Beneath the Lake

by Christopher Ransom

  ‘So when were you going to tell me the truth? After the trip? After we were married?’

  ‘A year ago, once I got a sense of you in the restaurant. But a couple months became six. Then there was a whole period where I decided not to. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to until now. I mean, when you invited me, I thought, this is too good to be true. Now I can meet the family. See what they’re like before I —’

  ‘Now you know the answer to that. They’re crazy, just like you.’ His anger has begun to throb again. He is mad at himself, at his father, at her. ‘You could have gotten yourself killed. Do you realize that?’

  ‘I didn’t know they were going to bring guns,’ Megan says. ‘They’re your family. You weren’t afraid, why would I be?’

  ‘Because your family is dead.’

  ‘But of what?’ she says. ‘I’m getting to that part, but you need to know where I’m coming from. Why I misled you.’

  Ray rubs his eyes. ‘Back up a bit. How did you find me? What led you to Boulder?’

  ‘Your dad’s profile on one of the company sites. It mentioned three children, your names. I couldn’t find Leonard. Colette was in New York. I saw her on a fundraiser website. And then you, listed as a marketing guru with the restaurants. Boulder was a lot closer than New York, and somehow I just knew I needed to start with you.’

  ‘Some guru,’ Ray says.

  ‘You were carrying the same kind of baggage as me, but I didn’t know that right away. I followed you for a while, and I needed a job. My savings were running out. Finally I figured I might as well apply at Pescado. You were there all the time. They called me for an interview at the other restaurant, Cantina Rojo out on Baseline. But I said no, I was only interested in Pescado. I heard the tips were better. Oddly enough, something opened up a week later and they called me back.’

  ‘And then you waited fifteen months to approach me,’ Ray says.

  ‘Technically, you approached me.’

  ‘Come on, Megan.’

  ‘You have to understand, all those years, your family were like people out of a myth, the most important thing that ever happened to me, and nothing about it seemed quite real. But suddenly there I am, working with you, seeing you in your booth every day, and I knew some part of me had always known about you. Did I ever seem familiar to you?’

  ‘In the attraction sense,’ he says. ‘The way you integrate someone into your whole life, wishing them there all along.’

  ‘That’s sweet, but I’m not being romantic. I really felt we’d been there together. Don’t you remember a little girl from the trip? I was blonde then. Small for my age.’

  He blinks at her a few times. ‘All those early trips my family took, they’ve sort of blended together. I was only three the first year, eight by the last one. They’re all like a collage, but when I focus on one thing, I can figure out which trip it happened on. Except for the last one. The storm. The rest of the trip, the five days that came before… it’s like they no longer exist. I’m sorry.’

  Megan nods, disappointed. ‘Enough bad things happened on that trip, I thought maybe you were better off not knowing. You seemed sad, but not completely lost like me, and I didn’t want to make it worse for you.’

  ‘We both had ways of masking it,’ he says. ‘You were the grounded one, remember?’

  Megan smiles. ‘And there was Pam. I sensed it was ending, the way you two acted toward each other. But I couldn’t just punch a hole in your life. I was scared, too. Sometimes I thought I would die if I didn’t talk to you about it. But other times, I was afraid to learn the other half of the story. In a lot of ways, finding out that your family killed my family might be less frightening than the alternative.’

  Ray can only stare at her.

  ‘But if I hadn’t waited, I wouldn’t have gotten to know you in the same way. We might have fallen… you might have despised me, okay? And I don’t blame you for despising me now.’

  ‘I don’t. I appreciate that you wanted to protect me too,’ Ray says. ‘But we are where we are, and you’re still stalling, Megan. We have to share everything now, before someone really gets hurt. I will go to the police if someone doesn’t start telling the truth. Tell me what you saw, don’t leave anything out, and I promise not to interrupt.’

  Megan takes a deep breath. ‘Okay. But I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

  ‘No, I probably won’t. But it’s time.’

  She looks away, searching for a place to begin. And begins.

  Black Water

  Megan is terrified of leaving the tent. The storm is scary enough from inside – one of the side rooms has already collapsed, the rest of the canvas walls snapping as the metal poles creak and bend, sand and rain blowing through the screens – but outside would be worse. She can’t believe her dad is actually talking about heading back out.

  Her brother Shawn looks nervous and oddly excited. Mom looks tired, worrying about everything, arguing with her husband telling him they should have packed up and left yesterday, as if they could have known. Her dad keeps peeking out, looking around, saying he wants to make sure everything is tied down.

  ‘Enough, Hugh,’ Mom says. ‘Stop trying to prove you’ve got it all under control.’

  ‘Fine, but the cooler tipped over,’ her dad says. ‘Gonna be sand in the hot dogs tonight.’

  Ever since the thunder and lightning started, Megan’s thoughts have been blowing in circles, unable to latch onto anything. She lost her coloring book and her Dumbo floaty when they ran away from the beach, then Shawn yelled at her to help him throw the clothes and pots and pans in the back of the truck, then Mom yelled at them both. It is only now, at the mention of hot dogs, that Megan realizes she forgot something important. More important than her Dumbo floaty, more important than just about anything.

  ‘Rusty is missing!’ she screeches in the tent. ‘We forgot Rusty!’

  Her father backs into the tent, turning slowly, looking guilty beneath his rosy sunburn. They all look around the tent, as if the dog snuck in hours ago and has been curled up in the corner without anyone noticing. But he’s not in here, obviously. Megan would have remembered unbuckling him from his bicycle, ’cause he can’t lie down while he’s wearing it.

  Megan leaps up before the others can respond, slipping past her father, out into the wind and rain. Soon as she rounds the front of the tent, a cloud of sand stings her face and the wind shoves her back a step. She squints, screaming his name. ‘Rusty! Rusty! Rusty, where are you?’ Over and over, running half blind, and at some point the wind knocks her down.

  Her mother is there to scoop her back up, pulling her back to the tent. Megan struggles to get away but Mom is too strong. Her dad and Shawn step out, calling for the dog, but they’re not worried enough. Megan has a vision of Rusty being spun across the point, his legs not strong enough to fight the wind. She can picture him stuck in the trees, barking and whining, lost, alone. She starts to scream and cry in a pink fury.

  Daddy and Shawn promise to go look for him, but she has to stay put. Mom stays in the tent with her, clenching her around the waist as they plop into a pile of sleeping bags. Pinned down, her dog lost in the storm, six year old Megan Overton knows this is the worst she has ever felt and ever will feel for the rest of her life. She wails, inconsolable.

  The boys, as her mom calls them, are gone for over half an hour, and Mom begins to worry about them. Megan has cried herself into an incoherent state, not sleeping but curled up on her side, sucking her thumb. At some point her mom tells her to stay put, and damn it, I mean it, girl, or you will be in deep trouble. Megan doesn’t respond. She no longer cares what they say. Her mom steps outside.

  The storm seems weaker now, but it’s not over yet. The tent leaks in places, the vinyl floor puddling, rain mixing with sand they have dragged in, making a goopy mess.

  More time passes, could be ten minutes or an hour, Megan can’t tell. She only knows it’s been too long for all of them to be gone. Maybe they went really f
ar to look for Rusty, but it feels strange that Mommy hasn’t come back for her yet.

  Megan decides to go look for him too. She remembers to put on her purple rubber clogs and, spotting her Minnie Mouse sunglasses next to their beach bag, decides those will be good protection against the blowing sand.

  She steps out cautiously to find a dark gray sky pressing low overhead. The rain falls in fat lazy drops. The point looks empty, a bunch of other cars that were here earlier today are gone now. There is only one other camper, next to a big maroon truck with a boat trailer. She knows it belongs to the people with the yellow and red sailboat, the ones who did the crazy fireworks show last night out on the sand bar.

  But the people are gone. Everyone’s gone.

  There is no sign of Rusty.

  She walks faster, nearing the lone camper. All the shades are closed, so she can’t see inside. She wishes her family had a camper like that. It looks safer.

  Just as she is about to look away, a shadow fills in behind the frosted shade covering the camper door. Dark gray, shaped like a person. She can’t tell how old, though, because the camper door is up three stairs and the dark sky only makes it look darker. She considers knocking on the door for help, but something about the way the shadow is just standing there… it’s like someone is watching her, but it doesn’t seem like a real person. She’s scared the door is going to bang open at any moment. She looks back over her shoulder as she walks, and a few steps later the shadow grows heavier. The outline sharpens, as if the person were pressed right up against the window.

  Definitely watching her. But also trying to hide.

  Megan runs back toward their tent, and glances wearily over at the cliff. The way the grass thins out, then only the yellow flowers growing from the packed sand, then the jagged edge. It gives her another horrible vision – Rusty getting blown over the edge, tumbling down, hurting his back even worse.

  She runs to the cliff, screaming his name, and barely remembers to stop before running past the yellow flowers, the ones Daddy told her never to cross because the sand was loose and it was too dangerous. She stops, but can’t see good enough. She takes a couple more tiny steps. Looks down. The view takes her breath away.

  The lake looks like an ocean, deep gray and white on top of the waves, crashing, roaring, furiously alive.

  Her family are down on the beach, watching the huge waves smash their way in. Daddy is clapping and whistling at something out in the lake, just a little ways out but coming closer, a ring of something in the water that has turned it black. Shawn runs a few steps into the lake, then rushes back just as one of the big waves crumbles all around his legs. Her mom is yelling at Shawn, but it must not be too serious because he’s still laughing.

  Where’s Rusty? Why aren’t they looking for him?

  What if he went in the lake?

  No, they wouldn’t laugh about that. They must have forgotten him already.

  Farther out in the water, another family are swimming. Diving. The blonde girl Megan has seen in her green swimsuit is riding one of the waves, and everyone else is cheering her on. Then the dad, and the son. Now she understands. Shawn and Daddy want to do it too. They want go play in the big waves.

  Megan is still sad and scared for her dog, but now her anger is like the water below. She wants to scream at them, drag them away, make them help her look for Rusty. He’s already been gone so long, they can’t waste any more time. She is tempted to jump, to get down faster, and even remembers Shawn saying he saw some kids cliff-jumping down at another camp site. The sand was soft enough in some places, where there were hills, it was like jumping onto a big soft bed.

  But when she looks down again, imagining herself doing it, there’s no way. It looks twice as tall as their house back in Pueblo. Megan backs away and takes off running across the point. She will go the long way around. She will be out of breath by the time she reaches them, but what else can she do? If they won’t come, she will look for Rusty herself.

  She runs aimlessly, disoriented, and swerves back toward woods. The wind gusts in strange circles closer to the trees, almost like it’s pushing her where it wants her to go. She looks back, and the tent seems way too far away. She calls out for Rusty again, and again, moving to the edge of the woods. It’s so cloudy out, the woods look like night-time. The weeds inside are as tall as she is, and she knows there are probably thorns and sharp sticks in there. She could get lost like those kids in a movie she saw, lost and starving, hunted by bears…

  But what about Rusty?

  Staring at all the high weeds and thick branches growing together, she suddenly knows he’s not in here. Even if the winds pushed him this way, he wouldn’t be able to walk very far. His wheels would get stuck. This is the wrong way to go.

  She continues on to the boat ramp, following the soft sand path beside the concrete, run-skipping down to the beach. She angles right and runs up the beach, clogs filling with sand, until she reaches the point that separates the cove from the rest of the lake. Out of breath, forced to walk fast.

  It takes her another ten minutes or so to get close enough to realize her family are not on the beach any more, where they were supposed to be. They are out in the water, trying to ride the waves like the other family, except for her mom, who is standing in it only to her knees. Shawn and Daddy tumble through the waves, back into the shallow part, and when they get up again they look confused, dizzy.

  She walks on hesitantly, instincts she could not explain warning her to stay away.

  Mommy falls down, under the waves, and it looks like something pulled her feet out from under her. Megan starts to run again, but she’s already close to hyperventilating and her legs are shaky. The sand feels like it’s trying to suck her shoes off, her feet keep sinking.

  A huge wave crashes to her left, only ten or fifteen feet away, and she yelps, hopping away from it as it froths and flattens, spreading across the wet sand. All along the edge of the water, where you can usually see the brown sand, the lake has turned deep black. But it’s not all the water, only a thin layer below the top, and it looks different from any water Megan has ever seen. She follows it with her eyes as she trudges along, noticing some kind of pattern to it. She thinks of the letter S, a whole bunch of them together. It looks like the shadow of a huge black snake, lying flat on its side in the sand.

  Another big wave rumbles over the shadow, reaching up the beach, soaking her clogs and splashing up to her knees. She screams, running toward the cliff, onto dry sand.

  When she looks up again, toward her family, something terrible has happened. She can’t find them, but the other family is jumping around, fighting, throwing each other in the waves like wrestlers on TV. Or was that Shawn in the middle? Megan starts to shout for help, but no one turns. They can’t hear her from inside the waves.

  Where are her parents? Why is the other family attacking Shawnie?

  Suddenly the fighting ends, and the other family are tromping around in a daze, the waves up to their waists, looking for something. Between two big waves, the water dips, sinking in like a trampoline with someone bouncing on it, and a big black blob bursts through the surface. Megan has no idea what it is, but it’s not more water. Or a fish. It’s almost as big as a car and shaped like a big rubber egg of some kind, squishing and bulging as it rolls over and sinks again.

  The other family shout in panic, scared of the black thing that just swelled up between them. They run away from it, then circle back, trying to decide where to go, and Megan doesn’t understand why they don’t just get out of the water. She remembers the long black snake shape at the edge, and looks back to where she was walking a minute ago.

  The black shape is no longer there. It moved. She can picture it slithering away, cutting through waves.