by Alex Archer
“Credible witnesses,” Annja said. “There were credible witnesses to Her Snakeship?”
“Her Imperial Snakeship. Oh, yes,” Sully said. “Down at Lake Geneva. A lot of rich folks live there. Lots of summer homes. But back around 1900, there were more common people. A minister by the last name of Clark saw her when he was fishing. It was bright as day. And he said it was a serpent. The newspaper carried the story.” Sully reached behind the counter and pulled out a scrapbook filled with old newspaper articles. He opened it to the one with Reverend Clark. “It says right here that people believed him, man of God and all and not having touched a drop of liquor in his life.”
“Maybe it was a dinosaur,” Rembert whispered. Annja could tell he’d gotten too caught up in all of this.
“Maybe she is,” Sully said.
“Some say she escaped into Lake Michigan,” the old man said. “But we don’t believe it.”
The men frowned as one. Rembert focused in close on the oldest.
“Mishegenabeg.” Sully pronounced the word slowly and with reverence. “That’s the Indian name for her. Their legend says she has antlers and eyes like the moon, big and reflecting.”
The old man straightened, his black eyes boring into Rembert’s camera lens. “But some Indians...Native Americans they call them now...some call the big serpent Anamaqkiu. It means dark spirit.”
“And you don’t believe she’s gone?” Annja stepped closer to Sully, a signal to Rembert to focus on the What-Not owner.
“No, she ain’t gone. I’m not saying there aren’t more serpents in the other lakes. But I’m saying that despite all the claims that she’s moved on, Her Imperial Snakeship or her kin is still in Rock Lake. It’s why I go out on the lake every chance I get. I know someday I’ll see her. Someday I’ll prove to everyone just how real she is.”
“We’re done,” Annja pronounced.
“That’s it?” Sully looked disappointed.
“Just done here,” Rembert said. There was an eagerness to his voice, but Annja couldn’t tell for certain if it was real or politely put on for Sully’s benefit. “I want to get shots at the beach. Annja mentioned some people think there’s a monster skull there. And then I want to get some video of her diving. I think you should close up shop and go out on the boat with us.”
Sully grinned wide. “I’ll go get the air tanks. Do you have a place to get them filled?”
Annja nodded. She’d already looked into that. She gave Rembert a foul expression; she hadn’t planned on taking Sully along.
“Maybe you’ll find Her Imperial Snakeship,” Rembert said when they were out on the street. He walked backward to capture a picture of Sully’s What-Nots growing smaller.
“Maybe I’ll find something else.”
Chapter 27
The pontoon boat bore the name H.I.S. Annja knew it had a double meaning: the boat belonged to Sully, so it was his, but it also stood for Her Imperial Snakeship. H.I.S. listed to its starboard side, even when all three of them stood against the port. Rembert wore a life preserver, a discolored orange one that smelled of fish bait. There were two other life preservers, but they sat unused on a bench, their presence only required for safety regulations. Annja wasn’t sure they’d work anyway. In fact, she was surprised Sully’s boat floated.
The boat had not been manufactured by any professional company. It was hand built out of big metal cans that had at one time been painted baby-blue, plywood that was warped in the center and ringed with garden fence to serve for a railing. The benches were plastic, one new and still having a price sticker on it.
Sully sat in a folding latticework chair and finessed the motor, which was probably worth as much as a decent used compact car. It was a Yamaha F90JA ninety horsepower four-stroke jet drive with four cylinders a twenty-inch-long shaft motor. Annja got a good look at it. It was pristine; it had an electric start, tiller controls, three-blade aluminum propeller and ran on an external gas tank. Overkill for this pontoon boat.
“Just got it. Found it on eBay,” Sully said, seeing her inspect it. “Low hours. Seller said it was used only a few times, had it hooked to a big lifeboat on his cruise ship. It was a steal at four thousand. Couldn’t have touched it new for less than ten.”
Annja wondered if he’d used the money he got from Edgar and Papa to buy it.
“Coffee?”
Annja shook her head. Sully had brewed a pot and poured it into two thermoses—and who knew how much he’d swallowed before that. It was close to noon now, as it had taken some time to go through the dive logs to judge where they needed to go. As the pontoon moved out across the lake, Sully kept one hand on the motor’s rudder controls, the other wrapped around a cup of coffee.
He slugged it down and smiled, put the cup between his knees to hold it and unscrewed the thermos, adding in the contents of his silver flask, sloshing it around and then pouring another cup of “coffee.”
“I’d mainline this if I could, Miss Creed. I was so excited, you coming to do a special on Her Imperial Snakeship, that I couldn’t sleep last night.”
She had no reply to that.
“I’m sure glad your photographer there thought I should come along.”
Annja had no reply to that, either. She’d stopped at the dollar store across the street from the What-Not shop. Rembert waited while she made her purchases: two pairs of shorts, two three-quarter-sleeve T-shirts with Bucky Badger on them—the University of Wisconsin mascot—ties to hold her hair back, another pair of tennis shoes and a plastic slipcase for the dive logs so they wouldn’t get wet. She wore one of the outfits now. It would have to do—Sully had sold his cousin’s wet suit a few months past.
It was cool on the lake, the breeze working in tandem with the motion of the pontoon. Annja let herself enjoy the sensation of the air playing across her skin. She looked toward the bank. Lily pads were in force near the shore, bright white and pink flowers open. A bird swooped low over the tops, probably finding insects to eat. Two fishermen were fly casting at the edge of the pads, the lines whipping back and forth sending droplets of water in passing as the hooks touched down on the surface and rose again, no doubt hoping panfish or bass would mistake them for bugs.
It was in some respects a perfect place, this lake and town, Annja thought. Peaceful, a terrific spot to vacation or set down some roots. She saw Sully’s expression, eyes lit with the pleasure of being in this place at this time. If only she could be here for another reason. Maybe Annja would come back here—or rather to a place like it—to unwind and to absorb something so very far removed from the violence and tragedy that had been dogging her since she’d inherited Joan’s sword.
Rembert had been saying something, but she’d missed it entirely, listening instead to the purr of the Yamaha motor and the slosh of the water against the pontoon’s barrels.
“Annja, I said how many bedrooms does your beach cottage have?”
She blinked. “Two, why?”
“Good, ’cause I checked out of the hotel this morning, and my bag is in the trunk of my rental. I’ll crash with you tonight.”
She didn’t bother hiding her surprise. “Tonight? Rem, we’re going to be done here after you shoot this.” She noticed that he was doing just that, getting video of Sully happily steering the pontoon, then panning to catch the fly fishermen and the lilies before turning the camera off. “You can get a flight back to New York out of Milwaukee if you don’t want to bother with Madison’s airport, and—”
“I’ll go back when you go back,” he said flatly. “Open-ended ticket. Doug always gets me one. I’ll just stick close and film you doing whatever. Do you have a problem with that?”
She started to stay something.
“Already called Doug. He doesn’t have a problem with it.”
“Fine,” Annja said, gripping the pontoon’s raili
ng. Why was Rembert suddenly affixing himself to her like a shadow? Was it just for the money? Or was it something else? “All right, Rem. Just don’t get in my way.”
Sully had emptied his first thermos when the old railroad bridge came into sight, the one Bobby Wolfe had mentioned that the Glacial Drumlin State Trail ran across. In the distance, she saw the tall reeds. Sully cut the engine, took a drink from the second thermos and tried to add more whiskey to it. But the flask was empty. He cursed, stood and stretched. He tossed the anchor line over, then picked up a second, a buoy line, and set it over the side for good measure. “Okay, Miss Creed. Those diving logs you picked through say Joe was working this area, right?”
“Yes.” She and Sully had consulted the logs, and Sully deciphered most of Joe’s handwriting. “We have to be close.”
“Joe always kept good records,” Sully said, “of everything. When we were kids, he kept a diary, even listing all the TV shows we liked and how many cans we shot with our new BB guns.”
Annja looked through two pages in the logs again; on one of them Joe had mentioned finding the gold pieces, a silvery bracelet and an opening on the side of a pyramid. A note in the margin said he might come back to go inside if he got his courage up. “Willies,” he’d written.
There’d been no opening on either of the two mounds she’d explored with Bobby. She remembered that Bobby had told her his first dive for Edgar was in this area. Edgar must have gotten the notion to look here based on talking to Joe. But Bobby or Edgar hadn’t been privy to these dive logs and so were probably looking blindly. It was a big, deep lake, after all.
There were three oxygen tanks in the center of the pontoon boat, each with about a half hour’s worth of air. There was no accompanying bail-out tank, and Annja did not have a waterproof watch, so she would have to rely on her instinct of time passing. She strapped on the tank and checked the gauge and mouthpiece. She’d checked both out earlier—she’d be diving alone and so was being extra careful. With no suit or neoprene boots, she’d have to be satisfied with her outfit and tennis shoes. She might get chilly, but she was made of stern stuff.
Sully had given her an extra boat anchor, which was a bleach bottle filled with concrete. She hooked it to one of the tanks and would take it down with her. Annja knew she wouldn’t want to come up after just a half hour and so would switch out her tanks at the bottom. Then she’d hook the cement-filled bottle to the buoy rope so both could be pulled up, leaving nothing behind but bubbles, she thought.
“I’ll be gone an hour,” she announced.
“I brought a paperback,” Rembert said. She’d seen him buy it in the dollar store, a Western.
“We’ll be back in a half hour or so,” Sully said, leaving the buoy rope but starting to pull up the anchor.
“What?” Rembert and Annja said simultaneously.
Sully gestured to the port side. “There’s a little tavern over there with a dock. I didn’t bring me a coffee can to piss in and I’ve gotta go bad. I could just hang—”
“No, you don’t,” Annja warned.
“I know. I know. I respect the lake...even though fish pee in it.” Sully grinned. “So I’m gonna take me over there to the tavern and get us a couple of sandwiches.”
It wasn’t to use the tavern’s restroom, Annja realized; it was to refill his whiskey flask. Sully had a serious drinking problem.
“I’m hungry.” Rembert brightened at the prospect of sandwiches. “You want us to bring you back something, Annja?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Something filling.”
“She eats a lot,” Rembert told Sully.
Sully let out a wolf whistle. “Not too much, she doesn’t. Not with that body.”
“Don’t let him drink too much, Rem. I need you guys back here. Him reasonably sober.” Annja dropped over the side, the weighted second tank helping to propel her to the bottom. She listened to the pontoon boat motor start again, the sound musical and disturbing as it cut through the water.
She was actually glad that they’d left. For a while it would be only her, the fish and whatever mysteries Rock Lake was trying to hold on to.
Chapter 28
The soreness in her leg all but vanished as she dropped deeper and put on Joe’s high-powered waterproof flashlight. Sully hadn’t yet managed to sell it.
It was seventy feet deep here, according to the laminated map Bobby Wolfe had let her keep and the length of marked rope that had played out when Sully dropped the buoy. One of the grease-pencil circles, indicating where Bobby first dived for Edgar, was in the vicinity of this spot but about sixty yards closer to the railroad bridge.
Again Annja felt as if she’d slipped into an alien realm, a delightful, magical one filled with varieties of fish she couldn’t put names to. She was more familiar with ocean species, which were more colorful, but she recognized a bass and a trio of sunfish. At the edge of her beam, a big turtle swam lazily toward the surface. She estimated her vision, with the beam, was about fifteen feet. Much better than her dive yesterday.
The water at the surface had been pleasant, probably in the mid-seventies. Now down about twenty feet—she could tell by the mark on the buoy line—it was getting cooler. A wet suit would have helped. After Annja had become a certified diver, she’d taken an advanced program for deep diving and cold temperatures. She well knew what she was doing and recognized that she was taking a few risks—no suit, no dive buddy, no bail-out tank. Some stupid risks.
But she remembered something a nurse once told her. The nurse had worked in a senior citizens center, where she often heard people say they wished they’d taken more risks.
Annja brought that conversation to mind whenever she was going beyond the realm of common sense.
Visibility improved after another twenty feet. The plant growth was sparse here, not thick like the reeds toward the railroad bridge or the colorful lily pads along the shore. The fish were numerous, however; a small school of minnows shot out of the murk straight at her, looking like pieces of quicksilver in the beam of her light. A second later she saw what had spooked them, a large thick-bellied fish, much bigger than she’d seen yesterday. Not a bass. A walleye? It stopped its pursuit of a meal to regard her. Annja held to the rope and stopped her descent, enjoying the moment. Its gills worked slowly and it turned ever so slightly, its eye holding hers.
A handsome creature, she thought, hoping no one would hook this one; it must have some age to it. After a few more moments, it swam away, and she continued her course.
At sixty feet, Annja directed her light straight below and saw the reason for the lack of vegetation. The lake bed about a dozen feet below was a mix of sand and mostly small rocks, helping visibility but cutting the silt and providing nothing for the plants to root in. Near the buoy rope was a massive boulder, at least five feet high and twice that across. It was covered with zebra mussels and moss. Annja’s feet touched gently on the floor and she rested the extra tank next to the rock, not touching it, finding the mussel and moss patterns artful. Leave nothing but bubbles.
She guessed she’d spent five to ten minutes coming down, as she’d allowed herself to be distracted by the big fish. No more diversions, she admonished. She didn’t have enough tanks to allow for that. Using the boulder as a marker, she glided to the south and intended to go for about ten minutes before spiraling back and switching out tanks.
Annja clamped her teeth tight to the mouthpiece. It was cold here, maybe fifty degrees. A dry suit would perhaps be even more appropriate. But she was healthy, and she would not be down a terribly long while. What would it be like diving this lake in the winter, when visibility was at its best? she wondered, shivering.
She slipped past a field of rocks that ranged from the size of a football to a beach ball. None were worked, like the ones near the mounds, and she saw no signs of them serving as tools. They were just
...rocks. Farther and she found a car bumper encrusted with various growths, a mud puppy stretched out on it. Farther still and she came across an old wooden boat, a ten to twelve footer that had sunk maybe four or five decades ago, judging by the degree of decay; it had the look of being from the 1960s, when all-wood boats were popular and appreciated. The depth and the cold were helping to keep it from disintegrating. Annja moved slowly around it, seeing a split in the hull and noting that a school of small perch were making a home of the center section. The boat had probably lost an argument with another boat. Its motor had gone down with it, the propeller bent from hitting the rocks at the bottom, zebra mussels covering most of it. She smiled; Sully would say Her Imperial Snakeship had pulled it down.
Another several yards and she swung to her left, what would be east if she’d managed to keep her bearings. She was starting her circle back to the boulder where the other tank was. More rocks, a traffic sign of some sort that an unthinking person had tossed in—a stop sign by the shape of it. She drifted past it and went another few yards when she nearly floated over a rent in the lake bed. She stopped and planted her feet, carefully knelt and aimed the light down. It was a crevasse, one that she was positive wasn’t marked on the laminated map. Visibility was good here, and she was seeing thirty to forty feet with the light. But she couldn’t see the bottom of the crevasse. The sides were a mix of smooth and jagged rocks, and the gap was only about ten feet across at its widest point and about twice that in length—easy to miss by anyone trying to map the lake even with equipment. She remembered the notes in Joe’s dive book about “Bob the Boulder,” which she took to be the very big rock, about the wrecked water-ski boat, followed by “Her Snakeship’s Maw.” She’d thought the last comment was a joke in reference to Sully’s obsession. But now she thought it was in reference to this rent in the bottom of the lake.