Clawing Free

by Josh Roberts

  14

  August 23, 2019

  The day following David’s death was hard for Lissy. The one person who might have been able to reveal anything about her sister’s death was now gone, and it felt like the final nail on Mia’s coffin had been driven into place. But however hard it was for her, she knew it was infinitely harder for Neil, whose brother was dead. The understanding she’d fought to keep at bay for years, that her sibling was gone, was now his reality just the same.

  Neil was, for all intents and purposes, catatonic as they drove toward the funeral home. Lissy had already decided on the night they’d found out that she would stick by him every step of the way, just as he’d done for her so many times throughout her life. She would do her best to be his rock. Although at the time, the idea of her being anyone’s pillar of stability was laughable. She had been falling apart long before this week had cranked the dial on her volatility.

  Beneath her thoughts about Neil’s loss lay the million-dollar question: Why David? And just as important: Why now? It had been eleven years since Mia’s death, and all of a sudden David was worth going after? The answers had to be tied in to Lissy finding Melissa Atwell’s body. She repeated the questions in her mind over and over, each time coming up blank.

  With each passing day, she felt the draw of the lake increasing. If not for Neil’s call in the early hours of the prior day, she would have surely found herself standing at the water’s edge. What had gotten into her? Going back was becoming a compulsion, a subconscious drive that lurked subtly beneath her thoughts at all times. But why? What was lending power to this yearning to return?

  Lissy pushed all thoughts of the lake aside as they climbed out of the car and approached the funeral home.

  They entered the building through large double doors, and the scent of hundreds of bouquets immediately overwhelmed her senses. The smell brought horrible memories of Mia’s death rushing to the forefront of her mind. For a split second, she even thought she’d recalled a memory of her father’s funeral, although she was so young at the time, she was sure she’d only fabricated it due to heightened emotions and the lack of sleep.

  Neil had wanted to plan his brother’s funeral as soon as possible. He said he just wanted to put him to rest, and that David wrestled with this longer than anyone should ever have had to. He deserves peace. So Lissy agreed and told him she’d drive, but she hadn’t counted on the swell of emotions that accompanying him would induce.

  The funeral director approached, vaguely familiar to her. It was as if he was the great-great-uncle who you only saw at funerals or weddings growing up. Only Lissy had never been to a wedding, and everyone in her family but her estranged mother was already dead.

  He spoke softly, as if straining to get the words out. “Hello. I am Hilton. How may I help you?” He offered no smile.

  “We need to arrange a funeral,” Lissy replied.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Hilton said. She finally placed him. He’d been standing in the corner of the room throughout Neil’s parent’s funeral. She found it odd that she’d never seen him in town even though the funeral home was right off the main strip. She assumed he lived down that mountain and wasn’t much of a people person, as might be indicated by his spending the majority of his time with the deceased.

  “I’ll just need you to fill out a few documents.” Hilton turned to leave the main lobby and motioned for them to follow him. “This way,” he said, almost inaudibly.

  They trailed behind him to a small office off the main entrance, and Neil filled out the paperwork required for a cremation.

  After leaving the funeral home, they went back to Neil’s and she warmed him some leftovers. They sat together at his kitchen table in familiar silence. It occurred to her that this had been their lives. In a quarter of a century, each of them had spent more time grieving lost friends and dead family than the average person would in an entire lifetime. It was unfair and screwed up. Why them? Why did Mia have to die? Or David? Why Neil’s parents and her dad? It seemed so discriminatory. She’d always assumed the relentlessness of life would ebb at some point, even itself back out, but that day never came.

  “It’s not fair,” she voiced her thoughts aloud. He didn’t respond. She hadn’t expected him to; he was completely zoned out.

  “Hey,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Why would it go to his trailer?” He slammed his fist down on the table, tears pooling in his eyes. “It feels so . . . targeted.” He choked out the last word, then erupted into tears.

  She stood, walked to his side, and rested her hands on his shoulders. “I know. I keep asking myself the same thing.

  She stood in silence as he cried until suddenly his sobs broke off. He looked up at her, suddenly alert. “When you black out,” he asked, “what do you see? Tell me every detail.”

  She felt the need to run, not wanting to discuss the visions. But there was no way she could leave him in that state.

  “I-I’m at the lake, at night.” She sat back down and took a deep breath. “And a voice calls to me. Well, two voices, I think.”

  Neil listened intently, not even blinking.

  “At first it’s like air, or wind. It says my name, almost gently. But then a storm comes. I’m afraid. And I see . . . I see you. But when I try to get to you, something . . . I don’t know. Something electric encircles me, crushes me.” She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, feeling more and more claustrophobic as she described the scene. “Then, in the last one, there was a second voice—more sinister. It was like I was caught in the middle of something. Then, this horrible shadow came up out of the water.”

  “What kind of shadow?”

  “I—” She stopped abruptly. “Neil, I don’t even know what it means.”

  “What is the shadow doing, Lis? And the voices, what do they say?” He was pleading with her now.

  “It came out of the water. It was shapeless. Just a big, amorphous thing. Really big. It’s like it’s not allowing me to see it. And somehow . . . I know it wants to hurt you.”

  “Hurt me how?”

  “Well, I try to get you to run, but I can’t. You just stand there, like you don’t see it.” She began to escalate, each word gaining intensity. “I need you to hear me. But you won’t. I need you to go!” She realized she was shouting. Quietly, she added, “Like I said, I don’t know what it means.”

  “So . . . you see me?” he asked.

  She was embarrassed at the question. “Yeah.”

  “Why me?”

  As he tried to decipher the meaning of the visions, his face went blank, and he began to enter the same catatonic state he’d been in all morning.

  “Neil?”

  He slowly turned to face her, and she took his hand. “What if whoever killed Mia, and David, and Melissa . . . What if they’re the one talking to me in the visions?” He stared at her without expression.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  His response came without hesitation. “That I believe you.”

  Relief washed over her. It felt good to tell someone everything and not have him scoff at her.

  “I mean, it only makes sense that the visions, the lake, the killings are all related,” he said, running his hands through his hair as if he could wring the stress out if he pulled hard enough.

  “Maybe that’s why David is dead,” she said with some hesitation.

  “I’m not following.”

  “I mean . . . maybe whatever is drawing me to the lake is getting angry that I haven’t gone back. Maybe he’s only dead because I won’t go back.”

  “We have to put an end to this before you get—” He stopped mid-sentence. But Lissy noticed an edge in his voice when he spoke, as if a spark had ignited in him—and she knew why.

  “Neil, you can’t go there. If it’s after me, you’ll be killed just like David. It probably only went after him first because he was so close to the lake. Maybe it feels . . . safer there.”

  “Or
it remembered him,” he responded too quickly. “I can’t just let this go, Lis.”

  “I know that. But if you go to the lake, you—”

  “And if I don’t go to the lake, then what?” he interrupted. “Eventually I’ll feel better? Do you?” There wasn’t malice in his tone, only truth. “I have to try something.”

  The conversation was too heavy. Lissy hated it. But the worst part wasn’t even her fear of losing him. It was that, deep inside, she wanted to understand it all just as much as Neil. She wanted to go to the lake and . . . what? Kill or be killed?

  She gave voice to her thoughts. “We don’t even know what this thing is, Neil. We know it’s got a taste for blood and that it’s capable of feats of great strength, but what is it?

  “Maybe we know more than we think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Neil shifted in his seat, remembering something.

  “It was years ago. Honestly, I’d forgotten it until now.” He fixed his eyes on her plate as he recalled the memory.

  “I was out at the trailer, on the night David mentioned. He just needed to spill his guts. And he did. He told me everything he remembered. It wasn’t much. There were some weird happenings leading up to that night, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away by teenage-monster jitters. But then he got agitated. He was trying so hard to remember, as he had been for years. But he couldn’t. He’d been knocked out. I could see in his eyes how much he hated himself—truly hated—for not knowing what happened to Mia.”

  He paused and added, “He loved her, Lissy. Every cell that comprised him loved her.”

  She nodded, trying to accept his words but still battling with years of pent-up unforgiveness and hurt.

  “Then he said something else. I didn’t really know what to make of it then. But now . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s something.” He leaned in closer. “He said that one of the things he could remember was that the whole trip, he felt like there was someone there, someone with them. He said it was like that feeling you get when you’re in a dark room by yourself and you think someone could walk up at any moment and grab you from behind.”

  The thought put ice in her veins. That was exactly how she felt the day she’d found Melissa.

  “Combine that with your visions and—”

  “We still know next to nothing.”

  “We do know something. David said the last time he’d seen Mia she was walking calmly up to the cliff while all hell was breaking loose. She had to have known something—or seen something—no one else did, right? And in your visions, the first time you were attacked, you couldn’t see it, right?”

  “Right. And?”

  “And, while the visions may not be real, they could be true to the nature of the beast.” His usage of the word beast petrified her, not because the description implied something inhuman, but because it seemed most apt to describe the thing she’d encountered in her mind.

  “Maybe this thing is able to hide itself from us—some kind of cloaking mechanism. And somehow Mia could see through the cloak,” he posited.

  Neil’s excitement worried her. She could feel the desire for revenge clinging to every word he said. She needed to defuse the situation. “You’re coming dangerously close to sounding like you think there’s merit to the lake monster stories. They’re just dreams, Neil,” she said. But the words were empty. She knew neither of them believed they were just dreams. Just like they could no longer rule out the possibility that something horrific might have killed their siblings.

  “Maybe I do.” His voice was flat, more contemplative than emotional.

  “Neil—”

  “If not that, then what? How do you explain this? These visions. The storm that flips Jeeps, throws trailers, and proceeds to claw its victims to death. What do you think is doing all this?”

  She’d said too much. His gears were already turning, and she had no way of stopping it. Especially because he was right. She had no reply.

  He pushed back from the table and stood. “I don’t know what we can do,” he said. “But we can’t do nothing. David can’t be dead for nothing. I won’t let that happen.”

  “Neil, I—”

  “I know. I can’t just traipse off to the lake. But Lissy, you know as well as I do, I can’t go to Sheriff Porter and warn him about the invisible voice monster that’s ravaging random lake-goers. We have to figure this out.”

  He went to the living room and dropped onto the couch. She worried about him. But what frightened her more was how much she agreed with him.

  15

  August 24, 2019

  Nearly twenty-four hours after their conversation about David’s death, and Neil had yet to do anything rash. But Lissy knew his lack of action was more than likely due to his not knowing how to proceed than his having given up on the idea.

  They spent the entire morning finalizing the details of the funeral. Adding insult to injury, it struck them that there were not many people to invite, as most of the people David had ever been close with were already dead. It would be a small event, short and to the point. It would be carried out the way David would have wanted.

  Lissy glanced at Neil, sleeping on the couch. It was only evening, but he’d been so tired that the moment he sat down, he went out. She grabbed her keys and quietly exited the apartment, making sure not to close the door too loudly.

  She walked through Mitchum, the only town she’d ever known, looking at each building as she passed. For years, the buildings had looked the same. Maybe there had been changes to the color of the paint or the furniture on the porches, but overall, the town was stagnant. But dilapidated buildings weren’t what she saw that day. It was as if her entire worldview was shifting with each step. She noticed that, although the buildings and the people hadn’t really changed, she was changing. She was beginning to see everything differently. It was like someone had taken all of Mitchum and overlaid her visions—her nightmares—onto it. Each face she saw was a future victim. She no longer saw friends, or even acquaintances; instead, she saw the people who might be taken by the beast.

  Even the buildings felt as though someone had thrown a dark sheet over them. It wasn’t that the sun wasn’t shining; it was. But she had this sense of impending doom percolating through her entire being. She hated it. She tried to push back the dark feelings, but they stayed tethered to her like a snake with its fangs hooked into a rat. No matter how much she jerked, the snake wouldn’t relent. And worse than the feeling that the town, or its people, were shrouded, she knew that in actuality it was her who was being consumed, not them. The events of the past week had tested her innermost core and found it wanting. She was like one of those buildings, decrepit and weak. Eventually, when a strong enough storm came, she would be overtaken and wiped from the dirt. It occurred to her that when that day came, Neil and maybe her mom would be the only two to even notice. She would leave no legacy, make no waves. Her funeral would be as empty as David’s.

  She paused in front of the town’s small grocery, noticing a shiny new Land Rover parked in the lot. There was a large black traveling container on its roof and a Michigan University bumper sticker on the rear window. The sight immediately triggered her. While the anger was irrational and unfounded, her mind immediately flooded with memories of tourists traveling to Mitchum eleven years prior, after Mia had been killed. They would laugh about heading to Diamond Lake in hopes of encountering the monster that resided there, like it was all just a game. Well, it wasn’t a game to her.

  Overtaken with rage, she stormed across the street, ignoring the car that came within inches of clipping her as she crossed.

  A bell chimed as she pushed open the door. She spotted them; a group of four college guys stood over by the beer case. She homed in. The man behind the cash register looked on with interest as she crossed the front of the store with fury in her eyes.

  “Hey—” The men turned to look at her just as someone grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the door.

&nbs
p; “Let me go!” she shouted, struggling against the strong hands forcing her back. The college guys were laughing now.

  “It’s not gonna help,” she heard Logan say.

  “This isn’t your business, Logan.”

  He had her outside now. The cashier craned his neck to watch them through the window. She inhaled deeply, blowing it back out through her nostrils.

  “I’m pretty sure you going nuts on some tourists is exactly police business,” he replied. “What’s gotten into you?”

  She huffed, but knowing he was right, she tried to calm herself. “I just—I don’t know.” Embarrassment replaced her anger in an instant, then she was mortified. What had she planned to do? Hit them? The thought had to have been laughable to the four muscle-bound jocks.

  “Listen, I’m not saying it doesn’t piss me off too. But they’re not the ones who killed David. Or Melissa.”

  His words felt like a punch in the gut, knocking the wind out of her. He was right, but she still hated them, regardless of whether or not this wasn’t their fault.

  The group exited the store, bags in hand. The leader of the pack raised his eyebrows at her as they passed. She told herself to let it go. She was the one who had made a fool of herself.

  “Where you headed?” he asked. “Or were you just out lookin’ to go Rambo on some hapless tourists?”

  “I was headed to Todd’s. Yunjin made a couple of meals for Neil. I was going to grab them.”