The People in the Lake

by E Randall Floyd

  She wondered where he might be right now, what he was doing. She longed to hear his voice, if only to say hello. She had swallowed her pride and tried calling him several times earlier that evening but was unable to get a signal.

  Before dark, she had even hiked over to Phyllis’s house and asked about using her phone. But the old gal explained she had tossed her phone into the trash ages ago, along with the television, laptop and every other electronic gadget in her possession.

  The only “high-tech” item she had kept in the house was a 1969 Royal typewriter which she used to work on her book projects.

  She even cooked on a wood stove.

  “I came up here to get away from all that,” she had said. “Once you free yourself from all the distractions of this so-called digital age, you’ll be amazed at how wonderful and liberating life can be.”

  Maybe Phyllis was right, Laura thought. She and Bit had been up at the lake for almost a week now, and not once had either complained about the lack of TV or computer. The only convenience Bit missed, as far as Laura knew, was the lack of pizza delivery service.

  When she had told Phyllis what Paul had done with Bit, the old woman almost went apoplectic. “I told you the first day I met you that you shouldn’t trust that man.”

  She had found Phyllis crouched in front of a roaring fire, wrapped in a thick blanket and sipping chamomile tea. When she didn’t get up, Laura feared something was wrong.

  “Just nursing a little cold from last night,” she replied.

  Images of last night’s escapade down on the beach flashed through Laura’s mind. She thought about asking Phyllis what she had been doing out in the storm but dropped it. Now wasn’t the time.

  “Can I do anything for you? Make you some soup or something?”

  “Already made a big pot, over there on the stove. Want some?”

  Laura shook her head. “What about some Advil or Tylenol? I’ve got some of both back at the house.”

  “Don’t use store-bought medicine any more. I’ve got my own remedies. Now, you just run along and get back to your daughter. She might be needing you.”

  She was right. Laura had been away from the house for more than an hour. She was beginning to feel guilty about leaving Bit alone for so long.

  She hurried back through the woods, ever-mindful of another run-in with the black bear. This time she was lucky.

  Back home she found Bit playing with Anastasia and Teddy on the sofa. She was surrounded by stacks of books and magazines. Good, Laura thought. She’d been reading again.

  Inside, Laura continued to fume about Paul taking Bit sailing. She had calmed down some, and now was even beginning to feel a little guilty about possibly over-reacting. Paul was obviously a skilled sailor and knew what he was doing, but that did not give him the right to take her daughter out without first asking. Deep down, Laura knew it would be difficult for her to ever trust Paul again.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Mom, it’s the door!” Bit yelled.

  Laura got up and went to the door. "Who is it?" she asked through the door.

  “It’s me,” Paul Wilson's familiar voice answered back.

  Laura sighed. “Paul, it’s late.”

  “I know, I know,” Paul replied, his voice low and muffled through the thick wooden door. “Can I please talk to you? I promise I won’t be long.”

  Bit crept up behind Laura and said, “It’s Paul, Mom. Why won’t you let him?”

  Laura motioned for her to be quiet. “Maybe tomorrow morning,” Laura said to Paul. “Come back then and we can talk.”

  She waited for Paul’s response. She closed her eyes and imagined Paul standing on the other side of the door, his soft brown eyes sparkling in the moonlight and wavy brown hair blowing wild in the wind.

  “I won’t be here tomorrow morning, Laura. I’m flying out to Denver for a couple of days. I'm taking a few of my canvasses out to a show.”

  Bit tugged at Laura’s hand. “All he wants to do is talk,” she whispered.

  Laura felt herself weakening. When she thought of Paul standing outside in the cold, she unlatched the door and swung it open.

  ⸙

  “THANK YOU,” PAUL SAID, stepping across the threshold. He wore jeans and the same navy windbreaker he had worn on the boat. When he saw Bit, smiled and said, “Hi-ya, Bitster." He blew her a kiss.

  Paul shifted, looked at Laura. “Can we at least sit down a moment?” he asked. “This won’t take but a second, I promise.”

  Laura led him over to the fire and pointed to the wingchair. She sat across from him, silent and stiff, waiting. Paul started to speak, but Laura cut him off. “Bit told me about what happened—about how it was her idea to go out on the boat."

  When Bit couldn't wake her up this morning, she had looked out the window and seen Paul walking on the beach. She had gone outside and waved him up, explaining that her mom might be sick.

  “She thought something might have been wrong with you,” Paul said. “That’s why she invited me in to check on you.” He leaned forward. “Laura, I want you to know that I would have never, ever come into your house like that unless I thought something was wrong with you.”

  Laura nodded. “I know that now, but what I don’t understand is, when you saw that nothing was wrong, that I wasn’t a corpse, why didn’t you just wake me up and ask me if you could take Bit sailing?”

  “My bad,” Paul said, slapping his chest with the palm of his hand.

  “You were so exhausted, Mom, from all that stuff with Dr. Coleman last night,” Bit explained. “We just decided to let you sleep.” She had plopped across the arm of the chair next to her mother. “Mom, Paul wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me, honest. He’s a really good sailor. You should see him out on the water!”

  Something inside Laura withered. “I know,” she sighed, trying hard not to make her anguish any worse. “I shouldn’t have flown off the handle that way, said all those terrible things.”

  “Don't apologize,” Paul said. “I completely understand.”

  “No, really, it’s not like me to lose it like that. It’s just that, well, with Brad being gone and all the crazy-weird things that have been going on around here, I was upset.”

  “It’s okay, really,” Paul said sweetly.

  “I owe you an apology.”

  “Not necessary,” Paul shot back. “But if you insist on one, then I accept—but only if you and Bit come over to my house for a little farewell dinner tomorrow tonight.”

  Laura hesitated. “I thought you were going to Denver."

  Paul smiled. "Actually, that's not until day after tomorrow. I'll be busy all day tomorrow getting my canvasses packed and ready for the flight. You'd be surprised how much trouble it is to ship half a dozen paintings across country."

  "That’s awfully sweet of you, Paul, but…”

  “Can we, Mom, huh?” Bit pleaded. “Please?”

  Bit had always been a cunning little master at manipulating her mother. She knew all the right buttons to push and when. After mulling it over for a moment, Laura gave in. “I guess I’ve always been curious to see what a real artist’s studio looked like anyway. What time?”

  “Around seven? That should give me plenty of time to get everything packed and out of the way.”

  “Out of curiosity, what’s going on in Denver?” she asked.

  “Nothing special. A friend of mine out there helped arrange an exhibit of some of my current works at the Museum of Natural History.”

  “Paul, That sounds wonderful!”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal? You should be dancing off the ceiling.”

  “It’s more of a bother, really. I’d rather stay here and finish up a couple of landscapes I’ve been working on.”

  “Well, you can do that when you get back.” Laura looked at Bit. “Imagine that, sweetheart. “We’ve been asked to dinner by a very important artist.”

  Paul got up from the sofa. “Now I kn
ow it's time to go," he said, winking at Bit.

  "But you are important," Laura said.

  "And famous," Bit added

  Paul waved his hands, as if warding off undeserved praise. "I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, striding toward the door. “Well, I promised it wouldn't be long.” He turned the doorknob. “See you guys tomorrow night at seven.”

  “Oh boy,” Bit squealed. “Can I bring Anastasia and Teddy?”

  “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” Paul replied. “I’ll set a place for them at the table.”

  He high-fived Bit and left.

  Before he left, Bit asked: “Paul, can I ask you a question>”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you really a verevolf?”

  Paul made a scary face. “Tonight’s a full moon. You just wait and see!”

  When Paul was gone, Bit looked up at her mom and said, “See why I like Paul, Mom? He’s funny. He knows how to make you laugh.”

  Her daughter had a point. “He's a regular Steve Martin,” Laura said dryly.

  “Steve who?”

  “Steve…” Laura caught herself, suddenly realizing that her favorite comedian in the whole world was way before her daughter’s time. “Never mind. Now, off to bed with you, my little sailor. It’s way past your bedtime.”

  “Are you coming too?”

  “I’ll be up in a minute. I just want to make sure all the doors are locked.”

  Bit stopped and asked: “Why do you do that?”

  “Why do I do what?”

  “Lock all the doors every night.”

  “Oh, honey, you should know the answer to that. We're two girls, alone on the top of a mountain. That's why."

  “But that’s silly, Mom.”

  “What’s silly?”

  “Locking all the doors. You should know that ghosts don’t have to worry about locked doors.”

  Thirty-Three

  AROUND 2 A.M., LAURA was awakened by a strange rustling sound. She opened her eyes and peered into the grainy darkness, searching for the source of the noise. Nothing but shadows and the silent hiss of rain finger-tapping against the window.

  She got up and went into the bathroom. She clicked on the light above the vanity and stared at the mirror. The face that gazed back at her was almost unrecognizable.

  Not only were her cheeks thinner than she remembered, she had never noticed so many wrinkles. Her hair was a tangled mess, almost cartoonish. As she looked closer, her complexion seemed to take on an abnormal, waxy-yellow glow. The bags under her eyes seemed to be heavier, darker, almost like deep bruises. Her eyeballs were streaked with crimson scratches and bulged painfully out from sunken sockets. Even her lips looked different—puffy, swollen, cracked.

  Laura stared at the apparition in the mirror and started unraveling. What was happening to her?

  Pressing closer, she noticed a whitish fluid seeping from a split in her lower lip. Startled, she nipped at it with her fingernail, and when she did, the spilt widened. The result was a trickle of blood mixed with the pasty-white excretion oozing down her chin.

  Raising both hands to her face, she began to tear at the snippets of flesh dangling from her cheekbones. The flesh came away in clumps and clots beneath her fingernails. Frantic, she continued to scratch and claw at her face—but the more she did, the more her flesh peeled away, exposing bloody bone tissue beneath.

  Then she noticed what looked like a hair protruding from one of the bruised cracks in the middle of her forehead. To her horror, she realized the hair was not a hair but an antenna—and out popped the crusty head of a roach, quickly followed by the rest of its body.

  Then another roach skittered out from the same crack, then another and another until soon the crack had widened into a gaping black crevice filled with more black, hairy roaches pouring out in a steady stream, clicking and clattering down and around her face.

  She opened her mouth to scream—but when she did, nothing but a hollow, rasping, wheezing noise came out.

  ⸙

  LAURA AWOKE—and for a moment, didn’t know where she was.

  The bed was not her own, nor was this strange room. Only the odd rasping sound remained, and then she realized it had been the low rustle of her own voice wheezing hard in the night that had awakened her.

  Relieved, she sat up and surveyed the dark room. Silvery rays of moonlight filtered through the slatted blinds, creating weird shadows that danced and slithered across the walls and floor.

  Even though it was freezing cold, she found herself drenched in sweat.

  She pushed back the covers, swung her long legs over the edge of the bed and sat still for a moment, marveling at the eerie shimmer of moonbeams flooding the room. The nightmare slowly faded, but the cruel sensation of not being able to scream stayed with her, as did that awful wheezing sound.

  Would she ever forget the sight and sound of those awful bugs skittering and scudding out of that black hole in her forehead?

  She needed something to drink.

  Something stronger than water this time.

  She pushed herself off the bed, slipped on a robe and trotted downstairs to the kitchen.

  Bathed in soft moonlight, the kitchen was so bright she didn’t have to turn on the light. She opened a pantry cabinet and searched through the rows of Danny’s liquor until she found an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels. She quickly unscrewed the cap and poured some into a glass. She drank it down, poured another. She took the second drink and sauntered over to the front door and looked out.

  The full moon hung low and heavy over the sparkling lake. It looked like a giant yellow eye, with long rays of dappled light trailing down and scraping the surface of the lake like crinkled aluminum fingers. Beyond, she could see the dark hump of the mountains cascading like a wavy black wall along the opposite shore.

  She noticed something moving down on the rocks. She took another sip of whiskey, straining hard to make out the movement.

  In the splash of moonlight, she could barely make out what looked like the silhouette of a little girl sitting on one of the rocks.

  Laura felt her heart collapse within her chest.

  Even in the dim glow of the moon, there was no doubt who it was.

  Bit.

  She grabbed a flashlight, slipped on a coat and hurried outside.

  ⸙

  BIT SAT ON A FLAT ROCK, knees drawn up tight under her chin, eyes gazing straight out across the moon-dappled lake. Laura heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that at least she was wearing a coat and scarf—the same yellow and blue college scarf Paul had loaned her.

  “Bit,” she proclaimed, taking a seat next to her on the cold rock. “Sweetheart, what are you doing out here? It's freezing.”

  Bit continued to stare off into the distance. Her eyes flicked back and forth, as if searching for something far out over the water.

  Finally, when she felt her mother's arms snake around her shoulders, she said, “They only come out when it storms.”

  The enigmatic words, mixed with her daughter’s odd behavior, chilled Laura to the bone. She pulled Bit close to her. “Bit, darling, who are you talking about?”

  Bit's eyes continued to roam the shimmering surface of the lake, as if searching for someone—or something. “Mason and Luke,” she replied in a voice both hollow and far away. A moment later she turned and faced Laura. “They’re brothers, Mom, only Luke is two years older…”

  Ice crystals formed inside Laura's throat, preventing her tongue from moving.

  “There are more of them, though,” Bit went on in that same floating, wandering tone.

  “More? More of whom?" Laura gasped. "Sweetheart, I don't understand what you’re talking about."

  “Out there.” Bit slowly raised a finger and pointed in the direction of the lake.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  "THE BELLS WAKE THEM UP," Bit said to her mom.

  They were lying on Laura's big, soft bed, cuddling to keep warm beneath the thick down comforter.
Half an hour earlier Laura had gathered Bit up in her arms and carried her from the rocks up to the house. After getting some hot tea inside her and dressing her in a dry gown, she had put Bit to bed and crawled in next to her.

  Laura let her daughter continue to talk while she massaged her ice-cold arms.

  In a voice barely above a whisper, Bit explained: "At night, when the bells start ringing, they wake up under the lake and walk out onto the beach. Sometimes they walk around until dawn, or until the bells stop ringing."

  Laura was creeping out.

  Who was her daughter talking about? Was she referring to the same boys she had seen several times down on the beach?

  She desperately wanted to interrupt her, to snap her daughter back to reality, but chose to let her keep talking.

  "There are lots of them, Mom,” she continued in that same detached tone. “I've only met Luke and Mason, the brothers I told you about. But their mamma and daddy are out there, too. So are their sisters...” She smiled faintly. “One of them is a…baby, a little baby. But she is sick, Mama, so sick and everybody’s sad.”

  Her voice trailed off for a moment before resuming. “There are…other people out there as well…many others…I can't count them all."

  She froze.

  A look of terror seemed to flash across her face, cloud her big brown eyes. "Mom, even that big man, the mean one with the beard and the axe, the one who ate Lord Nelson's rabbit, he comes out, too…"

  Laura felt her senses slipping away. An urgent voice inside her head warned her not to let Bit go on talking, that she'd heard enough. If she continued, that shuddering voice inside her head warned, Laura Drake might be pushed forever over the edge, down into some quiet, yawning abyss where nothing was real but dreams and nightmares.

  The dreams and nightmares that Phyllis Coleman had warned her about?

  "Sweetheart, don't you realize you were only dreaming? There are no people out there in the lake, no little boys walking the beach."

  Bit pushed back her mom's hands and jerked straight up in bed. The girl's eyes went wide, unnaturally wide, then all at once rolled up backwards and disappeared behind her eyelids