Serpentine (15 page)

TWENTY-ONE

Joe’s first nightmare involving the monster from the lake was a doozy. Even as it unfolded, his sleeping mind was somehow aware that it was a nightmare but he did not wake up. That’s probably because it did not start out like a nightmare at all. In fact, it started out like one of those dreams that often had Joe waking up in a flush, hurriedly checking the sheets,

In the nightmare, he and Valerie were lying in a huge field, kissing in the grass. The night was pitch black around them. Fireflies flickered here and there, casting a golden light down into them. He was kissing her along the curve of her neck like he had seen guys do in some of those cheesy romantic movies his mom watched sometimes. Her hands were at his back, going up his shirt. The feel of her hands on his skin was mesmerizing and the fireflies seemed to glow in tandem with the electricity that seemed to flow between them.

“Joe?” Valerie had said in a breathy whisper than had ticked the side of his face.

“Yes?”

“It’s here.”

“What’s here?”

“That thing…it’s here. And it’s hungry.”

Joe pulled away from her. Or, rather, he
tried
pulling away. Her hands clenched together at his lower back and he could only pull himself up a small amount. When he did, he found himself looking down into the face of a waterlogged corpse. Valerie’s face was pale and eaten away along her cheeks, which were bloated and purple. There was mud and muck in her hair from the bottom of the lake. One of her eyes was missing and when she smiled lovingly at him, lake water and mud trickled out of her mouth.

“It’s here,” she said again. “And it’s hungry. It won’t hurt…you’ll drown before it eats you. And drowning isn’t so bad.”

She pulled him down to her and he tried to fight away. But then she was kissing him and as much as he wanted to pull away, he couldn’t stop. Her tongue was cold and rancid. When it left his mouth, it left something behind. Something that squirmed, wriggled, and tasted like fish.

Revolted, he was finally able to pull away. When he turned to run, the leech monster was there. It was standing on its tail and hulking over him. It was at least nine feet tall and its shadow was darker than the night. Its mouth was even darker than that, opening into a squeal of hunger.

Joe turned to run but when he did, Valerie reached out and grabbed his ankle. Her hand was cold and rotten but she displayed impossible strength as she jerked him to the ground. She then crawled on top of him and trailed kisses around the side of his face. More lake water came out of her, trickling down his cheeks and along his lips.

He opened his mouth to scream but the thing was falling on them. It wasn’t cold, as he thought it would be, but warm and inviting. The suckers along the bottom of its body latched on to him and the stinging sensation was only brief. Valerie had been right; it wasn’t so bad.

He felt himself being pulled across the field and towards the lake in its warm embrace. And all the while, Valerie was kissing him, whispering into his ear:
“It’s hungry and it won’t stop until we’re dead…”

That’s when Joe jerked awake in his bed.

He came awake so fast that he nearly fell into the floor. He was covered in sweat and his heart was hammering in his chest. He looked across the room and saw Mac sleeping peacefully with Mr. Scraps tucked under one arm.

As he glanced around the room, trying to force his panicked mind and heart to realize that they were safe in the cabin and not out in the water, the nightmare replayed in his head. He felt like had
had
to remember it and relive it because maybe then he could also convince himself that the monster wasn’t real. He and Valerie hadn’t
really
seen that impossible creature come lurching out of the lake, had they? No…because things like that just didn’t exist.

But still, the logical part of his mind still cowered behind the part that had been spooked by the nightmare.
Well, whether it exists or not, you saw it,
his brain told him.
And so did Valerie. So yeah, I’d say it was pretty damned real.

When he was sure that he was calm and collected, Joe reached out to the bedside table and grabbed his iPhone. It was 2:06 and he saw no missed texts from Valerie. He didn’t know if she slept with the sounds on her phone off, and he really wasn’t all that worried about it in that moment. He texted her, trying not to think of her as the dead and rotting thing that he’d seen in his nightmare.

Pretty bad nightmare about that thing from the lake,
he typed in. Hope you’re doing okay. Thinking about you a lot.

He waited a few moments to see if she’d text him back but his phone remained silent. He guessed that meant she was sleeping. That was good—maybe it meant she wasn’t having any more nightmares.

He lay back down but realized that his mouth was dry. Although it had been nothing more than a dream, he could swear that he tasted lake water and a faint trace of fish in his mouth. He got out of bed, figuring a glass of water might make it go away. He quietly left the room, taking a final peek back at Mac to make sure she hadn’t stirred awake.

He tiptoed through the hall and to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the sink. He drank it slowly, still not liking the idea of having
anything
in his mouth after the nightmare. But the cool water seemed to make those imagined tastes leave his mouth and he finished the glass quickly. He set the glass down in the sink and started back to his room.

That’s when he heard the voices. He stopped and stood motionless for a moment. Because of the frazzled state of his nerves due to the dream, he automatically assumed that the voices indicated something bad. But as he cocked his head to the side and listened to them, he realized that he the voices were both familiar.

His parents were whispering from somewhere very nearby. This made no sense, as their bedroom was nearly on the opposite side of the cabin. He turned to see if they were maybe lurking behind him with the intent of playing a joke on him or something, but the kitchen and hallway were empty.

He looked to the picture window behind the dining table and saw the briefest flicker of light. He stepped towards it and when he saw the shapes of his parents, he stopped.

He was embarrassed at first but then realized that they weren’t doing anything that would scar him for life. If he had to guess, they had recently finished doing such a thing, though. They were laying together on one of the big lounge chairs on the back deck with a blanket over them. Maybe they
were
still doing…well…doing
that
. Joe didn’t think so, though, because they were actually talking.

He stepped away from the window and pressed himself against the wall. It was hard to hear everything they said through the glass, but he was able to catch the tones and inflections of their voices. And the important thing is that they sounded happy. They were laughing. In fact, at one point his mother started giggling in a way that reminded him of how Mac sounded whenever she started laughing and couldn’t stop.

Realizing how creepy it was that he was essentially spying on his parents after they’d probably just had sex, Joe stepped away from the window and headed back to his room. He felt a momentary pang of joy at the sight of his parents so happy together. It was a joy that increased as he got into bed and noticed the flashing light on his phone. He picked it up and saw that he had a message from Valerie.

That sux. Sorry about the nightmares. Thinking about you too. Cabin tomorrow at 4?

Smiling, Joe typed in: See ya there.

When he pressed Send, he was again struck by just how badly he was falling for this girl. It made him feel weak…but in a good way.

He put the phone down and lay down in bed. When he closed his eyes, the nightmare wasn’t very far from his mind. But thoughts of seeing Valerie tomorrow began to dwarf it as he managed to find sleep once again.

TWENTY-TWO

Wayne knew something was wrong with Al. It had been three days since his friend had been pulled into the lake by a creature that he still couldn’t put a name to. Al had been a little distant and very quiet. He’d spent most of the day after the incident in bed. When Wayne had called to check on him, Kathy had answered the phone and requested in a not-so-polite way that Wayne give him a few days to recover.

Now, though, two days after being pulled into the water, Al looked like he was on the mend. They were in Al’s back yard, taking up their usual positions around the horseshoe pit. The only noticeable difference was that Al was not drinking from a can of Coors as he usually did. Instead, he had a bottle of vitamin water sitting in his lounge chair as he went about the business of taking Wayne to task at a game of horseshoes.

“What did the doc say?” Wayne asked. While he would never admit it to anyone, he was extremely grateful to have his friend safe and sound. He’d spent that first night after the attack trying to imagine the sort of person he’d become if he didn’t have Al to spend time with.

“He said I’m fine,” Al said. “My blood pressure was up a bit, but that was to be expected from the scare I had. There’s a mark of some sort on the back of my neck from where the thing latched on, but the doctor cleaned it up and said there are no signs of infection.”

“Good,” Wayne said.

“What’s good is that you had that nubby little pistol with you,” Al said. His voice was grave, taking on a serious tone that freaked Wayne out a little bit. “If you hadn’t shot that thing, I’d probably be at the bottom of the lake right now.”

“You don’t know that,” Wayne said.

“Yes, I do. I felt that thing…it was strong as hell and it was not about to give up. If you hadn’t shot it, I’d be dead right now. I know it. Kathy knows it. And we’re both extremely grateful.”

“Thanks,” Wayne said quietly, not sure how to take the gratitude. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had sincerely thanked him. For that matter, he couldn’t remember the last time he had done something worthy of such thanks.

Wayne took his turn, tossing a horseshoe slightly left of the peg. It landed with a thud in the sand.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Al said. “Kathy didn’t want you over here. She thinks I should be in bed, recovering.”

“Is that what the doctor said?”

“The doctor said to take it easy for a few days. He’s worried about the stress levels and all of that.” He gave a roll of the eyes as he took his place to take his turn. He tossed his horseshoe and it landed directly in front of the peg. So far, there had been no musical
clinks
of the shoes hitting the pegs. That alone was enough to indicate that both men were distracted and off their game.

“You heard anything from the game warden yet?” Al asked.

“Not a thing. She assured me that she’d look into it and I think she meant it. There’s been some other things, you know. Word around town is that some dock repair guy died a few days ago. He was a bloody mess when they found him out at the Carter house. All anyone knows is that
something
attacked him. There was a teenage couple, too…both dead. They still haven’t found all of the boy.”

“Damn,” Al said. “Kathy was telling me that weird guy Brett Yates is missing. Someone found a little rowboat that he owns just floating around by itself nearly two weeks ago.”

“You think whatever it was that we saw is doing all of it?”

A look came over Al’s face when he nodded and Wayne suddenly thought that maybe Al
should
be resting inside. The man looked like a ghoul, his eyes glazed over and his mouth drawn tight.

“Yeah,” Al answered, and it was clear that he was remembering what it felt like to be in that thing’s grip—to have it clinging to him, covering part of his face as it tried to pull him beneath the water.

“You okay, Al?” Wayne asked.

Al nodded, his gaze no longer glassy. He bent down slowly to pick up a horseshoe and looked at it longingly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Look…I’m going to be honest with you, so you better not use this as joke ammo later on, got it?”

“Sure.”

“That thing scared the hell of out me. It was so bad that my bladder let go when it had me in the water. The last two nights, I’ve woke up from nightmares. Last night, I cried like a baby. Kathy is scared for me and the only reason she didn’t put up an argument about you coming over today is because she thought it might do me some good. But…something’s wrong with me. I think it’s a mental thing, really. Physically, I feel fine. A little tired, maybe.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Wayne said. “I had no idea…”

“I know. I didn’t
want
you to know. But just thinking about the lake makes me terrified, like a kid scared of the boogie man. I really appreciate you being so concerned and all but I need to take a break. Let’s try this some other time, okay?”

“Sure. No problem, man. I…well, I was scared to death, too. I thought you were dead the moment that thing came up out the water and got you.”

“I did, too.”

“Why don’t you call me when you’re ready to hang out?” Wayne said. He did his best to sound serious, something he knew he was terrible at doing. “And if you need to just talk through it, give me a call.”

“I will. Thanks for understanding.”

Wayne nodded and watched Al grab up his vitamin water and head for the front porch. Wayne tossed the horseshoe he had been holding in his hand. It barely landed within the box. He looked up to the porch and watched Al go through the screen door and into his house.

Wayne picked up the little red cooler he always brought to Al’s (the same cooler that had been on the boat when the thing had attacked Al) and started walking towards Kerr Lane. He only made it a few steps before he heard the screen door opening. He turned, wondering if Al had already changed his mind.

Instead, he saw Kathy coming down the steps. She crossed the yard and met him in the driveway. She looked just as tired as Al had looked but there was also a smile on her face.

Without saying anything, she approached him and gave him a hug. Wayne was pretty sure it was the first time she had ever willingly touched him. Awkwardly, he returned it as best he could. He caught sight of the veggie garden beyond the back corner of the house and wondered how much time she’d spend out there in the coming days while Al was on the mend.

“Thank you for saving him,” she said.

He waited until she broke the hug before responding. “It wasn’t a problem.”

Kathy looked to him like he was a stranger that she was trying to learn to trust. She had been very pretty when Al had first met her and a lot of that younger woman still existed behind the growing wrinkles and grey hair. Her age showed mostly around her eyes, where the crow’s feet were deep and pronounced.

“Do you know what that thing was?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I know it wasn’t a snake or an alligator. It looked like a leech or…I don’t know…just like some random sea monster, you know?”

“Do you think Susan Lessing and the police are taking this seriously?”

Given what had nearly happened to her husband, Wayne didn’t see the point in going down the checklist of deaths and disappearances that he and Al had just reviewed to prove his point. “Yes,” he said. “When I spoke to her on the phone, it seemed like she is taking it very seriously.”

“Good,” she said. “Now, Wayne, can you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“I hope you know I mean nothing by this, but I think you should stay away for a while. This shook Al up more than I think he’d let you know. Let him deal with it for a while. I thought you coming over today would help him but the look I just saw on his face when he came inside was…well, it was haunting.”

“That’s fair,” Wayne said. “I told him to call me when he’s feeling better. I think I’ll stick to that.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“Could you do me another favor?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Stay off the lake until this thing gets figured out. I hate to be the protective hen, but that’s what I’m going to be. Al thinks a lot of you and if he lost you…”

“I know.”

She smiled and looked him in the eyes directly. “Stay off the lake, Wayne.”

“I will.”

Kathy gave him a kind nod of approval before turning around and heading back for the house. She hurried up the stairs and back into the house without looking back at him.

Wayne looked sadly at the horseshoe pits and the strewn shoes. Then, hefting the minor weight of his cooler, he started back towards his house. Within seconds, he knew he had lied to Kathy.

He was already making plans to break the second promise he’d made.