I screamed. I ripped my arm free of her grip. I dropped the log, which had somehow become a wiggling creature. I grabbed onto Jaime and dragged him toward the lake.
Sometimes the body acts on pure instinct, even after the soul in the body is gone.
We ran into the lake, splashing through its oily water. Jamie was in a daze. His arm was bleeding heavily. Bright red syrupy strands fell to coat the gray surface with color. The creature that had touched me had held him for much longer. He too was just a shell. But I refused to give in to despair. I never was very good at knowing when a fight was over.
I screamed at Jaime, “We have to swim down to get back home!” Jamie looked at me and blinked. I think he understood what I was saying. I had no idea if what I was saying was true or not.
Then the tree behind Jamie moved. It unwound the bent over top trunk and lifted its head. Glowing white eyes stared at me. The gray woman was pointing at us and yelling at the moving tree in some guttural language. The tree pulled its four bottom trunks out of the ground. The roots that formed the thing’s feet looked like the paddles of the model plesiosaur I had seen in the natural history museum. But this thing was no extinct water dinosaur, it very much existed in the present, and it came towards us in a skittering rush.
In a panic, I decided I had helped Jamie all I could. He’d have to swim on his own. I turned and scrambled deeper into the lake. Jamie followed . I heard him splashing behind me. I also heard a louder splash, one that displaced a great deal of water. The tree thing was now in the lake with us.
I pushed my feet out from under me and started to swim as soon as I could. As a child, there had been many times when I forced myself to swim faster by pretending that an alligator or shark was after me. Well, a real predator was behind me now, and adrenaline flowed through my veins. It took all I had to focus, not to just frantically paw at the water, but to move through it with long powerful strokes.
The surface color of any body of water appears darker where it is deeper. That was true for even this gray filth. When I left the chalk colored water for the elephant colored, I took a deep breath and dove down.
As I swam down, I concentrated on moving as fast as I could with as little energy as possible. I made every motion smoothly. Every movement connected with every other and all served the purpose of driving me down into the lake. I concentrated on these things to make good my escape, but mostly to prevent my mind from freezing in fear.
The gray water grew dark quickly and soon became black. I swam down blindly. In the black, my mind slipped free of the cage in which I had placed it. What if all this was for nothing? What if there was no way out? Any moment I might hit the bottom and get a face-full of mud.
I swam anyway. Although I was terrified on one level, I was oddly detached on another. Something had already been taken from me. The thing that made me me was gone. I swam because I was like a twitching tail dropped by a lizard. Even though it had been left behind by its host, the tail still twitched because that was all it knew how to do. My body fled, because the body places its own survival above all other things. My body fled because that was all it knew how to do.
My chest ached from my exertions. My lungs were unhappy with the quick breath I had taken. They wanted more, soon. Then the blackness turned to dark brown.
I swam harder, willed myself forward faster than I have ever swam before or since. The brown brightened to caramel. I felt the pressure of the water come off my face. I felt myself being lifted up by my buoyancy. Soon, I saw light shimmering through the water.
I broke through the surface and gulped in air. It didn’t hurt me. The air was full and sweet and life giving. Even the smell of rotting vegetation did not dissuade me from breathing it in. Everything was as it should have been. The sky was blue. Plants and dried mud lined the shoreline of the brown lake. There was no woman seeking to feed on me, no tree man waiting on shore to crush me.
The thought of the tree thing spurred me back into action. If I could come up through the lake, then so could it. My body kicked back into flight mode. I swam hard for the shore. I heard a splash and I managed to over-ride my body’s flight instinct long enough to look back.
Jamie had made it through. He floated there for a moment taking in large breaths. Then he saw me. His gaze looked like the thousand yard stare war veterans sometimes get. He looked at me, but he also looked through me. I don’t think I looked real to him.
He began to swim toward me anyway. He moved on his side, dragging his useless arm alongside him beneath the surface. He was about halfway to me when something grabbed him and pulled him under.
I looked at the ripples that marked where he had disappeared in shock.
He came up again, his head and face bleeding. He reached out for me, mouthing words I couldn’t hear. Something pulled him under again, this time with an incredible amount of force. A plume of water shot into the sky from where he had vanished. The survival instinct in my body took over again. I swam for the edge of the lake as fast as I could. With every kick, I expected something to crush my toes or to take hold of an ankle and snap my foot clean off.
I was so focused on swimming away my hands and chest hit mud before I realized I was in the shallows. I stood up breathing hard, covered in muck, and I ran. My feet were painfully crunching across the dried mud before I looked back.
I saw nothing. There was no trace of Jaime. The water on the lake was glass smooth. There was no indication that anything had happened.
I ran all the way back to my parents’ house. In between gasping sobs, I told my mother that I had seen Jamie go under. I hadn’t seen him come back up. I said nothing about other worlds or monsters.
Emergency crews were called and an intense search of the lake commenced. They found nothing. I was accused of lying about seeing Jamie drowning, but Jaime’s parents soon confirmed that he was missing.
In the days that followed, the search turned into recovery. A pair of small boats ran a chain across the bottom . They found nothing.
A memorial was eventually held for Jaime. A plaque was put up near the lake. I was instructed to never swim there again.
What my parents didn’t realize is that neither Jamie or I had actually survived. Jamie had lost his soul and body; I had just lost my soul. Perhaps it would have been better if I had lost my body as well.
I can still feel fear, hunger, desperation... all the instincts a body gives us. But things like love or joy, those are things that come from the soul, and so they are beyond me. So very much is beyond me. Food can be flavorful but I cannot savor it. Friendship can be given to me but I cannot return it. I can hear music but it cannot move me. I am a vacant aging husk. An empty vessel that has no real purpose now that what was inside has been taken.
Despite my parents’ wishes, I have been back to that lake many times, seeking to regain what that creature took from me. I have run my hands through the sludge at the bottom of the lake. I have clawed at it, dug it up, thrown dynamite onto it, but all to no avail. The door to that other world is closed.
So now I wait, getting older, living but dead. I wait but I am always ready. When the lake claims its next victim, when the door is again open, I will dive down into that chasm, come out the other side, and find a way to kill everything I see.
I will die or I will get my soul back. Either way, I will know peace again. Either way, I will be free of that damn lake.
BEYOND THE BONEYARD GATE
Alicia Austen
“The next three houses are empty,” says the old man, pointing to his right. His hand is uncommonly smooth, creaseless. “The gingerbread ones.”
I swivel the cap back onto my camera lens, and look past his outstretched arm to the trio of decaying, pastel-colored mansions. They are lovely but beaten-up, just my sort of thing.
“They ain’t as old as they look, but they’re plenty old at that. Built by three brothers right before the war. That’d be the Great War to you an’ me. Gotta be a hundred years old by now, though th
ey look like refugees from the nineteenth century. Anyway, all the brothers came back alive. None of ‘em ever married. Lived to be real old. Hell, I was middle-aged by the time the last of ‘em died. That’s been thirty years. Their cousin’s kid owns the houses now. She’s older’n me and lives upstate. Don’t think I’ve seen her since the last of ‘em was buried.”
He falls silent long enough to climb the stairs, extending his thought as soon as his feet fall flat against the boards of the porch.
“No one would know if you went pokin’ around the back with your camera. Even though the houses are separate, they share a yard. The fence you see on this side wraps around the lot of ‘em. They were a peculiar set, those brothers. It’s a real boneyard back there, too. Kind of like the insides of a museum was tossed outside and left to rot. There’s beauty in everything, I suppose. Even in neglect.”
I thank him for letting me take photographs in his tidy garden, what he called a real widower’s hobby.
“An old man has to spend his days doing something, especially when the nights are so long,” was how he explained away its size and neatness.
I’m already walking street-side, halfway to the brothers’ boneyard gate, when his voice, followed directly by the shutting of a door, reaches the back of my head.
“You’ll want to watch where you step, miss.”
I’m a dust collector. I love junk, old things. The entire array of ROY G. BIV can be found in the right rusted object, if you pay close enough attention. Imperfection photographs better than beauty. It holds up to repeated viewings to a degree that flawlessness cannot. It’s never the same thing twice. I’ve learned, quickly, that there are advantages to living in a place with history etched on every surface and on every face.
My husband and I have lived in this small Southern town for three months, but it feels like six. Everyone is polite and voluble, but conversations never go anywhere. They speak in anecdotes, mostly about long-dead relatives or neighbors. I’ve no idea what most acquaintances do for a living, but I know how the breath of scandal hit their husband’s cousin’s father-in-law’s grandfather 60 years ago.
The people are closed to us, but the scenery is not. The crumbly old buildings that run down Main Street tell better stories than the townsfolk do, and are less threatened by outsiders. Healthy, bright flowers that bloom to past human height are neatly ensconced behind erect hedges. There are statues wherever one glances. Polished, clean-edged, or impressively decayed, they live in parks, cemeteries, and on admirably shellacked front lawns.
Nothing is ever really fixed here; it’s just shined up or loudly painted, and presented as good enough. This sloppy philosophy is mesmerizing. I am anxious to discover what treasures are waiting beyond the brothers’ shabby gate. Shading myself from the piercing arrows of an army of sunbeams, I step inside.
There is so much visual chaos that I’ve no idea where to rest my eyes. I start counting statues to steady my nerves. After four careful surveys, and a temporary miscount, I decide that there are twenty-seven.
They are spread, seemingly without any rational thought or eye for aesthetics, across the span of all three lawns. Or, what would have been three lawns had these brothers been a mite less emotionally conjoined.
Yet, the longer one stares-gapes, really, like an ill-mannered child-the more one becomes convinced that there is a strange, haphazard pattern at play. The statues look as if they were frozen in the midst of a foot race or hedonistic frolic: some appear to be in solitary flight, whilst others are jumbled together in faintly frightening yet awkward groupings, engaged in conversations that will never be finished. Time has not been kind to the materials they were crafted with; it is impossible to tell what most of them represent. Not knowing what they are seems a terrible unkindness.
What is truly alarming, though, is the state of their faces. Most of their features have been sloughed off; due to exposure to the elements or poor construction I am not entirely certain. Some have retained the curve of a nose or the upturn of a lip, but most are merely pock-marked surfaces gouged through with empty mouth holes or a single jagged nostril. They all have intact ears, which, I realize with a shudder, sounds like something straight out of a particularly vengeful piece of Greek mythology.
I’ve not composed a single image, and I’ve been standing here for at least ten minutes. There is too much to make sense of in one visit, but I know that I will not have time to return whilst the weather holds warm. Deciding it best to take a few moments to gather my thoughts, I sit down under the shade of the only tree and pull out a book of Ibsen’s plays.
I love reading aloud in strange places, and this boneyard – this decrepit museum – is the strangest of all. Cemeteries, for all their contained death, are orderly and peaceful. Here, the irregularities could not be bleached away by a dozen alien suns. I read for a few minutes, my voice barely above a whisper, but cannot escape the aching thought that this place – which is just a regular backyard run amok – is ripe with secrets. Ibsen is too logical a companion for this scene and I shut the book before the last few words trail off.
Then, there are the poppies. They are strong and perfect, and are everywhere a statue does not stand. One must walk on them uncaring, like grass, or remain fixed by the gate like a statue oneself. Every greedy inch of the ground is a deep bloody-orange. I rise, clutching at my book and camera, before I am devoured by claustrophobia.
As my eyes continue adjusting to this richly orchestrated madness, layer upon layer of details emerge. Small trinkets and ephemera are strewn on and amongst the statues. Together, they form a grandmother’s attic of random memorabilia: empty, faded envelopes; a frayed, dusty-pink pillbox hat; a table top artist’s easel; a blue Hermes Baby typewriter with rusty keys; costume jewelry with missing stones; a decayed oar; a bicycle basket; a purple high-heeled satin slipper; a gold-plated lighter. For every step I turn, I see at least a dozen new objects fading in and out of the poppies. They tease me with their solidness, only to disappear a second or two later. Blinking my eyes does not bring them back. Dusk is here.
I am walking now, quickly and deliberately, towards the gate. I’m unnerved, and have to stifle the impulse to run through the poppies until the hard comforting pavement of the street is underneath. Solid, drab. Safe.
My left arm rams into the cold, slimy surface of a statue. I scream, and do not move. The face has been eaten away, exposing an incomprehensibly rotted stone skull that looks almost as human as it does inanimate. Foulness lives here, inside this ugly thing, quarantined from all that is rational. It is a soldier, wrecked beyond identification except for the tattered cap on its head. The cap is real. He is a doughboy. He smells of cigarettes.
No, I catch myself. I smell cigarettes. Someone has to be smoking something strong, nearby. It must be the widower next door. I turn to move away, away from this statue, so maleficent and disturbing, and doubly away from the ridiculous spasms of my imagination. I close my eyes.
I open them on the inhale. Smoke laps against my prickly face. A bright orange dot glows from the statue like a pulsating beacon, growing and then receding with each pull of breath. His breath. Moonlight glances off of a face whose features are re-forming before me, as stone becomes flesh and sinew. I pant, voiceless, and do not scream again.
My senses are diverted, for the space of a few heartbeats, by a rustling sound emerging from the West. The old widower steps out of the shadows of his house. He stares at me, and grins; his teeth are like white flares in the night, illuminating the darkness with horrifying clarity.
My hands go slack, as the camera and book are drowned in the smooth sea of poppies.
CRITTER MARROW
Patrick Lacey
Make your dick three times larger with Ventrimex.
Gary rolled his eyes and clicked delete.
The next one was for a free subscription to a bestiality magazine, followed by tickets to a swinger’s party in Bangkok. There were a few notices that he’d won a contest of some sort. To
redeem his prize, all he had to do was enter his Social Security number, date of birth, and address.
He checked his watch. It was nearly six and his boss had told him the company junk folder had to be emptied before he could leave for the weekend. He’d almost told Emily to fuck off but he’d bitten his tongue. From what he’d heard, the internship was close to becoming a full-time position, and with his college loan grace period ending in two months, he couldn’t afford to make any such rash decision.
Me horny long time with you and your uncle. Call me now.
Where the hell did this stuff come from? He’d never thought twice about his own junk mail, usually deleted it as soon as it appeared, but if you spent nearly two hours treading through the stuff, searching for any important messages that may have accidentally been flagged as spam, you got to wondering.
Gary scrolled down and saw he was nearly done now. Only a handful left.
Sir, may I ask of you a favor for my starving family and our dogs?
Delete.
My pussy is waiting for you.
Delete.
He stopped himself on the next one, nearly ready to delete it like the others. It looked like an email from a concerned customer, seemed legitimate. He moved it over to his inbox. He’d deal with it on Monday and let Emily know he’d found something after all.
New study finds meat is cause of aids, cancer, pedophilia, and arthritis.
Delete.
Dolly Dix has shared an album with you.
Delete. Just one more now. He could feel the weekend calling to him.
He clicked on the email.
Critter Marrow.
His finger hovered over the mouse, ready to click the moment he was sure it was junk like the others.
A picture appeared in the body of the email. It was hard to make out at first. Gary had to squint and lean back to make sense of it. When it began to come together, he tensed.
Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling Page 12
