The House on Black Lake (25 page)

“Eggie, what did you leave inside the bushes? What is that sound?” A fierce explosion drowns my words and sends me reeling. In the stunning aftermath of the blast, I hear the crackle of burning leaves and watch in horror as the dried foliage along the base of the house begins to burn, and the fire catches the vines and rides up the ivy.

“Sammy... where are you?” I scream, and turn to run.

“For God’s sake, Alexandra, what the hell is going on?” Ramey shouts while crossing the lawn.

“The house is on fire!”

“Calm down. I’ll get a hose from the boat garage.”

“No. It’s impossible. The entire side is already in flames. We have to get everyone off the island. Where are the children—where is Sammy? I have to find him. Give orders for the guests to leave immediately.”

“Jesus Christ...” Ramey says, looking up at the blaze shooting over the roof. “Holy shit!”

“I’ve got to find Sammy!” I turn and run to the rear of the house, calling his name.

Amanda crawls out of a thicket of bushes in the backyard, followed by the bronzed lifeguard from the clubhouse. “It smells like something is burning. What’s going on?”

“Where is Sammy?”

“I haven’t seen him since they started playing hide-and-seek. Oh my God... the house is on fire.”

“Tell everyone to get into their rafts. I’m going inside to look for my son.”

“But Mrs. Brighton, you can’t go in there. Half of it is already in flames.”

“I have to find my child!”

“Mrs. Brighton, where is Samuel?” Gabrielle shouts as she sprints across the lawn.

“Why don’t you know where he is? It’s your job to watch over the children in your charge.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, with tears streaming down her cheeks. “The other children are all down at the dock. They haven’t seen him since the game started.

“You can’t go inside...” she calls after me.

A rush of terror drives me up the stairs. I hear panicky cries of guests as they run from the grounds to the lake. Turning back, I see, beyond the trees, the faint outline of rafts in the water filled with those who have already fled the island—and I hate them for their security in flight.

I heave myself through clouds of smoke and intense heat into the long shadows and ghoulish light of the flames. Through the haze I see vague silhouettes of filmy objects and lumps of furniture. Hungry flares crawl from open hallways and lick their way to where the grand piano billows fire from its gut. I call for my son while moving through the charred ruins to the kitchen.

A swift kick draws me inside an inferno of devastation. The linoleum floor burns the carcass of a dead rat, sucking it down into a charred circle below the crumbling shelf where Egan Schlotter’s accordion melts.

“Alexandra, what are you doing?” Ramey exclaims as he comes up from behind me. “Get the hell out of this house.”

“Where is my baby, Ramey? I can’t find my baby.”

There is an explosion of shattering glass, and an influx of rushing air whips up the blaze.

“Let’s get out of here.” He takes my arm in a fierce clench and leads me back to the entrance.

“But I haven’t checked upstairs.”

“If you go upstairs, you’ll never make it back down,” he says and guides me toward a clear passage.

The entire structure is now aflame. Flares flick madly out the shattered upstairs windows. Embers, like thousands of fireflies, start fresh fires in nearby trees and bushes, and the buildings on the perimeter have also begun to burn.

“I checked the dock before I came to retrieve you,” he says, and leads me to a spot near the path where the air is clear and the sounds of destruction muffled.

“Sammy’s not there. No one has seen him since the kids began playing hide-and-seek.”

“What does that mean, Ramey?”

He peers at me through red-rimmed eyes and his sadness breaks my heart. The lines etching his deathly pallid skin, the anguish in the furrowed brow, and the hollow cheeks beneath his sharp cheekbones all speak a solemn truth. They are evidence of my darkest fear, an unspeakable realization tainted and made bitterer by the source of the reflection. As the grim truth strangles me I see the light in his eyes dim and take on the flat glare of a dead fish.

“Are you telling me Sammy has drowned? Is that what you’re telling me? Answer me! Are you telling me I have lost the only thing in the world that matters?”

I don’t wait for his answer. Because I cannot bear to hear the words. Instead, I turn and run toward the lake.

“Let go of me...” I scream as he sprints after me and grabs me roughly around the waist.

“You wanted to see the monster freed from the cage. Well, here it is; here’s your monster,” I shriek, and turn to spew my venom in the face of the demon who lured me on this cursed journey.

“I am the mother who has lost her child. Do you want me now, Ramey? Do you want to fuck me now?”

“You can’t stay here any longer. You’ll die if you do.”

“I want to go back. I want to cross over the line of time. I can save him if I go back. Please God, send me back,” I wail to the roaring inferno.

“The line of time is the one thing that cannot be crossed.” Ramey’s last words are muffled by an explosion in a bank of trees.

“Pull yourself together, or you’ll cross another line of time you wish you hadn’t.”

“You don’t understand. I have no self and I have no life. There is nothing left. It’s all gone. My life ended the day I met you. I made love to my husband that night and pretended he was you. Nine months to the day I gave birth and my face became that of a freak.”

“Alexandra, that’s not what—”

“I curse the day I met you and I rue the day I knelt at the shrine—” I struggle to continue but my throat has frozen and my face gone slack, lip hanging, eyelid drooping, open, drooling, back to the gruesome mask. I gouge clawed fingers, bow my head, turn and run toward the flames.

He calls after me, but I have left his world forever. I’m done with it. I have entered the empty place between life and the afterlife. Voices call me from inside the crackling conflagration, beckoning me to join them. I suck the smoke into my lungs, inhaling deeply. It won’t be long before Sammy and I are reunited. I will be there to welcome him when he crosses over. Soon we will be joined for eternity.

The dense smoke swallows me up and I move through space—light, empty and disconnected. I stretch out my arms like the blind or the living dead, waving, weaving, and seeking the stability of the railing. It is there for me, mysteriously, as though sensing my desire, helping me to inch my way up the decrepit stairs to the ash-covered porch. Slipping and sliding, swirling in a world of gray matter and unbearable heat, I weave back and forth, like the most forlorn and lost of spirits, until I give in to the roar, the rush, and fall to the floor.

A vaporous, long-limbed beauty with flowing dark hair appears at the front door. It surely must be my guardian, my cousin Paget. “Paget, help me. I’ve lost my darling boy. Help me find him. Lead me through the door!”

Spirits materialize behind her and inside the dark eyes of the departed I see sorrow and pity, but no recognition that they hold my beloved amongst them. Paget floats in and out of my vision and a filmy trail of her seeps from the dwelling as she thrusts out a hand in warning, then turns and vanishes with the others inside the hellish deathtrap. A message is all that is left of my dear cousin—words that float through the thunderous crackle of a burning world:

A death on the island means an eternity interred!

The cursed words raze through an electric charge and imbed themselves in my brain. Reeling against the horrific, I scamper back, burrowing my head, sucking up oxygen swirling in tiny pockets, flitting along the hollowed-out corners of the porch. At the edge, I grasp onto a column and manage to pull myself upright and stumble down the stairs. I race toward Black Lake with arms spread wide, flying across the grounds in weightless freedom, transported by a force other than my own volition. I glide through endless space, beyond the silence of the night, floating through a warp at the rim of reality. Time has stopped its incessant and torturous progression. Nothing exists beyond. My feet take me to the base of the dock near the rush of dark waters. There is a deep growl, fangs bared, coarse fur grazes my leg, the sound of a whimper, a baby’s cry, and I plummet forward and fall into a starry void.

“M
OMMY, MOMMY WAKE UP,” A CHILD’S VOICE WHISPERS
.

I awaken from the unconscious, blind, paralyzed, and bound in a fetal position. Struggling to regain sensation, I find I am able to move fingertips and then a hand to grope through the twisted bindings and force my glued eyelids open. Blinding sunlight streams from above and I have no idea where I am or how I came to be here. Through blurred vision, I see a small face break into a beaming smile.

“My darling... my beautiful boy.” I struggle to free my arms from the sheets to take my son into my arms.

“I was worried about you, Mom.”

“You were worried about
me
?”

“You kept calling my name and talking in your sleep and wouldn’t wake up.”

“Where were you last night, Sammy? I looked for you everywhere. Let’s talk about what happened, because I’m having trouble putting the pieces together.” I free myself from the twisted sheets and work against aching muscles to sit up.

“We already did, don’t you remember? On the way home in the boat with Ramey. I told you what happened.”

Sammy tugs on my arm. “Let’s go upstairs. The kids are waiting for me to go out to the clubhouse. I’ve got to hurry or they’ll leave me behind.”

“No. You are not to leave my side for the rest of the trip. That is final.”

“But Mom, I promised.”

Sammy proceeds to tell me Ruth gave Amanda and Gabrielle a tongue-lashing and threatened to fire them for not keeping a close watch on him yesterday. In the midst of our discussion, the children file downstairs. They entreat and implore and make all sorts of pledges and promises until I have no choice but give in. When I acquiesce, they jump up and down and nearly make my seasick from the jostling of my bed.

Sam’s about to follow Rand upstairs when I call him back. “Sammy, I know you and Rand have become pretty good pals. But he’s older than you; he’s almost a teenager. I want you to be careful. And I want you to promise me under no circumstance will you leave Amanda or Gabrielle and go off alone. Is that clear?” He promises, and I give him a buss on the top of his head and shoo him off to join the other children.

I notice my charred clothes are stuffed inside the fireplace and I wear a fresh tanktop and sweatpants. And I must have showered as well, because my body is clean and my hair still damp. I untangle myself from the shroud of sheets, change into a pair of jeans, tie a sweatshirt over my tank, and walk upstairs to the kitchen.

Ruth stands at the stove with her back turned, cooking something that fills the air with a sweet fragrance. She is dressed in a natty terry-cloth robe and her hair sticks up in matted tufts, like the wig of a second-rate circus clown.

“Good morning, Ruth.”

“Alexandra, I’ve made something special for you—your favorite dish.” I am even more startled at Ruth’s appearance when she turns around. Her face is ghostly pale and it looks like she still wears yesterday’s makeup.

“Ramey told me what happened last night. Have a seat. I made you breakfast.”

“I’m curious to know myself. I must have gone into shock.”

“He said you passed out from smoke inhalation and knocked your head on the edge of a steel trash bin. You were lying at the foot of the bin with Jack licking your face when Ramey found you. He heard you mutter something and a whimper come from inside. The heat from the fire made the metal so hot he couldn’t lift it with his bare hands; he had to force it up with a two-by-four. But luckily Sammy was covered in wet garbage; that’s what kept him alive. He was fine when Ramey pulled him out, but he stank to high heaven. Sam told him he slept through the whole thing.”