by Hart, Joe
The edge of a license plate peeked from beneath a patch of dark green algae just above the chrome. There was no mistaking the rounded blue border and the faded yellow background. The light blue leg of a letter had been wiped clean. Lance rubbed his hand across the surface, the hidden letters and numbers emerging just as he knew they would.
189-GRR.
He shone his light farther down the row of what he had thought were boulders, their shapes now familiar to him. The flattened hump of a roof, the rounded shape of a fender, the dull shine of chrome beneath layers of time. They stretched off into darkness, out of the light’s reach.
Movement made him turn his head to the right, and his eyes met the empty sockets of Rhinelander, who hung motionless beside him, his blond hair splayed out around his head.
The scream escaped Lance in a rush of bubbles so thick it veiled the ghost completely from view. He kicked toward the surface, the flashlight falling from his hand unnoticed. He swam upward, his arms anticipating the feeling of breaking the surface, while his legs waited for the cold grip of a long-dead hand. His chest began to hitch reflexively, seeking air, though his mind screamed that there was none to be had. The darkness of the lake looked like it was beginning to lighten, then it all became the same opaque shade. I’m passing out, Lance thought, even as he kicked feebly one last time.
A half-lidded eye hung above him in the void, its flawless white pupil probing him as he floated there. He imagined it was God looking at him, but he felt no warmth in the gaze, only indifference and a harsh scrutiny. It wasn’t God, or anything like him. He realized then under its cyclopean gaze that there was no God. Only the floating darkness of eternal apathy. No warmth, only the cold understanding of absolute desolation, the hopelessness of being utterly forsaken.
A cold rushing sensation flowed up from the pit of Lance’s stomach and forced its way out of his open mouth. He vomited lake water in a gout that flew up and landed on his upturned face. He coughed and rolled onto his side in the water. More liquid surged from inside him, and he sucked in air greedily when the racking coughs passed. He felt his arms and legs begin to tread water, and turned so he faced the shore. He could see the gazebo glowing warmly, and he began to swim toward it. When he finally chanced putting his feet down, he felt the grazing touch of the bottom and began to walk, pushing with his arms to help propel him forward. Soon, the grass was beneath his feet and he moved up the forever climb of the hill. Then the door was open and he stood in the warmth of the gazebo. The fire crackled as it chewed the wood into cinder, and Lance saw arms held out before him—he supposed they were his—to the edge of the fire. All at once, he began to shake, just a shiver at first and then harder. He felt that the chattering of his teeth would jar the fillings from his mouth. He shook and then, just as fast as they had begun, the tremors eased, and he lowered himself into the lawn chair after throwing yet another piece of wood on the flames.
His eyes darted to the windows, although he couldn’t see anything beyond the reflection of the room. He wondered if his light still burned on the lake bed, if it shone on Gerald’s license plate, or perhaps on Gerald himself. His mind went back to the humps on the bottom of the lake. The cars. How many were there?
There’s so many, Andy’s voice answered in a hollow tone. At least now Lance knew what he’d meant. The fact that a man’s car, missing for over forty years, sat submerged along with God knew how many more overwhelmed him for a moment. Rhinelander had been trying to show him all this time. At first, he had just been a character in Lance’s mind, a figment of his imagination that had taken shape within the story. Then he had appeared in earnest, within Lance’s dreams and in the lake itself. Gerald had been trying to lead him to the car. To show him that he had been murdered.
There, Lance thought, at last giving in to the idea that had been building in his mind since seeing the license plate beneath the cold waves. Gerald Rhinelander had been murdered by someone in the house. His father’s face floated before his eyes, but how old had Anthony been at the time? Eleven? Twelve? It didn’t make sense. The only other possibility was Erwin. John had said the man had been violent—but murder? And not just one person but, from the looks of it, many.
The thoughts swirled around inside his head too fast to make sense of them. Soon he felt his eyelids beginning to close, and he realized that no amount of thinking would accomplish anything tonight.
Standing, he peeled off his still-soaking boxer shorts and hung them to dry on the back of the chair. His skin dried and warmed in the extreme heat of the fire, but he shivered as he slipped, naked, into the folds of the sleeping bag.
As his head rested on the pillow and true warmth began to spread throughout his body, he remembered the feeling that had clutched him in the lake as he floated on his back, not breathing but not yet dead. All he had seen in the last few weeks flew in the face of the notion of nothingness after life. There had to be something beyond this. Otherwise, a simple explanation still existed that gave cause to each: he was losing his mind.
Lance closed his eyes and prayed silently that he was.
The morning dawned, humid and overcast. The heat pressed down on the yard, house, and surrounding buildings, which had all but prepared themselves for a snap of cold and the first true taste of fall.
Lance awoke and blinked at the ceiling of the gazebo. His sleep had been restless, and at one point felt something touching his foot through the sleeping bag. After kicking out, he heard the storage box slide away on the floor, and then fell back into a dream where the water of Superior had crept closer to the door of the gazebo.
His skin felt damp and feverish, and he shrugged out of the sleeping bag and sat up. The fire had died in the early-morning hours, and now only a few coals remained. Lance grabbed his stiffened boxers from the nearby chair and slid them on.
As he buttoned his jeans and reached for his shirt, he noticed that one of the ledgers had fallen out of the box and was open. Two or three pages were sticking straight up from the binding like tongues. Gingerly, he reached down and picked the book up, and was about to close it when he noticed which page it had opened to. The last entries for Gerald lined the far edge of the page. ANN. Absent, no notice.
Something connected in Lance’s mind with an electrical snap.
His fingers scratched at the prior pages, their yellowed faces fanning the humid air across his own. He stopped and stared at an entry marked six months earlier, almost at the front of the book. Alex Stralin had been etched in the name column. Lance followed the line over to the notes, and there it was.
ANN.
Just as Gerald’s entries, Alex’s lasted for about a week and then were terminated. Lance flipped a few pages to verify that he hadn’t been added again later in the year and confirmed that his name did not rest anywhere else in the book. Lance flipped further forward and found yet another name—Jason Howard—that also bore the same code.
Lance fell to the floor beside the box and began to pull book after book from within. The names kept appearing: Ronald Oakland, Marshall Fencer, Alan Westling, Michael East. Always the same letters there.
The first ledger marked June 13, 1955 slipped from Lance’s fingertips and fell back into the empty box. The other registers sat in a disordered pile beside the box. Lance stared out of the window at the gray waters that barely moved in the heat of the day. He had counted fifty-two names in all. Fifty-two names, including Gerald Rhinelander’s. Gerald’s name had been the last marked with the acronym and his car had been the closest to shore in the line of vehicles sunk beneath the water. Lance’s mind reeled. The connection to his grandfather’s company was undeniable. He knew if he were to swim back down to where the cars sat and brought the license numbers back with him, they would undoubtedly be registered to the names in the books before him.
Lance stood and stepped out of the gazebo, into the full humidity of the day. The sun hung somewhere behind the congealed mass of clouds above, fueling the heat that permeated every surface in sigh
t. He stood looking at the house on the rise above him, which was silhouetted against the leaden sky. He felt the need to return to the room; it pulled at him from behind the door like a compass needle pointing to true north. He had missed something there, something crucial to understanding the mystery that had partially revealed itself.
The thought of returning to the room began to crush him in a tightening band of fear. He felt his chest constricting, robbing him of oxygen, while his palms began to sweat. He was ten years old again, looking out of his childhood home to see if his mother’s car had returned or, at the very least, if his father’s truck was absent. He was opening the door to their bedroom and his eyes were falling on his father’s disfigured back. He was being struck, over and over, a cold hand gripping his arm hard enough to crush the bones beneath the skin.
His hand rubbed the bruise and lacerations on his arm. The pain pulled him forward through twenty years, and he felt the thundering concussion of his heartbeat in his ears.
Lance had crossed the yard and pulled open the nearby shed’s door before he had time to register that he was moving. He had never been in the shed before, but it took only moments for him to find what he was looking for.
The ax’s handle felt smooth and powerful in his hand as he threw the front door open and strode across the entry. The door came into view as he rounded the corner into the living room, and it was closed, as he’d hoped it would be. Without breaking his stride, Lance lifted the ax over his right shoulder, gripping it with two hands at its flared end, and swung it as hard as he could.
The ax blade met the door with a chunky crunch, as wood fibers flew in several directions. Lance didn’t pause to acknowledge the surprise he felt at the ax actually damaging the door. In the back of his mind, he had expected it to merely bounce off, repelled by an unseen force. He pulled back, yanking the blade from the door, and reloaded another swing, which sent more pieces of wood flying.
The fury he felt inside him only increased as he swung the ax, as if with every blow he were freeing the emotion fully from the place he kept it within. He felt it flow outward, unbidden from his core, a seething hatred so thick he feared it would clog his veins.
A full panel of the door broke free and flew into the room. Lance felt the ax almost slip free of his hands as the panel gave way. He pulled it back and struck again. This time, a deep cracking sound echoed throughout the living room and Lance felt the entire door sway inward. In a swift movement, he drew his foot back and kicked powerfully at the center of the black door. It exploded into the room in opposite directions, the left half banging against the wall, and the other spinning out of sight.
Lance’s breath came in ragged gasps. The ax hung from his fingertips. He waited, watching the dimness of the room for movement, for the bloom of white flesh rushing out to meet him. Nothing came. He listened, holding his breath for a few seconds at a time, before stepping through the threshold and into the room.
The ashen light from the rest of the house barely reached past the opening, and Lance paused again to let his eyes adjust. The chair sat just where it had the night before. He could make out a scattering of dark pellets on the floor, and realized it was the ricocheted buckshot. He walked to the center of the space and turned in a slow circle, gripping the ax in aching fingers.
“I’m here, you fuckers,” he growled.
Nothing appeared to take his challenge, and after a few moments of stark silence, he sensed that he was alone. He shifted his gaze to the chair. It sat there, squat and ugly, as if it was waiting. Daring him to come closer.
He stepped nearer, dropping to one knee before it. The faint light fell upon its surface, making it glow. He searched around its base, feeling the edges of the steel for any gap or seam that might indicate a panel or hidden space within. His hands ran up its sides to the armrests. He worked there for a moment, and then moved around to the rear.
No clue presented itself. Lance stood and studied the chair. He noticed the darkened wood beneath his feet and imagined what must have occurred in this room years before. Had screams echoed off the stone walls without an empathetic ear to hear their anguish? Had his father been the one to inflict the pain on whoever had sat here? How much blood had spilled here to stain the wood black and leave the faint odor of copper decades later?
Lance shook himself from the morbid contemplation and stared down at the floor. One person still lived that knew what had happened between these walls. One person held the key to unlock the past. One person knew the truth, and she hadn’t spoken a word in over thirty years.
Lance raised his head to the gray light that filled the doorway like a mist. “By God, she’s going to talk now,” he said, and walked out of the room.
After placing the ax against the entry archway, he stepped out into the compressing heat and slammed the door behind him.
“Pick up the phone,” Lance murmured to himself as he began to speed up on the road heading south out of Stony Bay.
The phone in his hand emitted an unpleasant, monotonous buzz within its listening piece. There was a pause and then the sound began again. Lance almost pulled the phone away from his ear and terminated the call, but then he heard a click and an inward draw of breath before Andy’s voice resonated through the line.
“I didn’t expect a draft this soon.”
“Andy, listen to me. There’s some real bad shit going on at the house. I don’t have time to explain it all, but it was originally built by my grandfather,” Lance said, taking a curve faster than he had intended, the wheels of the Land Rover shrieking their protest beneath him.
“What? Your grandfather?”
“Yes, and that’s not all. I’m on my way to see my grandmother, she’s still alive. If you don’t hear from me—”
“You’ll be dead.”
A slithering ribbon of dread ran through Lance’s stomach. The voice that had cut him off wasn’t Andy’s. He felt his hand begin to shake as he pressed the phone tighter to his head.
“Andy?” His voice came out a whisper. A sound like a thick zipper being drawn open came from the earpiece, and Lance swallowed the hard ball that formed in his throat.
“You’ll be dead before you know it, boy. Just as well come back and get it over with.” His father’s voice sounded as if he were speaking through a mouthful of liquid. Maybe it’s the electronics, Lance thought numbly. Maybe it can’t recognize words from a dead voice box.
“You can’t hurt me,” Lance said, his voice weakened by the thought of how his father was even speaking through the phone.
“Look at your arm and tell me I can’t. We’re getting stronger every minute, boy.” Anthony paused and a sound like lips being smacked together filtered through the earpiece. Lance had a sudden horrible image of his father’s soul seeping out of the phone and into his own ear canal, poisoning and destroying the tissue as it passed. “Don’t tarry too long, we’ll be waiting.” The line crackled and then went deathly silent.
The sound of a horn blared and Lance blinked, his eyes focusing on the oncoming headlights of a large black pickup. His arms jerked the wheel, and he watched the world tilt as he swung away from the truck’s enormous silver grill, its left fender missing the rear end of the Land Rover by inches. The other driver blasted the horn again as the truck sailed past, his enraged eyes finding Lance’s for a split second.
Lance steadied himself, his breath bordering on hyperventilation as he focused on the road ahead and slowed well below fifty miles per hour. A tinny squawking drew his attention to the passenger seat, where he had dropped the phone. He picked it up, barely holding it with two fingers, as if it were a putrid piece of meat. As he brought it closer to his ear, he recognized the sound of Andy’s voice.
“Lance! Can you hear me? Lance!”
“I’m here. Did you hear that?”
“Hear what? You were saying something about your grandmother being alive and then you were gone. What the hell is going on?”
Lance slowed the SUV to a crawl and
turned off the highway, past the sign reading Riverside Serenity, a home for caring.
“I can’t explain any more right now. If you don’t hear from me within the next few hours, call the police and send them to the house. Tell them to drag the waters just in front of my place. I gotta go.”
“Lance wait, I need to tell you…”
Andy’s voice was lost as Lance stopped the car in the vacant parking lot and set his phone down on the center console. As he climbed from the SUV, the building reminded him of a massive crouching predator, its mouth open in the form of the two darkened front doors. With growing trepidation, he walked toward the structure, and noticed an expanding wall of black clouds just beyond the tall pines encircling the grounds.
The uncomfortable heat and humid air was carrying a storm. He could hear the faint rumblings of thunder, a promise of the fury the clouds longed to unleash on the world below. The storm’s got teeth, Lance thought as he closed in on the face of the building, and he shivered before the cool air of the indoors touched his skin.
John wiped his brow with the back of his hand, the skin there slick with sweat. He glanced out of the pickup’s window at the darkening sky. He couldn’t remember the last time it had been this hot and rainy in September. The world’s gone a little haywire, he thought, as he rounded the last bend and Lance’s house came into view. He felt a little disappointment when he saw that the younger man’s SUV wasn’t parked in its usual spot.
