Colt stands, checks. ‘Just beer. No ice.’
He stomps into the tent, looking for a jug of water, but all he sees inside the steaming dark enclosure is a sleeping bag that looks as though it enjoyed its last washing in 1987, a pile of clothes, approximately seventy empty beer cans (sober for fourteen years!) and the rifle.
Leonard has left his gun here.
He was holding it three hours ago, kicked back in his lawn chair outside the Airstream. Which means he must have come back to his tent since then, decided he didn’t need the weapon and then headed off to wherever he felt he needed to go. If he was scared, paranoid, or otherwise called away in distress, why leave the rifle? Doesn’t make sense. But, then, Leonard never has.
Ray emerges from the tent, and the sight of the Bronco reminds him – the cooler he and Megan brought should be in there, the last of their water and beer probably still cold.
‘Be right back.’
‘Bring me something,’ she says.
He is six steps from the Bronco when he notices that the hood is unlatched.
‘That wasn’t like that,’ he says, as much to himself as to his sister.
‘What?’
Ray walks to the front of the Bronco, trying to summon an explanation. There isn’t one. He finds the lever inside the front grill, but the hood has already been released. He raises it.
‘What the FUCK! No, no, no!’
‘What’s wrong?’ Colt hurries over and stands beside him, then flinches. ‘Oh my God. Who did this?’
Ray glares at her.
She swallows. ‘But why?’
‘Because he’s an asshole nutcase sociopath who should be behind bars. He wants us to suffer, Colette. Do you get it now? Our brother won’t be happy until we are all down in the shit with him.’
‘Did you do something to piss him off?’
‘Other than foil his blackmail scheme, no, not really. But how would he know about that already?’
‘Maybe this is about Dad. It’s his truck, after all.’
‘It’s my truck,’ Ray says. The sight of it vandalized hurts more than he would have guessed possible. ‘Dad gave it to me for graduating high school.’
‘But it’s got Dad written all over it,’ Colt says. ‘That’s what Leonard sees when he looks at this truck. Dad. Childhood. The lake.’ And the untainted son, Ray wants to add. Has Leonard always hated him? Or has his hatred grown over the years?
‘You know, he pulled a gun on us. Aimed his rifle at our heads. Said he thought we were the bad guys chasing him for their money. But think about it, Colt. If he recognized this truck last night, then he knew it was family. Me. And he still pulled the gun.’
Colt can only blink at him in pained sympathy, most of it for Leonard, Ray knows.
He forces himself to have another gander at the severed wires, the gaping hole where the battery should be sitting. The apparent bucket of sand overflowing from the radiator, and more poured into the exposed cylinder heads. Jesus Lord, he removed the engine cover too. There were tools involved! This was not a frenzy. It was premeditated! Will cost thousands to repair. But never mind that. How are they going to get out of here? He and Megan can’t leave on their own. Colt will have to give them a ride. She has the Audi…
‘Oh shit,’ Ray says, running to the white Chevy truck. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘Back by the Airstream. Why?’
The Chevy’s tires, all four, have been gashed. A puddle of green radiator fluid is still visible in the sand under the front bumper. Not that it would matter at this point, but any chance he left the keys in the ignition? Nope.
‘When was the last time you checked it?’
‘What for?’ But the answer dawns on her as soon as she sees the Chevy’s tires. ‘Oh God. Oh no.’
Ray walks back to the tent. ‘Dad’s Land Cruiser too. We need to check everything.’
‘All of us? Why would he do that?’
‘He doesn’t want any of us to leave, obviously. The next question is, what does he want us to do here?’
Colt hangs her head, covers her eyes. ‘I think… maybe he wants to spend the rest of his life here? Three weeks ago he told me on the phone. ‘It will be so beautiful, no one will ever want to go home.’ I thought he was joking, and I never even considered he wanted us to stay with him. All of us.’
‘Well, that’s not happening. But it is pure delusion and pure Leonard,’ Ray says. ‘But what worries me? Where this looks like it’s heading? What if it’s not a delusion?’
‘Not following you.’
‘Say Leonard is still sane enough to know that the possibility of us staying here for a long time, as one big happy family, is ludicrous, okay? He has to know we would never agree to that. Or else why bother attacking the vehicles.’
‘Okay…’
‘But what if his definition of “the rest of our lives” isn’t a long time at all? What if he thinks it’s just three or four days? The way Dad planned it. The way Leonard’s been preparing for it. And… you see?’
Colt gasps.
Ray slips back inside the tent. He picks up Leonard’s rifle. He knocks over some beer cans (sober, my ass) and piles of clothing in search of any other weapons, shells, anything that merits a phone call to the principal’s office. There, in the corner, peeking out from under a pair of filthy jeans. A leather sheath, thick metal handle with the compass at the end. It’s almost funny, and then not.
‘What are we going to do?’ Colt calls from outside. ‘Ray? What —’
He steps from the tent, weapons wrapped in a threadbare beach towel.
‘Keep everyone safe in the trailer. Secure all the gear.’ He pauses, opening the towel to show her the knife. ‘Then we probably ought to find our brother, before he completes his transformation into John fucking Rambo.’
Awakening
Colt’s Audi – which she claimed was actually her ex-husband Simon’s Audi, the only thing he left her in the divorce, aside from their daughter and ‘a bunch of bruises from the assault’ – was hosed. Wires, timing belt, tires. Warren’s Land Cruiser received the same tire treatment, plus a crowbar plunged into the ignition. They thought to at least try to start the engines on all four maimed vehicles, but no one could find the sets of keys. The only means of transport left at their disposal was the Old Testament kind – their own two feet.
Warren stood stoically, arms crossed as Ray explained his theories, Leonard’s debts, his paranoia, the rifle encounter of last night, his obsession with the gear that belonged to Megan’s family. Colt confirmed the rest, confessing to their father how Leonard had been staying here for weeks or months, unraveling, babbling about ‘closing the loop’ and ‘making peace with their fates’ as he first predicted and then prepared for the reunion trip.
‘Which means you threatened the life of an innocent woman,’ Ray finished, ‘one I happen to care about a great deal. As of now, Megan is the only person I trust out here, and if you don’t apologize to her the minute she comes back, we’ll walk straight to the nearest police station and we will tell them everything. Are we clear?’
Warren puffed up his chest, looked his son in the eyes, and said, ‘I was out of line. Please do whatever you need to do to bring Megan back so that I may apologize to her myself. I will tell her what I can about her family, as soon as we have finished locating the rest of ours.’
‘No more games,’ Ray said. ‘No more guns, games, schemes… only the truth. Is that too much to ask?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘What are we supposed to do now?’ Colt asks for the tenth or twelfth time as they reconvene at the picnic table. Sierra is napping in the Airstream, while Francine rests on the larger bed, the air conditioning humming its lullaby to child and elder alike.
‘We’ll talk to your mother in a minute,’ Warren says. ‘She can’t speak, but she communicates in other ways and is aware of more than we give her credit for. She might have seen something before she nodded off. Leonard might h
ave said something or acted funny before… this.’
Ray guzzles water, keeping an eye out for Megan. Unless she got lost she will have seen the signal by now – the Bronco. If it had not been moved, that meant it was safe for her to return to camp. Of course, it can’t be moved now, she may see the damage and decide to keep her distance. He will have to go search for her soon, not least because Leonard could be out there right now, crashing around in the bush, and might run into her. It’s possible that tracking down Megan has become Leonard’s next priority.
‘He had to have been working fast to do this,’ Ray says. ‘You and Colt were only gone for what, an hour and a half? This job ate some time. He couldn’t have gotten very far, especially not on foot.’
‘You can’t see the beach from here,’ Colt says. ‘Which means Leonard wouldn’t have seen our confrontation unless he followed us. ‘
Warren runs a hand over his mouth, looking sheepish.
‘What is it?’ Ray says.
Warren sighs. ‘There were no messages. No attempts at blackmail. From Megan or Leonard or anyone else.’
Colt looks as surprised as Ray feels, though not as angry. ‘What are you saying? If no one sent those messages… you sent them. Jesus, Dad. What did I just say? No more games!’
Warren has his hands up in surrender. ‘I started to tell you on the beach. We knew who she was. Gaspar informed me of her presence in the restaurant over a year ago. But we didn’t know what she wanted, what she knew. I had to isolate her. Scare her. But that’s all I was ever going to do, Raymond, believe me —’
‘Believe you!’ Ray shouts, jumping down from the table. ‘All you’ve done is lie! You selfish bastard, did you ever consider —’
‘We almost died, Raymond. Your mother, your sister, your brother. While you were tucked safe inside the camper, we were fighting for our lives, and we damn near lost the battle. Have you ever thought of that? That maybe we were trying to protect ourselves? To save you too? My God, son, you have no clue what we were up against.’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ Ray says, disgusted, turning away.
Colt chews on her thumb, pacing. ‘The thing is, we still don’t have an explanation for the cars. If Len wasn’t upset about Megan and the whole blackmail thing, then what was it?’
‘Think about your brother,’ Warren says. ‘Leonard might be unstable but he’s not stupid. Also, he’s grossly overweight, drinking all that beer, the amount of food he ate this morning. Does your brother strike either of you as a man in the frame of mind or body to go running around the beach playing spy, tracking us, doubling back to HQ for a riot of vandalism that would have taken whatever wind was left in his sails before he ran off again to hide? Do you see Leonard loping around the woods all night, stalking and taunting us for days? I did exactly that for two years in Vietnam, when I was twenty and built like a brick shithouse, and let me tell you, Leonard wouldn’t have lasted eight hours over there in that jungle hell —’
The door to the Airstream opens with a bang, causing all of them to jump.
‘Sierra —’ Colt begins, turning for her daughter, and then yelps in surprise.
Everyone is paralyzed, except for the woman who actually should be paralyzed. The woman who is standing in the doorway, then planting her bare feet, one patient step after another down the three short steps. She stands firmly in the sand, gazing past them, across the green growth in the clearing and out toward the receded water they all feel but cannot see. Her voice has aged but is still strong and clear, the way Ray remembers it from his childhood.
‘The lake has him,’ Francine Mercer says, her eyes creasing above a beatific smile. ‘It was waiting for us to come back, and now it has our first-born son. Aren’t we so blessed?’
The Stranger
Francine leads them from the clearing without acknowledging their questions, making her slow trek to the beach on legs even her husband has not seen her use in more than four years. The urge to race ahead or berate her for more information is strong, but they are at her mercy. Warren tells them to shut up or stay at camp, let the woman follow her ‘intuition’.
Now they walk respectfully behind her, Warren hewing near her right side and one pace back, Colt holding Sierra as she trudges alongside Ray. Even little Sierra, awakened from her nap, seems to understand something important is happening.
It’s a miracle, Ray thinks. Or else the past four years were a ruse. Or else this weekend is one big practical joke, the psychological boot camp Leonard mentioned. How else is Ray supposed to accept his mother leading them down the beach like a prophet?
They are approximately halfway to the water when Ray notices movement off to their left. Megan is near the Bronco, observing them. Her posture is one of acute balance, the jack rabbit prepared to bolt at the coyote’s first launch into action. He doesn’t have it in him to shout right now, the prospect of which seems akin to shouting in church. He waves casually – come on back – and a few seconds later she begins to walk toward their strange little procession.
Colt glances at Megan and continues on as if her return is last week’s news. Warren studies Ray’s tired looking girlfriend, this new addition to the family at whom he aimed a pistol only a few hours before, with a bit more interest. He gives her a kind of apologetic version of the elevator eyes, lips humbly pursed, and then offers a pointed nod: I’m sorry, welcome back, please observe the silence. Then he moves on, walking abreast of his wife, their eyes on the horizon.
Ray drops a few paces behind Colt as Megan joins him. ‘Are you all right? Did you get some water?’
‘I see your mother’s health has improved since this morning.’
‘I think she was faking it all along. Oh, and Leonard’s missing.’
‘I saw the damage to the Bronco.’
‘He went berserk. All the vehicles are completely dicked,’ Ray says. ‘Then my mom stepped out of the trailer and announced that the lake took him.’
Megan tenses, looking more alarmed by this development than Ray can bring himself to feel. He reminds himself that she has had first-hand experiences out here with disappearances. The situation is more real for her.
‘You don’t have to play along,’ Ray says, unsure whether he is making light of it all to comfort her or himself. ‘You can wait back at our tent. I’m not walking all over the place with them, just down to the water. I’ll be back soon.’
Megan frowns at the prospect. ‘What did your dad say about me?’
‘He knows it wasn’t you. Colt too. My dad made it all up, the part about the blackmail, the money, the postcards. It was all a charade to —’
‘I get it,’ Megan says. ‘I figured that out two hours ago.’
‘How —’
‘Because I know something everyone else seems to keep forgetting,’ she says. ‘There was no one else there that night. The storm chased the other campers away, and the rest of us who stayed were too busy trying to survive, or too busy dying, to document a crime.’
Ray doesn’t know what to say to that.
‘We should help them look,’ she says, leading him on.
The entire bay opens before them as they crest the last rise on the beach and the view slopes gradually down another hundred yards. Despite the constant faint breeze moving over the water, tugging the green-brown surface of the shallows into crystalline folds, the heat is nearly unbearable. The peak afternoon sun hammers at their backs, their necks, and Ray can feel the first tight sting of its burn on his nose.
‘We can leave any time,’ he tells her. ‘We don’t owe them anything.’
Beneath the Lake Page 18