And then we stopped, but there was still only darkness.
“What the hell?” said Jason. I could feel him stumbling off the inner tube. I grabbed his hand and pulled him back down.
“Don’t,” I said as he landed beside me on the inner tube.
“Just stay here with Lisa, I’m going to go look around,” he said, pulling his hand away from mine and getting back up again. “Okay, Lisa?”
Nobody answered.
“She’s not here,” I said, drawing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them; I was glad it was so dark and that Jason couldn’t see me.
“Crap, she must’ve fallen off of the tube,” said Jason, and I heard him start running in the direction that the slide had been. “We are going to be in so much trouble,” he started to say but his words trailed off just as the sound of his feet hitting something—that definitely wasn’t pavement—stopped.
“Where’s the slide?” he said.
I heard the sound of him fumbling with something, and then saw a light, a tiny flickering flame that lit up his face and the top half of his chest. Finally I could look around and see something—but I didn’t see anything at all, not the slide, not the park, not anything in any direction. It was just me and Jason and the inner tube and the ground. At least, that’s what it was at first. Then I heard the sound of somebody walking towards us, making a squishing sound in the ground as they got closer, and for a second I wished so much that Jason hadn’t wandered off from me. There wasn’t really any way for me to tell how far he had gone in the darkness.
There was a burst of light, far brighter than Jason’s lighter. It was a flashlight, pointed right at us. For a second I could see even less than when it had been just darkness, but then whoever was holding the flashlight lowered it down and I could make out who it was—a lifeguard. I could tell by the red bathing suit he wore. In fact, it was the lifeguard from earlier, the one I had seen in the changing room—I couldn’t really make out his face but I could tell because of his tattoo.
“What are you doing here?” said the lifeguard, shining his flashlight at us. He was tall, taller than either of us, and he was soaking wet from head to toe.
I could see the water oozing down his skin slower than it should have been. The sight of it made something in my stomach churn.
“Nothing!” said Jason, springing up from the tube and standing up straight like he was a marine or something. He dropped the lighter as he did, which went out the moment it hit the ground. For a second I could make out the soil. It was a strange mix of purple beneath green, I had never seen dirt that color before, and it smelled strange too, like the way a skinned knee smells before you put antiseptic on it.
“We went down the slide,” I said. I always knew when you got in trouble, it was best to come clean immediately, and somehow I knew that lying right here and now would be an incredibly bad idea.
“Don’t tell him that,” hissed Jason. I guess he thought there was still a chance that the lifeguard didn’t know what we had done—and for a second I felt a flash of anger at him, that he thought he could pull the wool over literally everybody’s eyes, everywhere. I choked it down, though, because the lifeguard had locked eyes with me. I couldn’t see his face but I could feel him looking at me and I couldn’t move.
The lifeguard stepped forward; the water seemed to cling to his skin and the ground at the same time. It was pulling at his skin, tearing whole stretches of it off at a time, like when you have a sunburn and the skin finally starts to peel, leaving splotches of pink under the red and maybe a few new moles. But the skin underneath his skin wasn’t pink, it looked like it was the same strange color of the ground we were standing on. Even as his skin was sliding off I could still make out the tattoo on his arm, except now it looked more like it was something on his arm. It moved, writhing around like it was alive, all up and down his arm and his chest and even further still. It wasn’t—it wasn’t as terrible as it sounds. I was frightened—I had the same feeling in my stomach I would get on a roller coaster or when Jason would convince me to do something that he knew I was going to hate. But at that moment I understood why people did that sort of thing.
“What the hell?” shouted Jason, scrambling onto the ground, grabbing at his lighter. He opened it up again and flicked it on before he started waving it back and forth in front of the lifeguard. “Stay away you freak!” he shouted, and when that didn’t have any effect he finally threw it at him; it bounced off of his chest and landed on the ground with a clunk. The lifeguard continued walking towards us as if Jason hadn’t done anything.
Jason stepped between the two of us; I guess he thought he was going to fight him. Before he could do anything I put my hand on his shoulder; when he still didn’t respond I locked my arms around his and pulled him to the ground. I had always been bigger than him, even if he didn’t like to admit it.
“Don’t move,” I said, looking down at Jason. He didn’t say anything, he just kept looking at me and then back at the lifeguard, his mouth slightly open like he was trying to think of something to say but finally he didn’t have anything to add so he stayed silent.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” he hummed, his voice deep, emanating from the back his throat; I felt the sound in my eardrums, a heavy buzzing that traveled down my spine to my stomach and lower. “We’ve seen you. Watching us. You’re almost ready. Aren’t you ready?”
“I think so,” I said, looking him in the eyes. They had gone completely black, but every now and then a thin layer of what I guess was skin would slide across his eyes. His eyes made me think of . . . not nothing but nothingness, what the world must look like when you’re miles below the surface of the ocean. It’s darker than space down there you know, at least in space you can see the stars.
“What about him?” I said, looking back at Jason. He was back in the inner tube, his arms wrapped around his chest, and he was shaking a little bit. His eyes locked with mine and I could see that he was crying. I don’t think I had ever seen him cry before, not even that time he had convinced his little brother to jump off of the roof and he had broken his leg.
“What are you doing?” hissed Jason, looking up at me. I didn’t answer him. He reached up to grab me, and I pushed him down again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You just have to trust me.”
“You can leave him,” said the lifeguard. “Leave him if you want. Eat him. See what he tastes like. Whatever you want.”
“I want him,” I said. “I want him. I don’t care what it means, I want him.”
“He can’t really be yours,” said the lifeguard. “You know that. But you can have him. And make no one else have him. Because that’s what having him is. Is that what you want?”
“What are you talking about?” said Jason; he didn’t try to get up this time, I guess he had learned his lesson.
“You know what I’m talking about,” I said. “I’ve lost enough friends. I’m not going to lose you.”
They never found Jason. It was assumed that he was a runaway. Nobody really had an explanation for why he had left his car at the park if that was true, but I guess that was the easiest explanation. Lisa didn’t understand at all what had happened. She said she came out of the slide and then a second later I came out of the slide but then Jason never did.
After about a couple of weeks or so people stopped talking about it. The park was closed for the season by then anyway, so there wasn’t really anything for people to talk about. Pretty much everybody had forgotten about it the next year—they all lined up to ride the rides—that included the Black Vortex, which had finally opened to the public. I did too—after I applied for a job to be a lifeguard there.
Employment at the park had so many perks, I just couldn’t pass it up.
And besides—how else was I going to see Jason?
BIOGRAPHY: Chris Pearce is allegedly an aspiring writer and student of the occult. He lives in an undisclosed location somewhere in the central United States. When n
ot pouring over forbidden tomes of blasphemous lore, he spends his time preparing for Halloween or working a rather mundane nine to five job.
ENCLOSURES
Sumiko Saulson
There are many kinds of enclosures.
A house is a building, which encloses within the treasures of its occupants. These treasures are not merely physical trinkets, the ornamentation and decoration we acquire throughout the day to day business of going through what we deem living, but memories. All of these accumulate to create residential fortresses we call homes. Bodies are merely flesh, encasing emotion and intellect, experience and education we collectively think of as spirit.
There are many kinds of enclosures I have coveted over the course of my twenty-eight years. I have lusted for comely flesh. I have been envious of the economic prowess of successful others. I have an acquisitive nature. I have always wanted things that weren’t my own.
My grandfather warned me, “Be careful what you wish for.” I took his curmudgeonly counsels as the trite and confused ramblings of a worn-out old man. There was nothing he had to say that I hadn’t heard before. During the visit, I politely pretended to listen to his advice with glazed over eyes, eyes that were otherwise bright and eager. His were jaundiced and bleary. When he spoke, his desiccated lips stuck to the ochre tinted surface of his decade-old, coffee-and-pipe-tobacco stained dentures. For appearances, I resisted nodding out during his endless lectures, holding myself at attention by sheer force of will, as the yellowed crust formed in the cavernous pocket of his sagging tear duct.
He was the esteemed Reginald Moore. I, though less esteemed, am named after him, with a pretentious-sounding moniker Reginald Henry Moore III. Perhaps I would have heeded his advice, but hubris is the gift of the young. I imagined I knew everything about how the world actually worked. I thought him a doddering old fool, sitting alone in his five bedroom three bathroom craftsman-style home on Clear Lake. His solitary bedroom was surrounded by rooms converted into voluminous libraries filled with musty old tomes and yellowing World War II era periodicals.
Bulging and precariously sagging bookshelves lined the guest bedroom I slept in. I feared for my life in case of an earthquake. Mount Konocti had not erupted in more than ten thousand years, but was prone to periodic tremors. I often rode out my fear of being crushed to death beneath his rickety bookshelves in order to spend a night in the isolated estate in order to impress the old man.
The books were interesting. He seemed to have dabbled in mysticism some time ago, back when Kennedy was in office. The strange thing was that some of these books had been inscribed with the name Reginald Henry Moore even though they dated back to the Hoover administration, more than a decade before my grandfather’s birth. Strange noises accompanied the musty odors in the room, and I often spotted odd greenish lights on the surface of the lake at night. I wouldn’t have bothered with my regular visits to his home in Clear Lake, California if I hadn’t been on the short list of potential heirs to his larger estate, which included a ranch and winery off the Russian River in Sonoma.
My frequent visits with the man gave him the wrong impression, however. Evidently, he decided I was interested in the two story house in Clear Lake. Perched on stilts above a winding staircase that descended to a modest private pier on the lakefront, the home was beautiful.
He left it to me in his will when he died.
However, Clear Lake was ninety miles from San Francisco and sixty miles from Santa Rosa.
It was far too far away from the exciting nightlife I had been enjoying as a young man in my twenties. If the will didn’t prevent such an action I would have immediately placed it on the market. The cool half million my real estate agent sought for the property would barely leave me with enough money to buy a one bedroom condominium in the city.
I began to dream up ways to stay in my urban environment. I was lucky I had a job at the post office. I made a decent wage and had a comfortable benefits package. My relationship with a girl named Leslie Parsons had been casual so far, but the thought of extra income in this difficult economy tempted me to suggest domestic partnership. I wasn’t interested in marriage, but living in the most expensive city in the country made a man practical.
Don’t think that I don’t know what you are thinking right now; that I am a rogue and a scoundrel. Perhaps you think that I never cared for the elder Reginald Moore. Maybe you, having met the sweet but plain looking Miss Parsons believe my interest in her was purely opportunistic. Leslie, after all, was gainfully employed as a dental hygienist, and could afford to pay her own way. You are mistaken. I am not a cruel man by any means. I am merely a practical one. I loved Miss Parsons in my own way. I often miss her these days.
I wish I had pursued a genuine relationship with her. Perhaps, over time, I would have grown to love and even marry her. If I hadn’t spent so much time down by the lake, pursuing my own petty ambitions, things might have been different. We could have been happy.
Instead, I wound up married to a house on the lake and the ghost of the old man whose name I bear.
The strangeness at the lake began the first week after the funeral. I’d inherited the house on Clear Lake and all that was within it. It had been strictly stipulated that I could not sell the property or live anywhere else for a period of one year. I was young, and ambitious, and I believed that I would eventually be in the position to sell. I asked for and received a transfer to a postal route in Ukiah, only an hour away. The three hour drive to San Francisco took a toll on my social life, and I rarely saw old friends. Still, sacrifices had to be made sometimes. I was approaching thirty, and I thought I should be practical.
I also believed I was too old for the shivers, night terrors, and childhood fears of the dead. Perhaps it was the loneliness of the vast, empty space, but I began to feel at ill ease. There was an oppressive emptiness in the home. The vacant space left was just waiting for strange imaginings.
I spent late nights alone by the fireplace reading from my grandfather’s remarkably well preserved group of old periodicals. I became hyperaware of every stray cool breeze and creak of settling floorboards. Occasionally, I became comfortable, relaxed in the illusion of peaceful solitude, lulled by the sound of crickets. These moments were brief, soon interrupted by the sounds of teeming wildlife. A city boy, I found myself as easily disturbed by a raccoon rummaging through the garbage as a mountain lion roaming through the brush. If these weren’t bad enough, the occasional tremors terrified me with the volcano so nearby.
I was literally jumping at shadows.
It was in this susceptible frame of mind that I first came in contact with the other occupant of my lonely estate. The presence was easily discernible from the natural inhabitants of the area, although in retrospect, I feel I should not assume its occurrence was other than natural. The term preternatural is used to describe those things that exist beyond the natural order of things. Supernatural describes things we simply do not yet understand. I don’t know if it is unnatural.
When I say it, I should say ‘he’ . . .
He did not exist outside of the house, as a part of the eerie symphony of hauntingly peaceful sounds that were comforting to natives but disturbing to my untrained urban ear. He did not exist in the library, among the yellowing volumes of ancient pages bound in moldering linen thread and concealed within stale leather binders.
I found him one day in the bathroom, staring back at me from behind a silver-lined mirror, soap scum obscuring its crystal-cut edges. He stared back at me from the mirror. At first, I believed I was imagining things. My bright hazel eyes appeared murky and morose beyond the usual darkening associated with my moods. Their irises mimicked the muddy brown hue of my grandfather’s. Likewise, they were encircled in hazy gray haloes, an optical illusion of some sort.
As the day wore on into evening, I became increasingly convinced that my grandfather was in the room with me somehow. I felt him not as a presence that might leap unannounced from a dark corner, but as an unwan
ted invader beneath my skin.
I started to believe that I was losing my mind.
I’d done nothing wrong, surely. I had no reason for a guilty conscience, when the old man died of natural causes. I wasn’t responsible for his passing and he’d survived to a ripe old age. Perhaps I felt a twinge of remorse over the many times I feigned attention when he spoke to me. I could have been kinder, more interested. I might have a mild case of regret about the lack of real concern I felt for the man. After all, my grandfather seemed to truly care for me. There weren’t many others who had. My parents and I were not close. They’d left the country many years ago, taking their wealth with them. They said I was spoiled and self-centered. Maybe I was.
Convinced that it was all in my imagination, I went about my day. I was in the kitchen, when I was once again overcome by the sense that I was not alone. The anxiety and foreboding increased as I sorted through his cabinets in search of a pot. I found an intricately formed old copper tea kettle whose handle was shaped like winding grape vines in an orchard. The old man kept loose tea leaves in a series of small metal cylinders on the kitchen counter, each labeled. He had an old fashioned metal steeping ball, the kind that could be filled with tea leaves and then dropped into a pot of hot water. I had just finished the task of brewing a pot of ginger tea when my fingers began to tremble of their own accord.
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