The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

by Rhett McLaughlin

  When Ben made it to the living room, Janine was crouched down by the TV, pulling random cords out of her camera bag as Rex paced around, biting his nails, wondering what they’d caught on camera. He had a feeling it wasn’t the underwater machinery of a fancy hot tub.

  “Why is your TV so weird?” Janine asked, trying to figure out which colored holes on the back of the television were the right ones to attach the camera cords to.

  “It’s not weird,” Rex said, feeling oddly defensive about his parents’ choice of electronics. He took the cords from her hand and quickly plugged them in, as if to prove his point.

  “Oh, that worked,” Janine said, as the otherworldly blue of the spring filled the television screen, the camera on pause.

  “I haven’t seen a TV in ages,” Ben said, still working on the carrot.

  “Who the hell are you?” Janine asked.

  “I’m Ben.” He gave a small wave with his bandaged hand. “I was the hooter.”

  Janine cocked her head.

  “In the tree,” added Ben. “Making owl noises.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Janine. “Hi.”

  “Thank you for joining the fight,” Ben said. “Most adults think it’s bullshit.”

  “No problem,” Janine said, eager to show them the tape. “Okay, so, um…I rushed over here as fast as I could. Because this is…Well. I mean. Yeah. I’m gonna hit play now.”

  Rex and Ben nodded.

  It was hard at first to tell that the footage was no longer paused, as the screen remained bright blue even as the camera panned back and forth. Then, the frame shifted violently, the picture dimming for a moment.

  “That was whatever was pulling on the camera?” Rex said.

  “Yeah,” Janine said. “You never see anything other than that darkening. But just keep watching.”

  The camera began to swing around again, a wall of roots and rocks coming into view as Leif panned the camera farther to the right. Janine paused the camera.

  “There,” she said.

  “There what?” All Rex saw was the rocky wall of the spring. Was there more to see than that?

  “Oh,” Ben said, his eyes bugging.

  What were they seeing? Is there an especially interesting rock? He was embarrassed to ask.

  But then Rex saw.

  And he felt faint.

  Sticking out from the dense, mossy wall was a head. A curly-haired head.

  Alicia.

  “That’s not all,” Janine said. She pressed play again and Rex saw it, just before the camera moved left.

  Alicia opened her eyes.

  20

  FEBRUARY 1978

  THE MOMENT HE walked in the door, Wayne Whitewood knew something was wrong.

  He set Ruby down in front of the television, unable to shed the sudden feeling of panic, like a bat fluttering around his rib cage. He began calling his wife’s name, inviting her to come enjoy the banana split they’d brought back from the Dairy Queen.

  “Hey, honey,” he said as he walked down the hall to their bedroom, hoping that if he kept behaving like everything was okay, then it really would be. “You better get in here before this thing melts!”

  Judith was in bed, but she wasn’t asleep.

  She’d left a note next to the empty bottle of pills: It’s too hard. I’m sorry.

  Word traveled fast through their small town of Plumland, North Carolina, even faster than normal, given Wayne Whitewood’s story was one of bad luck piling on bad luck, the kind of story that opened your heart wide even as it made you exhale with relief that your own troubles seemed mild by comparison. “Oh, no,” people would gasp. “And after everything that poor man’s gone through with Ruby…”

  Wayne and Judith’s daughter had been sick since she was three, an unforgiving illness that had gripped their family and refused to let go. At first, they’d thought it was the flu, and their pediatrician had agreed; what else would leave an exuberant, bouncy toddler like Ruby completely sapped of energy? But, two weeks after following Dr. Robinson’s recommendations to the letter—rest, hydration, and plenty of orange juice for Vitamin C—Ruby had been as fatigued as ever. And disturbingly frail, too. She’d ended up with bruises up and down her leg just from bumping into a chair in the kitchen. Another time she’d tripped in the living room on her beloved blue crocheted frog, and somehow broken an arm. She also bled easily—even a slight nick from safety scissors could break skin. When they’d returned to Dr. Robinson, he’d examined Ruby and said, “You sure she’s been gettin’ enough orange juice?”

  Wayne and Judith took Ruby to several other doctors, including one at the nearby university hospital. Even the big shot doctor had no idea what was wrong with their precious little girl, despite running a battery of unpleasant tests on her. They returned home, having become disillusioned with medical professionals altogether. It was then that Judith had suggested they turn to God.

  Wayne, up to that point not a particularly religious man, agreed to join the local Pentecostal church that Judith had attended as a child. He’d always been skeptical of that crowd, with their tales of healing and miracles. But given the circumstances, it seemed like the perfect fit. After they shared their situation with the church, everyone lovingly gathered around Ruby, devoting an entire Sunday service to laying healing hands on the little girl and pleading with the Lord to take the sickness away. Ruby came home that day with more energy than she’d had in weeks, giving them hope that their prayers had been answered. The next morning, however, when Ruby awoke, her listlessness was back in full force.

  It was then that Wayne saw his wife change. Judith retreated to a grim place, refusing to discuss further treatment for Ruby. She continued to carry out her motherly duties, but she did so distantly, like a robot following a program. The love was gone from her eyes. She’d grown cold.

  When Ruby was five, Wayne made the difficult decision to enroll her in kindergarten at Plumland Elementary School, where he had served as principal for the last ten years. He thought this could provide a badly needed break for Judith, and he figured he’d be able to keep an eye on his fragile daughter at school. On her third day, though, two boys in a shoving match collided with her and broke a couple of her ribs. Wayne wanted to have the boys expelled; the vice principal convinced him that was unreasonable. Wayne pulled Ruby out of school instead. It would be up to Judith to teach her at home.

  Two miserable years later, his wife was dead and his seven-year-old daughter was as ill as she’d ever been. The grief was unrelenting. A day barely passed when he didn’t feel that same pull toward hopelessness that had overtaken his wife. Ruby remained the only reason he was able to get out of bed each morning. He couldn’t lose her as well.

  Wayne leveraged his unenviable circumstances into a yearlong sabbatical—something elementary school administrators weren’t typically granted—so he could devote himself entirely to his daughter and her health.

  This time he turned over all the stones, taking Ruby to anyone within a hundred-mile radius who he thought might be able to help: doctors, healers, homeopaths, practitioners of New Agey crap that he would have never considered before. An old woman in thick glasses stuck leeches all over Ruby’s back. A master of Eastern medicine made meticulous adjustments to Ruby’s chi. A lazy-eyed German man zapped her with a giant electromagnet.

  Wayne was optimistic each time, thinking maybe this was it, they’d finally figured it out, but then a month would pass and Ruby’s situation would be unchanged. In a way, these days of chasing unlikely remedies were the most bittersweet of his life, as spending so much quality time with his daughter brought him profound joy in the midst of his crumbling hopes. He’d started teaching her how to play piano, and those moments together at the keyboard were the only ones in which he could truly lose himself, his routine of misfortune sloughing off like a snakeskin.

&nb
sp; “You know, it’s a shame that spring ain’t open anymore,” Wayne’s friend Hank said one night as they downed a couple of Budweisers on Wayne’s porch, Ruby fast asleep in her room.

  “What spring?” Wayne asked. Hank had been his mentor at Plumland Elementary before retiring and handing Wayne the job. The older man seemed to enjoy maintaining that knowledge-bestowing dynamic.

  “That healing spring over in Bleak Creek. You never heard about it?”

  Wayne shook his head.

  “Oh, yeah, at one point people were comin’ from all over to bathe in that spring, get healed.” Hank took a long sip of his beer, like an ellipsis at the end of his sentence. “Even had a whole resort set up next to it.”

  “Healed from what?” Wayne asked.

  “Everything, I guess.” Another long sip. “I remember people goin’ for smaller stuff—gout, kidney stones, rashes, that sort of thing—but Patty’s cousin still swears it wiped out his leukemia.”

  Wayne laughed. Hank didn’t.

  “I’m dead serious,” Hank said. “He was gettin’ his will together and everything. But then his wife convinced him to go to the spring.”

  “I don’t know,” Wayne said. “I’m not sure I believe in that sorta thing.”

  “Wayne, there’s a lot out there that don’t fit into our boxes, you know?” Hank said. “Just because I can’t explain it don’t mean it ain’t true.”

  “Okay, I guess. But if this spring can work so many miracles, then how come it’s closed?” Wayne asked.

  “Well,” Hank said, finishing off his beer and placing it with a dramatic thunk onto the coffee table. “The owners of that resort, the Bleak family, one of their kids drowned in it. About fifteen years ago. A four-year-old boy. He and his twin brother were playin’ around and…Well, one of ’em went too deep. The Bleaks shut it down after that.”

  Wayne nodded and took a gulp of his beer. “But the spring’s still there…”

  * * *

  —

  “COME ON, BABY,” Wayne said, gently shaking Ruby awake in the back seat. He’d intentionally left Plumland at bedtime, knowing she’d sleep the four or so hours it would take to drive to Bleak Creek. Either way, arriving at night was a necessity, since they were technically about to trespass.

  “Where are we, Daddy?” Ruby asked, her eyes not yet fully open.

  “Remember I told you we were gonna have a fun adventure? Goin’ swimmin’ at night?”

  Ruby closed her eyes. “I don’t want to do that anymore, Daddy. I’m tired.”

  “I know you are, Ruby Jane,” he said, brushing blond strands of hair away from her face. “That’s why we have to do it. But don’t you worry—I’ll carry you over there.” He scooped her into his arms and shut the car door with his hip.

  He’d had to drive around for at least half an hour before he even figured out how to gain access to the spring; the main entrance was gated and locked up with heavy chains, more than the simple wire-cutters he’d brought could handle. Eventually, he’d off-roaded his beige Ford Fairmont, slowly cutting across a tobacco field with his headlights off and parking near a chain-link fence that, if he could cut through it, seemed to offer a clear path to the spring.

  He bent with Ruby in his arms and grabbed the wire-cutters from the trunk of the car along with a flashlight, which he flicked on as he walked toward the fence. It was a warm May night, and for that he was grateful.

  “All right, Ruby-girl, gonna put you down for a seco—”

  “No, Daddy, no!”

  “Shhh!” Wayne said. “We can’t be loud, baby. Please don’t be loud.”

  “I don’t want you to put me down.”

  “But…” Dammit, Wayne thought, nervous enough breaking the law on his own, let alone with his kid. “Okay, here, let’s do piggy.” He readjusted his daughter in his arms and hoisted her onto his back, a move he’d taken pride in perfecting over the past few years. “There we go.”

  “Thanks, Daddy.”

  He positioned the flashlight near his feet, pointing it upward at the fence, and began to cut the first link, which was challenging with a forty-pound human on his back. By the time he’d cut two links, he was sweating bullets. What the hell am I doing here? Wayne thought, suddenly regretting every stupid hoop he’d forced his unwell daughter to jump through. He’d come this far, though.

  After a minute, he’d cut a large enough gap in the fence for him and Ruby to awkwardly slide through. From there, it was a short walk through the woods, and then: There it was.

  The moonlight shone down on the spring invitingly, and Wayne’s doubts began to melt away. This was right. He could feel it.

  “Doesn’t it look fun, baby?” he asked Ruby.

  “I don’t know.”

  He walked across the dirt and stopped about ten steps from the water. “I’m gonna put you down now, darlin’, and please don’t argue with me.” Wayne gently set down Ruby, who decided not to protest. He undressed himself down to the blue swim trunks he wore under his slacks. Before leaving, he’d convinced Ruby to put on her green one-piece underneath her dress. “Okay, honey, now you get down into your bathin’ suit and we’ll go swim. How does that sound?”

  “I don’t wanna take off my dress,” Ruby said.

  “But you’ll get it all wet.”

  “I don’t wanna, Daddy!”

  “Okay, you can keep the dress on,” Wayne said, guessing that agreeing to her request would get her in the water. “When do you ever get to swim at night in your clothes, right?” he asked, unable to hide how truly hopeful he was. Tonight might change everything.

  “You’re a goofus,” Ruby said.

  Wayne laughed, a little louder than he’d intended. “I am, baby. I sure am.” He took her hand and they took a few steps toward the spring, placing their feet into the shallow water along the bank.

  “It feels nice,” Ruby said.

  “I think so too,” Wayne said, already imagining the water working its miracles.

  In his overexcitement, he took a few more quick steps to go deeper.

  “Daddy, slow down!” Ruby yelled. “Owww!” She’d clipped her heel on a rock. “I hurt my foot!”

  “Shit!” Wayne said, a rare moment when he was unable to catch the swear before it left his mouth.

  “Bad word, Daddy!” Ruby said, as Wayne lifted her foot out of the water, the moon illuminating a thin stream of blood.

  “You’re right, Rubes. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about your foot, baby. That was my fault.”

  “It’s okay.” Ruby had grown so used to little cuts like this that she rarely cried over them anymore. She gave her father one of her classic slightly crooked smiles, and it just about melted his heart.

  Wayne took her hand again, and they walked forward more slowly, the water now at Ruby’s waist.

  “Look, Daddy!”

  Beneath the water, there was a blue glow, pale at first, then steadily brighter as it spread throughout the spring.

  “Oh my Lord!” Wayne said. It was working. The water all around them began to bubble. Wayne began to laugh, unconcerned about disturbing anyone who might be within earshot.

  Ruby laughed too. “This really is fun!”

  She pushed off the bottom, beginning to swim. Wayne was careful not to let go of her hand.

  That didn’t matter, though.

  As soon as she dropped her face below the surface, Ruby was violently sucked down into the water.

  Her hand slipped from her father’s.

  “Ruby!” he yelled. “Baby!”

  He frantically dove after her.

  The moment he went under, he could feel water forcefully pressing on his mouth and nose. Like the spring itself was trying to invade him.

  He watched through the blur as Ruby spun away from him, as if she was being pulled by an i
nvisible chain. She was yanked to the side of the spring, which seemed to come to life, a layer of dirt and rocks creeping across her body, trapping her.

  Horrified, Wayne swam toward the wall, but he could no longer resist the water, now streaming powerfully into his nose and pushing apart his lips, filling his lungs. Drowning him.

  As his field of vision began to darken, the end almost near, he was wildly catapulted out of the water—as if by a dozen invisible hands—soaring through the air and landing on the dirt.

  Then he began to retch.

  Violent, full-body spasms as he vomited up water, so much water.

  When—five or ten minutes later—his body seemed to have finished, Wayne rolled over onto his back, utterly spent. Ruby, he thought, as he passed out.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS APPROXIMATELY three seconds after he felt the sun on his eyelids that Wayne began to panic.

  He jumped to his feet and ran into the now-sunlit water, madly swimming down to where he remembered seeing his daughter get trapped. There was only a bare wall, just rocks and dirt. Was it all a bad dream? Had he really seen Ruby pulled into the rocky wall?

  The events from the night began to crystallize in his head. It was real. His beloved baby girl was trapped. He had to get to her.

  Wayne went up for air, then came back down again, his heart racing as he tore at the sharp rocks where’d she gone in, scooping away handfuls of earth in his determination to free her. The jagged edges lacerated his hands, but he continued to grab, dig, and pull, the blood from his tender fingers mixing with the stirred mud.

  He felt an effervescent tingle on his face, then saw that the spring was once again filling with the blue glow.

  There was a shift in the rocks, and suddenly she was there.

  His Ruby, her head sticking out from the wall. Her eyes were open but unfocused.

  Wayne reached out to touch her sweet face, but the water was already forcing its way into his nostrils and mouth. Again he tried to fight it, but the persistent water easily passed his lips and overwhelmed him. He waited for everything to turn dark, bracing himself for the violent ejection.