Beneath the Lake

by Christopher Ransom

  The memory is enough to bring Ray to the edge of… well, not tears, but the idea of crying. If any of them start crying now, they might never stop, hysteria will pass through them all like a contagion, and they can’t afford that. Ray does not want to break down in front of his father, but the uglier truth is that he doesn’t have to fight back the tears at all. It’s simply impossible to accept that this boy is Leonard.

  By the time they reach the clearing where the trailer is parked, fatigue and the gravity of the predicament have forced them into a businesslike shorthand.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Sierra. The women.’

  ‘Right. Near my tent?’

  ‘How’s the sand back there?’

  ‘It’s sand.’

  ‘Good enough.’

  A spot slightly behind the dome tent Ray and Megan share seems to present itself. Not too close, in the deepest patch of shade they are likely to find.

  ‘Under the two cottonwoods?’

  ‘Back out a few paces. The roots.’

  ‘Take a break first?’

  ‘Just get him there.’

  The sound of the polyester bag dropping to the lake bed is dull but fast in its slide through the arms. Ray turns away while his father refolds the top to cover a patch of exposed hair, shorn and brown and damp over the pale young ear. Even though Ray had been cradling the limp, still wet body just a short while ago, the sight of that ear almost makes him vomit. How his father is doing this, what the old man is making of it, is beyond Ray’s ability to guess.

  ‘The shovel is in the right side storage…’ Warren says, panting, ‘… compartment, closest to the rear wheelhouse. Should be unlocked.’

  ‘This is temporary, right?’ Ray says. ‘Just until we can call someone, get the proper help out here.’

  Warren looks at his blue Timex. ‘We don’t need to make it too deep. Just enough to get under the heat, minimize decomposition. As a precaution.’

  ‘Precaution?’

  Warren braces Ray with a look of frank annoyance. ‘I’m saying, he may not decompose. He may not be here at all come tomorrow morning. There’s no telling.’

  ‘Where’s he gonna go?’

  ‘Go get the shovel.’

  Ray is relieved none of the women come out to confront him as he rummages through the tool bags and gear stashed in the Airstream’s storage compartment. Glad, too, not to hear their crying, if any of them are. They probably don’t want to see or hear anymore of this until someone arrives to take them home.

  The question of how, exactly, they are going to get out of here floats through Ray’s mind again. Does anyone even know they are here? Uncle Gaspar is the only one he knows of. Ray considers calling the lawyer now, while his father is waiting, but are the phones even working? What would he say?

  The question of which of the two remaining male Mercers will do the digging is answered easily enough. Warren, always the more prepared, has brought two shovels. One full-size, along with a shorter spade designed for edging, turning a few weeds, but a welcome addition nonetheless.

  The sand is firm on the surface, dry for the next eight inches, then moist and loamy, with more of that black peppering Ray keeps seeing on certain stretches of beach and in the woods. It only darkens and softens as they carve out the remainder of the three- by seven-foot trench. Smells like fresh bog mud, sweet and rotting and frothing with microscopic life.

  ‘Hey, Dad, what time is it?’ Ray says between breaths, wondering if the old man will remember their little routine from the past.

  Warren grunts, planting his shovel in the grave. ‘What do you care? You got some place you need to be?’ He carves out another pile, heaves it aside.

  Ray grimaces and continues digging.

  Water seeps into the pit as they slop out the last two inches. Even though the nearest edge of the cove is at least half a mile away, a subterranean layer of the lake has managed to hang onto this land, the furthest perimeter of its old self, when Blundstone had been at her mightiest. We are below the lake of Leonard’s childhood, Ray thinks, and digging deeper into the past.

  Ray’s mind wanders for a while and very suddenly, it seems, they are rolling the package in, shoveling sand over the faded blue skin of the bag. Tamping the loose piles into a smooth plane, kicking leaves to restore a natural patina over the glaring fact of the grave, and finally a few words of prayer, his father wiping away a tear from his dirt-streaked cheek as he utters words of remembrance Ray cannot follow.

  Every moment of the burial is swallowed by something wise inside him, devoured by memory worms the moment they turn and walk away. They stand near the tent once more, backs to the twin cottonwoods, pouring beer into themselves as fast as their sore throats will allow it.

  The sky has changed. Everything has changed.

  ‘Maybe we should call Gaspar,’ Ray says absently.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Who else? I thought he was your fixer.’

  ‘Gaspar hasn’t fixed anything for a long time,’ his father says. ‘This is family business, no one else’s. Put the man out of your mind.’

  Ray doesn’t recall the orders his father gives him after that, only knows he is wandering through the brush and over combs of dry black grass, collecting armloads of driftwood and kindling, some of which remind him of fingers and arms, splintering gray ribs, the litter of the dead.

  Campfire

  It is the fire which brings them back together. The ancient light and its wild heat emanating from the circle of stones allows them to take comfort in tribe without forcing them to peer too closely at one another. The flickering flames and the nightscape beyond give each camper a transitional mask, human and animal coexisting until the two can be reconciled or one stakes its claim over the other.

  Ray is dirty, sore, numb and scared out of his mind. The growing blaze and the large tumbler of gin and tonic in his hand are helping, but not nearly enough.

  Megan is next to return, in clean clothes, her hair wet from a makeshift shower back at the tent. Hands planted defiantly on her hips, she surveys the camp site, the fire, Ray. Asks, ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘In the camper,’ Ray says.

  ‘Go get him. Now, Ray. I can’t take it anymore. I deserve to know.’

  ‘That was my brother,’ he says. ‘My father’s first-born. You and I have the same needs now. My dad will be out soon. Will you sit with me? Please?’

  Megan takes the cup from him, drinks deeply. She sits in the chair beside him.

  Colt emerges from the trailer, alone, and Ray assumes Sierra is sleeping by now, perhaps tranquilized. What must a free-and-a-half-year-old girl make of this day? Colt looks cried out. She proceeds to the picnic table, where she pours herself six inches of Mount Gay rum on the rocks, adds half a lime and then takes a chair across from them. She stares into the flames, drinking. Her eyes widen to their limits and stick that way. She is and is not here, Ray knows.

  ‘How’s Mom?’ he asks. When his sister doesn’t answer, he says, ‘Colt? Tell me about Mom.’

  Colt blinks. ‘Sleeping. She can’t move her legs now. Won’t talk anymore. I had to lift her into the bunk.’

  Warren pushes the trailer door open and descends with a platter of grilled cheese sandwiches cut in half, a bag of potato chips and a stack of napkins pinched between his fingers. Grilled cheese was always the traditional dinner for the first night of the trips. The rule was they could have as many as they wanted. One year Ray bested Leonard, 6–5, and Warren said, ‘That’s it! You two animals ate all the bread for the entire trip!’ Leonard tried to call it a technical forfeit, but Ray knew he was relieved.

  ‘I know no one probably feels like it,’ Warren says. ‘But we’re not getting out of here tonight and we have to eat.’

  ‘I’ll have one,’ Colt says without hesitation. Warren bends with the platter and she takes three halves, setting them on her thigh.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Megan says to him.

  ‘We will,’
Warren says. ‘But dinner first. I insist.’

  Megan takes two halves and a napkin.

  The cheese is white with little green squares of chili peppers inside, oozing from the seared golden brown bread. Ray’s stomach produces a sound closer to moaning than growling.

  ‘There’s a reason people bring food to a funeral,’ his father says, hovering over him. ‘Food is life, never more than when we are in the midst of its opposite.’

  Ray is sure he will not be able to hold them down, but he takes two halves anyway.

  Warren sits, chomping into his own as he passes the bag of chips around the fire, and they dig in, cramming Ruffles into their faces before the strings of cheese have time to cool on their chins. Ray’s stomach feels cavernous, his tongue scorched with salt. The platter makes its rounds until it is empty. Ray refills their drinks, thinking that his father got it only half right. Food might be life, but we eat and drink to keep our minds off death. This is a distraction, the vending machine in the hospital.

  Warren leans two more logs over the growing bed of orange coals and then stands for a moment, one heel on the rock, the sole of his hiking boot turning shiny, almost liquid, before he steps back and tamps his foot in the sand. It’s a test of sorts, one Ray has seen the old man put to himself on trips past. Control, at the edge. Their father opens the necessary next phase of the adventure in a soothing tone, speaking to all of them while peering only into the fire.

  ‘I know you are all as desperate to know what happened to Leonard as Megan is to understand what happened to her family. There are similarities between the things that took place here thirty years ago and what happened to Leonard today. It’s time she and Ray heard everything we know. But that doesn’t mean I can explain it all, or that I know exactly how to proceed.’

  Warren pours himself a cup of scotch at the table, then returns to sit beside Colt.

  ‘I offer my word, if I had the first inkling that Leonard or any of us were in danger, I would never have planned this trip. I admit now, I made a horrible mistake bringing us here. I will do what I can to get us home. Before I can do that, however, we need to clear the air and move forward with equal knowledge.’

  Ray would like to inquire as to why they are not all running blindly for the fields right now, walking all night back to town if that’s what it takes. How any of them could think it was safe to return.

  Megan beats him to it. ‘You knew it took my family. You knew what it was capable of. Who do you think you are, risking our lives again?’

  Warren answers her gently, but his eyes are as cold as Ray has ever seen them. ‘I’m the one who survived. We are all survivors. The question is, did we ever really escape? That is the matter at hand.’

  Megan simmers, and Ray knows she won’t hold her tongue for long.

  ‘We owe each other a fair chance to choose our own courses of action here,’ Warren continues. ‘As of now, no one here owes anyone anything. You are adults, free to leave or stay as you see fit. You are free to go home, contact the police, whatever you feel is best. I believe we need to confront our enemy here, not run, but I could be wrong. I have been before. If any of you wish to leave now, there will be no hard feelings or repercussions from me or anyone else, is that agreed?’

  They all nod, pretending to consider these reasonable options. But Ray knows the very thought of explaining this situation to an outsider must seem as ridiculous to them as it does to him.

  ‘It’s not like we have a way out, anyway,’ Colt says. ‘The cars are ruined.’

  ‘There’s always a way out,’ Warren says. ‘Someone has to go for help, to get another vehicle. We will not, by Christ, be stranded here. Either Ray or I will go, on foot if we have to – after we debrief.’

  ‘About Leonard,’ Ray says. ‘Isn’t that the big decision? What to do with Leonard, if that’s really Leonard.’

  ‘You think it’s not?’ Colt says. ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘That kid is sixteen years old at most,’ Ray says. ‘And, yes, he looks exactly like our brother did, a long time ago. But there’s one small problem. We saw Leonard this morning, if you all remember. He was forty-six, overweight with graying beard, and most of all alive. So I’m not sure what kind of trick the lake pulled, or someone pulled, but it is some kind of trick, all right? Because that thing Dad and I put in the ground to keep cool? That’s not my brother. It can’t be.’

  ‘But what if it is?’ Colt says. ‘What if we leave him and he…’

  ‘Comes back?’ Ray says. ‘Is that what we’re talking about here?’

  ‘Calm down, you two,’ Warren says.

  ‘I am calm,’ Ray says. ‘I’m asking you, Dad. If you think that’s possible, I want to hear you say it. Is that boy going to wake up? Is the lake going to spit out the old version of him when the moon is full again? How will it work? Is that poss —’

  ‘Nothing is impossible,’ Warren says.

  ‘Leonard knew it was going to end,’ Colt says. ‘We all did. Here, there, home, on the other side of the world. It was always going to culminate this summer.’

  ‘What was going to end?’ Megan asks.

  Colt begins to answer, but Warren stays her with a raised palm.

  ‘I promise that once you hear this,’ Warren says to Megan, ‘you will wish you hadn’t. And I promise it will be the truth, as I understood it. Is this what you really want, Megan? Raymond? To know the terrible truth?’

  ‘I’ve been waiting thirty years,’ Megan says.

  Ray wraps an arm around her. ‘We both have.’

  Warren studies the young couple for a moment, then begins, leading them back into the storm. The one they were so fortunate to have missed the first time.

  Cocoons

  After most of the gear and the sailboat have been secured, the storm has been expending its energy across the lake for more than an hour, and whatever danger it poses no longer seems imminent. Leonard and Colt are with Warren down on the beach, shoving lawn chairs under the trampoline, securing the life jackets with bungee cords. Francine returns to let them know that Ray has been stowed safely inside the camper. The four remaining Mercers head back toward camp, and Colt is the one to suggest they follow the beach around the point, using the cliffs as windbreak.

  They are tired from running around in a panic, so they walk beside the cliff, watching sand devils wheel overhead, which in turn draws their attention to the sky. They have not really paused to look at it since all hell broke loose, and now it halts them in awe.

  The storm clouds hang down like wine grapes, draining sheets of glittering rain across the lake. Streaks of purple and silver crack the darker gray plane stretching to the far end, the expanding creases of sunlight etching in like gold marbling. The lightning has moved beyond the dam, the thunder receding. Warren estimates the wind has come down from eighty or ninety knots to a relatively sane forty. They reach the point and round the corner, the view shifting from the swells funneling into the cove to the real stuff, the waves that have been building for four miles across the lake and ten or more down her length.

  The water is a magnificent gray-blue, almost metallic, and, despite all the surface activity, Warren remembers how the lake floor under it all is so smooth, soft, free of rocks and reefs as in the oceans. And shallow, the slope so gradual they have all been wading out hundreds of feet before their toes can no longer touch bottom.

  ‘We could surf that,’ Warren says, not sure if anyone hears him. In truth he isn’t really thinking of the kids or Francine right then. He only knows he wants to dive into that chaos, feel its force and try to catch one of those waves. He’d done a little surfing in Vietnam, so he knew the basic timing. When to turn, when to paddle, and how to stretch his body out. He wades out, ignoring his wife’s protests, and catches the first one he tries, scissoring off the steep face and swimming with it until he feels his weight lift off. The wave carries him most of the way in, and he can’t stop laughing, even when the wave decides to give him a spin-cycle i
nto the beach. The sand doesn’t hurt, it’s like crashing in warm snow, into a bowl of thick soup.