Cradle Lake (34 page)

“We're ruined now.”

He shook his head. “We went too far. But I can fix things. Do you trust me, Heather? Do you trust me to fix things?”

She looked away from him and stared out the window
into the yard. It was an overcast morning.

“You're weak and you're hurt,” he said, moving around to her side of the bed. She continued to look past him. “But if you come with me, I can make you feel better.”

“The baby—”

“Is dead. It isn't meant to be. Some people get sick and some people die. But I can fix
us.
I know how to do it. You've just gotta trust me and come with me.” He extended a hand to her. “Will you come with me?”

She looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes. “No. It ends here. No more.”

Anger welled up inside him, fueling his determination. The ulcer had returned in full force now, too. “No. Goddamn it, I'm not going to let it end this way. I can
fix
us.”

She folded her arms and refused to take his hand. Tears spilled down her face.

Outside, there was a dull crash. Alan felt it in his bones. He went quickly to the window and scanned the yard, the trees, the street. Across the street, he saw Hearn Landry's cruiser still parked down the block. The sheriff walked around the car, pulling his hat off, one arm pinwheeling in the air as if swatting away swarms of gnats. He stared perplexedly at his own vehicle, and for a second Alan had no idea why. But then he saw the windshield and the webbing of cracks that spread out along the glass. At the center was something large and black and …
feathery …

“One of the birds,” he muttered. “Goddamn it. That was one of the birds.”

Indeed, they had overpopulated his yard. And as he watched, they flocked closer to the street. There were some
perched on the cement curb and others roosting on the tops of nearby cars. Some had migrated across the street and sat like gargoyles on the peaks of neighboring houses. While he looked on, the birds all opened their wings in a gesture of intimidation. That was what it looked like to him at first, anyway. But then he realized what they were doing when their heavy network of wings blotted Sheriff Landry out of his line of sight …

They were providing concealment.

Alan turned around and snatched one of Heather's arms. “We need to go now!”

“Alan!” She tried to pull herself free, but his grip was too strong. “Let me go!”

“Come on! You've got to trust me.”

He dragged her from the bed and onto the floor. Her legs gave out from beneath her, and she collapsed in a heap. Bending down, he scooped her up, suddenly all too aware of his aching muscles. Nonetheless, he carried her down through the hallway as she began sobbing against his bare chest. He carried her through the living room and to the sliding patio doors.

“Alan…”

Despite Heather's cumbersomeness, he managed to slide open the door. He stepped into the yard and into the cold morning, his naked body suddenly accosted by the frigid air. It hadn't even registered with him that he wasn't wearing any clothes. In the crook of his neck, his wife cried, her entire body hitching. He walked quickly with her through the wet grass toward the path, aware of the tornado sound of wings at his back shielding him from the street and Sheriff Hearn Landry.

The path materialized before him. He wasted no time, moving swiftly beneath the clawlike branches of overhanging trees and taking each curve of the path like a stock car driver. In his arms, Heather grew heavier and heavier with each passing second. By the time he reached the clearing and the lake, his arms were burning and he'd nearly ground his teeth into powder.

Alan went to the cusp of the lake and set Heather down on the grass. She collapsed in a ball, shielding her face with her hands. His shadow loomed above her, and he caught his breath while the cold morning air bit into his naked, sweating flesh.

“You need to get into the water,” he told her.

She continued to sob, paying him no attention.

After a few more moments, he repeated the command. “Honey, you need to get into the water. Do you understand me?”

“I understand you're an
animal,”
she screamed, whirling around, her eyes on fire. There was genuine hatred behind them.
“What did you do to us?”

“No, no, I'm going to
fix
us. This time it'll work. This time we'll be careful. We'll take better care of each other and not lose our way.”

“Fuck you!”
Heather struggled to her feet, the hem of her bloodied nightgown coming up over her hips. Shoving past him, she turned to run, but Alan was quicker and had anticipated this mutiny, so he grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her backward.

She jerked to a stop and fell against him, the back of her head cracking his jaw. Vinegar spirals capered briefly before his eyes.

“Let me go, goddamn you!”

Still clutching her hair, he dragged her around until she faced the lake. She was flailing, struggling, but she was much weaker than him. He managed to get his free arm around her, bracing both her arms to her body. She sobbed weakly next to his ear.

“I'm going to fix us,” he whispered. “I promise you.”

Then, without even taking a breath, he launched forward and carried them both down into the lake.

The freezing water struck him like a punch. The wind was knocked from him. Momentarily, Alan lost all sense of place and time, and he became nothing more than a pinprick of light floating in the seminal fluid of some giant, nonexistent creature of myth.

A high-pitched keening sucked him back to reality: it was Heather, crying out before him, scrambling through the water toward land. Her hair was a dark fan down her back. He grabbed her, pulled her backward. She didn't understand. Screaming, she went under and swallowed mouthfuls of water, breaking up through the surface choking and sputtering. Her wet hair looked like seal fur.

“Stop it,” he told her, his voice eerily calm. A flag of vapor billowed out of his mouth. He grabbed her with a second hand and attempted to steady her in the water. “Heather, stop it.”

“Let me go!”
she shrieked, and he could hear her teeth rattling—

(maracas)

—in her skull from the cold. He spun her around so that she faced him. Her skin was already turning blue, her lips quivering, her wide, colorless eyes sunken into dark, fleshy caverns. A banner of hair was plastered down the center of her forehead, bisecting her face, and Alan thought of dramatic masks symbolizing good and evil, happy and sad.

“You have to—”

“No!”

“You have to—”

“Get… off…”
Heather pulled one arm free of his grasp. She swung and belted him on the side of his head.

Something exploded in twisting red flashes of light before his eyes, and he both felt and heard the sound whoosh out of his left ear.

She was wading toward the edge of the lake, carving a
V
through the surface of the water in her wake.

(It's deepest at the center. I've never touched the bottom. Don't know if anyone ever has.)

Alan lunged for her, gripping a fistful of her nightgown. He felt the fabric tear and come apart, unfurl like a roll of paper towels.

She doesn't understand…

Just as she was about to climb out, he yanked her toward the center of the lake. He had been the one who swam here, and swimming was how it helped heal him. It stood to reason then—

“Drink it,” he said, pushing her head down.

Splashing. Struggling.

“Mermaid,
drink.
Mermaid, I
love
you.”

One hand, hooked into a claw, raked the flesh of his left
arm. The bloody tracks healed almost instantly.

Bubbles ruptured the surface of the water. Her hair was tangled about his wrists like an undersea plant. The water too deep here; her feet could not find purchase on the bottom to hoist herself up.

Drink,
he thought. Willed it.

Holding her.

Underneath.

Momentarily, he was a teenager again, standing in the morgue with Jimmy Carmichael at his back, gazing at the pale lump of flesh that had been his father splayed out on a stainless steel table. A crisp white sheet was draped over his father's waist. There was a dime-sized hole ringed with dried blood at one side of the man's head.

—What am I supposed to do now? he asked Jimmy.

Guess you can do whatever you want.

Happy trails.

Once Heather stopped moving, Alan felt a sharp tremor quake from the base of his skull to the tip of his spine. He wasn't sure how long he stood there, the lake water up to his chest and freezing his skin, his hands submerged beneath the surface and buried in the strange undersea plant that was Heather's hair, but the dark and brooding clouds overhead had changed position by the time he blinked and looked down.

Nothing. And nothing. And nothing.

Then: the billowy white fabric of her nightgown floating like seaweed to the surface. The pale white of her body
came next. Her hair fanned against his chest. A bare buttock rose through the surface, a pale and glistening orb. His heart was racing like a locomotive, yet he felt strangely calm.

“Heather? Baby?”

She didn't move. Facedown, her hair continued to spread out across the surface of the water.

“Honey … ?” And his voice cracked. “H-H-Heath—”

Trembling. Rising mercury. Something hot rushing through the very epicenter of his soul.

Fists clenched, he threw his head back and screamed into the air.

Gathering his wife's body in his arms, Alan waded through the water and climbed out onto the grass. His muscles, which had been sore and weak just moments ago, now felt rejuvenated and strong. Powerful. In his arms, Heather's body was practically weightless.

At the line of trees, the opening to the path seemed much larger. Absently, Alan wondered if it was just a trick of perspective since the trees had shed their leaves for winter. But he didn't think so.

He stepped onto the path and crossed through the woods. At one point, an enormous lumbering beast walked alongside him, shrouded mostly by the trees. Alan could smell its fetid stench and hear its tremendous footfalls punching craters in the earth. Many times he was tempted to look at it, but each time he refused to give into the temptation.

The walk seemed to take forever, but he eventually found his way back to the house.

Inside, Alan shut and bolted all the doors, made sure the windows were locked. He had laid Heather's body in their bed on bloodied sheets. Then he went to the kitchen and peered out the windows at the street. The birds had retreated to the trees, and Sheriff Landry, along with two other men from the block, had scraped the dead buzzard off the cruiser's windshield. The sheriff was now in the process of dumping the twisted carcass into a trash pail. Hank joined the sheriff and the other two men.

Alan let the curtain whisper back into place.

Behind him, the walls crackled. It was a sound like breaking bones. He turned and, for seemingly the first time in days, actually
saw
the house: the gouges he'd knocked in the walls; the trails of vines and ivy sprouting from jagged fissures in the drywall; snakelike chutes jutting up from the separations in the floorboards; tendrils curling down from the light fixtures in the ceiling, stinking of rot and dripping
a pinkish ooze onto the floor, couch, tables, and chairs.

It has become a bad place.
It was George Young Calf Ribs speaking in his head.
It no longer hides and offers rejuvenation to those worthy enough to find it. Now it calls to whoever is careless enough to seek it out. That is its revenge on the ones who have soured its waters and poisoned its land.

His left eyelid twitched.

The lake is like a magnet. Your house is the closest thing to it. It's too close to the forest and sits on the soured land. Your house rots with you and your wife in it. Rots like carrion.

He went to the kitchen sink and bent down, opening the cabinet. He found what he was looking for.

Leave that house immediately. Burn it to the ground so no one else can live there after you. Do it before it's too late.

Laughter bubbled up inside him. Alan couldn't help himself. He stepped into the foyer and uncapped the bottle of lighter fluid he'd retrieved from beneath the sink and began spraying down the walls, soaking the stalks and vines. Some of the leaves seemed to curl up and turn brown upon contact.

From the foyer windows, he saw Hank moving up his driveway toward the porch. Alan ignored him, spraying the remaining lighter fluid onto the spots in the floor where the vines were corkscrewing out of bored holes. When Hank knocked on his front door, Alan did not acknowledge it. Once he emptied the bottle, he returned to the kitchen and got two more. The second bottle he used to spray down the hallway. Vines were everywhere, and great handfuls of them were spooling out of the holes he'd smashed in the walls. The floor itself was tacky with their purplish blood.

From the front porch: “Alan! I know you're home! Open the door! Please!”

Finally, in the bedroom, Alan emptied the final bottle of lighter fluid. He soaked the walls, the floor, the heap of dirty clothes atop the hamper. He sprayed the bedsheets and the comforter. The lampshade. A stack of paperback novels on his nightstand.

“Alan! Please, Alan! Open the door!”

But that sound could have been coming from a dream or shouted by someone submerged underwater.

Still naked, he climbed onto the mattress. The bed squeaked, and he could smell the mix of blood and lighter fluid in the sheets. He propped himself up against the headboard, then rolled Heather onto his chest. She weighed next to nothing. Her body was cold, her skin malleable.