Cradle Lake

by Ronald Malfi

  Wordlessly, Alan shook one from the pack and extended it to him along with a book of matches.

  Hank lit it and looked at the glowing red eye of the ember for what seemed like an eternity before he spoke again. “It became obvious that Sophie found the lake a few months after moving to town. To the best of my knowledge, no one had ever told her about it, so I assumed she had been out hiking and happened to find the path that leads to it. She lost ten or twenty pounds seemingly overnight, and even her skin looked healthier, her eyes more alert. Younger. She began running these charity races, and she even got first place in one of them. Was in the newspaper and everything. One of the judges, a guy named Botts who lives on Tulane, clocked her at a steady six-minute mile for the entirety of the race. He said she wasn’t even out of breath when she crossed the finish line.”

  “Isn’t it possible she was exercising, and that’s why she lost the weight and became a good runner?”

  “Sure. Anything’s possible. Personally, I was hoping that was the case when people first started talking about her. But then Sheriff Landry began keeping an eye on their house at night. Sure enough, he caught Sophie leaving her house in the middle of the night, all decked out in her running gear. At first Landry assumed she was going for a night run, but he followed her anyway. Followed her right here, in fact.”

  Landry, Alan thought. That’s why I’ve been seeing the goddamn police car outside the house. The son of a bitch has been spying on me.

  “He watched her go through the trees and onto the path until she disappeared,” Hank continued. “When she reappeared about an hour later, it was obvious she’d been out having a midnight swim.”

  “What’d Landry do?”

  “He stopped her and told her to stay away from the lake. He didn’t need to explain its power to her as she’d already figured it out. He said she was abusing its power, using it frivolously, and it had to stop.”

  “Did she stop?”

  “Sort of but not because of Landry’s warning.” Hank crushed out the cigarette on the sole of his sneaker and said, “Her husband killed her.”

  Alan’s beer froze halfway to his mouth. He stared at Hank.

  “Turns out they’d both been going to the lake together,” Hank said. “Thing is, for all the good those little midnight swims did for Sophie, they didn’t have the slightest effect on Owen. Or, more accurately, poor Owen seemed to get worse. He couldn’t give up smoking, and by the time his wife won that race, old Owen had actually strapped on another ten to twelve pounds. And whether it was from the long hours he’d been putting in at work or from his frustration at watching his wife grow younger and healthier while he got older and heavier, he seemed to be plagued by unshakable fatigue.”

  “How come it didn’t work for him?”

  “I couldn’t say. Sometimes it rejects someone for no good reason. Like my bum leg. Or old man Pasternak’s wife who couldn’t beat the goddamn cancer no matter how many midnight treks to the lake she took.”

  For whatever reason, Alan pictured his father—blue skinned and massive looking on the stainless steel table in the basement of the morgue, that hideous yet subtle dime-sized bullet hole at his temple. From the top of his chest down he’d been covered in a flimsy white sheet, the twin tombstones of his feet pointing straight up at the acoustical tiles in the ceiling. And remembering this made him think of Cory Morris’s single shoeless foot, the tip of his white sock curled over like a deflated balloon, flapping as Hank and the other men hurried him through the woods to the lake.

  Hank repositioned himself in the lawn chair. “As one might expect, their marriage had already deteriorated. It was like Owen woke up one morning married to a much younger woman—a woman he was unable to keep up with. It wore on him, ate him up from the inside. Made him feel inferior. Even his work suffered and he stayed home sick more and more. Soon he shut down his shop and wouldn’t come out of the house. Not that his wife noticed. While it wasn’t exactly, you know, common knowledge, Sophie had taken up with a young fellow from the firehouse, a kid in his late twenties. I don’t suppose there’s any need to go into much detail on that,” he added, a sly glint to his eye.

  A chilly summer breeze stirred the trees. In the grass, Jerry Lee whimpered but did not move.

  “Mr. Pasternak went over to the Moreland house one afternoon and knocked on the door. It wasn’t anything any of us had conspired to do, and we didn’t even know Pasternak was doing it until he told us later that evening at The Moxie. He said Owen answered the door wearing a pair of filthy boxer shorts and an armpit-stained T-shirt, his hair all screwed up into tight mattress curls and the stirrings of a lumberjack beard creeping up his jawbone. Pasternak asked him to come to The Moxie with him because he wanted to talk, but Owen shook his shaggy head and, without opening his mouth, shut the door in Mr. Pasternak’s face.

  “About a week after that, toward the middle of August, I was carrying some firewood down Market Street in Jonathan Nasbee’s pickup—Jonathan’s a good guy, works at the quarry—when I happened to catch sight of the Morelands’ old blue Duster parked slantways outside the Laundromat. It was Owen’s car, really—Sophie always said she wouldn’t be caught dead in it—so I knew he was out and about. I pulled the pickup into the next available space outside the Laundromat and hopped out.

  “As you’ve seen, that whole downtown section of Market Street is nothing but storefronts, each one family owned and passed down through the generations. Everybody knows everybody else’s business in other words. I’d imagine it’s quite a bit different than what you’re used to, coming from New York and all, but we like it that way.”

  Alan thought of the little no-name place in the East Village where he used to buy cigarettes and newspapers and of the proprietor, a grizzled old black man with salt-and-pepper muttonchops, who called himself Felix Gum-drop. Though he didn’t interrupt Hank’s story, it occurred to him that there were more similarities than differences between big cities and out here in rural nowhere. What was that story about the city mouse and the country mouse? He couldn’t remember …

  “Anyway,” Hank said, “before I could even get my fingers around the door handle at the Laundromat, I see him standing at the end of the narrow brick alley. I called out to him but he didn’t answer. He was standing toward the end of the alley, which is just a little brick walkway that runs between the Laundromat and the hardware store, the back of which is lined with Dumpsters and employee parking. Owen stared at something on the roof of the Laundromat. His gaze was so intense it was no surprise he didn’t hear me call his name, so I did it again, taking a step or two toward him.

  “This time he turned around. With Christ as my witness, there was such a look of empty depravity in his face I could feel my stomach muscles clench and my blood turn to ice. And then he smiled at me.” Hank laughed nervously and swiped at the side of his face with one big hand. “There was a children’s program on when I was a kid, narrated by Shelley Duvall, about nursery rhymes and fables and—”

  “Faerie Tale Theatre,” Alan said, with more excitement than he would have thought. “I watched it, too.”

  Hank grinned, still rubbing the side of his face, and said, “Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, there was this one episode about Aladdin and his magic lamp. James Earl Jones plays the genie. Do you remember it?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Well, there’s a part in the show where the genie, who’s really fucking bent out of shape, just turns to the camera and gives this fucking smile. Scared the shit out of me. Even today, I cringe whenever a phone book commercial comes on TV.” Another nervous laugh. This time, Alan couldn’t help but smile at him. “When Owen turned and smiled at me in that alley, that was what he looked like—fucking James Earl Jones done up as Aladdin’s genie. Had I been in worse shape, I could have had a heart attack right then and there.

  “‘How you been?’ I asked him. ‘Haven’t seen you in a while.’

  “‘Been around,’ he says, his voice gravelly. Thankful
ly, he turns away from me, and I don’t have to look at that hideous smile anymore.

  “‘Folks been worried about you,’ I tell him. ‘You been going down to the lake?’ Because, see, this was well before Landry followed Sophie to the lake that night. Jury was still out.

  “‘Do you see it?’ he says, ignoring my question. He’s staring at the roof of the Laundromat again with that same intense expression. In fact, he’s squinting while practically standing on his tiptoes.

  “‘See what?’ I say.

  “‘It’s gone.’ And there’s some resignation in his voice. ‘You must have scared it off.’

  “‘Must have scared what off?’

  “‘They’re all over the place now. Been following me. You just missed one up there.’ Owen points to the roof. ’Must have heard you call my name. They’re temperamental like that.’

  “‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say. And suddenly I didn’t care, either, because I knew he was about to face me—and offer that hideous genie’s smile. Which he did. And my blood ran cold all over again.

  “‘It don’t matter,’ he says calmly enough.

  “‘You and Sophie been going down to the lake, haven’t you?’ I say again—only this time I made the mistake of mentioning his wife. I knew it was a mistake the second the words came tumbling out of my mouth, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  “‘Don’t talk about her,’ he practically growls at me.

  “I could see the discolored patches under his eyes and his sallow complexion, and for one split second, he seemed to age right there in front of me. Like those time-lapse films that show the entire life of a flower in a matter of seconds? He just seemed to grow old.

  “And later that night, lying in bed and unable to sleep, I would think about how he looked so old and wonder if the lake did that to him—that it wasn’t only his worsening depression about his wife’s affair, which half the town already knew about, but the lake itself. As if the lake was physically draining him. For the first time I wondered if in order to heal some people the lake had to drain that energy from others.” Hank paused, almost as if he wanted those words to sink in.

  “Either way,” Hank said after a moment, “I don’t say another word to Owen. He shuffles by me, one shoulder dragging along the brick alley wall, until he reaches the mouth of the alley where it spills onto Market Street. He pauses there and cranes his neck. Please don’t smile. Please don’t smile, I’m thinking, mentally crossing my fingers. Thankfully, he doesn’t. He just peers at the roof of the building and screws his face all up, as if lost in contemplation.

  “‘You didn’t see it?’ he asks me. I shake my head and this seems to suffice, because he rolls his shoulders in return—oddly casual, I remember thinking—and hobbles back to his old Duster and drives home. That was three days before Landry followed Sophie out of the house and about a week before Owen killed her.”

  “How’d he do it?” Alan said, the words nearly sticking to his throat.

  “Put the barrel of a pump-action Winchester to the center of Sophie’s forehead and spread her brains along the front hallway of their home. She’d come from visiting her sister in West Virginia and had just walked through the door to find him standing there with his scattergun. One single trigger pull and Owen was a widower. Then he dragged her body down the hall and up the stairs into the bedroom. A few nights later, over some beers at The Moxie, Sheriff Landry said there was a glistening path of blood trailing through the house and up the stairs that reminded him of those red carpets they roll out for movie stars on their way to the big premiere.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Owen hoists her onto their bed and crawls in next to her. Then he pumps another shell into the chamber and sticks the barrel of the shotgun under his own chin. Sheriff Landry said Owen had taken off his shoes and socks and had his big toe stuck in the trigger guard when they found him, so that’s probably how he managed to fire the shot.”

  Hank leaned over and snatched another beer. Passively he stared at the label and didn’t open the bottle. “Of course, neighbors heard the shots and the police were called. It was without a doubt the messiest crime scene old Hearn Landry and his two bumbling deputies had ever come across. Landry said it looked like someone had smeared cherry pie all over the bedroom wall. And it only got worse two days later when the firehouse kid never showed up for his shift. Again, Sheriff Landry went out on the hunt and found the kid in his kitchen, blown to bits by the same gun.”

  Alan ran a shaking hand through his hair. His ulcer was bucking in his stomach like an angry bronco. Either the beer or Hank’s story—or the combination of the two—had agitated it.

  “Kolpeck was the medical examiner. He did the autopsies on all three bodies. Sophie Moreland was forty-eight or so when she died. Kolpeck said he couldn’t believe it. He said she was as fit and youthful as someone half that age.” Hank cranked the cap off his beer and took a swig.

  While Alan wasn’t paying attention, they’d finished the entire six-pack and, judging by the repositioning of the moon in the night sky, had been out here talking in the yard for quite some time.

  “So you see, the lake is not something to be used carelessly. It takes just as much as it gives. There is a price to pay, and there have been those who have paid dearly. You and your wife are young and healthy. There’s no need to go down the wrong path, so to speak.” The timbre of Hank’s voice lowered. “My suggestion is to stay away from the lake.”

  A light came on at the far end of the house: the bedroom window.

  “You said at first you assumed Sophie had found the lake from hiking through the woods,” Alan said, turning back to Hank. “But you don’t think that now, do you?”

  Hank sighed and seemed to genuinely consider the question. When he spoke, his voice was lower. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe they did accidentally stumble upon it while out walking through the woods, maybe looking for a good spot to have a picnic.”

  Alan could tell Hank was only talking in half-truths now. “No,” he said. “You don’t believe that.”

  Hank chuckled and rubbed his bad knee. “Let’s just say I’ve come to believe in a lot of things, all right? Things about man … and things about nature. Maybe sometimes nature has a way of intervening. Maybe that lake wanted the Morelands to find it because just like it gives it also needs to take.”

  “You’re telling me the lake … what? Called out to them? Summoned them?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “This is getting harder and harder to swallow. Seriously.”

  “I’m not asking you to swallow anything. I’m only asking you to heed my warning and forget about what’s on the other end of that dirt path. Might be a time when you’ll find that it’s worth the gamble, just like with the Morris boy. But for now, live your life and forget about it.”

  Alan glanced at the lighted bedroom window again. Briefly, Heather’s silhouette washed across the shade.

  “Do you have a few more minutes?” Hank said.

  “I guess so. What’s up?”

  “Come with me,” Hank said, standing. “I want to show you something.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Alan let Jerry Lee into the house, then followed Hank across the street. A light rain had started to fall, and periodic flashes of silvery lightning fractured the sky. He expected to see Sheriff Landry’s cruiser parked up the street, masked in darkness, but the street was empty, the pavement a milky blue in the pale moonlight. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.

  They went around to the back of the Gerski house. All the lights were off except for the flickering blue strobe of a television in one of the upstairs windows. There were the porch steps leading to the kitchen and, below them, the concrete stairs to the basement door. He followed Hank down the concrete steps to the basement.

  “Just be quiet,” Hank said before opening the basement door. “Catherine’s asleep.”

  Inside, Hank ran one hand along th
e wall and flicked on the lights. His Orioles paraphernalia came to life. Hank crossed over to a set of wicker doors in the far wall. He opened them, exposing a black, rectangular maw. Instantly, Alan smelled mildew and water damage. Hank rubbed one finger beneath his nose, then dipped into the darkness of the room.

  Alan followed a few steps behind and winced as Hank tugged on an exposed bulb housed in the ceiling. Harsh light threw shadows in every direction.

  It was an unfinished room, the walls gray cinder blocks, the floor a slab of unpainted concrete. A heating unit stood in one cobwebbed corner, surrounded by pyramids of cardboard boxes, folded aluminum beach chairs, plastic yellow recycling bins, a ten-gallon fish tank with a lightning bolt crack across one panel of glass, and a pair of enormous stereo speakers circa 1975. A picnic table umbrella was propped at an angle like a makeshift lean-to.

  “It’s like the Batcave,” Alan muttered.

  Hank crouched down before another mound of cardboard boxes and slid them away from the wall. Folded up behind the boxes and leaning against the cinder blocks was a wheelchair—a relic left over from Hank’s old leg injury, Alan surmised. Hanging behind the wheelchair from a peg in the wall was Hank’s old Orioles uniform, zipped up in an airtight bag.

  Hank sifted through the contents of one of the boxes. When he found what he was looking for, he withdrew it from the box. It was a vinyl-covered photo album with some sparkly unicorn stickers on the front cover. Hank pulled it into his lap, sat down with some difficulty due, Alan assumed, to his bum leg, and scooted against the wall. “Here,” Hank said. “Come have a look.”

  Alan sat beside him on the floor and peered at the album in Hank’s lap as he opened it.