The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

After completing that night’s cabin check, Emma asks Casey about the legends of Lake Midnight she has heard people talking about. The story goes that there was a village in the valley. Some say it was a colony for people with leprosy or a village of people who were deaf. When Franny’s grandfather decided to make the lake, he tried to buy the land from the villagers, but they refused. Angry, Mr. Harris supposedly decided to dam the river anyway, and on the stroke of midnight, he flooded the valley and washed the village away. Some say that the ghosts of the villagers haunt the woods around the lake, and others say that some villagers survived the flood and now live in the mountains; they come down during the full moon searching for “revenge.”

Casey assures Emma that it is just a story but admits that strange things have happened at Lake Midnight. Franny’s husband, for example, was a champion swimmer who drowned inexplicably in the lake. She also admits that she has “always felt partly responsible for what happened” to the girls (88). She tells Emma she noticed something “off” about