The House on Black Lake

by Blackwell, Anastasia

  “Let me go!”

  He does not relinquish his hold, but rather appears to retreat deeper into himself, and I fear I have lost him to something entirely diabolical.

  “You were the one who preached how I must have faith if I am to find those who will help me. I confessed to you what I have never shared with another human being. Now, you owe it to me to be honest and tell me the truth.”

  “I was brought into the club by my birth father,” he says in a voice bereft of emotion.

  “What about the Solar Temple?”

  “It is possible to belong to more than one club, eh?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “As I told you, I cannot be a part of a ritual ceremony for another ten years, but they can...”

  I follow his gaze to the stone path leading up to the grounds, where a group cloaked in hooded black robes and red armbands have congregated.

  “Andre, for God’s sake, why are they here?”

  “For you, darling: they are here to release you.”

  A statuesque figure emerges from the group and strides across the lawn. His black robe flows in waves behind him as he crosses the grass to stop in mid-stride in front of where the house’s grand entry once stood. Majestic in his billowing robe, he stands before me like a prince of darkness come to claim the soul of one soon to be departed. Shadowed before the ruins of the house, with the blood-red moon lurking like the magnified eye of Satan, he observes me silently. A murderous gleam escapes the eye-slits of his mask, and fits of steaming breath seep from the mouth hole.

  “Reveal yourself. Take off your costume. You defile the sacred robe of justice,” I taunt him.

  Andre tightens his grip as the odious specter raises a gloved hand and poises it aloft in an excruciating pause that nearly stops my heart. The hand clutches spasmodically, like one abruptly severed, then sweeps down to seize the fabric of the hood and tear it away. A shock of bleached hair appears from under the hood and intense green eyes flash from a tanned face with a mouth contorted into a cruel grin. Vapors of the evening air snort through Georgie La Pointe’s flaring nostrils.

  “Hello again, darlin’. As with our first meeting, you are accompanied by a tree. You must have a fondness for tough hide, eh?”

  “Where is Ramey?” I ask, peering into the robed vigilante tightening ranks behind him. I now see they wear the double hexagram with a winged cross, the same armband as the one I found hidden in Egan Schlotter’s trunk.

  “Ramey Sandeley is tending his mare. He no longer owns this island; it’s now my property.” Georgie moves towards me with a menacing swagger. His posse of sacrilegious priests follow suit and the sound of collective breaths under hoods lends a touch of the macabre to the obscene.

  “Wrap her up tight and we’re done with you, Labat. You’ll get your turn at the end, after the others have had a piece—a fitting spot for a half-breed,” he spouts in a voice bloated with unfettered disdain. He lifts the heavy robe up over his head, drops it to the ground, and draws a hand through his hair to groom the gelled spikes.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Alexandra. The sacrifice of a specimen like you could change the world. But you need a little taming first. You need to be fucked soundly before you’re put to sleep.” His face contorts into a gluttonous sneer as he lowers the zipper of his gaudy pants. His starched linen shirt is stained with perspiration and he reeks with the stench of a beast not quite human. He traces my eyes as he moves in on me, clawing his hand down his chest to the crude bulge that has afforded him the twin gods of fame and bloated debauchery.

  Is it Georgie’s own image he seeks in the reflection of my eyes? Perhaps. But if it is my fear he seeks, it will never be his.

  “Give in to it, Alexandra. Don’t struggle or make sounds. It will be over more quickly and with less pain,” André says as he tightens the rope around the oak’s trunk and wraps the excess around his forearm.

  “No, man, I want her face to the tree. I’m going to ride her backside.”

  André roughly swings me around to face the tree’s moss-encrusted bark. My mind feeds a frenzy of possible ways out of this horrendous scene. But, deep inside, I know a struggle is useless. There is no way out. I am trapped, at bay, a feast for the predators. And like the taken prey, or a condemned prisoner, I must offer up the sweet skin of my neck to save myself a more lengthy and torturous fate. There is dignity and power in resignation to injustice, and so I raise my arms to embrace the ancient tree and allow André to draw the heavy hemp rope firmly across my lower back.

  “Perhaps fear is my guardian angel,” I murmur, in a voice laced with fury, to my betrayer—André Labat.

  He retreats behind the tree to make the first loop that will secure me to my fate.

  “Go... run for your freedom,” he whispers as he makes the first pass and I feel my hands released.

  “The key is in the ignition. Guide the boat towards the flashing blue lights.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  THE STRUGGLE BEFORE DAWN

  JACK LOPES UP TO GREET ME, CLUTCHING A BONE IN HIS JAWS, AS I swerve up to the Sandeley’s house. I leap from the car, take the bone from the dog’s frothy mouth, and throw it into a patch of tangled vines at the base of the footbridge. As he takes off to fetch his prize, I run up the stairs and onto the porch. The wind chimes in the patio rafters welcome me, but they no longer sound like voices sharing intimate secrets; they now carry the warning of something terribly amiss inside this palatial dwelling. The carriage lights are dim, and only a few months flutter vainly against the frosted glass.

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” Ramey asks as he comes up from behind me.

  “I need to check on my son.”

  “Sammy’s asleep. He passed out early. The children had a full day playing soccer on our field and fishing with my special breed of crawler.”

  “I have to get up early to catch my flight home,” I say and reach out to grab the door handle.

  “Let go of me,” I demand as Ramey grasps onto my arm and roughly guides me from the porch to a car hidden in the shadows.

  “Get in.” He opens the passenger door and struggles to force me inside.

  “No. You’re not taking me back to your hooded priests.”

  “Alexandra, I’m worried about you; I’m concerned you’re having a breakdown. Last night I had to undress, shower, and put you to bed, like an invalid. I advised Ruth to call the doctor if you didn’t snap out of it today. Did Sammy tell you about last night?”

  “Stop the bullshit. I know about the human sacrifice and so will the police.”

  “Darling, I’m afraid your paranoia is getting the best of you.”

  “Georgie and your hooded friends tried to tie to me to the old oak tree on the island, where they planned to rape and kill me. Don’t deny it. André told me about your men’s club practices.”

  “The club members rowed out to visit the island after the meeting. I deeded the house to my cousin tonight. He needed a place to hide from his fans. Unfortunately, you must have been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why were you there in the first place?”

  “If that’s the case, you won’t mind me placing a police report.”

  “The chief of police is one of our elders, and will be just as amused by your paranoid delusions as I.” He has me wedged inside the car door. “Get in, dear. I’m not going to say it again.”

  “Obviously chivalry is not one of your attributes,” I say as he shoves me roughly into the car.

  “A damsel in distress is fair game in my territory.”

  “I noticed the knights’ armor in Roger’s—”

  He slams the car door over my words and moves around the vehicle to slide into the driver’s seat. “It won’t take us long to get to where we’re going.”

  Tires squeal on the stone driveway as he takes off and makes a series of turns down a side road running along the perimeter of the property. He stops the car in front of a building that appears to be a newly built
barn.

  “Come with me,” he says, and leads me inside. He enters a stall, where a dappled gray mare lies on a fresh bed of hay. Lying next to her is a newborn filly.

  “She’s absolutely breathtaking.” Her eyes flicker as I kneel to pet her downy coat.

  “Sunshine was born early this morning. I was afraid I was going to lose the mare. The placenta became infected, so we’ve been shooting her up with antibiotics. I think she’s taken the worst of it,” he says, and kneels beside me to stroke the face of the mare. She nuzzles her head against him and makes a deep contented sound.

  “I have more I want to show you.” He takes my arm and leads me to a stall at the end of the barn, where a bundle of hay is staked with pitchforks and a small forklift is wedged into a side corner. “Wait outside.” He takes a harness from a hook and leads out a white Arabian stallion with a powerfully muscled torso, lustrous mane, and a tail hanging nearly to the floor. “This is Faithful. Come on boy, easy there. Hold him steady,” he says, and moves to enter another paddock.

  “And this is True.” Ramey leads out and harnesses a bay mare. “She’s a sweet girl.

  “We named them for the riders of the apocalypse.

  “You can’t tame this one, but Faithful will take you where you need to go.” He comes up swiftly from behind and hoists me onto the stallion’s bare back.

  “For God’s sake, what are you doing?”

  “I’ve seen you ride, sweetheart; you’re an expert.”

  Ramey gives Faithful a slap to his hindquarters and the steed rears up and takes off in a wild gallop, as though freed from a long season of captivity. He flies out of the barn, takes off down a dark country road, and gallops through a vast expanse of pasture leading into a heavy thicket.

  “It’s not far from here,” I hear Ramey call out as we clear the overgrowth. He rides up alongside me to grasp onto the reins of the stallion and slow his pace.

  “I have a flight to catch in a few hours. If I miss it and don’t have Sammy at the airport for Matt to pick up tomorrow, a warrant will be sent out for my arrest. I’ll be thrown in jail, for God’s sake.”

  Ramey leads the horses inside a grove of trees where he ties them and helps me to dismount.

  “What is this place?” I ask, while looking around a circular area of shimmering ground cover surrounded by a jungle of extraordinarily lush vegetation. The humid air smells of bitter apples, and a light breeze rustles the leaves of overhead branches that create a canopy of partial seclusion.

  “My father brought me here when I was a child. The natives believed it was the house of the gods. They performed their ceremonies and ritual dances in this spot. This is the first circle. The two other spheres are similar, but the energy is different in each. Only the chiefs were allowed in the one that holds the sacred alter. The location for the clubhouse was chosen for its proximity to the site.”

  He takes my hand and guides me to a breach in the heavy brush segueing into a second circle of equal size. Here, the grass is velvet-like and tinged a deeper hue of green. The flowers are lavish and the fruit succulent and ripe.

  “Watch your step as we move into the third sphere. It dips a bit and there’s a line of sludge that follows an underground spring. We step into the muck and work our way through willowy bushes with limbs stretching tentacle-like to the other side, as we pass into the third realm. There is a sultry quality to this ring, a robust and mysterious oppressiveness, potent—nearly overpowering. Flowerless bushes and tall narrow trees stand like ghostly figures in the shadows.

  A triangular space juts from the circle. One angle has been shaped into an altar made of river rock, covered with mounds of dried flowers and dozens of candles melted to the stone. The other side holds a fire pit filled with a pile of equal-sized bundles of wood. At the midpoint, a carving of a giant man stands with a flat-edged bow at his side. He looks to be a primitive warrior, but there is something off balance, not quite right about him. The features of the wizened visage are mysterious and foreign and proportions of the bulky frame not quite of this earth, yet he is clearly human.

  Here lies the symbol—the one on the latch in Ramey’s room and etched into Georgie’s medallion. Here lie three concentric circles with an arrow through the center. And in my dream, the one that led me on this journey—a diseased woman held up three golden spheres with Ramey’s eyes blazing through her sunken orbs.

  Ramey takes a tightly rolled newspaper from a bin at the edge of the pit and lights it with a match taken from a metallic box atop the makeshift altar. He uses the paper to ignite the kindling in the pit. “Georgie and I used to bring girls we wanted to seduce to this spot. We studied the occult, made potions and practiced spells. La Pointe almost died here one summer. He suffered a seizure after he drank a concoction we cooked up.”

  He takes the blanket from True’s back and lays it out on the ground in the center of the circle. “Sit.”

  Reluctantly, I lower myself onto the blanket and try to collect my wildly conflicted thoughts.

  “I know about Luna and André’s sister and likely there are many others, many more broken hearts,” I tell him.

  He sits opposite me and gazes with curious intent.

  “I didn’t know André had a sister...”

  “She slit her wrists after your affair ended.”

  “That wasn’t André’s sister; it was his wife. He didn’t tell you he is married?

  “No... but I’m not surprised. Experience has taught me that a betrayer rarely limits himself to one act of malice.”

  “His wife was a maid in our house. She came into my bedroom one night when Ruth was away; she actually climbed into my bed. I told her to get the fuck out and go back to her chamber. I later learned she returned to her home and slit her wrists. I was sorry to hear about the incident, but her actions are hardly my fault.”

  “And Luna?”

  “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, my dear.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “My wife caught us together. It was a moment of weakness for both of us.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “It’s not worthy of an answer.”

  “I need to pack for my flight home,” I say and move to where the horses are hitched.

  “I see envy in your eyes; is that why you’re running away from me?” he asks and follows me to the edge of the circle.

  “No, not envy; it’s disgust.”

  “Or maybe lust.”

  “You’ve spent too much time in the company of whores and courtesans. It’s skewed your perceptions.”

  “Courtesans? What century do you live in? You’re not one of those pitiful souls who sin through the tales of others are you?”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Luna broke me when I was twelve; she was my baby-sitter.”

  “Then Luna was correct when she warned me to be more fearful of the rats that hide inside the house than the predators on the outside,” I say, while struggling to unhitch Faithful, who throws up his head and rears back.

  “Unlike you, I’m not imprisoned by outmoded moral standards. Therefore, I have no guilt.”

  “Good-bye, Ramey.”

  “I believe you’re in love with me,” Ramey responds, and rips Faithful’s reins from my hands.

  “You’re despicable.”

  “And you are in love with me.”

  “What would you know about love? What do you know about the desires of the heart or the soul? You’re like a sinkhole, like that stale black lake, filled with creatures feeding off one another,” I say, while struggling for control of the horse.

  “And what do you believe the soul to be? The soul is as dirty and black as the deepest and darkest sinkhole. It knows only brute desire and survival, and seeks its own kind with ruthless drive. It understands nothing of roses on Valentine’s Day, making love in the missionary position, or seeking procreation in a sterile vacuum.”

  “Is that what you talk about at your men’s club meeti
ngs—your covert fraternity of rapists and cold-blooded murderers? Is that what you spend your time philosophizing about while you’re planning your next human sacrifice?” I comeback with fervor, then grab a handful of Faithful’s mane and pull myself onto his bare back.

  “Take your hands off me!” I scream, as Ramey drags me from the horse and throws me to the ground. He straddles my chest with sturdy thighs, stationing his full weight below my shoulders. Immobilized beneath him, my lungs crushed under the weight, his powerful frame sinks deeper into the cavity of my chest until I can scarcely breathe. As I lapse beneath his commanding dominance, he wraps his hands around my neck and places his thumbs firmly against my windpipe, exposed more fully as he tilts back my head.

  “Have you ever made love like this,” he asks while pressing and releasing, playing my vocal instrument at whim.

  I struggle to speak, to create consequential words to dissuade this subhuman from snuffing out my life—but the emitted sounds are equally horrific. They are the squeals of the slaughterhouse—even more terrifying than the murderous gleam in his eyes.

  Seeking refuge from the unthinkable, I gaze beyond him into the night sky, scattered with wild stars, like millions of eyes peering through dark cloth. The black robes will have their way after all, and celebrate the victory. My sacrifice will create no abundance or profusion of wealth. But why continue the battle when the odds are so staked against me and allies clearly nonexistent.

  Flashes shoot through my consciousness, obscuring the starry sky. Like the photographs in Egan Schlotter’s trunk. Bullet shots of life, random pictures, split seconds of mind-blowing pain entangled with ineffable, unimaginable joy. Innocence lost, never to be recovered, and time marches forward, a roaring river of emotion and imagery, memories recorded, now wildly flashing.

  My sons, my dear sons, forgive me...

  “Will you remain still if I move off you?” I hear Ramey ask me. My eyelids flicker open to view him slide off and move to the edge of the blanket, where he lowers his head to his knees and covers his face with his hands. Woozy and lightheaded, I lie still and wait for the dizziness to pass. A strange choking sound issues from him, and I open my eyes to a sight I would never have imagined possible, not in a thousand lifetimes.