Lights Over Cloud Lake

by Nathan Hystad

  I parked a couple houses down, glad for the tree cover from the sun as I walked onto the sidewalk and toward the back fence of the Millers’ expansive yard. Huge trees stretched at the rear of the house, and I found Carly swinging on a wooden slat, chains hanging it to a thirty-foot branch overheard. There was an empty swing beside her, and she motioned to it when she saw me. Her face broke into a weak smile as I approached, and I was surprised when the timid girl got off the swing to wrap me in a big hug.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, sounding so much like an adult. Traumatic events often caused kids to grow up too fast, and I wished she could rewind her life and reclaim her innocence. Only there was no use trying to find that place. The “before it all happened.” I knew from experience.

  “Is it the lights?” I asked, before she said anything.

  Her eyes opened wide. “I saw them flashing. I only went outside on a dare from Tina. We were playing truth or dare, and Katie had just told us she wanted to kiss Kevin on a truth. I chose dare, and they told me I had to run into the forest barefoot. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but when I stepped out there, I saw something past the trees.

  “I wanted to leave, but with all the rumors around town about aliens, I had to see. I needed to know, to be one of the special ones who got to see the lights.” Carly’s face contorted, and she began sobbing. I reached over, taking her hand.

  “It’s okay to be upset,” I told her.

  Carly gave me the saddest smile, wiping tears from her ruddy cheeks, and kept talking. “I cut my foot, but the lights were flashing faster, closer, and by the time I came out the other side, they were right above me.” She stopped talking, her feet planted in a worn-out spot in the grass directly below the swing.

  I’d been expecting something like this, but it still hit me in the gut like a sucker punch.

  “You must think I’m crazy. I told my mom and dad, and they told the sheriff that a truck must have been out there, that I saw headlights before I was taken. Only, I heard the sheriff say there were no tire tracks in the area. What happened to me?” she asked, looking at me like I somehow held all the answers.

  “What else do you remember?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I’ve tried really hard, but I’ve had some dreams. I was alone in a room. At least, I think I was. There were tubes in me.” She patted her arms and neck, and I leaned in, seeing no sign of punctures.

  “Keep this to yourself for now, okay, Carly? I’ll try to help you, but you mustn’t tell anyone else. Believe me, it will only be harder on you and your family, and they won’t ever believe that’s the truth,” I told her.

  “Why? That’s what happened,” she said.

  “Because if you weren’t taken by a bad man, then the answer is too scary for their minds to understand,” I said.

  “If it wasn’t a bad man, then who took me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  __________

  My nerves were fried when I pulled away from Carly’s. We had talked for a while longer, and by the time I left, I hated that Carly had to deal with the fact that she might have been abducted by aliens. I hoped my presence helped her and wished I’d had a mentor to carry me through my own pain.

  I checked my phone at a stop sign and tried calling Harry, but my call went to voicemail. I left a message, asking him to contact me right away. It was three in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to arrive to the Kick-Off too early. Every piece of me knew Teddy would be there looking for me, and I had one more place to visit before heading over there.

  The drive to Grandma’s house was fast, and I parked in front of it, hardly feeling like it was the same cabin I’d arrived at yesterday. With the grass being cut and the weeds all pulled from the garden, it looked like someone might actually live there for the first time in forever.

  I peered over at the Martin cabin, where John’s truck was absent. He’d still be working, and I was glad he wasn’t there. I didn’t want to have an awkward goodbye with a man I wasn’t meant to be with.

  The porch steps groaned under my weight, the rotten boards threatening to fold under the pressure. I tried the door and found it was locked. Without any guilt, I found a rock and bashed through the small pane above the door handle, using it to brush any remaining glass shards free before I stuck my hand inside and unlocked the door.

  It swung open with an angry creak, the old hinges rusted and unused for so long. I made for the kitchen first, thoughts of my grandmother pouring over me. I opened the drawer where she used to put the aprons Dad bought for her and found them mostly intact, safe in their plastic wrappers. I smiled as I touched the top one, fuzzy bunnies in various positions covering the white backdrop. I remembered him giving her that, and she’d told him she was more of a duck person. I laughed at the memory and moved toward our old bedroom.

  There was evidence of rodents everywhere, and I tried not to think about the walls being filled with rats as I pushed my and Zoe’s bedroom door open. It was just as we’d left it, with the exception of a thick layer of dust, and water damage spread out on the ceiling.

  Beside Zoe’s bed were stacks of old paperbacks, ranging from western romances to classic fantasy books. Anything Grandma had read over the years ended up in here for my sister to cycle through. I read them on occasion as well, but with far more prudent taste than Zoe.

  We had only stayed in Cloud Lake until August of 2001, but that had been enough time for me to dwell on things and start to remember. I knew there were drawings in my dresser, and when I opened my drawer, there they were, stacked in a neat pile. Truth be told, I was surprised my dad hadn’t destroyed the sketches, but he’d been so sure it was my mind tricking myself. He preferred my strange drawings to the truth, or his version of reality.

  I went to the small desk tucked into the corner of the room, dusting the wooden chair’s seat off before sitting. The first picture was of a dark night sky, angry black lines scratched across the white sheet. I’d drawn in yellow stars; then the glowing circular vessel hung above a sketch of a girl. She wore the same clothing I’d had on that night.

  Then there was a face, and I dropped the sheet, finally having a recollection of drawing this image. The eyes were black, wide and oval. A lipless mouth, potentially a product of my lacking artistic ability. I sat down on the old wooden chair, plopping firmly as my knees gave out. My hand shook, and tears fell freely as I grabbed the next piece of paper.

  It showed a girl in a bed, and just like Carly had mentioned in her dreams, there were tubes running to her arms. I stared at the sheets, their implications causing me to finally believe the truth of that week after years of trying to believe that Peter Martin had indeed taken me. Without thought, I ran my left hand over my right arm, checking for puncture scars.

  If Peter hadn’t, why was Teddy after me? Did he blame me for wrongfully sending his father to prison, because it hadn’t been my fault at all? I’d never implicated the man, but the evidence had pointed to him in an indirect manner. They’d used my fear of the man against him at the trial. Zoe admitted he’d watched us at the beach, in the water, in bathing suits. Dad expressed the concerns Grandma had told him about regarding the man, concerns neither of them had told Zoe and me about.

  I kept looking, but the drawings became more obscure, the ramblings of a girl with extreme trauma. Shadows on walls, small rooms with people inside. I didn’t know what it was I was looking at, and after a few tense minutes, I restacked the pages, shoving them in the dresser. I changed my mind and took the one of me inside the hospital-like room, one figure watching from beyond a window, and folded it, shoving it in my back pocket.

  I remembered my dad seeing these drawings, and that was when he made the call for hypnosis treatment as soon as we got home. He hadn’t liked those results any better. I wiped tears from my cheeks as I stood about the room, remembering all the fun times we had, and how much I’d missed my grandma since then. She would have been so frightened when I went missing, and I couldn’t believe her b
ody wouldn’t let her hold on until I was found.

  She died on the fourth day of my abduction. Dad somehow blamed me for it; I knew that without a doubt. The rational part of him knew she was on her way out regardless, but because it happened while I was gone, the two events were forever linked in a devastating knot.

  Walking around the place now, I felt and saw her everywhere. The couch we’d watch game shows on at night, wheels spinning and answers in the form of questions. We always made her change it to something we liked afterward, but she never complained. I swore she spent as much time peering at us as she did the TV, especially near the end.

  It broke my heart that I’d never been able to say goodbye to her, and that she’d passed on without knowing if I was dead or alive.

  There was nothing I could do to change the circumstances, and that was one of the hardest things about losing someone. You can’t go back. You can’t say goodbye. You can’t have that last talk, that last hug, that pressing of forehead to forehead while each of you cries.

  I checked my phone and saw it was after five. Somehow I’d been here for two hours, wallowing in my past. It was time to face the music and head to the Kick-Off. The last time I’d been there was almost twenty years ago, and I was hardly the same person. This time, I was ready.

  __________

  I drove toward the public beach, centered on this side of Cloud Lake. A banner stretched over the road from treetop to treetop. Cloud Lake Summer Kick-Off ’20. It was surreal being here, and I nervously glanced at my glove box. I hadn’t thought this through very well. What was I actually going to do? Use myself as bait in the middle of a thousand people, carrying a gun? Dad had made sure I knew how to use a gun; Zoe too. He’d put us through some rigorous self-defense. He couldn’t risk us being harmed in any way, not after I’d been abducted by a man.

  Sounds of children playing, live music, and the smells of carnival foods wafted into my open window. If I weren’t so terrified, it would have harbored pleasant memories. There were far more vehicles parked than I could have ever imagined in the small town festival, and I had to double back, parking across the road in the dirt patch that had been fenced with Kick-Off signs.

  I glanced around me, making sure no one was watching, and shoved the 9MM into my purse, making sure the safety was on. Once outside of the car, the heat felt overbearing, like the temperature had risen ten degrees. My skin flushed in the warmth, and I flipped on my sunglasses as I walked toward the sounds of the Kick-Off event.

  People were everywhere, many more still parking. An impatient man in a truck honked at an SUV in front of him, trying to illegally turn, and I stayed to the side of the road. It only took five minutes to be into the thick of it, and there I was, at the Kick-Off in Cloud Lake. The same Ferris wheel was spinning between me and the water, and to the right, a stage was set up just off the beach. A man was playing an acoustic guitar, singing a country ditty about summer and chasing girls.

  There were a few deputies from the local office, and even more volunteers wearing bright green security t-shirts. I could help myself right now, and talk to the deputies. They might even know who Teddy Martin was, and McCrae could hear the whole story, bringing him up on some charges. But what if they didn’t stick, what if he hadn’t done anything wrong? All I knew was that he’d paid for my cabin. It wasn’t much to go on. No, I needed something more, substantial proof. I’d been hoping Harry would cover that end, but it was almost the end of the day and he hadn’t returned my calls; the office lines were going to voicemail as well.

  I stood there, peering over the crowds of people, my heart thumping in my chest like a bouncing ball trying to escape captivity. With all the faces, the eyes flickering about the area, I lost my nerve. Thunder boomed in the distance, and dark dense clouds began blowing toward Cloud Lake. Chester had been right about the looming storm. I made up my mind and tried winding my way to a deputy. What had I been thinking? I couldn’t do this on my own.

  The woman in uniform was twenty yards away, but the throng of people entering the festival was too much, and I couldn’t push towards her. I watched with a disassociated coldness as she grabbed the radio from her shoulder. Her eyes went wide, and she nodded to the officer across from her. They took off, moving away from me. I spun, suddenly hearing sirens in the distance. Something was happening, maybe an accident. The local law enforcement was leaving the Summer Kick-Off. I thought about leaving, jumping into my car and leaving, when I saw John.

  He stood near the beach, a single rose in his hand, and his gaze locked with mine. I felt relief at the sight of him. I wasn’t a helpless woman in need of being rescued by a man, but I’d also be lying if I didn’t feel strength in numbers. He walked toward me, and I wound through loitering families, meeting him in the center of the open square.

  He extended his arm, pressing the lone flower into my palm. I grabbed, it, a thorn poking into my skin. “I’m so sorry about yesterday. I just need the work around here, and they caught me off guard by not having power. The generator…” John was saying, but I stopped him.

  “It’s okay. It was only a boat ride. Work trumps recreation,” I said, using a line from my dad’s book of fatherly quips.

  He smiled and turned to take in the festivities. “Where to first?” he asked, and I didn’t know. I was about to ask him if he’d ever heard of Teddy Martin, but he was new to town.

  The clouds were rolling in, and I saw a flash of light, the first lighting strike of the evening above Cloud Lake. “Looks like it’s going to storm.”

  “That puts a damper on the night, doesn’t it?” he asked. “I think we can at least order some food first. Shall we?” He pointed toward the grilling station, which was thinning out as fat drops fell lazily from the clouds.

  My phone rang, and I unzipped my purse, painfully aware there was a gun sitting inside. I turned from John and grabbed the device, lifting an apologetic finger to the man beside me.

  “Harry! What the hell took you so long? I’ve been calling all day,” I told him.

  “Sorry, Eva. This was messed up.” Harry’s voice was tense, nervous.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, walking away from John.

  “His door was locked, so I had to call the building super, telling him I thought there was something burning inside. Barns must have changed his own locks, because we couldn’t open it, so they called the fire department and vacated the building. With my phone inside,” Harry said. “I didn’t know your cell number to call you.”

  “Well, did you get in or not?” I asked, anxiously awaiting the response.

  “I did.” He paused. “They busted open the door. They were also really angry about the waste of time. I told them Susan burned some toast in the lunchroom, and we got a fine. But Barns’ door was open, at least. I sent everyone else home, and started digging. Good thing I know my uncle, because he let it slip one time that he uses his favorite sports team for passwords. I found it.”

  “What did you find?” I asked. The rain started pouring, and I glanced up at the ominous black clouds directly above. People were scattering, heading for shelter.

  “There were emails from a TM27. They were vague, but they explained enough. He told Barns to send you to Cloud Lake for a story on the lights, the flying saucers. He paid my uncle ten thousand dollars. Gave him the name of the Cloud Lake Cabins, and said the money would be transferred when you arrived in town. Eva, this is bad. You need to leave. I don’t know who this guy is, but it sounds serious,” Harry said.

  “Why would Barns do this?” I asked, thinking about the email he’d sent me, apologizing.

  “I found a lot of other emails too. Creditors. He’s broke. He sank his money into this business and was desperate. I’ve called the police. I didn’t know what else to do,” Harry said, and I imagined him explaining the suspect emails to a street cop.

  “I’m leaving as soon as I can, Harry. Thank you for the help,” I said.

  “Get home. Call me on the way. I need to know you’re
all right,” he said.

  “I will.” I hung up, tucking the phone in my purse.

  Thunder boomed again and again, bright forks of lightning flashing around the lake. The crowd of a thousand residents and tourists alike was moving away from the festival in a horde, and they pressed against us.

  “Everything okay?” John asked, his hair wet and plastered to his forehead.

  I shook my head, fighting against my stress. We were being pushed now, forced to move by the crowd, and I fell, my ankle shouting out in agony as a man behind me stepped on it. He kept moving without even looking down, and a large woman tripped, righting herself as her foot landed on my forearm.

  John was there, shoving people away from me. His eyes met mine, and he grimaced as he pulled me to my feet, my ankle protesting the weight. “Can you walk?” he asked.

  “Not well,” I answered. My purse was flung on the ground, and I watched as someone kicked it forward.

  “Stay here,” he said, cutting a young family off, a little girl wide-eyed in fear in her father’s arms. People turned to monsters in a crowded area, even for something as trivial as a downpour. John arrived at my side, slinging the purse over his shoulder before gripping me around my waist. “My truck is right over here. We’ll find some shelter and return in a bit for your car,” he said.

  “Sounds good,” I grunted, each step painful. I wondered if Teddy was in the crowd, looking for me. Had he shoved me?

  We arrived at the edge of the beach parking lot, and John was backed into the end spot, so he was able to drive out before most of the crowd. He must have parked awfully early to claim such a coveted spot. I limped to the passenger door, and John opened it for me, helping me inside.

  “This is insane,” I said, meaning more than the storm and the mob mentality. He still had my purse over his shoulder, and his expression faltered for a moment before he passed it to me.