Salvage (7 page)

Joined them. Joined this cult. Joined her ghost. The man who walked on water.

Suddenly his vision shifted, and a very clear image that was either a hallucination or a vision overcame him. This same hand held Lori down, forcing her under the dark water. She kicked and screamed under its weight, unable to rise to the surface. The image vanished suddenly, returning him to the tub, where pinpricks of light danced before this vision. The room beyond began to gray, the witnesses to his death only visible in the whites of their eyes. He was losing consciousness.

Owen screamed, hoping for his neighbors to hear, hoping for the Shepherd and his flock to forgive whatever sin he'd committed against them. But the water stifled his cries.

The tub had grown impossibly deep. The Shepherd's arm seemed to stretch down to such an incredible depth that, even if the man let him go now, Owen wouldn't have the strength to swim to the surface. Far above the Shepherd's head, at an even greater distance, the ceiling split open like a wound, and the darkening sky began to show itself, rain pattering down on the surface of the water.

The lake was cool and dark and inviting, the sky overcast, the rain that had been threatening in the west all morning just beginning to drizzle down around them. Lori slipped under the water, disappearing in a wake of concentric ripples.

Owen gulped in another mouthful of water and followed her down.

1

OWEN SHIVERED,
gasping for breath.

He was breathing again, his lungs taking in air instead of water, and the sensation made him realize he must have been dreaming. The water, the trees, the sky, all of it peeled back like a stage backdrop. Lori disappeared. He floated in a cold and shapeless void, an emptiness so thorough he couldn't feel his own body.

Am I dead…?

The thought seemed to arise from nowhere. His body was gone, his thoughts mere electrical impulses in the ether.

A moment later, his surroundings came into view as if illuminated by a flashbulb. Sensation returned to his limbs, his chest, neck, and head. He'd been floating in a senseless abyss, but now he felt he was lying down. His hair was damp, heavy on his head, wrapped in something from his knees to his chest, fuzzy and warm, and yet he still shivered. A scent hung in the air: floral, powdery. A perfume? But whose? Not Lori's; not his mother's. Familiar, though. Something he'd smelled very recently. A window was open behind him, issuing a cool breeze. Directly across from him, the television was tuned to a rerun of
Columbo,
where Columbo was on vacation, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Am I still dreaming?

"My mother…" A woman's voice, swimming toward him in the gauzy half-light.

His eyes flickered toward the voice, as familiar as the scent. He saw the photo on the table of the three Saddlers at the water park before fully realizing where he was:
My condo, my living room
. It seemed he remembered very little, not least of which how he'd ended up here, on the sofa, shivering and wet and wrapped like the dead.

He turned his head, a difficult task. Just breathing was difficult. It seemed as though an invisible weight was on his chest, pressing him down—

The events from the bathroom returned, and he sat up abruptly, pushing against the sudden crushing pain in his chest. He'd been wrapped up snug in a pale blue terry cloth towel. The Shepherd's hand wasn't there—had never
been
there. Yet he still felt it, like a weight. Like something pushing him down.

She sat on the chair opposite: Sophie Huang from next door. The world was still somewhat blurry. He blinked until he could see her properly. She'd said something, hadn't she? He was barely able to croak, "W-what?"

"I lost my mother," she said, and brought her eyes up, looking at him intensely. "A year ago. She'd smoked for as long as I can remember. Probably even smoked through her pregnancy, for all I know. Maybe that's why I'm so fucked up."

Sophie put the tips of her fingers to her naked lips in a gesture of surprise. "Sorry," she said, with a self-conscious downward glance. "TMI. Anyway, she hadn't been sleeping well for months. Stayed up all night watching those late-night infomercials, hoping they'd put her to sleep. Of course they didn't, she just ended up with an apartment full of unopened junk. Then one night, she fell asleep in her chair with a lit cigarette. The medical examiner said she probably died in her sleep of asphyxiation before she could feel herself burning to death. Cold comfort. I'd always said that ratty old chair was a fire hazard." She uttered a morbid chuckle.

Owen wondered how Sophie could manage to talk about it so calmly. It must still have been painful, with her mother only in her grave a year. He let the silence draw out, unsure how to respond. Finally, he managed to say, "Sorry for your loss."

Her sudden laughter startled him. After a moment, he realized what she'd found funny: she'd said the same thing to him when they'd met in the mail room. He grinned. It would have been too painful to laugh, even if he'd found it funny himself.

"There was water all over the floor when I came in," she said, when her laughter died. "I thought maybe the dishwasher was leaking; mine does that sometimes. Then I saw the bathroom door open…" She gave him a look so intense he wanted to shrink away from her. "I thought you were dead. You were so pale, you weren't breathing or anything. Just floating there. It's funny, you looked so peaceful."

They sat in silence a moment.

"I tried to kill myself once," she said, matter-of-factly.

"I wasn't trying to kill myself."

"Of course you weren't. I never said you were." Judging by her tone, though, she didn't believe him. But pressing the issue would have made it seem more like he was lying, so he let it go. She'd just saved his life; by how much, he wasn't sure. Now was hardly the time to quibble.

"It was just after my mother died," she said, and for a second he had no idea what she'd meant. His thoughts were disjointed; he couldn't seem to focus. An aftereffect of having nearly drowned, he supposed, and determined to try harder.

"Couple of weeks, I think." She was looking off at the big windows that faced the Harbourfront as she spoke, at the lights of all the other condos, a poor substitute for the stars that couldn't be seen with so much light. "I stood in front of the subway tracks for—God, it must have been over an hour, willing myself to jump every time a train pulled into the station."

She considered it a moment, scowling off in silence, at her own foolishness or the thought of how close she'd come to death, Owen wasn't sure. "But I couldn't do it. You know, it's funny, I used to worry every time I stood close to the tracks and someone passed behind me, I'd keep them in my peripheral vision to make sure they couldn't push me, and if they tried, I'd see them and be ready. I'd steel myself for the push, make sure I had my footing and wouldn't fall out onto the tracks if it came. But that day, I
prayed
for someone to see me there and just… give me a little nudge. Just a little shove and all of my stupid little troubles would be over." She chuckled softly, perhaps at the dark simplicity of it. "But nobody did. Eventually, the station attendant or someone came over and asked me if I was all right. I told him I was lost, so he gave me directions." She shook her head, a very slight movement. "I really was lost, but not in a way directions could've helped." Looking up, Sophie held his gaze. "I was lost from
myself
."

Owen nodded. He let the silence draw out again, because it seemed a moment of silence was required. Then he said, "Well thanks for not letting me throw in the towel," indicating with a nod the towel she must have wrapped around his naked waist. She laughed again, a big, hearty laugh that apparently surprised her so much she tried to stifle it with her hand. It wouldn't hold back her snickering, so she snorted and made noises in her throat behind a balled-up fist.

Owen grinned, pleased to be able to lighten the mood, while proving—he hoped—that he wasn't in a suicidal mood. But he didn't laugh with her. When her giggle fit was through, he said, "Sorry."

"It's okay," she said, and chuckled again. "After what happened in there," she nodded toward the bathroom, "I guess I must have needed a good laugh."

"Thanks again," he said. "Honestly."

"Just thank your lucky stars I know CPR."

"Sorry if I wasn't the best kisser," he said. "I'm much better when I'm conscious, I swear."

She laughed again, not quite as heartily, and her cheeks flushed a little. She'd pulled him naked from the tub and resuscitated him before drying him with the towel, and mentioning it clearly embarrassed her.

"Why did you come here?" he asked her. "I mean, I'm glad you did, obviously. It just seems a little—"

"
Deus ex machina
?" she said, and grinned.

"Exactly."

"I found this mixed in with my mail." She picked up what looked like a postcard and held it out to him. Owen took it from her. "It's weird, I was going to give it to you the next time I saw you in the mail room, but my mother told me to get moving, and when mother talks, I listen."

Owen nodded before her words had a chance to sink in. "Wait…
your mother
told you?"

"Uh-huh," she said, then tilted her head. "I take it you don't believe in ghosts."

Owen scowled. "No. I don't. But thank your mother for me next time you see her." He realized how rude it sounded, and backtracked. "I'm sorry, I just—"

Sophie shrugged, expressionless. "You're a skeptic. I get it. It's tough not to be cynical these days. Anyway, you have to admit it was fortunate I came when I did."

"It was. Again, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be dismissive."

Sophie brushed it off and launched into a monologue, but Owen only half-listened. The photo on the postcard had caught his attention: a lake nestled among some trees, sparkling with diamond glints of sunshine. At the center of the photo was the rotted crown of a white church steeple, its cross rising from the water. Printed across the top were the words, GREETINGS FROM CHAPEL LAKE!

Speaking of ghosts
, he thought.

"You know, you shouldn't keep your door unlocked," Sophie was saying. "It's not the best neighborhood."

Owen turned the card around and was staring at the words on the back. The postmark was dated June 20, just over three weeks earlier. He recognized his sister's neat handwriting:

Come as soon as you can, Owns.

He's here. Zip.

To an outsider, it must have seemed like gibberish, but to Owen—who knew what his sister had meant by "zip," and who also now had a strong suspicion who
he
was, though the terrifying incident in the bath must surely have been a hallucination brought on by hypoxia—they filled him with a sudden and overwhelming certainty. Lori hadn't gone into Chapel Lake by choice the night she died, he understood that now. Somehow this man, whoever he was, had
drawn
her to the water. Though he might never know for certain, Owen felt the truth of it like a chill in his bones. And though it might have been too late to save Lori, he could still do something about the people he believed had been her killers. The flock. And the man who'd walked on water.

"Is she the one who passed?" Sophie asked.

"Thank you, Sophie," he said, ignoring her question. "Really. For everything." The postcard rattled between his quivering fingers. "But I have to look into this, and I should probably get dressed, so…"

"Oh, no, that's fine. I'm sorry if I overstepped."

"No, not at all," he said.

Sophie gave him a tight-lipped smile, then nodded and crossed to the door. She stopped by the kitchen counter, then turned, her eyebrows raised in concern to where they'd disappeared behind her bangs. "Are you sure you'll be okay?"

"Mm-hmm," he answered much too quickly. With an immense amount of physical concentration, he lowered Lori's postcard to the coffee table as if it were easy. He could tell Sophie didn't believe him, so he forced a smile. "I'm good," he said, a little more aggressively than he'd meant.

"Okay," she said. "You know where I live if you need to talk."

2

Owen dressed quickly in the clothes he'd left in the bathroom cubby, and looked up Chapel Lake again, this time for a map. The town and lake went by the same name, both nestled in a patch of forest along with hundreds of other small lakes—called the Kawartha Lakes or, simply, the Kawarthas—crisscrossed by provincial highways, communities, and country roads in Peterborough County, a little over two hours' drive northeast of Toronto. The map became a steel gray, forest green blur of blocky pixels, the closer he zoomed in on Chapel Lake.

Looking over the postcard again, the wording seemed needlessly enigmatic. He wondered why she hadn't written more, why she hadn't mentioned the
he
by name—why she hadn't sent a whole letter, for that matter. Or an email. Or
called
. If she'd written
I am here
or
He is here
, like the game they'd made up as kids: the time he'd written
I am in a painful place
on their little index cards, meaning the cactus pot, and after nearly twenty minutes of searching he'd inexplicably found Lori kneeling in their mother's closet. But she'd used the contraction this time—
He's here
—as if the phrase had no connection to her game at all.

It had happened so long ago, when they were still so young, he could barely remember the incident at all. Just some photos, a Bible, and Lori sitting among a dozen shoes, their pairs seemingly missing.

Zip
he knew. Zip meant
zip it
, as in
Zip it, Owns. Don't tell Mom
. The fact Lori didn't want their mother to know what she'd been doing up there meant Margaret Saddler wouldn't have approved. But the list of things their mother frowned upon was virtually endless.