No Amelia.
Not here.
But the beat, still drumming, went on.
James swam toward one of the doors.
Stopped. (The water rushed past him.)
Turned. (The water turned with him.)
Swam toward the other.
Stopped. (The water rushed past him.)
Turned. (The water turned with him.)
Where was it coming from? Where was Amelia? How close was she to meeting the monster?
Had she met it already?
Movement behind and James turned once more, quick, shining his light on the portrait, the still life hanging on the wall. He recoiled from the face it made, the table-edge mouth and the curtains for hair. The plums for eyes and the life in their stare.
The canvas rippled, sending an expression across the painting.
The purple eyes seemed to focus. The mouth bulged out toward him.
James dropped his flashlight.
He flipped toward the floor, reaching for the light as it sank.
Sank.
Sank.
Connected with the floor.
Went black.
Black.
Black.
Something touched him.
Wet canvas? The pulp of rotten fruit?
James reached the carpeted floor and curled up, hands high, protecting him from anything in the room.
(The bulging painting, coming to life, leaving the wall behind.)
Amelia!
Amelia who was somewhere else in the house, intentionally approaching the danger.
Amelia!
Amelia who went to meet whatever was responsible for the drum-thudding, thud-drumming of his heart.
“Amelia! Help!”
He was floating now, floating toward the bay window, fast enough, it seemed, to break it, powerful enough to crash through the glass, to be sent spiraling out into the lake, zero gravity, spinning, farther from the house, farther from (everything) Amelia.
“Amelia!”
He’d seen the table-edge mouth parting. Before the world went black. He’d seen the plum eyes registering his presence in the room. Before the world went black.
I’m not gonna make it, James thought. I’m not gonna make it OUT OF THIS HOUSE.
Fixed with fright, curled into a ball and free-floating near the ceiling of the lounge, James understood it was the most scared he’d ever been in his life. And while he always dreamed he’d perform with honor if ever he was this afraid, he’d underestimated how afraid this was.
And yet what came next was the only thing that could have left him more frightened than he already was.
It was the scariest thing that could happen inside a house underwater, a house at the bottom of a lake.
The lights came on.
Not the flashlight.
The house lights.
The lights in the ceiling. The lights in the halls. The lights on every window and wall.
The lights came on.
And James saw.
James saw the room, bathed, exposed. Saw the vibrant, breathing color of the house.
In the bay window he saw himself reflected. Curled up, floating, scared.
Exposed.
The lights are on.
The lamp on the end table was on.
On.
A burning bulb.
Electricity.
Running.
Underwater.
On.
33
Amelia placed both hands on the basement door and pushed hard, too excited to stop, following the thudding steps she’d heard overhead. James was still below, she knew, but he must be coming. She didn’t mean to leave him behind, but the steps led her here, into the lounge. This was exactly where they were leading, two points converging, herself and the steps, to meet (at last) here in the lounge.
But when she got there, her light showed her that she was alone.
“Hello?”
The two syllables collapsed flat in the mask.
Then she heard the creaking again from outside the lounge and Amelia understood that she’d just arrived a little late was all.
Whoever she was supposed to meet was simply ahead of her.
Deeper into the house.
Amelia swam, hurriedly, toward the door to her left. She thought James must be close. He’d know to follow her. He’d find the lounge empty and follow her and either way, no matter what he did, she had to get moving, had to catch up with whoever was still moving ahead.
She passed through the door as it swayed shut. But whoever had been in this adjacent room was now in the next.
The steps told her so.
Amelia followed.
Her flashlight flickered and she knew that it was dying. Knew that it would go out, go black if she didn’t get up to the raft and change the batteries. And yet there was a part of her that believed it would go black even if the batteries were new.
You’re in bigger hands than your own, she thought, without knowing (or caring) exactly what this meant to her.
The thudding continued. Growing dimmer.
She followed her dying beam from room to room, avoiding the objects of each, until it felt like a dance, an intentional movement, between herself and the other. Because the light was dimming, she could no longer see the corners, not seven feet in front of her mask. And the house, it seemed, was growing darker, dimming, a purposeful setting of a mood.
Into the kitchen, over the first marble island, then close to the kitchen floor, then up past a window in quadrants. All of this in flickering pieces, graying sights, near darkness.
Soon she couldn’t tell what room she was in, what thresholds she crossed.
And yet she continued, pursuing the source of those steps, until, at last, she saw the foot of the stairs ahead.
The light dimmed.
She treaded above the bottom step, listening for the other.
Where had it gone?
Up?
A creaking on the stairs told her how close she was, but her light showed her no form.
She should wait for James, she thought. Wait for more light. Wait.
But she couldn’t.
She swam up the stairs, above them, rising to the second floor, following the creaking of the wood, the creaking of the old house, the thud-drumming, drum-thudding of bare wet feet sloshing up the steps.
Halfway up the stairs her flashlight died.
Darkness.
Complete darkness in the house.
For the first time, Amelia experienced the house as it was without her and James, as it stood at night, how it was before they arrived.
She was guided by the creaking, and she understood she was at the top of the stairs, entering the hall, the long hall with a single swaying door at its far end, a door she could hear opening ahead.
She swam, into the darkness, deeper into the throat of the second story, her hands straight out, ready to connect.
Amelia thought she could hear fabric in the darkness, tugged on, sliding off the smooth curved shoulder of a wooden hanger.
She released her flashlight. Useless now.
And though she couldn’t see it, she could sense it sinking, sinking, until it hardly nicked the second-story floor, contact as slight as a brush.
And then the lights came on.
Not the meager beam of her flashlight, no.
The house lights came on.
Amelia stopped swimming (the water rushed past her), not meaning to, but overwhelmed by it, astonished, seeing for the first time the hall walls in detail, the exact colors, lines, and dimensions of the house.
Floating, breathless, she looked over her shoulder to the top of the stairs. She saw the runner was red, brig
ht red, the color of exaggerated blood. Light came from downstairs and she understood, clearly, that the second-story hall wasn’t the only place lit up.
The house. The entire house.
She positioned herself so that she was facing the door at the end of the hall again.
Staring ahead, treading, Amelia smiled as much as her mask would allow.
She knew why the lights came on. She hadn’t asked why, she hadn’t let herself do that, but she understood.
It was an offering. A welcoming.
A greeting.
She swam.
She reached the door. She saw the details of the door, smudge marks (wax?) where other fingers (not your own!) had opened the door before her.
Amelia entered the dressing room. She saw the color red as it came floating toward her. She ducked, allowing the red fabric to pass over her, the red dress, a curtain parting to reveal the stage, the space before the opened wardrobe doors.
A woman.
No.
A form.
Naked.
How old?
Couldn’t see its face; its back was to Amelia.
No.
Could see its face. Reflected in a mirror hanging inside the wardrobe door.
No face.
Amelia floated toward the thing, propelled by unseen waves.
Wax.
The word felt silly, a foolish way to describe what stood before her and yet, it did look made of wax.
Like when you melt wax and then dip it in water.
No face. No hair. No bones. Only undefined mounds of pink, thick molds of galvanized spit.
Yet it was moving, raising (a wax stump) an arm, raising it in such a way that Amelia understood it had to be facing her after all, that the expressionless bumps and folds were its face.
Amelia cried out. She tried to stop her forward motion.
But the unseen waves propelled her.
How old?
Forever.
How old?
Never.
The shapeless thing raised its lumped arm high enough for Amelia to see that it held (no hands) a black dress. As though Amelia had entered, had violated the privacy of someone getting dressed.
It can’t see you, Amelia thought, with sudden clarity. Turn around, Amelia! It doesn’t know you’re here!
Amelia recalled the dining room. Reheard the creaking, the stretched (wax) footsteps from above.
It heard us. Couldn’t see us. Heard us.
The thing slid the billowing black fabric over its formless arms. Amelia imagined it in bed, asleep, as she and James lost their virginity below. She imagined it rising from its bed after hearing what sounded like love somewhere in the house.
We should introduce ourselves.
Yes. Still. Do it.
Because not to do it meant to leave the house and not come back.
Amelia floated toward it.
Yes, she thought. Tell it you’re here. Tell it you live here now, too.
When she was within reach, Amelia touched the thing’s shoulder.
“I’m Amelia,” she said. “Who are—”
And the lights went out.
Everywhere.
In the staggering darkness, Amelia reached for the wardrobe but found nothing there. She lowered herself, stretching a flipper to the floor, but found nothing there.
She swam lower, deeper, but found nothing there.
And yet…a light far beneath her. A single small light, rising, growing larger, coming toward her until she understood that she was the object of that light, the very thing being sought.
Where are the stairs? Where is the floor?
The beam revealed (it’s gone, all of it, gone) nothing.
No walls. No wood. No rugs, no windows, no chairs.
No more.
As James’s light grew larger, brighter, Amelia looked everywhere for a sign of the house. A sign of the thing that lived there.
No more.
When James reached her, Amelia took his light and swam, spun, trying to find the house, their clubhouse, (their Potscrubber, James thought) their home.
When she trained the light back on James he was shaking his head no.
It’s gone, he mouthed.
And it was.
Gone.
Just two teenagers now, swimming in the center of a very dark lake.
The house. No more.
34
It was wax, Amelia thought. We could have shaped it into anything we wanted it to be.
35
Amelia at home. On the couch. Thinking.
She thought a lot in the days following the final events at the house. She believed she knew what happened and why. But that was part of the problem: She was sick of asking why.
On one particularly motivated morning, she actually looked into it. Tried to find some information about the house. About the lake. A house at the bottom of a lake, she believed, must have a trail. Yet there was nothing. No images, no stories, no rumors. And with every dead end she met, she experienced a little relief. If nobody else had a story about the house…didn’t that mean that, in a way, it still belonged to Amelia and James? And if they never talked about it with anybody else, if they forever kept their secret, wouldn’t it always remain theirs and theirs alone?
But that was the thing. One of the things. Many things. She wanted to talk about it with everybody she spoke to. Wanted to tell her parents. Tell her friends that she hadn’t been seen all summer because she was stuck on a boy, stuck on a raft tethered to a house in a lake. Stuck. Snagged. Trapped. She had to physically hold her mouth shut when her childhood friend Karrie called to ask how she’d been. Karrie knew something was amiss. Amelia could hear it in Karrie’s questions. But there was no way Karrie could guess what it was, and so Amelia wasn’t afraid. A drug addict might sniff. An alcoholic might smack her dry lips into the phone. But what did somebody who was stuck on a house sound like?
As long as nobody knew what it was, nobody could take it from her.
All this, Amelia believed, was too much thinking. Way too much thinking. And yet what else was she supposed to do? The house had vanished, leaving her and James floating in an empty lake, no more magical than any other lake in the world, except this one had been different; this one once harbored a house and in that house…
What?
Amelia closed her eyes.
James.
How was James?
They spoke in the few days following the final event at the house but it wasn’t easy stuff. Both of them sounded dazed. There was too much space between their words. Long pauses at the end of their sentences. As if something was slowing them down, stretching their syllables, muting their meaning.
As if they were still talking underwater.
Amelia didn’t tell James that she’d been hearing that same muted elongation everywhere. And that the doors in her house took longer to close than they should. Some seemed to sway shut on their own.
She opened her eyes.
James.
How was James?
They stopped talking after the first few days because it was just too weird. How many times could they say that was incredible, that was insane, what do we do now, what do we do now, what do we do now that we’ve experienced the apex of adventure and now have to face boring life ever after?
And how many times could they skirt the real issue, how freaky it had been, how unbelievably scary?
They didn’t hang out. No spontaneous trips to the third lake. No scuba classes. No kisses. No firsts in a fully furnished house underwater.
How long had it been?
Ten days? Two weeks?
Amelia wasn’t sure.
She checked her phone and saw nobody had called. Nobody had texted. G
ood. That way she didn’t have to hold her mouth shut, didn’t have to swallow the words that crawled up her throat, a description of the house, a recounting of the wonder that almost swallowed her whole.
We found a dangerously magic place. A place to fall in love.
She stared at the end of the couch, where she thought she saw the cushions ripple, for a moment, blurred by a mask she wasn’t wearing, bubbles she didn’t breathe.
But we lost it. And we don’t know where it went.
Amelia shook these words out of her head. She turned on the television and felt sick with every image she saw. It all felt so practiced, so dry compared with what she and James had found.
And then lost.
She turned off the television. She closed her eyes.
James.
How was James now?
36
James couldn’t sleep in his bedroom because it was still airing out from all the water damage. Two weeks later and it still smelled weird. Still smelled like a lake.
Dad was really on it, though. Really hell-bent on getting it back to normal. It had become a prideful project of his. James didn’t mind. He was kind of glad to see Dad so obsessed. Made him feel better about his own obsessions.
Sleeping in the living room wasn’t so bad. He had the TV for starters. But none of the movies were quite good enough. None of them matched the real-life adventure he’d had. Action didn’t thrill him like it used to. Like it was just a bunch of people dressed up as other people, pretending. Phony. The smell coming from his bedroom, though, that was real. It didn’t pretend. And the truth was, everything felt a little damp. His thoughts. His actions. The way everything rippled.
Even the shower smelled a bit like a lake. Like fish were swimming in the pipes.
James couldn’t stop thinking about it. Didn’t want to stop thinking about it. Kept recalling Amelia’s voice, her expressions, the way she was on the third lake and especially inside the house. She was happy down there.
Was it his fault that they lost it?
He believed it was. The trouble probably started when he tried to remove the pepper shaker. He’d alerted someone to something. Pressed the wrong button. Knocked on the wrong door. Asked how.
A House at the Bottom of a Lake Page 11