After twenty years, Kate Barlow returned to Green Lake. It was a place where nobody would ever find her—a ghost town on a ghost lake.
The peach trees had all died, but there were a couple of small oak trees still growing by an old abandoned cabin. The cabin used to be on the eastern shore of the lake. Now the edge of the lake was over five miles away, and it was little more than a small pond full of dirty water.
She lived in the cabin. Sometimes she could hear Sam’s voice echoing across the emptiness. “Onions! Sweet fresh onions.”
She knew she was crazy. She knew she’d been crazy for the last twenty years.
“Oh, Sam,” she would say, speaking into the vast emptiness. “I know it is hot, but I feel so very cold. My hands are cold. My feet are cold. My face is cold. My heart is cold.”
And sometimes she would hear him say, “I can fix that,” and she’d feel his warm arm across her shoulders.
She’d been living in the cabin about three months when she was awakened one morning by someone kicking open the cabin door. She opened her eyes to see the blurry end of a rifle, two inches from her nose.
She could smell Trout Walker’s dirty feet.
“You’ve got exactly ten seconds to tell me where you’ve hidden your loot,” said Trout. “Or else I’ll blow your head off.”
She yawned.
A redheaded woman was there with Trout. Kate could see her rummaging through the cabin, dumping drawers and knocking things from the shelves of cabinets.
The woman came to her. “Where is it?” she demanded. “Linda Miller?” asked Kate. “Is that you?”
Linda Miller had been in the fourth grade when Kate Barlow was still a teacher. She had been a cute freckle-faced girl with beautiful red hair. Now her face was blotchy, and her hair was dirty and scraggly.
“It’s Linda Walker now,” said Trout. “Oh, Linda, I’m so sorry,” said Kate.
Trout jabbed her throat with the rifle. “Where’s the loot?” “There is no loot,” said Kate.
“Don’t give me that!” shouted Trout. “You’ve robbed every bank from here to Houston.”
“You better tell him,” said Linda. “We’re desperate.”
“You married him for his money, didn’t you?” asked Kate.
Linda nodded. “But it’s all gone. It dried up with the lake. The peach trees. The livestock. I kept thinking: It has to rain soon. The drought can’t last forever. But it just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter…” Her eyes fixed on the shovel, which was leaning up against the fireplace. “She’s buried it!” she declared.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Kate.
There was a loud blast as Trout fired his rifle just above her head. The window behind her shattered. “Where’s it buried?” he demanded.
“Go ahead and kill me, Trout,” said Kate. “But I sure hope you like to dig. ’Cause you’re going to be digging for a long time. It’s a big vast wasteland out there. You, and your children, and their children, can dig for the next hundred years and you’ll never find it.”
Linda grabbed Kate’s hair and jerked her head back. “Oh, we’re not going to kill you,” she said. “But by the time we’re finished with you, you’re going to wish you were dead.”
“I’ve been wishing I was dead for the last twenty years,” said Kate.
They dragged her out of bed and pushed her outside. She wore blue silk pajamas. Her turquoise-studded black boots remained beside her bed.
They loosely tied her legs together so she could walk, but she couldn’t run. They made her walk barefoot on the hot ground.
They wouldn’t let her stop walking.
“Not until you take us to the loot,” said Trout.
Linda hit Kate on the back of her legs with the shovel. “You’re going to take us to it sooner or later. So you might as well make it sooner.”
She walked one way, then the other, until her feet were black and blistered. Whenever she stopped, Linda whacked her with the shovel.
“I’m losing my patience,” warned Trout.
She felt the shovel jab into her back, and she fell onto hard dirt. “Get up!” ordered Linda.
Kate struggled to her feet.
“We’re being easy on you today,” said Trout. “It’s just going to keep getting worse and worse for you until you take us to it.”
“Look out!” shouted Linda.
A lizard leaped toward them. Kate could see its big red eyes.
Linda tried to hit it with the shovel, and Trout shot at it, but they both missed.
The lizard landed on Kate’s bare ankle. Its sharp black teeth bit into her leg. Its white tongue lapped up the droplets of blood that leaked out of the wound.
Kate smiled. There was nothing they could do to her anymore. “Start digging,” she said.
“Where is it?” Linda screeched. “Where’d you bury it?” Trout demanded. Kate Barlow died laughing.
