The Reservoir by Rosemarie Naramore Page A

this girl.”
    “Yeah, I get that.  I’m with you on the last part, for sure.  I’ll forgo a face-to-face too.  But, uh, Holly, come here…”
    He still had her hand as he lead her over to the recliner, where Daniel was once again sitting.  He was no longer wild-eyed, but instead, calm and apparently about to drift off to sleep.  In contrast, Niqui and Kendall looked wide-awake and horribly frightened.  They huddled together in a blue plaid chair that had also seen better days.
    “What is it?” Holly asked, meeting Zack’s eyes.
    “We need you to see something.”
    “What?” she asked, puzzled.
    “Danny Boy, show Holly your leg.”
    Daniel roused himself and stuck his leg out from beneath the blanket.  Holly gasped.  There was a perfect imprint of a hand on his ankle.
    “Oh, my goodness,” Holly said, glancing heavenward for support.  She felt her knees go weak.  “What could have caused that?  Besides a hand, I mean?”  Her voice rose with each syllable, until Zack pulled her onto the couch beside him.  He draped an arm over her shoulders.  She leaned into him for support, without realizing she was doing so.
    She felt her whole body trembling with fear.  There had to be a logical explanation for that imprint.  Surely there was a logical explanation.
    “Holly, we need to talk,” Zack said.      He urged her up and through the door to the bedrooms.  He sat her down on one of the twin beds in the smaller of the two rooms.  Shaking with fear, Holly drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them—as if she expected something to reach out from under the bed and grab her legs. 
    Zack sat down beside her.  The bed springs groaned under their combined weights.  Zack ignored the sound, but instead, pulled Holly close and offered soothing words.  She let him comfort her for a moment, but then she rallied, pulling away from him.  There simply had to be a logical explanation for everything that had happened out on the water.  There had to be.
    “Okay, Zack,” she said, rising to her feet.  She felt unsteady for a few seconds, but still felt the need to pace.  If she engaged in some activity, her mind might possibly clear enough for her to make sense of that hand imprint on Daniel’s leg.  Suddenly, an idea came to mind.  “Zack, could he have done it to himself?  In the shower!  That has to be it.”
    Of course, that theory didn’t portend well for Daniel’s sanity, but it nullified grabby, ghostly apparitions.
    Zack emitted a long, weary sigh.  “We considered that, of course.  We had him put his own hand against the imprint.”
    “And…?”
    “He was angry we doubted him.”
    “Yeah, okay, but did his own hand match?”
    “Not even close.  The imprint was too small.”
    “Wait.  Could one of the girls have left it on him when they were pulling him into the boat?”
    Zack had already considered this possibility and tested the theory.  He shook his head.  “The imprint didn’t match either one of the girls.  We compared them.  Niqui’s hand was a little too big, and Kendall’s a little too small.  Besides, they had a hold of him by his vest.  Neither one remembers grabbing his ankle.”
    Holly sighed loudly.
    Zack raised his own hand, which was much too large to be a contender.
    “I don’t know,” Holly mused aloud.  “People bruise differently.  Maybe Kendall grabbed a hold of his ankle but doesn’t remember in all the excitement.  Maybe bruising expands.”  She ran a hand through her silky blond hair.  “Oh, I don’t know.”
    “It’s all good thinking on your part,” Zack said with admiration.  “But none of it explains this…”
    He held out his arm for Holly to see.  Her eye’s widened.  There was a perfect imprint of a hand on his wrist.  The bruising was deep and already turning black and blue.  Holly reached a tentative hand toward the imprint.  Was it her hand?  She had made a grab for Zack in order to try to