Should I try it?
On the way back from the job site, he'd considered recreating Lori's dive: to put on the wetsuit and mask, to let out enough oxygen from the tank so when he finally dunked himself underwater there would only be enough good air for a few minutes' breathing at most.
It would take too long, though, and by the time he got everything ready, he'd be likely to lose his nerve. Still, the idea was enticing, so much so that he stood up without further thought and crossed to the bathroom, where he began filling the cast-iron tub. As he undressed, his mind returned to the previous Saturday, to the imagined drip-drip-drip of the faucet in his mother's house. It was calling to me even then, he thought, and when he asked himself exactly what had been calling to him, he spoke the answer aloud: "The water."
All he needed was a little taste of what it had been like. More than anything, he needed to know. He might not figure out what had happened to her, but he couldn't shake the feeling that, before he made his way to Chapel Lake, this was the logical first step in his journey. To be close to her again. To feel how she'd felt. To know how it had ended. The moment he felt himself starting to choke, wanting to suck in air, breathing water instead…
"I'll call off the experiment," he told himself, standing naked before the tub full of water, and he flicked out the bathroom light, plunging himself into semi-darkness. Lori had drowned night diving. In the small amount of light from a lamp in the living room, he eased himself into water as cool as the lake in his dream. There might not have been moonlight when Lori went under, but there would have at least been minimal light from the cottage she'd rented on Chapel Lake. His imagination filled in the details for him: the cabin had oil lamps, providing her with a nice orange glow. The Himalayan salt lamp by the sofa would be a suitable equivalent.
He lay back, resting the base of his skull against the edge of the tub. When he did have baths—a rarity—he'd use an inflatable pillow. This time, he wanted nothing to come between him and the fantasy. The tub was large enough for him to stretch out comfortably, but a foot might sink too low and thump against the bottom, an elbow might thud against the side and spoil the illusion.
This has to be perfect, he thought.
In water up to his neck, the nightmare came rushing back. The thrashing, the splashing, the choking for breath. He pushed the thoughts away, hoping to calm his nerves. Now was no time to chicken out, not when he was so close to knowing how it had felt. Like the handful of dirt he'd reached out and snatched from her graveside when all eyes had been on the minister, the need to feel how Lori had when she'd drowned was inexplicable, a morbid compulsion he couldn't deny. A part of him knew no good would come of it, but that part was small, and easily ignored.
He took a measured breath, let it out slowly. He took another, thinking, This is how she died.
Then he slipped all the way under.
The water magnified every sound to near-supernatural proportions. He heard the radio in Sophie's condo, blasting some talk show, though the voices were muffled. Somewhere, someone zipped along on an exercise machine, a stair climber or an elliptical. The clatter of dishes from above or below, he couldn't tell; a toilet flushing; the rattle of a small animal chewing on its cage.
Soon all of these sounds drifted away. He heard his heart, thrumming steadily in his ears, and nothing more.
Ten seconds passed this way, thirty… until the urge to release his breath pressed heavily on his lungs. Finally, he opened his eyes.
A man stood over him.
More than a mere shadow this time, more than the dark shape he'd seen behind the shower curtain at his mother's house before Lori had shown herself to him the first time. He could make out the man's face, distorted yet familiar, through the ripples on the surface: a gaunt, wild-eyed face with dark, receding hair beginning to gray at the temples, and a dark mustache over an even darker smile. He wore a white loose-fitting work shirt and black slacks. A thin chain of burnished gold or brass hung from his wide, deep pants pocket to a belt loop. Owen took in all of this in the mere moments before his heart began to race and he instinctively drew back, plunging deeper under the water.
It's him, he thought. The one I saw that day, walking on water. Lori's ghost.
More rippling forms appeared behind the man, peering down at Owen's nakedness: eight stone-faced men and women in all, and a young blonde girl, all of them dressed in white garments. Flock was the word that sprung to mind, and he found himself thinking: He tends to his flock like a shepherd.
Behind them all, Lori stood shivering, fear evident in her eyes, while the man in the white shirt—Shepherd, he thought—rolled up his sleeves. Terrified and confused, Owen sprang up from the bottom of the tub. Breath exploded from his lungs, bubbling up toward the surface.
The Shepherd's hand plunged into the water, pushing down with enormous strength against Owen's sternum. He felt an ache from the man's strong hand like a bruise on his heart, a pain much like the loss of his sister, and he kicked out, soaking his attacker's shirt through to the undershirt beneath it, splashing the others, who stood huddled around the tub, watching without flinching, without mercy—even the child, the young blonde girl, didn't blink.
Only Lori turned away, apparently unable to watch.
Owen grasped the ghost's forearm. Horrifying images filled his head the moment his hand touched the man's bare skin—of fat, overfed beetles scrabbling out of skulls with scraps of withered gray flesh and a single eyeball floating in a red froth, its ocular nerve thrashing behind it like a fin, and of naked white bones strewn across a plain of sediment—and he jerked his hand away, strange black tendrils forming between the Shepherd's flesh and his palm and stretching out like saliva before being whisked away in the churning water. He gulped for air, desperately, his mouth filled with liquid. He tasted his own sweat, the dirt he'd unintentionally washed from his body, choking as it filled his nose, his throat, worse than the dream, worse than the nightmare. Strangely, the man's brown eyes held no malice; what Owen saw was something like bliss, a profound joy mirrored now in the faces of his flock, all except Lori—who, from her similar gown, was most certainly "one of them," just like it had said on the sign he'd thought he'd seen during the protest.
Joined them. Joined this cult. Joined her ghost. The man who walked on water.
Suddenly his vision shifted, and a very clear image that was either a hallucination or a vision overcame him. This same hand held Lori down, forcing her under the dark water. She kicked and screamed under its weight, unable to rise to the surface. The image vanished suddenly, returning him to the tub, where pinpricks of light danced before this vision. The room beyond began to gray, the witnesses to his death only visible in the whites of their eyes. He was losing consciousness.
Owen screamed, hoping for his neighbors to hear, hoping for the Shepherd and his flock to forgive whatever sin he'd committed against them. But the water stifled his cries.
The tub had grown impossibly deep. The Shepherd's arm seemed to stretch down to such an incredible depth that, even if the man let him go now, Owen wouldn't have the strength to swim to the surface. Far above the Shepherd's head, at an even greater distance, the ceiling split open like a wound, and the darkening sky began to show itself, rain pattering down on the surface of the water.
The lake was cool and dark and inviting, the sky overcast, the rain that had been threatening in the west all morning just beginning to drizzle down around them. Lori slipped under the water, disappearing in a wake of concentric ripples.
Owen gulped in another mouthful of water and followed her down.
CHAPTER 3
Lost and Found
1
OWEN SHIVERED, gasping for breath.
He was breathing again, his lungs taking in air instead of water, and the sensation made him realize he must have been dreaming. The water, the trees, the sky, all of it peeled back like a stage backdrop. Lori disappeared. He floated in a cold and shapeless void, an emptiness so thorough he couldn't feel
his own body.
Am I dead…?
The thought seemed to arise from nowhere. His body was gone, his thoughts mere electrical impulses in the ether.
A moment later, his surroundings came into view as if illuminated by a flashbulb. Sensation returned to his limbs, his chest, neck, and head. He'd been floating in a senseless abyss, but now he felt he was lying down. His hair was damp, heavy on his head, wrapped in something from his knees to his chest, fuzzy and warm, and yet he still shivered. A scent hung in the air: floral, powdery. A perfume? But whose? Not Lori's; not his mother's. Familiar, though. Something he'd smelled very recently. A window was open behind him, issuing a cool breeze. Directly across from him, the television was tuned to a rerun of Columbo, where Columbo was on vacation, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
Am I still dreaming?
"My mother…" A woman's voice, swimming toward him in the gauzy half-light.
His eyes flickered toward the voice, as familiar as the scent. He saw the photo on the table of the three Saddlers at the water park before fully realizing where he was: My condo, my living room. It seemed he remembered very little, not least of which how he'd ended up here, on the sofa, shivering and wet and wrapped like the dead.
He turned his head, a difficult task. Just breathing was difficult. It seemed as though an invisible weight was on his chest, pressing him down—
The events from the bathroom returned, and he sat up abruptly, pushing against the sudden crushing pain in his chest. He'd been wrapped up snug in a pale blue terry cloth towel. The Shepherd's hand wasn't there—had never been there. Yet he still felt it, like a weight. Like something pushing him down.
She sat on the chair opposite: Sophie Huang from next door. The world was still somewhat blurry. He blinked until he could see her properly. She'd said something, hadn't she? He was barely able to croak, "W-what?"
"I lost my mother," she said, and brought her eyes up, looking at him intensely. "A year ago. She'd smoked for as long as I can remember. Probably even smoked through her pregnancy, for all I know. Maybe that's why I'm so fucked up."
Sophie put the tips of her fingers to her naked lips in a gesture of surprise. "Sorry," she said, with a self-conscious downward glance. "TMI. Anyway, she hadn't been sleeping well for months. Stayed up all night watching those late-night infomercials, hoping they'd put her to sleep. Of course they didn't, she just ended up with an apartment full of unopened junk. Then one night, she fell asleep in her chair with a lit cigarette. The medical examiner said she probably died in her sleep of asphyxiation before she could feel herself burning to death. Cold comfort. I'd always said that ratty old chair was a fire hazard." She uttered a morbid chuckle.
Owen wondered how Sophie could manage to talk about it so calmly. It must still have been painful, with her mother only in her grave a year. He let the silence draw out, unsure how to respond. Finally, he managed to say, "Sorry for your loss."
Her sudden laughter startled him. After a moment, he realized what she'd found funny: she'd said the same thing to him when they'd met in the mail room. He grinned. It would have been too painful to laugh, even if he'd found it funny himself.
"There was water all over the floor when I came in," she said, when her laughter died. "I thought maybe the dishwasher was leaking; mine does that sometimes. Then I saw the bathroom door open…" She gave him a look so intense he wanted to shrink away from her. "I thought you were dead. You were so pale, you weren't breathing or anything. Just floating there. It's funny, you looked so peaceful."
They sat in silence a moment.
"I tried to kill myself once," she said, matter-of-factly.
"I wasn't trying to kill myself."
"Of course you weren't. I never said you were." Judging by her tone, though, she didn't believe him. But pressing the issue would have made it seem more like he was lying, so he let it go. She'd just saved his life; by how much, he wasn't sure. Now was hardly the time to quibble.
"It was just after my mother died," she said, and for a second he had no idea what she'd meant. His thoughts were disjointed; he couldn't seem to focus. An aftereffect of having nearly drowned, he supposed, and determined to try harder.
"Couple of weeks, I think." She was looking off at the big windows that faced the Harbourfront as she spoke, at the lights of all the other condos, a poor substitute for the stars that couldn't be seen with so much light. "I stood in front of the subway tracks for—God, it must have been over an hour, willing myself to jump every time a train pulled into the station."
She considered it a moment, scowling off in silence, at her own foolishness or the thought of how close she'd come to death, Owen wasn't sure. "But I couldn't do it. You know, it's funny, I used to worry every time I stood close to the tracks and someone passed behind me, I'd keep them in my peripheral vision to make sure they couldn't push me, and if they tried, I'd see them and be ready. I'd steel myself for the push, make sure I had my footing and wouldn't fall out onto the tracks if it came. But that day, I prayed for someone to see me there and just… give me a little nudge. Just a little shove and all of my stupid little troubles would be over." She chuckled softly, perhaps at the dark simplicity of it. "But nobody did. Eventually, the station attendant or someone came over and asked me if I was all right. I told him I was lost, so he gave me directions." She shook her head, a very slight movement. "I really was lost, but not in a way directions could've helped." Looking up, Sophie held his gaze. "I was lost from myself."
Owen nodded. He let the silence draw out again, because it seemed a moment of silence was required. Then he said, "Well thanks for not letting me throw in the towel," indicating with a nod the towel she must have wrapped around his naked waist. She laughed again, a big, hearty laugh that apparently surprised her so much she tried to stifle it with her hand. It wouldn't hold back her snickering, so she snorted and made noises in her throat behind a balled-up fist.
Owen grinned, pleased to be able to lighten the mood, while proving—he hoped—that he wasn't in a suicidal mood. But he didn't laugh with her. When her giggle fit was through, he said, "Sorry."
"It's okay," she said, and chuckled again. "After what happened in there," she nodded toward the bathroom, "I guess I must have needed a good laugh."
"Thanks again," he said. "Honestly."
"Just thank your lucky stars I know CPR."
"Sorry if I wasn't the best kisser," he said. "I'm much better when I'm conscious, I swear."
She laughed again, not quite as heartily, and her cheeks flushed a little. She'd pulled him naked from the tub and resuscitated him before drying him with the towel, and mentioning it clearly embarrassed her.
"Why did you come here?" he asked her. "I mean, I'm glad you did, obviously. It just seems a little—"
"Deus ex machina?" she said, and grinned.
"Exactly."
"I found this mixed in with my mail." She picked up what looked like a postcard and held it out to him. Owen took it from her. "It's weird, I was going to give it to you the next time I saw you in the mail room, but my mother told me to get moving, and when mother talks, I listen."
Owen nodded before her words had a chance to sink in. "Wait… your mother told you?"
"Uh-huh," she said, then tilted her head. "I take it you don't believe in ghosts."
Owen scowled. "No. I don't. But thank your mother for me next time you see her." He realized how rude it sounded, and backtracked. "I'm sorry, I just—"
Sophie shrugged, expressionless. "You're a skeptic. I get it. It's tough not to be cynical these days. Anyway, you have to admit it was fortunate I came when I did."
"It was. Again, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be dismissive."
Sophie brushed it off and launched into a monologue, but Owen only half-listened. The photo on the postcard had caught his attention: a lake nestled among some trees, sparkling with diamond glints of sunshine. At the center of the photo was the rotted crown of a white church steeple, its cross rising from the water. Printed across the
top were the words, GREETINGS FROM CHAPEL LAKE!
Speaking of ghosts, he thought.
"You know, you shouldn't keep your door unlocked," Sophie was saying. "It's not the best neighborhood."
Owen turned the card around and was staring at the words on the back. The postmark was dated June 20, just over three weeks earlier. He recognized his sister's neat handwriting:
Come as soon as you can, Owns.
He's here. Zip.
To an outsider, it must have seemed like gibberish, but to Owen—who knew what his sister had meant by "zip," and who also now had a strong suspicion who he was, though the terrifying incident in the bath must surely have been a hallucination brought on by hypoxia—they filled him with a sudden and overwhelming certainty. Lori hadn't gone into Chapel Lake by choice the night she died, he understood that now. Somehow this man, whoever he was, had drawn her to the water. Though he might never know for certain, Owen felt the truth of it like a chill in his bones. And though it might have been too late to save Lori, he could still do something about the people he believed had been her killers. The flock. And the man who'd walked on water.
"Is she the one who passed?" Sophie asked.
"Thank you, Sophie," he said, ignoring her question. "Really. For everything." The postcard rattled between his quivering fingers. "But I have to look into this, and I should probably get dressed, so…"
"Oh, no, that's fine. I'm sorry if I overstepped."
"No, not at all," he said.
Sophie gave him a tight-lipped smile, then nodded and crossed to the door. She stopped by the kitchen counter, then turned, her eyebrows raised in concern to where they'd disappeared behind her bangs. "Are you sure you'll be okay?"
"Mm-hmm," he answered much too quickly. With an immense amount of physical concentration, he lowered Lori's postcard to the coffee table as if it were easy. He could tell Sophie didn't believe him, so he forced a smile. "I'm good," he said, a little more aggressively than he'd meant.
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