by Frank Martin
“You don’t have to worry about us, though,” April said while popping another Buffalo wing into her mouth. “Our uncle doesn’t even have a boat.”
Truth be told, April didn’t really care about having a boat. She probably wouldn’t even have gone on one if they did. But she had gotten so used to snapping out a sarcastic response whenever there was an opportunity for one that she didn’t even think about saying them anymore. They just came out automatically, like a reflex.
The comment, however, went right over the Sheriff’s head, who focused on a single word instead. “Uncle? So these are the niece and nephew you were telling me about the other day, Henry.”
Henry smiled proudly while gesturing to the children seated across from him. “This is April and her brother, Mark. They’ll be staying with me for the summer while their parents travel around Europe.”
Sheriff Thompson nodded, impressed with the story. “Europe, huh? Sounds fun. Shame they couldn't take you with them.”
“Oh, they could’ve,” April quipped, slobbering another wing in some ranch dressing. “They just chose not to.”
She unabashedly popped the wing into her mouth as Henry leaned over the table towards her. “Come on, April. That’s not fair of you to say.”
“It’s true,” April exclaimed, modestly putting her hand in front of her mouth full of food. “They’ve always paid some babysitter to stay at home with us for the summer so they could do their globetrotting thing. Last year was South America. Australia the year before that. Not that we would know if they went somewhere else because they make it a point to be unreachable.”
Sheriff Thompson’s head hung low, distressed by the conversation’s sudden shift in tone. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Enjoying herself a little more than was appropriate, April smirked and playfully waved off the Sheriff’s sympathy. “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s a lot better during the school year when they ship us off to boarding school. Then we’re lucky if we get a phone call once a week.”
Henry and Sheriff Thompson exchanged subtle glances, each one of them unsure how to respond.
“Damn, April,” Mark jeered, his eyes shifting back and forth between the two adults. “Way to kill the mood.”
Sensing the atmosphere was in dire need of uplifting, Sherriff Thompson sucked in a huge puff of air, as if inflating his body with optimism. “Well, then forget about your parents. Sounds to me like your summer here is off to a great start with your uncle.”
The Sheriff’s response took April by surprise. People in the city didn’t talk like that. They didn’t even think like that, which was par for the course in a place where nobody ever said what they meant. Yet she believed the Sheriff genuinely had a cheery disposition. Especially when her uncle reciprocated by beaming with pride.
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Uncle Henry touted before stammering over his mistake. “Err, I mean Brian.”
Smiling, Sheriff Thompson tilted his head and nodded, a reflex from wearing the sheriff’s hat he forgot he didn’t have on.
“Have a great night, folks,” he said before turning to walk away.
A waitress carrying two plates stepped up to take his place.
“All right,” she said, holding out one of the plates with a red mesh basket of French fries. “Who got the chicken fingers?”
Henry lifted his hand with a soft smile, and as the waitress dropped the plate in front of him, April slapped her face into her palm, embarrassed to be seen with a grown man that ordered a meal off the children’s menu.
CHAPTER FOUR
After dinner, Henry weighed the options of going out for soft serve or just using the tub ice cream he had in the freezer back at his house. He mostly had this debate with himself. Out loud, too, much to Mark’s amusement.
Ultimately, Henry decided to bring the kids back home as it was getting late. As much as he wanted to be the fun uncle, he also wanted to be a responsible one, too. Or at least, he was trying to be. Not an easy task for a grown man who’d spent his entire life as a bachelor.
Sitting out on their uncle’s porch, April and Mark each enjoyed a bowl of chocolate caramel ice cream. Henry went with vanilla, which surprised no one.
Nobody said a word. There had been enough conversation over dinner. Instead, they all sat in silence, staring out over the lake as the full moon radiated through a fog crawling off the water.
Despite all her attempts not to, April left her uncle’s house with a smile. Obviously, Mark was smiling too, and the laughing siblings ran down the walkway to the guesthouse, pretending the fog starting to disperse through the property was chasing them.
Once inside, there was little to discuss. Mark and April each went to their respective rooms and shut their doors. Well, Mark did. April left hers a crack open, waiting to see how long it took her brother to turn the light off. The answer was barely three minutes. The poor kid was exhausted.
April wasn’t quite ready to fall asleep. She put in her ear buds, lay down in bed, and scrolled aimlessly through social media on her phone. But she wasn’t paying attention to it. Her mind was elsewhere, still trying to come to grips with the fact that she might’ve actually enjoyed herself tonight. Against all odds, April couldn’t remember a bad moment of the evening. Embarrassing? Sure. Cringe-worthy? Absolutely. But bad? Not really. It was almost kind of…fun. Though it was painful, she had to admit, to use that word.
After so many years of failures and disappointments, April had almost given up on the concept of family time. Surprisingly, her uncle changed that. Her dorky, out of touch, hopelessly awkward uncle. What he did for them tonight, something as simple as dinner and a movie, made April believe that the summer might not be as bad as she thought. Possibly even something she could look forward to.
And it was with that thought that April turned off the light and let her head fall against the pillow. She closed her eyes, ready to drift off into a happy slumber, when the rolling whoosh of her uncle’s sliding glass door echoed outside the window.
She leaned off of the bed and pushed down on the blinds. Up the hill from the guesthouse, Henry’s place loomed from above. The shifting fog had grown to cover the house like a living wall and scattered the moonlight in a thousand directions.
After another whoosh from the glass door, a figure emerged from the darkness inside the house and stepped onto the porch. Without a hint of urgency, the figure descended the steps onto the walkway and continued down towards the guesthouse, parting the fog as it moved. The figure’s steps were slow and deliberate, as if calculating each one before lifting its leg. Distorted by the fog, the moonlight outlined the figure like a spectral being but darkened its form, obscuring its face into a void.
Not that April didn’t know who it was. The figure was obviously Uncle Henry. It had to be. But why was he coming to the guesthouse? Was everything all right? April hoped it was, but there was something about her uncle, the way he moved with meticulous intent, that formed a knot in her stomach.
As he approached the house, April put her head back down on the pillow, pretending she never saw him. Then she heard another whoosh of a sliding door. Only this one came from downstairs.
Then came the footsteps in the kitchen, one after the other. They were soft, barely more than a tap. Impossible to hear if April hadn’t been listening for them. She squeezed her eyes shut, again praying that Henry took care of his business inside the house and left, but as the steps grew closer, she knew that wasn’t the case.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the noises stopped in front of her door, followed by a soft creak as it was carefully pushed open. April pressed her face deep into the pillow, pretending to sleep and wishing he would just go away. She held her breath, lying as still as possible as another eternity passed her by.
“Hello, April,” a shallow whisper greeted her.
April released a shaky sigh before sitting up off the bed and seeing her uncle standing tall in the doorway. Henry was still, his hands plastered to h
is sides like a tin soldier at attention. He wore the same warm, welcoming smile he always did, but the expression was cut in half by the hazy shadow in the hallways. The weak moonlight piercing through the blinds only illuminated half his face. The other half was drenched in the darkness extending out from April’s room.
“Uhh,” she stammered fearfully, unsure how to respond to the surprise visit. “Hi, Uncle Henry. Kinda late, isn’t it?”
Henry’s head bobbed up and down, popping in and out of the moon’s glow. “It is. But I couldn’t sleep and just saw your light go off. I figured you were still awake.”
April’s hands clenched around the edge of the bed sheets, squeezing them tightly while pulling them closer to her chest. “Ooookay. But I’m trying to sleep now so could you—”
“Yeah,” Mark interrupted by stepping through the threshold of the room. “You're right. I should come inside. We don’t want to wake Mark up.”
Henry turned around and shut the door so gently it never even clicked. April stared at his back as he stayed there for a moment, nothing more than the outline of a figure in the darkness. April’s body grew warm, yet a shiver ran down her arms, dragging a wave of goose bumps along with it.
Eventually, after hovering in place for several seconds, Henry’s head sunk low, hanging over his chest as he spoke. “The reason I couldn’t sleep is...”
Henry abruptly spun around on his heels. There was no face for April to see in the darkness. Only two, glossy orbs staring back at her.
“You like it here, right, April?” the orbs asked.
Struck by their stare, April shrugged and nodded at the same time. “Yeah. I guess so.”
Henry took a step forward, entering the faint, streaky light from the window behind the bed. “You’re having fun? Enjoying yourself on the lake?”
April looked away from him, averting her gaze to the floor. “Well, I’ve always been kind of a city girl, but the water’s kind of growing on me. It’s only been a couple of days.”
Henry approached April’s bedside, bringing his long stride directly into her line of sight. “And what about me? Do you like me, too?”
“Yeah, Uncle Henry,” April answered, keeping her eyes pointed down at his feet. “You’ve been real nice.”
“Aww,” Henry bawled. “Thank you.”
He remained standing beside the bed, practically inviting April to look at him. She refused, though, holding out for as long as she could. They each waited silently in that position until April finally glanced up, meeting Henry’s intense eye line and prompting him to speak. “It’s just that...”
Henry moved swiftly to sit down at the edge of the bed, catching April off guard. She dropped the sheets and recoiled her legs, clutching them into her chest. But after the first, sudden burst of movement, Henry slowed to a crawl. Controlling his body, he sat down gently, careful not to plop down too hard on the bed all at once.
“What you said to the Sheriff about your parents really got to me,” Henry confessed.
He released the weight of his body, which compressed into the mattress and sunk April even further down into it. Still clasping onto her legs, April uncomfortably squirmed in place. “I didn't mean to—”
“Our parents never treated your mom and me like that,” Henry interjected. “So it’s unbelievable that she would do that to you.”
April smiled and chuckled awkwardly. She didn’t know what else to do. “Yeah...well...I’m used to it.”
“But you shouldn’t have to be. You should be around family that loves you, nurtures you, and…” Henry reached out slowly, placing a tender hand on the top of April’s knee,“…will always take care of you.”
April stared at the hand as if it were an alien creature latched onto her skin. It paralyzed her and sent a cold shiver down her spine.
“Uncle Henry,” she said, carefully pushing further back on the bed to remove her knee from his grasp. “I think you should—”
“Mark really loves it here, doesn’t he?”
Henry’s sudden question caught April by surprise. Why would he bring up Mark? Especially right now. She didn’t understand it and therefore didn’t know how to react.
“I know,” Henry continued with a friendly smile, his body playfully bobbing up and down on the fluffy mattress. “You’re a cosmopolitan teenager that’s interested in guys and makeup and all that other stuff girls do when no one is watching. But Mark...”
Henry paused to take a deep breath. His frame, although thin and scrawny, expanded as he inhaled, and his demeanor changed, too. Drained of its jubilance, his face sunk, becoming solemn and sober.
“He’s still just a boy,” Henry woefully lamented. “Just a sweet, innocent kid looking to get all his energy out by running around. The lake lets him do that. I mean, heck, it’s only been a couple of days and you already see how happy he is, don’t you?”
April wasn’t expecting the image of Mark smiling to pop into her head…but it did. The picture bore its way into her mind until it was all she could think about. To the point where it pained April to think the man responsible for it had made her feel so powerless. In that moment, her brother’s happiness became a burden. One that April suddenly felt compelled to bear.
Seeing April under such emotional strain, or perhaps merely sensing an opportunity, Henry returned his hand to her leg. “But I also want you to be happy, too, April.”
Again, the hand paralyzed her, filling her chest with dread. The wave of terror slithered up into her throat, preventing her from speaking.
“I want us all to be happy together,” Henry went on with a warm smile.
April tried to exhale through the stress, but each quivering breath felt as if it was being extracted from her body.
“What’d ya say?” Henry asked, slowly leaning in. “Will you be happy with me?”
He then placed a gentle kiss on her trembling lips.
CHAPTER FIVE
April didn’t sleep. She cried, instead.
Her head shot up off the floor when the first rays of sunlight peeked in through the blinds. She couldn’t be in the bed. Not after what happened.
There was no way Mark was up yet, but April couldn’t stay in her room any longer. She slipped through the small crack in the door without touching it. Henry was kind enough to leave it as it was when he arrived the night before.
After drudging through the hall, April slunk downstairs, her feet barely hovering off the floor as she stepped. She then carefully pulled the sliding door in the kitchen open, just enough for her slim frame to fit through. Once she was past the threshold outside, April’s body exploded in an all out sprint down the walkway.
The evening’s fog had faded to nothing more than a light morning mist, and April ripped through it as she ran across the grass, past the dock, and straight into the untouched woods beyond the street’s dead end.
Still in nothing more than the shorts and tank top she slept in, April’s bare feet crunched against the leaves and branches littering the forest floor. There was no stopping the tears from flowing under her eyes, but April scrunched her face to keep herself from crying completely. She focused straight ahead, zoning in on a path forward as she darted between the trees as fast as her legs would take her.
April had no idea where she was going or in what direction she was headed. The position of the lake was lost to her. She was completely turned around and didn’t care. All that mattered was that she kept moving and never looked back.
April’s mind drifted into a space separate from her body, which kept on pumping full speed on autopilot. She was safe there, where time had lost all meaning. She could’ve been moving for a couple minutes or over an hour. There was no way for her to tell. It reminded her of the day before when she sat on the edge of the deck, staring up at the trees and forgetting there was even a world beyond the lake. Maybe that’s just how reality worked in this place. It was a prison of a black hole. An anomaly outside the real world that trapped you without any hope of escape.
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Without even telling them to, April’s feet came to an abrupt stop at the edge of the ground before it dropped off into the lake. Panting, out of breath, April looked around at the water yet didn’t recognize where she was. She must’ve been on the other side of the lake, far from her uncle’s house and without any idea how to get back.
Unable to contain her anguish, April fell into the grass and broke down into the sobs she’d been holding back, adding fresh tears to those dried against her cheeks. She didn’t know why she was crying. Sure, she felt traumatized, depressed, angry, miserable…pretty much any negative word she could think of. But April refused to acknowledge what happened to her last night. She boxed it up and locked it away. It never took place. And there was no reason to be upset about something that never happened.
Clenching her fists, April forced herself to forget. She fought desperately to burn the images from her mind when the light sound of trickling water abruptly stole her attention.
April shot her gaze up and saw the lake was glass, just as Henry described the other day. All along the opposite shore was a perfect mirror image of the trees in the distance. The smooth water spread out over the entire lake. Everywhere except right in front of April, where a faint ripple lingered in the otherwise pristine reflective surface.
Anything could’ve caused the disturbance. It could’ve been a fish popping up for an early snack or an acorn dropping off a tree. After rising to her feet, April’s body went still as she focused on the spot, waiting to see if it happened again.
The top of the morning sun had only just poked out over the trees, barely illuminating the sky with a twilight blue. The rays of newborn sunshine split as they hit the water, filling the lake’s depths with the shimmering image of a splintered star. In the center of it, a blotch started to emerge. A dark blemish in the spotless surface.