Cradle Lake (15 page)

Pajama pants.

Wet.

The vines grew around the handle of the sliding patio door, prohibiting it from opening. Hottest day this summer, and Alan found himself out in the yard sawing at the thick cables of vines with a hacksaw. The rapidity with which they grew was astounding. Like the ones that had grown in the kitchen behind the refrigerator, these also bled that syrupy purple ink onto the patio. Unlike the ones in the kitchen, these were even thicker and had begun sprouting the nubs of thorns along the stalk. By the time he finished cutting away the vines, the palms of his hands were inlaid with bloody pinpricks.

Swiping an arm across his sweaty brow, he took a step back and examined the rear of the house. More vines sprouted from the house's foundation and crept up the siding. They were tall enough to become entangled in the gutter. Some had made their way onto the roof where they actually grew beneath the roof shingles, prying them up.

Alan caught peripheral movement across the lawn by the trees, near the location of the dirt path. He looked and, to his horror, found one of the buzzards right there on the ground, its massive wings spread, the feathers sparse and diseased-looking, its body roughly the size of a Thanksgiving turkey.

It seemed to notice him the same instant he noticed it, because it abruptly cocked its grotesque, fleshy head almost comically at him and issued a throaty squawk that suggested the protestation of Alan's very existence. Then it dipped its head and drove its hooked beak into a mess of something on the ground. It made a move like a pneumatic drill hammering into the earth. Seconds later, when it brought its head up, a pinkish cord stretched from its beak to the mess of what now appeared to be a mound of mottled gray fur in the grass.

The buzzard jerked its head and the cord stretched with organic elasticity. One final jerk and the cord snapped wetly. It dangled like a fleshy dewlap until the bird, executing a series of mechanical neck bobs, swallowed the entire bit of flesh.

“Goddamn it. What is it with you damn things?” Alan gathered up a stone and chucked it at the cretin.

The ugly son of a bitch cawed at him, the sound causing his nerve endings to vibrate, but it did not move.

He selected a larger stone and fired it with better precision. This time he struck it on one of its wings, creating a sound like thumping an open palm against an empty milk jug.

The bird shrieked, not just in fright but in pain, and launched itself into the air with an awkward, ungainly ineloquence. It took off over the treetops, trailing in its wake a string of agitated cries.

Alan approached the mess of fur in the grass. Whatever it had been, it now lay splayed open, black tributaries of blood soaking into the soil.

Then he realized what it was. What gave it away was the little twinkling bronze medallion with the name Patsy etched onto it.

“Oh, Christ.” His stomach rumbled. “Stupid cat. Should have listened to me and stayed home.”

Not much of Patsy the Cat was intact. In fact, had it not been for the identification collar, he wouldn't have recognized it at all.
He's a she,
Cory Morris had said. Well, “he” or “she”—none of that mattered anymore. All nine lives had been expended.

Minutes later, he returned to the spot with a snow shovel and scooped up Patsy the Cat. He considered dumping the carcass just beyond the line of the pines until he envisioned one of those disgusting buzzards finding it and dragging it back onto the lawn. Goddamn birds.

Balancing the dead cat on the end of the shovel, he passed between the trees and down the dirt path in search of a suitable spot to dump the thing. He briefly considered wrapping it in a trash bag and taking it over to the Morris house in case they wanted to bury it or cremate it or whatever. But that idea was just a bit too creepy, so he went deeper into the woods.

As if the woods maintained a direct connection with all the horrible memories he kept bottled up inside him, he remembered his discussion with Dr. Chu, the psychiatrist who'd been on staff at the hospital where Heather had been admitted after opening her wrists. There had been a fish tank full of tropical fish on the credenza behind Chu's desk, and the
whole office smelled of Pine-Sol. Dr. Chu had reclined in his chair, steepling his fingers beneath his nose, his black eyes narrowed in thought. Alan had sat across from him in an uncomfortable wooden chair, sweat prickling the nape of his neck.

“I've reviewed your wife's medical history,” Dr. Lawrence Chu had said. “The two miscarriages, the therapy recommended by her ob-gyn. The test that came up inconclusive.”

“What about them?” His heart fluttered like a hummingbird.

“It's my opinion your wife is suffering from severe depression. My recommendation is that she be kept under constant surveillance for a period of time which, of course, would include daily counseling sessions and the appropriate medical treatment she—”

“You're talking about putting her in a psych hospital?” His vision fractured. A potent heat billowed up from his shoes, up his legs, and filled his shirt and pants like a hot air balloon. “In a nuthouse?”

If Chu had been bothered by the term, he did not show it. His face remained expressionless. “I've already spoken with her. I'm on the fence whether or not I should petition her admission with or without your approval. Please understand, Mr. Hammerstun, that I by no means am trying to undermine—”

Alan held up one hand, cutting the doctor off. “Wait a minute. You can't do that. How can you do that?”

“Please allow me to finish.”

“How can you
do
that?”

“I am on the fence, as I've said. Your wife is not combative
or, for that matter, even physically active. With proper supervision and stronger antidepressants—”

“I'll watch her. I'll take a sabbatical from teaching and watch her until she's better. She's my wife. I'm not locking her up in some fucking institution.”

Unaffected by his language, Dr. Chu retrieved a manila folder from within his desk, opened it, examined the documents inside. “I'm recommending two different antidepressants. I'm also recommending weekly therapy sessions. We have a wonderful staff in the psych ward.”

“She won't need therapy. I'll watch her.”

Dr. Chu had set the folder down on his desk. He'd folded his hands and leaned forward, closing the distance between them. “Your wife needs medication and she needs therapy. This is not her first attempt?”

Alan swallowed a heavy lump. “What do you mean?”

“There was another time? With pills?”

“She told you that?” His voice was small.

“If you wish to take your wife home, I suggest you agree to my recommendations. Otherwise, I will reconsider my position on that petition …”

He had uttered a strangled laugh that sounded more like a cough. “Okay,” he had said, nodding like a fool at the doctor. “Okay, yeah. I get it. Let's do this. And let me get my wife back home.”

Now, Alan shook his head and cleared it of the memory. Once again he was in the woods, a shovelful of dead cat along with him for the ride.

Pausing on the dirt path, he blinked and glanced around. Lost in his memories, he'd walked deep into the
woods, maybe halfway down the path. On either side, the scrub brush and ivy were dense. Like tossing a shovelful of snow, he flipped the dead cat over the embankment into the brambles. It fell through the underbrush and was swallowed up by the forest.

Something crashed through the trees behind him. Something big.

He whirled around, dropped the shovel, and stared through the web of trees. It was impossible to see through the dense trees, their intertwined, leafy branches as impermeable as meshwork. He caught a whiff of something fecal, its potency amplified by the sudden breeze that bowled it through the woods toward his nose.

“Hello?” he called. His voice echoed as if he were shouting over a canyon. “Somebody out there?”

No one answered.

Sweat-slicked, he shivered nonetheless. He thought of the dead buck he'd stumbled across that day he got caught in the downpour. Surely this forest was chock-full of deer—and bears, foxes, wild game, and scores of other animals he probably didn't know existed in this part of the world. Bobcats? Gazelles? Hank's mountain grizzlies?

Eerily, Hank's voice returned to him now, from the conversation they'd had that night on Alan's back patio. He could hear him almost verbatim:
Woods surrounding the lake are said to be haunted, too, but that's just superstition. Maybe the Indians used to believe that—and maybe those woods
were
special back when they used them—but I've never seen anything out of the ordinary in there.

“Fuck this,” Alan muttered.

He turned around on the path toward home, but he must have gotten confused because when the trees parted and he stepped out into the clearing, he was looking at the glassy, silver surface of the lake. Somehow—stupidly—he'd walked in the wrong direction.

Here in the daylight the lake looked less ominous than it had at night. Even the energy that had been in the air like an electrical charge on the day the neighborhood men carried Cory Morris was gone. It was just a tiny, serene lake, like something out of a dream.

Across the lake and in the daylight, the giant trees stood empty of the horrible birds. Alan tried to recall if they'd been present on that day Cory Morris had been submerged in the water, but he couldn't remember. That day had been too hectic to remember anything specific that didn't have to do directly with the injured Morris boy.

Crossing the field, he tossed down the shovel and stopped at the edge of the water. A shiver zigzagged through him as he recalled the dream that perhaps hadn't been a dream. While the wet pajama pants at the bottom of the laundry hamper had been proof that he'd gone into the water, his recollection of the details of the event were no doubt contaminated by fever. He remembered his father being there, which was impossible, of course. And Owen Moreland had been there, too, which was equally impossible.

A fever-driven case of somnambulism was responsible for that late night jaunt and the swim that evidently followed. Likewise, it had been his fever-addled brain that created the hallucinations of his father and Owen Moreland—his subconscious prodded to the surface by a temperature
of 102. He'd come to accept all those things and counted himself damned lucky he hadn't drowned while sleepwalking that night.

The stifling heat caused sweat to burst from his skin. The heat in his belly was even greater—the ulcer, eating him from the inside out.

Alan began climbing out of his clothes.

Moments later, the reflection staring up at Alan from the placid surface of the lake was completely naked. Had he been asked prior to this occasion, he would have said with finality that standing naked outdoors would have instilled him with a near crippling sense of humiliation bordering on fear. However, standing here now with his bare feet in the thick grass and the midday heat beating down on his bare shoulders, he felt oddly serene. Lulled, even. And the calmness that embraced him also spread through him like blood.

The ulcer burned at the base of his stomach. It was a bright strobe of electrical current; it was a smoldering hunk of coal burning through the lining of his belly.

He took a deep breath and dove into the water.

Still wet from the lake, Alan entered his yard. The sun was directly overhead now; it beat down on him with unforgiving potency. He felt like a solo performer spotlighted onstage. The heat felt good. Despite the rising summer temperatures, the lake water was as cold as an ice bath. Alan found it invigorating.

He shook his head and ran his fingers through his damp hair. It had already begun to dry in the heat.

He went to the sliding patio doors. Paused. Stared. He had one hand outstretched, reaching for the door handle, frozen in the air as if in a photograph.

A single vine, thin as spaghetti, had wound its way around the handle.

His heart seemed to freeze in his chest.

Noise off to his left. He jerked his head in that direction and felt his blood turn to ice when he saw Cory Morris standing at the edge of the yard, partially obscured in the
shade of nearby trees. Even from this distance, he could see the beads of sweat rolling down the boy's plump face and the darkened stains spreading out from the armpits of his T-shirt.

The boy's hands were covered in blood.

“Hey,” Alan said, attempting to yell. The word came out in a weak croak, barely audible even to himself. Then, louder: “Hey! Did you do that to your cat?”

The boy turned and headed up the street.

“Cory!” he called after him. “Cory Morris!”

The boy vanished up the street.

“Haven't heard from you in a while,” Hank said. “You avoiding me or something?”

“Of course not.” Alan had been hacking away at vines when Hank had come up behind him, a six-pack of beers cradled in one arm. Now, Alan paused and wiped the sweat from his brow. He was shirtless, and the warmth of the sun felt good on his back and shoulders. “I've just been busy trying to get the house in order. Once school starts, I won't have this kind of time anymore.”

“Your hands are bleeding.”

He glanced down. It looked like he'd grabbed a pincushion with both hands. He hadn't noticed until Hank brought it to his attention.

“Some mean-looking vines.” Hank set the six-pack on the picnic table and selected a bottle for himself, popped the top. He offered one to Alan but he declined. “Might be better to wait for winter when they dry up and die. Might be easier to cut them. Would save your hands, too.”

“Thanks but I'm good.” Alan was using hedge clippers on some of the thinner vines. He went back to work, all too conscious of Hank's eyes on him.

“How's Heather? Lydia says she hasn't seen her in a while.”