Lakebridge: Spring (Supernatural Horror Literary Fiction)

by Natasha Troop

  * * *

  Denise knew that Ivy was just doing her job, but she still flinched slightly when her bark-alarm went off. It was a good thing Denise was used to her dog barking at just about everything or she might have plowed her truck into a maple or, worse, a moose. People were always hitting moose… or maybe it was the moose that were always hitting people…sometimes it seemed like people got the worse end of those collisions. Ivy was good for a warning when there were moose or people on the side of the road. In this case, Ivy was barking her warning out at Will Kurtz.

  “Ivy, you know you don’t have to bark at Sir William. He’s trying to save us.”

  Ivy gave her that little Collie smile that said “Yeah, okay, lady. Whatever you say. I’m still going to bark anyway because it’s my job.” Mark the Breeder told her that Collies always do their job, which is protecting their flock and once you brought a Collie home, you were their flock and they were going to protect you. He got that right. Ivy was always watching over her, making sure nothing bad happened.

  There had been a few people along the way who Ivy had not liked not one little bit and Denise knew if Ivy said, “No!” to a person, it was a no go for that person. At least until that person gave Ivy a donut. Ivy was a sucker for donuts. And cheese. And cat poop. Not that people came around handing her dog cat poop, but Ivy somehow always found the litter box in any house with a cat and “helped” the owner by “cleaning” it…Denise did not let Ivy kiss her for a time after her cat box treasure hunts. They say that a dog’s mouth is somehow super clean, that a dog’s saliva can clean wounds. Denise was having none of that. Dogs eat cat poop. She wouldn’t rub cat poop on an open wound. So a dog’s mouth? Uh uh. She wasn’t buying that. Not one bit. Denise loved Ivy and Ivy loved Denise. That was all that really mattered. Denise thought that was why people love dogs so much. You just know they love you. You just look at them and you can see the love in their eyes and no matter how you are feeling you get to have a little love to keep you sunny even when the storms of life beat against you and try to wash you away.

  Denise read a lot of self-help books and tended to think in self-help analogies. She once bought a series of video tapes, back before DVDs… or at least before she had a DVD player, from a friendly guy on the phone who told her that the tapes by this famous TV doctor were the next best thing to having a relationship counselor in your home all the time and that even at two in the morning he would be there for you and would help you when you were crying and blue and eating too much ice cream because the only love you were getting was from your dog and your dog, while unrelenting with her love and warm in bed on a cold night, was not quite the right kind of warm in bed and you would rather something with a little less fur – but not too much less because she liked guys to a have a little fur on them. She didn’t understand “manscaping” or whatever the gay guys on TV were trying to get straight guys to buy into. You were born with a thing and you should keep a thing…at least if you were a guy. Guys should just deal with body hair. Girls were supposed to shave it all off because… well… because. She wanted her men manly and not approved by queer eyes.

  So she bought the tapes from the nice guy on the phone because she believed him when he said that he found real lasting love because of the tapes and the TV doctor. And she tried to watch the tapes because she wanted real lasting love and the TV doctor promised his tapes would give her what she really wanted. She tried to watch the tapes.

  She put Tape Number One in her VCR. Tape Number One out of the twenty-four tape set she purchased from the nice man on the phone who found real lasting love. She was originally going to buy the first six tapes in the set to see if she liked them but the nice young man said that there was a special for people like her who really wanted real lasting love and that if she bought the whole set she would also get a set of cassette tapes for her car to listen to while she drove around so that she could have the TV doctor with her wherever she went, increasing her chances of finding real lasting love. How could she not find real lasting love with all this help wherever she went? So she put Tape Number One in her VCR and popped her popcorn and sat down on her comfy brown couch and gave Ivy some popcorn because Ivy did that thing where she just stood there next to the couch with her sweet little tri-color head resting on Denise’s lap waiting for popcorn to slip into her mouth – real lasting love from Ivy was rewarded with popcorn – and pressed “play” on her remote.

  Nothing.

  Just the VCR logo on the screen.

  She pressed play again.

  Nothing again.

  She got up and ejected the tape and looked at it as if she knew what she was supposed to be looking at because she had seen other people look at tapes like they knew what they were looking at and then they fiddled with them a little bit and put them back in the VCR and the tapes worked. So she fiddled with the tape, shook it a little, did that thing where you flip the lid up to look at the tape itself and then put the tape back into the VCR.

  She sat on the couch. Popcorn. Ivy’s head. Pressed play.

  Nothing.

  Just the VCR logo and nothing more.

  She thought that perhaps her VCR was somehow defective. Maybe it was a new kind of tape that wouldn’t play on her old VCR. So the next day she drove up to Montpelier and bought the latest and greatest VCR. She rushed home with it – but not so fast that she would get stopped by some overzealous trooper or that jerk Deputy Steve who gave her tickets after she didn’t go out on a date with him. She knew that he wouldn’t give her tickets if they were dating but he was a stupid jerk and she knew that if she could ever watch the TV doctor tapes he would tell her to stay away from jerks like Deputy Steve.

  She wanted to listen to the TV doctor’s Number One of the six tape series about making your you a better kind of you for you and for your real lasting love partner. But the tape player in her truck ate the tape. When she tried to get Tape Number One out of the player, at first it wouldn’t eject. She looked at Ivy and Ivy chuffed a little. Ivy didn’t like the cassette player. Not one bit. Denise didn’t like it either.

  She kept meaning to get a CD player but she had all these mix tapes she made when she was in high school that had all this great music on them and she knew that she would never hear all that music together the way she knew it was supposed to go if she just listened to CDs and she didn’t have enough money to get a computer to make mix CDs because she would have to get all the CDs with all the music on the mix tapes and then sit down and make a list of the way each song went on each tape and then make sure that she had the right CD and maybe there wasn’t even a CD for that song.

  So she kept her old cassette player and her old mix tapes and they played just fine on the player but the TV doctor tape didn’t. When she finally got Tape Number One out of the old player it was nothing but a mess of cassette tape spaghetti. She tried to use a pencil to rewind it like she had seen other people do who seemed to know what they were doing but after a few moments it snagged and broke altogether. Holding a mess of broken spaghetti tape, she looked over to Ivy for comfort. Ivy chuffed again and licked her face. Denise had to smile a little even though she had started to cry. Real lasting love, indeed.

  She put the tape down and decided that the only real way for the TV doctor to really help her was on the TV. That’s where he belonged. Leave the radio to the radio doctors. She never liked them anyway. They were always telling people how stupid they were for doing the things they did and not listening to the problems, which were real and true and needed compassion, not nasty judgmental put downs. That’s why she only listened to her mix tapes on the radio.

  On her way back from Montpelier, she was listening to her “Travel Mix ‘86” tape full of cool songs from 1986. She actually made the tape in 1987 so she could make sure she did not leave any of the coolest songs from 1986 off of the tape. Her favorites on that tape were “Broken Wings” by Mr. Mister which was still an awesome song and “Life in a Northern Town” by the Dream Acade
my. She could play “Life in a Northern Town” over and over again and she would always sing the “Hey ya ya ya” part at the top of her lungs, which mould make Ivy chuff. She put “West End Girls” by the Pet Shop Boys on that tape, but now she didn’t know why because it kind of annoyed her. She managed to avoid troopers and jerky Deputy Steve and return home.

  She unpacked the fancy new VCR and set it up, following the directions closely. She did everything including setting the time for recording from the TV – something she never did, she liked watching TV live and not on tape. She let the VCR find all the channels. She used the head cleaner that came with the VCR to make sure it was as clean as possible. She put in the test tape that came with the VCR to make sure it worked the way it was supposed to work. She was just a little impressed with herself when it worked the way it was supposed to work. The comedy shows on TV were always making jokes about how only little kids could set up VCRs while the adults just sat around in awe at the new technology. She wasn’t so old yet that technology scared her. She could plug in a plug or two. She just had to follow the directions is all. Most people did not want to follow directions. They were too stubborn or something and thought that if the thing didn’t set itself up then it must be too hard. She liked directions because if you followed them, they usually worked. And she followed the directions for setting up her fancy new VCR and did all the tests and it worked the way it was supposed to work.

  She made a bowl of popcorn and put Tape Number One in the new VCR and sat on her comfy brown couch and gave Ivy her piece of corn. She smiled and pressed “play” on the new remote.

  Nothing.

  She frowned and pressed the button again and nothing happened again. It was a fancy new VCR and she had tested it and it worked like it was supposed to and still no TV doctor telling her how to have real lasting love. Just to be sure she removed Tape Number One and replaced it with Tape Number Two. Yes, she knew she was cheating. But just the same, she wanted to see if any of the TV doctor’s tapes worked at all. She was beginning to feel disappointed in the TV doctor. She did all that she was supposed to do. She bought a new VCR for his tapes. She checked the wires and made sure the whole thing worked because she really wanted real lasting love and the nice man on the phone promised that the tapes would help her get that and she bought the whole set and the cassettes which didn’t work in her tape deck and so even though she was skipping ahead she had to see the TV doctor just a little and it was only fair, wasn’t it?

  She sat back on her couch. This time she was sitting, leaning a little forward so that Ivy could not rest her head on Denise’s lap. Ivy didn’t mind, though. She had her head in the bowl of popcorn and, as Denise had not yelled at her to stop, she took that as a sign that Denise meant to leave the popcorn for her. Denise closed her eyes tightly and pressed “play” on her new remote.

  The VCR made a funny noise. Actually, it wasn’t very funny at all. It was more of a crunching noise. At first, Denise thought the noise came from Ivy crunching popcorn, but she soon realized it was far worse and soon replaced by a strange mechanical groan. Before she could act, the groan became a loud SNAP and the VCR turned itself off.

  Denise started to cry a little. Just a little. She slowly stood and walked over to the machine and pressed the power button. It didn’t do a thing. She unplugged the VCR from the wall and plugged it back in again.

  Nothing.

  Still trying to maintain a calm center while her emotions stormed around her, she flipped the little flap and peered inside the VCR. She could see pieces of the tape where there shouldn’t have been pieces. Somehow the machine had eaten the tape in a way the cassette player in her truck could only dream of cassette consumption. It not only murdered Tape Number Two, it committed suicide as well.

  Still maintaining her calm, she carefully put the new dead machine back in its box and plugged her old reliable VCR back in and reconnected it. She put in her well-watched copy of “Mannequin” which she always watched when she was feeling like she was going to fall apart. She loved that movie. The opening credits came on and there was Andrew McCarthy – she loved Andrew McCarthy - and as she slowly leaned back towards her couch, she caught herself. Andrew could wait. She needed to see if any of the Tapes Number Three through Twenty-Four worked at all.

  Sadly, she ejected Andrew and Kim from her VCR and put in Tape Number Three. Her heart leapt a little when the TV doctor appeared on her TV. There he was, a little late in the lessons, but ready to give her the secrets to real lasting love, like Andrew and Kim had in Mannequin. After about 30 seconds, however, the picture got all weird, like the signal from the antenna wasn’t coming in properly. Without thinking about it, she went to the TV and adjusted the antenna on top for a moment before remembering that it was a tape. The tape wasn’t coming in clearly! Suddenly the picture went out and the word “TRACKING” appeared on the screen and never left.

  Eject.

  Tape Number Four. The sound of rewinding just went on and on and Denise realized that the TV doctor’s tapes just weren’t going to give her the answers she needed. They were cheap tapes and if the TV doctor sold cheap tapes then his answers were probably cheap too and certainly not going to give her the kind of real lasting love she sought.

  So she packed them all up. Tapes Number One through Twenty-Four (what was left of Tape Number Two in any case) and the six cassettes that were hers to keep free but she didn’t even want to keep them because they wouldn’t play for her and she didn’t want any advice from the TV doctor anyhow.

  She packed it all up and called the number on the box to ask them how to return the item. The nice man from customer service told her to pack the tapes up and gave her an address and a return number. He said to write the return number on every side of the box. She asked why and he said to trust him and write the number clearly on every side of the box. He also said to use a registered delivery service and not the regular mail. She asked why and he told her to trust him and make sure she used a registered form of delivery so that she could track her package. She thanked him for his time and he asked her if she was interesting in purchasing a set of investment tapes that would help her to be a millionaire investor in the commodities market. He said that the tapes really worked and that the only reason he answered the phone for the company was that, as a millionaire investor himself, he felt a need to talk to other people and help them become millionaire investors too. She asked him what the commodities market had to do with real lasting love and the TV doctor and he said if you were a millionaire investor, it would be much easier to find real lasting love.

  She began to suspect that he was not, in fact, a millionaire investor and that the nice man who sold her the TV doctor tapes did not, in fact, have the kind of real lasting love he said the tapes gave him. How could he watch the tapes anyway? They were so crappy! She told him that she wasn’t interested in investing today and he asked her if that mean she was not interested in being a millionaire investor in a tone of voice that made her feel stupid for not buying the tapes. She did not think he was very nice anymore and told him to have a nice day and hung up.

  She did, however, send the TV doctor’s tapes back the way he instructed her to do. And then she waited for her money to be refunded. And waited. And waited. She tracked the package and found out that an A. Martinez in San Fernando, California signed for it. She called the number again and a lady named Judy who had a mean voice answered. She asked when she was going to get her money back and the mean voiced lady asked her if she had proof the package had been returned. Denise told her about A. Martinez in San Fernando and the mean voiced lady said she would put in a refund request and hung up.

  She waited for her refund and it did not come and she called and more refund requests were put in until one day when she called and the number had been disconnected and she found out that the company that sent out the TV doctor’s tapes had been closed by the government because too many people had been promised that they could become millionaire i
nvestors or find real lasting love and no one found love or became a millionaire investor and no one ever got their money back when they returned their tapes even if they followed all the directions.

  She realized that she would probably learn more about real lasting love from Kim the Mannequin than any TV doctor and promised herself she would never buy anything from anyone on the phone again, no matter how nice they sounded.

  Denise absently scratched Ivy under the chin as she parked in front of Osno’s. Lately she started taking sleeping pills and needed to pick up her prescription. As she opened her door, Shelley’s voice cried out.

  “Ivy!”

  Ivy barked once and jumped over Denise and out the door to Shelley. Denise smiled a little. If there was anyone Ivy loved other than her, it was Shelley. Ivy loved Shelley.