Clawing Free

by Josh Roberts

“Have a seat.” He gestured to the couch. They sat and he pulled a chair from the little wooden dining table and put it in front of them. It felt like they were interrogating him, or vice versa. The whole situation made Lissy squirm.

  “So, you want to talk about the lake,” David said, his tone serious. “Why?”

  “Well,” Neil began, “I think it would be best for Lissy to tell you what she told me.”

  She felt the heat in her face that always came on with nerves, along with an unsettling anticipation that she couldn’t peg the source of. David stared at her, waiting.

  “Did you hear about the death at the lake last week?” she asked David.

  “I did.”

  “Well”—she swallowed hard at the memory—“I found the body.”

  He waited for her to continue. “Okay?”

  “So that body—Melissa Atwell—had been . . .”

  Suddenly, while looking into David’s expectant eyes, she was overwhelmed with the feeling that to talk about it would be to open a Pandora’s box that she had no business tampering with.

  She turned to Neil. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be talking to people about Melissa’s body.”

  He looked a little confused but responded gently. “Lissy, I think it’s important. I need you to trust me.”

  “Listen,” David said. “I’m not sure what made you come out here.” He was speaking to Neil. “But maybe it’s best if you go.”

  “You’re gonna want to hear this, David,” Neil responded. “Go on, Lis.”

  She felt pressured, but she trusted Neil. So she went on, rushing the words out so as not to freeze up. “Her body was all cut up. Probably from the ravens. But there were bigger marks too. And there were black burns all over.”

  “And her face,” Neil prompted.

  She nodded. “Her face was ripped off. It looked like someone had taken a gardening rake and just . . .” The thought made her cringe. She trailed off, unable to complete the description.

  David sat motionless, paralyzed the same way Neil had when she told him the night before.

  “What? What’s wrong, David? Neil?” Lissy felt panic rising with their silence.

  Neil raised his eyebrows at his brother. David responded with caution; it was obvious he didn’t like discussing the topic either.

  “Eleven years ago at the lake, something happened. Something I haven’t ever been able to reconcile in my head.”

  “You told Mom you got knocked out and didn’t remember what happened. You said you woke up and they were all dead.” There was more than a hint of accusation in Lissy’s tone.

  He hesitated, wringing his hands nervously. “There was . . . more.”

  She almost snapped at him but resigned to a simple, “What?”

  The look in his eyes made her shudder.

  “I told the police, but to my knowledge, it has never been released to the public.”

  He was beating around the bush. She noticed small beads of sweat gathering on his forehead.

  “It’s okay, David,” she said. Not believing she’d just comforted David Sheridan.

  “I—Before I went unconscious, things happened. Mia had these . . . I don’t know . . . freak-outs.”

  “About your being so close? Because of my dad. She mentioned—”

  “No . . . well, yes. But this was different. It was almost like a seizure.” He paused before sharing more. “She was detached. Like she was somewhere else.”

  Lissy felt her eyes widen, and Neil shifted in the seat beside her. She wondered if he’d heard all of this before.

  “And then,” David continued, “that night, something . . . wild happened.” He stared at the wall behind them as if he were somewhere else in his mind. “Something attacked us.”

  Lissy remembered hearing there was a huge storm that night, and it had caused a lot of damage to the forest surrounding the lake. “What do you mean? Like an animal?” she asked.

  David’s eyes remained placid. “No, not an animal. I mean—we couldn’t see what it was.” He squinted. “At least, no one but Mia could. I still remember that look in her eye, like there was something terrible there. But there was nothing. Just wind and rain. A lot of rain.”

  Lissy recalled the vision she’d experienced four days prior, the invisible force that had squeezed the life out of her. Could Mia have been having the same visions? Freak-outs, David had called them. And then she remembered another detail about that night at the lake.

  “That nothing was able to flip your Jeep,” she said sharply, as if adding the final point to his story.

  “And hit me hard enough to snap three ribs,” David agreed.

  “I think I had a similar freak-out.”

  “On the stairs,” Neil said, making the connection. “Did you see something?”

  “No . . . I mean.” She paused, feeling frustrated in trying to accurately describe her experience. “That’s just it. I didn’t see anything. But I felt it. Like a giant, electrically charged cable coiled around my entire body. It just . . . squeezed.” She shivered.

  The brothers locked eyes with each other. Neil spoke first. “Mia’s bones . . . they were all—”

  “Broken,” David said. “Shattered, actually. She was like a ragdoll.”

  Silence filled the room, everyone trying to add up all of the cards that had just been laid on the table.

  “But Neil, you didn’t know about the . . . whatever it was in my vision. So why bring me here?”

  Neil didn’t respond. Only looked at David again.

  David continued his story. “After I woke up, when I found her—and later, when the police found the others—there were,” he paused, then continued, “marks on their—”

  Lissy was beginning to follow. “Their faces,” she finished his words.

  David nodded. “Not only that. They were completely ripped apart. The girls had all kinds of marks, but specifically, each had one down their torso that basically split them in two.” He paused, overcome by the memory. “Parts of Dom’s body were found in several places. But the majority of the gashes on all of them were the same. Groups of three, side by side—looked just like someone dragged a hand rake across them.”

  Lissy turned to Neil. “How did you—”

  David answered before she finished asking. “After a couple years of talking to no one but the police, I needed to unload. I felt like I was gonna lose my mind, or that maybe I already had. Neil was the only one I could talk to. Everyone else was already dead.

  A pang of guilt stung Lissy’s chest. David didn’t sound at fault for that night. He sounded like a man haunted. She’d held onto the hate for so long that it felt foreign and uncomfortable, when a sudden sense of empathy welled in her chest for him.

  “Did Mia ever mention hearing a voice? During the freak-outs?” Lissy asked.

  David’s eyes narrowed, locked on hers.

  “No, but whatever she saw, it terrified her.”

  Neil cut in. “Wait, Lissy, did you hear something?”

  She calculated before answering, “It said my name.”

  Neil and David stared at her.

  “I don’t get it,” Neil finally said. “Some animal kills four people, goes to sleep for eleven years, and then comes back and kills one more? And it’s talking to you in your dreams? Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “I don’t think it’s an animal at all,” David responded. “And after what you’ve said, I know that girl didn’t jump off a cliff.” Lissy felt an icy chill course through her.

  “So who are you saying did this?” Lissy asked.

  David held her stare. “Something . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  She leaned in, only a foot from his face, speaking slowly and deliberately.

  “You can’t really beli—”

  “That it’s the monster? You tell me.” He glared.

  “I refuse to believe—”

  “Your refusal to believe it doesn’t make Mia any less dead,” David said with inte
nsity.

  Lissy fumed. She couldn’t believe David had bought into the lake monster hype. She didn’t remember him being so naive.

  “Whatever happened to Mia, it was something real, something tangible. Not something invented to attract tourists.”

  Neil put his hand on hers, signaling for her to let it lie. With clenched teeth, she stopped talking.

  “So, what do we do?” Neil asked.

  “There’s nothing to do,” David responded.

  Lissy unleashed now. “What? David, what if it happens again? We’ve got to talk to Jack about this.”

  “Jack is a dunce.”

  “We can’t just ignore it,” Lissy retorted.

  “Why? Will taking it to the cops bring any of them back? They’re dead. Leave it alone before you end up like—”

  “David!” Neil shouted.

  David paused only for an instant before saying, “Listen, I spent the better part of three years trying to get the police to do something about Mia’s murder—our friends’ murders—and it went nowhere. I’m done trying.” Then, looking to Lissy, he added, “If you want to stay alive, you’ll leave it alone too.”

  “David, you were there. You saw the bodies,” Lissy appealed. “How can you just—”

  “It’s time for you to leave.”

  8

  August 19, 2019

  After calling Jack Porter to confirm his whereabouts, Lissy and Neil drove straight to the sheriff’s station from David’s. Porter was talking to someone on the phone when they walked in, so they waited in the multipurpose interrogation room where Lissy had been interviewed days before. Lissy watched him through the open door; he was clearly in no rush to talk with them.

  Finally, he hung up the phone and came to join them. He stopped just inside the door, with Lissy and Neil opposite him, standing on the other side of the table.

  “What can I do for ya’ll two?” Porter asked, trying to mask his annoyance but not doing a great job.

  “We need to talk about Melissa,” Lissy responded. She was quaking, knowing Jack wasn’t going to want to hear anything that contradicted his ruling that the woman’s death had been a suicide.

  “Elisabeth, the matter is—”

  “Shut up, Jack,” Neil interrupted. The sheriff was stunned. Lissy was a little caught off guard herself. She didn’t remember ever seeing Neil take such an authoritative tone. He was winding tighter. “There’s something you need to understand. Once we’ve said our piece, it’s up to you what you do with it. But you need to hear us out.”

  Porter made a sound akin to a sigh colliding with a growl and shut the door. “Talk.” He’d given up any pretense of being courteous.

  Lissy and Neil unpacked the similarities between the wounds David had seen on the bodies of his friends eleven years prior and the wounds Lissy saw on Melissa earlier that week, omitting any mention of invisible Jeep-flipping assailants. In the end, Porter was unimpressed.

  “No animal is waiting eleven years to make a second attack, Elisabeth. That’s just not how animals work,” he said. “Where’d it go during that time?”

  Neil responded. “We’re not saying it was an animal. We’re telling you that there may be a relationship between the two events. That’s it. It’s your job”—he pointed a finger at the sheriff—“to figure out what happened. What we can tell you is that it seems too similar to be coincidence. I mean, come on, Jack.”

  “I’ll admit, it’s intriguin’,” Porter said. “But not enough to open a murder investigation. It’s just not. We ain’t got the resources to investigate every jumper that gets mauled by a cat.” He was out of his depth. Lissy could see it now. He didn’t want it to be a murder because if it was, he would have to figure out what to do about it.

  Porter rambled on, “And anyway, we don’t know nothin’ for sure. It’s been ’leven years since David saw them bodies.” He shifted his gaze and addressed Lissy specifically. “Those lacerations you saw on Melissa . . . there’s several animals could’ve done that. Cougar maybe. The marks probably ain’t exactly the same as them other folks. You’re chasin’ your collective tails. And I don’t have time for it.”

  Lissy scowled, her innate fear of confrontation temporarily overruled by the rage ignited by Porter’s lack of enthusiasm for the truth. “A three-toed cougar, Jack? Come on. You can’t just write this off. These are human beings we’re talking about here.”

  Porter’s patience was depleted. “Listen, jumpers bein’ scratched up ain’t nothin’ new. Happens once ev’ry couple years. You two are just clinging to past losses.”

  His words penetrated Lissy’s emotional barrier and cut her to the innermost core. Was he insinuating they were fabricating the entire connection?

  It was Neil who finally responded. “Are you saying you’ve ignored this before?”

  The two men glared at each other, Porter looking like he might punch Neil.

  Lissy spoke up to diffuse the situation. “You have pictures, right? You take pictures of the victims?”

  “Yes . . . we took pictures of the girl.”

  “And Mia?” Her voice quivered slightly as she said her name.

  “I’m sure we d—”

  “Pull the file and compare the photos.”

  His stare might’ve burned a hole in her skull if Neil hadn’t spoken. “What are you so afraid of, Jack?”

  The big man clenched his jaw. “I don’t think that’s a good—”

  “It’s your job!” Neil shouted.

  Porter growled again. “I’ll tell you what my job is. It’s to keep the peace! Not waste my time looking into people jumpin’ off cliffs. I told you before, Elisabeth, you’re not thinkin’ ’bout the facts. We’re not havin’ this conversation again.

  The sheriff threw open the door and stormed out.

  Lissy and Neil rode together in his truck on their way back to her apartment. The sun was an orange-pink ball in the sky, casting a similar hue across every building in Mitchum. The air in the truck was cold, its old heater not able to contend with the mountain chill. Lissy crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her arms.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “Don’t know what else we can do. We told the police.”

  The thought of no one looking into Melissa’s murder ate at her. Did she really die just to be forgotten by everyone? But she wasn’t a townie, what did they care? It infuriated her.

  “Do you think I’m just holding onto Mia? Chasing my tail?” She still focused outside the window as she spoke.

  “I know you’re holding onto Mia.” His response took her by surprise. She turned to challenge him, but he was already saying something else.

  “But I also don’t think you’re wrong about this. The marks were the same. Whatever killed Mia and her friends is the same thing that killed that wo—Melissa.”

  His reassurance comforted her. They drove all the way back to the apartment in silence before he parked the truck and picked up the conversation as if it had never ended.

  “Besides, you have every right to hold on to your sister. Mia deserves to be fought for, no matter how long it’s been. Some connections transcend time. And love is most definitely one of them.”

  “Thanks.” She almost stopped there, but she was getting tired of keeping him at a safe distance.

  “Neil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why do you hold onto me? I haven’t been good to you. Honestly, I’ve been horrible.”

  He answered without hesitation. “Because I’m in love with you.”

  She wasn’t ready for that. She’d expected an anecdote and a hint at wanting to be more than friends. He’d never outright told her that he loved her before.

  Her eyes widened and, despite the truck’s broken heat, she began to sweat.

  “I . . . I don’t know what to—”

  “You don’t need to say anything,” he interrupted, looking into her eyes. “I just . . . well, with all that’s happened, I realized life’s too short to w
ait. I love you—have for years.”

  He extinguished the truck’s headlights and turned off the ignition.

  “I don’t need to hear that you love me back,” he kept on. “I won’t be pissed if you completely ignore the fact I said it. But I will be here for you no matter what. Always. I’ll sleep on your couch every night until you feel safe without me, and I will do everything within my power to heal your hurts every time you fall.”

  How had such a horrible time in her life built to Neil expressing his love for her? She clenched her jaw, trying to hold back the onslaught of tears that were trying to come.

  He smiled and put his hand on her knee.

  “I’ll tell you what . . . Why don’t we scrounge up something to eat, turn on the TV, and pretend the last week didn’t happen. What do you say?”

  She sniffed, wiped her eyes, and replied, “I’d like that.”

  9

  August 14, 2008

  David had been hearing stories about the Diamond Lake monster his entire life. Supposedly, the thing had ripped apart the camps of Colorado’s earliest settlers and gold panners, massacring anyone who dared approach its watery lair. He’d also heard a ton of descriptions of the beast. Some said it was a big cat, like a giant panther. Others described it as having a massive lizard-like body, like Godzilla. Another group, his favorite sect, thought the monster was some kind of huge bird. He loved the thought of a massive, bloodthirsty parrot maiming people with its beak. Ludicrous. Although no one could agree on its appearance, the one thing that was consistent in all of the fables was that it kills. It had supposedly been throwing people off the cliffs or ripping their heads off and burying them below the lake for a hundred years. That aspect of the lore is what, counterintuitively, made the lake so appealing to the teenagers of Mitchum. It was a proving ground. Every summer, groups of teens flocked to the lake, giving them a big tale to tell when they got back to school the next year.

  This year would be David’s first time staying there overnight. Growing up in Mitchum, he’d been to the lake a thousand times, first with his parents, then with his aunt and uncle after they’d taken him and his brother in. And, while they had always enjoyed the outdoors, none of the Sheridans were big on camping, so he hadn’t ever put any real thought into the idea. Similarly, he’d been incredibly surprised when Mia brought up the idea to spend a weekend there because, as far as he knew, the Oullette girls were as anti-sleeping-outdoors as they came. Not to mention that she’d been acting really odd in the weeks leading up to the idea, as if she was nervous just being around him. Which was super weird because in the year prior to that, they had become incredibly close, inseparable even. But something was bothering her, and he could tell. Which is why the second she said she thought it would be amazing to spend a couple of days by the water with their friends, although it baffled him completely, he agreed instantly. Not that it ever took much arm-twisting from Mia for him to do anything she wanted. He didn’t care what they were doing as long as they were together.