Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling

by H. P. Lovecraft

  I can only imagine what Uncle James would say about white people excising his—our—tales from the living rock. But Perry does have a point. This is Canada: the pictographs get rained on, and snowed on, and I can see a spider creeping across the great beast’s left horn. Perry speaks again, and voices what I’m thinking.

  “Come on, Meesha. I’m not going to hurt it.”

  And yet, somehow, I feel an irritation creeping up my spine. I can’t find words to convey it, but my expression makes the point just fine.

  “Geez. Sorry,” Perry says, but he doesn’t sound sorry, particularly not when he mutters “fuck” under his breath.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stir, just a little. I don’t really know Perry all that well. Sitting next to him in introductory biology last semester had been fun – he’s got a great sense of humour – but we never had much time to hang out at school. By which I mean I never had much time. I held down two jobs to pay my bills and a scholarship to pay my tuition, and I needed to keep my grades up to maintain my scholarship. This is my best chance at a higher education, and I’m not going to blow it. My dad would never forgive me if I proved correct all those stereotypes about lazy Indians. I could never take Perry up on his invitations to go clubbing or partying, so this camping trip had seemed like the perfect opportunity to spend some time with him before my summer job takes me out of province.

  Now I’m not so sure.

  Perry didn’t mean anything by his comment. Right? Still, there’s something about his lack of….of respect…that eats at me. I’m fumbling for words, debating between trying to explain myself further and changing the subject entirely, when I glance upwards.

  What I see isn’t mentioned in the guidebook.

  A huge vein of translucent quartz runs through Mazinaabik Rock two feet above my head, and countless fossils hang suspended in the stone. Above and to my left, a perfect skeletal fish swims through crystal; on my right side, a trilobite scuttles across a patch of rosy feldspar. I tilt my head back and my breath catches in my throat. High overhead, a massive skull the likes of which I’ve never seen stares down at me.

  My first thought is it’s a dinosaur, but that’s ridiculous on two counts: the guidebook would’ve mentioned a dinosaur skeleton, and the shape of it is wrong. The skull is too rounded, too mammalian. It looks like some kind of predator, though, with enormous eyeteeth longer than my hand. Its forward-facing sockets gape at me, as though it can see me gawking up at it through stone and millennia, and it looks back at me across the eons. It’s posed as though it’s leaping out of the rock towards us, with its—I don’t know if those were massive paws or flared flippers, because only bone and thick black claws remain—folded in front of it and its spiny tail lashing out behind.

  “Holy shit,” I say.

  And I can’t shake the sensation that it recognizes me.

  I vaguely remember my uncle talking about the Great Underwater Lynx, the Manitou of Mazinaabik Lake. I’d responded with Nessie jokes and then tuned him out. I’d never imagined that the legendary Underwater Lynx might have some basis in fact. This thing’s incredible. I can’t believe it’s not in the guidebook. I lift my gaze to marvel some more…

  …and blank grey stone looks back. A thin vein of white quartz winks at me in the sun as the canoe bobs up and down.

  I blink my eyes, feeling dazed. Did I seriously fall asleep right here in the canoe? I shift in my seat and the canoe rocks alarmingly. I yelp and cling to the gunwales. Perry laughs.

  “Wake up, Meesha,” he says teasingly.

  I did. I drifted off. I feel like an idiot, but Perry at least seems amused. “I guess we should head back,” I say reluctantly. The sun’s hot and I’m obviously more than a little tired; maybe that’s why I got so upset with Perry.

  Perry starts to paddle, and I do too, but as the canoe turns I take one last look back over my shoulder. The pictograph is unchanged: rabbit-man, fabulous beast, and those columns I can’t understand. It seems small and pale next to my dream, which slips from my mind even as I struggle to recall it, but I seem to remember the skeleton of something very like the creature in the pictograph looming over me, pouncing through the wall between death and life to claim me as prey.

  By the time we carry the canoe back to the campsite, Perry is back to being the funny prankster I remember from class. We laugh through a supper of hot dogs and chips, and then Perry opens his cooler.

  “Beer?”

  He’s got to have a whole case in there. Does he really think we’re going to drink twelve beers each in one night?

  I don’t want to be a party pooper, so I accept a beer, but I’m glad my own cooler is filled with pop. We sit, drinking and talking, while the fire dies down and Perry adds to the collection of empty bottles on the ground. I tease him about Boy Scouts, and he responds by trying to scare me with a ghost story he heard at Scout Camp.

  Two can play that game, but unfortunately the only scary stories I know are the ones I’ve learned from Uncle James. I tell Perry the tale of the grand old inn and tourist resort that used to be here in this place where we’re now camping. The local tribe were tired of holidayers polluting the lake, and their requests for respect went unheeded, so their medicine people summoned the spirits to raze the resort and purify their sacred land.

  “What,” Perry smirks, “was it built on an ancient Indian burial ground?”

  No. It wasn’t. It was built on our land, our home, without our permission. The stereotype is irritating coming from Perry, and I bite off a retort, even though I’m the one telling a tale about a curse. I don’t believe in Uncle James’ faith, but I do know several medicine men, and none of them spend their time cursing people. Still—leave it to Uncle James to feed me his revenge fantasies and call them culture. I am suddenly weary of Perry and Uncle James both, and I do not recognize this ember smouldering in my soul.

  “There really did use to be a resort here,” I say instead, “and it really did burn to the ground in a thunderstorm. You can read about it in the guidebook. It was before the province bought the land and turned it into a protected park.”

  “This place is seriously in the middle of nowhere. I can’t imagine it as a tourist destination.”

  “Some people like the middle of nowhere.”

  “Why couldn’t we have gone to Sauble Beach instead?”

  Sauble’s a much more popular party spot. I sighed. “Because Sauble’s expensive, the provincial parks book months in advance, and Uncle James said I could use this campsite he’d reserved.” I roll my eyes. “It’s probably part of his constant agenda to put me back in touch with my heritage.”

  “You Indi…er, Native?”

  “Anishinaabe,” I say. Perry just looks confused. I guess I can’t blame him; it’s a bit of a mouthful. “Ojibwe is fine.”

  He looks relieved at that. “I wondered,” he said, “but I never knew how to ask.”

  “Yeah. My Uncle James told me that tale about the inn, and he knows a legend about the pictographs, too. ’To touch them is to enter their world’ or something like that.” I roll my eyes again, and Perry laughs.

  “Is that why you freaked out on me this afternoon? You think I’ve brought us into the Twilight Zone?”

  Yes. No. I don’t know. I suddenly feel guilty for mocking Uncle James, even if I don’t believe as he does. “I don’t believe that stuff,” I say, and the words sound lame to my ears. “It’s just that the guidebook says not to touch them.”

  They’re part of my heritage, aren’t they? They’re not for Perry to put his hands all over.

  Uncle James would have interpreted my dream in the canoe as a message from the spirit world. I just call it too much sun and my subconscious mind at play; but now I’m wondering what James and his medicine man friends would have made of it. I think of that fossilized creature in the rock, monstrous huge, alive in death and jumping out at me, and I shiver.

  I’m a twenty-first century woman and all those myths belong to a world long sin
ce dead. I can’t live in my uncle’s ideal of an Anishinaabe Eden.

  “Wasn’t anyone there to stop me,” Perry says easily. He finishes the last of the beer in his can, and I know he’s about to get another and try to press one on me, like he’s been doing all night. It’s getting annoying. I decide to head him off by opening a Pepsi instead.

  “Hey, can I show you something?” he asks, taking me by surprise.

  “What?” I set the freshly opened Pepsi down on our picnic table.

  Perry grins. Behind him, embers take flight like transient fireflies while the smoke blurs the stars. “You can see the stars better over the lake.”

  Perry and I abandon the dying coals of our campfire so quickly that I barely have time to grab my flashlight. He takes my hand and leads me along Camping Loop C, which writhes like a snake between scattered stands of trees. We pass mothers tucking children into pup tents, families gathered under the overhangs of RVs lit by sun-faded patio lanterns, and packs of young adults passing smokes around blazing fires. Perry’s surprisingly steady on his feet given the number of beers he’s had.

  We leave the gravel lane behind and holy hell, it’s black out here. Living in the city, it’s easy to forget just how dark the primal night can be. The provincial park’s lights are few and far between, and the glow of campfires fades quickly behind us. I can feel the asphalt under my sneakers as we follow the main road that runs through the center of the park like a spinal column. Trees loom over us, swaying in a high-altitude wind, but straight above the sky sparkles with the sheen of a thousand thousand stars spattered across the sky.

  I don’t know how long we’ve been walking when Perry tugs me to the left. “This way,” he says, and for just an instant my flashlight beam plays over a wooden sign. I think I see an illustration of a swimming figure and the ornate H that denotes a historical site, but Perry’s halfway to running now and I stumble trying to keep up with him.

  We leave the spine, following a dirt track that creeps downhill into the forest. I wish I had half the magical nature senses that Natives in popular fiction always seem to be blessed with; maybe then I’d know where the hell we were and how to stop tripping over stones. I’m still trying to formulate words to ask Perry what the hurry is when we emerge from the cover of the trees onto the open, starlit beach.

  The beach isn’t merely deserted; it’s utterly desolate. It’s actually kind of creepy that we can’t even hear the noise from the campsites. Just this afternoon, I’d been in this lake along with a hundred other people, lazily swimming, listening to kids shriek and chase each other. Perry and I have come to a different place by the light of the stars.

  The lifeguard chair stands stark and lonely in the cold beams of the moon. I breathe in damp sand and dew-covered forest. The floating line that marks the family swimming area is the only thing that dares to mar the eerie flatness of the lake’s surface. Perry was right, though—the view of the stars is breathtaking, with no trees or smoke or firelight to get in the way. I’m glad he brought me here, and I feel badly for being so sharp with him in the canoe.

  Perry sinks to his knees on the shore and, after a moment’s pause, I follow him. The sand is cool under my butt, but at least there’s no dampness creeping through my jeans. The lake’s surface is perfectly still, from the shoreline where we sit, all the way out to the great hulk of Mazinaabik Rock. In the far distance, a slight haze of mist rises from the surface and blots out the places where we saw the pictographs.

  I try to tell Perry that I’m glad he brought me here, but when I open my mouth, a shard of a story slips out.

  “It looks like….like the world ended, and left us behind.” Great. That doesn’t make me sound like a weirdo, does it?

  He surprises me when he agrees. “It does.” He turns to me with a snigger. “Is it up to us to repopulate it?”

  Gross. In school I would’ve laughed, but out here with the two of us all alone at night his joke falls flat. I decide to ignore his juvenile innuendo. “It’s like the lake has grown bigger,” I said instead, “and everything else here…like the boat slip and the buoys and the lifeguard chair…is smaller in the dark.” And us. I look out over the empty flat expanse and watch the reflected stars twinkling faintly, as though they’re encased in quartz. I realize, after the fact, that my words are sort of, kind of, true. It’s easy to imagine that I feel a presence radiating from Mazinaabik’s waters.

  That’s when Perry wraps his arm around my shoulders and yanks me towards him. Shocked, I don’t move when he puts his mouth on mine. He thrusts his tongue between my lips and I taste sour beer and saliva. I’m so utterly taken by surprise that for a moment I’m frozen, as paralyzed as a trilobite in shale.

  Perry takes my lack of protest as encouragement, and slips his hand up under the hem of my T-shirt. It takes time for me to process that this is really happening, and all the while his hand is climbing higher. When he grabs my breast, alarm flares in my brain and breaks me free of my paralysis. I shove him away, hard, and jump to my feet.

  I can still feel my breast throbbing, as though the touch of Perry’s hand has seared through my bra and into my skin. I gawk at him, as though I’ve never seen him before. He’s completely blindsided me. “What the fuck was that about?” I splutter.

  Perry blinks at me, blankly, as he rises. He looks disappointed, and I feel uncertain. I had no idea he thought about me like that. What signs had I missed?

  “I didn’t come out here to talk about stupid legends and look at the sky. I thought you invited me camping because you wanted to…”

  My temper sparks like flint. “I invited you here because I thought you were my friend.”

  “Fuck,” Perry says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and glowers at me, as though I’m the one who’s done something to him without cause.

  It’s the glower that gets to me. Suddenly, I can’t be alone with him a second longer. I turn and storm into the embrace of the forest, my mind whirling madly, my thoughts struggling to catch up with my reality. What the hell just happened and what did I do?

  I rack my brain, but I can’t recall a single instance when Perry had suggested he thought of me in a romantic—no, sexual—way. Not unless I count all those stupid innuendo jokes that he makes about, and to, every other girl we know. He’d certainly never asked me to be his girlfriend, and I feel sick when I realize he hadn’t been asking that now. He’d been asking to fuck, which was a totally different thing.

  I considered going back to the beach, telling Perry I was sorry, he’d just freaked me out, but I wasn’t interested in him that way, and could we please go back to the way we were this afternoon? I’d actually paused when it hit me: Perry hadn’t even asked to fuck. He’d just presumed. Hands all over me.

  Hands all over me as if he had every right.

  Shit, what am I going to do now? Perry and I drove up here together. I can’t just leave him stranded. Can I? I don’t want to be a bitch.

  I also don’t want to call Dad or Uncle James and try to explain why I need one of them to give Perry a ride home. Fuck, where am I going to sleep tonight? Not in a tent with Perry, that’s for damned sure. I no longer trust him to stay in his own sleeping bag.

  I thought we were friends. I thought we were friends. Look what’s happened.

  I realize, too late, that I’m not following the path. I have no idea how to get back to the trail Perry used to get us here. I’m weaving in between the trees, heading upslope, and my flashlight can barely keep up with the blur of trunks and bracken and rocks. Behind me, a twig snaps, and I realize, of course, Perry is following the light from my flashlight.

  And I’m out alone with him in the middle of the deep dark woods.

  I need to get back to civilization. I need to return to the campground, to the pup tent moms and the patio lantern RVers and the kids with their smokes. Once I’m back in sight of people, Perry won’t try anything. I’ll get in my car. I’ll leave. I’ll get someone else to take Perry home tomorrow. I break into
a run, knowing everything will be okay once I’m in the warm light of campfires again. I know what to do and everything will be fine if I can only make it back.

  But Perry runs faster than I do.

  His hand falls on my shoulder and then he plants his feet and digs his fingers into my flesh. The force of my momentum half-turns me to face him. The trees around me flicker as though they’re caught in a strobe light, and it’s only then I realize how much I’m shaking; the flashlight is dancing in my hand. Perry’s face looms pale and surreal, like a monster in a horror movie. I’m terrified. I’ve been very stupid and very trusting and…

  …and that strange glowing ember ignites.

  I jerk my shoulder from Perry’s grip. He scowls, and he starts talking, but I can’t make out his words. I don’t care what he’s saying. I take one step backwards, away from him, and suddenly, everything changes.

  The trees around me snap into straight lines, one behind another, lined up like soldiers at attention. My flashlight beam shines on forever through the endless corridors between the perfectly aligned trunks. It’s uncanny—unnatural—and I turn, sweeping the area with the light, but it’s like that everywhere, all around me. It’s as though I can feel the natural order inverting, and then Perry moves towards me and I should be running, I really should be running but I’m angry, I’m angry at Perry and his presumption, his hands on me, his hands on the pictographs and then Perry’s left leg slides out from under him and he goes down like a crippled deer in a snowbank. His knees slam into the ground and I can see pain in his eyes. I smell the agony-stink rolling off his body, seasoned by just the slightest whiff of fear.

  It’s not surprising he’s in pain. The ground beneath my feet is hard, not yielding humus and soft rotting leaves like it should be. I glimpse charred stone and the ghosts of walls in between the ranks of trees. The ground around me is a huge sunken depression, and its size and shape give me a hint as to where I am.

  This must be the site where the resort had once commanded the lake, decades ago. I lower the flashlight’s beam and see that I stand on smoke-stained brick. Perry has fallen in what was once the fireplace at the heart of the former inn. Half burned sticks and broken crockery lie about us like scattered bones.