonlight Lake

Written By

 Greg Kendall

  Emily plopped a large scoop of mac and cheese onto the plate and placed it on the table in front of eight-year-old Jessie Coleman. “Thanks Em!” Jessie said as he dug in.

 This would be Emily’s third time babysitting the boy at his parents’ cabin on Moonlight Lake. Dr. Coleman and his wife, Elizabeth, lived next door to Emily and her parents in the Cedar Falls gated community.

 Emily checked her phone, still no service. That was the only bad thing about being at the cabin. “You can get service by the old well in the backyard. That is the only spot it works,” Jessie said. Emily looked out of the window and didn’t see the Colemans yet, so she decided to do a little snooping.

 Emily walked down the hallway, past the guest room on the left and then the master bedroom on the right, to a doorway at the end of the hall. She tugged at the door handle, but it was locked. She knew the door led down to a basement area because she had seen Dr. Coleman come up the steps and locked the door behind him. She gave up and walked back to the kitchen to check on Jessie.

 “Can I have something to drink?” Jessie asked.

 “Sure,” Emily said.

 Emily poured water from a bottle into the glass and opened the freezer. The ice was stuck together, so she opened a kitchen drawer to look for an ice pick or something sharp to break the ice up. Only spoons and forks in the first drawer, a can opener and a potato peeler in the second. The third drawer was a junk drawer with a little bit of everything in it. A necklace caught her eye. She picked the necklace up and studied it. It was identical to the necklace that she had seen Amy Green wearing at school. Amy went missing two weeks before.

 The front door of the cabin opened, and Emily gasped and dropped the necklace and closed the drawer. She placed the iceless glass of water on the table and Jessie grabbed it.

 “Alright kiddos, we are back from our hike. Are you two okay?” Dr. Coleman asked.

 “Hi Dad!” Jessie said through a mouthful of mac and cheese.

 Elizabeth Coleman smiled at Emily and said, “Let’s get everything ready to go. It’s time to head back home.”

 The thirty minute ride back to Cedar Falls was mostly quiet. Jessie was busy playing a game on his touchpad and Emily couldn’t think of anything to say. Her eyes met Dr. Coleman’s in the rearview mirror and she looked away, after that she didn’t take her eyes off her phone screen.

 Dr. Coleman pulled up in front of Emily’s house and handed her a hundred-dollar bill.

 “Are you free next Saturday?” Elizabeth asked.

 “Um, maybe. I’ll have to check, I’ll let you know.”

 “Bye Em!” Jessie yelled as Emily got out of the vehicle. Emily smiled as best she could and waved goodbye at Jessie.

 Emily said hello to her parents as she rushed by them and went upstairs to her room and called her best friend, Jennie. Jennie answered on the first ring. “Tell me you’re done brat-sitting and we can hangout.” “Yeah, I’m home, can you come over?” Emily asked. “Yeah, for an hour or two, Tyler is picking me up later.”

 Emily told Jennie about the necklace, and the locked basement, and the creepy vibes from Dr. Coleman.

 “I don’t know Em, it seems far-fetched to me. You’re imagining things,” Jennie said.

 Forty minutes passed by and Tyler showed up. Jessie told him to come up and the girls told him about the cabin and the necklace and he was intrigued.

 “There’s only one way to know for sure, we have to go to the cabin and check it out. Look at that necklace and see what’s in that basement,” Tyler said.

 “No way. There is no way we are going to that cabin,” Emily said.

 “Come on Em, that’s the only way to know for sure,” Jennie said.

 “Oh, so now you don’t think I’m imagining things?” Emily asked.

 “Look, we’ll just go have a look. I can pick the lock. We’ll be in and out in no time and we will know if Dr. Coleman is a psycho killer or if Emily is just a paranoid freak,” Tyler said with a grin.

 Thirty minutes or so later, the three teens pulled up to the cabin. Tyler turned the car off and killed the lights.

 “Shouldn’t we like, park down the road or something? Emily asked.

 “Relax, nobody is here. If anybody shows up, just tell them you left your purse or something,” Tyler said.

 Tyler grabbed his flashlight and motioned for the girls to follow. They walked quietly to the side door of the cabin. Tyler handed Jennie the light and grabbed the doorknob; it was unlocked.

 “I don’t like this. This door should be locked. We need to leave,” Emily said in a panicked whisper.

 “Shhh..He probably just forgot to lock it,” Tyler said.

 The three of them entered the cabin and went to the kitchen area. Emily pointed at the drawer that the necklace was in and Jennie pulled it open. She rummaged through the junk in the drawer, but there was no necklace. Emily looked for herself. “It’s gone. It was here, I know it. Dr. Coleman must have moved it.” “Where is the basement?” Tyler asked.

 Emily led them to the basement door using her phone as a light. Tyler tried the door but it was locked. He pulled out a cheap lock-pick tool and went to work on the deadbolt lock. He was having no luck with it. “Why do you even have a lock-pick?” Jennie asked. Tyler smiled and said “Got it off the internet so we can get in the gym and use the weights on Wednesday nights. This isn’t working; I have a crowbar in the car. I’ll be right back.”

 “Crowbar? Tyler, no,” Emily said as Tyler walked away.

 “Okay, I’m starting to get a little freaked out, we should probably just leave,” Jennie said.

 “That necklace was in that drawer, I swear it was exactly like Amy’s,” Emily said.

 The girls heard the cabin door open again, this time not so quiet. The kitchen lights came on. The girls looked down the hall in disbelief that Tyler would be so stupid as to turn the main light on. Then the lights in the hallway came on, exposing the girls. And there stood Dr. Coleman with a bloody knife in his hand and blood splatter on his tan sweater and on the side of his face.

 “Your parents are going to be very upset with you, Emily,” Dr. Coleman said in a deep and wicked voice. He started walking towards the girls. Emily grabbed Jennie by the wrist and pulled her into the master bedroom and shut the door and locked it. Emily tried her phone, no service. Dr. Coleman was kicking the door and it wasn’t going to hold long. Emily ripped the thin curtains off of the hangers and unlocked the window and struggled to raise it. Jennie helped and it went up. The door flew open and Coleman stepped into the room. “Did you come looking for this? He held out the necklace and grinned. Emily grabbed a large vase off of the dresser and threw it hard. He blocked it with his forearm and it broke into a million pieces. Emily grabbed another item from the dresser, a heavy paperweight and reared back and told Jessie to go out of the window. Jessie did. Emily threw the paperweight at Coleman and it narrowly missed him. Emily dove out of the window and hit hard on the ground. “Run to the well, there is service,” Emily said to a terrified Jessie.

 The two girls ran and Dr. Coleman ran after them. Jessie was behind Emily a few yards and Dr. Coleman caught up with her and grabbed her. Emily stopped near the well and quietly told her phone to call 911, not knowing if she even had service or not. She felt it vibrate in her back pocket, it was dialing.

 Dr. Coleman held the knife to Jennie’s throat as he stood behind her. “Emily, do you want to see what’s in the basement? Well, you’re about to. He punched Jennie in back of the head, knocking her out and fast walked toward Emily. Emily ran past the well and to the side of the cabin, and retrieved her phone and told the operator the address and that Dr. Coleman was trying to kill her. She stopped at a woodpile. The only light she had was the light of the moon. She saw a hatchet and grabbed it. The 911 operator was asking questions but Emily wasn’t listening. She threw the phone down and hid on the side of the woodpile and waited.

 A few minutes later, Dr. Coleman slowly approached the phone and picked it up. Emily could hear the operator talking and Dr. Coleman said, “Hello, this is Dr. Coleman, out on Moonlight Lake. I am so sorry, but these silly kids have pranked you. My kids grabbed the babysitter’s phone and well, I’m really sorry about this. No need to send anyone here. Yes, yes, I’m sure, just kids being ki…” Emily cut him off with the swing of the hatchet. She caught him right above the temple and he fell to the ground like a rock.

 Emily grabbed the phone and talked to the 911 operator as she made her way back to Jennie.

 It only took about 15 more minutes for the police and first responders to arrive. The girls were seen to by the paramedics. They took Jennie in an ambulance; they said that she probably had a concussion. Emily only had scrapes and bruises but she was okay.

 “Hello Emily, I’m Chief Owens. Can we talk for a moment?”

 Emily nodded and asked, “Is Tyler okay?”

 “No, Emily, I am sorry. Tyler didn’t make it. What you did here was very brave, but you should have come to me first.”

 “I know. I just wasn’t sure, it all happened so fast,” Emily said through tears.

 “Well, at least you’re alright; you and your friend. And don’t you worry, we’re going to find that bastard.”

 “What? Is he not dead? I hit him the head with an axe.”

 “You got him good. We found the hatchet, and what looks like his blood, but Coleman is gone,” Chief Owens said.

 The next few weeks were a media frenzy. Reporters and cameras were all over town and the lake. They had dubbed Dr. Coleman, The Moonlight Lake Killer. Emily thought it was kind of a lame name.

 The police had uncovered nine bodies in the ground and in the well at the cabin. They had also found remains in the lake and were expecting to find more. The police solved several missing persons cases, including Amy Green’s. Mrs. Coleman and Jessie packed up and left town a few weeks later. Dr. Coleman has not been seen since.

The End