The Angel of Indian Lake

The third and final installment of the Indian Lake Trilogy follows Jade Daniels, now 24, as she attempts to build a quiet life as a history teacher in Proofrock, Idaho, the small mountain town she has survived two previous massacre cycles in. Provisionally hired through the influence of her best friend Letha Mondragon-Tompkins, Jade manages severe PTSD and panic attacks with medications, court-mandated therapy, and compulsive cigarette smoking. She bears the physical scars of her past: missing toes, bitten-through fingers, and facial damage, along with seven years in prison for destruction of state property. Throughout the narrative, Jade addresses her dead former teacher Mr. Holmes in an ongoing internal monologue, framing her thoughts as letters to him.

The novel opens on a Friday the 13th in October, two weeks before the main action. Hettie Jansson, one of Jade's students, films a VHS documentary about Proofrock's violent history with her boyfriend Paul Demming. They discover the grave of Greyson Brust dug open in the cemetery, with tracks suggesting someone crawled away on all fours. When Paul's friend Wayne Sellars texts that he has found the wreckage of former Sheriff Rex Allen's white Bronco, the group rides out to investigate with Hettie's young brother Jan. They find Sellars dead and the decomposed remains of Rex Allen and his deputy Francie in the Bronco. Paul vanishes. Hettie's camera captures a figure called the Angel of Indian Lake, a woman in a dirty white nightgown with long black hair, alongside a reanimated corpse. The Angel tears the corpse's head off, and Jan disappears.

Two weeks later, the day before Halloween, Jade's seventh-period class delivers presentations. Lemmy Singleton, the towering son of Lana Singleton, presents drone footage that reveals not only the Bronco but the dead bodies of Hettie, Paul, and Sellars. Sheriff Banner Tompkins, Letha's husband, arrives to pull Jade from class. He tells her Rex Allen and Francie's remains have been found but knows nothing about the students' bodies until Jade informs him. Banner also reveals that Sally Chalumbert, the Shoshone woman who first incapacitated the serial killer Dark Mill South years earlier, has escaped from a psychiatric facility. He asks Jade to babysit his daughter Adie while Letha recovers from jaw surgery and his deputies handle a forest fire started by game warden Seth Mullins. Before Jade can refuse, a small, child-sized figure climbs into a car in the school pickup lane and tears off a waiting father's head.

Interspersed throughout the narrative are surveillance reports from Baker Solutions, a private investigation firm documenting Jade's vandalism of local landmarks. These reports catalog her nocturnal activities: destroying signs, dropping equipment into the lake above the submerged old town of Drown Town, and walking Proofrock at night in a white nightgown, possibly accounting for some Angel sightings. A late report reveals that Cinnamon Baker, a research associate for the firm, has been secretly staying on Lana Singleton's yacht, the English Rose.

On Halloween morning, Jade discovers Phil Lambert, her dead mother's former partner, murdered in his trailer. Unable to reach Banner, she crosses the lake on the English Rose. At Terra Nova, the luxury development on the far shore, Jade finds Deputy Bub dead with a square hole punched through his skull and fire chief Walter Mason impaled by the same wound. Jocelyn Cates, whose husband and son both died in previous massacres, nearly kills Jade with an axe before recognizing her. The Angel appears briefly before a stampede of fire-fleeing elk thunders through. A figure in a gas mask, later identified as Seth Mullins, appears carrying a Halligan, a heavy firefighting tool.

Among the surviving chainsaw workers in the woods, a figure steps forward holding a golden pickaxe fitted to a new handle. It is Jade's father, Tab Daniels, reanimated from the lake where Jade killed him eight years earlier, his throat still mostly severed. Tab massacres the workers. Banner empties his pistol into Tab without effect, and Tab drives the golden pickaxe through Banner's skull, killing him. When Tab swings at Jade, she jerks aside, losing most of her right ear, but the pickaxe embeds in the ground and a falling tree pins Tab. Fire retardant planes dump loads of red powder, temporarily burying everything.

Tab frees himself and pursues Jade through Terra Nova. She gets caught in a bear trap; Jocelyn frees her and they set the trap as a snare. The trap catches Tab's cane instead of his foot. When Jocelyn attacks, Tab kills her and wraps the trap's chain around Jade's legs. Before he can strike, Letha arrives in a helicopter that crash-lands directly onto Tab, the rotors shredding him. When Jade tells Letha that Banner is dead, Letha collapses. In a raw outburst of grief, Letha beats Jade, who takes the blows willingly. They reconcile, and Jade confides her sexuality to Letha for the first time.

Lemmy's drones draw dozens of Proofrockers to a screening below the dam, where Hettie's recovered documentary plays on the concrete face. Seth Mullins has coated the area with bear bait, and multiple bears driven from the forest attack the crowd. Deputy Jo Ellen shoots the reanimated Jan Jansson after the child kills his own mother. Seth, realizing the horror he has caused, covers himself in bait and leads the bears away in a suicidal act of atonement.

A figure in a Ghostface robe approaches Jade and removes her mask: Cinnamon Baker, who has been posing as Jade's therapist for months, using throat damage to disguise her voice. She orchestrated the screening as revenge on Proofrock, blaming Jade for the deaths of Cinnamon's parents. She taunts Letha with claims that Letha's father, Theo Mondragon, was responsible for past crimes including the death of Mr. Holmes. When Jade charges her, Cinnamon draws a blade concealed in her cane. Tiff, Banner's office assistant, grabs Cinnamon from behind but cannot disarm her. Cinnamon throws Tiff off and falls backward onto her own blade, killing herself.

Using a phone-tracking app, Jade, Letha, and the injured Jo Ellen follow Rexall, the school custodian Jade has long suspected of installing voyeuristic cameras throughout Henderson High, who grabbed Adie during the chaos, into the forest to Remar Lundy's remote cabin. The cabin conceals an underground shrine with voyeuristic videotapes from cameras Rexall installed in the school. Outside, a row of small graves contains decades-old skeletons of children Lundy killed. One skeleton still moves: Amy Brockmeir, a girl falsely institutionalized for crimes committed by Stacey Graves, a supernatural child known as the Lake Witch of local legend, in the 1960s. Jade separates Amy's head to put her to rest. Rexall emerges with a crossbow and pins Jo Ellen to a tree. Letha kills him with the Halligan. Jo Ellen records everything, and Letha insists the footage be preserved as evidence, choosing accountability over concealment.

Jade returns to the yacht and convinces Lana to ram Treasure Island, the research platform floating above Drown Town's submerged church, whose corrupting influence has been reanimating the dead. Three runs collapse the island through the church roof. Ezekiel, a towering undead preacher, emerges onto shore with his choir. Jade drives the remnant of the golden pickaxe through his chest, and the lake pulls him under. Stacey Graves surfaces and runs across the water to embrace the Angel of Indian Lake, revealed to be not Sally Chalumbert, who was apprehended far to the north, but Josie Seck, Stacey's murdered mother. Josie carries Stacey into the trees as the first Halloween snow falls.

Two days later, the epilogue shifts to third person. Jade visits Letha in jail; Letha posted Jo Ellen's recording to social media herself, insisting on accountability for killing Rexall. Jade promises to care for Adie and retrieves the girl's drawing from the sheriff's office ceiling. The drawing depicts a cove with a distinctive bent tree, a Native American marker tree that former Sheriff Hardy once showed Jade's class. Jade walks across the surface of the lake, an ability she possesses from her bitten fingers' infection with lake water, and finds Adie alive, playing with paper boats. She takes the girl's hand, lifts her onto her hip, and walks back across the water. The novel closes with a previously misfiled letter from Mr. Holmes to Jade's mother, dated 2013, praising Jade as the most promising student he has ever taught.