Beneath the Lake Read online

  ‘What happened,’ Raymond says when they are a safe distance away, crossing the point. The moon is nearly full and there is plenty of light for them to make their way across the field and down the boat ramp, into the trees. Leonard shakes his head, shivering. ‘Come on, Len. You have to tell. Why did those people – what was that?’

  ‘You saw? What part?’

  ‘In the water, the fighting. After that I couldn’t —’

  ‘Two park rangers came and took those fuckers to the hospital,’ Leonard says. ‘We had to answer a lot of questions. Don’t worry about it. It’s over now.’

  ‘But why’d they do that? That man punched —’

  ‘They were drunk. Or sick.’ Leonard won’t look at him, and he sounds brokenhearted. ‘It doesn’t matter. Some people are just bad news.’

  ‘But what about the other family? Where did —’

  ‘Will you stop?’ Leonard hisses. ‘Enough. We’re gonna get some sleep and then first thing in the morning we’re going home, so please. Shut the fuck up, all right?’

  Raymond doesn’t speak the rest of the way to the tent.

  After falling back on his sleeping bag, Leonard drops into a profound, rigid state of unrest. He looks like some kid who’s been beaned in the head with a baseball, eyes rolled up, the whites agitated. His hands curl stiffly over his chest like claws, as if warding off something creeping towards them. Even without the moonlight reaching into the tent’s dark center, Raymond can see that his brother’s arms are raked with red scratch marks, his fingers caked with grainy soil and mud.

  The same kinds of marks and dark stains are on the rest of his family, when they come back for him two short hours later, in the darkness of earliest morning, informing him the trip is over. Now. Get in the truck.

  It’s time to go home.

  Getting Lost

  None of it – from that first unruly wave that struck him in the chest to the silent, alienating ride home in the Bronco – has ever sounded as suspicious, off-kilter, and just plain wrong as it does today. Telling Megan everything he can remember, Ray feels like a fool, and one who is guilty of delivering incriminating testimony about his family.

  ‘I probably made it sound worse than it was,’ he says, attempting to downplay, though he knows it’s too late for that. ‘You have to remember, I was a kid. Being left alone was pretty damn scary, but in the end, what really happened? My dad interrupted a domestic abuse incident and got a bloody nose for his efforts.’

  Megan has no response. She didn’t say much through the entire story, especially after the part about the husband trying to strangle his wife in the waves.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I should have told you all about that before we were four hundred miles down the road. It’s not too late to turn around. If you don’t feel up for this, I totally —’

  ‘They never talked about it,’ she says. ‘Not the next day or for weeks, years later. They never sat you down and explained it? The subject never came up at the dinner table?’

  ‘I’m sure they did discuss it, but never around me.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem strange to you?’

  ‘Obviously they should have handled it differently,’ Ray says. ‘But I think you’re getting at something else. They were hiding something. They lied to me. Whatever it was, there was a lot more to it.’

  Megan stares at him and nods. Duh.

  ‘And you think I never considered that?’

  ‘Then what do you think really happened?’

  ‘You heard the story. You now know as much as I do.’

  ‘I wish I had a cigarette to go with this beer,’ Megan says, unfastening her belt and pivoting in the seat. ‘You want one?’

  ‘Not yet, thanks. But if we don’t find that turn soon, I’m going to need something stronger than beer.’

  Megan plops down and opens the can of ale with two fingernails. She drinks deeply and stifles a burp with the back of her hand. ‘Excuse me or not but too late.’ She shoots him a quick smile. ‘So, the park rangers who got involved. Leonard said your dad went for help? Or did they just show up?’

  Ray blinks several times. ‘My dad took Leonard’s little Honda to the general store at the end of the lake. It was closed but there were a few houses down there. He banged on some doors until somebody let him use the phone.’

  ‘Why didn’t he take the Bronco?’

  ‘There were trails through the woods, short cuts. The bike was faster.’

  ‘I’m not trying to interrogate you,’ Megan says, pulling on the beer again. ‘But why didn’t he call the police? And wasn’t the motorcycle out of gas?’

  ‘He did call the police. Or the rangers did. The police came later and took them off to jail. Or the hospital first, then jail. Whatever. The gas was leaking, not empty, obviously.’

  Megan purses her lips, shakes her head. ‘Did you see the rangers when they came back to the camp ground? The police? Anyone?’

  ‘I was locked in the camper, like I said.’

  ‘But you had the windows. You would have seen lights, right? Sirens, something at night? Heard the engines, all the commotion?’

  Ray is aware of his jaw clenching. ‘The other windows had fiberglass storm shades. Even with the sun out, which it wasn’t, you couldn’t see more than blurry shapes, shadows. The only real window was facing the lake. The rest of the camp ground was behind, where I couldn’t see a thing, and I was scared out of my mind, all right?’

  ‘Sorry. Don’t get mad,’ she says. ‘Here, have some beer. It will help you think.’

  ‘I don’t need help thinking,’ Ray grumbles as he reaches behind her seat and digs a beer from the cooler. He pops the top, hesitates. ‘It was green. I remember that.’

  ‘What was?’

  Big slug of beer. ‘The ranger’s truck. Pale green with a brown State Parks badge on the doors.’

  ‘So you did see it that night,’ Megan says.

  ‘Or when it was still light out, before the storm. I don’t know. Oh yeah – the ranger was an old man with big shoulders and a yellow mustache. Brown uniform, cowboy boots. A real hardass Nebraskan. His thumbs looked like horns.’

  ‘Horns?’

  ‘I remember being scared of them. The skin of his hands was chapped, spotted. Fingernails were yellow, cracked, sharp. They made me think of horns, like you see on an old sick goat.’

  ‘Wow. Sounds like you remember a lot now,’ Megan says. ‘That’s good, right?’

  ‘You know what? To be honest, I could have seen that ranger and his truck days before, or on another trip, anytime. I can’t remember anything about what happened on that trip in the days and hours before the storm hit. It’s entirely possible my memory is filling in the gaps because I’m trying to explain something that I can’t really explain.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘I told you everything I know! Why would I lie to you? To scare you? Impress you? I agree, it’s huge mess, it ruined my family, and that’s all I know, okay?’

  Megan has managed to avoid recoiling from him, but she looks pale, hurt.

  Neither of them speak for a few miles.

  Ray sighs. ‘That wasn’t cool. I have no right to be angry with you. I spent a long time trying to forget the whole thing, but the closer we get to this stupid lake… I’m sorry.’

  Megan reaches over and runs her fingers through his hair, massaging the back of his head. ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation for all of it. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard. Whatever happened, I believe everything you said, and I’m sorry you had to go through that.’

  ‘I appreciate that. But I’m not sure I believe what I said.’

  ‘No one in his right mind would make up such a story, especially not for some girl he’s taking on a road trip back to where it all happened.’ She studies him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Unless he was a real psycho, planning to cut her into pieces and dump her in the lake.’

  Ray laughs. ‘Oh, that reminds me. Next time you turn arou
nd for another beer, would you please hand me that machete under the bench seat?’

  ‘Mister Romantic.’

  ‘I try.’

  Megan watches the scenery passing by, then consults her phone. She thumbs the screen a few times.

  ‘Uhm… did we miss a turn? I feel like we’ve been on this highway too long.’

  Despite driving the past hundred and however many miles since lunch, eyes on the road as he told her the story of the storm, he realizes now he has not really been seeing the road at all. He sits up straight, cracks the window to let some fresh air blow over his face and takes in their surroundings. How long as it been since they passed one of those giant sprinkler trains arcing over the rows of corn or soybeans? It’s greener up here, with more woods and fewer farms, nothing quite familiar. Then again, it’s been thirty years since he made the journey. The land changes. Towns grow, or shrivel up and disappear.

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Shit. I really don’t want to arrive at night, bumbling along the beach looking for Camp Mercer, trying to set up the tent in the dark. Please tell me we’re still west of it? I know the lake is east of Highway Eighty-Three, and we haven’t turned, so… Right?’

  She swipes the screen of her phone a few more times, and Ray allows the Bronco to decelerate. There is no one behind or ahead of them as far as he can see, which is pretty far considering the road is flat and straight for miles and miles.

  ‘No, keep going,’ Megan says. ‘If we stay on this for about another twelve miles we can head west, or sort of south-west, down along Highway Twenty for about thirty miles. That should take us to One-Eighty-Three, and from there it should only be another fifteen miles or so.’

  Ray sighs. ‘How confident are you with all that?’

  ‘Pretty confident.’ Megan holds her phone up for him and wiggles it. ‘See?’

  ‘I don’t know why it matters. It might be better for both of us if we wound up in Idaho.’

  ‘Here it is,’ Megan says, pointing to a distant exit ramp. ‘Take that and go right.’

  He does. A while later she tells him to take another right, then a left, and two hours later the sun is setting and they are still lost.

  On a whim, Ray takes an unnamed county road. It’s paved but not well. It will probably lead to a dead end, or a dirt road that deposits them on a farm. But he is gambling on the possibility it will pop them out of the vortex they have become stuck in, maybe even onto one of the lake’s entrance roads. He pushes the Bronco up to seventy, then eighty miles per hour as if trying to force the answer.

  Ten miles tick by. Fifteen. Twenty.

  Thirty-one miles after the last turn, a few dilapidated barns give way to a row of small white houses, then a pale brick building that might once have been a post office. Is this a town? Ray didn’t see a sign. But any business will do at this point. Dusk has turned the lawns a shade of green close to black, the sidewalks are empty and Ray’s back hurts. They need to ask for directions and get back on track before this turns into a real problem.

  ‘Brace yourself’ are the first words Ray has spoken in approximately forty minutes. ‘I think it’s time to meet the natives.’

  Megan starts beside him, which in turn startles him right back. He didn’t even know she was sleeping.

  Folklore

  Shaking off her second nap of the trip, Megan doesn’t bother asking where they are. Shit All Middle of Nowhere, USA, is usually self-explanatory.

  The only option turns out to be a truck stop, diner and gas station combination. One of the older independent ones, with wood paneling and only two street lights in the small cracked parking lot. The inside is brighter, the row of vinyl counter seats visible from the pumps where Ray parks to top off the tanks. They have enough fuel to go another two hundred miles, but he doesn’t want to take chances on how long it will take them to get unlost.

  He pays the girl at the register in the convenience and souvenir section, wondering what all the plastic trinkets and Cornhusker paraphernalia are supposed to help you commemorate. She might be sixteen or twenty-two and she looks unhappy and used to it.

  ‘Say, do you know if we’re close to Blundstone Lake here?’ Ray says. ‘My friend and I got a bit sidetracked.’

  The girl seems to mistrust the hundred dollar bill he gave her.

  ‘What lake is that?’ Her voice is lightly rasping, deeper than it should be.

  ‘Blundstone,’ Ray says. ‘The big one. We must be within fifty miles of it.’

  ‘Lots of lakes ’round here,’ the girl says, depositing his bills and coins in a pile before turning around to slip a pack of Pyramid brand cigarettes from the rack above. For a moment Ray thinks she is going to hand him the smokes, until she peels the cellophane seal, flips the cardboard top, whacks the base against her wrist, and one springs forth at the same moment her tightened mouth duck-bobs for it. ‘Never heard of Bunson,’ she mouths around the prize.

  Ray is tempted to ask for a map, but he doesn’t see any and what’s the point? Google may not have scoured the entire planet yet, but a thirty by four-mile reservoir could not have escaped their satellites and roving cameras. The girl probably hasn’t traveled beyond the county line.

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ Ray says.

  She forgoes any further acknowledgement in favor of setting fire to her coffin nail.

  He finds Megan seated at the counter in the diner area, watching an older woman, sixty and smoothly stout under her mustard-yellow waitress top and the white tablecloth smock, blending up a vanilla milkshake. The smell of Salisbury steak hangs in the air, the curtains, the fibers of the trampled carpeting. A couple of truckers are siphoning coffee and scratching strips of lotto tickets at the end of the counter, comparing sums lost and gained and, possibly, the manner in which their lives have been altered. A whiteboard above the heat lamp counter informs patrons the special of the day is Andie’s Pork Cutlet Spighetti w/roll and coffee $4.75.

  ‘Here ya go, darlin’,’ the waitress says, placing a tall glass of milkshake and the steel-bucket of reserves beside a straw and spoon. ‘Anything else for ya?’

  Megan turns to Ray, ‘You want something?’

  ‘Did you ask her?’ He can feel the woman’s heartland smile turn on him.

  ‘Do you know how we can get to Blundstone Lake from here?’ Megan asks the waitress. Her name tag is located near her collar and reads ANDIE.

  Andie’s smile shrivels into a pucker. ‘You two come down from Minnesota?’

  ‘Colorado,’ Megan says. ‘We’re meeting some family out there for a few days.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ Andie says. ‘No one in your party musta called ahead, talked to Game and Parks?’

  Megan looks at Ray. Ray shrugs. ‘What’s the deal?’

  ‘Blundstone been closed going on two years now,’ Andie says.

  Ray picks up Megan’s milkshake straw and taps out a little beat on the counter. ‘Closed? How does a lake close?’

  ‘No longer open to the public,’ Andie says. ‘No campin’, no fishin’, no swimmin’. And probably no huntin’ neither.’

  How about fiddlin’ and drinkin’ and screwin’? Ray would very much like to ask. Do they still allow that? And when does the albino boy with the banjo appear?

  Instead, ‘There must be some mistake. I’m sure my family would have checked.’