by Tom Deitz
“Sorry, Liz,” said David. “I’ve had things on my mind—and, besides, it’s only been a week.”
There was a flustered pause. “So what are you doing now, Davy?”
“It’s David, Liz; David with a D, like in dammit, and I’m not doing anything except sitting on the porch complaining about the heat and fussing with Alec.”
“Well, I can’t help you with your fussing, except to ask you not to get a black eye if you can help it. I don’t want to be seen with a boy with a black eye.”
“It ain’t that kind of fussing. Call it a gentleman’s disagreement.”
“You two, gentlemen? Ha! You won’t even call a girl, and Alec never can seem to figure out when he’s not wanted . . . but as far as your problems are concerned, I can’t help you with your fussing, but maybe I can with the heat—if you’d like to go swimming down in the lake behind my mom’s house. I’ll even be nice and let you bring Alec.”
David grinned. “That’s good, ’cause he’s spending the night over here tonight, and I’d hate to have to leave him to the tender mercies of my pa—or even worse, to Little Billy.”
“Your folks might as well adopt him, as much as he’s over there.”
“His folks’re out of town at some literature conference or another; I doubt the rural life would agree with him in the long run.”
“Well, that’s good; there are other people who’d like a piece of your time once and a while.”
“Oh?”
“Never mind, Davy, just get your tail on over here.”
“Oh, right.”
“I’ll see you in a little while.”
“Right . . .” He hesitated, not quite knowing how to end the conversation, which, he realized, could have gone on for hours in endless exchange of taunts and inanities. But he had left an extremely unhappy Alec on the porch and wanted to resolve that. Maybe a change of locale would do the job.
“Bye,” he said, feeling somewhat awkward, and hung up.
The door slammed behind him as David returned to the porch. Alec looked up, raised an inquiring eyebrow, then frowned into his third daisy.
“That was Liz Hughes wanting to know if we wanted to go swimming over at her house.”
“So what’d you tell her?” There was only a trace of the former hostility, as if Alec had regained control of his emotions for a while—or suppressed them.
“I told her yes, of course. I presume you do want to go—considering how much you were complaining about the heat just now. Maybe it’ll wash a little of the mad off you.”
Alec frowned. “I’m not mad, I’m . . . confused—and hurt, a little, to be completely honest.” He smiled wanly as he levered himself to his feet. “But I guess you really do mean well, even if you are crazy. At least I know you didn’t get that ring from Liz; it ain’t her style.”
“Isn’t, Alec, isn’t,” David laughed, assuming the exact intonation Dr. McLean used when correcting his son’s grammar. “No, as a matter of fact Liz hasn’t even seen it. I’d as soon she didn’t, in fact; but there’s nothing much I can do about it. If we’re going swimming, I guess I’d better wear it on my finger, though; I’d hate to lose it in the lake.”
“You got anything I can borrow to swim in?” Alec asked. “Somehow I don’t think skinny-dipping is appropriate just now.”
“Might be interesting, though,” David mused. He laid an arm across Alec’s shoulders and headed into the house. “Come on, fool of a Scotsman, I can probably find you something. We’d best get going, though, before Liz changes her mind.”
David took mostly back roads to avoid the traffic, and Alec spent most of the trip with his eyes closed and his hands tightly gripping his seat belt. It took twenty minutes to get to Liz’s house, an almost-new brick ranch sprawling amid a stand of pines.
Liz was waiting for them in her front yard, an incredibly large red towel draped around her body like a toga. Her auburn hair fell atop it like dark copper wire. She had always had nice hair, David thought. Her purple two-piece bathing suit—not quite a bikini, peeked out from beneath the towel.
“Well,” she said in a tone of mock irritation, “it took you long enough!”
“Don’t say that!” cried Alec in dismay. “I’d hate for him to take up hurrying. It’s bad enough riding with him when he’s just taking it easy.”
David shot Alec a scathing glare and threw a friendly punch at his shoulder. The ring glittered on his finger.
“All right, boys!” Liz said firmly. “I don’t allow any fighting around here.”
“Yes ma’am,” they replied as one, extravagantly repentant.
They had to pass through a small pine wood to reach the nearest arm of the lake, maybe a quarter mile behind Liz’s house. The air there was cool and clean-smelling. As they walked through forest, they saw a half dozen squirrels and at least two chipmunks—which darted frantically about, as if they had just popped into existence and didn’t quite know what to make of finding themselves suddenly alive.
“I hope there aren’t any possums around,” Alec whispered.
David elbowed him in the ribs.
Alec parried the elbow with a wrist. “Alive or dead.”
“What’s this about possums?” asked Liz from her position at the head of the line. Beyond her the gray-green shimmer of the lake had become visible.
“David tried to turn himself into a werepossum back in July.”
“Alec!” David growled. “Shut up!”
“A werepossum?” Liz’s tone was serious. They had reached the lake’s edge, where the land descended in a series of red clay shelves to a thread of sandy beach Liz’s father had had hauled in. The water was clear and smooth, reflecting the blue sky and the surrounding pine trees as well as the three tanned faces that stared into it.
“Never mind, Liz,” David said. “I’ll tell you later. Did we come here to talk or to swim?”
“I came to swim,” said Liz, dropping her towel and running fifteen or so feet into the lake before thrusting her head smoothly under water.
“She’s filled out some this summer,” Alec observed.
David nodded appreciatively. “She has for a fact. Now come on, let’s go find a bush and change.”
“If you weren’t so picky about that damn car, we wouldn’t have to do this,” Alec muttered as he followed David toward a clump of laurel at the top of the bank.
A few minutes later the three friends stood together on the muddy bottom, water waist-deep about their bodies, hair slicked back, beads of moisture dewlike on their limbs, sticking their lashes together.
All at once Liz snatched David’s hand from under the water, bringing it up in a cloud of spray that sent Alec flinching. “So this is that ring I’ve heard so much about!” she cried, grasping David firmly by the wrist while she turned his hand this way and that, the water glittering on the silver circle.
David rolled his eyes at Alec. Alec shrugged noncommittally, leaving David to fend for himself.
“Who is she?” asked Liz.
“I found it.”
“Oh, another story,” muttered Alec.
“That’s not what Little Billy told my brother Marvin at Sunday school,” Liz remarked.
“That’s practically ancient history now, Liz . . . and, besides, Little Billy’s a kid. Who you gonna believe, him or me?”
“Don’t ask me,” Alec grumbled.
“Christ!” cried David, looking absently at the water lapping in and out of his navel. “Who hasn’t he told about that?”
“You tell me,” said Liz. “I’ve heard from three different people that you’d said you had a girlfriend but wouldn’t tell her name.”
“Good grief!” David sighed. “Can’t I do anything without it being front page news? And, Alec, how many people have you told about me and a little trip up the mountain back in July? Will I read about that in the newspaper next week? ‘Local Boy Tries to Become Werewolf—Fails—Parents Horrified.’ Or maybe, ‘Local Boy Sees Castle, then Psychiatri
st’?”
Alec feigned dumbness, pointing to his closed mouth and gesticulating wildly. Abruptly he stiffened and fell backward into the water, only to emerge grinning a moment later, hair slicked into his eyes.
“You know,” continued Liz, looking intently at the ring, “I get a kind of funny feeling about this ring—like it was something really old.” She shook her head. “No . . . I don’t think you got this from any girl around here; it’s too weird for anybody we know.”
“I told you! He got it from a girl in Atlanta.”
David wrenched his hand away from Liz and thrust it under water. “Oh, come on, Alec. Let it die. Where would I have met a girl in Atlanta? I’d never been there without my folks but once before the convention, and you were with me then. And, besides, would I be here if I had a girl in Atlanta?” David’s eyes twinkled, but he knew he was treading on dangerous ground—for several different reasons.
Both Alec and Liz looked confused.
A moment later Alec cried out and pointed toward shore. David and Liz turned, following the line of his pointing finger.
“A white squirrel!” cried Liz. “I’ve never seen one. Is it an albino, do you think?”
“Most white animals in this part of the country are,” said David, “unless they’re naturally white—which doesn’t make much sense, if you think about it; I mean albinos are natural.”
The squirrel lay precariously on the green-fringed tip of a pine branch that overhung the water—a patch of brilliance, almost snow-white amid the green needles. It reminded David of winter, in fact; it was like one snowflake on a summer day, and he felt an unexpected chill. Goosebumps rose on his back and chest and shoulders.
The squirrel did not move; it seemed to be watching them. The branch swayed gently under its weight.
“Odd,” said Alec.
“Peculiar,” said Liz.
“Strange,” said David after a pause. “Very strange.”
“But pretty,” continued Liz.
“Not likely to live long, though,” Alec observed. “Stands out too clearly. Easy prey for a hawk.”
“Somehow I don’t think so,” David said, scratching his chin.
He flinched abruptly, for the ring had suddenly grown warm on his finger. Looking down, he saw that it was blazing with light.
“What was that?” cried Alec.
“What was what?”
“That glitter.”
“Sun on the water, probably,” said Liz, “if you saw what I saw.”
“Weird.”
“In the old-fashioned sense,” David muttered as he ducked his head under. He entered a brown-green world marked by the pale shapes of his friends’ legs, the white cutoffs he had lent Alec, and Liz’s purple suit. And then his head broke water again. The squirrel was gone.
“Let me have another look at that ring,” said Liz, reaching under water for David’s hand.
David snatched his hand behind his back, fearful they would see its glow, but he knew from its diminished heat that it had faded. He held it up.
“Let me see if I can get some vibrations off it,” Liz said suddenly, closing her eyes.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Alec snorted, turning his back and folding his arms dramatically. “Is everybody I know crazy as a bedbug? Vibrations! Liz, come on! Not you too!”
“Well, Alec McLean, sometimes I can pick up vibrations—impressions, whatever you want to call them. My granny taught me a little bit about how to do it before she died. . . . Well, she didn’t exactly teach me, she just told me to be aware of what was there, to trust my feelings about things, and I do—and it works, most of the time. And right now I’ve got a feeling about David’s ring.”
“What are you going to do?” asked David, fascinated. He had known Liz for years and never suspected she was in any way interested in anything out of the ordinary, though she had listened to him go on about his various fixations with something besides the bemused glances he usually got, and did occasionally ask a penetrating question. Maybe she was a little bit psychic. It wouldn’t hurt to try. He held his hand out to her.
She closed her eyes again and placed her hands on his, one over and one under, and took a deep breath. David and Alec watched incredulously.
She said nothing for quite a while, but her dark lashes fluttered, and her breath became shallow. Finally she opened her eyes; they were wide and filled with a strange light in their green depths.
“I don’t know what just happened, but it was . . . strange. I just tried to picture the ring, and then to be aware of whatever images came into my mind, and I got this incredibly sharp image of an old man in gray robes looking at me, and then of two men, one in black and one in white, fighting with each other. . . . No, not exactly fighting, but contending somehow . . . and then they looked at me, and I got scared and quit. I’ve had impressions before, but this was like television!”
There was a sound then, like the howling of a thousand wolves heard from a great distance, but it was the sound of the wind, a strange wind that suddenly swept out of the high, still air and flowed among the pines on the far bank, then raced across the glassy water, stirring up a miniature tidal wave like a boat wake as it passed, and that then fled up the near bank, but not before it had whirled and eddied momentarily about the three friends so violently that they finally had to submerge themselves to avoid its touch—which was like deadly ice.
“I . . . think . . . I don’t want to swim anymore today,” Liz whispered.
“Nonsense,” said Alec, who immediately did a back flip and swam fifty or so feet out into the again-smooth water. David followed in a moment, and so—reluctantly—did Liz. For a good while they sported about, diving the fifteen or so feet to the bottom and rising again, pulling each others’ legs in an attempt to relieve the nervous tension that the eerie wind had generated.
Alec’s head broke the surface next to David. He blew water out of his mouth and nose.
“Did you see that?” he sputtered.
“See what?”
“The white fish.”
“White fish?” David was treading water, but faltered in his stroke. “Are you kidding?”
“He’s not kidding,” said Liz, coming up for air beside them, “if he’s talking about the white trout I just saw.”
David took a gulp of air and submerged, peering through the gloom past his friend’s lazily churning legs, to where indeed a white trout swam rapidly in a tight circle. At the same time David became aware of a burning pain on his finger so sudden and intense that he almost gasped out his lungful of air. The ring was glowing white hot again; he could see it even under water, flaring like a magnesium torch.
Suddenly the trout darted straight toward him. He jerked back, but not before it grazed his ring finger and in an apparently deliberate motion swam away toward shore. The ring was hotter than ever, hotter than David had ever felt it, so hot that he almost wanted to take it off—but he knew that he would be a fool if he did.
He surfaced and looked around. Liz and Alec were where he had left them, but maybe fifty yards across the lake behind them he could see the head and part of the body of what appeared to be a great black horse swimming silently toward them. Its eyes glowed red in a way that made David shiver, and he thought he saw steam rising from its nostrils.
“Come on, you guys, let’s go!” he cried, swimming frantically toward shore. “There’s a horse coming straight toward us. And it doesn’t look very happy!”
Alec glanced over his shoulder. “Son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted as he began to swim after David. Liz said nothing; she just swam. Behind them they could now hear the heavy breathing of the horse and the splash of the water against its head and neck as it increased its pace. David thought he could feel its hot breath on his back once or twice, and was it his imagination, or did a faint smell like burning sulfur taint the air?
They swam shoreward until they could stand and run clumsily in the shallows, mud welling up between their toes, the water sucking at thei
r legs, hampering their efforts. They had not turned once to look back, but the snorting hiss of labored breathing sounded closer, and the dull, heavy splashing of the knees of the black horse breaking the surface as it came into shallower water became clearer and clearer.
They heaved themselves onto dry land and scrambled up the bank. Once in the perceived safety of the trees, they turned as one, half afraid of what they might see.
Below them in the shallows stood, indeed, a great black horse, staring malevolently up the bank toward them, but making no move to leave the water that lapped about its hocks. Moisture glistened on its flanks, and the devil light in its eyes had faded—at least to David’s sight—to a dull, lifeless gray.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Alec whispered.
The horse stared at them a moment longer, then turned and swam off into the lake. The three friends watched it from the safety of the trees until it became a mere speck. Oddly, it did not walk out onto the bank on the other side of the lake, but rather continued into the open water to the right, disappearing finally around an outthrust peninsula.
“That sure was scary!” Liz said breathlessly.
“That’s very true,” David agreed, picking up his towel. Liz cautiously eased back to the shore to fetch hers.
“Any idea whose horse that was, Liz?” David asked when she had returned.
Liz shook her head. “Nobody around here has a black horse, and, anyway, I’ve never heard of a horse swimming around like that. I wonder if . . . God, I hope not . . . you don’t reckon it might have had rabies or something, do you? I sure don’t want to think about a rabid horse running around.”
“Swimming around, you mean,” Alec corrected. “You know, it was almost like it was in its natural habitat, though—and was chasing us off.”
“Good thing you saw the fish when you did, Alec, or we might not have noticed till it was right on top of us,” David put in.