The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten

by Harrison Geillor

  The entire Scullen clan was there, looking like a Christmas card or a photograph from a catalog. Argyle sat in one chair, beside the woman I assumed was his wife, Ellen—she was dark-haired and looked to be in her late twenties, with mismatched eyes, one blue and one green, and her smile seemed as warm and genuine as her husband’s. Icy Rosemarie stood behind the couch, her arms crossed, openly scowling at me, and towering Hermet was beside her, though he leaned forward with his elbows planted on the back of the couch, chin in his hands, looking at me mostly like I was an amuse bouche. Pleasance was on the couch, holding hands with Garnett, and she looked delighted to see me, too, while Garnett seemed bored, and as fidgety as vampires ever got—which wasn’t very, but Edwin’s preternatural stillness had attuned me to tiny shifts and twitches.

  “Welcome, Bonnie,” Ellen said formally, inclining her head slightly. “You are welcome here.”

  I said, “Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.” I looked around, trying not to dwell too long on the fact that these were a bunch of alcoholics in recovery and I was a jeroboam of champagne. “This is a lovely home.”

  “Hello, Bonnie,” Pleasance said, bouncing off the couch and giving me a kiss on the cheek. The cold bitch who’d turned up her nose at me in the cafeteria a while back was gone—she was as warm as someone dead could be. Maybe she’d just been looking out for her adopted brother, then. That kind of protectiveness wasn’t entirely an impulse I could comprehend—I’ve certainly never felt moved to protect anyone that way—but I understood it in theory. And Edwin loved her. Maybe I could let revenge slide in her case. Everyone’s entitled to one mistake. She stepped back. “Wow, you do smell yummy, I never noticed before!”

  Everyone was silent for a moment, the whole room uncomfortable (except maybe for Pleasance, who had a certain manic pixie dreamgirl quality to her, either natural or affected). I noticed Edwin leaning in, and Argyle whispering something in his ear. Secrets already?

  I glanced around, pointing toward a weird device in one corner—sort of like a keyboard, but with lots of speakers attached, and vacuum tubes, and more wires than seemed necessary. “What’s that?” I said. Thinking: exotic torture device? One of Argyle’s medical machines from the old days when people thought electricity and magnets could cure anything?

  “It’s an ondium Martenot,” Ellen said. “An early electronic music device, something like a theremin, but more versatile—”

  “Wow,” I said. “Do you play?”

  “I do not, but Edwin does.”

  “Man of many talents,” I said, turning toward him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said dryly. “Nothing gets a pretty young girl more hot and bothered than hearing you play an obscure electric music instrument from the early 1900s.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I think that band Radiohead used one on an album, I forget which—it makes kind of weird spacey sounds, yeah? I’ve never seen one before. Play for me?”

  “Oh, yes, you must,” Pleasance said, clapping her hands. He scowled, sighed, then allowed himself to be prodded toward the device by Pleasance.

  I got the sense he was the sort of person who said, “Oh, no, you don’t want to hear me play,” while simultaneously strapping on a guitar and grabbing a pick. I didn’t mind: I had an impulse for the theatrical myself, and he was certainly a pleasure to watch in performance of any kind. He sat at an ordinary piano bench, put a weird, wide ring on his finger, and pulled out a little drawer full of controls on the left-hand side of the keyboard. He didn’t actually press any keys, but ran the ring on his finger along a strip in front of the keys while doing obscure things to the control panel with his left hand. Rich, lush, weirdly vibrating tones filled the space, emerging from three speakers—one rectangular, one like a stretched hexagon, one shaped like nothing so much as a fan of peacock feathers. It was the sort of music that would make you think deeply about the nature of space-time if you listened to it while tripping on acid; music to accompany the arrival of a time machine; psychedelic spaceman marching songs. I didn’t think pop music was in danger of being taken by storm, is what I’m saying, but it had a certain weird prettiness, I guess. He lifted his fingers away, and the last notes faded.

  “Wow,” I said. “That…” I fell back on one of my dad’s stock phrases. “That sure is something.”

  Edwin beamed. “It’s a forgotten instrument, mostly, which is a shame—” He broke off. “I certainly know how to clear a room, hmm?”

  I turned around, and the Scullens and Scales had all vanished. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they were fleeing because they don’t like me, not your music.”

  He patted the bench, and I sat beside him. “They like you,” he said seriously. “Pleasance, very much so. And Garnett, well, he likes anyone Pleasance likes, if he knows what’s good for him.”

  “Your mom didn’t seem to hate me,” I mused.

  “My parents both think well of you. Ellen especially, because… Well, it’s not as if she has hopes for grandchildren, we’re vampires, but like any mother, she wants her children to be happy, and I have, I confess, been very lonely. Never loving, never loved—admired, certainly, but… Nothing like this. Pleasance and Garnett have been paired off for decades, and Rosemarie and Hermet even longer—”

  “Now those two,” I said. “They’re not about to be charter members of the Bonnie Grayduck fan club, are they?”

  “Ah,” he said. “They… have reservations. Rosemarie, mostly. Hermet thinks I’m quite mad—he says one of us dating a human is, ah, like a wolf dating a hamster, which I believe is rather overstating the case, especially since you’re not even remotely hamsterish—but he doesn’t like or dislike you, I don’t think, and he’s doing his best to make Rosemarie see reason.”

  “So what does she have against me? I’m certainly not prettier than she is.” I’d never felt anything but waves of hostility radiating off her, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I didn’t mind being an object of hatred, but I usually had something to do with causing the emotion.

  “She didn’t want to become one of us. She was turned against her will, and abandoned by her maker. In you, she sees all the possibilities that have been taken from her—a normal life, you understand?”

  I shook my head. “That’s dumb. She’s immortal, supernaturally hot, and, I assume, has various magical powers. Whereas me? I’m cute enough, and pretty smart, but I don’t compare—”

  “You can have children,” he said. “You have a soul.”

  Never planning on squirting out a brat, I thought, and I hope there aren’t souls, because I’ve got no interest in being judged in the afterlife. “Oh,” I said. “I guess that makes sense.” Maybe I could manipulate her jealousy? Get her to turn me into a vampire so I wouldn’t get to be a lucky real human girl anymore? Risky, since she might just kill me, but I’d keep the possibility in mind.

  I said, “So what did Argyle whisper in your ear? Or is it a special vampire secret?”

  He blinked. “You noticed that. Of course you did. He, ah… There are outsiders in town. Outside town, technically, out in the woods.”

  “Ooh. Wild vampires?”

  “Presumably they belong to a group less civilized than our own, yes. I might as well tell you—I’m going to be watching you all the time until they’re gone. You might not always see me, but I’ll never be more than a second away from you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m in danger? Me, particularly?”

  “Vampires are sons-of-bitches,” he said. “If they find out I’m close with a human, they might think it the height of hilarity to kill you. And we know they’re… interested in us. They’ve snooped around the perimeter of the house—we’re some of the only stationary vampires in the world, so we’re a novelty. They can smell us, or perhaps they have abilities that allow them to spy on us. We think there are three of them, a small pack, fortunately. Ideally, they’ll never know you exist, or even stray within the limits of Lake Woebegotten, but havi
ng finally found someone I love, I’m not about to risk losing you.”

  “It’s a good thing this isn’t a movie,” I said, “because that sure sounds a lot like foreshadowing.”

  “If we were in a movie, it would be a love story, don’t you think?”

  “Or a horror movie. Or one of those weird mishmashes that can’t decide if it’s action or paranormal or heartstring-tugging, and tries to be everything, and isn’t very good at being any of them.” Or a serial killer movie, I thought. Even if I haven’t killed anyone around here. “But you’re probably still impressed by movies that are talkies, aren’t you, old man?”

  “I’ll show you an old man.” He wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me. I bit gently on his lower lip, and he laughed into my mouth, which was actually kind of unpleasant.

  He pulled away. “Come on. The others are probably waiting for us in the back yard. I promised to show you how the Scullens and Scales amuse themselves. Come and join our vampire games?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said.

  I’m not sure what I expected. Paintball, only played with live ammo instead of paint? Bow-hunting one another? Mixed martial arts battles, with takedowns faster than the eye could follow? Capture the flag? War games? Any of those seemed possible: they owned a lot of land, had a lot of woods to call their own, and could have staged all sorts of impressive amusements.

  Instead…

  “You’re going to play hockey?” I said incredulously, standing on the edge of a frozen pond, with my scarf wrapped around and around and around my throat.

  “What else?” he said. “We lived for years in Canada, and now we’re in Minnesota. I can’t imagine why you’d be surprised.” The others were already on the ice, gliding around on skates. “This, frankly, is a bit boring,” Edwin said. “When we can find a sufficiently large frozen body of water, we prefer to play inverted hockey.”

  “What, where you guys are the pucks or something?”

  “Oh, no. We break a hole in the ice. We climb into the frozen water with our sticks and swim out under the ice sheet. We use a hollow puck, so it floats to the top, and ‘rests’ on the underside of the ice. Then… we play hockey. Underwater. Swimming, in near-freezing water, slamming the puck along the bottom of the ice.”

  I pondered that. “You people are insane.”

  He laughed. “No, what’s insane are the humans who do it—there are perfectly mortal free divers who play the same game. If I had to breathe, or was troubled by the cold, I certainly wouldn’t play inverted hockey. Go to your precious internet and search around, you can find video of people playing underwater ice hockey.” He shook his head. “For us, it’s a welcome challenge to enliven the occasionally humdrum nature of eternity. But for mortals to do it… The living baffle me. But inverted hockey isn’t very interesting for spectators, and we don’t have a big enough frozen lake anyway, so: conventional hockey it is. Enjoy the show.”

  Something occurred to me. “It’s only about 40 degrees,” I said. “So how is this water even frozen?”

  We were in the backyard, which was more or less a featureless flat expanse of grass about the size of two football fields laid side by side, surrounded on all sides by a dense growth of trees. A pond in the center of the space was the wrong size and shape for a hockey rink, but big enough for a game, and so cold it steamed in the somewhat-warmer air.

  “You know how I said some of us had special powers?” Edwin said. He nodded toward Rosemarie, who skated around elegantly with a big stick in her hands. “She has the power to manipulate the weather, temperature, pressure, precipitation, things like that. So whenever we want to ice-skate, she flash-freezes the pond. It’s hard on the fish, but fun for us.”

  “Wow.” I remembered him saying their powers seemed to be enhancements of qualities they’d had when they were alive, so this made sense—I was pretty sure Rosemarie had always been an ice-cold bitch.

  “Here.” He handed me a pair of binoculars. “You should probably watch from the gazebo there.” He pointed to a little wooden octagon not far from the house. “Keep behind the plexiglass. We, ah… play hard.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him, but obligingly plodded over to the gazebo, which was indeed enclosed in plexiglass. I had a feeling the Scullens had installed the protective material strictly for my benefit, since there was also a little electric space heater there to keep me warm, and neither one would be of much use to them. I sat on the bench and looked through the binoculars, which were high-quality, and gave me a great view of the action on the ice.

  It seemed to be boys against girls, with Argyle standing aside as the referee or scorekeeper or whatever. Ellen and Garnett were goalies, standing in homemade-looking goals of bent metal and cargo netting. I couldn’t imagine how Pleasance and Rosemarie could possibly stand up against Hermet’s unstoppable bulk and Edwin’s grace, but I underestimated them. Hermet was ginormous, yes, but that made him just slightly slower than the others. I think the simple physics of ice and skates limited how fast they could move, but even so, they were mostly just blurs, whipping around the ice, sticks flying, puck smashing toward the goals, where the goalies more often than not blocked with their bare hands. Oh, to have that kind of strength, speed, power… I sure as hell wouldn’t waste it on stupid games like hockey.

  Suddenly there was a brutally sharp crack, and the plexiglass barrier in front of me developed a starburst of cracks like a spiderweb made of ice. I involuntarily jumped back and almost dropped the binoculars, then lifted them to my face again, where I could see Rosemarie and Edwin screaming at each other. I couldn’t hear their words, but I could guess: How dare you try to kill my girlfriend with a hockey puck! vs. It was just an accident, gawd, give it a rest!

  But I had no doubt she’d aimed the puck my way. Maybe not to take my head off, but definitely to scare me. Creatures with that kind of power and control don’t make mistakes, not with the simple physical manipulation of a curved stick and a hard disc. This was a message: go away, little girl, or it might be your face that gets shattered next.

  Poor Rosemarie. She had no idea what I was. She was so aware of her own monstrous qualities, it never occurred to her that I might have some monster tricks of my own.

  Suddenly, the vampires stopped yelling at each other. They all stood very still, and then turned, as if all their feet were attached to the same swiveling mechanism, to look at the woods. I stepped hesitantly out of the gazebo, squinting toward the treeline, cursing my stupid mortal eyes, or nose, or whatever they were using to sense whatever it was I couldn’t perceive at all. I walked almost all the way to the edge of the pond before I saw what they did, and by then, you couldn’t miss it.

  Three figures stepped out of the woods. There was a blur, and Edwin was suddenly next to me. “Stay close to me,” he said through clenched teeth. Hermet drifted over—what? icebergs can drift—and stood between us and the newcomers.

  “Are these our out-of-towners?” I said.

  “Yes. We didn’t expect them to approach so soon.”

  “So are you guys going to have a brawl?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. It should be perfectly polite. There’s nothing we want or need from one another, but it’s… good manners to introduce ourselves, reveal that we mean each other no harm, that we aren’t encroaching intentionally on another’s territory, etc. I know it’s hard for you, but just… be mouselike and quiet, please?”

  “Consider me the incredible shrinking violet.” I crossed my arms, watching the vampires slowly approach one another. The newcomers looked like, well, dirty hippies, or more like if two male models and a high-class hooker decided to give up their fame and fortune and go hike the Appalachian trail in clothes they stole off some hobos. They were carrying big packs, which seemed a little strange to me. What did a traveling vampire really need? They wouldn’t carry food, they clearly weren’t too concerned about clothes, and I couldn’t imagine the elements bothered them much. Were the backpacks
full of opera cloaks and big gold medallions?

  The man in front was blond, sharp-featured, with eyes that never stopped moving. The other man was shorter, sturdier, with great ropelike dreadlocks and tattooed arms. The woman was lusher than either Rosemarie or Pleasance—full like a tick, I thought—all curves and bosoms and torrents of wavy, long, dark hair, which would have been unbearably pretty, except for the leaves stuck in it.

  Argyle stepped toward them. “Greetings,” he said.

  “We didn’t meant to interrupt your game,” the leader said. “I’m Jimmy. Hockey, is it? Shame we didn’t bring our skates.”

  “Perhaps we can loan you some,” Argyle said. “Another time. Do you expect to be in the area for long?”

  “No, no, just traveling. Yourselves?”

  “We maintain a… permanent residence nearby,” he said. “This is my family.”

  Jimmy glanced at the other man. “You… live around here? Doesn’t the local population, ah, notice the depletion?”

  “We have… a different method,” Argyle said. “We—” He squinted. “Wait,” he said. “Is that… Gretchen?”

  “I wondered when you’d notice,” the woman said, grinning. “Stop trying to hide behind your enormous brother, Edwin, and say hello.”

  He groaned. “This is all I needed. Why did it have to be her?”

  “You know these people?” Jimmy said, at more or less the same time I did.

  “They’re the vegetarians I told you about,” Gretchen said.

  Jimmy laughed. “Queequeg! Did you hear that? These are the ones who eat dogs and cats and so on!”

  “I don’t know how people can eat that stuff,” Queequeg said, in a stoner’s loopy drawl. “Sounds nasty.”

  Gretchen walked toward Edwin—and me, though she didn’t pay me any attention. She grabbed Edwin in a hug. “You little bastard,” she said. “I didn’t realize you’d rejoined your brood and settled down here.”