Salvage

by Duncan Ralston

  It was rising damp, all right, he thought—only this damp rose all the way from the grave.

  He laughed bitterly.

  On June 24th, Lori had come to the same conclusion Owen himself had only a short while ago:

  He's there in that church, Owns. The preacher's there, I know it! But I can't prove it if I don't find his remains… This is a bad place. There are ghosts in Chapel Lake, and I don't mean skeletons in the closet. I'm starting to think all of the things that happened to me in this house—the power flickering, the shadows and creaks in the night, the clocks all stopped at 2:06 no matter how many times I set them and change the batteries—can't just be explained away anymore. Either I'm going absolutely crazy, or this place really is haunted.

  The trouble is, I don't believe in ghosts! Ghosts can't exist in the same world as God. Either God exists and our souls are saved or damned, or our spirits carry on in this world, haunted by our own transgressions, haunting the living in the dead of night. Purgatory is a made-up place. It's not even mentioned in the Bible—I guess you'd probably know, since you were part of that church. Did Everett Crouch teach you these things? Did Crouch ever explain to you about the difference between the spirits of the Bible and what we call "ghosts"?

  It doesn't matter. I don't know what to believe anymore. Last night I dreamed he came back, only this time he led me down to the water—

  The same dream, Owen thought. How could we have the same dream?

  Because it wasn't a dream, he answered himself. Crouch came for us, he lured us down to that lake. He's had his hook in me ever since that night in the tub, and he's been reeling me in.

  Owen swigged his root beer, his mouth suddenly as dry as the town of Peace Falls before the flood.

  Crouch had lured Lori here, too, somehow—Owen was sure of it. He'd cast his sister into the water and used her as bait, to draw the big game out from hiding.

  Why does he want me so bad? Wasn't taking Lori enough? Wasn't Howie?

  No. It would never be enough, he was sure of that now. Crouch's poisoned soul wouldn't rest until the last of them were dragged down to their watery graves. Not until the last members of the Blessed Trinity had been returned to the fold.

  The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the Sheep…

  He didn't want to read anymore, but he couldn't close the book in the middle of Lori's story.

  —and they rose out of the lake, bloated and black, the corpses of the Blessed Trinity Cult. It was horrible, Owns, but the worst part was when I woke up there was a puddle beside the bed where he'd stood in my dream.

  How is that possible if he's not real?

  Owen wondered if she had also been asked about "the Mystery," as Brother Woodrow had asked him. He supposed he'd never know unless he kept reading, so he dove right back in as the sun began to sink behind the trees on the opposite shore, and the happy cries of suntanned children in the trailer park died away.

  After the visit from Crouch, her dives began to focus on the church, but she could never manage to get inside. She'd gone so far as to drag a street sign to the window to use as a battering ram, but the force required to smash even the rotted wood boarding up the lower windows was dulled and deadened underwater. She'd left unrewarded.

  Lori had been able to enter the house behind the church, and had done some snooping. As Owen had thought, it seemed to be the home of the church's minister, this Everett Crouch, and aside from the fact that there'd been two moldering double beds pushed together in the master bedroom, and a single bed in the room next to it—evidence of this man of the cloth having had a child—she'd found little of interest.

  "Why didn't she find the watch?" he wondered aloud, scaring away the chipmunk who'd come to feast on the dust of his previous meals.

  Because it belongs to me, he thought, just like Howard said. Whether it really is mine or not, I was meant to find it. Crouch used it to draw me into that room, just like he used Lori to draw me to the lake. He wanted me there all to himself, to fill me full of his filth, whatever the hell that black stuff was that came out of him. His poison. His perverted religion. His disease.

  The sun was a glorious fire on the horizon, but it was too dark to read out here anymore. He brought the book and the empty root beer bottle inside.

  Craving red meat, the bloodier the better, Owen fried himself some hamburgers and left them so juicy that they soaked through the buns and made his fingers greasy. When he'd finished, he let out a loud, satisfied burp—That one's for you, he said to the darkened living room, hoping Crouch and his holy ghosts were listening—and licked his fingers clean. He threw the dirty plate in the sink. The faucet was leaky, dripping into the chipped enamel pan, but he didn't care. He let it drip; no matter if it reminded him of the tub at his mother's house, no matter that it reminded him of Crouch. He felt defiant.

  If the Shepherd wanted him, he'd have to come get him. There was no way he was getting in that lake again, not unless he was dragged.

  A splashing sound drew him back to the sink, where the drips still plunked hollowly. He peered out the window above, expecting to see Crouch's pallid face framed by the darkness beyond the glass. Nothing stirred in the darkened woods. The black pillars of trees, the dock, pale and skeletal under the moon, and the dapples of silver light out on the water were all he saw.

  Another splashing sound. This time it drew his attention toward the lake, where a dark shape slipped across the surface of the water, ripples radiating from the dock, dispersing the glitter path of the moon.

  "What now?" he said.

  The thing turned back, moonlight revealing a pale ovular form rising above the water with something long, sleek, and dark trailing behind it—Hair, he thought. It's a woman.

  His immediate thought was that this was one of the women from the Blessed Trinity. Whoever she was, she threw her arms up onto the dock and pulled herself up, and he saw that, aside from her damp hair and the dark place where her legs came together, the rest of her glimmered wet and pale in the silver moon, naked as Eve.

  The realm of the dead is naked before God…

  Owen stepped out into the cool night air. Frogs chirped and moaned in the shallow water, mosquitoes droned. A lonely loon cried somewhere out on the lake. A bat fluttered by, black against black.

  The woman stood as Owen approached—not as cautiously as he might have if she hadn't been nude—and she turned her shoulders to squeeze out her hair on the dock. He recognized the gesture immediately: Crazy Jo Dunsmuir. The blonde girl from the photo of the Blessed Trinity. The childhood friend he barely remembered.

  "She really is nuts," he said, and hurried down to the lake.

  Jo dove in again before he could warn her, her smooth white form plunging headfirst into the wet dark of the Blessed Trinity's grave. For a long moment, as he bounded onto the dock, he was sure she wouldn't resurface—that Crouch and his undead minions would have pulled her down there with them for good. That he'd be forced to dive in after her, to save her life as she'd saved his.

  He hurried down to the dock, suddenly more worried about her life than his own. Then she broke the surface, blowing water from her lips, and shook her hair. Her eyes, dark jewels in the moonlight, found him instantly. A smile came to her red lips, and she swam for him.

  She treaded water at his feet, looking up at him in amusement. "You act like you've never seen someone skinny-dip before," she said.

  He held out a hand. "You really should get out of the water."

  "You really should get in here with me. The water's fine."

  Owen shook his head. "I'm not getting in that lake. Not after what happened this morning."

  "Oh, poor baby."

  "A man died today," Owen said. "Don't you have any respect?"

  She gave him a pitying look. "People die all the time, in or out of the water. It's a fact of life. You can't let that make you afraid to live."

  "Cruel optimism," he said, recalling what Howard had said about him.

  "What?"


  "It doesn't matter."

  "Exactly. It doesn't matter." She smiled again, coyly. "All that matters is there's a reasonably attractive naked woman at your feet, and you're too worried about dying to take advantage."

  "Advantage…?"

  "We're not kids anymore, Owen, running around with our clothes off. When adults get naked, it's either to get clean…" She reached up and stroked his bare leg. "…or dirty."

  He felt himself stiffening in his shorts. "I can't," he said—nearly gulped.

  "Fine then. Why don't you fuck off crying back home to your mother?"

  "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  Crazy Jo scowled and blew water from her lips again. "You want me to write you out a list?" She swam backward, kicking away from the dock, splashing his legs. Once she was in shallow water, she stood, revealing herself. "Last chance, golden boy," she warned him, sliding a hand over her wet, erect nipples and down between her legs. "Come get a piece before it gets cold."

  His shorts jutted out at an angry angle, his prick throbbing painfully against the fabric. He couldn't conceal his desire for her any longer. His hard-on sprung free as he stripped off his shorts. Owen couldn't remember the last time he'd kissed a woman, let alone slept with one. He supposed it would have been Allison, and that doomed relationship had ended over a year ago.

  "I'm coming," he said.

  He caught her smirk. "Not yet, I hope," she said.

  Owen dove in over his head.

  She met him halfway, her hands finding him in the dark below, tugging at him. Their lips met for a second time—though now with a powerful, aggressive hunger. Their tongues danced. He reached between her legs, finding her warm and slick in the cool water. The frenzied movement of their right hands stirred the surface. With his left, he cupped her head, fingers slipping into her wet hair, pulling her close. Her left hand reached below her right and cupped him as well.

  Owen's eyes fluttered open. Over Jo's shoulder he saw a fat black snake slope into the water from the shore and slither across the surface. He thought of the Tree in the Garden as the water snake slipped by, oblivious, out into the dark. Jo bit the shallow above his clavicle, moaning against his skin, and he grunted in pleasure, forgetting the snake, forgetting Eden.

  Jo pulled him into a close embrace, her breasts and hardened nipples pressing against him, and jerked him roughly inside of her. He thrust, and she mimicked his movement, a little off-rhythm at first, then finding it, relearning all the old steps. Their trembling bodies bucked together, splashing, thrashing, both of them finally groaning in orgasm, crying out to God. She gasped and buried her face in his neck, and they stood silently, catching their breath, his cock throbbing inside her until it slipped out on its own, cooling and trickling sperm into the lake.

  "That was a long time coming," he said, not meaning to make a bad pun. Jo laughed anyway. It took a moment for him to realize she wasn't laughing, but crying.

  "What's wrong?"

  She looked up at him, eyes filled with tears. "I promised myself I wouldn't do it," she said. "I wouldn't fuck you. It's exactly what he would have wanted, isn't it? The two of us, his golden children, repopulating the earth after the Great Flood."

  "What? That's cra—" He stopped himself from saying it, from calling her crazy. She'd likely heard it enough over the years. He could only imagine the survivor guilt she must have suffered, growing up the child of mass suicide. Owen hadn't even known the sorrow that darkened his past and had still grown up angry, lonely, cynical, and clinically depressed.

  "All of his sermons about how you'd spare us from the flood didn't amount to shit," she said. "You left, and the flood washed it all away."

  "What do you mean 'spare' you? What's the flood got to do with me?"

  Jo shook her head. "I envy you, you know that? You don't remember anything. I can't stop remembering."

  "I was five," he said. "You want me to feel bad for you, believe me, I do. But if you're expecting me to feel guilty, you can forget it. What did you want me to do? Beg my mother to turn the car around?"

  "Yes!" she cried. "I would have."

  "Hell, Jo, for all I know, I might have! I don't even remember this town, I barely remember you. I don't even know my own father, for God's sake!"

  She muttered something, her eyes downcast.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said, 'Yes, you do.'"

  "How the hell would you know what I know or don't know?"

  Jo shook her head, chuckling at his stupidity. "You know who he is, Owen," she said. "Why do you think he wanted you here so badly—bad enough to murder a girl who had absolutely nothing to do with us, with that church? A girl who wasn't even born when they were already dead!"

  Owen swallowed hard. He should have known—Crouch had made it so simple for him. Even he should have been able to see the Mystery. "What are you saying?" he said, refusing to believe it. "You're saying he—Crouch is…?"

  "Everett Crouch is your father," she said.

  INTERLUDE

  Ye of Little Faith

  LORI HAD BEEN HOME for two days when Owen stepped through the front door, unlocking it with his mother's spare key. "The prodigal son returneth!" she exclaimed, grabbing him up in a hug.

  "It's almost like you were expecting me," he said, fumbling with his baggage as she squeezed the life out of him. Loose dreads of her blonde hair pricked his chin. "Where's Mom?"

  "In the kitchen with my dad." She took Owen's bag from him. "Take off your coat, stay a while."

  "Gerald's here?" Owen hung his coat on the rack while he kicked off his boots. Early October, and it was already chilly, but at least it had yet to snow.

  "Don't start. He's off the sauce."

  "Just as long as he doesn't try and lead us in a blessing before dinner."

  Lori barked laughter. Her laugh was infectious, and Owen joined in. They sat in the living room, on the same old sofa and loveseat they'd sat on as kids. On the television, much bigger than the one they'd had when they both lived at home, Dorothy skipped hand-in-hand with the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion down the Yellow Brick Road. They watched the muted images in silence for a moment as pleasant memories from their youth came drifting back to Owen.

  "Remember when you used to sit upside down in that chair?"

  She grinned, tucking her sock feet under her knees. "I don't need to anymore. I live my life that way."

  Owen nodded. "You look good. Tanned."

  "You look like shit. Tired."

  "Now that we've got the pleasantries out of the way… I could really use a drink."

  "Oh, feeling adventurous, huh? What'll it be? Coke or ginger ale?"

  "Just some water."

  Lori made to get up, but Owen held up a hand to stop her. "I'll get it. I should put in an appearance, anyway."

  Owen went to the kitchen, leaving Lori behind. Gerald leaned against the kitchen counter, drinking a glass of sparkling amber liquid Owen assumed was infused with alcohol. He tipped the glass toward Owen, swallowing and smacking his lips before saying, "Owen! Your mother and I were just talking about you."

  "You know I love it when people talk about me, Gerald."

  His mother turned with moist stuffing stuck to her bare hands. The pork roast rested in the large roasting pan, tied and dressed with sprigs of rosemary. "Owen, be a lamb and turn on the sink for me." Gerald reached the sink before he could, and she washed her hands thoroughly. Owen stood beside her, waiting to give her a hug.

  "Ginger ale, Owen?" Gerald asked, ice clinking as he raised his perspiring glass.

  "Is that all that is?"

  A scowl flashed on the old man's face, then softened. "How about you, Margaret? Something to drink?"

  "I'm fine, thank you." Her hands dried, she allowed Owen to hug her. She was just skin and bones under the apron, her sweater, and pleated pants. He thought that, if Lori had hugged her with the same enthusiasm she'd showed him, dear old mum might have broken something.

 
"Can I help you with anything?" Owen asked.

  He turned to Gerald, who seemed to be eyeing him queerly. Probably thinks I'm sucking up, he thought. He had been surprised to smell nothing but pop in Gerald's drink. Maybe he really was off the sauce, like Lori had said.

  "We're fine," Margaret said. "Spend time with your sister. Never know when you might see her again."

  Not such an odd thing to say, considering Lori's constant globetrotting. Owen kissed his mother on the forehead and shuffled back to the living room, where Lori was watching the grease-painted winged monkeys attack the gang. Toto barked as they flew off carrying a screaming Dorothy with them.

  "You ever feel like Dorothy?" Lori asked suddenly, looking over.

  "I usually feel like Toto."

  "The dog or the band?"

  Owen chuckled. "That reminds me, where are you off to next? If you're heading to Africa, maybe you could—"

  "Bless the rain," they said in unison.

  "Oh, you've heard that one," he said, grinning.

  "Once or twice." She turned back to the TV, fidgeting with the drawstring of her Baja hoodie—avoiding the question, he noticed. Typically she'd go into great detail about her next destination: the culture, the food, the sights, and the indigenous people.

  "I'll zip it if you think it'll upset Mom," he said.

  She turned to him with her lips pressed flat, then back to the movie. He decided to drop it. If she wanted to tell him, she would tell him. They watched the rest of The Wizard of Oz in silence.

  "How's the roast?" Gerald asked during dinner.

  "Porktastic," Lori said. She'd been off meat for a few years, but had come back with gusto.

  "It's a little dry," Owen admitted, making his mother scowl. "But good," he added, pouring on more gravy.