Swim Deep

by BETH KERY

  “Wes mentioned something about that. That’s so sad. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t go out to the boathouse much.”

  “Maybe,” I said doubtfully.

  Evan and I had gone out on a boat to go diving during our getaway at Sapphire Bay, I recalled. Evan hadn’t seemed nervous being out on the guide’s boat. In fact, he’d seemed extremely at ease and entirely in his own element out on the water.

  Thankfully, my brief mention of diving changed the direction of Valeria’s and my conversation. We decided we’d try a dive tomorrow. Valeria said her brother Manny could take us out on one of the boats while we dived.

  “One of the sharpest drop-offs on the lake happens right here near Les Jumeaux. I’ve dived it before, but not near your house,” Valeria explained. “Just fifty feet or so from the shoreline, the water depth goes from thirty feet to over a thousand. From that overlook where you paint, you could throw a rock, and it’d sink eleven hundred feet to get to the bottom. They call it the Great Wall. There are boulders the size of houses, and some pretty big underwater caves. Maybe we should do that dive tomorrow, since it’s so close?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Once we reached the house, Valeria went to the kitchen to start meal preparations. I went upstairs to double-check that everything was prepared in her guest room. Afterward, I decided to do a workout in the exercise room, and then sauna.

  I heard the muted sounds of hammering in the distance later as I stripped out of my sweaty workout clothes and wrapped a towel around me. It was good to know that the construction crew was keeping it honest, and weren’t cutting out early on a Friday, just because their supervisor wasn’t on site.

  The workout facility at the North Twin contained both a wet and dry sauna. Evan preferred the wet one exclusively, while I loved the dry heat, especially from this particular sauna. It got satisfyingly hot, and always melted every trace of tension out of my muscles.

  Once inside, I turned up heat to the highest level and stretched out on the cedar planks on the top bench.

  Fifteen minutes later I was slick with sweat. I’d forgotten to bring a bottle of water in with me, and now I was feeling dehydrated from the combination of being in the hot sun out on the lake this afternoon, my workout, plus the intense sauna heat.

  My legs felt a little rubbery as I stood and descended down the benches. Spots scattered at the periphery of my vision. Fantasizing about drinking quarts of ice water and then taking a cool shower, I reached to push open the door.

  It didn’t budge.

  I pushed harder, but the door was fixed in place. I stared blankly at the solid cedar door. An adrenaline rush cascaded through my whole body. There was no lock on the door. I knew that for a fact.

  I pushed again, then threw my hip against the door once, and then twice in mounting frustration and fear. The impacts caused the black spots at the sides of my vision to scatter toward the center.

  “Hey!” I yelled, pounding on the door with my opened hand. “Let me out of here.”

  What the hell was going on? Was Valeria out there, playing a practical joke on me?

  Even as I thought it, I knew the idea was ridiculous. I realized I didn’t know Valeria well, but she absolutely did not seem like the type to do something as crazy as to hold the door of the sauna shut on her new employer on her second day of work.

  Besides, Valeria was even smaller than I was. Even if she had thrown her entire weight to block me inside, I would have felt a give in the door when I pushed. But that absolutely wasn’t the case. It was as if the door had become frozen, an utterly unmovable stone slab. Even if there had been a lock on it, I would have felt more give in the door than I did presently as I pushed, pounded, and shouted.

  Recognizing the pressure in my chest as the prelude to panic, I forced myself to pause and try to slow my breathing. It was hard, with what felt like a wall of fear pressing in on me from every direction. It was hot. So hot. I couldn’t breathe the heavy air. Just the distant echo of the word suffocation in my head made it feel like my heart had been pinned outside of my chest, exposed, vulnerable, and convulsing grotesquely.

  Think, Anna.

  No one is holding the door shut. It just got stuck somehow. You need to stay calm. What should you do until you can get Valeria’s attention?

  Clutching the towel around my breasts, I went over to the temperature control and slid the dial all the way to the lowest setting. I couldn’t shut the sauna off entirely, though. The power button was just outside the door. Unfortunately, I’d turned up the temperature up so high upon first entering that it would take quite a while to cool down.

  Don’t think about that.

  I just needed to make enough noise that Valeria would hear me from the kitchen. Unfortunately, I was feeling so weak-kneed from the intense heat, I hardly felt up to making the necessary ruckus.

  Cursing myself for not bringing in a bottle of water, a thought struck me. I dipped my hand in the wooden pail with the dipper we used to throw water on the heating element to create steam. There were several inches of water in it, even if it was probably old and dirty. I lifted the dipper and drank several mouthfuls of water. It was almost too hot to swallow, but I hoped it’d give me the energy I needed.

  Then I went over to the door and hammered with my fists and screamed my head off. I called Valeria’s name. I begged. I cursed. When my hands and forearms grew sore from pounding, I got the wooden ladle out of the pail and banged on the door with that.

  Every minute or so, I’d try to open the door again, each time wondering if I’d been temporarily insane by imagining it was locked tight.

  At one point in this waking nightmare, I climbed the sauna benches and banged on the ceiling with the ladle and shouted, thinking sound might carry through the house to Valeria in the kitchen better that way.

  It was much hotter toward the ceiling, though. So I staggered back down the benches, my legs nearly folding under me when I leapt to the floor.

  I’d been leaving the last of the water in the pail for an emergency, but it seemed like the crisis was upon me. The water wouldn’t do me any good if I passed out.

  How long had I been in here? I wondered after I drank the remaining mouthful of water. It felt like an eternity, but was probably closer to an hour. I usually could only tolerate fifteen or twenty minutes or so in a dry sauna. I pounded on the door again, but my banging sounded weaker. My throat felt cracked and sore. I couldn’t shout anymore.

  How long can I survive in this hot, airless room?

  The thought nearly undid me. I sagged against the door, weakness and fear overwhelming me. Seconds dragged by. Minutes. The temperature of the room hadn’t decreased much. The air felt like it scorched my throat and lungs. It hurt to take it in, but I had no choice but to inhale. I realized that while I’d been wet with sweat before, my skin was now dry. I’d grown so dehydrated I couldn’t perspire anymore. My tongue and lips felt parched and swollen.

  Fear pounced, holding me at its mercy.

  I was twenty-three years old. I had never really considered death with any seriousness. Now, I felt like it’d latched onto me unexpectedly. A haze swam across the dim room. I was blacking out. I found I didn’t have enough energy to care overly much. I realized I was sinking toward the floor.

  Was this really how things would end? They would find me shriveled and desiccated, dead on this wood floor? It seemed ridiculous. Pitiful.

  Evan’s face leapt into my mind’s eye, the vision shockingly realistic, as if he stood in front of me… as if I could touch him.

  I won’t get to say goodbye to him.

  I heard a raspy sound of protest, and realized it was coming from my own parched throat.

  Distantly, I became aware that I sat on the floor now, my back against the obstinate door. How much time had passed? Again, I was uncomfortably aware of how fast my heart beat in my chest,
as if I were running the race of a lifetime.

  It can’t keep going like that. It will give out soon in sheer exhaustion.

  My towel had slipped off me. I could feel a sliver of cool air against my upper buttock and lower back. It came from the crack beneath the door, I realized with the barest glimmer of excitement. I told myself to move, but nothing happened. My limbs were like lead posts.

  I forced myself to conjure up the image of Evan again.

  With a gargantuan effort, I heaved myself onto my belly. Fingers digging into the wood planks of the floor, I managed to scoot forward several inches. I put my mouth to the crack under the door and drank in the cool air from the changing room in wild desperation, my lungs heaving. It felt divine, intoxicating… almost as glorious as the idea of chugging down a glass of deliciously cold water.

  I opened my eyes, still sucking madly with my lips pressed to the bottom of the door. The crack beneath it was tiny and nearly indistinguishable. Nevertheless, at such close proximity, I could make out two distinct shadows beneath it, two obstructions blocking the light from the changing room.

  They were shoes, I realized in dull amazement. Someone stood just on the other side of the door, inches away from my lips.

  As I stared, the shadows wavered and then vanished.

  I inhaled more air. Minutes passed, as I tried to decide if the cool, refreshing blasts of oxygen had restored me enough to get off the floor.

  The door swung outward. Light and cool air washed over me.

  “Anna? My God, Anna? What happened?”

  I recognized Valeria’s anxious voice, even though the light had blinded me, and I couldn’t see anything but her small, quick shadow kneeling in front of me.

  “Door was blocked. Someone was holding it shut,” I tried to say, but my words came out like I had a mouth and throat stuffed with sandpaper.

  Valeria wanted to call an ambulance, but refrained when I demanded that she just help me to sit down in the changing room. The next thing I knew, she was handing me a glass of water and pressing a cold washcloth to my head. I’d never tasted anything so good in my life as that water. I handed her the empty glass, and she immediately went to get me more out of the water dispenser, and then more again.

  After several minutes, the haze of misery that had enveloped me began to loosen its clutches. Valeria asked if I thought I could stand to get into the shower. I agreed, and with her help, made it over to one of the two shower stalls. Once there, my legs shook from weakness. Fortunately, there was a shower seat to which she guided me.

  Cool water rushed over me, bringing down my body temperature. I sat there for I don’t know how long, fisting the ledge of the seat, my head down and my wet hair streaming down around my face.

  Finally, I lifted my head, feeling reasonably comfortable for the first time in what felt like an eternity. I stared up at Valeria. She stood in the shower stall with me. She was every bit as soaking wet as I was, but fully clothed, her face pulled tight in wild concern. I gave a bark of regretful laughter.

  “God, Valeria, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you—”

  “It’s okay,” she said quickly. “Anna, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said automatically. I took a few seconds, focusing on my body. My skin felt cool, my heart had stopped its crazy, dangerous charge into the unknown. I shuddered, recalling how I’d wondered while I was stuck in the sauna how long the organ had before it just stopped from sheer exhaustion. Fear had made me exclusively, repulsively aware of my heart and its function, more so than I’d ever been in my life.

  More so than I ever wanted to be again.

  “Anna?” Valeria asked anxiously. I realized she’d seen my shudder of fear.

  “I really am fine. I feel okay now. How did you find me?” I asked, realizing that she’d come after I’d ceased my banging and shouting.

  “One of the construction workers came upstairs to the kitchen, looking for Evan. He said they’d found something in the viewing room when they were ripping down a cabinet there—a box of some kind. Here, let me help you,” Valeria said when she saw me start to stand. “Hold on, Anna,” she warned when I wavered.

  I sat back down while she turned off the shower and stepped out of the stall to get towels for both of us. When she was satisfied that I was strong enough to stand and keep myself steady, we walked back out to the changing room. I sat down while I toweled off my hair.

  “Did the construction workers hear me banging?”

  “The guy who came up to the kitchen mentioned that he’d thought he’d heard some banging, and he didn’t think it was from the crew. When he said that, about the banging, I realized how long you’d been down here. I started to get worried, and came to look for you.”

  “Maybe it was him,” I breathed out. “Maybe he was the one who was holding the door closed.”

  Valeria blanched. “I can’t imagine why he would do that. I know him. Kind of, anyway.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Jesse… Jesse Martin, I think? He’s my younger brother’s age, like twenty? Twenty-one? They were both on the football team. He’s a good kid. Why would he try to lock you in the sauna?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, just as confused as Valeria appeared to be. “You didn’t see anyone else when you came to the dressing room? Anyone near the exercise room, or anywhere else they shouldn’t have been?”

  “No. The only person that wasn’t where he usually would have been was Jesse, but he’d already returned to the viewing room to work by that time.”

  “How long was it after he left the kitchen before you came down here?”

  She shrugged, thinking. “Almost immediately. I thought about what Jesse had said about the pounding for maybe a minute before I decided to check on you.”

  “I couldn’t get out of there. I almost passed out from the heat, but the door wouldn’t budge,” I said, staring around the changing room, looking for some sign of an intruder’s presence there. I saw nothing out of place. It took me a moment to realize Valeria hadn’t responded.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her when I saw her uncertain expression.

  “But… there’s no lock on the door. Anna, it opened easily for me the second I got here.”

  “Someone was holding it closed,” I insisted. “I’m telling you, Valeria. Someone was out here, holding that damn door shut. I could see their feet under the door!”

  “Okay, I believe you,” Valeria assured, holding up her hands, her eyes wide in alarm.

  “I saw movement. Or at least… I thought I did.”

  At that moment, I’d recalled the black spots I’d been seeing as I started to pass out, and the shimmering haze over my vision. Had those spots been responsible for what I’d thought were shadows on the other side of the door?

  “But who would do something like that? Are you saying someone was trying purposefully to hurt you?”

  Kill you?

  Valeria didn’t say the last, but I heard the voice in my head. It sounded melodramatic. Ridiculous. I stared at the sauna door, my mouth sagging open. Valeria hadn’t shut it all the way when she’d helped me up off the floor. It hung open several inches, the exposed, smooth side of it making it clear there was no lock. It appeared benign. Innocent. Even if a very strong man had been holding it shut, I would have felt a give in the wood when I pressed against it. Wouldn’t I have? Instead, it’d been like pushing against a ten-ton slab of rock.

  “It happened,” I said, but my voice shook as my confidence wavered.

  Valeria nodded. “Then we’d better call the police,” she said, digging in her shorts pocket for her phone.

  “No… wait.”

  She blinked at my terse command.

  “Do you think the door could have just been stuck?” I asked hesitantly. “I had the temperature in the sauna up really high. Maybe t
here was some kind of heat expansion on the door, and it made it stick?”

  “I guess it’s possible,” Valeria admitted slowly. “I mean, something had to have happened. But still… it opened so easily for me.”

  I nodded, thinking, replaying the sequence of events in my head, and trying to make sense of the nonsensical.

  “But at some point, I turned down the temperature as far as it could go, even though I couldn’t turn it off all the way. It didn’t feel like the air temperature went down that much afterward, but maybe that’s because I was so overheated to start with. Maybe it’d cooled enough by the time you got here, and the door had contracted again?”

  Valeria frowned. “If that’s true, then the manufacturer of that sauna ought to be sued. Of course there’s going to be expansion and contraction of the wood with the heat. You’d think they’d have that factored into the design.”

  “You’re right,” I said, standing. Thankfully, my legs held firm this time. “I’m going to call the manufacturer first thing tomorrow and tell them what happened. That was so scary.”

  “I’ll bet. If I hadn’t shown up, you could have been killed.”

  I glanced at her uneasily, shocked by hearing her say out loud what I’d feared the most while locked in that hotbox.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t mention this to Evan,” I said. “I’d better be the one to tell him. He already worries enough about me as it is.”

  “If you think so,” Valeria said, but I heard the anxiety in her tone.

  I nodded, pretending confidence. “And I’m going to go and check with the work crew… ask that guy, Jesse, if he saw anything unusual when he came back from the kitchen.”

  Valeria did a double take. “You mean you’re still not convinced? You think it could have been a person who was responsible for holding the door shut?”