Lake Thirteen by Greg Herren

Rachel asked as she unfolded her napkin. All she had on her plate were a couple of pieces of buttered toast. She started spreading strawberry jam on one.
    “Not good,” I replied, pushing my plate away. I looked over at the table where the adults were sitting—my parents had also arrived, but their table was far enough away that I didn’t have to worry about them overhearing anything we were saying.
    “Nightmares?” Carson poured some cream into his coffee and stirred it.
    I nodded and bit my lower lip. “Yeah. They were pretty awful. And I heard someone calling in the woods last night—calling Bertie. I thought it was maybe all a part of the dream, you know, but then this morning my mom said she heard it.”
    Logan started making Twilight Zone noises until Teresa smacked his arm hard.
    I couldn’t help but grin. In the well-lit dining room, with the sun streaming in through the windows and all the voices talking—it all seemed so unreal now. “Mom figured it was one of the Bartletts, looking for a cat or a dog or something.” I shrugged. “But I don’t know. It was the middle of the night when I first heard it—at least if I wasn’t dreaming—and I heard it again when I woke up.”
    “They don’t have any pets.” Logan rolled up a piece of sausage in a pancake and poured syrup over it. “I talked to Annie yesterday—”
    “Trying to get in her pants,” Teresa interjected, earning a sour look from Logan.
    “—and they don’t have any. She had a dog but wolves got it last winter, and she said she doesn’t want to get another.”
    “Interesting.” Carson tapped his plate with his fork. “So, what did Scotty and his mom hear last night?” His grin was so smug I wanted to pop his balloon.
    “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” Rachel had finished her two pieces of toast and was fiddling with her phone again.
    “It couldn’t have been a dream—like I said, my mom heard it, too.”
    Carson looked like a cat who’d swallowed several canaries. “I told you it was ghosts,” he said officiously. He looked over at the table where our parents were talking and laughing. “You’re sure the voice was calling Bertie ? That’s what it was saying?”
    I nodded.
    He slipped his recorder out of his pocket and waved it at all of us. “Listen to this.” He hit the play button. He’d cued the recording to just before we heard the voice say my name.
    But it didn’t sound like my name this time.
    “I could have sworn it said Scotty last night,” Teresa frowned.
    Carson nodded. “Exactly. We weren’t expecting to hear anything, and so when we did, our minds interpreted what we heard as something we were familiar with—we heard Scotty’s name. After all, we were all keyed up from what happened down there—and what Scotty had experienced. So when we heard the voice on the recording, we heard Scotty’s name. That’s why it’s so important to listen again when things have calmed down and—”
    “It’s saying Bertie,” Rachel cut him off. “Albert, right?”
    “That’s what I heard,” Logan popped the last of his weird pancake-sausage burrito into his mouth.
    “So, once the adults head into town”—Carson glanced over at their table—“we should head into the woods and look around.”
    “Why?” Rachel looked up from her phone.
    “Because that’s where Scotty and his mom heard someone calling Bertie last night,” he said patiently, like he was explaining to a small child. “Whatever the ghost wants us to know, I think we’re going to find in the woods.”
    I pushed my chair back. “I’ll be on the deck in a few.” I took my plate and my coffee cup over to the buffet table, where a big gray plastic tub had been set out for dirty dishes. Mrs. Bartlett was standing there, wiping her hands on a dish towel. I smiled at her and headed to the game room, sitting down on the brown couch and pulling my own phone out of my pocket. I pulled up Marc’s contact page and stared at his