Cradle Lake

by Ronald Malfi

  “Why am I here?”

  “Because you do not know all there is to know about the lake.”

  “You’ve been to the lake?”

  “It was many years ago and only once. I traveled with my father, and we found the hidden clearing. There were no houses to mar the land back then, and much of the countryside was forest straight out to the foothills. The deer were plentiful, and we watched them drink from the lake, strong and healthy.”

  “Did you go in the lake?”

  “No.” The old man’s voice was sharp. “That day, the lake was not for us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was not the right moment for us to use it. We had not been allowed. We could only observe it and respect its power.”

  “Its power to heal—that’s real, isn’t it?” It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth did he find he actually believed them. Despite the heat from the fire, the notion sent a shiver up his spine.

  A hawk circling overhead cried out. Startled, Alan looked up and watched it soar through the burning cumulus clouds.

  “Your question does not require an answer,” said the old Indian, his onyx eyes holding him in their stare. “You are well aware of what the lake is capable of, I think.” And there was more than just suspicion in his tone.

  Suddenly, Alan felt as open as a textbook. “Then why am I here?”

  “You are here to learn the things you don’t know.” He tossed another pinecone into the fire. It blazed, belching out a billow of dark smoke, then simmered back down. “I have attempted to explain this once before, to change the direction of one’s path. Unfortunately,” he said, with a slight agitation of his hand, “I was too late. I’m hoping I am not too late with you.”

  Owen, Alan thought. He’s talking about Owen Moreland. That’s why those words and symbols were on the walls. But Owen hadn’t listened, had he?

  “Tell me what I need to know,” Alan said.

  “It is called the Ataga’hi. It was meant as a gift to the animals in order for them to heal themselves after being struck by a hunter’s arrow or cut by man’s blade. For a long time, the lake remained hidden from man until it was made visible to the People from Yowa, the Great Spirit. It healed the sick and the lame and gave spiritual and emotional peace to those possessed by evil thoughts. It was to be used and treated with respect.

  “But countless winters of abuse and selfishness—of man’s greed and raping of the land—have soured the waters and the forest whose job it is to hide and protect the lake. Our people stopped going to the lake long ago when we saw how it had been corrupted. But others—your people, people not of the land—continued to go. Then, years later, they built houses and streets of pavement, lampposts and ballparks and industry, which not only further soured the land but angered it, too. It has been poisoned.”

  “What are you saying?”

  George Young Calf Ribs leaned forward over the fire pit, the flames casting his face in a demented orange hue. “It has become a bad place.” His tone was simple, matter-of-fact. “It no longer hides and offers rejuvenation to those worthy enough to find it. Now it calls to whoever is careless enough to seek it out. That is its revenge on the ones who have soured its waters and poisoned its land.”

  He thought of Owen and Sophie Moreland, of course. He thought, too, of Hank’s bum leg that refused to heal no matter how many times he went into the lake.

  But then there was Catherine whose leukemia had been seemingly cured by the lake. And there was Cory whose neck had surely been broken. How many others had secured their own personal miracles on its shore?

  It fixed my ulcer and made me stronger, he thought.

  Alan stammered, “It does good things, too. I’ve heard stories; I’ve seen firsthand what it can—”

  George Young Calf Ribs held up one hand, silencing him. “Don’t be fooled. There are still healing powers in the lake. But even those powers are shrouded by the black cloud of evil.”

  Hearing the word evil succeeded in shaking George Young Calf Ribs’s sermon into the realm of science fiction. Alan uttered a wavering laugh and shook his head before he realized what he was doing. He hadn’t meant it to sound obstinate and disrespectful, but there was no denying that it did. Immediately, he apologized.

  “Your laughter is a sad response, considering you are currently in a most dangerous position.” He paused, heavy eyes locked on Alan once again. “You … and your wife.”

  His mention of Heather shook him to his core. All lightheartedness evaporated from him like steam. “What about my wife?” It came out as a wheeze, a whisper.

  “The lake is like a magnet,” he said simply. “Your house is the closest thing to it. It’s too close to the forest and sits on the soured land. Your house rots with you and your wife in it. Rots like carrion.”

  He thought instantly of the hideous buzzards—the carrion birds—and how they’d started occupying the trees in the yard, creeping closer and closer to the house like vultures circling over a coyote dying in the desert.

  “Vines keep it tethered to the soil,” the Indian said, “like a balloon. They are channels, conduits, for the transfer of power.”

  “The vines,” Alan muttered.

  “You can cut them away but they grow back. They come up through the earth. They are the lifeblood, the beating veins, of that house now.”

  Alan’s mouth went dry.

  “And those symbols,” George Young Calf Ribs continued. “Carved into the stones.”

  “Yes. What are they? What do they mean?”

  “They are the eyes of the Great Spirit. A man who approaches the path is judged and either permitted admittance or turned away. His soul is judged to see if he is ready. If he is not ready, the symbols say one thing. If he is right and just—if he is truly ready—the symbols will say so.”

  “How do I know what they say? How do I read the symbols?”

  “That is of no importance to you.” Another pinecone tossed into the fumarole—whoosh.

  “But the upside-down triangle,” Alan went on. “The same symbol you had carved back at the house on that slab of stone in the yard—”

  “It means stop and don’t go any farther. It means turn around and don’t look back.”

  What had the old Indian woman said when he’d asked her about the upside-down triangular sigil on the stone marker in her yard? What had she called it? A barrier and a warning.

  “But what if somebody was to approach the lake from a different direction and not from the path? Like if someone happens upon it coming through the woods from a different—”

  “There is no other way to approach the lake.” George Young Calf Ribs’s voice was curt.

  Alan thought of the night he spent bumbling around in the rain in an attempt to shortcut through the woods, the rain coming down in torrents through the trees and creating a muddy, pine-needled stew of the ground. That afternoon, he’d been certain he was heading in the right direction and that his shortcut would surely cross the dirt path or that he might empty out into the clearing itself. But that had not happened; he’d simply meandered around the fog-dense woods, becoming more and more disoriented with each passing minute, until he’d finally stumbled into his own backyard.

  There is no other way to approach the lake …

  “The symbols can no longer be trusted,” George continued. “They are in disharmony with the land.”

  “I don’t understand. What is it you want? Why have I come here? Somehow—in some way I can’t begin to understand—you knew I’d come here … but for what purpose? What is it you have to tell me?”

  “Leave that house immediately,” he told him. “Burn it to the ground so no one else can live there after you. Do it before it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Things are already set in motion.” He cast his gaze toward the sky. “You must leave me now. Head back before night falls.”

  “But I’ve got so many questions—”

 
“You must go before it grows fully dark. Leave me.”

  “Please.” It came out as a reluctant whimper.

  George Young Calf Ribs did not speak further. Keeping his eyes trained on the darkening sky, he commenced with a chanting tessitura that stirred the hairs on the back of Alan’s neck to attention.

  With the assistance of the old woman’s walking stick, Alan rose and hiked back around the Devil’s Stone, pausing to cast a final glance at George Young Calf Ribs. The old Indian remained chanting and staring at the storm-pregnant clouds, his profile illuminated with a flickering glow from the fumarole’s firelight.

  It began to turn towards night as he followed the river down the valley and toward the veil of trees, the sky a twilight blanket of glittering jewels at his back. The temperature had dropped considerably, and the sweat from his excursion down from the Devil’s Stone froze on his skin as he hiked, chilling him.

  When he reached the woods, the half-moon was already up in the eastern sky cradled in a nimbus of wispy gray clouds. He pushed on quickly through the woods, focusing on the crunch of dead leaves beneath his feet underscored by the solid, periodic clink of the metal-tipped walking stick striking the occasional stone.

  George Young Calf Ribs’s words echoed in his skull, and the image of him crouched over the firelight with his black eyes and red skin like an old catcher’s mitt burned into his mind. Things are already set in motion, he’d said just before telling him to leave.

  What did that mean, exactly? Did he somehow know Alan had been going to the lake? Surely, if he possessed the preternatural foresight to anticipate Alan’s arrival, then something as simple as reading his mind perhaps would not be beyond him. And was it reading his mind, or had his arrival here today been more than enough to give him away? After all, had he not been going to the lake—had he not spoken of the symbols and found the Indian’s name written in blood in the old Moreland house—he wouldn’t have sought him out.

  Sure, I just gave myself away. Son of a bitch.

  From somewhere startlingly close by, someone spoke a single word—hey or wait—to him in the darkness.

  Alan’s sneakers skidded in the dirt. He stood as stiff as a board, his heart suddenly crashing against his ribs. The voice—it had been a man’s voice; he was certain—did not come again.

  The old woman’s warning rushed back at him, with all the fury of a passing locomotive: If you hear things moving around you in the forest—and you will—do not look at them. If they speak to you, do not answer them.

  Despite this warning, Alan found himself about to call out to the darkness in response to the mysterious voice. He even opened his mouth, the words about to spill from his throat, when something off to the right of the path caught his eye: a shape, a shadow. A second shadow, one right behind his own shadow, stretched along the underbrush in the pale glow of moonlight. Alan held his breath.

  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.

  Closing his eyes, he managed two or three shaky breaths. He shut his mouth, reopened his eyes, and continued down the path. Trying desperately not to glance back at the shadow he knew was following him, he heard a second set of footfalls only a few paces behind him, crunching through the underbrush. He tried to convince himself that it was an animal—a possum or even a fox—and that the word he thought he’d heard was nothing but a mind trick.

  But the shadow? The shadow following me in the shape of a man?

  Of course. Yet maybe it was the old Indian himself, returning from the Devil’s Stone.

  Sure, he thought. Sure.

  Yet he couldn’t bring himself to turn around and look.

  Knew he shouldn’t look …

  After a while, the second set of footsteps faded away. When Alan finally summoned enough courage to look, his shadow was the only one that followed him through the woods. As quickly and silently as his visitor had arrived, he’d left.

  The half-moon was directly ahead of him and opposite the mountains when he reached the old woman’s clapboard house. A pale-colored light issued through one of the grimy windows, casting a white-yellow square on the slouching porch. A tendril of smoke corkscrewed up from the stone chimney.

  He set the walking stick against the stone marker with the three-sided sigil on it. Then he climbed into the Toyota and took two deep breaths, for some inexplicable reason anticipating the engine failing the moment he turned the key in the ignition. When it started up, he silently thanked God while wondering why he’d been so worried. Spinning the wheel, he bounded around the property and headed toward the rutted roadway and away from the old woman’s house.

  Not wanting to catch a glimpse of anything in the woods on either side of him as he drove, he kept the headlights off until he was back on the main road. It was probably the smartest decision he’d made in weeks.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Hours later, Alan arrived home to find the house dark and the air pungent with the scent of burning coffee. He called Heather’s name, as it wasn’t late enough for her to be in bed yet (unless she hadn’t gotten out all day), but she didn’t answer.

  In the kitchen, he found a pot of coffee trembling and boiling over on the stove. It was an old stovetop percolator, some ancient relic that had been passed down through Heather’s family until it found its way into their home. Muddy coffee belched out of the spigot and splattered against the stovetop.

  He clicked off the burner and walked down the hallway, calling Heather’s name again. A sliver of light issued from beneath the partially closed bedroom door at the end of the hall. Something turned over in his stomach—

  —that rattlesnake sound, that shaking of maracas behind a closed bathroom door—

  —and he rushed to the door, flung it open—

  “Hon,” he managed, freezing in the doorway.

  Heather was sitting cross-legged on the bed wearing sweatpants and a too-tight T-shirt that made her breasts look fuller. Kleenexes were balled in her lap. She looked up at him, her face blotchy and red, her eyes brimming with tears. Her lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice just barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry for ruining your whole life.”

  He could only stand there, not moving. “What is it?”

  “I can’t give you what you want.”

  “I want you.”

  She smiled wanly.

  “You’re scaring me,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. So sorry, Alan. I’m sorry.”

  He cringed inwardly each time she said it.

  “So, so sorry …”

  “Did you do anything?” he asked. He’d hidden all the pills in the house, including her Ativan, but she still could have found some. Or maybe she’d done something else. He silently cursed himself. There were household cleaners under the goddamn kitchen sink that he only thought about just now. “Did you … take anything?”

  “I just want to sleep.” Heather eased down on her side, the bed groaning beneath her.

  “Answer me.” His voice was dry, hollow. “Did you take any pills?”

  “No.”

  “Did you take anything else?”

  “No. Yes.” She laughed. It was a horrid sound. “I took a detour.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Off the path. A detour.”

  For one terrible second, he thought she was talking about the path that cut through the woods and led to the lake. For some reason, the idea of Heather walking down that path and finding the lake horrified him. But when she spoke again, he was somewhat relieved to find that she was speaking metaphorically.

  “We had one path chosen for us, one life,” she went on, “and I turned around and went another way. My body did it. I didn’t want it to but my body did it. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing to be sorry about.” Alan couldn’t move from the doorway; he could only stare at the curve
of her back as she lay on the mattress, not facing him.

  “So, so sorry …”

  Trembling, he went down the hall and into the kitchen. He stood for a long while in front of the telephone on the wall. He contemplated calling information, telling them he wanted the phone number for Dr. Lawrence Chu, that he was ready to have Heather committed. He even reached out for the receiver. His hand shook.

  Acid funneled up his esophagus and scorched his throat. Instead of picking up the phone, he opened the window and pulled a chair next to it. He sat and lit a Marlboro, exhaling smoke out the window. The air coming in smelled cool and untouched: the fragrance of midsummer. He smoked the Marlboro down to the filter and when he was done lit a second one and repeated the process.

  What now, sport? said his father. What happens now?

  “Quiet,” he whispered, silencing him.

  When Alan finished his third cigarette, he shut the window and went to the bathroom where he washed his face and hands and took a misoprostol tablet for his ulcer.

  In the bedroom, Heather was still reclining on a mound of pillows. She had turned on the CD player in his absence, Ryan Adams singing “Mockingbird” in a cool voice. Her face was colorless and slack, her eyes recessed into deep pockets. Her gaze conveyed the lethargy and surrender of someone frighteningly near death. Strands of dark hair hung around her face like trailing cobwebs.

  “My head hurts,” she said and rolled back over, turning away from him.

  He crawled into bed behind her, spooning her. Soon his eyes spilled water on the pillow where he rested his head. Holding her tightly, he wondered if she could feel his heart beating through her body, pounding with fear in the midst of their embrace.

  Alan awoke sometime in the middle of the night just as the laughter of dead children faded into the ether. He sensed them somewhere above him, floating like vapor, swirling around his sleeping body. In his semiconsciousness, he even waved a hand in the darkness above him, stirring dust motes in the bands of moonlight that spilled through the slats in the blinds.