Serpentine

by Napier, Barry

  “Sure thing. I do think we should keep an eye on the cove the old men were attacked on, the Carter pier, and the one up the tree, though. You get more coverage on those and two of them are sites we know the thing has come to before.”

  “That’s fine,” Scott said, wolfing down the burger he’d found in the fast food bag.

  “Your guys in DC getting antsy?”

  “Yeah. And I am, too. Two full days with staring at screens with nothing to show for it. I take it there have been no calls from the police about another attack?”

  “Not a single one. I even called twice today just to check.”

  They were quiet for a moment as Susan looked to the screens. “You know, I could probably talk the local PD into sending another set of eyes out here to help you.”

  “Thanks, but the fewer people that know about this, the better. If you could just dupe them into believing there’s something killing people, that would be enough. Just enough to have them sort of patrolling the major roads that go by the lake to keep an eye out.”

  “They’re already doing that,” she said. “Some think it’s a gator that somehow found its way up from a swamp in Louisiana or something. That’s stupid, of course. A few others think it might just be a forest animal lurking near the shore. Maybe a bear or a rabid bobcat or something.”

  “Are there bears out this way?” he asked.

  “Very few. But yes, they do make it out here. Strays that have wandered too far away from the mountains.”

  “Huh,” Scott said. He found it interesting just because it was something to think about other than the screens in front of him.

  “How long do you think your supervisors will let you keep doing this?”

  Scott shrugged, cramming the last of the burger into his mouth. “I have no idea. Probably as long as it takes. This is…well, this thing is bad.”

  “I know. I saw the pictures,” she reminded him. “Anyway…you need a nap or something?”

  “No thanks. I’m going the opposite route and keeping the coffee going. You’re welcome to stay and have a cup.”

  “I think I will,” she said. “No offense, but you look a little stir crazy. You look like you could use the company.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could,” Scott said.

  He sipped from the soda that had come with his meal and sat back on the couch. He looked to the eight different squares on the screens in front of him, hoping for some sort of change in the scenery.

  There continued to be nothing, just minor events. A bird swooped down by the camera installed in the tree, pecked at something, then flew off. A small fish leaped from the water and splashed back down. A small boat could be seen in the distance of one camera, pulling a late-afternoon skier behind it.

  Scott sighed, the screens taunting him. With all of the questions about what this thing was, where it might be, and when it would attack next, there was one thing Scott knew for sure: he was good and tired of this damned lake.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Three days passed.

  They passed in the way summer days on the lake tend to: in a humid haze of buzzing insects, the nagging itch of sunburn, and sunsets that seem to strangle the night for as long as possible. A handful of vacationers left the lake while new ones came in, hauling campers and recreational vehicles like jet skis and ugly golf carts. It happened quietly and without much fanfare, as it did every summer around Clarkton Lake.

  Wayne Crosby watched it all from his front porch. He spent a lot of time there, perched in an old folding chair that was starting to rot away along the bottom. He spent a great deal of those three days drunk and grumpy. He had not yet heard from Susan Lessing about the creature that had nearly killed his best friend. Even when he called her office and left messages, there was nothing.

  From his porch, Wayne listened to some of his favorite music while drinking more beer than he had since his thirties, back when he’d finally had to admit that he had created a nice and complicated drinking problem for himself. It had been the first real hit to a marriage that would fail nineteen years later. But he didn’t bother thinking of that failed marriage or even about how easy it had been to fall back into that black hole of drinking in order to solve his problems as he sat on his porch.

  Instead, he thought about some unnamable monster rising up out of the lake and trying to kill his friend. He thought about an overweight and incompetent woman game warden trying to hunt such a thing down and it only made him drink more. He was not a sexist man, but he knew Susan in an off-hand sort of way. She was known around the community for half-assing things and delegating the nastier and more complicated parts of her job to those beneath her. Wayne didn’t see how someone of her skillset and drive was going to find and kill the monster he and Al had seen out on the lake.

  With such thoughts heavy on his mind, Wayne sat in his deteriorating chair, smelling the cooking meat from grills everywhere around Kerr Lane and thought about how one might track down such a creature.

  He had an idea that, when he was extremely drunk, seemed like a good idea. But during those little slivers of sobriety in the morning, it seemed stupid and dangerous. He pondered this idea like some great philosopher while he watched vacationers and locals alike come and go. He would, on occasion, look to the west, towards Al’s house. He wondered how his friend was doing and if there was anything other than staying away that he, Wayne, could do to help.

  But he decided to keep his word and stay away until he was called upon. He stayed away and continued to refine the simple plan he kept revisiting in his head. It was a plan that, by the end of that third day, started to seem so simple that he could no longer find a reason not to go through with it.

  And really, that was the scariest thing of all.

  ***

  While Wayne Crosby got a pretty good grasp on the goings-on around Clarkton Lake by simply sitting on his porch, there was one thing that he did not see during those three days. What he did not see was the quickly growing relationship between a vacationing fourteen year old from New York City and a fifteen-year-old semi-local girl.

  It happened night after night, and sometimes during the afternoon when the boy’s sister tagged along. If you asked either of them, they would likely tell you (rather naively) that they were falling in love. And maybe they were. Rural summers by the lake have a sort of magic to them, the sort of thing kids imagine exist in faraway lands where maidens are rescued from towers and brave knights can win wars all by themselves. The mosquitoes and stifling heat mute that magic from time to time, but it’s not nearly enough to stop young love.

  And because Wayne did not see these two falling in love no more than a mile and a half away from his porch, he also had no way of knowing the fear they shared. It was a fear that was very similar to his own—a fear that was born of something deep in the water, without name or shape.

  These teenagers felt the fear, too; like Wayne, they had seen it.

  It was nearly strong enough to get in the way of their raging hormones, their thunderous hearts and the stubborn chemistry of first loves.

  And that, they would both realize later, was probably why things went as badly as they did.

  PART THREE

  SUMMER’S

  END

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Even with Mac tagging along by his side, Joe was still as happy as he could ever remember. They were walking down Kerr Lane, towards the shed that he had come to know and love so well over the last two weeks. The last two times he had come here during the day, Mac had insisted on coming with him. He would refuse but she would threaten blackmail like usual. So there was nothing he could do to keep her away.

  Joe had wondered if it would be so bad for his folks to know that he had met a girl. His dad might even be happy and, although Joe would never admit it to anyone, he had been seeking something for him and his father to bond over for quite some time. Still…confessing to a summertime romance with one of the semi-locals would only make this vacation more awkward and Joe di
dn’t think he could handle that.

  His mother was under the impression that he and Mac were simply getting along better than usual. She had even gone so far as to credit it to the vacation and how it was bringing them all closer together. The hell of it was that Joe actually didn’t mind Mac glued to his side as he made these walks down Kerr Lane towards the shed. She never really got in the way and there was something about the way she looked at him that he liked. He supposed it was respect or appreciation for being able to spend time with her big brother. It made Joe feel more grown up in a way he didn’t fully understand.

  So yes, maybe the vacation was bringing the Evans family closer together. His parents certainly seemed to be repairing whatever damage they’d been dealing with. Joe still thought about accidentally seeing them on the back porch several nights ago, wondering just how late he had been from seeing something that could have easily traumatized him for life.

  There had been a few good times on the lake with all of them, back when Joe had still been getting in the water. They’d also had some borderline cheesy moments on the back porch with dad’s guitar and grilled burgers and hotdogs. All in all, it had not been the misery he had assumed it would be.

  Of course, Valerie had a lot to do with that. He knew that they only had another four or five weeks or so of their…whatever they were calling it. He tried not to dwell on that or if Valerie was now his “girlfriend” or not. Mac had already taken to calling Valerie his girlfriend when they were alone and he was okay with that.

  Actually, he rather liked it.

  The footpath came into view and Joe felt that tug at his heart—a warm sort of surge in his chest that instantly got him excited. He saw that Mac was glad to be there, too. She went off ahead of him, sprinting. This would be only the third time the two girls had hung out, but Valerie made a point to be nice to her. It irritated Joe a bit because Mac was stealing some of his time with Valerie, but he also thought it was cool. It showed the sort of person Valerie really was.

  Today, when they reached the shack, Joe saw that Valerie was sitting in the back of the old aluminum boat out near the edge of the lake. The idea of her being so close to the water scared him, but he didn’t want to let it show. The canoe sat beside it, anchored by time alone, and seemed foreboding, almost like a coffin beside her.

  “Hey, Valerie!” Mac said, skipping far ahead of Joe. Joe sped up, not wanting to seem too anxious but also unable to resist closing the distance to her as quickly as possible.

  Valerie turned around and waved at them. She slid out of the boat and took a few steps towards them.

  “You going for a boat tide?” Mac asked her.

  “Not in one of these old things,” Valerie said. “Too dangerous.”

  “Yeah, they look old,” Mac agreed. She ran her hand curiously along the wooden surface of the canoe. It made Joe more than a little uneasy.

  Valerie’s eyes found Joe’s over Mac’s head. Just looking at her in such a way made Joe want to start kissing her. Between now and when the moving truck arrived five weeks from now to pack all of their stuff up, Joe wanted to kiss her every second of every day. He knew his buddies back home would ask if anything else had happened between them. They would be referring to sex—a word that Joe and his friends all tried to avoid actually saying at all costs, preferring terms like doing it or banging instead. To call it sex inferred that they might actually know what they were talking about.

  Sex had never crossed Joe’s mind; he knew he was a little young to actually hope for it and, honestly, was perfectly happy with nothing more than kissing, holding hands, and enjoying the way his hand felt on her hip when they were standing close together.

  “Hey, Mac,” Joe said. “Go poke around the shed for a while.”

  “No way. I’m not going to leave you just so you guys can make out.”

  “Actually,” Valerie said, “I’d like to talk to your brother. Nothing you’d be interested in. Can you let me talk to him for about five or ten minutes, just the two of us?”

  Mac let out a little sigh, accompanied by a pouting sort of frown. It was a combo that worked wonders on their dad. But neither Joe nor Valerie were moved by it.

  “Fine,” Mac said. She didn’t sound too disappointed. “I’m going to go down and check out the boats…maybe splash around in the water.”

  “No!” It was out of Joe’s mouth before he could stop it. He could feel the fear rising up in him and wondered if Mac had heard it in his voice.

  Mac looked startled to have heard such concern in his voice. She took a step back, giving him a curious look. “It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t go in past my knees.”

  “If anything happens to you, Mom will kill me,” Joe argued.

  “I’ll be safe. Yikes, don’t throw a fit about it.”

  “Mac…”

  He would have argued further, but then Valerie’s hand was in his. She held it loosely, sort of caressing his fingers. Far back in his mind, he saw a vision of the monster rising up out of the lake and slapping its odd-shaped body on the shore, devouring Mac. But it seemed unlikely, maybe because it was daylight now or maybe just because nothing felt as if it could go wrong with Valerie’s hand in his.

  “Just be careful,” he said. “And don’t go out past your knees.”

  “Duh!”

  Joe rolled his eyes as Mac turned her back to them, making her way down to the boats where the water met the shore in a smooth brown dip. He watched her for a moment and when he turned back to Valerie, she was already leaning in to kiss him. He met her slowly and they shared a long kiss. It was the sort of kiss that still felt new in a sense because they were still beginning to learn things about one another. She pulled him close to her and when he put a bit more intensity into it, she let out a breathy little sigh.

  When she pulled away ten seconds later, Joe felt dizzy. He steadied himself by taking both of her hands and making sure to stand still.

  “So, I have some not so great news,” she said.

  The dizziness faded and everything came snapping back into place. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not terrible,” she said. “It’s just not good.”

  “Well, what is it?” Joe asked. He wondered, not for the first time, if there was something in the female DNA that didn’t allow them to get straight to the point. It was not a cruel observation, but one that he had legitimately wondered about in secret as he had tried to learn more about the opposite sex.

  “Dad’s having some inventory issues at work,” she said. “We’re leaving in two days to go back home. If it’s really bad, we’re going to stay.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Joe said plainly. His heart felt as if it were cringing.

  “But even if it is bad, we’ll still come back up on the weekends.”

  “Still…”

  “Hey, it’s nothing to worry about right now. Don’t let it get you down.”

  “I’ll try not to,” he said with a smile.

  “There’s something else I’ve been thinking about,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, in three weeks, you’ll be back in New York and I’ll be back home. It’s a little town called Bower, a little over an hour away from here. I Googled it last night. That’s almost eleven hours. And I know there’s Facebook , Skype, FaceTime and e-mail and all that, but…this won’t work, will it?”

  It was something Joe had also thought about and, surprisingly, had come to terms with. This thing between him and Valerie was a for now thing. It would end in five weeks, when he would be headed back to New York, crammed into the family car with his mom, dad, and Mac. It felt like a very grown-up thing to think about. Maybe that was why he was taking it so well.

  “No, I don’t think it will,” he admitted.

  She frowned, but there was something playful about it that drove Joe crazy. She looked down to the ground and said: “So what do we do, then?”

  He knew it was a playful sort of bait, and he gladly to
ok it. He took her gently by her hips and pulled her to him. They kissed again and this time there was an energy and heat to it that he hadn’t felt before. It took him by surprise and almost scared him a bit, but the feel of her against him and the taste of her mouth was enough to kill off any fear.

  That changed, though, when he heard Mach screaming for help.

  It was just a scream at first, but then she included his name.

  “Joe! Help!”

  Joe broke the kiss instantly and had a fleeting second where he became perfectly aware of what his sister meant to him. He would gladly have pushed Valerie to the ground if she tried to hold him away from helping his sister to continue kissing him. Thoughts of the monster from the lake popped up into his head and a scream rose up in his throat.

  But when he turned to see what had happened, he settled down a bit. In fact, he started to feel the barbs of anger. Irritated laughter bubbled out of his throat as he looked towards the two old boats.

  “Mac…”

  She had gotten into the old rickety canoe and was now floating away from the shore. Somehow, she had managed to move the boat from the bank without making much noise. She was now floating in the water, and had made it about ten feet away from the shore before bothering to call out to them.

  “Joe, please help!” She was near tears, her eyes wide and filled with fear.

  “It’s okay,” Joe said, aggravated. “Is there an oar in there?”

  She looked around the bottom of the boat as it continued to drift further away. “No!”

  “Damn it,” Joe said.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” Valerie said. “There was one in there earlier this summer but I swiped it for Dad. An antique sort of thing…”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “How would you know my idiot sister would do something like this?”

  He looked around for some solution, not liking the thought of simply wading out into the water. She was far enough away where the water was likely over his head by now, meaning he’d have to swim out to her.