People of the Lake

by Nick Scorza

  “You never had a chance to mourn the first time, so we thought it would help to let you make up for that now. She had you draw pictures of Zoe, write about her, and soon you were eating and sleeping again, even talking a little. She told us to make pictures of you and Zoe, to help you grieve, and so we made some.

  “Once you had improved enough, we moved to the city. We didn’t want you spending another day in that school, dealing with the same kids who—they never understood that Zoe was real to you. They could be so cruel. We found a place in Forest Hills, near where your mom grew up.

  “You were always strong, and in time, you mentioned Zoe less. You made friends with Rayna, and we thought things were better, that you had healed—but all that time you were grieving, and you still are. We felt so guilty for lying to you. Please believe me, we only did it because we thought we were losing our little girl. It wasn’t supposed to be forever, but as time went on, it only got harder to tell you. I’m so sorry, Clara.”

  “The divorce . . . I thought it was because you guys couldn’t keep it together after losing Zoe.”

  “Things between us hadn’t been working for a while,” he said. “Please never think it was your fault. We argued about . . . about Zoe, and about how best to help you, but your mother and I just didn’t work together, and on my part, I was afraid I’d hurt you or your mother. I was angry at the world for what had happened to you, and I saw too much of what anger can do growing up here.”

  A cold weight was settling inside me. If what my father said was true, how could I trust anything I saw or felt again? How would I know what else was real if Zoe had felt so real to me? No, it had to be wrong. There was no other way.

  A half hour later, we pulled into the driveway. As soon as the car came to a stop, I was out the door. I ran into the house, my father calling after me. I didn’t listen. I tore through the bookshelves, looking for where he kept the photo albums. All of the drawings and collages I’d made were back in Queens, but my father had to have pictures.

  I finally found a stack of old leather albums, not on the shelves but in a cardboard box tucked underneath. I supposed it was hard for my father to look at them after all that had happened, but I didn’t care about that now. I skipped past all the recent pictures of me, and the awkward middle school years with my braces and my glassy eyes and flimsy fake smile—all those years I’d been more dead than alive. I paged through until I found younger photos. The vacation where Zoe drowned was a gap in the timeline. There were no pictures from that trip, but before it . . . before it should have been nothing but me and Zoe.

  I turned the pages, and there we were, two little girls in matching dresses, alike in every way. I looked closer. The flaws weren’t hard to spot, the altered photos—the duplication of my image. It was easy to see in the face, maybe not for anyone else, but for me. The little differences that set us apart, the things only we knew, just weren’t there. How had I not noticed before? Had I just seen what I wanted to see?

  I tore the fake photos out, throwing them on the floor. I couldn’t stand to look at them. I knew my father was hovering somewhere behind me. Without looking, I could picture the sad, nervous expression he had on his face. I didn’t care.

  I flipped faster through the pages, hoping for something real. I had to—if I didn’t find it, I would explode—or I’d vanish, undone by the changing past like someone in a time travel movie.

  Then one photo made me gasp. I was maybe six years old, my hair in braids with the barrettes I was so proud of back then. I was looking at the mirror, smiling, and my mother had taken the picture so that both me and my reflection were captured by the camera—two girls smiling back at each other. Only the girl in the mirror wasn’t me. She was almost exactly the same in every way—most people could never tell the difference between us, but it was always clear to Zoe and me.

  Beneath the picture, a caption written in my mother’s sloppy handwriting said only Clara and “Zoe.”

  I felt the room spin around me. This was too much. I felt sick, my stomach cinched into a terrible knot. I took deep breaths, closing the photo album. When I opened it again, the picture was still there, still the same. The only true record of my twin’s existence was a reflection in a mirror. Every time I’d seen her, was I seeing someone who wasn’t there?

  My father laid a hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off. Just a short time ago, I’d felt closer to him than ever in my life, but with those words in the car, he’d opened an impassable rift between us.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can’t imagine how this must feel. I-I hope you can forgive us. We thought we were doing what was best.”

  “I don’t care what you say,” I said. “She’s real.”

  My father stared at me, speechless. I could see the panic behind his eyes, searching in vain for the right thing to say to his daughter, like there was a magic word to fix this. All he could manage was to sadly shake his head. I couldn’t look at him. Just when I thought I finally understood him, he tore my whole world apart.

  “Maybe there’s more to it than you know,” I said.

  I pushed past him, headed for the exit. I waited for him to stop me, to tell me I was grounded or that he was sending me back first thing tomorrow, but he only watched as I walked out the door.

  The sun was setting, turning the clouds in the western sky a deep red-gold that lightened to pink at the edges. It would be dark soon. Under the forest’s canopy, it was already practically night. I walked faster, texting Hector on the way. Can you meet me at the diner? Had to get away from home.

  I walked quickly, keeping one eye on the forested side of the street, wary for anything moving in the shadows. This town’s paranoia had officially infected me. My phone buzzed with an incoming text, but it was my father, Please, Clara, please be safe. Don’t put yourself in danger. Stay in town, stay out of the forest. As if I would just wander off into the woods for no reason after what I’d seen here.

  My head was full of memories of Zoe, our late nights telling stories when we were supposed to be in bed, or summer afternoons playing in the park, buying ice cream from the Mister Softee truck. I wondered how sad I’d looked, a little girl all by herself, convinced she was with her best friend in the world. Had I just been hearing her voice in my head, like now when I tried to imagine what she’d say? No, it had been different. She had been there—somehow. All I felt now was her absence. Doubting your own memory is a terrible thing. I felt like my sense of self was breaking apart, like there was an earthquake ripping through the landscape of my life. No memory was safe.

  And as I walked, I thought of everything else my father had told me about the lake and the beings that lived here, and the lost souls they trapped. I thought of Zoe, glimpsed in the mirror, or in those still waters. Maybe I had been talking to a reflection every time I spoke to her—but what if your reflection talks back?

  Things were racing through my head I couldn’t yet bring myself to put into words.

  By the time I reached the diner, Hector texted to say he was on the way. I sat at a booth and ordered a chocolate milkshake. I didn’t care about calories at a time like this. Outside, the sun finally slipped behind the clouds and the sky darkened. I wished Hector would hurry. Then I pictured him running afoul of the thing we’d seen that night on the way here. I told my mind not to go there, but of course that was the first place it went, and each second passed with an agonizing tension as I waited for him to walk in the door.

  Finally, the chimes on the door rang as he pulled it open. He must have sprinted here, because he was winded and twitchy. I wasn’t the only nervous one after what we’d seen in the forest.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “This better be good; I had to make up a big summer essay project you’re supposedly helping me with before I could leave the house, which means I’ll actually have to do the project or my folks will get suspicious. That, and after last night, I was seriously considering never leaving the house again. So what is it?”


  He saw the fear and the hurt in my eyes, and his expression immediately softened.

  “I’m sorry. We’ve all been through hell, and I don’t even know what’s real anymore. How can I help?”

  All of a sudden, without thinking, I threw my arms around him. I was as surprised as he was by my own actions—I was never much of a hugger, but I couldn’t believe how good it was to see him. Just hearing his voice was a warm wave of relief, even when he was being a jerk.

  We sat down and he ordered a soda. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I started at the beginning, telling him all about Zoe, and our life together until the day I lost her at the beach. Then I softly told him what my dad had told me earlier today, about the town and about Zoe. I felt eyes on us from other parts of the diner, but I didn’t care. I spoke in an urgent whisper. I had to share.

  “Jesus,” was all Hector could manage. “I don’t even know what to say but I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “No, Clara. Of course not. Even if I hadn’t seen all the crazy things last night, I’d still believe you, because I trust you.”

  I felt such shocking relief when he said this that a chill went through me. I never guessed how badly I needed someone to believe me, especially if that someone was Hector. I reached across the table and put my hand in his.

  “This might sound weird,” he went on. “Math nerds are supposed to be rational types, but I’ve always sort of believed in ghosts. There used to be this dog—a real monster—back in Inwood, all the kids on the block were scared of it, even when it was old and half blind. There were rumors it had mauled one kid so badly his mother didn’t let him outside, or that it ate the old man who had owned it and now it just did what it wanted. When it finally died, we were all relieved—except, I never was. Every time I walked by the lot it used to hang around, I still felt it there, watching me, like it never left.” He shivered. “Now this place makes that ghost dog look like a shih tzu in a tutu.”

  “There’s more,” I said, “and it’s even stranger. Zoe is here. I don’t know how, or in what way, but I saw her in the lake. I’ve seen her before, too—indistinct, in the distance or as a blurred shape looking in the café window in the morning. I think . . . I think she’s one of them, or one of the souls they trapped. I don’t know, but somehow I can feel it.”

  I showed him the notes, explaining the language we had made up together. I could see doubt and worry cross Hector’s face like a bout of nausea, and I was briefly afraid it was too much for him to accept, but then he nodded his head.

  “Sorry, keep going. It’s just—it’s hard to talk about this stuff out in the open. I guess I’m more a part of this town than I thought.”

  “When I first came here, Neil seemed to recognize me,” I said. “He did a double take, like I was somehow familiar but not. There was a rumor that he had a new girlfriend, but no one had ever seen her. I think Zoe was trying to contact him. There was something in Danny’s diary about him and Neil trying some sort of ritual, trying to contact a soul from the lake.”

  “Why in the hell would they do that?” said Hector.

  “I think-I think they wanted her help, or she wanted theirs, to change the way things are here, and I think that’s why they died.”

  Hector was silent from a moment, and I thought oh god, he thinks I’ve lost my mind. Then he squeezed my hand and smiled—not the cocky, sarcastic smile he usually wore. This was shy, almost sad.

  “I think you’re right.”

  Just then I could have jumped across the table and kissed him.

  “You know,” he went on, “since you came along, I’ve gotten way over my head in stuff that I don’t understand and that could seriously kill me. I may be nuts, but I’m still glad you’re here.”

  “Glad you’re here too,” I said.

  I was happier than I’d been in what felt like forever, but I couldn’t ignore the gathering darkness outside the diner. Sooner or later, we’d have to leave. “So what do we do now?”

  “Do you think it’ll come back for us?”

  That was exactly what I’d been trying not to think about.

  “I’ve been wondering why it stopped when it saw Keith.”

  Hector frowned when I mentioned Keith.

  “It stopped when you hit it with cold iron.”

  “I don’t think that did more than slow it down,” I said. “It could have come back for us.”

  “Keith’s family is bad news,” Hector said. “Who knows how they’re tied in to this. Keith seems like a decent guy, though. All this time, I assumed he had to be the biggest jerk in this town. Are you and Keith . . . ?”

  The question caught me by surprise. How could he have thought that? Maybe when you showed up in Keith’s car, and then you were the last one he dropped off, dummy, I thought.

  “Oh, no. I don’t feel that way about Keith.”

  I caught the ghost of a relieved smile on his face before he quickly tried to look serious.

  “I was one of those kids who never stopped asking questions,” he said. “My mother would always tell me to look something up when I didn’t know it, so I kept doing that. You can’t look any of this up, though, not really. There’s no Ghostopedia out there, not a real one anyway.”

  He paused for a second—I could tell he was making a mental note of the idea.

  “I don’t recommend making one. They don’t like being talked about,” I said. “And I don’t think they’re all ghosts, at least not the bad ones. Spirits, maybe, but not of anyone that used to be alive as we know it.”

  He shook his head. I doubted any of this would ever feel normal, or even comprehensible. We both glanced out the window. The night was deep black outside the diner’s circle of light.

  “We should probably get back,” he said.

  I had been trying not to think about the walk home. Whatever Zoe was, I wished she were here with me again, ready to face what was coming. She was always the braver one. All those years, my parents must have thought she was my impulsive side, or the excuse I made up to cover bad behavior. Even the idea of that made me furious. Whatever the truth was, she was so much more than any of it.

  The town was dark and silent outside the neon halo of the diner’s sign. It felt like we were stepping out of a magic circle. As we walked through the empty streets, Hector’s hand reached out and found mine. It felt good to have him beside me.

  As we walked out of the town center and along the road that bordered the woods, I started to worry. There should have been armies of crickets chirping on a night like this, but everything was dead silent. The air had that eerie stillness it sometimes gets before a thunderstorm, though there were no clouds in the sky. The moon shone out big and near-full, but it brought no light to the forest below.

  “I think they’re watching us,” Hector said.

  I held a finger up to my lips. Whatever these things were, I knew talking about them wouldn’t help.

  “Stay on the road,” I said. “Not even one foot in the woods.”

  “Trust me, I wasn’t planning on it.”

  We walked like that for another few blocks. Once in a while, I thought I could see shapes moving in the forest, shadows that seemed darker and denser than the surrounding night. We quickened our pace, and soon Hector’s house was up ahead.

  We stopped outside his front door. It looked like his parents were already asleep.

  “Let me walk you home,” he said.

  “I’ll be okay as long as I move fast and stay on the road.”

  He didn’t look so sure, but he was prepared to trust me in this new reality.

  “Be careful, Clara. I mean it. I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.”

  I looked into his intense brown eyes. All the aloofness and sarcasm he usually guarded himself with were long gone, and suddenly I felt like I was melting, like I didn’t care about what was waiting out in those woods, if only for a second. His hand stroked my cheek with just the slightest touch, br
inging our faces closer together. Our lips parted.

  Then, from the depths of the forest came a bone-chilling howl, answered by several more in the distance. The sound sent waves of panic through me. Hector looked toward the forest, then back at me.

  “Get inside!” I said.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll run home. Go!”

  He hesitated one second, then ran toward his front door, checking over his shoulder to make sure I was all right.

  I ran like I never had in gym class, or for any other reason, and I kept running even as my ankles started to ache and a stitch burned in my side. I could hear things moving within the woods, keeping pace with me in the darkness. I wished I still had the iron clasp I threw at the King of the Wood.

  My father’s house was close now. I prayed whatever rules governed these things’ behavior still kept them from leaving the woods. My breath was ragged, but I only ran faster, racing to the front door.

  I stopped for a second before running in and looked back over my shoulder. I wished I hadn’t. Behind me, the shadows were full of eyes that glowed like burning coals.

  c. 1400

  Let these words tell of our little sister, who gave her life for ours when we took shelter here.

  When the Two Shadows came to our village, we fled.

  They took our food and our possessions. They burned our homes. They fouled our hearths, but still they came.

  We fled to the hills, but still they came, hunting us among the trees. We heard the screams of those they found. The most fortunate ones were killed quickly.