" I have no idea why vampires have been so incredibly popular for the last decade," says the author. "Perhaps it's our fascination with perpetual adolescence. As the poster line for the 1987 Warner Bros, movie The Lost Boys says, 'Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire .'
"Perhaps in those cultures that have removed themselves from any connection with a natural cycle of life it's another way to deny the inevitable. An easy immortality as it were. Perhaps it's because there's something innately tragic about a vampire, hero or villain the fragility underlying the strength. Or perhaps there's just a lot of good people writing vampire fiction these days and readers are going where the quality is."
Huff reveals that she got the idea for "The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea" while visiting a time-share resort down in Florida: "In this time of political correctness, it gets harder and harder to find a satisfactory villain, but after spending two hours with a high-pressure, smarmy time-share salesman, I realized I'd found a villain that pretty much everyone would be quite happy to see get what was coming to them.
" The tale grew in telling as I began to research the weird and wonderful possibilities in deep-water lakes. If any of you want to know what's really going on here, pick up a copy of Michael Bradley's fascinating book , More than a Myth: The Search for the Monster of Muskrat Lake. It's certainly changed my mind about swimming after dark "
"Camping?"
"Why sound so amazed?" Dragging the old turquoise cooler behind her, Vicki Nelson, once one of Toronto's finest and currently the city's most successful paranormal investigator, backed out of Mike Celluci's crawl space.
"Why? Maybe because you've never been camping in your life. Maybe because your idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service. Maybe" — he moved just far enough for Vicki to get by then followed her out into the rec room — "because you're a"
"A?" Setting the cooler down beside two sleeping bags and a pair of ancient swim fins, she turned to face him. "A what , Mike?" Grey eyes silvered.
"Stop it."
Grinning, she turned her attention back to the cooler. "Besides, I won't be on vacation, I'll be working. You'll be the one enjoying the great outdoors."
"Vicki, my idea of the great outdoors is going to the Sky dome for a Jay's game."
"No one's forcing you to come." Setting the lid to one side, she curled her nose at the smell coming out of the cooler's depths. "When was the last time you used this thing?"
"Police picnic, 1992. Why?"
She turned it up on its end. The desiccated body of a mouse rolled out, bounced twice and came to rest with its sightless little eyes staring up at Celluci. "I think you need to buy a new cooler."
"I think I need a better explanation than ' I've got a great way for you to use up your long weekend ,'" he sighed, kicking the tiny corpse under the rec room couch.
"So this developer from Toronto, Stuart Gordon, bought an old lodge on the shores of Lake Nepeakea and he wants to build a rustic, time-share resort so junior executives can relax in the woods. Unfortunately, one of the surveyors disappeared and local opinion seems to be that he's pissed off the lake's protective spirit"
"The what?"
Vicki pulled out to pass a transport and deftly reinserted the van back into her own lane before replying. "The protective spirit. You know, the sort of thing that rises out of the lake to vanquish evil." A quick glance towards the passenger seat brought her brows in. "Mike, are you all right? You're going to leave permanent finger marks in the dashboard."
He shook his head. The truck-load of logs coming down from Northern Ontario had missed them by inches. Feet at the very most. All right, maybe yards but not very many of them . When they'd left the city, just after sunset, it had seemed logical that Vicki, with her better night sight, should drive. He was regretting that logic now but, realizing he didn't have a hope in hell of gaining control of the vehicle, he tried to force himself to relax. "The speed limit isn't just a good idea," he growled through clenched teeth, "it's the law."
She grinned, her teeth very white in the darkness. "You didn't used to be this nervous."
"I didn't used to have cause." His fingers wouldn't release their grip so he left them where they were. "So this missing surveyor, what did he"
"She."
"She do to piss off the protective spirit?"
"Nothing much. She was just working for Stuart Gordon."
"The same Stuart Gordon you're working for."
"The very one."
Right . Celluci stared out at the trees and tried not to think about how fast they were passing. Vicki Nelson against the protective spirit of Lake Nepeakea. That's one for pay for view
"This is the place."
"No. In order for this to be 'the place' there'd have to be something here. It has to be ' a place' before it can be ' the place' ."
"I hate to admit it," Vicki muttered, leaning forward and peering over the arc of the steering wheel, "but you've got a point." They'd gone through the village of Dulvie, turned right at the ruined barn and followed the faded signs to the Lodge. The road, if the rutted lanes of the last few miles could be called a road, had ended, as per the directions she'd received, in a small gravel parking lot — or more specifically in a hard-packed rectangular area that could now be called a parking lot because she'd stopped her van on it. "He said you could see the lodge from here."
Celluci snorted. "Maybe you can."
"No. I can't. All I can see are trees." At least she assumed they were trees; the high contrast between the area her headlights covered and the total darkness beyond made it difficult to tell for sure. Silently calling herself several kinds of fool, she switched off the lights. The shadows separated into half a dozen large evergreens and the silhouette of a roof steeply angled to shed snow.
Since it seemed they'd arrived, Vicki shut off the engine. After a heartbeat's silence, the night exploded into a cacophony of discordant noise. Hands over sensitive ears, she sank back into the seat. "What the hell is that?"
"Horny frogs."
"How do you know?" she demanded.
He gave her a superior smile. "PBS."
"Oh." They sat there for a moment, listening to the frogs. "The creatures of the night," Vicki sighed, "what music they make." Snorting derisively, she got out of the van. "Somehow, I expected the middle of nowhere to be a lot quieter."
Stuart Gordon had sent Vicki the key to the lodge's back door and once she switched on the main breaker, they found themselves in a modern, stainless-steel kitchen that wouldn't have looked out of place in any small, trendy restaurant back in Toronto. The sudden hum of the refrigerator turning on momentarily drowned out the frogs and both Vicki and Celluci relaxed.
"So now what?" he asked.
"Now we unpack your food from the cooler, we find you a room, and we make the most of the short time we have until dawn."
"And when does Mr Gordon arrive?"
"Tomorrow evening. Don't worry, I'll be up."
"And I'm supposed to do what, tomorrow in the daytime?"
"I'll leave my notes out. I'm sure something'll occur to you."
"I thought I was on vacation?"
"Then do what you usually do on vacation."
"Your footwork." He folded his arms. "And on my last vacation — which was also your idea — I almost lost a kidney." Closing the refrigerator door, Vicki crossed the room between one heartbeat and the next. Leaning into him, their bodies touching between ankle and chest, she smiled into his eyes and pushed the long curl of hair back off his forehead. "Don't worry, I'll protect you from the spirit of the lake. I have no intention of sharing you with another legendary being."