People of the Lake

by Nick Scorza

  The menu was the same as what you’d see in half the fancier places in Brooklyn these days—heritage pork belly, roasted brussels sprouts, heirloom tomatoes—which always made me picture a smiling grandmother passing on a mummified old tomato to her disappointed granddaughter. Everything was locally sourced and farm-to-table.

  “A restaurant group from the city bought this place a while ago,” my father said. “They want to open up the old hotel above it, too.”

  I felt sorry for whoever’s bright idea that was. They clearly didn’t know what they were getting into. My father seemed to be thinking exactly the same thing without saying it.

  A moment later, everyone in the restaurant fell silent as Keith and his father walked in. It was good to be the local royalty, though I could tell the attention made Keith uncomfortable, and his father barely seemed to notice. When Jonathan Redmarch caught sight of my father, he smiled in a sincere, almost goofy way that was totally at odds with the cool, reserved man I’d met yesterday.

  “There’s Tom. God damn, it’s been too long!”

  In a flash, he was by my father’s side, shaking his hand. The difference between them was even more stark up close—my father looked tired, his hair thinning and his midsection getting thicker, while Jonathan Redmarch looked like he’d stepped off a movie set. They sat down, and Mr. Redmarch pulled out a bottle of wine, which the waiter swiftly uncorked and poured two generous glasses for him and my father.

  The effect was almost charming, except that everyone else in the restaurant, my father included, was watching Mr. Redmarch as if he might snap at any moment.

  “I bet you haven’t told your daughter what a troublemaker you used to be,” Mr. Redmarch said with a laugh. “This guy was always getting me in over my head. Remember when you talked me into stealing apples from the McReady’s farm? Then old Mrs. McReady came after us with her shotgun?”

  Sure enough, I didn’t remember that story, or any stories from my father’s childhood, but he was nodding along with Mr. Redmarch and even smiling a little.

  “Is that true, Dad?”

  “I guess it is, except it wasn’t apples we stole, it was a jug of her extra-hard cider.”

  “Right, right,” said Mr. Redmarch. “You’ll have to forgive me. Those years are a bit of a blur. Sometimes they almost feel like they happened to someone else.”

  Mr. Redmarch looked troubled for a moment, as if trying to capture a memory that was just out of reach.

  “Yes, well it’s a good thing I got you in trouble with me. She had me dead in her sights. They’d have been pulling buckshot out of me for weeks if she hadn’t seen you with me.”

  Mr. Redmarch frowned like he’d just smelled something bad. I guess he didn’t like anyone calling attention to his special status. Then he grinned.

  “Those were the days. Shame we got old.”

  My father looked old, Mr. Redmarch did not. With a cheerful flourish, he handed the menus back to the waiter, asking instead for whatever the chef thought was best. Jonathan Redmarch and my father spent the rest of the night talking and laughing about old times. It was a side to my father I never imagined; stealing hard cider, racing cars on country roads at midnight, trying to make moonshine in the woods. I had trouble squaring it with the quiet man I knew, and I wished he’d told me even one of these stories. Mr. Redmarch seemed to love every moment of it, savoring it like he couldn’t remember any of it without someone else there to remind him.

  Even my father seemed to be enjoying himself, though he remained uneasy, and as the night progressed, I noticed a wistful sadness creeping into his voice, as if there was a painful side to all these happy memories. I knew how he felt—my childhood with Zoe had been happy, but now even my best memories were a source of pain.

  “Do you remember the time you had dates with Marcy Barrows and Sue Stevens on the same night?” Mr. Redmarch pointed a mock accusing finger at my father, who protested his innocence.

  “An honest mistake. Dating was a nightmare. You were lucky you and Anne were so steady. How is she, by the way?”

  Everything was suddenly silent. There was so much I didn’t know about this history, but it was plain to see my father had forgotten himself. The color had vanished from his face, and Mr. Redmarch was looking at him with a hard, penetrating stare.

  “She’s well. We should all get together sometime. Perhaps we should take a boat out on the lake.”

  Mr. Redmarch’s words sounded normal, but they were full of cold menace. My father couldn’t look him in the eye. I glanced over at Keith, but he had shut his eyes tight as soon as his mother’s name was mentioned.

  “But that’s something for another time,” Mr. Redmarch’s easy smile was back. “Tonight, I want to catch up with my good friend who I once thought had left us behind for the big city. You know, the rest of us felt a bit betrayed when you ran off. This town’s not the same without the Morrises.”

  My father nodded.

  “Who do I have to thank for bringing you back?”

  “Well, I got divorced,” my father said quietly.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mr. Redmarch said, “but glad to see you never forgot your ties to this place. Those ties go double for families like ours. Our ancestors bled and died for this land, and who are we to spurn their gifts?”

  Judging by what I’d read, they’d done a lot more killing than dying for it.

  My father nodded, but he couldn’t meet Mr. Redmarch’s gaze. I waited for him to say something about Zoe, about how losing her had driven my parents apart, but he never brought her up. It hurt how little my parents talked about her. Sometimes I felt like I was the only one keeping her memory alive, even though I knew that wasn’t true. I didn’t want that to happen again tonight.

  “My twin sister died eight years ago,” I said. “Things weren’t really the same after. We moved from Jersey to the city after that.”

  Mr. Redmarch raised his eyebrows in alarm.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. You never told me you had twins,” he said to my father.

  My father seemed taken aback when I mentioned Zoe. He looked like he had no idea what to say to Mr. Redmarch. Finally he nodded.

  “It’s hard to talk about,” he said.

  “In any case, you have my deepest condolences. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a sister or a daughter.”

  He didn’t look sorry. His expression was somber, but there was something else in his eyes. Something I didn’t like. My father had noticed it, too, and it made him even more nervous.

  “I-I’d rather talk about something else, if you don’t mind,” my father said. I glared at him, but the creepy feeling I was getting from Mr. Redmarch kept me from getting too angry.

  “Sorry,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t trying to depress everyone.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Mr. Redmarch said.

  Quickly, I cast around for something, anything to change the subject, but all I could think of was the hotel we were in. “This hotel is named for the family that owned it, right? Are there still Clyburns in town?”

  Mr. Redmarch’s expression was back to what passed for normal again—friendly, in a stiff sort of way, with something odd and inscrutable beneath. Apparently he was always happy to talk about the town that bore his name.

  “They were one of the town’s original families, along with the Redmarches and the Morrises. They were quite rich in the hotel’s glory days, but they were too focused on the outside world. Our families’ strength has always been here, in Redmarch lake. They lost everything in the Great Depression. My mother, Pearl Clyburn, was her parents’ only child.” Mr. Redmarch made a gesture interlacing the fingers of both hands. “But now our bloodlines are joined, and both are stronger for it. My father always said the old families are strongest when we stick together.”

  That got him reminiscing about what the town was like when he was younger, and a moment later, my father and Mr. Redmarch were both talking about old times again whil
e Keith and I ate forkfuls of heritage pork. Our brief discussion of my sister had brought up a riot of emotions, and I couldn’t sit here and listen to them much longer. After a while, I excused myself to use the bathroom.

  The ladies’ room was all porcelain tile and dark wood stalls. The mildewy old smell was stronger here, and I thought I could almost smell the lake. When I washed my hands, I saw the water was cloudy, and when I looked up, there was no mirror above the sink. Whoever had bought the hotel probably thought superstition was good for business.

  Outside I could hear Mr. Redmarch, still going on about old times. I noticed there was an unmarked door open just a crack between the bathrooms. I couldn’t resist a quick look. It opened on a short hallway, which led to the old hotel lobby. The smell of mold and mildew was thicker here, and I felt a sneeze building in my nose. The old carpet had once been lush and intricately patterned, but it was now water damaged and half eaten away. The front desk was fine old wood, just like the bathroom. It was such a shame this had all gone to rot.

  Something next to the front desk caught my eye—an old glass display case, like you’d see in a museum. Inside were three intricately carved stone figures. They were old, but they didn’t look like anything I’d seen before—nothing like European art, or the Native American artifacts I’d seen in museums. They looked like miniature statues or idols, but I couldn’t tell what sort of figures they were supposed to represent—the forms looped and bent back on each other in what seemed like painful contortions, and I couldn’t tell which parts were arms, legs, heads or both.

  Then I realized I had seen something like them before, briefly—the weird statue I saw in the consignment store on my first day in town. The stone looked like it almost flowed in a sinuous, organic way, and it glistened with an oily sheen. Some of the statues were carved with what looked like letters or symbols, though I couldn’t recognize the alphabet. I’d seen them somewhere before, too, though—the plaque on the statue of Broderick Redmarch in the town square.

  As I stared at the sculptures, I started to get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, just like in the consignment store, and I quickly turned my eyes away. There was a tiny placard below the display case. All it said was Double Shadow, c. 1200 a.d.? Purpose and material unknown. Double shadow? Was that anything like the Two-Shadows from the book I’d found in the library?

  Feeling my stomach start to settle, I turned my attention to the big windows that stretched along the back wall. They had a sweeping view of the lake—there was even a row of moldy old couches arranged so that guests could enjoy the sight. The Clyburn hotel must have been something in its day. I walked over to look out the window. The lake was as eerily placid as ever, calm and silvery in the dusk. It was hard to tell as the light was fading, but I thought I could see a figure down by the lakeshore, standing at the edge of the town’s little esplanade—the same place I’d stood on my first morning here.

  I couldn’t be sure in the half light, but I think it was a woman, or a girl. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, and hung down to the small of her back—just like mine. My heart started to beat faster.

  “Wow, I had no idea this was back here.”

  I whirled around to see Keith standing behind me.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just couldn’t take the ‘glory days’ talk anymore—I was getting jealous you managed to escape.”

  “I guess I did,” I said. “Sorry to leave you there. I don’t know what it is between our dads, my father won’t talk about it. They sound friendly enough, but I couldn’t deal with whatever was going on underneath.”

  “That’s like every day of my life,” said Keith, glancing out at the lake. “Here, there’s always something going on underneath.”

  I looked back out at that calm surface. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw something stir beneath it, the faintest ripple, gone just as quickly as it came. The figure was still there by the shore, her back to me. I wondered if I should run out there—if she’d still be there if I did.

  “My dad warned me to stay away from your family,” I said. It just slipped out, before I could think better of it, and I cursed myself for saying it, afraid I’d offend him somehow or make things worse. Instead he nodded like he understood.

  “Sometimes I wish I could do that, too.”

  “I guess we should go back before they get suspicious,” I said.

  Keith sighed, but he agreed. As we walked back, I took another look over my shoulder at the lake. The figure by the shore was gone.

  1934

  . . . It was all a grift. Strictly small time, you understand—you won’t lock me up for something so little, right? Not after you hear what I got to say.

  Dennis was the medium, I was the skeptic—Dr. Ephraim Wright of the Reason Institute—I don’t have to tell you there’s no such place. We’d go from town to town, performing “investigations into psychic and paranormal phenomena.” We’d argue and debate, Denny would do his spirit talk act. We had it just right—enough mystery the believers went home happy, and enough science that the doubters did the same. Even when a man’s only got two nickels to his name, he’ll give you one if you show him what he wants to see.

  We hear about this town called Redmarch Lake—just rumors, I’d never heard of the place before, and I thought I’d hit everywhere in New York. Denny told me it used to be rich folks would vacation out there, before everything went to hell in twenty-nine, pardon my French. It’s got everything—a haunted lake, a creepy hotel with no mirrors—perfect spot for a show. But as soon as we get there, Denny starts acting all cuckoo-bird, saying this place ain’t right. He won’t even go down by the lake.

  I never suspected he actually bought this stuff, but he tells me once when he was just a boy he heard his aunt speaking to him, telling him she felt cold, and when he ran to tell his mother, he found her crying, reading a letter saying his dear Aunt Gladys had died the week before. He told me he hadn’t heard a thing like it since, until now. “The lake,” he says, “they’re lost in the lake. So many people. And that’s not all. There’s things here, things I never felt before.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Ghosts . . . ghosts used to be alive,” he says. “There’s things here with no bodies, only they ain’t never been alive.”

  I tell him to pull himself together. We don’t eat if we don’t perform. I put on my Dr. Wright getup and go to drum up some interest in the town square, but nobody will give me the time of day. Unfriendliest town I’ve ever seen. I thought, well, we’re not eating tonight even if Denny gets his head on straight, but when I get back to the hotel, he’s not even there. Someone else was, though, and I swear to you this is true. A tall man with dark blond hair, said his name was Frederick Redmarch—just like the town, I swear to you.

  “Your friend had a nervous fit in the lobby,” he says. “Don’t worry yourself, we’ll see he’s well taken care of. I must insist you not perform your little show tonight, though. Our residents don’t go in for that sort of thing. I’ve taken the liberty of buying you a train ticket. Your friend will join you as soon as he’s well.”

  I know when I’m being run out of town, even when they use nice words. I took the message. The thing is, I believed him about Denny, but it’s been weeks, and I ain’t even got a telegram.

  —Testimony of Albert Wiley, a.k.a. Ephraim Wright, arrested on an outstanding charges of fraud in New York City, 1934. From the library of Tom Morris.

  XI.

  “Every time I see him, there’s less of my friend left,” my father said as we left the restaurant. I waited for him to explain, or at least say more, but he was silent for the rest of the drive home, a distant and morose expression on his face. I thought again of him smiling and laughing as he went on about old memories with Mr. Redmarch, a hint of wild terror never leaving his eyes. Keith’s father had to have seen it, too. Was all that we witnessed just some sort of game? My father didn’t say another word until we�
�d made it inside the house and he’d locked the door behind us.

  “I-I wish you hadn’t mentioned Zoe.”

  These were fighting words, and my father knew it. He wasn’t angry, more like scared and depressed, but he felt compelled to say them anyway. I clenched my hands into fists. I tried to tell myself to stay calm, or at least not to yell. I wanted to, but I knew it would get me nowhere.

  “Why would you say that to me, Dad? You and Mom both never bring her up, and you know how that makes me feel. It’s like you’re erasing part of who I am.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I just—I remember how hard it was, after . . . and I never, ever want you to go through that again. You’re doing so well now, friends and good grades and everything . . .”

  This was a lie, or at the very least it wasn’t the whole truth. I remembered the look on Mr. Redmarch’s face, and I shivered. I was still angry, but I just couldn’t bring myself to have another fight. I wanted my father to tell me what was going on, why he’d left New York and moved back here. I wanted my family back again. More than anything, I wanted Zoe. Without her beside me, even after all these years, I felt so unbearably alone.

  “Good night, Dad.”

  Hector was my first customer the next morning, and he listened in awe as I told him about my awkward dinner at the old Clyburn Hotel. His eyes narrowed a bit when I told him about sneaking off to look at the lake with Keith. I was surprised by how good I felt when I spotted what I thought was a little flash of jealousy on Hector’s part.

  See, he likes you, too, he totally does, I imagined Zoe whispering.

  “I’ve got good news, though,” I said. “Ash is joining our investigation. She has an idea of who might know more about Neil. Can you come by after we close up?”

  “No way I’d miss it,” Hector said.

  Our speculation about what the rest of the day would hold came to a sudden halt when we smelled smoke. I checked the coffee machines, but they were all in good shape, and I was too early for the cigarette-smoking man. Then we saw the strangest thing outside: a procession of townsfolk were slowly making their way down the street. I saw the power walk ladies, the pregnant woman from New Again, the old man from the bus, even the librarian. They carried lashed bundles of leaves, all burning at the tips, and as they walked, they waved them around to spread the bitter smoke, acrid and pungent. No one sang or even spoke as they marched—they all continued in glum silence, as if they were taking out the trash.