A House at the Bottom of a Lake

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A House at the Bottom of a Lake Page 8

by Josh Malerman


  He dug at it again.

  No wiggle.

  No give.

  James put the knife back in the pouch and swiveled toward the bigger knives. Their handles jutted out of their wooden holder.

  He thought of Amelia. What she would say.

  Why’d you need to know? This place is ours, James. Isn’t that enough?

  He looked back to the shaker, thinking maybe he should leave it alone.

  But the shaker wasn’t on the counter anymore.

  “What?”

  The porcelain animal floated, eye level, and James watched it rotate in place, as if someone were turning it, showing him the bottom, showing him there was no evidence of glue.

  James reached for it.

  The shaker floated up, toward the ceiling.

  James reached for it again and again it spun away.

  He shone the beam in the space surrounding the shaker.

  A pocket of cold water rolled the length of his body. James knew the feeling well. He’d experienced it in flooded basements, helping his dad repair a neighbor’s pipes. Water so cold it seemed to grip you with actual fingers.

  James sensed life behind him and turned quick.

  A distorted face was inches from his own.

  He yelled into his mask.

  But it was Amelia.

  Only Amelia.

  Only.

  She placed a hand on his shoulder. She was smiling.

  She motioned for him to follow her. She was mouthing words. A door, she seemed to be saying. A new door. James held up a finger, telling her to hang on, he had something to show her, too.

  But when he shone the light to where the shaker had been, it was back, secure, on the counter.

  The big teeth and dumb eyes glinted in his trembling beam.

  Come on, Amelia seemed to be saying. You’re gonna love this.

  She swam from the kitchen and James followed.

  23

  While James was in the kitchen, studying the pepper shaker, Amelia had been doing flips, floating somersaults, through every room in the house. By the time she reached the lounge with the oil painting still life, she was dizzy from it, even a little turned around. She flipped once more and her flippers struck the wall and the wall opened and Amelia gasped, within her mask, understanding that, despite having explored the house a dozen times now, there were still new rooms to be found.

  She swam into the surprise entrance and excitedly ran her beam in all directions, finding at first only a wall of chipped pink paint, possibly a closet. She shone the light to the floor, expecting (and hoping) to find shoes, evidence of someone having once lived here, like the floating dresses in the room upstairs.

  But there were no shoes.

  There were stairs.

  Amelia treaded for half a minute, the word basement playing in her mind. The word impossible, too, as the house (our house) was situated firmly in the muddy muck of the very bottom of the lake.

  Finally, she swam toward the stairs, head down, her flippers clipping a lightbulb’s string above. But before fully diving into the subterranean level of the house, she stopped.

  James.

  She found him in the kitchen looking as if he’d seen a flesh-and-blood chef crawl into the oven and close the door. She convinced him to follow her.

  Minutes later, treading above the staircase that, an hour before, neither of them had known existed, James thought the same two words Amelia had.

  Basement.

  Impossible.

  But a third word worried him most.

  Trapped.

  As if, by swimming below, they wouldn’t have only the lake above them.

  They’d have the house, too.

  Amelia swam first, head down. He watched her flippers vanish beyond the reach of his beam, into the throat of the stairwell.

  Then he followed.

  24

  There were thirty steps in all. The stairwell was a tunnel of its own, traveling down at a dizzying angle. And like the concrete tunnel that delivered them to the third lake, there was graffiti.

  Of a sort.

  Rather than crude drawings of penises and naked women, the writing read like a growth chart, though neither James nor Amelia could fully envision a parent asking their child to stand against the wall, halfway down the basement stairs, in order to mark their height.

  But there were marks. Rising marks. As if somebody’s development had been noted.

  After examining the marks for a minute, James and Amelia continued down.

  Deeper.

  At last, they arrived at an entrance to a wide room and Amelia felt another lightbulb string trace her spine as she passed under it. She had to swim lower to avoid wooden support beams, the foundation of the home. She spotted a web, a large one, where one of the beams met the ceiling, and paused to show James. They treaded near it, studying the intricate design rippling with waves that must have come down the stairs with them.

  A spider’s web. Underwater. In a house at the bottom of a lake.

  They continued, deeper, into the basement.

  Space, James thought. The room had a lot of space. Amelia tugged on his wet suit and pointed down with her beam, showing him a familiar flooring below. Blue-and-white tiles labeled with measurements, 3 ft., 5 ft., that in another context surely would have been clear but down here simply could not be.

  And yet as that which could not be was in this house, the basement proved no different.

  Amelia and James treaded water six feet above an indoor pool.

  With water all its own.

  The surface moved independently of the water they swam in.

  Amelia laughed and James could hear it, muffled by her mask, coming to him in marveled beats that perfectly embodied the wonder she was relishing.

  Then she dove, swimming headfirst into the pool.

  25

  It’s warmer, Amelia thought. Warmer like an indoor pool ought to be. Like when somebody says it’s bathwater. Bathwater, Amelia thought, soothing and smooth, enveloping, tomblike, like a womb.

  She rolled onto her back and sank to the concrete bottom. The tank struck first and she looked up through her mask, through the independent surface of the pool, into the lake water that held James, suspended so high above her.

  Amelia smiled.

  He looked so funny up there, treading, looking down at her, the bubbles rising beside him. Just then he looked like a man to her. The teenage boy masked within.

  James, she thought. Come make love to me.

  They’d talked about it. She knew he was thinking about it, too.

  Come make love to me.

  She felt love for him then, the physical sensation of it leaving her body, rising up through the pool water, then through the lake water, traveling the light of his beam.

  Suddenly James flipped, as though he’d felt the feelings she’d sent him. When his head was where his flippers had been, he swam toward her. Toward the swimming pool that should not be, had no right to be, but was all the same. Amelia embraced it. The magic. Frightening or not, it was magic. Water upon water, moving in different directions, the temperature in the pool warmer than the temperature out.

  No hows. No whys.

  Come to me…

  James broke the surface of the pool far to Amelia’s right, and through the fresh ripples he’d created, Amelia saw that a form remained treading by the ceiling where he had been.

  Amelia sat up fast. She planted her flippers solidly on the floor of the pool and rose. She stood half in the pool, half in the lake.

  She pointed, up, to where James just was, breathing quicker now, shaking her head no, no there’s nobody there, nobody treading where James just was.

  James came to her as she had silently asked and wrapped his arms a
round her.

  Amelia resisted, shoving him away, pointing to the ceiling with the beam of her light.

  Look, she tried to say. LOOK!

  But her voice was muted by the mask.

  As if comprehending in slow motion, moving slower than the feeling of dread rising within him, James looked to where Amelia was frantically training her beam.

  A black dress floated high above the indoor pool. Its dark fabric flapped with unseen waves. But its position was what scared James most.

  Like someone’s wearing it.

  The hem rippled beneath the symmetrical shoulder straps. The waist was slimmer than the hips.

  Amelia and James did not move. They did not cry out. They stared.

  Then the dress started to sink, to fall toward them in the pool.

  James wanted to believe it was chance, the way the dress seemed to be filled out, the way it looked.

  Like someone was in it.

  Like someone could swim up to it, then slip easily through the bottom, arms extended, with a mind to wear it.

  Amelia held a hand in front of her mask.

  James couldn’t move. He was rooted to the floor of the pool’s shallow end. As Amelia raised her other hand, blocked her face from the fabric, James watched the dress fold over upon itself, then twist in a way that no person could.

  Not if someone was in it.

  The dress floated away before it reached them.

  Amelia lowered her arms and looked at James. They lit each other’s masks with their respective beams.

  “Up,” James said.

  Amelia nodded. And then James saw something more startling than the dress itself had been. In Amelia’s face, James saw fear.

  You’re not supposed to be afraid, he thought. You’re the one that makes this all okay.

  But Amelia was scared.

  And still…she smiled. And the expression she wore was like that of a woman after a close call in a car.

  Up, she mouthed. And they swam up. And as they exited the basement, James looked back, shone his light into the shadows, and saw no dress.

  But he thought of it. Continuously, as they swam up the stairs, he thought of the black dress falling and how it hadn’t looked like an errant article of clothing at the mercy of unseen undulations. No, it had behaved much more like a discarded dress that someone had taken off and tossed from the ceiling toward them.

  26

  They ate lunch on the raft. Turkey sandwiches and chips. Bottled water. They were exhausted. Diving itself was more of a workout than either of them usually got, but the experience in the basement took something extra out of them.

  The sun felt good. Being above the surface felt good, too.

  It always felt like night down in the house.

  “You look good when you’re tired,” James said, his toes at the edge of the raft. Neither dangled their feet in the water.

  “I was really scared for a second there.”

  “I know you were. I was, too.”

  The raft bobbed on steady undulations.

  “I honestly thought somebody had found us,” Amelia said. “I thought somebody had seen the canoe and come searching for us.”

  James wondered at this. He hadn’t thought of it from that angle. Not at all. When he saw the dress floating above the pool, his mind had gone to a much darker place than hers. And yet maybe being found out was as dark a thing as Amelia could imagine.

  “I love you,” James suddenly said.

  “I know you do. You didn’t swim away when I was scared.”

  “Is that how somebody knows?”

  James recalled how he felt immobile beneath the dress. How nothing in the world could have moved his flippers from the indoor pool.

  Amelia smiled. It was good to see her smiling.

  “That’s how I know,” she said.

  They stared into each other’s eyes, then Amelia looked down to the roof. James watched her breasts against the red fabric of her bikini top. Despite being so afraid less than half an hour ago, any movement of her muscle beneath her skin, any view of her skin at all, excited him.

  Amelia suddenly kicked her feet to the edge of the raft and shoved off into the water. She swam out a few feet so that she was directly above the roof. She stared into James’s eyes as she treaded water, the whole huge house beneath her.

  It was a challenge, James thought. Something like one. Amelia was telling him she wasn’t scared. Or perhaps she was telling herself.

  We got spooked today, James thought. So do we continue?

  This, he thought, was Amelia’s way of saying, Yes. We continue.

  He jumped in after her. For the first time since discovering the house, he experienced that nerve-burning sensation of something much bigger than himself beneath the water. Like the famous poster from Jaws, he was the very small swimmer cresting the surface, the many teeth of the house below.

  When he reached her, they embraced. James did so partially out of fear. But Amelia, he could tell, had already moved on from the floating dress. They kissed and their mostly naked bodies pressed against each other, as their bare feet propelled them, kept them stationary above the roof of the house. Amelia stuck a hand deeper into the water and felt James’s hard penis through his yellow bathing suit. She wanted to make love to him then, right there, high above their secret.

  “Tomorrow,” she whispered in his ear.

  James pulled his face from hers. It was easier to forget about the basement now.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “One hundred percent, yes.”

  They laughed because it was both awkward and assured. They laughed because they were embarrassed and they were brave, too.

  These feelings warred and mingled within them both, as the water beneath experienced rotations of its own: pockets of warm, pockets of cold; pleasing water across their legs, their bellies, replaced, suddenly, by the icy tips of unseen fingers and the tips of tongues, tickling their bare skin from the deep, wanting perhaps to take hold of them, wanting to pull them deeper, deeper into the lake, deeper into the house, deeper in love, deeper…

  Tomorrow.

  27

  No wet suits this time.

  Just the masks, the flippers, the tanks.

  And their bodies. Pale despite all the time spent on the lake. Pale because they spent their days below.

  Below.

  Today.

  James and Amelia got ready on the raft. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t say, Today’s the day. No questions, no jokes, no assurances. James watched Amelia finish up, feeling almost hungry, watching her body move. Amelia watched James, too. The same hands that adjusted his mask would be holding her soon.

  Below.

  Beyond the edge of the raft, beneath the blue rippling surface of the water, the place of the coronation waited.

  The house.

  (Home.)

  “All right,” Amelia said, giving James a thumbs-up, a gesture she would have been embarrassed by only weeks before, when they first paddled out upon the lakes. “Ready.”

  She bent at the knee and dragged a toe across the surface of the water. It was warmer than most days. Welcoming.

  “You look beautiful,” James said.

  Amelia shrugged and nodded, a weird thank-you, then crouched at the edge of the raft.

  But James jumped in first. His body broke the surface cleanly, creating sparkling ripples that reached for the logs and vanished quietly beneath them.

  Amelia followed.

  In truth, the water was colder without the wet suits. But the shock of it woke them up a second time, and they clasped hands above the roof.

  Then they plunged together, heads down, toward the half front door. At the muddy bottom their flippers sank and James climbed the m
ossy, slick step first. He held the half door open for her.

  Amelia swam inside.

  In the foyer they embraced. They couldn’t kiss but that didn’t stop them from running their hands over each other’s bodies, frantic, mad, thirsty. Amelia gripped James’s hard penis and pulled him toward her, pressing him against her belly, her thighs, her hips. They tumbled down the hall, horizontal to the floor, into the dining room, groping, crazed, hungry. Above the dining room table, but beneath the chandelier, they let go of their flashlights and the beams traced random patterns on the walls, exposing the room piecemeal: the glass cabinets, the vases like bookends on either side of the buffet, and their bathing suits, too, as they drifted from their now naked bodies.

  The flashlights sank to the table and there they remained, one trained upon the hall through which they’d come, the other upon the ceiling, a spotlight it seemed, mere inches from where they moved.

  Floating, Amelia guided James inside her.

  It wasn’t easy. There was an art to this that neither of them knew.

  And yet…artless as it had to be, their clumsiness was perhaps most thrilling of all.

  Entered for the first time, Amelia gasped, into her mask, and felt James tighten up. She relaxed him, rubbing her fingers against his shoulders, his back, his chest.

  They made love in the darkness.

  James’s eyes were closed as he climaxed and Amelia felt him pull out, at the last moment, as he came.

  In the beam of light beside them, they both saw the white cloud rise from the head of his penis, then spread, taken by unseen billows toward the ceiling, toward the walls, beyond the reach of the beam.

  Amelia looked to James, his face partially lit by the fallen flashlight. She expected to see him wide-eyed, happy, deep love behind his mask. But James was looking up to the ceiling.

  Slowly, Amelia reached for his chin, to turn his face toward hers, to connect. But without looking at her, he swiped her hand away and placed a single finger to his mask, telling her to be silent.

  With his other hand he pointed to the ceiling.

  Amelia looked up.

 

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