Madman Across the Water: Madman Across the Water, #1

By Caroline Angel

For generations one family has been haunted by something... something that stalks. It sees and listens, it watches and follows. In the shadows and mist it waits, to take you, to hurt you, perhaps to kill you. If it doesn't kill you, you'll wish it did. A creepy, suspenseful saga of family, horror, and mystery, this is one story sure to leave you frightened of the woods at night, fog, and all things tall and slender.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cape Publishing
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201558512

Caroline Angel

Caroline Angel, R.N., Ph.D., is a certified mixologist and cosmopolitan aficionado. She holds a doctorate of philosophy in Nursing and Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania (where she now teaches) and lives in Westfield, New Jersey, with her husband, Steve, and daughter, Catherine.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

CAMPBELLTOWN, PRESENT DAY

The tall boy's hair was unnaturally black and shiny. He had dyed away the soft blonde curls he had inherited from his father and turned them into a gothic shock of spiked rebellion. His eyes were all his mother's, bright blue and expressive, soft and cheerful one moment and harsh and demanding the next.

He dressed in the same rebellious style as his hair: dark clothes, deliberately planned rips in his black jeans, and frayed laces in his heavy army boots. He lined his eyes with thick black eyeliner and had pierced his lip himself with a sterling silver ring. It was healing quite nicely and matched the similar piercing in his eyebrow. Girls are gonna go wild over it, he had thought as he had twisted the ring through his skin. While only partially numbed from a block of ice, the constant pushing of the silver ring had swollen all feeling from his face. They are going to fall at my feet, begging me to do anything to them I want to do. He had smiled at that, making the piercing hole weep a tear of red. Take me, Brent, take me, I'm all yours.

When he had looked in the mirror he was torn at the image. He liked what he saw. He looked tough, emo, angry. It was the image he wanted to portray to the world, that he wanted everyone to see. Not a frail, frightened, sad child from a broken family, but a brave, proud rebel, fighting bureaucracy and the man. Not that Brent knew who, or what, the man really was. Didn't matter. He wanted to at least look like he did.

He also knew that he was good looking. It wasn't just the ruffled hair compliments his mother gave him as she passed through the kitchen. It was in the appreciative looks from the schoolgirls at his high school. And sometimes even on the faces of the teachers. He liked that. He liked that a lot.

The dark hair emphasized his light-colored eyes and long black lashes. It also showed his near-perfect complexion. He was lucky at his age not to be covered in a road map of pubescent explosions all over his face. His fellow students often bore the curse of teenage acne and pimple cream in an abstract landscape of embarrassment, but he never had, and for that he was eternally grateful. It was about the only thing in his whole fucked up existence he was grateful for.

His reflection also showed his sad, lonely eyes. He may have come across as a young, hard-nosed goth teen but, really, he was just a sad misunderstood boy. Abandoned by his father and neglected by his mother, he reacted in the stereotypical way with his attitude and dress but wanted nothing more than to be the same as all the other kids. Two-parent household, brothers and sisters, and loved. It wasn't too much to ask for, but it was more than Brent ever had.

He scuffed his military style boots along the gutter as he headed away from the local senior high. He liked to portray the bad boy image, but his attendance record was near perfect; he almost never missed school. It wasn't that he was a good student, or even that he liked learning. God knows he had no real friends there to speak of. And that was precisely why he didn't flake out and skip school. He often skipped classes but was always somewhere on the school grounds. He had nowhere else to go. If he hung around town, he would be on his own. No friends. No gang. Just him. The other kids tried to be friends with him, but he was sure that was only because his more-popular-than-God cousin encouraged them to do so.

Brent, hold up, dude. Are you walking with us? called a blonde-haired young man. Dad gave me money for burgers.

Brent shook his head. Nah, Alex. I'm going past the lake, he called back. The blonde boy frowned but didn't challenge him. Brent gave him a half-sided smile and turned away. Pity food. That's all it was. Alex may have liked hanging out with him when they were little, but now Brent was sure it was more a misguided sense of loyalty. Look out for the underprivileged kid. Here, boy, here's twenty bucks to feed the weirdo. He turned and vaulted over the school fence, one arm clutching the fence top, the other hanging onto his canvas satchel he used as a school bag. He knew Alex's dad disapproved of him walking the long way home. He didn't care. He like to meander along the small path that took him near the lake and through the woods, it was a short cut that a lot of the kids took. This time of year it was even better with all of the water flowers in bloom. Not that he would admit that part to anyone.

He did like to walk alone when the weather was nice. The woods were dry and silent, the meadow green and lush. And if he took the long way around he passed a strange clearing that was just a jump over from the small feeder creek to the lake. It was there a couple of years ago he found wonderful outcroppings of rocks piled up like burial mounds. He thought they looked like some giant rock monster had taken a series of dumps around the clearing, resulting in giant piles of rock poop. They were fascinating and he loved to hang out there, weirdo amongst the weirdness, as they led him up to the lake where they formed a little reef.

A decrepit, ancient broken boat on the lake was now a house for aquatic wildlife. Reeds and water irises pushed all around, and frogs sung their merry tune from above and below the hull. He decided to cut closer to the lake on today's walk. Passing along the lake path would give him a chance to see the jetty and the small house that sat perched on the edge of the forest. He might even get to see the madman across the water.

He didn't often catch sight of the strange man, but sometimes he got lucky. He knew it was a popular pastime for everyone to try and get a glimpse of the fascinating man, his craziness the stuff of town legend. The kids from school sometimes liked to hang a day of hooky and throw rocks across the lake to the house. No one could get them all the way over the wide expanse of water, but they tried anyway. Brent just wanted to see him, get him to wave, just once. Not scurry back into his little shack like a frightened mouse. Coward. Fucktard. Not enough of a man to face a small-town teenage boy.

Today was not a lucky day. No sightings of the mental case that hid in a fishing cabin, so Brent continued his walk, occasionally skimming a stone or two across the water. He didn't see the faint silhouette at the window of the little cottage peering through tattered floral curtains. He walked on, not noticing the eyes following his movement, the form standing there until long after Brent moved from view.

The path wound around the lake and he came close to the rocky clearing he liked. It had been a wet spring so jumping the creek was a little harder than normal; the water was high, and the long slippery grass coated both banks in a never ending threat to tangle his feet and plunge him head first into the chilly stream. Luckily, he was a tall, lanky boy with long legs and managed the leap without stumbling into the burbling water below.

He sat against one of the larger piles of stone and lit a cigarette he'd pulled from his satchel. The day was peaceful and clear, barely a breeze rippled the lake. The sounds of the children in the park were far enough away for Brent to pretend he didn't hear them. He pulled both knees up under his chin and let his eyes close as he basked in the warm sunlight. He felt his stomach rumble against his legs and wished he'd stayed with Alex. God knows when he got home there'd be no food there. His mother would be out, like every other night, and there would be nothing on the shabby, secondhand kitchen table other than unopened mail, a dirty glass with bourbon dregs drying out in the bottom, and an overflowing ash tray.

His stomach called out again and he took a long, slow drag of the cigarette. It helped with the hunger. Funny how his mom would notice and have an apoplectic fit if he even touched the bourbon, but he could snake a handful of her smokes and she didn't bat an over-painted eyelid. He took another drag and let the warm sunlight wash over him. He liked the way his own eyelids glowed with a bright red screen as he closed them against the light. It was nice here. He laid his head back against the rocky pile as he crushed the cigarette butt into the sweet-scented grass.

The rocks he rested against had stored the warmth from the sun. Brent didn't realize he'd dozed off until a chill around his ankles roused him. Looking down he was shocked to see a layer of milky white fog had drifted around him, completely covering the grass, and softly rolled against his feet. He put a hand into the fog and withdrew it quickly. It was bitterly cold. He stood up and looked around. The whole clearing was covered in the white blanket and it seemed to be rolling in thicker waves from the tree line.

Stepping forward, he realized the forest noises had stopped. The singing birds and chirping bugs had quieted. A strange stillness settled over the bright day as the mist rolled out of the forest. Brent turned around, shocked and a little frightened at the fog and silence. He looked over at the far-off children in the park across from the lake. Everything looked normal there, no fog, no white mist covering the ground. But now the cheery noises that had drifted across the water to him were gone. Looking over at the distant park was like looking at a silent movie. People were there still, but he could not hear them. He looked back towards the trees. There was something new, some noise, sort of...

Was it music? Was there music, just a bit too far off to hear clearly?

The music was coming from the forest. Brent shouldered his satchel and moved towards the tree line. He had never been afraid of the forest; he liked the creepy stillness and cool smooth tree trunks. He never minded the shortcut home through the trees and, whenever Alex's dad couldn't give them a lift home from school, he was more than happy to take the path through the woods. He had never seen this weird, low-lying fog before. In fact, he had never seen any fog here in summer. There had to be a reason for it. Maybe it had something to do with the music. Maybe it was a trick or something, like a circus passing through? He didn't know fog could just drift around low like this; it was not quite up to his knees. Intrigued more than frightened, Brent broached the edge of the woods and made his way into the dark forest, his footfalls muffled by the fog blanketing the tree lined path.

He moved easily between the tightly grown trunks, following one of the paths that meandered through the tall trees and twisted their way from one side of the woods to the other. He trod carefully though as the floor of the forest was completely obscured by the fog. It was dark in the woods, the treetops meshed so well together they blocked almost all sunlight. Oh, here and there it broke through like stage spotlights, but the light spots were few and far between.

The tall, dark-haired boy moved cautiously forward, his eyes straining against the dim light and his ankles frozen from the mist. The music seemed to grow louder. He turned a little in the direction he thought it was coming from but could not be sure. It seemed to be all around him, above, below, beside, and behind. He felt a tight knot of fear start to grow in his belly as the fog lifted to waist height and thickened around him.

He turned to leave the woods, but for the first time in his life, Brent was disoriented. He did not know his way out. He had practically grown up in these woods, but right now they seemed foreign and unknown to him. The path all but vanished, around him the trees were almost too close together to pass. He slipped through the trunks and headed in the direction he thought he had come but no matter how far he walked he did not come to the forest edge. He only hoped he hadn't gotten so far turned around that he was heading deeper, towards the dark hills behind the woods.

He stumbled against something, perhaps a fallen branch or a tree root and fell heavily to his knees. He dropped his satchel and it immediately disappeared into the thick frozen fog. He crawled on all fours, feeling around for the bag. It couldn't have gotten far, it only slipped from his shoulder. Dammit, he thought. My iPod and phone are in that bag. And my homework. He crawled around for what seemed like ages, the cold seeping into his very bones. His hand brushed at the corner of his bag and he breathed a sigh of relief. Normally he wouldn't consider leaving it but he was getting freaked out enough to start thinking about it. The fog was so cold that he was near losing all the feeling in his hands. He slung the satchel over his shoulder and stood, brushing the forest litter off his pants as he straightened.

Something moved. Something over there. Something at the corner of his eye. Brent turned and leaned forward a little, trying to see what the dim light was hiding.

It moved again.

It was not a deer, nor any forest animal. It was tall. Very tall...And very dark.

Oh shit. It's probably Carl Hoover the basketball major. Douchebag would beat him senseless if he found Brent alone. Best be off and make it fast.

He turned and took only one step when he saw something move again, this time ahead of him. Again, he could not see what it was, not clearly. There was only a glimpse.

Just a small movement of something tall, dark. It moved on long thin legs, waved long arms.

Brent swallowed hard. What the fuck? What the fuck was it?

Oh God, Oh God... don't let it be the thing...

He turned to run as he dropped his satchel again. This time he didn't stop to pick it up as he ran as fast as he ever had in his life.

He ran with lungs bursting and heart pounding until he could finally make out the edge of the forest. He slowed with relief when he could see the grass beyond the trees. The fog seemed to have lifted from the clearing and he couldn't wait to step out into the warm comfort of the afternoon summer sun.

He stepped forward just as a long, impossibly thin, white hand encircled his wrist and Brent screamed in horror.

Chapter One

A LONG TIME AGO...

Across the horizon, dusk followed the setting sun as it descended with soft fingers of light mixed with darkness. The odd cloud or two glowed with a burnished halo of golden red that shone a kaleidoscope of visual delight in all directions. The light caressed the dark distant hills in splashes of reds, pinks, and golds, lending a fiery facade to the rolling green heights. The light also touched the tall rye grass setting its golden countenance ablaze with color. The grass gently swayed and moved in the soft evening breeze and brushed against little oddly shaped piles of rocks and boulders. The rocks looked like they had been dropped in deliberate little mounds by something giant. In truth, they were probably just ancient cast offs from a volcano gone dormant many centuries ago.

To the north of the horizon was a tall stand of trees with the dark hills as their backdrop. The trees were straight and grew close together in fairly even lines, almost like they had been deliberately planted that way. Their canopies were thrust high into the evening air, the branches knitted so close together that even in the middle of the day the sun almost never poked through.

From these trees a gentle mist started to spread, rolling slowly out over the grassy plains in a soft wave. Ebbing and surging, the mist mimicked the white foam on a distant shore as it silently crept from the tree line. It rolled and swirled around the piles of rocks, danced through the grass and spilled out over the large blue lake. Accompanying the mist was a soft sound, a muffled song or perhaps an echo of distant music. So soft, so quiet, it was almost unheard.

High above the trees on the black hills and silhouetted against the darkening sky, a well-built young man with copper skin and feathers braided into his hair sat upon his painted horse as he watched the mist. The sight of that mist sent a cold shiver of fear down to his very soul. He knew what it meant, what it would bring, for it was not the first time that the mist had rolled from this forest.

And in his heavy heart, he knew it would not be the last...

CAMPBELLTOWN, 1961, SUMMER

Simon kneeled on the sidewalk, purple chalk in hand and leaned back on his heels, his Keds slipping a little as he admired his work. Further down the street his friends drew on the faded gray path, a competition designed by his mother to keep the children occupied. She and the other mothers sat on the front porch watching their charges, making sure they didn't stray or fight.

A wireless radio played a cheery rock and roll song as the women chatted. One of the ladies tapped on the top of the radio as it crackled and spluttered before falling quiet.

What's wrong with that thing? another of the moms asked.

Simon's mom, Leah, stood and walked over to it and turned the knobs, jiggled the power cord, her brow furrowed. I don't know. It's fairly new. She picked the radio up and shook it then put it down again. Small bursts of static rewarded her efforts and she turned away from it. Looks like we're out of music, girls. The women moaned a little, but their bright chatter soon resumed and drifted to the sidewalk in a flutter of giggles and half-heard words.

Simon turned his head to look behind him and counted six boys stretched out in a row drawing sidewalk pictures in the hopes of winning the secret prize that awaited the best chalk art competition for Macy Street.

Macy Street bordered the park that skirted this side of town. There was a lake a little further over, not easily seen from the street. From the edge of the road there was a small, winding, shrub and tree lined path that meandered the hundred or so yards to the edge of the woods. As Simon turned and looked further down at his friend Peter, he noticed something behind the boy. A movement, just slight, like a deer, or bird, something half concealed in the shadows of the late afternoon.

There it was again.

A movement.

Something, there was something there.

Simon dropped backwards onto his butt. Sitting on the warm ground, eyes squinted as he stared down the path into the woods, trying to make out what could be moving behind his best friend, hoping it was a deer.

It could be a deer.

He had seen one last summer when he was only six, and it was something he hoped to see again someday. Last year the deer had been foraging in Mrs. Jeffries' rose garden; her yard bordered the wooded park and would often host breakfast for squirrels and rabbits. The deer was something different, something unexpected, something wonderful. The majestic animal had stood quietly munching on the roses, large fluffy ears occasionally twitching, the shiny black nose glistening in the overhead sunshine. The sight had taken his breath away. Never before had he been so close to such an animal, not even at the zoo his father had taken the family to the spring before last. He couldn't believe his eyes. He stood there for what seemed an age but, in reality, was perhaps a minute or two until the deer spotted him and bounded soundlessly away, back to the safety of the dark woods. Simon told no one. He kept that delicious secret to himself. Today though, today if he saw one, he would tell everyone. He would make sure everyone saw.

Simon counted out his friends behind him. There was James, who lived on the street behind him, and Ralph. Then there was Louis, Andy, Wayne, and lastly, Peter. Andy moved from his drawing to Peter's and waved Wayne over. Simon watched them from the corner of his vision as he tried to focus on the movement behind his friends. Strangely, a fog was rolling in, its soft wisps around the base of the trees and across the carpet of leaf litter. This time of year there should be no mist, no fog. Even in the cold crisp of late fall.

There, again, something moved.

Simon frowned as the shape came into view.

It was a man.

A tall man.

A very, very tall man. He had a thick, black hide that almost looked like he was dressed in a rough suit, kind of like Pastor Rodgers wore at Sunday sermon. It was hard to see from where he was, but Simon could not make out the tall man's face. Simon held his breath as the man stepped forward from the shadows of the trees and approached his friends. Mist followed the tall man, swirling around his feet and coiling up to his very, very thin knees. The dark man moved slowly, strangely, like he was trudging through mud. He lifted his knees a little too much, a little too high, as he moved closer to the boys. He was very tall, very, very tall, and so thin he seemed to be made from sticks and twigs.

The thin man had no face.

None.

Nothing.

No eyes, no nose, no mouth.

Just white - a blank, white, featureless face.

Simon looked towards his mother, sitting with the other moms on the front porch drinking Long Island Iced Teas and smoking menthol cigarettes. None of them saw the tall, thin man approaching the boys at the end of the street. Simon looked around and realized he was the only one that saw the man.

The three boys closest to the stranger, Andy, Wayne, and Peter were crouched low, looking down at their intricate artwork with their backs turned to the thin man. The man drew closer to the boys and finally something made Andy turn, catching sight of the stranger. His