People of the Lake

by Nick Scorza

  “I didn’t mean that. I’ll stay home. I don’t care about the stupid party.”

  That part was true; I didn’t even want to go anymore.

  “Be home by ten,” my father said. “No drinking.”

  He didn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the night.

  IV.

  The car’s headlights illuminated barely ten feet ahead of me, and the road rolled on forever in the darkness beyond their reach. Distances seemed so much greater at night. As I drove through the woods, the high beams lit the trees from below, making them look like weird undersea plants. I listened for the clipped syllables of my phone’s GPS telling me where to turn to reach Redmarch Lake Episcopal.

  As I drove, I thought about what I had said to my father. I knew it hurt, and I wished I hadn’t said it, but it was the truth—I barely knew him. Not that he hadn’t always been there, and done all the stuff dads are supposed to—but I didn’t know his whole family was from here until tonight. I’d never met anyone else from his side of the family. He had no brothers or sisters, and my grandparents on his side died when I was little, but I had no idea if he had cousins or anything. As I drove slowly down the outer-space-black country roads, I resolved that by the time the summer was done, I’d be able to say I knew my dad and mean it.

  When I finally made it to the church, the parking lot was half full, which was a good sign. It looked like everyone was already at the party, though, so I would have to walk there alone. I felt in my purse for the little key-ring bottle of pepper spray my mom had bought me, glad it was still there.

  The trail head was easy to find, a gap in the fence with a little spur of asphalt extending into the undergrowth. Only a few feet of it was paved, after that it was bare ground, growing narrower and narrower as I went further in. I was thankful for the flashlight on my phone to light the path ahead. The cricket chorus was even louder out here than at my father’s house; their chirps echoed from all around me. Mosquitoes were probably eating me alive, too—every so often I felt the gossamer brush of insect wings on my legs and tried to aim a good swat, only to come up with nothing. I thought about what my father had said about lyme ticks and walked faster.

  I was beginning to regret coming out when I heard music through the trees ahead—some sort of music anyway. It sounded like whistling, or high-pitched singing, and someone tapping out a strange rhythm. The problem was, it was a little ways off the trail. It had to be the party, though—where else would sounds like that be coming from?

  I took a step off the trail, then another. The ground didn’t open up to swallow me or anything—so far so good.

  I followed the music deeper into the woods. The undergrowth was thin here, making it hard to tell what was trail and what wasn’t. The sound grew louder as I walked, and I saw a faint light peeking out from between the trees in a little clearing ahead. I thought I heard someone laugh, a girl’s voice.

  In my haste to get to the party, I didn’t notice the thorn bush in my way, and I swore as my cardigan ripped and inch-long thorns scraped my arms and legs. When I fought through the bush and into the clearing, I saw it was empty. There was no music to be heard, no light but the moon shining through a gap in the branches.

  I took a deep breath. Did I remember how to get back? Was there even a party out here? I could hear my heart thudding in my chest. I told myself to calm down and just go back the way I’d come. As soon as my heartbeat quieted, I realized something else that sent a chill down my spine—the crickets had stopped chirping.

  I stood rooted to the spot, my back against the rough bark of a tree, hoping nothing was there. Everything was quiet for another moment. Then I heard a twig snap, horribly close. I heard another, then another—footsteps, getting closer. Something big breathed in and out—a deep, rasping snort.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took off running, crashing though the undergrowth. It was all I could do not to scream.

  I could hear it behind me—its ragged breath getting closer and closer, its footfalls crashing through the woods. I couldn’t tell if it had two legs or four. I didn’t dare look back.

  I ran until my sides ached. A jutting root sent me sprawling, and I heard it lunge for me. I screamed as something brushed my ankle. I threw myself forward, kicking with both legs. Then I was back on my feet, running hard into the darkness.

  I ran until I couldn’t anymore, and when I finally collapsed against an ivy-covered tree trunk, I turned to face whatever horrible thing was coming for me.

  And there was nothing there.

  I stood silent for I don’t know how long, catching my breath, trying to convince myself I wasn’t losing my mind. There were no cuts or scrapes on my ankle, except the ones from the thorn bush. But what I heard, what I felt, had been real. I was positive.

  This place was really starting to get to me.

  Then I heard music, unmistakably someone’s stereo this time, playing a screamy metalcore song, which is much more what I expected from the party. I laughed. Now, of course, I’d find it.

  I wandered through the trees, following the sound. I came out on a large clearing, lit up by a few electric camp lanterns, with a pair of portable speakers blasting the screamo. A big knot of people clustered around the silvery bulk of a keg in a tub of ice, and a few other groups were talking or smoking. Further out, I caught glimpses of couples making out in the half-light at the far edge of the clearing. It was all so far from where I’d just been I had to laugh again.

  “You made it!” Neil said, happy to see me. Then he caught sight of my torn cardigan and the scratches on my arms. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, sure. More thorn bushes than Central Park, that’s all.”

  He handed me a red cup that was almost all foam. It was just as well since I didn’t drink. Not because I was underage, but because I really didn’t like not being in control of myself. No pot, no alcohol, and definitely nothing stronger—there was no telling what would come out once I lost control.

  I smiled anyway, pretending to take a sip.

  “Thanks. Not as easy to find this place as I’d thought.”

  “Sorry. I could’ve given you better directions, I’m not very good at that.”

  Neil looked sincerely crushed. I wondered if he knew anything about whatever was lurking in the woods.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. I’m a city girl, I need a grid.”

  “You stayed on the path, right?” he said, suddenly worried.

  “Oh, yeah, not one foot outside the line.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d been through; I didn’t want to believe it myself.

  “Let me show you around,” Neil said, making a grand gesture like he was escorting me to his country house. “Here’s the keg, the smokers’ corner, the uh . . . the hookup nook, and I know the casino and the shuffleboard deck must be around here somewhere . . .”

  It was cute the way he blushed when he said “hookup nook.”

  “What, no ice sculpture?” I said.

  He laughed. Then a girl a foot shorter than him walked right up to him and punched him hard in the chest.

  “Oh my god, is this her?”

  She had dyed black hair and black eyeliner, and she was clearly furious.

  “You knew I’d be here. You just wanted to parade her in front of me, didn’t you?”

  “Hi, I’m Clara,” I said.

  The girl gave me a brief head nod. Her eyes were not friendly.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but this isn’t anything,” I said. “I’m just new in town, and Neil told me about the party. We’re not together.”

  I backed away. The girl gave me a stay the hell out of this glare, then she was back to yelling at Neil, who was falling all over himself trying to explain and apologize. He mouthed the word sorry to me just like he had in the café, then they were gone, taking their unresolved drama to the edge of the clearing where it belonged, and I was alone again with a cup of beer foam. I spilled a litt
le of it on the ground just in case someone asked why I wasn’t drinking. Not that anyone did.

  I stayed in the circle around the keg for a while, feeling like a trespasser who would be discovered any minute. No one even looked at me. They were talking about other people they knew who weren’t here, or things they all remembered from last year. This was probably the sort of place where you went through every grade with the same people, and whoever was the poor paste-eater in kindergarten was marked for life.

  I couldn’t imagine how bad my life would have been if I’d stayed at that school in New Jersey, with everything reminding me of Zoe. If I were from a town like this, I’d probably leave and never look back. The more I thought about it, the more it made me angry at my father—why would he ever want to leave the city and come back here?

  I waited for some kind of entry into the conversation around the keg, something I could chime in on. One of the guys said, “Well, you know what Bone is like . . .” and everyone burst out in giggles. This was a language I didn’t speak. I drifted away—no one had noticed my presence, and they definitely didn’t notice my absence. It felt like the first years after Zoe’s death all over. I tried hard to forget my halfhearted first attempts to connect with other people. My sister had died, but I was the one who felt like a ghost you could see right through.

  I wandered back toward the edge of the clearing, looking up at the stars. I wondered how hard it would be to find my way back.

  “You just tried to hang with the locals, right?”

  I recognized Hector from the coffee shop. Apparently Neil had ditched him, too, for whatever drama was playing out at the edge of the woods. Hector looked up from his phone for half a second to raise an eyebrow at me.

  “That obvious, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah, it reminds me of a joke. So this guy goes to prison, and when he walks in, one of the inmates yells out, ‘number 54!’ and everyone laughs. Then later on, someone yells out ‘number 16!’ and everyone cracks up. Finally, he asks his cell mate what the hell is going on. ‘Oh, we’ve all been in here forever,’ says the cell mate, ‘we know all the jokes, and we gave ’em all numbers to save time.’ ‘Wow, okay,’ says the man, ‘let me try—number 21!’ There’s like, dead silence through the whole cell block. Finally, his cell mate says, ‘Man, some people just can’t tell a joke.’”

  I nodded.

  “That was like a metaphor for this whole town.”

  “No, I got that,” I said. “It was maybe more profound than funny.”

  “Yeah, well at least now that you’re here, I know it’s not a race thing: they just hate everyone who’s not from here. Except Neil—I don’t think he hates anyone. You’re from the city, right? What neighborhood?”

  “Forest Hills, you?”

  “Uh oh, you’re a Mets fan.”

  “I don’t care about any of that.”

  “I thought so, it’s okay. I’m from Inwood.” He puffed out his chest, trying to look hard. It didn’t really work. I couldn’t help it, I laughed a little. Luckily, he didn’t look too disappointed. “Yeah, I can’t scare any of these gringos, either. They only talk to me to copy my math homework.”

  “Do you let them?”

  “Are you kidding? I charge for that shit. It beats working at the diner.”

  “How’d you end up here?”

  “My parents always wanted to live in the country—now my mom can have a big house and my dad can go fishing. My sister’s off in college most of the year. It’s just me suffering.”

  I waited for him to ask me about how I ended up here, trying to think of something clever, but he suddenly lowered his voice.

  “Hey, you been out to the lake yet?’

  I nodded. He looked around to make sure everyone was ignoring us, which of course they were.

  “Creepy, right? They say no one knows how deep it actually is. No one in town will tell you this, but they used to kill people out on that island, like human sacrifice.”

  I remembered staring out at that eerie little island, and I suppressed a shudder.

  “Yeah, right. None of the Native American tribes from here practiced human sacrifice.”

  “Who said I was talking about Native Americans?”

  At that moment, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he suddenly seemed to forget I existed.

  “Sorry, I gotta answer this. I’ve been trying forever to get a signal out in this wasteland . . .” Whatever was going on with his phone was obviously more interesting than me. If I couldn’t even make friends with my fellow NYC exile, what hope did I have here? This was a terrible idea. At least the Woodchuck acknowledged my existence. I would head back in a few days, if the creature in the trees didn’t get me first.

  Everything seemed so normal now, with the light and the music and the sound of other people around me. I looked back at the woods: the shadows deepened to impenetrable blue-black just a few feet past the lanterns’ little circles of light. I wondered if whatever had chased me was still waiting out there.

  “We’re pretty close to the lake shore out here, but of course you can’t see anything,” said someone behind me.

  I turned to face perhaps the best looking guy I’d ever seen outside of a magazine. He was leanly muscled, with a strong jaw and an easy smile. He looked like an actor playing a small-town boy, his dark-blond hair perfectly tousled just so. I was instantly suspicious.

  “Hey, I saw you talking to Neil,” he said. “We don’t get too many new people around here. What’s your name?”

  “Clara.”

  “Clara, what?”

  “Morris.”

  He perked up when he heard my last name, like he suddenly realized I was famous. My mother’s last name was DiStefano. Back home, I kept wanting to use hers—less vanilla and more New York. But just now I was glad I had a local name.

  “You’re Tom Morris’s daughter,” he said. “Welcome. This town’s your home, too. I’m Keith Redmarch.”

  “Redmarch,” I said, “as in Redmarch Lake? Did your ancestors plant a flag in it or something?”

  I remembered the statue in the town square and the frightening expression on its face. Keith didn’t seem anything like him, I was happy to say.

  “Something like that,” he said. “I mean, there were already people here. The white man didn’t ‘discover’ anything; we just stuck our names on it . . .”

  “Right.”

  “Hey, can I get you another drink? Let me introduce you to everyone.”

  I’d been a bit suspicious at first, but this pushed me over the edge. I’d been the butt of too many false offers of friendship and other cruel tricks in my life, and there was no way this was legitimate. Guys like this at my high school would walk right past me like I wasn’t there, unless they stopped to mutter something like “weirdo.” I take that back—there weren’t any guys like Keith at my high school—most of them had at least one flaw. He looked back to see me standing there with my arms crossed.

  “Sorry, but is this a Carrie thing? Or like Les Liaisons Dangereuses? You’re not secretly into your hot cousin, are you?”

  “Ugh, no. I don’t even have cousins. I’m just trying to be a good host.”

  “Okay, sorry. I’m from the city. I don’t trust easy.”

  “You’re family’s from here,” he said. “That makes you one of us. . . . I have always wanted to see the city, though.”

  “You should go! I think you’d do well there.” He had no idea how well. He’d probably get some kind of male model contract after stepping off the bus.

  Keith led me into the knot of partiers, this time as a confirmed actual person, and I tried to remember the dizzying list of new names—they were all some variation of Dave or Mike, or Jennifer or Kristen. The challenge was remembering which one was which. Keith even tried to explain one or two of the in-jokes to me. “Everyone calls him Bone because of what happened during the rope climb at gym class years ago. Yeah, immature, I know . . .”

  Someone pressed a new beer
into my hand, and I pretended to drink again. Then someone else passed a joint around, and I pretended to hit it. I looked for Neil and his ladyfriend. She was smoking with another group of girls by the edge of the woods, but I didn’t see him. Hector was still preoccupied with his phone, caught half in shadow at the edge of the clearing. I almost felt bad until I remembered the way he ignored me. I laughed along with the in-crowd at the stories and jokes I only half appreciated, but I had an all right time after all.

  The party wound down around four, and a big group of us made our way back up the path, which was so much shorter and easier than the way I’d come.

  By the time I got home, there were birds singing in the trees. My father was asleep on the couch again. He probably tried to wait up for me. I felt a twinge of guilt. I’d lost track of time so easily. I went to bed knowing I’d hear about in the morning.

  I was exhausted, but once again sleep did not come easy. I tossed and turned in the sheets, dreaming of the darkened woods, of fear and running, until I reached the shadowed edge of the lake, and everything went black.

  1889

  I have never endured such a journey as our trip to Buffalo. It was horrid at first, beset by railway delays and all manner of other inconveniences. I resolved to tell my husband he could conduct whatever business he had there alone from now on, and the children and I would await him in Manhattan, but to tell him anything I would have to reach him first.

  Stevens had made all the arrangements, and I am ashamed to say I was quite cross with him, even though he could have foreseen none of the compounding misfortunes that finally culminated in our locomotive’s engine dying in the middle of the journey. The damned thing would take days to repair, and we were adrift in the wilderness. Bless his heart, Stevens sent a railroad man for a horse and carriage, which conveyed us to the nearest town. I took back every intemperate word I’d hurled at him.

  The town was larger than I’d expected—given I’d never heard of it before—and it was quite charming. There was a placid lake with a romantic little island at the far side, and a stately house beyond it on the hill. The inn where we roomed was modest, but not uncomfortable. The fellow who owned it, Clyburn I believe his name was, said he had plans for something more grand, a real hotel. I told him he should have to get his town on all the maps first.