Cradle Lake

by Ronald Malfi

  None of the campers were ever seen again.

  The roadway grew bumpier before it flattened out, opening up onto a small clearing toward the back of which sat a whitewashed shack with a sloping, weather-ruined roof. The windowpanes were blind with muck, and sod grew on the porch planking. Birds nested in the eaves, and ivy climbed the crumbling white bricks of a sagging chimney. A 1958 Chevrolet, colorless and defeated by rust, its chrome bumper and gapped grille pitted to a spotty red brown, sat beside the house. Its busted headlamps were like the empty eye sockets of a skull.

  Alan slowed the Toyota to a crawl and rolled down his window. He could smell smoke in the air but could see none. Peering at the house, he was confident it was deserted. He braked and let the car idle, his hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel. He was about to turn around and drive back down the dirt road when he noticed what looked like a grave marker—an ovoid slab of granite—protruding from what appeared to be a weedy, overgrown flower bed at the front of the house. Carved into the stone and quite visible even from the car was an upside-down triangle.

  His throat felt itchy.

  Movement behind one of the grime-covered windows caught his attention. He jerked his head in its direction but could see nothing more. Surely no one still lived here. Surely no one—

  The front door opened. A woman in a pastel housedress and drooping nylons appeared. Her face was a withered mask of deep bloodhound wrinkles. She shuffled toward the edge of the porch with a pained, rheumatic slowness and folded meaty arms over her heavy breasts. Her hair was a silver nest atop her head; cobweb tendrils of loose hair fluttered like pennants in the breeze.

  Alan climbed out of the Toyota and raised one hand in a gesture of both affability and complete disclosure. His intentions, he wanted to show her, were of the nonconfrontational variety. “Hi,” he called, taking a few steps through the tall grass. Twigs and dead leaves crunched beneath his sneakers. “I’m sorry. I might be lost …”

  The woman produced a slender brown cigarillo from the pocket of her housecoat. She lit it with a match and puffed dirty rings into the air. “You’re looking for George,” she said. Her voice was scabrous, grating.

  “George? You must have me confused with someone else.” He pointed to the stone with the upside-down triangle on it. “I wanted to ask you about that symbol.”

  “You’re the college professor,” she said. The tip of her cigarillo flared red. “George has been waiting for you.”

  The inside of the house looked no better than the outside. The walls were unpainted slatted panels, and what daylight managed to penetrate the filthy windowpanes took on a fatty, tallow hue. Roots and vines spilled down through rents in the ceiling like jumbles of intestines. The tiny kitchen area—designated as such by the small icebox trailing an extension cord and the laminate countertop overflowing with soiled dishes—smelled of oils and astringents. On the stove, something burped and boiled in a large pot.

  The meaty woman with the bristling silver bun of hair motioned him inside and pulled out a chair for him around a rough-hewn wooden table. Still smoking and without uttering another word, she went directly to the icebox and withdrew a Mason jar of a greenish, soupy viscous liquid while Alan sat down at the table. He heard a television on somewhere in the house, what sounded like an afternoon game show. Leaning back in the chair, the kitchen floorboards creaking beneath his weight, he peered down a shallow hallway cluttered with stacks of newspapers into the room at the end of the hall. A tattered mauve sofa and an Elvis lamp were visible. Animal hides hung from the walls like tapestries.

  Alan prodded a groove in the tabletop with his thumbnail. “How do you know who I am? Who’s George?”

  The words hung in the air as if caught up in the smoke from her cigarillo. She went to a can of Maxwell House and scooped out a spoonful of white powder.

  Nails clacked on the linoleum. A sad-looking hound poked its head into the kitchen and surveyed Alan with the reddened, rheumy eyes of an alcoholic.

  “How do you know who I am?” he repeated.

  This time, the woman glared at him from over one large shoulder. Her eyes were milky and gray, the sclera marbled with blood vessels. Again, she refused to answer.

  “That stone marker in the yard,” he said, taking a different approach. “The one that looks like a tombstone. What is it?”

  “A barrier and a warning.”

  “For what?”

  The woman dumped the spoonful of white powder into the Mason jar, then stirred the concoction. The greenish liquid turned cloudy. She brought the mixture across the kitchen and set it on the table.

  In the doorway, the hound rested on its front paws, the velvety folds of flesh above its eyes cocking alternately.

  “Here,” she said. “Drink this.”

  Alan watched the powdered sediment settle at the bottom of the Mason jar. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  In tattered felt slippers, the woman shuffled back over to the stove. With a large wooden spoon, she stirred the bubbling, pungent contents of the pot.

  “Excuse me.” His voice wavered. Looking at the Mason jar of green liquid made him queasy. And despite his morning swim in the lake, he suddenly felt fatigued. Even his ulcer was starting to return; he could feel the magma sunburst roiling in his lower intestine. “Excuse me but I’m not drinking this. Who’s George? Is he even here? Ma’am?”

  She clacked the wooden spoon against the rim of the pot. A chunky paste the color of flesh dripped from the end of the spoon. Alan tried hard not to imagine what was boiling away in that pot. “George is up in the mountains, where he’s been going every afternoon for the past couple of months. He will not be back until dusk.”

  “Until … dusk?” He didn’t understand. “Then what am I doing—?”

  “You will go to him. He has been waiting.”

  “He’s been up there waiting all day for me?”

  “No,” she said. “Waiting for the past couple of months.”

  “Up in the mountains,” he muttered, more to himself than the big-shouldered woman.

  “That is why you must drink.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are not of the People. The land here does not want you to pass through, even if you must, even as it is George’s will.” She pointed at the Mason jar with the wooden spoon. Some of the pinkish slop dripped from the end and splattered on the dirty tile floor. “That’s why you drink. It will keep you safe.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “From what you might find in the woods and in the mountains. Or from what might find you.”

  “I’m not drinking anything. I don’t even know who George is or why he might be expecting me.”

  “He has seen a vision,” said the old woman. “And when George Young Calf Ribs sees a vision, it comes true.”

  George Young Calf Ribs …

  It was a name. Hearing it chilled him to the bones.

  “Hold on,” he managed, his tongue suddenly thick in his mouth. “Wait a minute… “

  “George waits. You must drink.”

  Alan turned back to the Mason jar. The stuff looked thick; it would not go down easily. Not to mention what it might taste like … what might be in it …

  Perhaps stupidly, he grabbed the jar and brought it to his mouth without giving it further thought. Conscious not to inhale, he opened his mouth and gulped down the gelatinous liquid in three aching swallows.

  Surprisingly, the stuff was tasteless. There was a dry, powdery quality to it as well. The sediment at the bottom of the jar oozed into his mouth like a clump of wet sand where—to his surprise and relief—it disintegrated almost instantly.

  He set the jar down and gasped. His mouth tasted of menthol. “That wasn’t—,” he began, then cringed as his ulcer roared to fiery life. Briefly, fireworks exploded before his eyes.

  The old Indian witch cackled, then set down the wooden spoon on the stovetop. She went to a narrow closet door beside the icebox. The door squeale
d open, eliciting a curious look from the sloppy-eyed hound.

  “Jesus,” he wheezed, staring down at his hands as his vision cleared. Sweat broke out along the back of his neck, clammy and warm. “What was in that, anyway?”

  From the closet the woman withdrew a long, tapered alpenstock with a silver handgrip. She hobbled toward him, pointing with the staff toward the opaque windows. “The walking stick will guide you through the woods and up through the valley. Out behind the house you will find a path of fine white stone flanked with yellow flowers. Take the path to the river but do not cross it.” Her sour eyes cut to slits, and her voice took on an enigmatic quality. “This is very important—do not cross the river. Follow it north. Use the sun as your guide. Your journey will end once you reach the Devil’s Stone.”

  This was all too much, all too quick. Am I here? Is this really happening? Alan had the strong desire to get back in his car and drive the hell home. But even before he managed to stand up from the chair, he knew he would not be going home. Not until he spoke with George Young Calf Ribs.

  The old woman handed him the walking stick. It was heavier than it looked.

  “If you hear things moving around you in the forest—and you will—,” she added, “do not look at them. If they speak to you, do not answer them.”

  “What are they?” He could not mask the awe in his voice.

  “They are spirits of those who have been lost. It may also be the Tsul Kalu, the slant-eyed and sloping giants coming up from the Shining Rock just to see the white-faced man who passes. They all mean you harm. But if you heed me, schoolteacher, then you have nothing to fear.” She squinted beyond the grime-caked windows and out at the midday sun. “Go now. You need to be back from the mountain before nightfall.”

  The old woman all but shoved him toward the front door. As she opened the door, the squeal of its hinges alerted the dog, who raised its head from its paws and stared at Alan with casual detachment.

  “Go,” she said again as he stepped onto the rickety porch. “George waits.”

  He thought she might watch him as he went around the back of the house in search of the path, but she didn’t; the front door slammed with enough force to splinter the frame, leaving him all alone on the porch.

  At the back of the house, wind chimes made of hollowed bamboo shoots hung from the eaves, their sound as forlorn as a sailor’s lament. Alan spied the path right away—a crushed gravel walkway bordered on either side by yellow bellflowers that ran straight from the rear of the house into a copse of black firs. Beyond, the sky was battleship gray, the sun a bulb of molten glass.

  The walking stick in hand, he proceeded down the path and through the thicket. The forest rushed up to meet him almost out of nowhere. Nettles twined around his ankles. He paused only once to look back, spying the slouching, whitewashed shack framed within a clutch of cottonwoods and evergreens.

  The crushed gravel path cut straight through the forest with hardly a twist or undulation. Around him, however, the forest seemed to swell and rise, flanking him like a canyon of juniper, at the bottom of which ran the path. The old woman’s warnings still resonating in his head, he remained alert for the presence of others—for footfalls in the dead leaves and rustling in the nearby trees—but he couldn’t hear or see anyone. He was utterly alone.

  Not for the first time, the notion that he was being set up returned to him. Was it possible this whole thing was yet one more peg in Sheriff Landry’s attempt to warn him away from the healing lake? As he walked, crunching the tiny bits of gravel beneath the tapered metal tip of the walking stick, he tried to put all the events that had led him here back into place: Hank telling him the story about the Morelands; the sigils and words carved into the walls of the Moreland house, which hadn’t been cleaned up since the incident, as if it sat waiting for him to arrive. Was it possible this was just another staged event in a long line of them? Something to scare him away, keep him quiet and obedient?

  You don’t believe that, sport, a voice spoke up in his head. It sounded strangely like Jimmy Carmichael’s. You don’t believe this is a setup any more than you believe you can fly.

  It was impossible to estimate how long it took him to reach the end of the path, but by the time he crossed out of the woods and into a rocky, lichen-slick ravine, the sun had repositioned itself in the sky. Silver threads burned through gaps in the cumulus. Digging the staff into the earth and hoisting himself out of the ravine and to the crest of an embankment, he felt his exhaustion weighing down on him like a physical thing—a feeling he hadn’t known since he’d started going to the lake each morning. The ulcer kept a steady pulse against the lining of his stomach.

  See? There is no power in that lake. I’ve been exercising, swimming, and that’s why I’ve been feeling better, he told himself. There is no power there. I’m walking through a dream. And I only feel sick now because of that concoction the old woman made me drink. Or maybe it’s this forest, this place. The path itself. Or just being here on this reservation.

  Could he keep denying the effects the lake had on him? Could he continue being so forcefully, willfully blind?

  What are you afraid of? Jimmy Carmichael wanted to know.

  Below, the vista was breathtaking. Alan paused to soak it all in. An impossibly lush, impossibly green panorama of sloping countryside loped on toward the purple foothills, bisected by a dazzling, fire-lit river. Weeping willows, their long, tendril-like fingers stroking the grass, rose in pods, their arrangement so perfectly symmetrical it looked preordained. He was closer now to the mountain range than he had thought; he could see the fir-studded peaks and valleys, the shadowed cols and canyons in sharp relief, the broken shale and loose talus heaped in mounds within the crevices of the foothills. The spectrum of color was infinite.

  Continuing down the other side of the embankment toward the river, he was overcome by the distinct impression that he was no longer in North Carolina—and not just into the next state but somewhere far, far off, as if following the path had somehow transported him to an alternate plane in an alternate time. Any minute, wild buffalo could overtake the distant fields, pumping their powerful legs and kicking up dry plumes of dust, and he wouldn’t have been surprised. This was a special place. The air tasted cleaner, smelled fresher and untouched by mankind. How could a city like New York reside on the same planet—in the same universe—as this remote and hidden place?

  Alan saddled up to the river, which was more like a large stream and quite shallow. He noticed smooth brown stones on the floor of the river, and the water looked crisp and clean. The muscles in his thighs aching and his heart strumming like a guitar string in his chest, he followed the left bank of the river through the valley. Overhead, clouds intersected and turned the color of soot. Distant thunder rumbled.

  He followed the river until it cut sharply down a steep slope—steep enough to create a small waterfall and, below, a whirlpool of choppy white foam. Pausing here, Alan stretched his calves on a nearby boulder and popped the tendons in his back. It seemed as though his tattoos had once again regained their potency, the sharpness of their color and design standing out against his white flesh.

  It’s all in my head. A trick of the daylight.

  The storm was creeping down the mountains and would be here shortly. Shielding the sun with one hand, Alan peered in the approximate direction of north. His gaze settled on the silhouette of a twin-horned crag, black against the overcast sky: the Devil’s Stone, surely. Dark smoke twisted up from behind the stone and vanished into the air.

  Continuing in the direction of the Devil’s Stone, he approached from what he estimated to be the southern side, the pillar of smoke growing thicker in the storm-pregnant sky. Indeed, the stone looked like a face—no, a skull—sprouting twin goat horns. Two cavernous pits recessed into the stone like vacant eye sockets, each one the size of a manhole cover.

  Alan walked around the side of the stone and found George Young Calf Ribs sitting on the ground before a smolderi
ng fumarole.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Indian motioned for Alan to sit opposite him on the other side of the fire pit. Fiery orange light issued from the pit and cast deep shadows across George Young Calf Ribs’s sharp features. Alan could tell he was old, but the Indian’s actual age was impossible to determine. He wore a buckskin shirt, denims, and a bone breastplate. His hair was raven and threaded with silver wisps. Two inky black feathers protruded from behind his right ear.

  Setting aside the walking stick, Alan sat down and folded his legs under him. The heat from the hole in the ground struck him with dizzying effect, the smoke making his eyes water.

  George Young Calf Ribs’s somber eyes pierced through to his soul. Alan couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away. Skin like burlap, the knuckles of his big hands like the turns in a hangman’s noose, the old man cleared his throat. Alan could hear a dry rattling deep in his lungs.

  Death rattle, he thought. Illness.

  “I dreamt of your arrival for six moons without break,” George Young Calf Ribs said in a whiskied voice. “Since then, I have been coming out here to the valley and the Devil’s Stone, guided under the protection of the warrior Tsul Kalu, waiting for the day of your arrival. I’m glad it is today.” He grimaced without pretense. The lines of his mouth were like cracks in ice. “I’m tired and the summer days are long.”

  “I found your name written in blood on the wall of a vacant house,” Alan said, his own voice sounding paper-thin. “A house where something horrible happened.” He wiped sweat off his brow. “How did you know I’d come? It couldn’t just be from … from a dream …”

  “There are some future events that have already been written. It is up to us only to act them out. You coming here is just such an event.” There was a pile of pinecones beside the old man. He picked one up and tossed it into the fire pit. The firelight intensified, and more smoke spiraled up into a sky that seemed to be darkening prematurely. “Of course, not all events are predestined. We have the power to make our own decisions.”