Spider Lake

by Gregg Hangebrauck

  “I think by the time we got around to talking, neither of us had the collective coherency to be giving any advice.”

  She rang the purchase up. “That’ll be eleven dollars and thirty-six cents Mister Fisher. The first cup of coffee is free for campers. From here on in you are on your own.”

  Ben looked back up and made eye contact with the woman. He could see past the face that time and worry had conspired to age, and guessed that she was probably once the prettiest girl in town. No doubt she was the head cheerleader, and she was likely unanimously voted prom queen. Her eyes communicated a great deal more than her conversation, and Ben felt real pangs of guilt looking into those deep pools. He almost missed the fact that she had just fulfilled the subconscious prophecy about the coffee from his dream of two nights ago. “What do you know?” he mused, “The Our-Lady-of-the-Coffee prophetess is standing right in front of me.” He was batting one thousand in the fulfilled prophecy department.

  “Could you do me a favor Mister Fisher?”

  “Sure I will, if I can.”

  “Please don’t come back here again. Get on that motorcycle of yours and leave town. Don’t look back. I have had to live with that fool’s gold all my adult life. I have done my very best to patch up all the holes in Ruben’s heart. He was the fatherless kid that had to live with all the Digger McCann jokes. Did you know they called him Digger too? No, I guess you wouldn’t. It is no wonder Ruben drinks. He is just trying to kill the pain.”

  Ben was wondering if the entire northern third of Wisconsin knew that he was in Rhinelander, and why he had made the trip. He was speechless. His right eye began to twitch uncontrollably. He thought he would have a meltdown right in front of the woman. He strained to collect himself and answer her, but what could he say to that? His mouth had gone completely dry. He tried to speak but nothing came out. He held up one finger as if to say; “Just a minute please, Ben will be here in a minute.” He went to take a drink of his coffee, and burned his mouth, spilling some of it on his right leg as he pulled the cup away. All he could get out was; “Pardon me?”

  He imagined what he must have looked like to the woman. Anyone less serious might have burst out into laughter. She was as sober as a person could get, and she answered him: “Mister Fisher, I am afraid if you stay here, Ruben will go off on another tangent; and all the years of me persuading him to forget the gold and forget his father’s obsession will be for naught. The man still has problems coping, but if he goes backward and starts looking again, I will simply burst. I have a garage full of metal detectors. Can you use one? Come on by and get one. I’ll give it to you for free. He will never know the difference.”

  Ben was never a dishonest man. He had his own problems but lying was not one of them. Now he was standing in front of this poor woman, getting ready to lie to her face, and it did not make him feel good. How had he gotten himself in this position? Why had he stopped here of all places? If all had gone right he would be anonymous; a ghost. There would have been no reason to lie to anyone. He hated to have to go down that slippery slope and yet— he had to. He couldn’t jeopardize the entire trip in an effort to be absolutely honest. He wondered what other compromises he would have to make before it was all over. How much damage would he be doing to his integrity. He pictured himself drinking a glass of water, and having it leak out on all sides. He offered the woman a half-truth to soften the impact of a full-fledge lie: “I am leaving this morning Ms. McCann? And I plan on leaving town as soon as I can.”

  He swallowed hard and continued, “I am only coming back here on the advice of my— doctor. There are some— psychological reasons for my being here, and I hope to have them wrapped up and leave town as soon as possible. I’m sorry for having contributed to your husband’s— let’s just say I will not be back again to the bar and well; tell him I can understand how I might have stirred up some bad old memories.”

  She didn’t answer him. She knew as soon as Ben opened his mouth that she had failed to persuade him to leave. Ben exited the store red-faced, and was eager to pick up his things and leave the campground forever behind him. He had made a real mess of things so far, and he hoped that he could be as low-key as possible once he was at his childhood resort.

  As he was collecting his gear at the camp site, he tried to think through the problem that had just been revealed to him. Now he would need to keep his bike from being seen during his stay at Spider Lake. Hiding his bike would be easy enough. He could park it somewhere like the airport and take a cab to the resort, but Ms. Morton would undoubtedly ask where it was. How could he take a cab without Carly Morton asking questions? She was far too bright to believe a half-baked excuse for the absence of his motorcycle. He had to give the problem more thought. Check in time at the resort was one o’clock. He would need to have a sound plan by then. He thought he would break from tradition and eat at a fast-food place this morning. Maybe then, he wouldn’t be seen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Night of the fire Part Three ( 1968 )

  ack in the day, many years before Sonny Rule’s father began to envision a sawmill where the Pelican and Wisconsin rivers converged, before any resorts were imagined, before the timber industry produced a single mansion or a single millionaire, an immigrant with a green thumb named Stuart Wodek had big dreams for a sizable property he had just purchased on a tiny unnamed Lake that he had eventually named Spider. He liked the name. He had named it so because of the many water-spiders that crawled day and night on its smooth surface in the summer months.

  Wodek had big dreams of clearing a patch of land that his family and he could work. They would grow vegetables and God-willing, after a few more years, clear even more of the land for cranberry-bogs.

  He and his family worked many long months building a one-room cabin for shelter, clearing the top land of trees and rocks for a modest crop of root vegetables, and digging a proper root-cellar for the storage of whatever God and the land would provide them.

  Stu had plans to build and irrigate the bogs with the fertile black water from the mud-bottomed lake which he had so named. He spent many years struggling to eke out a living there, trying in vain to get a cranberry crop to pay off; but after several years of breaking even, and two unexpected deaths of his children who had caught the fever due to the stagnant air of the place, Stu took a torch to the cabin, sold the land, and decided to strike out and try and see if California might be better suited to his style of horticulture.

  Over the years, the stone foundation of the house began to be consumed by the surrounding forest, disappearing year after year under layers of plant debris which transformed into soil. The one feature of the ancient construction which remained intact was the root cellar. Being underground and constructed with heavy trees cut and shaped twelve inches thick, the twelve by ten foot underground cellar remained for years, and was known only by the young residents who still explored the woods surrounding the lake.

  The place was known by all the young ones as the Alamo. Countless battles were fought there, many secret meetings were conducted there; treaties were signed, stories were told. The Alamo was the Spider Lake version of the ancient ruin Stonehenge. The place had a secret and mystical quality that only very old places have, and it was considered hallowed ground by its pint-sized visitors. The heavy iron hinges and doors of the cellar were so expertly built, that they were still in working order.

  An oil can was left on site by some unknown earlier visitor, and as each generation of kids re-discovered the ancient place, they kept the oil can there as a sort of modern-day talisman; replenishing the oil from time to time to keep the hinges free and the magic doors of the cellar in working order.

  The kids would never go there at night. They didn’t want to scare up something frightful. The cellar was dark enough in the heavy woods at full noon. They would only actually enter the cellar after sweeping the cobwebs from the place. Once inside, they would never-ever shut the heavy doors behind them.

  There we
re a couple of random incidents in which one kid would play a very dirty trick on another, closing the doors while they were still in, but it was not at all standard bully practice. Only top-level bullies would go so far. The survivors of the prank sometimes had tales of secret doors opening behind them when the cellar doors were shut, and the tales acted as a major deterrent to all but the worst practical jokers.

  The boys hoped that the boat would protect them from the debris that was falling everywhere around them. They stayed right where they were until a large branch hit the boat, causing damage to the transom and fatally weakening the make-shift shelter. They both realized that they had to move. If something else hit the boat, they could be injured or killed. The storm was still raging all around them and they had to move fast. Ben yelled at his friend; “We gotta get out of here!”

  “I know, but where?”

  “The boat house!”

  “No, that will be locked! And what if the water-tower falls?”

  They thought for a second or two more about their possibilities. The deep moaning of the wind was getting louder again, and just behind them a full-grown tree made a huge splash in the lake, prompting them to hasten their retreat. “How about the Alamo! It’s close. We can make it there if we run!”

  Matt nodded in favor of the idea, and the boys clambered from underneath the boat and ran as fast as they could in the direction of the old ruins. The second smaller funnel cloud; the one that was currently making the new moaning noise; was making its own way towards the ruins from the southwest, pulling trees from the ground and dropping them wherever it wished. Ben and Matt were getting bruised and battered by all the smaller debris that was raining down on them, and it was difficult for them to hurdle all the deadfalls in-between them and the Alamo.

  They were fortunate to reach the old ruins without being killed. Twice they were nearly missed by full-grown trees, and once, Matt was even hit by one; luckily by the uppermost branches where they were the thinnest. Matt would be badly bruised and unable to make use his right arm, due to a hairline fracture of his collar bone and a cracked rib.

  The noise of the second funnel was increasing, but neither boy could make out where it was coming from. The dense forest was preventing them from seeing the storm, and the darkness was even deeper under the canape of the trees. They were at the heavy door of the secret root cellar, and even though trees were snapping and falling and smashing very near them, they were not enthusiastic about walking into the thing in the dark. It would be pitch black in the small room, and there would be spiders.

  The storm would have it’s way though. It forced the boys into the small dark cellar with a renewed ferocity. Just before they shut the heavy door behind them, Ben could see that the storm was nearly on top of them. Fifty feet away, trees were being plucked upwards as if some crazy giant was pulling trees as a person would pull carrots.

  They closed the door in the nick of time, and they heard as they stood there in the pitch black, a maelstrom of crashing noises right above their heads, showering them with decades of dust and soot from the root-cellar ceiling. The storm outside was in the process of putting a finishing touch on the business of hiding the ruins for all time, letting go of the trees it held just above the Alamo; then lifting off the ground and climbing back up into its parent cloud, having finished its day’s damaging work.

  The boys stood there in the dark, looking up at the place they thought was the cellar door. Each time they heard another muffled rumble of close thunder, they could make out slivers of white light at the edges of the door where it met with the jamb. If any pair of eyes had large enough pupils to see in that utter darkness, they would see that both boys’ hair although wet, was standing at attention. They were not happy at all with their new shelter, and they were going to vacate the premises as soon as the storm would allow.

  The very old smell of the place mixed with the soggy smell of the decaying wood of the forest, and blended with the smell of urine. The two of them dared not move because each time they did, they would get a face-full of spider webs. They strained to listen for the legendary back door to open, but whatever or whoever opened the secret back door before was not opening it now. They wondered how long it would be before it did open. They wanted out of the cellar. They would get out very soon.

  “Something’s wrong with my arm. I think I broke it.”

  Ben looked in the direction of Matt’s voice. Matt was right next to him but he could not see him.

  “Which arm Matt?”

  “My left arm.”

  “Are there any bones sticking out?”

  “No, I felt it up and down and it feels the same, only I can’t move it.”

  “Should we get out of here and take our chances with the storm?”

  “We probably should stay a little longer. I never seen so many trees falling from the sky. I sure as hell do not want to dodge them again.”

  “This place is creepy. I am holding my hand two inches from my face and I can’t see it.”

  “I wonder if them stories about a back-door are true?”

  “Knock it off Matt. I have enough to be afraid of with all these spider-webs.”

  The mentioning of the spider-webs began to work on the boys’ imagination, and soon they were imagining the arachnids crawling this way and that in every place that was exposed to them. Naturally, some of the sensations of the crawling things had merit, and both of them began swatting themselves. Ben had a clear advantage with the full use of both arms; both were equally miserable thinking about the vile creatures. Then Matt said, “I say we take our chances with the storm. I’ve had enough of these creepy-crawlers, and I only have one good arm to swat em with.”

  “I wish they were creepy-crawlers. I could use a handful of the glow-in-the-dark ones I made with my thing-maker.”

  “How about it Ben. Let’s vamoose from here. It’s too damn creepy.”

  “Alright Matt. The twisters must be gone by now.”

  Ben blindly, slowly, climbed the wooden stairs to the entrance. He pushed the heavy door to open it, but it only moved a few inches. There was something in front of it on the outside. Strangely, when he eased the pressure, the something outside that blocked the door pushed it back. Ben’s heart turned to ice from the fright he felt from the pushing back of the door. He had never been so thoroughly frightened in his life.

  What had pushed back? It didn’t make sense to him. If something was on top of the cellar door, he would only feel resistance from the weight. He distinctly felt something push back. He was paralyzed with fear. He stood there on the steps saying nothing, listening for any sound of a voice or a grunt or a breath, but no sound came but the sound of the storm. A bug, probably a spider dropped onto his cheek and he slapped it away. If there was ever a time that he could revert to a child again, it was now. Ben wanted his mother. He wanted to crawl in bed with her as he used to do when he was little, and when he was scared.

  He tried the door one more time. It gave way again in the same fashion, and again Ben felt something strong push back at him. He could feel the strength of the unseen thing’s muscle. It pushed back hard. This was the kind of scared that makes a person want to pee in their pants. Behind him, Matt asked, “Open the door Ben! What are you waiting for!”

  Ben walked backwards down the steps and bumped into Matt. “Something is up there pushing the door shut when I try to open it.”

  “Are you frigging pulling my leg or are you for real?”

  “I am not making this up Matt. Something is pushing back when I try to open the door. Go see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  “Alright I will. But if you are pulling my leg I am going to be pissed!”

  Matt climbed the stairs as slow as molasses, holding his good arm out in front of him. He pushed the door as Ben did, and though he had only one arm he still managed to budge it. The unseen force on the opposite side of the door pushed back just as it did with Ben. He was frozen in fear just as Ben was, but for a differen
t reason. He deduced correctly that the force pushing back was a heavy but flexible branch, and they might not be able to budge it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Homecoming Part Six ( Present Day )

  en rolled out of the McDonalds parking lot and pointed his bike north. He had done his best to soak up the alcohol of the night before with the greasy fast food. It was way too early for him to check into the resort, so he decided he would take a ride to kill some time. He looked at a Wisconsin road-map and guessed the trip north to the Porcupine Mountains and Lake Superior would eat up two hours each way. He was sure that the ride and the fresh air would be the best medicine to revive him from his hangover.

  Had he been a little less hung over, or a little more alert, he might have noticed the blue jeep following him until he was many miles out of town. He never did though, and he would never know about the extra hours his ride had purchased for him.

  He took route fifty-one through Woodruff and Ironwood, and then rode the smaller county roads that headed north and eastward, finally turning on a road called Presque Isle which ended literally on a boat ramp which serviced Lake Superior. He parked his machine in the lot and walked along the rocky shoreline. He loved the sound of the waves, and was soothed by the huge expanse of water. Before, during his ride, he had put a lot of thought into the hiding of his bike at the resort, but each plan he had come up with fell flat. Ms. Morton would not be fooled easily.

  He thought about actually having his motorcycle serviced, but his funds were limited and any motorcycle mechanic in Rhinelander would likely take advantage of him; as business owners often do with their out-of-town customers. Now, while he was putting more thought to the problem, he finally decided on making it simple; purchasing a camouflaged tarp at the builder’s hardware, and covering the bike at the resort. Then, if someone were to drive up the driveway of the place, they couldn’t make an immediate positive ID of his Honda. He sat there for another half an hour, watching the waves, and then he decided to head back.