Tales from The Lake 3

by Tales from The Lake

  Tasha paused a moment then said, “I’d rather you were having an affair.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “I’m not joking. You’re obsessed with this thing. It’s starting to seem OCD or something.”

  “I simply wanted to see what I could find.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I located two copies of the book that were published in the 60s. Both spelled Pygmalion with a ‘y’ and had the ending where the kids love Patty’s new look.”

  “Then that settles it, you were mistaken.”

  “I guess,” Joe said, beating his briefcase against his leg.

  Tasha rolled her eyes. “What more proof do you need?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m positive that the copy I had when I was a kid was different.”

  “Maybe you’re losing your mind.”

  Joe sputtered a laugh. “That’s entirely possible. What’s for dinner?”

  “Spaghetti. The garlic bread is almost done.”

  “Okay, I’m going to do a couple of emails for work then I’ll set the table.”

  Tasha’s expression softened slightly and she gave him a peck on the cheek.

  He headed into the living room where Julie sat on the floor playing with her Barbie dolls. She had arranged them in a circle.

  “Hey munchkin,” he said, reaching down to pinch one of her plump cheeks. “You and your dolls having a party?”

  “Yes, Daddy. You wanna be invited?”

  “Thanks, but this looks like an all girls kind of shindig. I’ll just be over on the sofa if your friends get rowdy and you need a bouncer.”

  Julie giggled as if she understood what her father was talking about then turned back to her dolls.

  Joe took a seat and pulled the iPad from his briefcase. Instead of going to his email, he opened a search engine and typed “Pigmalion Pigs name change.” Several articles appeared, but one in particular caught his interest, because it was from a website entitled Proof of Other Realities. Joe clicked the link and started reading.

  “The children’s book The Pygmalion Pigs is considered by many to be compelling evidence of the existence of alternate realities. This website recently conducted an informal poll and found that 4 out of 10 people remember the book’s title being spelled The Pigmalion Pigs. Some even stated that they remember the story unfolding differently. And yet there is no evidence that the book ever appeared in any other form than it does now, with the title spelled The Pygmalion Pigs. Some of those polled said they dug up their childhood copies and were surprised to find the spelling was even changed on those. What is most fascinating about this case is that it not only suggests the existence of parallel universes, but it suggests that we can shift from one to the other throughout our lives.”

  Joe was still reading when the tablet was suddenly snatched from his hands. Tasha looked at the screen then turned her withering gaze on him. “I knew you weren’t doing work emails.”

  “I was. I mean, I was going to, I just—”

  “Get out of this house.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you tell me once that your parents still have a bunch of your childhood toys boxed up in their basement?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Then there’s a chance that book is there as well. Hop in your car and head over there.”

  “Now? That’s crazy.”

  “Yes, which is exactly how you’ve been acting. This is just going to continue eating at your mind until you do this. Please, for your sake and mine, go.”

  Joe made a show of debating the issue with himself before rising from the couch and kissing his wife. “Thanks, sweetie, I won’t be long.”

  ***

  “Well, to what do I owe the pleasure of an unexpected visit from my baby boy?” Joe’s mother said as she greeted him at the door.

  “Mom, I called you fifteen minutes ago and told you I was on my way.”

  She stood aside and let him into the den, where his father sat in a recliner, watching TV. He glanced over and raised a hand to his son then returned his focus to the tube.

  “Yes,” his mother said, “but it’s very unusual for you to come calling so late, and just to go rummaging through some old boxes.”

  “I told you, I really think Julie will get a kick out of some of my old picture books from when I was a kid.”

  “And you had to rush right over? It couldn’t wait?”

  “I wanted to get to it before it slipped my mind.”

  The two of them walked through the archway into the kitchen, leaving his father bathed in the glow of the TV.

  “Have you eaten?” his mother asked, opened the oven door and peered inside. The familiar aroma of roast wafted on the air. “I can fix you a plate.”

  “Tasha is keeping some spaghetti warm for me. Besides, this will only take a few minutes.”

  “Okay, you be careful. It’s probably crawling with spiders down there.”

  As Joe opened the door to the basement and started down the narrow stairs, he couldn’t help but smile. His mother had few fears, at sixty she went skydiving for the first time, but she couldn’t abide spiders.

  The basement was a small square with a concrete floor, the air musty and full of dust. Spider webs dangled from the low ceiling like old forgotten party decorations. To the right were the washer and dryer, straight ahead stood an old work bench that his father used to tinker with home repairs. Currently a toaster was strewn across the top in several pieces. Stacked against the wall to the left were about a dozen cardboard boxes.

  Working by the harsh light of the overhead florescent tubes, Joe began opening the boxes one by one. He found old dresses that had belonged to his mother, a box of his father’s bowling trophies from when he was in a league, broken knickknacks and chipped china, faded photos and old birthday cards.

  He’d gone through half the boxes when he finally hit pay dirt.

  He pulled back the flaps of a ripped box with water stains on the top and the first thing he saw was He-Man and Luke Skywalker tangled together in a somewhat obscene knot of plastic and sculpted muscle. He tossed them aside and began pawing through more of his past, action figures and matchbox cars and toy guns and yoyos. At the very bottom of the box were several pictures books, some Seuss and Amelia Bedelia and Babar. All these he discarded, they could be incinerated for all he cared. He was interested in only one book, and it had to be—

  He moved aside a copy of Dandelion and caught a glimpse of Patty in her new dress. Joe snatched up the book, an idiot grin spread across his face. The book was tattered and discolored, several of the pages falling out to sift down like autumn leaves. He glanced at the front cover, preparing for vindication as he read the title.

  The Pygmalion Pigs.

  The grin withering to a tense frown, Joe quickly flipped to the last page of the book. The image showed all the animals at the party cheering and laughing and dancing, with Patty in her new dress at the center.

  “No, no, no, this is all wrong.”

  Joe experienced a moment of vertigo, a woozy lightheadedness overcoming him, and his voice echoed in his own ears. He reached out to the wall to steady himself . . .

  . . . but gasped and jerked his hand back when he realized the wall was no longer in front of him. Instead he saw a reflection of the room, as if the bricks had become a mirror. He stared at his own face, a dumbfounded expression making him look like one of the mentally handicapped children that lived in the group home on Wellington Street. He crouched there, frozen, for a moment, and then watched himself sneeze, lose his balance, and fall over onto his bottom.

  And yet he hadn’t sneezed, he hadn’t lost his balance, he hadn’t fallen over. It was only his reflection who had done that.

  Joe bolted to his feet, and so did his reflection. Only at a slower pace. “What the hell is going on?” he and his doppelgänger said at the same time, creating that curious doubling effect again.

  Joe reached up and scratched his chin as the refle
ction ran his fingers through his hair. “Am I dreaming?” the double said, closing his eyes. His voice had the same timbre and inflection as Joe’s own. A perfect imitation.

  “This isn’t real,” Joe said with a laugh as brittle as cracked ice. “Maybe Tasha’s right, maybe I’m losing my mind.”

  The doppelgänger’s eyes snapped open. “Tasha? What do you know about Tasha?”

  “She’s my wife,” Joe said, thinking: Why am I talking to myself?

  The reflection looked down at the book in his hands. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I just wanted to come find this book, to see if the title was spelled the way I remembered it.”

  Joe glanced down at the book in his own hands. “Pygmalion with a ‘y’?”

  “No, that’s the way it should be, that’s the way I remember it, but every copy including this one has Pigmalion spelled with an ‘i’.”

  “That’s the way I remember it, but on every copy here it’s spelled with a ‘y’.”

  Joe found himself thinking of the article he’d read earlier, all that nonsense about parallel universes and alternate realities. At least it had seemed like nonsense at the time, but now that he was staring at the mirror image of himself, he started to wonder. And he could tell by the look in the doppelgänger’s eyes that he was wondering the same thing.

  “Maybe we should switch,” the double said.

  Joe frowned. “What?”

  “Books, maybe we should switch books. You have the one I remember from childhood, I have the one you remember. Maybe we should just switch back.”

  “Can we do that? Is it possible?”

  “I don’t know how any of this is possible. Maybe because we’re in the exact same place at the exact same time for the exact same reason. Maybe that opened some kind of, I don’t know, window or something.”

  Taking shuffling, hesitant steps, Joe approached the line of boxes that separated this basement from the identical one that existed across some unknowable gulf of time and space. His hand trembled as he held out the book, his double doing the same. Would they encounter resistance, an invisible wall? Would the air ripple like water or sizzle with electricity?

  Joe didn’t experience any of that, but he did notice a low hum in his ears. Not the buzz of an electrical current, but more like a hive of bees. Vertigo overcame him again and he swayed on his feet. The room seemed to spin. He thought he was falling . . .

  . . . but then the spell passed and he was standing in his parents’ basement, staring at the blank wall. No doppelgänger, no reflection of the room. Just the wall.

  “We didn’t even get to switch bo—” he started, but then glanced at the cover.

  The Pigmalion Pigs.

  Quickly he flipped to the last page, where Gina Giraffe tells Patty Pigmalion that she didn’t have to change for anyone, that everyone at the party had liked her just the way she was.

  “Yes! Now I can prove to Tasha that I’m not crazy.”

  Without bothering to place the items he’d unpacked back in the boxes, he started up the staircase. Halfway to the top he became aware of the roaring sound of rain hitting the roof, and when he came up into the dark kitchen lightning flared bright through the windows. The air held the acrid stench of something burnt. Apparently his mother had cooked the roast a little too long.

  He turned to head through the archway and almost collided with his father. “Oh, sorry, Pop.”

  “Find what you were looking for down there?” the man asked with an amiable smile.

  Joe held up the book. “Sure did.”

  “Want to split a frozen pizza?”

  “No thanks, Tasha’s waiting.”

  His father’s fuzzy eyebrows rose up. “You’re eating with Tasha and Julie tonight?”

  Joe opened his mouth to ask why his father sounded so surprised when thunder rocked the house. “Jesus, this storm just rolled in out of nowhere.”

  “You feeling all right, son? It’s been raining all day.”

  A chill spread all over Joe’s skin, and he found himself staring at the book again, and the sight of the title now restored to coincide with his memory made him shiver. “Um, I need to go, Pop.” He went into the den, which was quiet and empty. “Tell Mom I love her and I’ll call tomorrow.”

  Hand on the doorknob, he glanced back to see his father frozen in the center of the room, his body shaking as tears rolled down his face.

  “Pop, what’s wrong?”

  “Do you think you’re funny?” the old man said in a deep, husky voice that Joe had never heard before. As if his father’s body was now inhabited by a stranger.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Son, I know you’ve been having a rough time lately, but that is no excuse for you to be so cruel.”

  “I really don’t know—”

  “Just get out of here,” his father said then turned to the right and disappeared down the hall that led to the bedrooms. Joe considered going after him, but he had a sinking feeling that he needed to get home as soon as possible.

  The rain came down in a torrent, impacting the earth with such force that each drop splashed back up like a mini-explosion. As if to compliment this image, thunder crashed loud enough to cause the windows of the house to rattle, and lighting illuminated the sky in an atomic flash.

  Joe was drenched within thirty seconds of stepping outside, but still he paused on the front walk, staring at the spot where he’d parked his Honda Fit when he first arrived. The car was gone, and in its place was a beat-up Pontiac Sunfire with a bent antenna.

  He didn’t understand what was happening. At least, he didn’t want to understand. Reaching into his pocket for his keys, he discovered not the fob for the Fit but instead a plain metal key with Pontiac written on it.

  The urgency to get home reaching a fever pitch, he jumped in the unfamiliar car, tossing the wet book on the passenger’s seat, and backed quickly out into the street. The drive back to his house usually took half an hour, but despite the horrible weather conditions, Joe made the trip in half that time.

  ***

  He skidded to a stop at the curb, not bothering to pull into the garage. The control for the automatic door wasn’t hooked to the visor in this car anyway. Not bothering to close the car door but taking the time to grab the copy of The Pigmalion Pigs, he splashed through a puddle deep enough to drown a Chihuahua, and bounded to the door.

  Once he was on the porch and out of the relentless rain, he fumbled with his keys, shifting through them to find the one for the front door. He noticed he had fewer keys than usual, and the house key was not among them. He went through them four times to be sure. With a growl of frustration, he pounded on the door with a fist.

  “Tasha! Tasha, open up, it’s me! I must have lost my key!”

  The storm was moving on, the rain slackening and the thunder and lightning fading, but twilight had descended, lending the neighborhood a shadowy gloom that filled him with a sense of foreboding.

  Five minutes after he started knocking, the porch light buzzed to life and the door opened. Just a crack, and the security chain was still attached. Tasha’s face, strained and pensive, peered out from the opening. “What do you want, Joe?”

  “What do you think I want? I want to come in and get out of these wet clothes. I lost my key.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No, I’m not drunk, I was just over at my folks’ house looking for this,” he said, holding up the waterlogged book.

  “Jesus, Joe, are you still going on about that book? You need to see a shrink.”

  “Look at the spelling, Tash. Pigmalion with an ‘i’.”

  “Yes, just the way it has always been. Now maybe you’ll stop with all this nonsense about how it used to be spelled with a ‘y’.”

  Joe let his arms drop, as well as his mental defenses. Realization finally sunk in. Crazy as it sounded, he and the doppelgänger had exchanged more than just books.

  “Maybe I’ll read this to Julie tonight,”
he said.

  Tasha barked a harsh laugh, glaring at him with a coldness he’d never witnessed before. “You know good and well you don’t have her again until next weekend.”

  “Have her? No, this isn’t right. This is where I belong. Let me come in and we can talk.”

  “Found a job yet?” Tasha asked.

  “What? A job? WYFF—”

  “The station laid you off almost a year ago. It’s time you gave up on this idea that they’re going to ask you back. Those unemployment checks aren’t going to keep coming forever. Grow up, find another job, maybe then you can get your own place and move out of your father’s house.”

  “Wait, I live with Pop?”

  Tasha sighed and let her head hang down as if she hadn’t the energy to hold it up any longer. “Go home and sleep it off, Joe. I swear to you, if you pull something like this again, I’ll contact my lawyer and you’ll lose the one weekend a month you get with Julie.”

  Before Joe could respond, the door slammed in his face. The porch light went out, leaving him clothed in darkness.

  He remained on the porch for another five minutes before turning and starting back to the car. The rain had tapered to just a light misting, but the saturated ground squelched under his feet and his hair dripped cold droplets down his face.

  As he pulled away from the curb, he mused on how much his life had changed since he’d left the house earlier, barely more than an hour ago. Life hadn’t been perfect, but whose was? Not perfect, but certainly wonderful. Now he was unemployed, separated or possibly divorced, able to see his daughter only one weekend a month, living with his father, and all signs pointed to his mother being dead. All because of that damn book.

  Gripping the steering wheel tighter, Joe pressed the gas pedal and rocketed through the streets. Determination made him fearless as he sped past stop signs, took turns at breakneck speeds, once clipping a mailbox but not stopping to see how much damage was done. He had to get back to his parents’ house quickly. He would go down to the basement and sit amongst the boxes and stare at that wall, The Pigmalion Pigs in his hands, until the other him showed up and they could switch places again.