Hedge Lake

by Brian Harmon

  It was keeping pace with him. And apparently without much effort. Eric had time to wonder why it hadn’t rushed him yet. Was it playing with him?

  At least they seemed to have lost the shallows walker. That was one less thing to worry about.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  Jordan informed him that they were almost there, which didn’t actually answer his question, but he didn’t say so. In light of the fact that there was a relentless predator on his heels, he decided that he’d settle for an answer to the question he probably should have asked in the first place.

  “I thought you said these things never hurt anyone!”

  “They never did before! What did you do to them?”

  “Me?”

  “Well you’re the only thing that’s changed around here since yesterday!”

  She had a valid point there, he realized. And hadn’t Isabelle suggested something similar earlier in the day?

  The hellhound snarled. It sounded like it was right at his heels. He let out a yelp and struggled to push his way faster through the trees and brush.

  “There it is!” said Jordan.

  Ahead of them loomed a small structure, a house, barely bigger than a shack. A light was on in the window, shining like a beacon, guiding them through the overgrown wilderness. “Is this your house?”

  “No. Mine’s the next one. This is Ned’s house.”

  “Who’s Ned?” he asked, but at that moment the hellhound let out a blood-curdling howl and he cried, “Never mind! Just go!”

  Jordan reached the edge of the yard and ran for the back porch. Eric wasn’t nearly as fast. Snapping branches and stumbling through the underbrush, it was almost baffling that the beast hadn’t already seized him by the leg and dragged him off into the woods, where it could devour him in peace. He could hear it back there, huffing and snarling and snapping its powerful jaws.

  Then he was free of the forest and running across the open lawn.

  Jordan was on the porch. The door was open. She was yelling at him to run.

  He had just begun to think that he might make it when he saw another shape standing beside her. A man moved through the shadows, a faceless figure darting down the steps and rushing toward him, his arm outstretched.

  Was that a gun in his hand?

  Startled by the idea of having a gun aimed at him, Eric tried to veer to the side, only to trip over a stump. He was aware of a sharp pain in his shin for only an instant, and then he was on his face, sprawled limp across the grass like a discarded scarecrow.

  His flashlight landed farther ahead, beyond his reach.

  Dazed and wincing at the pain in his leg, he rolled onto his back, intending to protect himself, and saw both the man and the hellhound silhouetted in the moonlight. The man was aiming the gun. He seemed to be firing it. The hound, likewise, reeled away from the man as if shot. It let out a terrible snarl. The man fired again and the thing actually yelped as if in pain.

  And yet the gun made no noise.

  Eric shook his head, wondering if he’d finally managed to damage his brain. (Karen had told him it would eventually happen, and she did have an annoying habit of being right a lot…)

  But when the hellhound finally fled back into the forest and the man hurried to his side, he at last realized that the weapon was nothing more than a squirt gun. It was one of those little Super Soaker toys, like the ones Kevin used to be so fond of, back when he was about Jordan’s age.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” replied Eric. “What’ve you got in there? Holy water?”

  The man looked at his water gun. “What? No, it’s…it’s just tap water.” He spoke with a heavy Yooper accent, similar to the one his aunt’s first husband had, he recalled. And like the old fishermen he’d crossed paths with earlier in the day.

  “Tap water?”

  “Ya. He hates it. Same principle as using a squirt bottle on a naughty cat, eh?”

  Eric was confused. “That’s all it takes to stop that monster?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call him a monster, really.”

  “Not a monster? That’s the second time that thing’s tried to kill me today!”

  The man tugged at his ear as he considered this. It was a curious gesture, almost childish. “That’s odd. He never bothered anyone before. Although…he did look pretty rough…”

  “Rough” was a profound understatement. The thing had been blind and mangy before it was set on fire.

  Eric rose to his feet and retrieved his flashlight. He was so confused. Jordan had said the same thing about the creature, as if it were nothing more than a timid, stray dog.

  “Come on inside. Rest up a minute.”

  Eric followed him back to the porch and into his small, untidy home, to a cluttered, little dining table with inexcusably uncomfortable chairs. He sat next to Jordan. The man sat across from him and introduced himself as Ned Bouven, who Eric then realized was the same Mr. Bouven that Owen and Pete had identified hours earlier. This was the biologist. He was a short man, with a pudgy belly and receding, red hair.

  “How is it you know so much about that…animal?” asked Eric.

  “It’s my job to know about it,” replied Ned. “I’ve studied all the wildlife in and around this lake. Including the oddities.”

  “Oddities?”

  He nodded.

  “I like hanging out at Ned’s place,” explained Jordan. “He knows all about the lake. He always has good stories.”

  Ned looked embarrassed. “I don’t claim to know everything,” he said. “But I know more about Hedge Lake than anyone. I can tell you that.”

  “Tell him about the vortex,” said Jordan.

  Ned looked pleased at the idea. “The vortex,” he agreed. “Ya.”

  “Vortex?”

  “At the bottom of the lake. It’s where they come from.”

  The bottom of the lake? Eric shifted in his uncomfortable chair and scratched at the back of his neck. That was where Mrs. Fulrick said he’d have to face whatever was causing all this.

  “It’s a doorway to another world,” Ned went on. “Fascinating, eh?”

  “Where in the lake?”

  He deflated a little at this question. “Well… I don’t…exactly…know. To be honest. I’ve gone down looking for it, but I haven’t been able to find the exact spot. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s always there. It could only be open occasionally, like at certain times of day or during certain phases of the moon. I do think that it may move around a little. Or else there might be more than one. It’s incredibly complicated. I may never figure it out.”

  “You’ve been down there?” asked Eric. “Like, with scuba gear?” He wasn’t going to have to go underwater, was he? Because he definitely wasn’t comfortable with that.

  “Well, it’s not like I can afford a submarine, eh? Although that would be cool.” The pudgy little man laughed at the idea.

  Eric recalled Holly’s warning to stay out of the water and felt a shiver creep down his back at the thought of descending into those murky depths in the middle of the night. Especially after his nightmarish vision of the boiling lake with millions of dreadful things writhing in it.

  “How many things have come out of this vortex?”

  “Oh, hundreds. Thousands. They’ve been turning up for decades. Probably centuries. If not forever. I have a basement full of preserved specimens, if you’d like to see them.”

  “They’re really cool,” said Jordan.

  “No thank you,” Eric quickly replied. The idea of venturing down into a dark basement full of dead things from another world when he didn’t have to was just a little more than he could deal with tonight. “Just…give me the abbreviated version. Please.”

  Ned shrugged as if to say, “Suit yourself.” Then he went on, “Most of them arrive dead. Drowned, mostly. But even the aquatic ones usually die in the lake. They can’t adapt. The environment’s too different from whatever world they come from.”
>
  Again, he recalled those pictures Pete showed him. The mysterious carcasses washing ashore. It was the same thing. And clearly, this was how Jordan knew about the things that came out of the lake. She heard it from her friend, Ned. “Why haven’t I heard about this before? If there are so many, why isn’t it common knowledge?”

  “It is. In certain circles. But most of the time the reports are dismissed and never properly investigated. People say it’s just a rotten deer carcass or a drowned dog. Or just a hoax. Always that. But these things are real. They always have been.”

  Eric nodded. Even as early as that morning, he would’ve thought to himself that this guy was completely nuts. Even though he, himself, had faced golems and ogres and other equally unbelievable things, he would’ve found it hard to believe that this guy’s giddy rambling was anything but sheer delusion. But this was now. And between that morning and now, he’d seen too much of the sort of thing this guy was talking about to dismiss even a single word of it.

  “Tell me about the ones that survived.”

  “Nothing makes the transition from their world to ours unscathed. Even the survivors are always crippled or scarred in some way. That poor creature just now, for example,” he said, gesturing toward his front yard. “Blinded during the trip here. Mangled pretty bad. It’s amazing to me that anything could survive that sort of abuse. It’s surprisingly resilient.”

  “What about the shallows walker?” asked Eric.

  “What, the reptile creature? He’s one of the few that made it through with his eyes intact. Probably because they retract down into his skull. And his skin’s surprisingly well armored, too. I’m sure that helped. But even with all that going for him, he’s still covered in scars. I haven’t been able to get close enough to study him very thoroughly. He’s extremely shy.”

  “He seems to be getting over it,” said Eric.

  Ned stared at him, perplexed. “What?”

  “It came out of the water and came straight at us,” explained Jordan. “It was right before we ran into the dog.”

  He considered this as he tugged at his ear again. “That doesn’t make any sense. It goes against all the data I’ve collected. No one’s ever been able to get very close. That’s why he’s generally only ever seen from far-off boats. He retreats deep into the lake whenever he senses anyone getting close.”

  “Well, he’s apparently getting braver,” said Eric, “because she’s right. That thing was coming straight at us down there.”

  “It don’t make sense,” Ned said again. “They’re still only animals, eh? They’re no danger to anyone, as long as they’re not provoked.”

  “I didn’t provoke anything,” insisted Eric. “And that was the second time that hound’s tried to sink its teeth into me.”

  Ned looked thoughtful. “There was something different about him tonight. He looked terrible, eh? Even in the dark.”

  Eric didn’t mention the beast getting set on fire by a blazing ghost.

  “Why were his eyes glowing?” asked Jordan.

  Ned looked confused. “His eyes glowing?” he asked. Again, he tugged at his ear. “He don’t have eyes.”

  “His eye sockets, then,” she amended.

  But this didn’t seem to make the subject any less confounding for him. “I didn’t notice any glowing eyes.”

  Jordan looked at Eric then. “How could you miss them?”

  Eric didn’t bother mentioning that he saw the same glow deep in the beast’s throat.

  “Probably just an odd reflection,” Ned reasoned. Then, seeing the skepticism on their faces, “Or I suppose some sort of bioluminescent bacteria or something. Maybe. Anything’s possible when you’re dealing with an entirely alien ecosystem.”

  Eric couldn’t argue with that, he supposed. “Speaking of aliens… How does all this factor in with all the other supernatural activity in the area?” he asked. “The aliens and the ghosts.”

  Ned snickered. “You don’t really buy into all that nonsense, do you?”

  “You don’t believe in aliens or ghosts?”

  “Well, if you mean ‘alien worlds’ in the sense of realities other than our own, then that’s just quantum mechanics. And I have no problem with the idea of life on other planets, but I really don’t think they’re traveling across the galaxy in flying saucers to study us.”

  Eric nodded. “Especially with gas prices the way they are.”

  Ned stared at him for a moment, confused. Then he snorted as he finally got the joke. “That’s right! That’s good. I like that.”

  Eric smiled. Jokes aside, that had been his own view of the subject, too, until a few hours ago, when an alien spaceship had tried to fry him with its lightning cannon. Now, he wasn’t entirely sure. The jury was still out.

  “And don’t get me started on ghosts,” continued Ned. “These woods aren’t haunted. I’ve never had a single experience that can’t be explained logically.”

  “That’s right,” said Jordan, her expression as serious as it could be, as if she had enough years behind her to be sure of anything in the world. “That’s just silly.” Then she smiled brightly at Eric.

  She was the one who told him the dead didn’t leave this place. She seemed to know as well as he did that Ned was wrong. But she didn’t bother saying so. She seemed to know that he was too stubborn to ever believe in ghosts.

  Eric didn’t bother telling him, either. Even if he did think he could convince him of the truth, perhaps it was better to let him remain ignorant. His life certainly hadn’t gotten any easier since he learned that ghosts were real.

  Looking at Jordan now, he wondered how it was that she knew these things. If Ned was the one who told her about the creatures that came out of the lake, then who it was that told her the spirits of the dead linger in this place.

  He didn’t ask any of these questions, of course. Not in front of Ned. Instead he asked, “How well do you know Lorelai Fulrick?”

  Ned rolled his eyes. “That’s what this ghost nonsense is about? That old woman’s delusional. She thinks she’s some kind of psychic.”

  “So I take it you don’t believe in psychics, either.”

  “Utter nonsense.”

  Eric rubbed his eyes. He felt weary. This guy was a scientist. He made more sense than anyone else he’d spoken to today. And yet he felt as if he were talking to another lunatic. He had it all wrong. There were such things as ghosts. And he was sharing a psychic link with a girl right now who was all the way out on the east coast somewhere, listening in on them from hundreds of miles away.

  He tried to put it all together. This guy was talking about a vortex in the lake. A phenomenon backed by scientific theory. (He was taking Ned’s word on that.) It was through this vortex that the monsters were entering this world, not monsters at all, but merely creatures from a vastly different world than ours. In his meeting with Cordelia, she told him of an anomaly, which seemed to be the triangle that Specter Ten described shortly after he arrived. She also told him that ghosts wouldn’t trouble him outside of the anomaly, on the triangle’s surface, which was where Specter Ten and Ned conducted all their research. That was why Specter Ten couldn’t find any evidence and why Ned was so convinced of the nonexistence of paranormal activity. Those things probably didn’t appear to them up here. Cordelia also mentioned something trying to force its way through from another world. Isabelle had mentioned portals at one point. Those two things could possibly be the same phenomenon as Ned’s vortex. Something forcing its way through might be tearing small holes through whatever separated the worlds, creating portals or vortexes. And Mrs. Fulrick had told him that she dreamed of a secret path through the forest that would apparently lead him to the evil at the bottom of the lake…which was where Ned claimed the vortexes were…

  Was it weird that it all kind of made sense? Or had he finally just lost his mind?

  Add to all that the fact that Holly’s spell told him of an “invisible footpath” and it was all becoming frightfully clear.
All except what it was he was up against and how the hell he was supposed to stop something like that…

  But then again, he wasn’t quite done yet, was he? He still had one more stop on this psycho train. “What do you know about Jonah Fettarsetter?”

  Ned’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t care for that guy.”

  Shocking revelation there. Clearly Fester Sweater wasn’t very good at making friends. “Why not?”

  “He’s always up to something. I see him out on the lake when I’m working. Or else sneaking around the woods. He’s looking for something. Personally, I think he’s trying to find the vortex before I can.”

  “So he’s a rival scientist?”

  Ned looked a little embarrassed to have it put so bluntly. “Maybe. But I don’t trust him. I wouldn’t doubt if he’s military. They probably want to know how they can turn it into a weapon or something.”

  Eric nodded. Sure. Why not? “Any idea what’s the fastest way to get to his place?”

  “Straight out across the lake would be the fastest, eh? By boat.” He said the word “boat” so that it had two syllables.

  “Well…yeah…” Eric felt annoyed. “But since I don’t have a boat…”

  “Just take the road around. It’ll be easier than dealing with the rough terrain past the southern tip of the lake. Go to the end of my driveway and hang a right. He’ll be about four miles down. You can’t miss him. His name’s plastered right on his mailbox.”

  Eric nodded. The road sounded considerably longer than trekking around the perimeter of the lake, but a lot less stressful.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Jordan.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting home?” asked Eric.

  “It’s not even eleven yet,” she told him.

  “Don’t you have a curfew?”

  “I don’t need one. I’m a responsible kid.”

  Ned chuckled. “I’ve been renting this place for almost a year now and she’s always popping up and talking to me. I don’t mind at all. She’s a good kid. But I’ve never known her mom to even check on her.”

  “You’d think she’d be worried,” said Eric.

  “She’s been sick,” said Jordan, sounding snippy. “Very sick. She doesn’t go out much anymore. And she doesn’t like talking to people.”