Beneath the Lake Page 24

Ray knows it would better to minimize the chances of another one of them going off the deep end, but he doesn’t want Megan out of his sight for even a little while.

  Warren addresses her directly. ‘Megan, you have a vote here.’

  ‘I think your dad might be onto something,’ she tells Ray. ‘Just – let’s not turn this into an all-night adventure, no offense to anyone.’

  ‘It’s okay, we deserve it,’ Warren says.

  Sierra has begun to cry. Colt looks miserable, torn between their logic and her stronger maternal instincts.

  ‘All right, whoever’s going, we gotta go now,’ Ray says. ‘We’ll give it an hour, two at the most. If we haven’t found Mom in, say, ninety minutes, I’m sorry but… Colt, yes or no? Time to roll.’

  Colt allows a tearful nod.

  ‘Thank you,’ Warren says, then reaches for his granddaughter. ‘Come here, liebchen, you’re staying with Pop-Pop for a little while.’

  Sierra begins to howl, and Ray is sure this is going to turn into yet another scene. But, to her credit, Colt offers Sierra up. Warren hop-steps to retrieve his granddaughter and then nearly buckles from the weight. Megan rushes over to help.

  ‘It’s all right, honey, be strong for Mommy. I’ll be back soon, I promise.’ Colt kisses her daughter on the forehead. ‘Be brave for Fa-Fa. I love you so much.’

  Sierra is still reaching for her when Colt wheels on Megan, eyes ablaze. ‘She’s all I have. Got it?’

  Megan swallows, nodding. ‘I won’t take my eyes off her. You just keep your brother in line, and come back soon.’

  Colt glares at them once more, then walks away, wiping her eyes.

  Ray hugs Megan as Sierra continues to bawl. ‘I owe you one.’

  Megan shoves her flashlight in his pocket. ‘Don’t screw around out there, Ray. She needs her mother, and I need you. Got it?’

  ‘We’re leaving before sunrise,’ he says, giving her a heroic wink that feels stupid and dishonest.

  But Megan is already turning away, dipping under Warren’s arm for support. Sierra thrashes one more time, then falls limp, making them drag her. The threesome hobble off toward the trailer.

  Colt and Ray run for the Bronco.

  Ray doesn’t have the keys to power the rear window down and thus can’t open the tailgate, so he has to climb through the cabin, over the bench seat, to reach their bag of gear. The spotlight is sitting on top of a thick brown bag. He snatches it up and turns to grab some water from the cooler, but something about the bag pulls his gaze back. It’s got lettering on it. Faded logos. This wasn’t the bag Megan brought.

  He triggers the spotlight. It’s a Louis Vuitton. Worn, well-traveled. Familiar, but definitely not Megan’s. Whose, then?

  Mom’s.

  He remembers it now. Warren bought her a whole set years ago, around the time Ray was still in high school and they were planning to travel to Europe. The family businesses were growing exponentially by then. Mom was in her nouveau-riche phase. Upgrading the house, furniture, jewellery collection, and all her brands into the bargain.

  Ray’s back has gone cold. He draws the gold zipper. Shines the light down into the bag. He draws his hands through brittle fibers of human hair –

  No. Ray blinks. Not hair. Wires. Black, blue, and some yellow, a nest of rubber-coated wires and black plastic pieces. He drags a handful up. The distributor cap to one of the trucks comes out in a tangled mess.

  ‘Oh, Mom, no…’

  Was Leonard trying to stop her? Or was it the two of them? Maybe once he had been lured away by the tar people or whatever else got him, Francine seized the opportunity. She knew we wouldn’t be back for a while. Sierra was napping in the trailer. She was alone. How many other chances would present themselves?

  ‘Come on, Ray!’ Colt calls to him. ‘Time’s wasting!’

  Ray drops the tangle, hefts the bag and backtracks out of the Bronco.

  ‘What now?’ she says, seeing his face.

  Ray drops the bag in the sand. ‘Recognize this?’

  ‘Mom’s bag.’

  ‘What’s it doing in my Bronco, filled with car parts?’

  Colt gapes at him.

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter now who did it,’ he says. ‘Maybe they both lost control of themselves.’

  ‘But she obviously wasn’t hiding it. She knew someone would find it.’

  ‘Dementia?’ Ray says. ‘You know how some old people get. Like children again. In her state, she could have thought she was being very clever.’

  ‘But what if wasn’t her or Leonard? What if we find her and something else has control over her? How do we know it’s really Mom? How do we know if it’s safe to bring her back?’

  Ray has no answer. They turn and look up the beach. He triggers the spotlight, cutting great swaths through the darkness. Ahead. Behind them. Toward the water. All along the hills and cliffs. The cold whiteness makes everything inside its cone look barren, alien, dead.

  ‘Which way first?’ he says.

  ‘Toward the entrance. Where the boat ramp is, and the road.’

  ‘You think she’s trying to escape? Hitch a ride back to Miami?’

  ‘I’m sure she’s not. But it might be a good idea to remind ourselves where the exit is, before it’s too late.’

  They head off, jogging at first, then walking as fast as they can without sacrificing any blind spots. They call out for her. Sometimes they yell Mom, sometimes Francine, and sometimes Franny, the way her husband talks to her.

  Other times, especially after the first hour, they don’t call out anything at all, as if the idea of finding her has become more frightening than simply letting go.

  The Cliff

  Ray doesn’t like wearing a watch, hasn’t since high school, but he wishes he had one now. He can almost hear his father admonishing him for the lapse. A prepared soldier never goes out into the bush without a timepiece, a compass and a knife, and dry matches, and and and…

  The M1911. The .45 caliber they do not have because they were in such a hurry to leave and Mom’s bag full of auto parts threw them into another tailspin, they didn’t even bother to look for it. Warren had it last. What did he do with it?

  Ray makes a mental note to get the gun back from his father as soon as they return. Round up all the weapons the way he started to, and… keep them for himself. To be safe. To keep everyone safe.

  ‘Colt?’

  ‘What?’

  She is walking some thirty feet to his right, closer to the cliff, or the hills resulting from cliffs eroding over the years. When they first set out, they kept close, a tight unit, beaming in opposite directions as they marched in near lockstep. But as they have grown tired, they’ve lost some of the urgency, the fear of losing one another. Plus, they need to cover as much ground as possible. As soon as possible. Before they run out of time, and other things.

  Ray can feel the hope evaporating from his sister as clearly as his own sweat. He doesn’t have much confidence they will find their mother tonight, but he can’t bring himself to call it off or turn back. The woman who brought him into the world and fed him from her breast and cleaned blood and broken glass out of his hair after Leonard played ‘airplane’ with his baby brother on the way to bed and wound up crashing Ray’s skull into the bedroom mirror; the woman who argued with Ray’s elementary school teacher and refused to let him be held back to repeat fourth grade because she knew he was smart, if prone to day-dreaming; the woman who never once doubted him, even when he lied to her – that woman is out here all alone, missing, lost, probably terrified out of what is left of her mind. And whatever has come of her, she is his mother and Ray intends to find her.

  ‘Ray?’ Colette calls.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said my name.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Like five minutes ago. And I said what?’

  She did?

  ‘What did I want?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Colette’s flashlight beam sweeps up the cliff face
, over the vertically gouged runnels of dark brown sand, over the occasional yellow flower dangling from a long, fuzzy green stem, and then back, until it hits him the eyes, making him flinch. ‘What time is it, Ray?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. That’s what I meant.’

  They spent some time closer to the lake, worrying she could be in the water; but, without discussing it, they quickly retreated back up the beach. Ray caught a glimpse of his sister’s face when the two of them were down there staring at the blackness, and he knew she was barely maintaining her composure. It wasn’t so much the sight of the black water, what little they could see, that disturbed them. It was the idea of the rest of it, the acres and miles and millions of gallons they could not see. The half-empty lake was still a very large body of water, vast and deep and deceptively dormant, hiding its secrets from them, especially at night. Standing before it half an hour earlier, Ray was reduced to a child standing atop the high-dive, the one they never had at the local YMCA pool, because this one was filled with black water and there were no children below, laughing and telling him jump, you can do it!

  ‘I left my phone back in the trailer,’ Colt says.

  ‘Phones don’t work out here.’

  ‘But the clock on it.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Ray tries to picture his cell phone now, and can’t. But he does remember his father reminding him not to bother asking what time it was, not on vacation, trying to teach Ray that the whole point of vacation is to stop watching the clock. Did he understand that then? When he was six or seven or –

  ‘So, how long, do you think?’ Colt says.

  ‘What?’

  But she doesn’t answer for a while, and so he must ask her.

  ‘Have we been out here?’

  The growing delays between their replies to one another confirm what he suspected. If she has to think about it, her internal clock has gone as wonky as his own. Are they merely tired, or is the lake actively trying to disorient them?

  ‘An hour?’ he says, knowing it’s been at least that. Maybe two. Or three. My God, if it’s three a.m. we need to get back. Even if we make a bee-line, it will take us two hours to reach the clearing. And that’s assuming we don’t get lost.

  ‘About an hour and a half,’ Colt says with more confidence than he feels.

  ‘We passed the boat ramp at least an hour ago,’ he says.

  ‘She could have gone the other way from camp.’

  ‘We placed our bet. At least we know how to get home.’

  Colt doesn’t answer, and a few seconds later he realizes her flashlight beam has stopped moving. He’s gotten so used to the peripheral visual of it, the way they’ve been bobbing and wagging along like tethered miners, the sudden encroachment of darkness feels like he just ran into a wall.

  Ray stops, turns. Colt’s beam is aimed directly at the ground before her feet.

  ‘What is it?’ he says, backtracking.

  ‘Hmmm.’

  Ray walks faster. They finished the two pints of water some time ago. His mouth is dry and his head aches, the gin from earlier really making itself known as yet another bad idea. He trains the stronger light on the sand in front of her light.

  ‘Are those footprints?’ Colt says.

  At first Ray can only make out the usual wavy dips and depressions, then a pattern. The heels, the thinner middle from the arches, the wider areas from the toes. He follows, walking beside them, and they are not quite consistent enough to form a clear trail. But there are too many of them to be a coincidence, or anything other than human. Last time Ray saw his mother, she was walking barefoot. He remembers worrying that her soles were burning on the hot sand.

  ‘How tall is Mom?’ he says.

  ‘About five seven. An inch shorter than me, at least before she started to stoop.’

  ‘Let me see your feet.’

  ‘You think they’re my prints?’

  ‘The size,’ Ray says. ‘If Mom’s only an inch shorter, you guys must wear close to the same size.’

  ‘I’m an eight, eight and half. Mom was a nine. She had three kids.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pregnancy.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ The trail seems to have faded out.

  ‘You never heard that? Pregnancy makes your feet bigger. It’s the weight, spreading the bones, swelling everything up. Mom always warned me, and then one day it was true. I couldn’t fit into my favorite heels anymore.’

  ‘Huh. How about that,’ Ray says.

  ‘Fucks up your body, man. Lot more than your feet, believe me. You should see my —’

  ‘Okay, that’s enough, thanks, sister.’

  ‘Oh, grow up.’

  But Ray is no longer distracted by the marvels of pregnancy and its effects on the human body. He has found a new trail of prints, same source but branching away from the other line. This series is headed directly toward the edge of the basin, where the sand slopes down and forms what looks like the beginning of a small hill.

  ‘There’s more,’ he says. ‘But if they keep going this way, we’ll never find her.’

  Colt catches up to him. ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cause there’s nothing out there but fields, prairie grass, trees. We’ll never be able to follow footprints.’

  Colt shines her light ahead, to the low berm of sand, higher, over a few sparse patches of weeds, and then higher still.

  ‘Uhm, Ray?’

  He sees it, following her softer yellow light with the intense white beam of the spot. The hill is not a hill at all. It’s a pile, the fallout from the cliff itself. The pile of clods and thick sand rises for ten or twelve feet in elevation, then runs into a nearly vertical face, cleaved and darker brown, like cardboard insulation.

  Colt’s light drops back down as she gives up the possibility.

  Ray is curious to see how high it goes. He traces the contours and ridges of the cliff, noting those few yellow flowers that seem to sprout here and there. They look like dandelions or daisies, if the stems of such things grew to human lengths. Higher, and higher, until he has to crane his neck painfully and finds himself backing up several steps to take in the wider view. It’s vast, spanning at least a hundred feet in either direction, rising at least thirty and perhaps forty vertical feet.

  ‘Damn,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think there were any of these left. All the cliffs around the point are pretty much broken down, washed out. This is old-school.’

  He looks back at Colt. She is standing with her arms held tightly at her sides. Shivering. The night has cooled, he just didn’t realize it until now. A light breeze has picked up, the first wind he has noticed all night. She wants to go back. Sierra needs her.

  Ray takes one final look up the cliff face, sweeping the spotlight over the grass-topped ridge, fifty feet or so to his right, admiring its resilience, a little further to the right, and –

  There’s a woman up there.

  Her.

  His mother is standing on the precipice, staring into the spotlight. Through the light, it seems, right into his eyes. Time bends around them, holding them in a long moment, and Ray sees everything about her. How her hair is no longer gray but rich black, her papery wrinkled skin now glowing with suntan. How her posture is firm, upright, and she is not dressed in the kind of elderly beach wrap get-up she wore all day, but in her other clothes, the old clothes, her one-piece blue Speedo under the white Oxford dress shirt that started as Warren’s but became her lounging shirt, her bare legs and, though he cannot see them from down here, her bare feet, just as she was that day she nearly dislocated his shoulder hauling him off the beach.