Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  This night, however, they watched in vain, because Lucille did not return.

  After a half hour of waiting, Frances became nervous. She went to the owner, and said, “Where is Lucille? I didn’t think she usually took this long.”

  The owner only replied, “She’s changing down at the bathhouse. I give her a key, ’cause nobody is allowed in there at night.”

  “Maybe she went home,” said the owner’s wife as she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her dirty apron.

  “Nope,” said the owner. “I’d stake my life.”

  Frances signaled to Billy to remain and headed out the door. Her footsteps on the gangway over the edge of the lake echoed woodenly. The moon shone that night, but nothing of its light reached through the dense canopy of cedar branches. Frances pushed open the door of the bathhouse and called Lucille’s name. Only a high-pitched, stertorous breathing came in reply.

  She reached above her head and pulled the chain on the metal-shaded light that hung down from the ceiling. In its harsh illumination, she saw Lucille lying twisted on the rough, puddled floor of the bathhouse. Her dress had been torn and raised up over her breasts. Her underpants had been pulled down to her ankles. Her lower belly and the inside of her thighs were bloody.

  Lucille’s eyes struggled to open. “Frances?” she whispered, as Frances began to pull Lucille’s clothes back more or less into place.

  “Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord!” Frances whispered. “Let’s get you home.”

  “Travis Gann,” said Lucille, struggling to rise. “It was Travis Gann.”

  “I thought he was still in jail!”

  Lucille shook her head. With that motion, she lost her fragile balance, and her head dropped back against the rough wooden floor with a loud knock.

  “You lie there. I’ll get Billy,” said Frances.

  Lucille made no reply; her breathing was rough.

  Frances rose, knocking her head against the light, so that it danced and threw violent shadows and shafts of light over the interior of the women’s bathhouse. Frances backed out the door, unaccountably knocking her head again, this time on the top of the doorframe.

  Everything was different for Frances as she left the bathhouse with the intention of returning to the dance hall and fetching Billy. For one thing, it no longer seemed night. Before, she had had to almost feel her way along the path to the bathhouse with her arms outstretched, the night dark beneath the canopy of cedar boughs. Now, on her way back, she saw as easily as she might have seen at high noon, when the sun glanced blindingly off the surface of Lake Pinchona.

  She had wanted to run to bring Billy out, but something was different about her legs, that didn’t allow running. She loped and swayed, and her head was thrust forward.

  Everything looked different too: her vision was blurred, and she saw things from a different height. The ground seemed farther away.

  Even as these differences registered in Frances’s mind, that mind itself changed. Frances Caskey no longer had thoughts that belonged to Lucille’s cousin.

  Her hearing was acute. To her right, among a grove of cypresses on a little tongue of spongy land, she heard a footstep on the soft ground. Without any conscious thought, the thing that was no longer Frances Caskey turned in that direction.

  At the same time, that thing caught another sound, this one much louder, an echoing footfall on the gangway from the dance hall. She—for though she was no longer Frances, she was yet female—slipped into the darkness, and avoided Billy on his way out to the bathhouse.

  She slipped among the trees and was hidden in the darkness, her progress marked by a series of wet slaps against the cypress and cedar trunks. She heard more footfalls, then a curse word that conveyed no meaning to her altered mind, but did serve to pinpoint the location of its speaker.

  She saw him long before he saw her. His form appeared vague and indistinct, but brightly lighted, as if she gazed at him on a sunlit beach through squinted eyes.

  Travis Gann, standing near the shore of the lake, had turned at the unfamiliar, moist slapping noise. In the darkness, beneath the trees, he saw, indistinctly, pale, nonhuman staring eyes, a wide flat gleaming face, an enormous lipless mouth, a tall, strong form to which the tattered remnants of a girl’s dress clung wetly. Vast webbed feet flapped against the ground as it came nearer. He backed against a tree and pressed as if he might push it down behind him. The tree did not fall, and Travis Gann sidled around it to the right. He lost his footing on the slippery ground and slid with a splash among the lily pads at the lake’s edge. A large moth flew against his face, and he saw the frantic beating of its white, dusty wings. The mud of the lake was soft, and when he tried to stand, his feet sank deep. When he tried to scramble away, tearing at the lilies, he discovered that he was caught in the twisted underwater stems of the plants. He looked up, and the thing that had appeared to him amongst the trees a few moments before now stood above him in the moonlight. He saw it for only one moment of stark terror, for it slipped down the bank and into the water beside him.

  Moving beneath the water, Frances’s vision cleared. Everything was as bright as before. The lilies were a waving forest of thin brown trunks, and among them she saw the man struggling, one foot caught in the mud. She surged toward him, thrust out one arm to catch him, and in the same easy motion, pushed off toward the center of the lake.

  Travis’s head remained above water as he was suddenly pulled backward, free of the lilies, into the open black water of Lake Pinchona. With a fearful jerk, he remembered the alligators. Then, for an instant, he grinned. Why should he fear alligators when this thing had caught hold of him? The grin faded, and Travis Gann stared up at the sky. The stars raced along above him. He heard the water rushing past his ears and water poured chokingly into his open mouth.

  The thing that was Frances Caskey swam out to the middle of the lake, and when it had got there it swung its other arm around Travis Gann. Holding him close, she plunged down to the muddy bottom. She held him in her embrace as a father might hold an overgrown boy on his lap. She gazed into his face as a father might have gazed.

  So deep were they beneath the water that Travis could see nothing but the pale luminescence of the two eyes that stared at him. He struggled and squirmed, but was held fast. The little air remaining in his lungs was exhaled in a stifled shout. He freed one arm, made a fist, and jammed it against the wide, flat face in front of him. His fist met nothing at all. His mind registered bewilderment, and his last conscious thought was the solution to that mystery: It opened its mouth, and my fist went right in. Then the mouth clamped shut over Travis Gann’s forearm, and the entire arm was wrenched from its socket.

  Travis Gann knew nothing after that.

  Frances ate both Travis’s arms. Sometime in the course of that feeding, Travis Gann died. When her hunger was sated, Frances carried the corpse over to the alligator nest she knew lay at the edge of the cow pasture. Attracted by the smell of blood in the water, the alligators were there to receive him.

  Frances stood up out of the water, holding aloft the armless corpse. Blood spilled from the empty sockets. Her own bloody mouth opened and she piped a series of brief shrill notes. The water all around was agitated by the thrashing tails of the alligators—and her own. Somewhere, in a dark corner of the creature’s mind, Frances Caskey was startled to hear the shrill piping song that she remembered from her dreams.

  Frances Caskey sang, and Travis Gann was tumbled into the alligators’ nest on the banks of Lake Pinchona.

  Chapter 53

  Mother and Daughter

  When Billy reached the bathhouse, he found Lucille as Frances had left her only minutes before. He gathered Lucille up into his arms and hurried along the cedar path with her, pausing once behind a tree to allow a knot of soldiers to pass. He slipped out to the parking lot, laid Lucille across the back seat of the car, and covered her with a blanket from the trunk. Returning to the dance hall with as much nonchalance as he could muster, he reassured th
e owner and his wife that all was well. Lucille had merely fallen prey to an upset stomach, and he was taking her home. He stood just outside the door of the dance hall, causing the gangway to creak beneath his weight as he shifted back and forth in confusion and nervousness. The yellow light from within spilled out in discrete squares all around the building, but did not dispel the darkness. The moon was now obscured by clouds.

  Billy could easily imagine that Frances had fled in silent hysteria when she found her cousin in that horrifying condition in the bathhouse. He went back to the car, hoping Frances would be there. She was not. Lucille moaned softly. Billy got into the car, unsure as to what he should do. Lucille might require medical attention, but he did not want to leave without Frances. He got out of the car, cautioning an unheedful Lucille of the necessity of remaining quiet.

  Billy returned to the bathhouse and softly called Frances’s name. When there was no reply, he decided to search further. Keeping clear of the dance hall, he entered the grove of cedar and cypress at the edge of the lake. The music from the dance hall was frequently drowned out by the noise of the cicadas anchored in the bark of the trees. He went to the edge of the water. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and shone upon the lake.

  “Frances?” he called.

  A head broke the surface of the water about fifty feet from shore. It wasn’t Frances—it wasn’t even human. It disappeared so quickly that Billy told himself that he’d imagined it—even though he was certain he hadn’t. While he was telling himself, it was just an alligator, he noticed a trail forming itself in ripples on the surface of the calm black water of the lake. The trail came toward him. He backed away into the darkness and security of the trees.

  It saw me.

  Frances rose among the lily pads and weakly called Billy’s name.

  He rushed forward, and pulled his fiancée up onto the land. She had lost her shoes and her feet were covered with mud. Her dress and underclothes hung from her in shreds. Billy took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

  “Shhh!” he said, when she looked as though she was about to speak. “Let’s just get back to the car.”

  On the way home, Frances was silent. She did not explain how she had come to be in the lake, or why so little was left of her dress. Billy did not press the matter. He pulled up in front of Elinor’s house, got out and hurried inside, cautioning Frances and Lucille to remain in the car. He brought out Elinor and Zaddie with blankets, and the two young women were soon installed in the bedrooms upstairs. Queenie was telephoned and arrived in a few minutes.

  Travis Gann, Lucille said, had raped her. He had been waiting for her just outside the bathhouse. He had grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her inside, knocked her to the floor, pulled up her dress, ripped off her pants, and punctured her hymen in his first thrust.

  Queenie’s eyebrows were raised—she had not imagined that the thing had been intact. It was only then so much the worse for her poor daughter.

  Frances would see no one but her mother. Elinor took Frances into the bathroom and kneeled beside the bathtub to bathe her daughter tenderly. In a low, distant voice, Frances told her mother all she remembered about her experience at the lake.

  “Mama, I killed him.”

  “He was a terrible man,” said Elinor reassuringly. “He raped Lucille. He got Malcolm in trouble.”

  “But I killed him.”

  “Nobody knows that, darling, except you and me. And even if anybody knew, do you think they’d do anything but give you a medal?” Elinor gave a low laugh. “What do you think Queenie would say? Queenie would say, ‘Frances, I’ve got to kiss you for killing that old Travis Gann, now we’re not ever going to have to see his ugly face again.’ Stand up, darling.”

  Frances stood obediently, as of old, with her feet a little apart. Her mother began to rub her belly with a soapy cloth.

  “You know what, Mama?” said Frances, when Elinor had begun washing her right leg.

  “What?”

  “It’s not even so much the business about killing Travis Gann...”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s how I did it.”

  “What do you mean how?”

  “How?” repeated Frances. “I dragged him down to the bottom of the lake. And I bit off his arms. I got his arms inside my mouth and I bit them off. I ate both his arms.”

  Elinor said, “Give me your foot, baby.”

  Frances obediently raised her leg and placed it on the edge of the bathtub for her mother to wash.

  Mechanically, when this was done, Frances turned around, and her mother began on her left leg.

  “What’s wrong, darling?” asked Elinor after a bit. “What are you thinking of?”

  “I’m trying to remember if that was exactly what happened. It couldn’t have happened that way really, could it? Already it seems like a dream.”

  “It was a bad dream,” returned her mother. “Now turn this way, face me.” Frances did so. Her mother stood, looked at Frances, and held her gaze. Elinor took her daughter’s arm in her right hand, and with the other she began to wash between Frances’s legs. “Do you know what really happened out at the lake?” Frances shook her head. “You found Lucille,” said Elinor slowly, and went on with deliberateness, “and then you ran to get Billy so that he could help get her out of there. But Travis Gann was lying in wait for you, and he attacked you and tore off your clothes and when you tried to run away from him you fell in the water. You couldn’t see because it was so dark. Travis came in after you, but he couldn’t swim as well as you could and the alligators came and got him.”

  France’s gaze, which had turned glassy, hardened into focus. “Yes, ma’am,” she said quietly.

  Elinor sighed, dropped the washcloth, and embraced her naked daughter. “I’m so sorry, darling. I’m so sorry it had to happen this way!”

  Frances was stiff in her arms. When Elinor let go, Frances said, “It did happen, though, what I really remember.”

  Elinor nodded.

  “Stand out of the bathtub, darling, and let me dry you off.”

  Frances did so. She said, “It was horrible, Mama.”

  Elinor, who had taken a fresh towel from the rack, looked at Frances in surprise. “No, it wasn’t,” she said. “You just say that now. But were you hurt? Were you frightened? Were you ever in danger?”

  “I don’t remember...”

  Elinor shook her head. “You weren’t, darling, not for one minute.” She placed the towel around Frances’s shoulders and began to rub. “That old Travis Gann could never have hurt you, not when you were...”

  “Were what?”

  “Were the way you were when you got out in the water.”

  “It didn’t happen in the water, Mama. It happened in the bathhouse, right after I found Lucille.”

  Elinor nodded. She dropped to her knees again and continued to towel Frances dry. “That’s because you were upset. You were upset on Lucille’s account. I don’t blame you, either. Not one little bit.”

  “Mama, is this ever gone happen again?”

  Elinor didn’t answer. She stood up, tossed the towel into the corner of the bathroom, and took a robe from a hook on the door. “Put this on. Let’s go in the other room and let me brush your hair.”

  “Mama,” said Frances calmly, as she allowed herself to be led into the next room, “you got to tell me this time. You cain’t keep on putting me off and putting me off when I ask you about things. Not after what happened tonight. I killed somebody,” she whispered.

  Oscar and Billy were sitting on the screened-in porch, onto which opened the window of Frances’s room. Oscar, when he saw the light come on, came over to the window and peered in. “Elinor,” he said, “is she all right?”

  “She’s fine,” returned Elinor, guiding her daughter to the vanity. Frances sat woodenly on the wicker seat before the triptych mirror.

  “What the hell happened out there?”

  “Travis Gann,” said Elinor.
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  “Are we gone have to call the police?”

  “No!” said Elinor sharply. “Oscar, will you just let Frances and me alone for a while? I will come out there a little later and tell everybody what happened and explain what we’re going to do. Don’t you trust me?”

  Oscar shrugged. “Billy and me are sitting here on our hands and we just don’t know what to do next.”

  “Fine,” said Elinor, “you just continue with that.” Despite the heat of the evening, Elinor pulled down the window in her husband’s face and snapped the curtains shut. She returned to her daughter. Frances sat with her hands in her lap, blankly staring at her triple reflection in the mirrors. Elinor picked up a brush and began pulling it through the thick ropes of her daughter’s damp hair.

  “Frances,” said Elinor quietly, smiling down at her daughter’s reflection as she brushed, “what you’ve got to do is calm down, because in just a little while you and I are going to have to go out on the porch and talk to Oscar and Billy and Queenie. You’re going to have to tell them what happened out at the lake. They’re going to expect you to be a little upset, but they’re not going to want to listen to any wild stories.”

  “Mama,” sighed Frances, looking neither at herself nor at her mother, but staring instead at the little lamp with the fringed shade, “you don’t think I’d go to anybody with a story like that, do you?”

  “I hope not. Who’d believe you? Nobody would. I wouldn’t even believe you.” Elinor gave a little laugh.

  “Mama, it’s not funny.”

  “Frances, darling, you act like this has never happened before—that’s what I can’t understand.”

  Frances looked up at her mother’s reflection in astonishment.

  After a few moments, Elinor said quietly, “I see what it is. You don’t remember...”