Deep in the dark your kiss will thrill me like days of old
Lighting the spark of love that fills me with dreams untold
Each day I pray for evening just to be with you...

Together at last at twilight time.

The police dragged the lake. Their chopper droned through the air and neighbors searched the lake shores all day, but no trace of Barbara.

Ten past three in the morning officer Breaker took a seat opposite Tom Zane at the kitchen table. The wracked man stared emptily into his coffee mug, the thick blanket round his shoulders almost engulfing him. They'd almost lost track of him as well when he stalked deeper and deeper into the woodlands, bellowing out his beloved's name. Something about it brought to mind a distraught deer buck.

"I'm sorry Tom, but we're gonna have to call the search off for tonight. Visibility's too low."

"Have you looked for unknown cars in the area?" Tom struggled to get out of the blanket nest. "She might've been kidnapped-"

"We'll follow every lead, Tom." Breaker pushed him down on the seat again with a mild yet firm hand. "Get some rest. There's still a chance she'll turn up." But the officer didn't say out loud what he deep down feared.

Breaker hesitated to leave Tom alone in this state. You never knew what shocked people could do. The poet's assistant writer (Hartman, was it?) lingered in the doorway, and he decided to take the young man aside.

"Can you stay here tonight?"

Hartman gave his shoulder a precocious pat. "Don't worry, officer. I'll look after him."

When the tail lights of the last police cruiser blinked out of sight, Emil turned to Zane.

"Go lie down, Tom - I'll wake you up right away if something happens."

Tom shook his head. He didn't feel tired. And if he somehow fell asleep, it would become a distance between now and tomorrow. Then Barbara would be part of the past, not a living person whom they still had a chance to find alive and well, sheltered under a ponderosa because she couldn't…

His thoughts balked.

"I'm really sorry about this." Emil sat down in the vacant seat. "I know you loved her very much, and this loss is obviously harrowing for all of us. But as your friend and temporary caretaker, I think right now you need some quiet-"

"So be."

Silence pressed against the walls of the room. Thoughts seemed to rise within the poet, until they finally overflowed into the world of sound.

"I wish I could have this undone." Tom's voice was tense and thin, trapped in his throat.

"Write about it," Emil said.

"…What?" Tom's gaze flew up to his face.

"It will help."

The corners of Tom's lips turned upwards in a joyless grimace. "Emil, don't be foolish. You're a commendable assistant, but you're no shrink. You've never shown any interest in therapeutic writing."

"As a matter of fact I took a correspondence course in psychology last winter. I had to look for other career-options when you didn't get a word on paper." The hint of indignation in Emil's voice made Zane's eyes shift just a hint.

"Tom." An apologetic hand cupped Tom's shoulder. "The kind of help I'm talking about is far greater than any therapy ever could ever bring you. I'm talking about bringing Barbara back."

Tom's gaze shifted to a spot on the wall. It felt like he'd cross a point of no return if he met Emil's eyes.

Above his head the man began to talk about the old hunters in town. Of how some of them shared with him the legend of the lake. How it held special powers that affected its surroundings, and a person with vivid imagination could harness these powers. Even use them for great good.

Tom wanted to laugh bitterly and dismiss it as a ghost story. Yet he felt compelled to listen. He wanted to know what had made a chronic pragmatist like his assistant writer make a turnabout. These urban legends - about Lover's Peak, the birds, the lake…. They echoed his own experiences. The Anderson brothers. Mr Scratch. Things he'd told himself happened due to his own prophecies and creations.

"Surely you'd want Barbara to think you really did everything to save her?" Emil dipped his head. His gaze was sympathetic but grave. "Or will you spend the rest of your life asking 'what if'?"

Tom could not argue with that. Not when he truly wanted to save her.

Emil pushed pen and paper towards him. "Write about it. As you said yourself, if anything it's a therapeutic activity."

As soon as the horizon grayed, Tom sent Emil off with strict orders not to return until he called. He must set to work.

For days Tom scribbled, scratched out, searched for words and hammered them out on the typewriter. When tears dimmed his eyes and sobs nearly choked him, he was reminded of what Barbara must've felt in those last moments, and it drove him forward to grind out yet another stanza. If it could bring Barbara back, he had to try.

He wrote in a tunnel-vision trance, cutting at phrases like a miner at rocks. When words failed him he sketched the images he wanted to summon. In them Barbara rose from the lake, swept in gauzes of night mist under a majestic moon.

There was only one hoop to jump through; the legends said to obtain what you wanted, you must give something in return. Balance bliss with misery, exchange woe for well. But what? He could sacrifice anything for Barbara, but he had nothing of enduring value – the Lake had taken what he cherished most.

Time. He'd wait as many agonizing months or years as it took to see Barbara return. The longing and anxiety must more than balance his wish.

When the third day neared its end the final word was on paper. Under different circumstances he'd put it aside for two weeks, let the soup simmer so to speak. But this was a matter of Barbara's life.

Tom put the last sheet in the heap. It could be imagination let loose in his exhausted brain, but he thought he felt a sort of shift in the air as his words took effect.

He had not expected it to happen so soon, if ever. Perhaps he should have seen it coming, when night frost covered the ground in August.

The moon was not the usual jovial lantern that hung under the verandah-roof this time of the year. No, it hovered over the surface of the deep, an abnormal marble giant seeming ready to collide with the Earth. Tom could almost count its craters.

"Just like in the picture," he mumbled. He pulled on his coat and went out to take up watch on the dock.

Tom stared out over the waves until they became mere undulating lines of grey and black. In every crest he spotted a pale arm, in every crash dark curls sweeping over curved shoulders.

She climbed onto the dock.

For a moment he thought the waves clung to her and threatened to pull her back into the depths. Then he saw the billow of a dark gown round her thighs.

"Tom." She smiled, but her eyes remained shadowed. Water dripped from the hem of the skirt. He scrambled to his feet, pulled off his coat. Goosebumps prickled his bare forearms – she must be freezing. He wrapped his coat around her with near-reverent movements, and led her back to the cabin with its sole light in the window.

He couldn't say exactly when he realized this was not his Barbara anymore.

His grandfather once remarked that loving is easy when life is easy. Tom had thought his love would be stronger than that. He never reflected over what to do if Barbara turned into his own Bertha Mason.

And now it had happened. A supernatural entity, a single-minded, malicious force had twisted her to its own liking.

"Tom, how sweet of you!" Her smile must be wide enough to hurt, but her eyes ere lifeless like a doll's. Her embrace froze him to the spot. "You've never treated me to afternoon coffee before."

I brought Barbara breakfast in bed every Sunday, you…

He braced himself. "I thought it was time for a change."

She released him, and he pulled out a chair. She sat down tentatively, eyeing the layer cake.

"I'll just get a knife for that."

Reaching behind him, Tom pulled out the rope hidden under the kitchen sink and threw it over her arms.

She shrieked and thrashed, tried to bite him, kicked wildly at the table legs. Cups rattled and turned over, coffee splashed onto the floor. He yanked her body flush against the chair back, livid flesh to wood, tendons like steel cables. Finally, right when he thought she'd break free, he managed to slip one rope end over the other and pull tight. Two more knots followed, before he sagged against the wall, gasping.

"…I found you out."

"Found out what?" She spat, tugging at her bonds.

"You're not my Barbara anymore."

"Tom, you jealous fool. There's nothing between me and Pat Maine."

"Don't act like you don't know what I mean!" He tried to sound brave, but his voice slipped up. "Who are you?"

"Don't be silly now." Her voice turned light and coaxing like with a hesitant pet. "Untie me, you naughty boy. I promise to be good." A smile toyed on her lips as they kept uttering sweet nonsense. "I will help you write your masterpiece. I will love you. Forever."

His response was to put the knife edge to her chest, right at the curving neckline of her dress.

"Give her back to me."

He winced when she psshed, sharp like oil in a frying pan.

"Why should I? You left nothing worthwhile in the balance. Time! I have that beyond your measure. At least now I have a vessel to move in."

He pulled the knife back and drove it in hilt-deep, wrenched it round. She screamed, a scream void of humanity, pain or fear, enraged at his defiance. He carved blindly until the blade met the back of the chair, and he threw the knife aside and vomited on the kitchen rug.

It lived without a heart.

After the first shocked seconds it shook the narrow shoulders and cackled at him.

He must send it back into the depths again – an enormous undertaking that would need the power of the very thing that fought to break free through his creations. This time he must seal the plan with something of weight.

His own life.

In that moment he could almost understand the reluctance of this creature, the struggle it would put up against his plans. For who wanted to work against their own existence? It was perverse. But he'd done enough damage with his life as it was.

Tom had built a career on describing emotion and ambience, but he'd never experienced a state of mind like the one when he pulled out the typewriter from behind the couch. Empty, dejected. No panic. Maybe he was in shock. Better strike while the iron was hot.

It was hard to write himself out of history, leave his friends now when he would have welcomed them the most. His poems that would've been included in school books as an example of contemporary poems, though his pride had always been tinged by awkwardness. That worry seemed so trifle and self-absorbed now.

And the heaviest thought of all - that no one here would remember Barbara's goodness and graces, her kindness and beauty.

The Presence stirred just faintly against its bonds. He'd expected to be wrestling with all limbs against a slithering, straggling storyline full of plot-holes. But it trotted doggedly on, like a prisoner to his cell.

Because it knows it will return. The gallows were for Tom.

He needed a saving clause.

He stood at the edge of the dock clad in the diving suit that was almost a submarine in itself, the creature tied to its arms. He took one step forward, and they plunged headlong into the depths.

The surface rose farther away for every second, and the fresh panic that could still make him struggle upwards stilled into leaden certainty in his chest as he lost track of the time and the feeling of falling. All he could hear was his breaths in the helmet. The cold of the depth seeped through the suit. Darkness stood like a wall outside the tiny window of his helmet.

Soon what little air there was in the suit would be used up. Tom only hoped the light he'd flung into the future would be bright enough. He thought of the shoebox left on the shore, how fragile and exposed to the elements it was. But he hadn't been able to slip anything greater through the loophole.

The pressure cracked the helmet glass, and cold water struck him out.