Savage Lake

by Nick Medina

Genres: General Fiction; Native American & Aboriginal; Horror; Thrillers; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

A mother and son travel to a dilapidated cabin in the woods that haunts more than just her memories in this new unnerving horror from the author of The Whistler and Sisters of the Lost Nation.

Nell Marin swore she would never return to the place where part of her died.

The passing of her estranged father, however, leaves her with no choice but to take her teenage son, Oscar, back to the run-down family cabin on Torchlight Lake, where horrific memories linger. The two will fix the place up, sell it, and ensure Nell never has to return to that dreaded lake again.

But when the roads—which pass through Native land—are barricaded by the local Tribe, the quick trip turns into weeks. Oscar, a horror movie buff, knows this is exactly how it starts. As the long summer days drag on, unsettling things begin to occur: screams ring out over the water and a mysterious figure watches the cabin from the trees at night. Most disturbing of all, his mother is becoming less and less herself.

As the strange events lead Oscar to uncover the secrets Nell has shielded him from, he is forced to confront a reality that is far more frightening than movie monsters. He must uncover answers to the questions that stole so much from his mother…before the horror that traumatized Nell drags him under as well.

Release date: October 27, 2026

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 336

Sample

1

The Creepy Gas Station Attendant

Friday

7:36 p.m.

The world through the windshield wasn't as he knew it back home. Trees stood tall and dense, pitching perforated shadows over human-size carcasses cast to the side of the motorway. The rotting remains fouled pockets of the clean air ripping through the lowered passenger window, inviting big breaths that enlivened Oscar's lungs.

His mom steered their Corolla, Barcelona red, into the lot of a two-pump gas station.

"Thought you said we'd make it on a single tank?"

Nell killed the engine and unbuckled her seat belt. "It's farther than I remembered." She plucked her smartphone from its mount, the GPS on its screen. "Just about an hour to go." She swung open her door. Both she and the car sighed. Standing, she stretched until she was up on her toes, then stuck her head back inside. "Get rid of the guts," she said, and slammed the door shut.

"Why do I . . . ?" Oscar muttered to himself. "I didn't hit 'em." Groaning, he got out of the car and found a double-sided squeegee in a bucket of black water beside the pump. "Shouldn't it be blue?" He pressed the spongy side of the squeegee hard against the yellow splotches of splattered guts on the windshield, bits of broken wings and leg segments sticking out of them. At least Nell hadn't hit a deer.

The dirty water didn't cut through the sticky mess. The sponge smeared the splotches, making them worse.

"Looks like the bugs get the last laugh."

Nell shifted her gaze from the numbers spinning on the old pump before her to her son with the squeegee dripping at his side. "You have to put your weight into it. Really scrub."

"The car was shaking. Couldn't you feel it?"

"Keep trying."

He motioned toward the bucket. "It's black water. I have to pee."

She rolled her eyes. "Go. I'll do it myself."

Oscar tossed the squeegee back into the bucket and walked past the pair of pumps to where the station's lot met the trees, no other buildings in sight. Head thrown back, he looked up at the impenetrable canopy of needles and leaves, the trees nearly as tall and compact as the buildings back home.

He jumped at the sound of ( footsteps?) something near him yet hidden within the woods. His skin prickled and chilled, rousing a feeling like sadness and a need to find the restroom fast.

A bell's ding announced that he'd entered the station, then the door rattled shut behind him. A man with a large, fleshy face, pale as milk in the spaces between raisin-shaped liver spots, slowly lowered the can in his hand and peered across the counter. "Bathroom's for paying customers," he said.

Oscar paused, absorbing the situation, the place. Two rows of shelves stood to his left. A cooler. A coffee counter. A mini fridge filled with bait. The attendant, bald but for a greasy brown-and-gray fringe dangling along the sides of his head, leaned against the counter to Oscar's right, his sweaty muscle shirt clinging tightly to his bloated belly. Flabby skin hung where his biceps should have been, and on his left arm was a faded pinup girl tattoo. Wearing a loincloth and beaded moccasins, the topless girl had her hands behind her head, a headdress of feathers upon it.

Oscar motioned toward the grimy window, his mother by the car, then, compelled by need more than nerve, went forth to find the bathroom. Once he spotted the single-seater in the corner, he paused and said, "What made you think I wasn't going to buy something?"

He turned, and his gaze met unblinking bug eyes, hazy, dull, and misaligned. They bore into him nonetheless.

Oscar's skin prickled again. He hurried into the bathroom and locked the door. Suffering the stink, he averted his eyes from the crusty toilet, brimming with more black water.

Nell, her back to him, was paying at the counter when Oscar emerged a minute later.

"If you can hold it-" He came up behind her.

She whirled around. "I'll be right out." She moved around him, leaving Oscar staring into those unblinking eyes again. They were bloodshot. He could see that now.

"Almost there," the attendant said.

Oscar's heart kicked. "Huh?"

"Almost there?" The attendant's lower lip flapped.

Oscar took a breath. Considering where he and his mother were going and why, he'd spent the ride imagining all the ghastly scenarios they might endure once they got there, but only if his favorite films were a reliable reflection of real life. The bug-eyed attendant could have been a character in one of those films.

"We've got about an hour to go," Oscar said, and wished that he hadn't.

The man took a drink from his can, contemplating. "You must be on your way to-"

The bell dinged. The door opened. Excited voices poured in before all the bodies were inside the store. Five of them. Teenagers no older than Oscar. They went quiet as soon as the attendant, distracted from guessing where Oscar and Nell were headed, aimed his bloody eyes at them.

Barely believing, Oscar took in each of the teens. The tall, ripped-as-a-fitness-influencer jock, whose sun-kissed skin was as golden as his hair, and who'd been blessed with a jawline capable of cutting glass. The hot blonde, wearing more makeup than a road trip required, her tantalizing curves protruding from the sides of her tank top and the fringed leg holes of her skimpy denim shorts. The free spirit, his face unshaved, his hair greasy, the smell of weed wafting off him, and his eyes as bloodshot as the attendant's. The girl next door, cute, conservatively dressed, her hair pulled back in a neat braid. And the valedictorian, skinny and smart, his glasses just thick enough to distract from an otherwise handsome face.

While Oscar had been imagining the horror-movie scenarios he and his mother might encounter on their weekend trip to the Northwoods, he'd been reassured by the fact that the two of them together didn't fit the movie-victim mold. This group of five, on the other hand-whether on their way to work as summer camp counselors or searching for an old family homestead-just might have reason to worry. Something, however, did set them apart from most other horror-movie casts. The free spirit was Hispanic. The valedictorian was Asian. And the girl next door was Black. Tropes being what they were, she'd either outlast them all as the victorious final girl, or she'd be the first to meet her fate.

"No, no," the attendant said when the free spirit and the valedictorian-the former a shade darker than Oscar, the latter a shade lighter-moved toward the shelves. "What'd you need?"

"Won't know until we find it," the free spirit said, proceeding between the rows of shelves. "Anyone want some turkey jerky?"

The attendant stood straighter. The can clicked and creaked, the metal crumpling in his tightening hand. "Stay away from the beer cooler. I don't care what your fake IDs say."

The golden-haired jock flashed a killer smile and winked, his hand patting the counter. "Never touch the stuff, big guy."

The hot blonde giggled, laughing at the man in a way that would have wounded Oscar. "We just want some snacks and sodas." Her artificially innocent tone said something her words didn't. Oscar cringed. The attendant's floppy lower lip collided with the one above it, a soggy smack. He stood like a statue, only his eyelids moving, somehow opening wider, showing pink and red, painful in appearance. Oscar cringed again.

The blonde giggled some more, fake, and slipped a hand into the jock's waistband as they turned to see what the station had in stock.

"We're not about to cause any trouble," the girl next door said, holding up her hands, surrendering herself.

"Doesn't mean you won't find it. That's how trouble works. You either cause it or you cry about it." The attendant leaned forward to look through the window at the convertible parked outside. "Your father's?"

"My mom's," the valedictorian said, the key fob dangling from his hand.

The attendant transferred his gaze from the window to the kid's thick eyeglasses. "Almost there."

"What?" The skinny, smart kid stepped backward toward the door. The bell dinged again.

"Almost there?"

The valedictorian struggled to swallow. "Think so."

"Are these made in the area?" The girl next door plucked a bag of kettle-cooked Wisconsin cheddar chips from a rack near the register. The words made with real wisconsin cheese were emblazoned on the bag.

"Where to?" the attendant asked.

"We'll give 'em a try." She set the bag on the counter. "Do you recommend any other regional goods?"

Moving only his free hand, his eyes still aimed at the sweating valedictorian, the attendant slid a little brown brick across the counter, dairyland fudge printed on its label.

"Who doesn't like fudge?" Her giggle was far different from that of the hot blonde. Nervous.

"This oughta get us through the rest of the ride." The jock butted the girl next door out of the way and deposited an armload of snack cakes, candy bars, energy drinks, and Cheetos onto the counter.

"It'll get us through the weekend," the girl next door said, peering over his shoulder.

The free spirit tossed a lighter onto the pile. Oscar glanced toward the bathroom. The door was still shut.

"Where to?" The attendant aimed the question at the valedictorian again.

"Here." The jock tapped a forefinger against a map taped to the counter. "Right?" he asked the hot blonde.

The attendant's big eyes fell to the map of local lakes. His forefinger, twice as thick as the jock's, traced a circle around one of them. "Savage Lake, eh?" he wheezed. "Why in the world would you go there?"

"What'd you call it?" The jock double-checked the map.

"Closure," the girl next door spoke up. Her woeful tone ushered in a hush interrupted only by the mini fridge's hum. The valedictorian wrapped a supportive arm around her. "My little brother . . ." Her eyelids closed, holding back tears. "He drowned up here. Last summer. It'll be a year this week." She opened her eyes. They glistened. "He was staying at the sleepaway camp on Bluster Lake. . . . It was supposed to be a whole month of hiking, kayaking, fishing, and swimming. Things he loved but couldn't really do in the city. Not like here. Maybe you heard about him?"

"Black boy?" the attendant said.

The girl next door bristled. "His kayak took on water and capsized. I thought coming here might make it easier to accept what happened to him. And that I might be able to honor him too." Her lips pressed tight together, forming a somber smile as her gaze passed over her friends. "I couldn't do it without them."

"Ready?"

Oscar gasped in response to the hand that gripped his shoulder. The hot blonde laughed. His cheeks flamed red. "Ready," he whispered. Nell was already heading for the door.

Unmoved by what the girl next door had said, the attendant tapped the total displayed on the register. Nell left. The bell dinged. Lingering, curious, Oscar took small steps toward the door.

"I'll get it." The jock dug his phone from his pocket. "Where do I tap?"

The question earned him a blank stare.

"I've got it. . . ." The girl next door fished her wallet from her bag.

"Hey, look!" The hot blonde bent, reaching for the floor. "Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have-"

"Bad luck," the attendant said, feeding the girl next door's cash into the register.

"Everyone knows that's not how it goes," the free spirit said.

Oscar leaned into the door, moving slower still.

"I left it there for a reason," the attendant said. "Never pick up a penny that's tails side up. You just bought yourself some trouble."

"You think so?" The hot blonde giggled again. "Freakshow," she said beneath her breath.

"We don't need a bag." The jock swept their snacks into his arms, then led his crew out of the store, Oscar holding the door for them. The blonde flicked the penny toward the counter on her way out. It sounded as if it'd struck glass.

"Trouble!" the attendant hollered, stopping the girl next door-the last to leave-as she put a foot out the door.

Both she and Oscar looked back at the man, now pointing at a shelf stocked with pocket packs of facial tissue.

"You either cause trouble or you cry about it," he said. "I'd turn around if I were you. Go back to where you came from."

The words were a gut punch, but while Oscar was winded, the girl next door wasn't.

"What'd you-" she started. "Asshole!" She huffed and stormed out of the store.

Oscar jogged to join Nell in the car. As she turned the key in the ignition, the convertible with two teens up front and three in the back tore out of the lot. Oscar wished them luck wherever they were going, half wondering if what he and the girl next door just heard might have been a misinterpretation of what the attendant said. Guys like him, after all, were often misunderstood in the movies. But not always.

Nell gave the Corolla gas. The station disappeared in the distance. Unsuspecting bugs exploded against the spotless windshield ahead. A severed wing got stuck in the snot-green guts.

2

The Cabin in the Woods

Friday

8:12 p.m.

Oscar turned in his seat and squinted at the big black (monster?) silhouette between the trees as the Corolla sped past. The sun had dipped since Nell put the gas station in the rearview mirror, and the dusky sky-a mix of fiery orange and charcoal blue, studded with more stars than Oscar had ever seen in the city-hampered his ability to tell if he'd seen what he thought he had.

"I think I just saw-"

"Bigfoot," Nell said.

Oscar settled in his seat. "Bigfoot?" He supposed the oversize silhouette could have been that of something mythic, but his mother's reaction, or lack thereof, did little to convince him that they'd just had a close encounter with the creature.

"It was metal. Like a sign," Nell explained. "It's a thing up here. Bigfoot. So is beer. People say they've seen him stalking through the trees as if black bears don't live in these woods . . . as if Spotted Cow doesn't impair the senses. Keep your eyes peeled. You'll see more of those metal silhouettes. They sell them at the Garden Market in town . . . they used to anyway."

Beneath the dimming sky, Oscar spied more of the silhouettes. Some of them moving. Black bears, maybe. He snorted at the sight of a family-Papa, Mama, and Baby Bigfoot-escaping into the trees. They reminded him of the reaper and witch silhouettes he taped to the apartment windows at Halloween, bought by Nell. She wasn't crazy about scary stuff, but she sometimes surprised him with horror-movie T-shirts, action figures, and limited-edition DVDs because she knew how much he liked them.