Lake of Darkness

by Scott Kenemore

  “Ursula!” Flip cried, staggering backward and turning in a slow circle. “Ursula!?”

  There was nothing.

  Flip shone the light frantically at the broken furniture around him. He looked for any place where the witch might hide. He pulled and shook sheets until dust billowed up. (It was so dusty, he thought. So dusty. She could not have moved in so dusty a place without leaving a trail, surely. Yet the furniture and machine parts around him appeared unmolested.)

  Then Flip looked back at the table. The seer’s crystal ball had suddenly changed into a grimy fishbowl. Several dead fish floated at the top the murky water.

  Yet his thousand dollars remained.

  Flip looked down at the money for a long time. He shined the flashlight at the greenbacks, waiting for them to transform also. When they did not, he picked them up and put them back inside his coat.

  Then Flip saw the fine paper lanterns flanking the rug had changed to crooked, hand-dipped candles. Half of them had burned out, and the other half were about to. All were slightly asymmetrical. The imported rug they framed had been replaced by a painter’s stained dropcloth.

  Flip followed the candles back to the door and let himself out.

  He extinguished the flashlight and breathed in the warm night air. He half expected the city beyond to have changed as well. For the Palmerton, South State Street, and the city of Chicago itself to have transmogrified into some other, lesser versions of themselves. Yet the summer night seemed real as ever. The back of the Palmerton rose high and firm and elegant as it always had. The buildings in the distance looked hale and strong and real.

  Flip walked back around to the front.

  Two gentlemen in ten-gallon hats were hitching up horses and laughing. A parked motorcar stood a few spaces off. Sally was nowhere to be seen, but Flip noticed the one-eyed courtesan relaxing on the balcony. The emerald set into her eye patch gleamed brightly in the streetlight, as her good eye watched the cowboys.

  SEVENTEEN

  The night was cool. It smelled, properly now, like autumn—even beyond the strong scents of the perfumed people, the fragrant salty food, and the pungent circus animals. The evening wind carried some hint of hoarfrost down from Canada that threatened to spread across the city. It was the first raiding party of chill and cold. Most men would not adjust themselves more than to cross their arms absent-mindedly. Women, however, seemed to have less compunction, and readily reached for shawls or blankets.

  Flip waited stock-still in the darkness beside the circus tent. He had positioned himself so as to be utterly invisible to any casual passerby. Only paces away, circus-goers filed in, hoping the late show was not yet sold out; Singer-cum-Singling was running two each night during this particular homestand. And no one in the flowing throng noticed the tall, dark man waiting in the tangle of wagons beside the entrance. Even the circus employees—who often stepped within five feet of him—did not sense Flip’s presence.

  Flip was not looking at the circus patrons. His eyes were watching the darkness at the edge of the brownfield, carefully searching the treeline. Having performed this task over the past ten evenings, Flip had already developed some acumen for knowing how best to squint and shade his eyes in order to plumb the variations in the darkened strip of land that was his focus. Yet there were many other factors at play which he could not control. Flickers of light from the raw torches behind him often blurred his vision for frustrating instants. Then there was the interplay of the very atmosphere itself. The twinkle of stars and light of the moon. It played games with his eyes as he attempted to probe the subtle nuances of grey and black along the trees. To study the leafy folds where a man might hide.

  On this night, the moon rose full and wild and awesome above the city. The metropolis’s electrified grid could do nothing to diminish it. The moon’s cratered face looked upon the circus and cast its magic. Spells rained down. Flip sucked them in the way he sucked in the Canadian air and the miasma of human and animal and food and shit smells all around him. He was thankful for the moonlight. He was counting on it.

  And it was then, on that bright night in September, that he saw the man once more.

  The figure hesitating at the edge of the field—near to the where the caravans were kept, and where roustabouts like Ike would be sleeping soon—wore nothing on his head. It was easy to see then, when he turned to the side, that something was missing from just above his temple.

  Nash kept nearly motionless as he spied upon the circus. It made Flip think of a mannequin being slowly rotated at its base. The figure stayed stiff, with only small rotations. It did not appear hurried or concerned. It would pause for a minute or more, then shift ever so slightly for a better view. Nash’s eyes reflected in the torchlight like an animal’s.

  Flip’s only concern was that Nash would—like an animal—bolt into the trees before he could close in.

  The policeman slunk sideways through the tangle of wagons and equipment, knowing that to do so he must break his clear line of sight to Nash. He left the wagons entirely. In a mad, silent dash, he circled around and connected with the edge of the treeline farther up, moving to ambush Nash from the side. Flip could not see Nash at all as he began this approach, picking his way hurriedly through the trees and high grass and circus detritus. As he did this, Flip did not notice that he was holding his breath. Yet neither did he bother to listen for Nash, for he knew he’d hear nothing until it was too late.

  This was a game for other senses.

  Flip heard only his own footsteps and the indistinct murmuration of patrons entering the circus tent—occasionally punctuated by the “Step right up! This way folks!” of a distant barker. None of it registered in his mind.

  But Flip smelled. He smelled the new autumn air. He smelled the funk of animals. And, then—when he had crept fifty yards down along the treeline—he smelled the musk of a man who had lived among stockyards.

  Flip stopped. The smell crashed in fast. Strong, and growing stronger.

  Then, before he could decide if the lumpy shadow in the lee of a tree looked a little off, it came alive and punched him in the stomach.

  The great fist sped out of the darkness and caught Flip in the center of his leather coat. The breath was immediately knocked out of him, and his thin frame careened backwards. He fell against a tree, doubled over at the waist, yet somehow still remained on his feet. One hand held his stomach. The other went frantically for his gun.

  Flip was quick to draw, yet too stunned to aim the 1911 properly. The weapon gleamed in the moonlight, searching erratically for a target.

  Flip had time to wonder if Nash would hit him again, or pause to draw a weapon of his own. But in the moment it took to think this, he heard the heavy thud-thud-thud of Nash’s retreating footfalls.

  The third option, then.

  The man had chosen to flee.

  Flip gritted his teeth and pulled his torso upright. He craned his neck just in time to glimpse Nash hightailing between the trees, speeding away from the circus field and into the neighborhoods beyond. For a large man, Nash ran quickly, navigating the foliage as though this was a favorite spot of his.

  Which, Flip realized, it was.

  Flip forced himself to take a step in the direction of the fleeing man. His chest and stomach did not feel good, but he could manage it.

  He took another step. Then another.

  Nash was heading east. Flip would follow. He must.

  If he lost Nash now, he would never see the man again. Flip felt certain of that fact.

  Flip believed Nash was driven by something so strong and primal that he would, indeed, return again to these same hunting-grounds, despite the danger, and despite the fact that he knew Flip had seen him here. But he would assuredly bide his time. And in that time, Flip would have to go back to work. Resume his normal duties. Nash would begin to notice that the tall, thin policeman didn’t come around anymore. He would grow bolder. And then, one dark night, when the stars aligned, he would come and mu
rder Ike and Drextel Tark.

  Flip hobbled forward. He considered trying to shoot Nash in the back. Yet over so much distance and in the dark, it would be an unlikely thing. Plus, worse than missing him entirely would be shooting him stone dead. In that scenario, nothing would ever be explained.

  Flip put his 1911 away and began to stagger after Nash. Then, though it pained him grievously, he broke into a run.

  Nash sped east, toward Lake Michigan, and Flip followed. Within minutes, Flip could smell the water and hear the night cries of the seabirds. For whatever reason, Nash never turned. He could have slipped down any number of alleys or ducked into a hundred different doorways, but he didn’t. Nash ran straight east along 55th Street, almost as if the water were calling his name. Like he had a need to get there directly. The path took him through residential neighborhoods. They started Negro, but turned white and Jewish as the lake drew closer.

  There was no honorable reason for a man to be running in these neighborhoods at this hour, and Flip entertained the distant hope that some good Samaritan would stop Nash and ask what he was doing, or even stick a leg out to trip him. Yet foot traffic was light on most blocks, and nonexistent on others. What pedestrians there were generally let Nash pass unmolested. (As the second-place runner, Flip received more attention. Several passersby opened their mouths to give him a “Now see here!” as he barreled past. In these cases, Flip summoned just enough breath to shout: “Chicago Police! Move!”)

  They raced through the city this way. The high-end apartment complexes that dotted the edges of the lake glowed on the horizon ahead. The houses grew newer, finer. Some were still in the process of being built. They ran past a large horse stable being converted into a parking garage for cars. Iron wrought fences demarcated property lines. Rooftop spires and widow’s walks rose into the night sky. As they neared the university, Flip prayed he would see someone—a likely student, a campus cop on patrol, anyone—who might be game to help tackle a fleeing man. Yet the avenues and alleyways stayed empty. Flip’s stomach cramped. His legs ached. His throat burned. Where the pain of the gutpunch ended and the agony of a relentless footrace began was no longer possible for him to tell.

  Nash ran evermore east, to where the white dinosaur bones of the Columbian Exposition lay in a massive skeletal heap. These structures had been the pride of the nation a generation ago. Now they hunched like broken carnival attractions, stark and pale in the moonlight.

  As pain coursed through Flip’s body, he took some solace from the knowledge that it must course through Nash’s as well. And soon they would arrive at the edge of the lake. Unless the fiend could walk on water—or finally made up his mind to turn north or south—then he must surely stop.

  At last, the water came, properly, into view. They ran almost comically now, like marathoners at the end of a race—slowly, with exaggerated lopes, lost in worlds of their own. That their actions constituted a chase would seem absurd to any passerby, as it would be easy for a rested man to catch either one. (This was doubly frustrating to Flip, who still longed for help to appear. Anyone—a child!—might have come to his aid with only a modicum of effort. But there was no one. The midnight lakefront was bare.)

  Flip could hear the seabirds and smell the fresh lake water. And there was something else beneath it. Something he was only certain of because he had recently smelled it in concentrated and distilled form. There was wild ramp, growing somewhere ahead in the darkness. Perhaps on the rocks that lined the coast. Perhaps down in the water itself. But it was here, Flip realized. The thing for which Chicago had been named. Wild onion was all around this place.

  Flip followed Nash to where a manmade outcropping extended from the shoreline into the lake. This small peninsula had been formed by construction detritus left over from the exposition. It had taken decades to assemble itself, but now this mighty promontory jutted a hundred yards into the water. It had not been properly reinforced, and it seemed to Flip that a few days of rough water might cause the whole thing to crumble away. Yet trees as tall as a man grew upon it. Its surface was grassy and mossy and—he suddenly realized—covered with ramp. It was also strangely pliable. In most places, the ground sank underfoot when he stepped on it. Sank down a good half-inch.

  Above the ramp, Flip could smell the lake and the fish and the night wind. He could smell, it seemed, the very stars overhead.

  Where was Nash running? Where? There was no Chicago left. He had run across all the natural city. Now, only this small, manmade extension remained. And soon that would be gone too, and there would be only the lake, stretching forever, it seemed, into the dark horizon.

  Flip made his way onto the promontory. Nash—just ahead of him—was silhouetted starkly against the sky. What made Flip uneasy was that even in this desperate moment, Nash still ran like a man with a destination in mind, when, plainly, that could not be the case. There was nothing here, only muck and weeds. Flip had been on his share of foot chases. He knew how men ran when they had no goal; when they were making it up as they went along.

  And this was not that.

  Flip prepared to go for his 1911 on the off chance Nash had a compatriot waiting in ambush at the end of the peninsula.

  Then Nash reached the water’s edge and stopped. To Flip’s surprise, he did not dive off into the chilly lake, and no confederate rose from the shadows. Instead, Nash fell to his knees—his back to Flip—and leaned forward like a man praying.

  Out-of-breath, covered in sweat, and tingling from exertion, Flip crept up from behind.

  Nash bowed his head before the lake and began to mumble. His hands were clasped tightly. Flip carefully leveled the 1911. He waited for Nash to pull out a gun and turn to face him—to risk it all in one last, desperate shootout. Flip had seen men do it before, and he knew he would see them do it again many times before his career was through. The things that occurred to a man in the moments before he was captured—when he could already feel the jail doors closing behind him—Flip knew that anything, everything felt like an option in those dire final seconds.

  The ground of the promontory squished and sank underfoot. The onion-smell was sharp. Flip risked a glance down and saw that all the green underfoot—all of it!—was now not grass, but wild ramp. It swayed as if possessed by something beyond the gentle breeze. The broad green stalks seemed to stretch up toward the moon with a horrible intentionality.

  Flip crept close. There was no approaching silently in the squishy ooze. It was like trudging through an inch of cold onion soup.

  Flip took up a position behind Nash, and gently placed the cold metal barrel of the 1911 against the back of the cowering man’s head. Nash did not react. He not seem to register what was happening.

  Flip leaned in close and whispered one word into Nash’s ear.

  “Why?”

  EIGHTEEN

  “They come here to steal it. To steal the magic of the ramp. Every one of them. Du Sable. The Fort Dearborn soldiers. The traders shipping grain across the great lake. There’s magic here, and they come to take it for themselves. But He doesn’t like that. You shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to you. Everybody knows not to steal. Everybody knows there are consequences if you do. That’s what I finally figured out. I am the consequences.”

  Flip took a series of deep breaths, still recovering from his run.

  “You killed those twins for Durkin, didn’t you?” the policeman said hoarsely. “For a fella named Durkin who worked for very rich and powerful men. Yes?”

  Nash turned his irregular head to the side, just enough for Flip to see his smile.

  “I killed those twins . . . but not for Durkin,” Nash said with a terrible grin. “Not only for Durkin.”

  “What do you mean?” Flip asked.

  “I killed twins before him,” Nash said, turning back to the lake.

  He lowered and raised himself, like a man praying. It seemed that the ritual occupied the bulk of his attention, and conversing with Flip was some sort of afterthought
. Nash’s speech was distracted. Ramp water soaked Nash’s knees and the legs of his pants and the tops of his shoes. He was sinking down into the muck, already a couple of inches deep, as if he were gradually becoming a part of it.

  “The Haymore brothers,” Flip said confidently. “You’re referring to the Haymore brothers, who you killed in 1910.”

  Nash began to vibrate as he prayed.

  “The Haymores,” Nash said. “Mmm hmm. And about five other pairs as well. I had a reputation on the streets as a twin-killer. I always had the feeling I should kill twins, you see, and so I did. Durkin knew that much of me. My taste for it. Maybe from the Bucket or maybe from other places; I don’t know. I always did it clean. Never spilled no blood. That was my rep. Durkin took me aside one night and said he had a deal to propose. He would pay me richly for every pair of young Negro twins I killed—and reward me with a great boon if I killed the right pair. They would have southern accents he said. Be new to the city. Older than five but less than fifteen. I did not say yes right away. No, sir. Some part of me felt like it would be a distraction from my project. From my true calling. I was called like a man in the Bible. It was holy, this thing. But then I thought about it, and I realized Durkin’s task was part of my calling.”

  “And what was your calling?” asked Flip.

  “The one who lives in the lake,” Nash said, as though it were obvious. “They have stolen from him. He lives down there, on the other side . . . but He cannot come all the way through. And so He uses me.”

  “In the water?” Flip asked, glancing into the murky lake. “Somebody lives down in the water?”

  Nash turned back and flashed a coy grin, but gave no answer.