The construction worker nodded and fished a ten-dollar bill from his pocket. The man in the suit put out his hand, and the man in the yellow vest laid the bill in his palm. “No change,” the man in the suit said sharply. He pulled his hand back inside the truck and slammed the window shut.
“Great customer service,” Mallory said.
“Ha ha!” the construction worker laughed nervously again. Sweat popped up along his brow as his eyes darted over to his buddies at the other end of the lot. They whooped and hollered encouragingly. The man wiped his sweaty palms on his yellow vest.
“What’s wrong? You don’t like pâté either?”
The man blanched. “Oh God…you think they’re serving pâté today?” He looked like he might throw up, but he didn’t get the chance. At that instant, the back doors of the food truck banged open, and a huge set of slimy, purple tentacles burst out of the truck. They waved menacingly in the air, as if sniffing out their prey, then they turned and shot out at the construction worker, fast as lightning. He screamed as one tentacle wrapped around his waist and another secured itself to his wrist. The creature began dragging him back toward the rear of the truck. The man screamed and begged for help, but his friends just looked on, shocked and dumbfounded, and a little sad. The man in the yellow vest looked at Mallory and pleaded for her to do something— anything. But a third tentacle shot out, clamped itself over his mouth, and lifted him into the air by his chin. The creature pulled the man into the back of the truck. The whole vehicle rocked violently from side to side, the tires lifting off the ground. The man’s muffled screams were drowned out by a grotesque slurping and chomping and crunching of bones. Then the truck stopped moving, the unseen creature belched, and everything fell silent.
The man in the black suit slid the window of the food truck open. He poked his head out and looked at Mallory. “One?”
“Uhh…no, thanks. I’ve…changed my mind.” Mallory turned on her heels and hurried back to Lewis and the RV. “What the fuck was that?” she hissed.
Lewis sighed and sucked at the corner of his bottom lip. “Some days, you eat the special, and some days, you are the special.” Then he added, “It’s still better than the pâté.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Mallory snapped.
“I did say something! I said, ‘Don’t do it, Mallory, don’t get the special!’”
“You didn’t tell me I might be the special!”
“Every time I tell you not to do something, you do the opposite!” Lewis huffed. “So what’s even the point?”
“The point is making sure your friends don’t get eaten by a giant octopus! That’s one of the basic building blocks of life.”
Lewis brightened around the eyes. “You think of me as a friend?” he asked, clearly pleased.
Mallory exhaled. She suddenly felt exhausted. “Look. Let’s just get lunch, then you can take me back to the Roach Motel, where the tentacles are at least a more manageable size.”
Lewis’ smile fell. There was no disguising the hurt in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want.” He rubbed his chin for a moment, as if he were on the verge of a very important decision. “I have just one more stop to make on the way. It’s quick, and completely harmless, I swear. Then I’ll bring you back to the hotel, and you won’t ever have to see me again.”
Mallory sighed. She grabbed Lewis’ hand and gave it a good squeeze. “Look, Lewis, I just want to check back into the motel, go to my room, lock my seven locks, put up my barrier against demons, and wait it out until my car’s ready and I can get the hell out of here. Okay? It’s not you…mostly. It’s this town. Really.”
Lewis raised an eyebrow. “You mean it?”
Mallory shrugged. “Sure.”
Lewis nodded. “Thank you for saying that. As far as lunch goes, I’d recommend the Rice Bowls with Various Canned Vegetables. Everything else is sort of greasy.”
“Even the pudding?”
Lewis sniffed. “Especially the pudding.”
Chapter 11
The RV pulled up to their final stop for the day. Mallory was almost afraid to look out the windshield. When she did, she breathed a sigh of relief. “It looks peaceful,” she smiled.
Lewis nodded. “It is peaceful. Peaceful, and calm, and basically non-threatening.”
Mallory gave him a side-eye. “Basically?”
“Sure,” he shrugged. “You know. Basically.” He popped open the door of the RV and jumped down out of the cab. “There’s not a whole lot that can go wrong here, I promise.” He gestured grandly at the land before them with a wide sweep of his hand. “Welcome to Clone Lake.”
The gentle lake waters stretched before them in a lazy curve that disappeared into the horizon on the north. Tall fir trees lined the eastern edge of the lake; the rest of the shore was lined by dark, wet sand that sloped gently up to a grassy ridge running alongside the water. Tall, willowy reeds sprouted along the shoreline, swaying lazily in the breeze. The water lapped quietly against the beach, and as Mallory shielded her eyes from the sun, she saw a graceful loon swoop down from one of the fir trees and skim along the surface of the lake, just barely hovering over, never quite touching the water.
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted with a smile. “A nice change in scenery. Thanks for bringing me here.”
Lewis’ cheeks blushed red. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.”
He fished a small cooler and a handful of empty vials from the back of the Winnebago. He tucked the vials into his coat pockets and motioned for Mallory to follow. He walked over to where a small rowboat lay overturned on the shore. He struggled to set it right side up. “Do you want to come in the boat, or are you good on the beach?”
Mallory bit her bottom lip gently as she thought. “What sort of nightmare lives under the water?” she asked.
But Lewis shook his head. “Not a thing. Not even any fish! Promise. No tentacles, no teeth, no mouth, no eyes, nothing. Scout’s honor.” He held up three fingers, pointed toward the sky.
“And why is it called Clone Lake?” she asked suspiciously.
“Well, see how this is shaped sort of like a kidney?” he asked, pointing out the coastline that disappeared toward the north. “There’s another lake in the next town that looks exactly the same. If you saw them on a satellite, you’d swear they were perfect clones. Hence Clone Lake.”
“What’s the other lake called?” Mallory asked.
“Evil Clone Lake.”
“Funny.”
Lewis shrugged. “I guess they figured a sense of humor is important when you live in a town with tentacle monsters hiding in food trucks.”
“I bet.”
Lewis struggled to push the little rowboat toward the water. “What do you say?” he asked, already breathing hard. “Want to come for a ride?”
Mallory edged warily toward the boat. “It’s seaworthy?” she asked.
“Perfectly seaworthy; it has to be,” he said, very seriously.
And here comes the catch, Mallory thought with a sigh. “Okay. And why’s that?”
Lewis shrugged. “Otherwise, we’d sink.”
“Oh.” Mallory tilted her head. That made sense.
“Also—and this is just a small thing—the water is…unique. And it’s best not to come into contact with it.”
“I knew it!” Mallory cried, leveling an accusatory finger at his chest.
“But it’s fine if you stay in the boat!” Lewis added quickly. “And it’s not dangerous, it’s just unique! You’ll be perfectly safe, I promise! I’ll be in the boat, and I wouldn’t go into the boat if I didn’t think it was safe.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ve been a paragon of safety today,” Mallory said, rolling her eyes.
Lewis looked hurt, but he held up his hands in defe
at. “I understand,” he said. “It’s been a long day for you. I’ll row out and get my samples, then we’ll go back to the hotel. You stay here.”
“Great,” Mallory said, crossing her arms, “I will.” Then a tree branch snapped somewhere off to her left, and she could’ve sworn she heard a wet snarl coming from something in the trees. “Wait, hold on…I’m coming!” she cried. She ran toward the boat and leapt into the stern just as Lewis pushed off the beach with an oar.
“Oh!” he gasped, startled. Water splashed up the sides of the boat, and he drew his arms inside in a panic. But the droplets fell harmlessly back into the lake, and Lewis smiled. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks,” Mallory grumbled, looking over her shoulder. She didn’t see any creatures prowling the woods, but still. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Or safer, at least.
“I’m not rowing, by the way,” she added, noticing Lewis eyeing the other oar in the bottom of the boat. “I’m not sturdy.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest that you should,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose indignantly, though it was eminently clear to everyone in the boat that he certainly had been planning on suggesting it. He picked up the second oar and dipped both in the water, pulling them unsteadily away from shore.
“So level with me. What are you sampling for?”
Lewis hesitated. He was struggling against the oars, which were comically large in his small hands. After a few labored strokes, he said, “Uniqueness.”
Mallory crossed her arms and glowered. “Right. I got that part. What sort of uniqueness? Life-altering, limb-mutating, radioactive uniqueness?”
“No, no! It’s nothing dangerous, I swear.”
Mallory snorted. “Sure. And I guess that’s why there are no fish? Because it’s not dangerous?”
“It isn’t dangerous. Honestly. It won’t hurt you a bit.” He rowed a few more times in silence before adding, “Just…don’t get any on you. Okay?”
Mallory shook her head and sighed. She hunkered down into the boat and closed her eyes. There was a light, pleasant breeze, and she grabbed her tangled hair and held it in a bunch on the top of her head, letting the cool air blow against the nape of her neck. With the warm sun and the easy wind and the gentle splash of the dipping oars, she could almost relax…if she didn’t think too hard about the water. This is what it’ll be like in Saskatchewan, she told herself. Except it’ll be colder. A lot colder. Mallory hated the cold. She supposed she’d have to get used to wearing wool sweaters and down coats. Three down coats at once. I hate you, Canada, she thought.
But it would still be better than Missouri.
Lewis rowed them out toward the center of the lake. After a solid ten minutes of heaving and pulling and straining his poor scientist arms, he declared them a reasonable distance from the shore. He hauled the oars into the boat with a stern reminder to not touch the wet ends. Mallory smiled up into the air, her eyes still closed, and nodded. Here in the boat, she finally had the chance to rest a bit. For the first time in what felt like years, she was able to lie in the sun and not worry one bit about tentacles or spontaneous combustion or Mars or flies or goddamn waffles or police cars or any of the insanity that exploded its way into her life since leaving St. Louis and making a wrong turn into an inter-dimensional passageway. If pressed, she might even be willing to admit that she was edging her way toward a good mood. And that was a rare thing these days.
She opened one eye and spied Lewis pulling on thick, black rubber gloves that went up to his elbows. He picked up a small vial in one hand and leaned carefully over the edge of the boat. He dipped it slowly into the surface of the water, and when it was full, he lifted it and held it at arm’s length, as if it might be caustic in spite of his insistence that it was fine. With the other hand, he grabbed the vial’s lid and screwed it on, slowly, carefully, and methodically. He gingerly placed the sealed container into the little cooler and took a little breath of relief. Then he grabbed a second vial and started the process all over again.
Mallory smiled to herself. She didn’t know if it was the sun, or the water, or the brain tumor that she was halfway certain had sprouted in the last 36 hours and given her severe hallucinations about a town from hell, but with Lewis teetering so precariously over the water, an opportunity presented itself that was just too wonderful to ignore. She’d been a hair’s breath away from injury, maiming, and death by unspeakable means ever since she arrived in Anomaly Flats, but Lewis had skated breezily through all the perils without so much as a stutter in his step. She’d barely survived the last day and a half; he’d been living here just fine for twelve years. It didn’t seem fair.
But now Mallory could even the scales a bit.
She bit her bottom lip mischievously and pulled herself up into a crouch. Lewis didn’t notice her as he screwed the lid onto the second vial, lowered it into the cooler, and picked up a third vial. She crept forward, a wide grin spreading across her face, as he turned back to the lake. And when he leaned over to dip the vial in, she put both hands against his lower back and shoved him, screaming, over the side.
What? she thought, looking over the side and shrugging at her reflection in the water. He said it wasn’t dangerous.
“Help!” Lewis yelled as he thrashed in the lake, bobbing under the surface and clawing his way up in a frantic spray of water. “Help!”
“Sorry,” Mallory called out, laughing. “You’re splashing a lot, and I’m not allowed to get the water on me.”
“Mallory!” he sputtered, kicking and twisting and generally seeming to drown. “Get me out of this lake!”
Mallory frowned. She wasn’t terribly adept at feeling guilt, and she wasn’t actually sure if she would recognize it if she felt it…but she was fairly confident that she was feeling it now. The annoying part of her brain that tried to shame her for taking such reckless action cleared its throat knowingly. “Shut up, conscience,” she said through gritted teeth. She grabbed one of the oars and held it out over the water. “Here…grab on.”
But Lewis had sunk under the gentle waves.
“Lewis?” Mallory stood at the prow and leaned out over the water. Above the spot where he sank, a string of bubbles burbled up to the surface and popped into nothingness. “Lewis?” she asked again.
Oh my God, she thought. I’ve killed him.
She immediately began calculating the odds of successfully covering up his death by leaving the lake, taking her backpack, burning his RV to the ground, and skipping town on foot. They seemed pretty high, all things considered. If Anomaly Flats was good for nothing else, it had to be good for getting away with murder. But just as she was resolving herself to row back to shore and douse the Winnebago in gasoline, the surface of the lake frothed, and Lewis exploded up from beneath the waves.
And then he did it again.
Lewis surfaced, and then a second Lewis surfaced, and they both wailed and thrashed and cried out for help.
Two separate Lewises bobbed helplessly in the middle of the lake.
“What the shit?” Mallory whispered under her breath. Then, louder, she called, “Lewis?”
“Yes!” both Lewises screamed. They both swam for the boat, but they soon bumped into each other, and they each started frantically swatting at the other. They wrestled and yelped and cried—mostly, they cried—and tried to fight the other one off.
It was all too much to bear.
Mallory lifted the oar over her head and brought it slamming down onto the water with a loud SLAP. Both Lewises froze in mid-swat and turned to look at her. “What the fuck is happening here?” she demanded.
The Lewis on the left pointed at the Lewis on the right. The Lewis on the right pointed at the Lewis on the left. “He’s a clone!” both Lewises cried in unison.
Mallory’s knees became watery beneath her, and she sat
down hard on the bench close to the front of the boat. “He’s a clone,” she snorted, more to herself than to either of the Lewises. “Of course he’s a clone. Clone Lake doesn’t hurt you; it just duplicates you.” She stood up suddenly and screamed down at the Lewises, “You told me it was called Clone Lake because there are two identical lakes!”
“There are!” both Lewises cried. The one on the right swatted at the one on the left, and the one on the left swatted back at the one on the right.
“Mallory! It’s me!” insisted the clone on the right, struggling to stay above water. “We met this morning, outside the Office of Tourism, and you were attacked by a swarm of flies!”
“No, I’m the original!” insisted the one on the left. “I took you to the food trucks, and you almost got mauled by the special! Remember?”
“Don’t listen to him!” shrieked the Lewis on the right. “He has clones of my memories!”
“Spoken like a true clone!” screamed the Lewis on the left. They splashed at each other and both struggled toward the boat.
“If I were a clone, would I know that you smell like boysenberry and sweat?” the Lewis on the right screamed, trying desperately to make his case.
“If I were a clone, would I know that you snort like a hyena when you eat rice?” the Lewis on the left demanded.
“Keep it up,” Mallory said with a glare. “See if I let either of you into this boat.”
“Mallory, please!” both Lewises said at once. They each put one hand on the boat and started swatting at each other with the other hand. “Stop splashing me!” the Lewis on the left screamed. “You stop splashing me!” the Lewis on the right yelled back.
“Enough!” Mallory brought the oar back down onto the water, nearly taking off the fingers of both Lewises as it smacked down onto the surface. Both men grew quiet and looked up at her with pleading eyes as they treaded water. “Now, look: if one of you is a clone of the other, then you’re both the same, right? Why don’t I let both of you into the boat?”
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