Beneath the Lake Read online

  Went after them? After her family?

  It might have gotten Rusty too.

  No. Please, no. They will be in the tent! They have to be. She prays they saw it in time and ran away. It’s not safe here, and her daddy is smart. Big and strong. He would have escaped, they all would have.

  Megan turns and runs back toward the point. She trips, slamming into the sand, but gets back up and keeps going. The second time she falls, her right hand lands in wet sand and a wave breaks over her, drenching her entire right side. She screams and crawls away as fast as she can. She looks into the water and it’s there again, the black ribbon, wide and smooth and squirming alongside her as smaller waves pass over it.

  Megan runs to the end, around the point, and doesn’t look back again until she reaches the path beside the boat ramp. The two teenagers from the other family running after her, a long ways off, and this scares her almost as much as the thing in the water. Because if they are scared, they saw it too, and it’s real. Something terrible is happening.

  She runs, everything warping into a blur of panic. The whole world dims, stuck between gray storm sky and premature nightfall.

  Up on the point, a sand burr catches in one of her clogs. She stops to shake it out, panting so hard her tummy tightens up and she has to force herself not to upchuck. The wind howls again. Her feet are wet, and not just from the lake. She didn’t notice until now, but the rain started up again, the wind too. The storm is back in full force.

  Megan looks back toward the ramp, expecting the teenagers to be chasing her, but they aren’t there now. Maybe the monster got them.

  She decides to make one last sprint for the tent, but as soon as she turns and takes her first big step, she collides with a pair of wet sandy legs, her face pressing into a swimsuit as strong arms seize her own and shake her by the shoulders.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ a woman shrieks in her face, so close and loud that Megan can barely see her at all. There is only a mouth, a face smeared with sand, wet black hair, the smell of coconut lotion mingling with sour breath, a combination Megan will forever associate with raw fear. ‘Where are your parents? Dear God, what’s happening?’

  Megan starts to cry. ‘I want my Mommy. I lost my dog. Daddy went swimming and I can’t find any…’

  The woman rises to have a quick look around, then crouches again, still holding her shoulders but more gently now. She looks sad, her eyes are red and her nose is dripping. She’s out of breath as if she’s been running too. She rubs Megan’s back and gives her a strong hug.

  ‘Okay, it’s okay. You poor thing. Where’s your camper? Where is your family? Are they staying here? Do you know where your camper is?’

  Megan knows the woman is trying to help, but she can’t talk. Relief and fear and the lost feeling of being grabbed by a stranger, it’s overwhelming. She can only point toward the tent as the sobs pour out.

  ‘In that thing? That’s all you have?’

  The tent looks smaller now, another wall having collapsed. Two of the ropes used for the stakes are waving free and there’s still a mess of gear around it.

  ‘That’s not – nothing is safe out here,’ the woman says. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  Megan resists, but the woman is stronger, dragging her back toward the boat ramp, asking more questions.

  ‘Do you have a brother? An older brother about fourteen?’

  Megan nods.

  ‘Your parents… your daddy is big? A big guy?’

  ‘Uh-huh!’

  ‘Oh my God.’ The woman releases Megan and takes two steps back, staring at her oddly, her mouth open. Megan doesn’t understand why, but for a moment she is certain the woman is afraid of her. ‘Are you… do you feel different? Are you hurt?’

  Megan doesn’t know the correct answer.

  ‘Did you go in the water?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I want my mommy!’

  The woman softens, taking her hand once more. ‘I know. Come with me. I have to help my family. Something horrible is…’ But she doesn’t finish.

  When they reach the top of the boat ramp, the woman comes to a halt, screams, and turns Megan away. She looks back, down toward the beach, and screams again. Megan tries to pull away, but the woman won’t let go. For the first time, Megan notices the scratches, thin slashes of red like cat’s claws make, running from the cuffs of the white shirt down to her hands. One of her cheeks is scratched too.

  ‘Listen to me,’ the woman says, and immediately after a sharp boom rings out, which Megan thinks is more thunder. But there is no flash of lightning. Another boom, followed by three or four more. The woman’s face turns almost as pale as her wet white shirt. She looks down to the beach one last time, and covers her mouth.

  ‘Get in the camper!’ the woman shouts at Megan, louder than ever. All the kindness is gone. She looks enraged. ‘RUN! Don’t come out until I say so!’

  Before Megan can respond, the woman shoves her and runs the other way, heading for the beach. Night is all around, it snuck in with the storm and now it’s really dark out, the sky a deep purple pitted with growing spots of black. More loud bangs go off, and Megan knows whatever is causing them is not lightning.

  She races off for her tent, but it looks like a broken down cardboard box. No longer their shelter, no longer a place to feel the warmth of her family and her dog sleeping beside her feet while the crickets chirp and the stars twinkle down through the screens. Just a big mess, like wet trash.

  She runs to the camper but stops short, listening for more of the loud bangs. The camper is too strange, and she can’t leave her family outside. The booms do not come back. She turns in confusion and heads back toward the beach. Maybe that woman will help her find her family.

  Someone screams. Different from the woman.

  It sounds almost like Shawn.

  When she reaches the top of the boat ramp, Megan sees the others, down in the sand, beside their sailboat, its yellow pontoons barely visible in the night.

  The family that is not her own are gathered around a big pool of shining blackness on the sand. It looks thick and wet, streaked silver in places, like the black beyond the black between the stars. She moves closer, numbly fascinated by the black spot and the people, the only ones left out here.

  The father holds a gun in one hand. Megan knows that was the sound of thunder. The boy holds some kind of sharp silver blade. The girl hugs the mother who seemed like she was going to help Megan, and their soft cries are intense, a private thing she cannot bring herself to interrupt.

  A minute or two later, the family break apart and move down toward the water, where they take turns carrying something heavy. It reminds Megan of a giant sleeping bag, and it takes all four of them to carry it and swing it onto the sailboat. The mom and the girl climb aboard as the guys push it out. A small motor comes to life, chugging the boat out into the cove.

  The black orb shimmers on the beach, then fades, becoming part of the night.

  Far out in the water, someone begins to scream again. It goes on for a long time, fading across the cove and returning like a siren. It doesn’t sound like any person Megan’s ever heard.

  She turns away and wanders off to look for her family. For something she can understand. She enters the woods, thinking only about her dog. Walking, sometimes crawling under low branches and thick bushes, searching very carefully. Behind every tree, into fields, behind hills made of sand and sharp grass. Sometimes the grass sways and rustles, coming alive with strange things that move but make no sound.

  She is alone in a new dark world, and she doesn’t emerge from it for a very long time.

  Sabotage

  ‘Six days. They assumed I was wandering around the lake and the woods the whole time, and that’s probably true. I have no memory of it. Eating, sleeping, whatever I did, it’s just blank space in the rest of my life. I don’t even know if I existed during those long nights. How could I? I was here be
fore, in my life with my family, and then I was somewhere else after, without my family. In between, the nights were endless. I lost my entire sense of time, the world, who I was, where I was, why there were even such things as day and night. Some part of me is still there, walking in the woods, alone. That little girl. She’s out here, still. I think she always will be.’

  The heat of the afternoon lingers around them in silence. He knows she is finished, there is nothing more for her to tell.

  Ray watches her for a while. He feels sad for her, and stuck in something he thought he was prepared for but is not. Something inside him has changed, not only in mind but body too. His bones feel rearranged.

  Megan pushes herself to her feet and walks away. He knows she is headed back to camp, to confront his family. She will never leave the woods. Not until she has found the reason so much was taken away.

  Ray stands, following her tracks in the ashen sand.

  By the time Ray is within sight of Leonard’s stolen tent, almost four hours have passed since their original foursome set out to find the anchor. The tent is no longer just a tent, or even the tent that belonged to ‘that other family’. The Overtons.

  Megan Overton? Had he really never asked for her last name, not in all of the past fifteen months? Obviously not, and there must be a reason for that too.

  Her father’s name was Gene, short for Eugene, but in one of those odd but affectionate twists of rhyme and tongue that occur between spouses his wife called him Hugh. He was a salesman for an industrial plumbing outfit in Cheyenne but worked out of Denver. His wife’s name was Mary. She was the front-line receptionist at an elementary school, the kind who had been there for fifteen years and hoped to be there for thirty more. Loved the students, by Christmas each year knew all two hundred and eighty-six of them by name. Shawn was a math and science ace as well as an aspiring motocross racer, and the highlight of his short life was attending the Van Halen concert in Denver on his fifteenth birthday, a month before he was swallowed by the lake.

  Now Hugh and Mary and Shawn are dead and gone forever and Ray still doesn’t understand why, but he is staring at the coolers that once held their dinner and sodas, and there is Hugh’s white Chevy truck, and the tent is still here —

  ‘Have you seen Leonard?’ Colt’s voice comes from behind him, and Ray jumps. Didn’t even hear her approaching. ‘He wasn’t at camp when Dad and I got back. He left Mom and Sierra alone.’

  Ray turns, skin crawling. Colt is standing there in her same sweaty T-shirt, the dirty climbing shorts. She looks pale, thinner than this morning, and Ray has another premonition: his sister should not be here, and she definitely should not have brought her daughter along. This trip was a bad idea for adults. To bring a child into this mess exhibits a glaring lack of judgement. Fragile Colt and innocent Sierra – the two of them are not equipped to handle what’s to come.

  ‘What happened?’ Ray says. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘In the camper with Mom and Sierra. They’re fine. Everyone’s fine. But no one knows where Leonard went.’

  Ray’s mind skips back to what transpired as they were leaving camp four hours earlier, as Leonard pulled him aside and warned him to be careful. Dad was crazy, thinks he’s still in ’Nam, blah blah blah. But that isn’t the disturbing part now. It’s Leonard’s sadness. Ray saw it then, didn’t heed the warnings inside his subconscious, and now it seems terribly obvious.

  ‘Little bro, more like my big bro now,’ Leonard said. ‘I love you, kid. You were always the best of us.’

  Still smiling and a little embarrassed, his big slob of a big brother looked so deeply sad and ready to fall to pieces, Ray was moved to take one of his hands, grasping it between both of his own.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Len. Better days to come, huh?’

  Leonard snorted, swallowed. ‘Maybe so.’

  ‘He didn’t believe in better days to come,’ Ray says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was saying goodbye. This morning. How bad off is he, Colt?’

  She resists, then it comes out in a rush of guilt and relief. ‘I told him not to come. I begged him to stay home and get some help. See a doctor. Ask for Dad’s lawyer to step in, put him somewhere he could get treatment. Anything but this. He laughed, talked right past me. Working himself into a lather.’

  ‘I know about the debt stuff. What else? How was he living before this?’

  ‘Living?’

  ‘His life,’ Ray says. ‘What was his life like the past few months?’

  ‘He’s become paranoid. He’s basically homeless. He’s been sleeping in that tent. Here. He’s been at the lake for months, Ray. Hiding out. Waiting. He said he knew we were all coming back, it was just a matter of time. He told me that before Dad sent out the invite.’

  ‘Jesus. What is his malfunction? Why is he like this?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ Colt nearly spits back.

  ‘You know Leonard sent the messages, don’t you? Not Megan. She’s innocent here. Maybe the only one who is. Leonard was the one in debt, and he’s the only one crazy enough to blackmail his own family.’

  He expects an argument, but Colt only nods with the regret of the enabler.

  ‘You knew,’ Ray says. ‘You knew what he was up to and you let Dad think it was Megan? How could you do that?’

  Colt grows antsy, begins to pace. ‘I suspected, but I wasn’t sure. But so what if he did? Who is she, anyway? Dad said you just met her. Some waitress? He’s our brother. And it’s Dad’s fault he turned out this way, why shouldn’t he get some help? Who else is going to save him?’

  ‘Leonard’s forty-six years old,’ Ray says. ‘Dad can’t save him. He can’t fix any of us. Money can’t do it. This trip might make us feel better for a few days, but we still have to go home and deal with real life. Do you get that, Colt?’

  ‘Sorry we let you down, Ray,’ she says with a sneer.

  ‘You let yourself down. You can’t blame the lake for all your problems. The parents. At some point, they’re just your problems.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. You don’t know what we went through.’

  ‘Megan lost her entire family when she was three years older than Sierra is now. Yet she’s not an addict, a corrupt businessman, a thief and a fraud like Leonard, and she’s not starving herself to death the way you appear to be. Why is that, Colette?’

  Colt’s nostrils flare with that angry breathing he recalls from elementary school, when some slight in the hallways after phys-ed class could render her capable of killing someone with a hairbrush.

  ‘I don’t know what Megan saw, and I’m sorry for her losses,’ Colt says. ‘But she wasn’t on the beach during the real storm. She wasn’t out there on the boat with us that night. She doesn’t know what we’ve had to live with. You don’t know how lucky you’ve been, Ray.’

  This is going sideways quickly. ‘Look, we don’t have time to argue. We need to tell Dad the truth. I’m surprised he hasn’t figured this out by now.’

  Colt scoffs. ‘Where is your little friend anyway? Dad wasn’t going to hurt her, you know. He would never do that. He just wanted to find out what she knew and what she was planning to do about it.’

  ‘She’s keeping her distance until I give her a signal, if I decide it’s safe for her to come back. He could have shot her. Shot me.’

  ‘It was a warning. He aimed it at the sky.’ Colt sits down on one of the coolers.

  ‘Is there anything to drink in that?’ Ray asks.