Beneath Still Waters

by Matthew Costello

  soon be keeping him perky enough.

  And he remembered the look of the parents. Lost. Sick.

  Yuppies up for a week of skiing. It was their only kid, a lit-

  tle boy.

  “Boys do like to explore,” the local sheriff had told

  them. (All heart, the fat bastard.)

  Only this kid had wandered down to the December lake

  ice (funny, it sure looked solid) and even got pretty far out,

  slipping and sliding, enjoying the fun, the ice, even the too

  warm glow of the sun on his face.

  Bunches of people saw him vanish. A few even tried to

  get out there to pick him up. But with the cracking ice, it

  was clearly too late before things were properly organized.

  They wanted to pay him to dive for the body. (Schneider-

  man, who had a dive shop down near Saratoga, would have

  taken the money. A job’s a job.) But Dan said sure, actually

  sneered at the sheriff who had mentioned cash.

  So he had a few toots, and with everyone on shore

  watching—and not one of them envying him—he dived in.

  The radio had been Dan’s idea. Part of a test, but also, ice

  could be funny. Guidelines get snagged. Divers trapped.

  He didn’t want to take any chances.

  Over the side—resisting the temptation to make the

  normal Sea Hunt banter (the parents were standing right there beside the radio, for chrissake). Over the side, right

  through the hole that gobbled the little boy.

  I’m coming.

  Just a tad late, son.

  The lights made the icy roof above glisten with a dull

  bluish glow. And it’s there that the body would be, most

  likely pressed flush against the ice, waiting for spring.

  He saw it almost immediately. And he cried.

  So small, my God, so damn small, all snug in its sleeve-

  less parka and L. L. Bean mini-boots.

  108

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  “I . . . I’ve got him,” he had said.

  Then, knowing they were listening, “I’ve got your boy.”

  He reached up, thankful that this wasn’t to be any long

  night of searching, and thankful that he wore gloves.

  He grabbed him gently—the body floated downward so

  easily—and cradled him lifesaver-style under his arm as he

  followed his guide rope back to the hole.

  “I’m heading back,” he said.

  He came out of the hole first, grabbing the support

  plank that crisscrossed the surrounding ice like enormous

  wooden snowshoes, distributing his weight. Then he pulled

  out the boy, lifting him, heavy now in the air.

  He carried him back to his parents.

  A week later he left the Lake George area.

  He knew he’d never dive there again.

  “We’re all set, Dan. . . . You okay?”

  He smiled. What did that little mental trip take? he

  thought. A second? Two . . . three? More than enough time

  to bring it all on home.

  “All set,” he said into the condenser mike.

  “Move north once you’re down,” Russo said. “Away

  from the damn building, or whatever it is.”

  “Right, Chief,” Ed said. “Let’s get going.”

  The divers flipped backward, like funny targets at a car-

  nival being knocked down.

  And for now Dan was glad he was just sitting on the

  boat.

  N I N E

  “Jeez, it’s cold,” Tom said, letting his body just float for a

  minute, getting his bearing.

  “A mountain-fed lake, Tommyrot,” his partner said, the

  voice amazingly clear in Tom’s ear.

  “It’s a long way from Battery Park.”

  “Head due north about ten yards.” Dan’s voice sounded

  more distant. But it was certainly better having him direct-

  ing them than Russo, who tended to bark in their ears.

  Ed was already kicking away, and Tom followed, his

  light trailing downward.

  At first all he could see was a murky blackness. It

  seemed to gobble up all the glow of the waterproof tung-

  sten lamp. Then, peering through the snow of tiny bits of

  suspended algae, he made out something solid.

  It was dark and flat.

  “A roof,” he said aloud.

  Just about the strangest thing he’d ever seen on a dive.

  But Ed was already past it.

  “Jack says you can head down now, guys,” Dan told

  them.

  110

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  “Right.”

  Down. Street level coming up. It looked like Noah’s

  flood, take two. Only this time nobody gets out alive.

  He kicked back, guiding his body right over the edge

  and then straight down. His light picked up the front of the

  building.

  It was a movie theater. Unfuckin’ real. He made out the

  letters. The Glenwood.

  There were even some letters on the marquee. An F, a

  D, and a few vowels hanging off cockeyed. Did someone

  forget to take them down?

  (And he imagined an audience inside, some waterlogged

  collection of stiffs munching on buckets of buttered algae

  watching—what? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Jaws?

  And were the seats left behind in the theater, the red vel-

  vety cushions worn almost white by years of squirming

  fannies, now all bloated with water?)

  He nearly crashed into the street.

  “Watch it!” Ed yelled at him. “What the hell is wrong

  with you?”

  He kicked around, curling, prawnlike, and faced Ed.

  “Sorry. I was checking out what was playing. I’ve got a

  heavy date later—”

  “Cut the chatter—” It was Russo, obviously taking the

  microphone away from Dan. “You’re on Main Street. Try

  going south, down the block . . . see if the body could have gotten . . . caught up on something. Then I’ll guide you

  down one of the open side streets.”

  “Jack, you see something on the sonar screen?” Ed

  asked.

  “Nothing free and moving . . . just the outline of the

  buildings.”

  Ed leveled out, splaying his light in front of him, wav-

  ing it back and forth.

  Tom followed his example. But the last thing he was

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  111

  looking for was a body. No, it was too strange down here

  to look for anything as mundane as a body.

  The Gill-Man maybe. But not just a corpse.

  Most of the shops were still there. Many of the large

  glass windows were intact, while fish swam in and out of

  the broken ones . . . little schools of pumpkin seeds check-

  ing out Donnelly’s Hardware, zipping into the Rexall Phar-

  macy for an egg cream.

  “Too weird,” he said. “Too freakin’ weird.”

  He wasn’t looking where he was going. He hit some-

  thing, crashing headfirst, and he brought his hand quickly

  up to check that his faceplate was okay.

  “You okay, Flaherty?” Russo called down.

  “Sure.” His gloved fingers checked the seal of his mask,

  while he strained to look down into the bottom, inside the

  mask, checking for the telltale sign of leakage. “Just hit a

&nb
sp; street sign.”

  “Asshole,” Ed commented.

  “We’re live, guys,” Dan reminded them.

  Tom looked up to the sign. Main Street. And he thought

  of the guy who must have put the sign up. Little did he

  know that what he was putting up would become some

  kind of underwater signpost.

  He hoped the body showed up soon.

  Real soon.

  He passed a foundation, an open basement filled with

  years of debris, dead leaves, bits of wood, decades of flot-

  sam and jetsam from hurricanes and garbage chucked out

  of cars.

  Whoever owned this particular building obviously took

  it with them. It looked just like some giant extraction.

  Yeah, the buildings were all teeth—squat molars and pointy

  canines, and this one had been yanked away.

  He was glad when Ed swam over to check out the

  garbage at the bottom. Better him than me. . . .

  112

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  “Nothing here. Just a lot of—”

  Ed paused. Tom waited a minute for him to finish his

  sentence. And when it didn’t happen, he knew he’d have to

  swim over and take a look too—

  (And maybe even get down and dig through all the

  decaying shit.)

  Ed was there, his hand gingerly picking through the

  layers.

  “What is it?” Tom asked, sounding almost annoyed.

  “Dunno. Saw something. Like . . . yeah, there it is.”

  He reached over and pulled something out of the muck.

  For one horrible moment Tom didn’t know what it was.

  It could have been anything. Anything.

  But then the water-bloated shape came into view. It was

  pretty well chewed through to the bone, but amazingly

  enough, the head was pretty intact. Intact, that is, except for

  the eyes.

  “A delicacy for some fish, no doubt.”

  “Some mother rat, eh?” Ed said, suspending the carcass

  in the water, looking like a dumb-ass big-game fisherman.

  “Got anything, fellows?” Dan’s voice crackled in his

  ear, picking up a bit of static now.

  “No. Just an old rat.”

  Sure. Just an old—

  “I’ve got a block for you to head down.” It was Russo

  again.

  “We’re all ears, Jack.”

  “About fifty feet ahead of you, on the left, there’s a small

  street . . . Scott Street, if you bump into another sign. It will bring you close to the shore, and you can work your way out

  from there scanning the tops of the houses, backyards—”

  “Great, and maybe, if we’re really lucky, we’ll get to go

  into some of the buildings. Won’t that be fun.”

  “I see it,” Ed said.

  Tom lost track of his partner and quickly kicked ahead,

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  113

  swimming hard, his light just barely picking up Ed, already

  kicking his way down the small side street.

  “Wait up, Cisco,” Tom said.

  And sure enough, there was a sign, cantilevered at a

  sick-looking forty-five-degree angle.

  Scott Street.

  Nice kind of block, Tom thought. Right out of Our Town.

  Just the perfect, small-town kind of block. One he wouldn’t

  mind moving to, if it wasn’t under water. He turned the cor-

  ner, kicking past Smiler’s newsstand and down the street.

  “Who’s that?” Wiley asked Paddy Rogers.

  The police chief shrugged. “Some writer. Barged in

  here with Susan Sloan and talked his way on. The divers

  said they could use another hand.”

  Wiley could see him crouched by the radio. The boat

  looked stranded in the dark lake, surrounded by the hills

  and water. It might be the middle of summer, but Wiley

  was feeling chilly.

  “No luck yet?”

  “Nothing. They’re starting to come closer to shore now,

  near the spot where Tommy Fluhr went down.”

  Wiley put an arm on the chief ’s shoulder. And while the

  old bastard didn’t recoil, Wiley felt him tense under his blue

  jacket. Small-town cop, he thought. Just a local redneck who

  doesn’t realize that things are different now. There are no

  communities anymore—not in the ’burbs. People sleep and

  fuck there, that’s all. And send their kids to yuppie camps in

  Vermont. And if all the paid officials do their bit to keep

  things nice and quiet and friendly, then everything will be

  fine.

  “You know, Paddy, they’re setting up for the celebration

  tomorrow. Putting together a platform for speakers, ban-

  ners, you name it.”

  114

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  He looked right at Rogers, who kept his eyes on the

  boat. “I hope this is all taken care of real soon.”

  “Soon as possible, Mr. Mayor,” Rogers said. He cleared

  his throat and then hawked a great gob to his left.

  The old fart.

  He turned away from Wiley. “Just as soon as we come

  up with the body.”

  Claire got up. Not that she wanted to. She would have liked

  to stay in bed . . . let the dream fade and maybe fall back to sleep, listening, listening for the sound of her mother’s car.

  But she had to pee, and it was nagging at her, forcing her to

  get out of the bed. And her mouth felt dry, like she couldn’t

  get her tongue wet no matter how much she tried to swirl

  around the inside of her mouth.

  So she got up, crawled out of her bed, pushing aside her

  purple poppet that didn’t seem to have the friendly, smiley

  expression it wore in the daytime.

  It looked scared, worried.

  She walked.

  Fighting back the fear. Kid stuff, she thought. Baby

  stuff. Nightmares and being scared of the dark. It was all

  so stupid.

  The more she tried to tell herself that, though, the more

  difficult it became to pad into the bathroom, past dark,

  empty rooms, down a bleak hallway—the light switch at

  the other end.

  “Hello,” she said, passing first the living room, then her

  mother’s bedroom. Monsters have to be polite . . . it’s a

  rule. Before they jump out and eat you, they’ve got to say

  hi back.

  Then they rip you to tiny pieces.

  But she kept moving, feeling better when the too bright

  light of the bathroom was finally on. And, of course, there

  was someone else there, looking right back at her.

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  115

  In the mirror. A young girl. Just like her. Same eyes,

  same hair, even the same nightgown.

  Something was different, though, as she studied her

  image in the water-spotted glass of the mirror.

  For a minute she didn’t know what it was.

  Then it was clear.

  The girl in the mirror looked alone, lost, and so, so

  scared.

  She needed help, that girl did.

  Someone who believed in dreams.

  Claire touched the glass, hand to hand, wishing that it

  was already next week and that she was already away at her

  grandmother’s.

  Away from this plac
e—and her nightmares.

  Dan looked out at Susan. She was standing in a small

  group by the edge of the water, near the police chief and

  some other people who all stood with their arms folded,

  studying the small boat.

  Damn peculiar. Like some kind of strange wake, only

  everyone has to wait for the body to show up. And just as

  soon as the corpus delicti appears, everyone can go home,

  crawl into bed, and go to sleep with the damp chill of the

  lake in their bones.

  Susan looked cold, standing stock-still, arms folded,

  watching the boat just bob around.

  They had a radio receiver on the shore so they would get

  the same blow-by-blow of the dive. But so far it had been

  pretty much like watching radio. Not a lot to be seen or

  heard.

  And he wondered whether he should have told her. About

  his meeting with Reverend Winston. About Billy Leeper.

  (Didn’t want to scare her off? Now did he? She was be-

  ing pretty tolerant of him as it was. Damn tolerant. If he

  told her what he really suspected, really thought—)

  116

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  No, there’d be time for that later.

  He gave her a wave, a dopey gesture spurred by his

  guilt, no doubt. She waved back.

  Unaware that there might be more going on here than a

  drowning and a dam built for no good reason.

  The radio crackled, and Tom’s voice came out of the

  small speaker: “Where to now. Dan? I’m afraid we haven’t

  a clue where we are.”

  He picked up the microphone.

  It looked like a backyard.

  Sure, that’s what it was. Somebody’s backyard. There

  were even the remains of a tree stump. Maybe it had been

  an old maple or something, chopped down for firewood

  before the water came.

  Only Tom could see that the stump looked all strange,

  puffy, like some kind of a great underwater fungus, bloated,

  about to release millions of spores.

  He looked left. The back door of the house was still there,

  complete with a battered screen. Might have been banged

  shut a thousand times in the summer. Now it was closed up

  tight. No robbers coming down this way.

  “Dan . . .” Tom said into his microphone. “Can you get

  Jack to tell us which way to go? We can barely see ten feet

  down here.”

  Tom swung his light around to catch his partner, sus-

  pended in the gloom. And for a moment Tom wished he

  could swim back to the door, yeah, open it and go inside the

  house.