by Chris Raven
The Lake Crimes I
A ghost tale
Chris Raven
Copyright 2017 Chris Raven
Title: The Lake Crimes I: A ghost tale
Author: Chris Raven
Illustrations: Chris Raven (possessed by the spirit of a twelve-year-old girl)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Chris-Raven-104291381008609/
Email: [email protected]
Copyright of this edition: © 2017 Chris Raven
Date of publication: July 3, 2017
Any form of reproduction, distribution, public communication or transformation of this work can only be carried out with the authorization of its owners, except as provided by law.
You, always you, even if you don’t want to.
How am I not going to dedicate all my stories to you if you have filled mine with light?
Index
Swanton, August 2001
I
II
III
IV
V
Burlington, July 2016
I
II
The Lake Crimes By Anne Austen
III
IV
V
VI
Swanton, August 2001
I
Anne Austen was my first love. In fact, we didn’t do things that people in love do. At twelve years old, one doesn’t do those things. We were restrained to take walks down the street, to talk about nonsense and linger around her father’s store. Mr. Austen had an imported-goods grocery store on First Street and, for a couple of kids like us, that place was kind of a Disney World.
One of the qualities that fascinated me most about Anne was her proverbial ability to find chocolate. She didn’t have to search or open boxes until she found it. She was stood still in the middle of the storeroom, with her eyes closed, like a hunter sniffing a prey. When she opened her eyes, she was heading towards one of the innumerable stacked boxes, she opened it and showed me her treasure: tablets and tablets of chocolate. Now I suspect she knew where to look, that the boxes were marked in some way, but, at that time, it seemed like magic to me. Sitting in some dark corner of that store, with our dark brown stained lips, laughing about our jokes and talking about our dreams, I thought I could never love someone as much as I loved her.
Anne said she would live to write, that she wore it on her last name. I always suspected that she had nothing to do with the famous writer. After all, my last name is Armstrong and the closest thing I have to an Astronaut as a family member is a geek cousin who has been able to build his own computer. However, I wasn’t going to tell her. I just nodded and smiled, with chocolate-stained teeth, believing her success stories and that we would live together in a cabin in the woods. She would write, and I would spend my time fishing and walking with our five dogs. In those moments, that looked like the perfect life. Nowadays, I still think so.
The last time we were together, we spent the afternoon in the garage of her house. It was a hot August day, of those in which the air is thick, dry and hot. Her garage, with the door up, was fresh, so we had grabbed a couple of cans of Coke and we had sat in the front seats of her father’s car, a beautiful 67 Chevrolet Impala, to listen to the radio. We liked to sit there without his permission, dreaming of going out on the road looking for adventure.
That afternoon Anne turned to me with bright eyes, she left her soda can on the dashboard and put a hand in the front pocket of her short jeans.
“Would you like to go for a ride?”
“Sure.”
I had answered without a second thought, without considering that the question could go seriously. We had not yet abandoned completely the time in which the world of imagination is still alive, in which one can play to set a fort in the middle of one’s room or to be a hardened explorer among the trees of the park. I wasn’t expecting her to take the keys out of her pocket, nor to put them into the ignition switch and spin them. I merely gazed at her with her mouth open, listening as the engine roared.
The car was put in motion without me having been able to react. I remained silent, but it was not only out of fear. For a moment, it seemed to me that her hair waved through the wind because of the speed. I thought there could be nothing in the world prettier than her smile and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. During those seconds, I thought we would make it, that she’d be able to line up the car down the road, gaining more and more speed. I thought that we would leave Swanton and Vermont behind, that maybe we could take the Route 66 and tour the country and get to Los Angeles, as we had imagined together so many times. I could almost see us parking the car by the beach. The sun would shine high in the sky and the ride would be full of blonde girls skating, but I wouldn’t even look at them. I would hold hands with Anne and we would run by the sand to the sea.
We didn’t get that far. The car slid up to the sidewalk, it crossed the two road lanes and crashed against Mrs. Jones’s mailbox. That was the end of our adventure and, even if I didn’t know it, the end of our relationship. Anne was grounded all summer and was forbidden to see me again. I guess that, like all parents, hers refused to believe that such a crazy idea could have come out of their beloved daughter’s head. They thought it was all my fault and that I was a bad influence on her.
Three days after her confinement, Anne sent me a love letter through her friend Meg. She told me she missed me and asked me to wait for her. She reminded me of our dreams, she talked about the cabin in the woods, the walks with the dogs, the novels she would write... Her letter moved me. I think at the time, even if she was just a kid, she loved me. I still keep her letter and, very occasionally, I take it out of its yellowish envelope and I smile as I read it. At that moment, I promised to wait for her as long as she needed and help her as much as possible so that she could fulfill those dreams.
However, Anne could not fulfill those girlish dreams. She couldn’t even try it. The murders in the lake began that same week and she was the first victim.
II
I heard about her disappearance on Monday at noon. I had gone out with my bike, the one that I received last Christmas, to take a ride around the village. I was very proud of my bike. It was huge and red and, even if I had never tested it, I was sure it was the fastest in the county.
I liked to go for a ride aimlessly, without any target, just for the pleasure of feeling the muscles in my legs burning when climbing those slopes and the feeling of speed and freedom to ride them down. It was like so until half-morning because what better thing can be done on an August day when you are twelve years old and there is an eternal summer ahead, when September is only a very distant cloud on the horizon?
At noon I was already bored and started to feel hungry, but before going home I decided to go through the Marble Mill Park. I hadn’t settled an appointment with any of my friends, but I was sure I could find them sitting near the river or playing basketball. The night before I had got a baseball card that I knew Jim had been looking for several weeks and I wanted to find out what he would offer for it. I could almost see the face he would make when I showed it to him, without even letting him touch it. I was sure I could get at least five of his best-repeated cards in exchange for that marvel.
I went into the park still riding my bike, winding down the white roads while I was looking for them. I found them near the river, sitting on the ground next to other village boys. A couple of them threw stones in the water, trying to make them bounce.
“Hi, Jim,” I called as I got off the bike and left it lying on the floor, next to the others’. “You can’t imagine what I’ve got in my pocket.”
All conversations were instantly extinguished. They turned to me and looked at me. They were so pale and serious that they frightened me. I s
tood a few paces away, waiting to be greeted. Many of them lowered their eyes to the ground, others whispered. Jim received a couple of shoves and nudges that forced him to advance a couple of steps to be the “volunteer” to talk to me.
“What’s the matter?”
“Didn’t you hear about Anne?”
Jim was dodging my gaze. His head was low, and his eyes were fixed on his shoes’ shoelaces. In the pallidity of his face, the freckles highlighted as the most serious case of measles in history. I sighed relieved and slapped him in the arm to reassure him.
“Her punishment? Sure, I know it days ago. I went with her in the car when she crushed against Mrs. Jones’s mailbox.”As they all continued without speaking, I directed a wide smile to reassure them. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’m sure her father’s anger will pass in a few days...”
“It’s not that, Eric,” Jim stopped me. “She’s gone. Her parents have been looking for her since yesterday morning. You know something?”
I was frozen, paralyzed, not knowing what to say. What did he mean, Anne was gone? That was impossible. Anne was that type of girl to whom nothing bad could happen, simply because it would not be fair, because God could have no choice but to fill a being like her with blessings. It had to be a mistake. Convinced by that idea, I managed to regain control of my body and deny it with my head. The other boys had approached and, once the ice was broken, they all seemed anxious to give me new data.
“Last time she was seen, she was at church...”
“Yes, it is said she was sent home alone while the rest of her family was going to eat...”
“They all went to Pam’s pizza shop. My aunt saw them, but Anne was not there...”
“Of course, as she was grounded, she wasnt allowed to go.”
“Mrs. Robins says she saw her crying over Canada Street and that she’s probably run away...”
“Mrs. Robins is only talking nonsense. My cousin Carl saw her near Cody’s coffee and she wasn’t crying or anything...”
All of that was not helping me at all. Every data was fuel for the fear that was overrunning in me and that threatened to paralyze my heart and my lungs. What they were saying was meaningless. They couldn’t be talking about Anne.
I didn’t listen to them anymore. I turned around, climbed on my bike and started pedaling as fast as I could. Behind my back, they yammered at me and asked where I was going and if I knew something, but I didn’t turn back. All the way to her home I felt like I was floating inside a black cloud. My thoughts had turned dark and heavy and something in my chest, ―that something that seemed to flutter when Anne was near―, had died frozen. Although at first, I had categorically denied it, I was beginning to fear that something bad had happened to her. I had to get to her home as soon as possible.
The front garden of Anne’s house was crowded: two police cars, a local newspaper van and dozens of curious neighbors. I left the bike lying under a tree and headed for the front door with a decided step. Some neighbors recognized me. Since our accident with the Chevrolet, I had become very popular in the neighborhood. I heard several voices that identified me as “The girl’s boyfriend” and even came to perceive some “poor boy” pronounced between whispers. I wanted to stop, turn around and shout that there was nothing to pity me for, that everything was a mistake and that Anne would return safely. Yes, I would have loved to shout all that, but I did not because I did not know if I could pronounce those words with enough conviction.
A policeman stopped me at the very door of the house, putting his huge hand on my shoulder to prevent me from coming in. I stood still, not knowing what to tell him, so he would allow me to pass. Fortunately, the door opened, and Mr. Austen grabbed me by the arm and took me inside. It seemed strange that he let me come in without further explanation. I would have bet all my money that, since the incident with his car, he would have no desire to invite me to his house.
I tried to smile to thank him for letting me in and to ask him what he knew about Anne, but he didn’t give me an option to open my mouth. Mr. Austen took me in, suspended in midair through his hall, crowded with policemen, until he placed me right in front of a very tall man with a back as wide as half a county. I looked at the man from below, but the only thing I could perceive was his huge belly and a thick mustache full of gray hair.
“Inspector Dunning, this is the boy we talked about,” Anne’s father introduced me. “I’m sure he knows where my daughter might be.”
They sat me in the kitchen and started questioning me. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared at first. I did not know what they wanted from me, why they asked me over and over again the same questions, why they did not tell me anything about Anne... Inspector Dunning wouldn’t even let me ask him anything. It was he who asked and asked and none of my answers seemed to satisfy him, because he started again, in a circle that I thought would never end.
I don’t know how much time we spent there, although I guess it was a lot. Through the window, I could see the sun’s path in the sky. The shade of the maple that adorned the Austen’s garden was moving until the kitchen was darkened.
“Eric, are you listening to me?”
I looked away from the window and set my eyes on Inspector Dunning’s huge mustache. I didn’t know what the last thing he had asked me was. I looked down and nailed my eyes on the table, feeling that I was blushing. I think I had reached a point where I was so tired that I had disconnected and had been answering with the autopilot. When I looked up, the Inspector drilled me with his little eyes of a rabid badger, making me lower my head again, ashamed. On the table, I discovered a glass of cocoa and a couple of biscuits with almonds. I guess, at some point, someone had pity me. I was sorry I didn’t notice who, to thank him.
“Eric, I know you must be tired, but this is important. Did Anne do or say anything that might make you think she was going to run away from home?”
“I have already said no,” I answered for the umpteenth time. “I had not spoken to her since Thursday, since her father grounded her.”
“And did she not contact you in any way to tell you that she was leaving?”
For a few seconds, I thought of the letter she had sent me through Meg. I didn’t want to tell the inspector about that letter. It was an intimate, personal letter: My first love letter. I didn’t intend to give it to him so that he would put it in a bag of evidence that would end up lost forever in some huge warehouse, as it happened to the Ark of the Alliance in that Indiana Jones movie. Besides, I was sure that handing them the letter would not help at all to find Anne.
“Eric, what are you thinking?” The inspector bowed to me and squinted his little eyes trying to intimidate me with his gaze. “You’re not hiding something from me, are you? If you know where Anne is hiding, you must tell me. If you don’t, you’re putting her in danger.”
His words made me feel furious. It wasn’t fair to try to blame me because they were not able to find her. I didn’t know anything that could help them. If I had known, I would already have told them. While they held me there, asking me stupid questions, they were wasting precious time to look for her. I would have liked to yell at him all that, but I was just a kid, and kids don’t yell at police inspectors.
“I am not hiding anything,” I answered at last, with a thread of voice, “but I am sure that Anne has not escaped, nor she is hiding.”
“And how do you know that?”
“For she would not have left without telling me,” I looked up from the kitchen table, feeling suddenly more courageous and determined, “and, if she had said so, you should now be looking for two missing persons, because I would have gone with her.”
I managed to pronounce those words with my head high, feeling proud. I knew that Dunning could not understand, that for him we were only two flirting kids, but I had the firm conviction that what I had just said was true. I would have never gone without Anne and she would have never run away without me. It was not an opinion or a belief. For me, it was as tru
e and immutable as if it had been engraved in stone by God himself.
The inspector shook his head and uttered a resigned sigh. He put his hands on his knees and, releasing a grunt of effort, he managed to lift his imposing body from the chair and stood up.
“I hope you’re not right,” he gave me a slight slap on the back. “It’s okay, Eric. You can go home.”
“You’ll find her, won’t you?”
“Sure, don’t worry and go home. Your parents will be wondering where you are.”
I left the kitchen almost running. When opening the street door, the conversations of the gossipmongers waiting outside got intensified. The journalists shot their cameras a few times while asking the neighbors who I was. I heard them calling me, thirsting for news of what was going on inside. I didn’t turn, I didn’t even raise my head. I ran to my bike, climbed on it and started pedaling like a madman heading home.
When I turned at Tremore Street’s corner and left that crowd behind, I allowed the tears to fall out of control. At that time, I would not have been able to explain what I felt. It was a new emotion, the most painful thing I had ever experienced. It felt as if a horrible serpent had settled inside me and was devouring everything in its path: my internal organs, my hopes, my dreams of a future with Anne... It even seemed to be consuming the oxygen I needed to breathe. I tried to put air in my lungs, but my throat had the thickness of a silk thread. That was the first time I experienced a panic attack, a feeling that has been my most faithful companion throughout my life.
They didn’t expect to find her alive. I’d seen it in Inspector Dunning’s eyes.
III
Three days later the funeral was held. Anne’s body appeared the same day I was at her house talking to Inspector Dunning. A fisherman brought the bad news that evening, when his pole was entangled with her body, resting at the bottom of Lake Champlain. She wore the same clothes with which she had disappeared: short jeans and a gray T-shirt of the Vermont Lake Monster. Her shoes were gone. They were never found.