Boondocks Fantasy

by Jean Rabe

“Sorry,” Jeff apologized. “But I wanted to make sure the investigation was going in the right direction.”

  “Is it?”

  “I think so,” Jeff said. “The whole thing’s tangled enough that Bronson and his men should still be in jail by the time Billy MacAvoy finds someone in the FBI to talk to about their little protection racket.”

  “Even though none of those men actually killed anyone?”

  Jeff shrugged. “The gun that did kill Kostava was found in their boat,” he reminded her. “And the way Bronson tried to bluster himself and the gun out from under all this tells me that the thing’s probably going to have an interesting history once they start looking into it. Bronson’s actually a city cop named Finch, by the way. Probably the one Billy MacAvoy went to and who destroyed the first security tape.”

  “I see,” Tressla said, in a tone that told Jeff that she didn’t really see at all. But then, swimming peacefully through Rilling Lake, Tressla never got to watch TV cop shows. “The town and the people are safe?”

  “Looks that way,” Jeff said. “More importantly, you and the lake are safe.”

  “Thank you,” Tressla said softly.

  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” Jeff said. Reaching beneath the dock, he found her hand and squeezed it. “See you tomorrow?”

  She squeezed his hand back. “I’ll be here.”

  LAKE PEOPLE

  Chris Pierson

  Chris Pierson was born in Canada, and now lives in Boston with his wife Rebekah and their hyper-adorable daughter Chloe. He works as a writer and designer of online games, including The Lord of the Rings Online, and is the author of eight novels, including the Kingpriest and Taladas trilogies. His short fiction has recently appeared in the anthologies The Dimension Next Door, Terribly Twisted Tales, Gamer Fantastic, and Timeshares.

  The first elf I saw up close hung from a poplar tree in Helen’s yard. It was little and dressed all in green, with a drawn bow pointing out toward the lake. It dangled from a lower branch, fishing line tied around it, so that it bobbed in the breeze and bounced when squirrels shook the limbs above. It stared at me with black, empty eyes, a smile on its lips.

  This was a few years ago. Kate and I had driven up to Maple Lake from Toronto, trees whipping green on either side of the road, water sparkling silver and blue between the trunks, here a farm stand selling fruit, there a bait shop proclaiming FRESH DEW WORMS. We were part of a long chain of Friday traffic, campers, and station wagons hauling motorboats.

  “You need to be ready for her,” Kate said.

  “So you keep telling me,” I said. Helen MacKay was Kate’s grandmother, and I’d heard a lot about her since we started dating. “Haven’t you told me all the stories? The time she canoed all the way to Horseshoe Lake and had to get driven back in an OPP cruiser? Her recipe for squirrel dumplings? The Great Fireworks Incident of ’87?”

  Kate moved her hand off the gearshift to squeeze mine. She’d told me the fireworks story after a couple bottles of shiraz during a blizzard that knocked out power to our little apartment on the Esplanade. It involved some badly stored, extremely illegal fireworks, a kid playing with matches, and then a lot of running and yelling and people being chased down to the lake by screaming Roman candles. It was a wonder no one got killed.

  She looked out ahead, at the outboard motor in front of us, and was quiet for a while. The Eric’s Trip disc in the CD player droned on.

  She didn’t say what she wanted to say. Her mouth got thin when words got hard.

  “She’s not going to have a problem with us being gay, is she?” I asked.

  Kate burst out laughing. “Grandma Hels?” she asked. “Oh, Jesus, no. She had a girlfriend once herself, when she was younger.”

  “So what is it?” I paused while we turned off 35 onto King’s 118, wending our way farther up into the wilderness. “Look, I’m going to find out in about fifteen minutes anyway.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “It’s . . . it’s just hard. Grandma Hels . . . she makes things.”

  “Things.”

  She sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Makes them, does she?”

  “Look,” she said. “It’s better if you just see when we get there.”

  She was right. I can tell you what was waiting at the end of the dirt road, where it came out of the trees onto the rocky lakeside, beyond the wooden mailbox with “HELEN & ED” still carved into the side, though Grandma Hels’ husband died back in the seventies. But you’d need to see it to really understand.

  We pulled off the road, the gravel driveway crunching under our tires, and there they all were. The elves. Dozens of them.

  You know how sometimes you’re driving out in the country and passing farm after farm and then wham, there’s this house where some guy with some scrap metal, a fondness for blowtorches, and a lot of spare time has filled his yard with iron dinosaurs and robots and things? Or how someone thought it would be fun to build a scale model of Stonehenge made entirely of broken refrigerators out in the middle of a field? Helen was kind of like that.

  Male elves, female elves. Some as big as a child. Some doll-sized. Some wrapped in cloth, some in leather, a few in chainmail made of twisted wire. Elf wizards, in big white robes. Elf queens, with pine needles tangled in their long, golden hair. Elf knights, with clamshell helmets and shards of colored glass for swords. They hung from trees and fences, stood watch on stumps and rocks, perched on the roof of Helen’s little wooden cottage and the boathouse down by the dock.

  Each one was unique, handmade with meticulous care. When we got out of the car and I looked at the green-clad elf archer that dangled just beyond the sweep of the passenger-side door, I saw it had fingernails . Little fingernails, made of chips of white quartz. Its eyebrows were actual hair, each strand individually sewn. There was a tiny oak leaf carved into its wooden belt buckle.

  “Good God,” I muttered.

  “Told you,” said Kate, rummaging in the back for our bags. “Hey, Gran! We made it!”

  I turned and looked. From what decorated the cottage, I expected Helen to be a hippie-type with big jewelry and a hemp skirt, but the woman could have stepped out of a bridge club in any middle-class subdivision. She wore black slacks, a crisp white blouse, and—even though it was late June—a light-blue knitted cardigan. Her hair was styled, gray with a skunk-stripe of white above her right eye. She was wearing makeup. Nothing about her would indicate she had an army of little people twisting in the wind around her home.

  “Katharine!” she called, coming down the cottage’s front steps, the screen door banging shut behind her. “I was just beginning to worry.”

  Kate went to meet her, a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. “Traffic on the 401,” she said. “Sorry. I called on my cell, but you didn’t answer.”

  Helen waved that away and turned toward me, smiling wide. “And you must be Erica. Katharine’s told me so much about you over e-mail.”

  “Hello, Mrs. MacKay,” I said, offering my hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too.”

  “I’m sure you have, dear,” she said. She ignored my hand and gave me a hug. She was small, but surprisingly strong. “I can only imagine the picture she’s painted. You must think I’m some daffy old bat, up here in the wild.”

  I couldn’t think what to say to that. Fortunately, Kate saved me.

  “I can’t imagine why, Gran. So more elves, eh? Think you have enough?”

  Helen laughed. “Not yet,” she said. “Still plenty more to make. Now come in—I have ginger lemonade in the fridge, and there’s food to grill when you get hungry. Leave your things. You can get them later.”

  And she toddled off, back toward the house. I shot a look at Kate, and she shrugged and held out her hand. I took it, shaking my head as we followed Helen inside.

  * * *

  I’m a city girl. Kate’s the one who’s into dirt and trees and fresh air. It took four beers and a lot of pleading for Kate to convince me to drive the three hours (mor
e like five, with traffic) up into cottage country for the weekend. Plus, she’d agreed to go to the horror movie festival at the Bloor later that summer. Really, though, I mainly agreed to go so I could meet the legendary Grandma Hels.

  The weird thing is, even though the cottage was just this side of not having indoor plumbing, I felt at home right away. The inside was elf-free, and the guest room was cozy, with boat-related décor. Like Kate said, Helen was totally fine with the two of us sharing a bed. Try that with my grandparents.

  We had a nap together, then joined Helen on the deck, looking out toward Maple Lake. It was a beautiful afternoon: blue sky, sunlight on the water, pines and poplars swaying. A couple canoes out on the lake, someone waterskiing farther out. The backyard was all mossy rocks and ferns and brown needles, sloping down toward the boathouse and the dock where an old pedal-boat bobbed on the water.

  Oh, and the elves. The things were everywhere. I examined a few more: some were made of carved wood, others cloth, bundled and stuffed and dyed. They gave me a creepy feeling, like I was being watched.

  We had a nice enough dinner, with burgers and dogs and salad, and fresh strawberries Kate and I had bought from a roadside stand. Helen served boxed wine, which normally would make me look for someplace to go have a good cry, but it was actually kind of good. We talked about my job and Kate’s classes and our families, and before we knew it the sun was setting and the lake was the color of fire. Geese flew over the water. The canoers and skier had gone back to their own cottages.

  Planets appeared in the sky, then stars—a hell of a lot of stars. In the city, you’re lucky to see a couple dozen through the red smear from all the lights. Up north there were thousands. It was the first time in my life I’d seen the Milky Way outside of pictures.

  It was still warm out, so we stayed up. Helen got out the backgammon board and beat me four games to one. That woman was lucky with her doubles.

  Kate finally decided to ask: “So, Gran. What’s up with the elves? Why so many?”

  Helen sipped her wine and picked up the dice cup. “I need them, dear. To keep me safe.”

  She said this so pleasantly, neither of us knew how to respond. The dice clattered down—double 4s, again. Kate glanced at me, and I shrugged.

  “Safe,” Kate said.

  Helen nodded. “Yes, dear.”

  “ From . . .”

  That gave Helen pause, not because she was confused, but because she was sure it was so obvious that we shouldn’t need to ask.

  “From them, of course,” she said, waving toward the water. “The Lake People.”

  Kate looked at me again, like she wanted help. What was I supposed to say? I’d just met Helen. But I guess that was the point—it was easier for me to play dumb. I rolled the dice at my turn, to appear casual and avoid seeming as if I were interrogating Helen, and got a 1-3.

  “Who are the Lake People, Hels?” I asked.

  “Oh, they live above the water,” she answered, bright and cheerful as she rolled a 6-5 and knocked one of my pieces to the rail. “You can hear them sometimes, late at night. They come to dance, and call to me.”

  It might have been the breeze blowing in off the lake, but I shivered. I couldn’t help glancing out at the water. “They call you? What do they look like?”

  Helen put her hand on my arm, smiling. “It’s all right, dear. They won’t come near my elves. They wouldn’t dare. As to what they look like . . . beautiful. Like the loveliest children in the world, before they learn how terrible life can be.”

  “All right, Gran,” Kate said, getting up. “Stop trying to frighten us. I’m getting tired, babe. Let’s make an early night of it. I want to take you out boating tomorrow.”

  Great, I thought. The sun’s glare was off the water, which had turned a bruised purple, reflecting the darkening sky above. It seemed to be full of stars. I didn’t want to go canoeing. I wanted to get back in the car and head back to Toronto, breaking the speed limit the whole way.

  But I didn’t. I went in and read my book for a while in bed. Helen popped her head in to say good night, and when she was gone Kate rolled over to kiss my temple.

  “Lake People,” she said. “That’s a new one.”

  I grunted, and she flipped back onto her side. I put away a few more pages, then realized I’d read the same paragraph three times, so I put the book down, turned off the lamp, and lay my head on the pillow.

  Nighttime is so quiet up in cottage country. No street-cars, no alarms, no neighbors yelling or laughing or watching TV. There was the hum of the fridge in Helen’s kitchen, Kate’s soft snores, and nothing else. The silence was like a big thing out there, listening to us instead of the other way round. Once, I thought I heard a soft noise, like fiddles playing, but I was asleep before I could think twice about it.

  The sound of Kate yelling woke me. There was fear in her voice, so I was up and out of bed in a second, lurching out the door while pulling on my sweatpants. I bumped into her in the hall. Her eyes were huge, her face white. It was still dark out.

  “She’s not in the house,” she said. “I called, but she didn’t answer.”

  I almost asked who she was talking about. Like there was anyone else. “Have you looked outside?” I asked.

  Kate blinked a couple times.

  “Maybe she just went for a midnight paddle in the canoe,” I said, wondering: do people do that?

  Kate pointed at the sliding glass doors that opened to the yard. “In that?”

  I looked. There was nothing to see but gray. Fog had come in and swallowed the world. We couldn’t see the dock from where we stood.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  We went out the door, into the mist. It was cold and quiet. I couldn’t even hear the water lapping against the narrow pebbly beach on the lakeshore. Kate pointed toward the dock, yelled something, then took off around the front of the house. I lost sight of her right away, and soon I couldn’t hear her either. I was alone, with shadows of trees all around me, elves dangling from the branches.

  I’m safe, I told myself. It’s cottage country. Nothing to be scared of up here. Snapping turtles don’t count.

  I didn’t buy it, though. Eyes watched me, out in the fog. I could feel them. I stood still, squinting, trying to find proof I wasn’t the only person left alive in the world.

  Then it came: a quiet voice, down by the water. I couldn’t make out words, but I was sure who it was. I shook myself and walked forward, then broke into a run.

  Helen was in the lake, up to her knees, shuffling out farther as I watched. I splashed out after her, felt slime oozing between my toes, then banged my shin against a hidden rock and splashed down, catching myself before I went under completely.

  “Shit!” I yelled. “Kate, down here!”

  “Where are you?”

  “The goddamn water! Run!”

  I got back up. Helen was waist-deep now. I slogged out and caught hold of her robe, dragging wet and dark behind her. She tried to struggle out of it, so I lunged forward and threw my arm around her waist.

  Helen was singing softly to herself. It was no tune I’d ever heard, and the words were gibberish. She fought to get out of my grasp, but I had forty pounds on her, not to mention being fifty years younger, so she didn’t get far. She stopped and glanced up into the fog, tears crawling down her cheeks. It was such a regretful look that I couldn’t help but follow it....

  A shadow loomed over both of us, a black patch in the fog. It was man-shaped, but there were horns on its head . . . or antlers. I felt it staring at me, and my insides turned to broken glass. My mind went white.

  Then it was gone. The shadow disappeared, and it was just Helen and me standing in the lake, and Kate splashing down after us, yelling our names. I could only stare at the emptiness in the fog, where the thing had been.

  Certain words just hang in the air, unsaid. You can hear them, but no one wants to speak them aloud. CANCER—DIVORCE—ABORTION. You can have whole conversations about them withou
t ever exactly talking about them.

  Alzheimer’s is one of those.

  We drove back to Toronto that Monday, Kate and me. We barely said a word to each other the whole way, but when we did, it wasn’t one of them. And yet, we both knew it was on each other’s mind. How could it not be? Helen had wandered into the lake. If I hadn’t stopped her, she might have kept going till she drowned, singing all the way.

  And the elves . . . Jesus. It was all Helen wanted to do the rest of the weekend. Once we got her warm, got some hot food and coffee into her—all she wanted to do was stay inside and make more elves to hang in the trees. She didn’t have enough yet, she said, to protect us from . . .

  From what, exactly? That shadow in the fog? I’d already pretty much talked myself out of believing I’d seen it. I certainly didn’t say anything about it to Kate. So that’s two things I didn’t talk about: your grandmother’s going senile, and by the way, I saw a Lake Person, and he had goddamn antlers.

  After a few weeks, Kate finally spoke to her cousins about it. They agreed to keep a closer eye on Helen, taking turns, comparing notes. If she had another episode . . . well, none of them really knew what they’d do. I did a lot of research online, trying to figure out what the next step might be.

  Kate and I went up to the lake again later that summer, and again in October. Both times, there were more elves. Both times, Grandma Hels seemed perfectly lucid. There was no fog, no weird songs, no attempts to cross Maple Lake on foot. The cousins didn’t report anything odd, either—well, nothing too odd. With Hels, you graded on a curve.

  Winter came, and we got busy. Me with my job, Kate with school. The next thing we knew, it was April again. Kate opened her e-mail one morning while I was making breakfast and choked out a weird sound. I burned my hand getting the eggs off the stove and ran up the stairs to our room. She was sprawled on the bed, hands over her face, her laptop open beside her.

  The mail was from Anton, her eldest cousin, a doctor in Peterborough. “Went to Maple Lake this weekend,” he wrote. “Here’s what was waiting.”