Beneath the Lake

by Christopher Ransom

  Ray feels weightless, even after his ass lands on the road and his teeth crack together. The sky is wide open blue and shimmering. Ray tries to sit up but can’t, can’t move, can’t feel anything, can’t talk, can hardly breathe.

  The truck door creaks open once more.

  Ray half rolls, half falls to his side, his numb ear and cheek pressing into the gravel. Moving on a tilting plane, Colt staggers across the grass, swerving and stumbling forward, and she seems acres away, though even in his poisoned state Ray knows she is only a dozen steps off the road.

  The old man walks after her patiently, something new in his hand, not the phone.

  It is thin and silver, gleaming in the sun.

  Ray’s vision turns fuzzy, blurred as if by tears, then hazy red. He is blind with his eyes open. There is only pink-red light. His numb face. The smell of the dust and crushed gravel. And the warbling siren sounds of his sister’s screams.

  He tries to sit up and maybe he succeeds, but he no longer knows whether his body is responding to his commands. The numbness has spread to his neck, arms, into his chest. He wonders if his heart is slowing or if it has already stopped.

  Before he loses consciousness, Ray registers the quiet fallen around them. His sister is not screaming anymore.

  The Shovel

  Colette stands in the driveway, wearing her favorite outfit of this summer – pink terry shorts, a blue military tank top, her red suede Kangaroos with pink laces. Her blonde hair is held back in a tail by a poofy rainbow scrunch, the one she sometimes wears as a bracelet. She is dribbling their red, white and blue basketball, and then holding it before her chest. Concentrating, waving the ball aloft. It rolls over the summer morning and descends through the net with a pleasing snap.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispers to herself before turning to look at him.

  Ray is standing at the mouth of the garage, just inside the open door, banished, forbidden to cross the line into the driveway. The Bronco is parked behind Colt, the camper hitched to it. The camper’s door is open, a small stepladder before it. Ray can’t see inside. It is all shadow, another door, this one black. But he can hear Dad banging around in there, cursing, stowing the last of the gear. It is almost ten in the morning. They were supposed to be on the road an hour ago, but Mom’s not ready. She’s still in the house, fussing with her clothes, double-checking the grocery bags. Ray was hovering, offering to help, but she told him to go play outside, he was driving her nuts. It is as if they all despise him now.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Colt says. ‘It wasn’t my decision.’

  Ray can feel his lips trembling but he doesn’t want to cry. If he starts now, his father will come out of the camper and yell at both of them.

  Leonard is missing. Ray hasn’t seen him all morning, and they won’t tell him where his big brother is. If he even came home last night.

  ‘Do you wanna play horse?’ Colt says, trotting to retrieve the basketball from the gravel strip along the driveway.

  ‘I wanna come with you,’ Ray says. ‘You can’t leave me here by myself.’

  ‘It’s only a week. It’s not like I wanna go either.’

  She twirls away and delivers a layup. The ball thuds off the backboard and circles the rim once… and slips off. No score.

  ‘I can’t stay here alone. I’m too young.’

  ‘You hate the lake anyway,’ she says, catching the ball on its third bounce.

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  She dribbles idly, walking toward him. ‘I left you some Girl Scout cookies in the freezer.’

  The thought of eating the cookies alone in the house while they are playing on the beach does it. Can’t hold back any longer. The tears flow.

  Inside the camper, something bangs loudly. As if a toolbox just fell off the top bunk and spilled on the floor. ‘Sonofabitch,’ his father growls.

  Colt dribbles faster, passing the ball from ground to hand to ground and between her legs with amazing skill. She is staring at him as she dribbles, approaching him with a playful snarl. She is tall for an eleven-year-old. She could pass for thirteen, Mom says, usually with a frown.

  Wham wham wham goes the basketball.

  She is sweating along her upper lip and near her hair. Her face is flushed, her cheeks glowing.

  ‘You’re safer here,’ she says, snatching the ball with both hands. She stuffs it into his belly. Ray clutches it, unable to look up at her. ‘Bad things always happen out there, you know. If I were you, I’d count my lucky charms.’

  Ray sniffs. ‘Don’t go. Please.’

  ‘Have to.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do without you?’

  Colt pries the rainbow band from her hair. ‘I’ll bring you a turtle, how about? You can keep him under your bed.’

  Ray stifles another sob.

  ‘You have to be the strong one now,’ she says. She leans in to kiss him on the cheek and her breath smells like orange gum. ‘Time to wake up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’ She snatches the ball, walking back on her heels. Staring at him in angry desperation. She mouths the words this time.

  WAKE UP.

  Inside the camper, a cabinet door slams.

  ‘Colette!’ Dad shouts. ‘Hurry up, chicken legs. We’re gettin’ on the road!’

  ‘Colt, don’t go in there,’ Rays says.

  Colette looks to the camper, then at Ray. ‘Sorry, buddy. Time’s up.’

  ‘Don’t, please…’

  ‘Wake up. Wake up, Ray.’ It becomes a song. ‘Wake up, little Raymond, wake up. Wake up. Come on, Ray, time to wake up…’

  He can still hear her words as she throws the ball out into the street and skips across the driveway, up into the camper. Into the darkness.

  The camper door slams behind her.

  No one touched it.

  The Bronco’s engine starts. The brake lights glow, then fade. The Bronco eases from the driveway, and he knows they are in there, Mom and Leonard were hiding, and now they have Colt too, and his father is in the camper and someone else is driving. Someone else is taking them back to Blundstone Lake this year and Ray is alone, his corduroy shorts are turning hot and wet as the urine soaks through, and his family are locked in the camper with it, the thing driving them off to Nebraska, gaining speed up the cul de sac. And he can hear her voice, long after the loaded mobile home has disappeared around the corner.

  Wake up wake up wake up wake up wake…

  Flesh-red-pink, a wall of it. Then a crack of brightness, white as a star.

  A slit of blue.

  Blackness again.

  A rumbling vibration under him, whistling wind above. The clank of metal on metal. Brighter, darker, brighter. Light again, pain in his eyeballs, stabbing his brain. His head throbs. His tongue is leather, tingling.

  Wake up.

  He does.

  Colt is staring at him, eyes wide, bloodshot. They are on their sides, as if facing each other in bed. But the bed is hard, bouncing under them, its wall behind her a short metal ledge rusted and faded to the color of key lime pie.

  Colt’s hair is streaked with red. Her face is wet, dirty, with flecks of red. Snot trails from her nose like a winter cold. She closes her eyes, nodding off, and then they snap open again.

  ‘Wake up,’ she says, softly.

  The groaning noises increase, then shift into a smoother droning hum. The wind pushes her hair around. The ride is rough. They bounce, slide, and sometimes swerve. It’s like a sleigh ride in summer.

  He remembers walking with her. Talking about Simon. Ray can’t picture him but the name conjures a nebbish man in a suit, square glasses framing beady eyes. The one who hurt her. Did this to them. Is driving the truck? What did Simon do this time?

  Colt’s eyes water and roll inside their sockets.

  He looks down, past her sweating chest inside the V of her ruined shirt. There are blotches of blood everywhere. The shirt is torn, t
he blood around the holes darker, thicker. Spreading as he watches, soaking her shorts, filling the metal grooves they lie upon and sliding like rain in a gutter.

  ‘Colt!’

  She hears him this time. ‘Didn’t finish,’ she says, groggy but just loud enough.

  ‘What?’

  She swallows, forcing herself to stay awake. ‘Therapy.’

  He can’t remember, has no idea what she’s talking about.

  ‘S’okay now,’ she says in a hopeful rush. ‘Made him pay. I got him, so doe… don’t think I’m weak.’

  Ray struggles to sit up but his arms are numb. His face is still tingling. He wants to kill Simon. I have to kill him, he thinks. And I will.

  ‘Got him,’ she says again, almost smiling.

  ‘Who’s driving?’

  ‘S-S-S-simon. Before we left. Five… days ago,’ she manages. ‘For what he… did.’

  Then he sees it in her eyes, which are cold and satisfied and deadly. She killed him. Killed her husband for hurting her that way. This is what she wanted to tell him all along. She needed to confess.

  ‘Good girl.’ Ray struggles to sit up and his legs respond. He pushes an elbow against the hard bed of the truck.

  ‘Wait —’ Her eyes widen in alarm.

  He hesitates. Doesn’t have the strength yet anyway but wants to try. He has to hurry. Looks down again. She’s bleeding like a dressed deer.

  ‘Shovel,’ she says, eyes darting down.

  Ray cranes his neck. Sees a wooden handle in the truck bed, between her ankles. Other tools near the tailgate. A tangle of rope. A white bucket. The truck bounces again and it all clarifies. They are in the ranger’s truck, moving down the beach. The wind flows over them and Ray can feel the sand beneath the tires, giving way, allowing them to slide.

  Sand. Black powder. The silty kind he saw in the cove with Megan, like ash. Something bad in the lake. The old man’s hand. The cloud of black powder. Black water. Megan’s family. Goat-horn thumb. Fucking demon shit.

  ‘Hold on,’ he says.

  Colt closes her eyes and shudders. ‘S-s-sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘G-g-g-oing to hell. Like Len.’

  ‘No. Don’t think that. Never.’

  ‘P-p-p-romise.’

  ‘I promise. Stay with me, Colt.’ Ray’s heart is thrumming. He has a mission now. Time is everything. He rolls onto his back. His legs are not as numb. Only his right arm and hand, but those are waking up too. He can move. He will force himself to stand, before this fucker arrives at whatever graveyard he has in mind.

  ‘Sierra,’ she says, eyes lowering with sleep.

  ‘Colt! Stay with me!’

  Her eyes open, much slower than before. ‘Taker… good care your daughter.’

  She’s letting go. No. ‘Colt. She needs you! Stay here for Sierra!’

  She doesn’t open her eyes this time. Her cheeks appear to sink in, her jaw shifts to one side, lips parting.

  Numbness or not, it has to be now.

  Ray sits up with a grunt and his head swims with motion. The lake is flying by on one side, the flat plane of beach on the other. The truck is going at least forty miles per hour and it feels like a hundred. If Simon looks in the rear-view…

  Clawing at his sister for leverage, Ray pulls himself forward, clenching her blood-soaked shorts, her hips, twisting and turning on his side. Almost. The wooden handle is there, below her knees. He grabs her thigh and heaves, until he is sideways in the truck bed. If this weight hurts her, all this clawing and bouncing, she gives no sign.

  He reaches, fingers curling over the wooden handle. There.

  Slips.

  He plows forward, fingers scraping the handle – got it.

  He looks back, up at her. Her eyes are closed. The truck bounces over another sand ridge and her head knocks against the bed. She doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Colt,’ he hisses. ‘Colt, wake up!’ Loud as he can without shouting. ‘Colette!’

  She doesn’t move.

  She’s going to die here. Maybe already did.

  Motherfucker.

  Ray pulls the shovel up, hand over hand, until he has the metal base in his left hand. His right grips the handle at the middle but he can’t feel it. Squeeze, he orders, willing his arms and fingers to do what they were made to do.

  Hold. Fight. Kill.

  Ray slams his knuckles into the truck bed once, twice, a third time, the pain welcome, bringing his hands back to life. He pushes himself up. Sways, gets his knees under him, inching along until he is facing the cab of the truck. Through its dusty window, the back of a small head. Red cap. A target.

  You ready, Simon?

  Ray looks down at Colt. One of her teeth is streaked with blood. Her face is so pale. We got him, honey. Hold on.

  The truck’s engine peaks, then quiets. They are almost coasting but still moving fast. The wind makes his eyes water.

  The rear-view mirror. A small wrinkled hand on it, adjusting.

  Their eyes lock into each other’s, and the truck swerves right. Ray lurches to the left, pushing off the sidewall with his good hand. He balances, inches forward on his knees, planting his weight as best he can.

  He raises the shovel.

  The truck swerves left and the force sends him to his weak side. He throws the shovel blade out, over Colt’s chest, aiming for the sidewall to stop him from vaulting out. The metal blade screams against the faded green wall, slips, sticks to the floor. Ray levers himself upright, resetting his grip.

  Last chance. Won’t be that lucky again.

  The truck speeds up, engine roaring. Ahead, a thick green bush rushes toward them and goes under the front end. The truck bounces hard, Ray’s knees leave the bed and come down with twin bolts of reverberating pain. His anger soars, he is shouting incoherently.

  Ray spins the handle like a baton and drives the shaft forward with all he’s got, slamming the blade through the rear window. The shovel meets no resistance, or none he can detect, as if the man were made of air and the shovel has taken flight, passing through the cab and windshield right on over the hood.

  The truck swerves suicidally to the left, the tires dig and shudder against the beach and a wall of sand rises up, curling over his head. Shards of glass tumble past, nicking his face and ears. The truck bed bucks like a rodeo bull and Ray becomes weightless, soaring. A glimpse of sand, whistling sky, sand, sky, brown-green water, and sky once more.

  He comes down on his shoulder and hips in less than three inches of water and rolls six or seven times, catching lake and wet sand across the face like shotgun pellets. Closes his eyes as the sand bar pounds him, slamming his knees and back and the back of his head before sucking him face down into the muck.