Silverwood

by Betsy Streeter

  Florence sets down her teacup. “But mostly, the things that come to you, dreams, messages, those are you talking to yourself. You are trying to come to terms with something. You need to listen to what you are saying. It’s not a voice from an old relative.”

  “Okay,” Helen says, “So what am I saying to myself with gurgly noises in my ears when I’m asleep?”

  Florence simply looks back at her. The two of them sit very still. Clarence lets out a large sigh in his sleep and shifts slightly in the doorway.

  “Underwater… ” Helen says. “It’s… ”

  Helen leaps up from the mustard-yellow couch, nearly upsetting the candle and teacup. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Okay,” Florence says.

  Helen trips over the edge of the rug, hurdles over Clarence, and sprints out the door.

  “Thanks Florence! Clarence, go home!” she yells from the middle of the street.

  “No problem,” Florence says, taking another sip of tea. “See you soon.”

  Helen sprints forward through the tree branches, her arms stinging as she holds them up to protect her face. Her frantic breaths come even faster than her stride. Dead branches snap under her boots.

  The lake’s surface appears through the foliage, a flat blue line growing slowly thicker. Helen trips and falls, bashing her knee into a long-dead log embedded in the ground. She claws with her hands in the leaves to pull herself back up and keeps running.

  The ground slopes steeply and her feet slide downward in the mud. Big, craggy rocks protrude in crazy directions, either offering her steps for her descent or something to trip on. Helen has to slow down to pick out her footing, but her eyes stay fixed on the widening blue area in the distance. Now she can make out ripples on the surface of the water. The foliage and rocks thicken and tangle her feet. She must kick her legs forward with all her strength and leap over masses of plants and rocks.

  The ground becomes looser and sandier as she gets lower, demanding more effort with each step. Helen does not take her eyes off the surface of the lake, and as she clears the foliage she sees exactly what she does not want to see: a figure, dressed in black and with white hair, waist-deep in the water.

  “Mom!” she screams. “Mom!”

  She pumps hard with her legs through the thick branches, just a few brambles left between her and the edge of the lake. The figure does not turn. Helen’s foot sticks in the ground and she sprawls forward.

  “Mom! Don’t!” she screams again, pulling up to her knees in the wet sand and dirt. Her hair sticks to her forehead. She pulls herself upright.

  The figure still does not respond. Now Helen can only see a head and shoulders.

  “Mom! Answer me!”

  Helen sloshes out into the water at a full run, stubbing her feet on the rocky bottom and flailing with her arms. Now she can only see a little bit of white hair—and the figure is gone. Helen’s mom is gone under the surface of the lake.

  “Mom!” she screams again and dives into the water. She kicks forward and swims under the surface, but can only see a murky green smudge. She comes up for air, desperate to keep her bearings on where she saw her mom’s head disappear. But the ripples on the surface offer no clue.

  She swims farther forward, putting her face under the water and scanning for any sign at all. Surely the shape of a person would be easy to pick out. There would be a big, dark object sinking toward the bottom. Right?

  Nothing. No sign of anything. Just junky water. And some rocks. Nothing else.

  “You didn’t see it?”

  “Henry, there’s nothing under there. Just—mud. That’s it. Believe me, I would have noticed.”

  Henry furrows his brow. “You should have seen it,” he says. “It’s there.” He looks down at his notebook.

  “Henry… ” Helen says.

  “It’s there,” Henry repeats.

  Helen knows that her brother sees things that others can’t, things that haven’t happened yet. But a town under the lake—that’s a hard one to believe. Helen looked, and there’s nothing under the lake. Just some muddy fish. And her mom.

  Mom.

  Why would she do that?

  Helen doesn’t want to upset Henry any more. Her head is still jumbled up. And Henry, even with his imagination, is spinning an awfully elaborate excuse for their mom walking into the lake. He’s gone and constructed the crazy notion of an entire town, under water. She leans over and puts her arm around her brother.

  “It’s there, Helen,” Henry says again. “Maybe it’s out of synch with us, maybe it’s in another time. But it’s there.”

  The drawing in his notebook depicts a western town, complete with a general store and a hotel and a main street down the middle. Something out of Pale Rider or High Noon. It almost seems like an older, worn-out version of Brokeneck.

  Helen says nothing. She is afraid. She is afraid for Henry, she is afraid that their mom really has gone into the lake and drowned herself, she is afraid that she will never know why, and she is afraid that there is nothing, nothing she can do about it.

  Code Entry Complete

  Protocol Accepted

  Connection Established

  G: K, you there?

  G: K need to talk to u

  G: K PICK UP

  K: dad it’s helen, not mom

  G: helen where’s mom?

  K: she’s gone

  G: gone where?

  K: into the lake

  G: what lake? helen what are u saying?

  K: the lake at brokeneck

  K: she’s gone

  K: i can’t track her, there’s nothing there

  K: i saw her go in i swear

  K: dad what should i do?

  G: stay where you are

  G: stay at the hotel

  G: don’t leave the field protecting the hotel

  G: i’ll be there i promise

  Re-Establishing Signal

  Buffering

  Buffering

  Reconnecting

  Connected

  G: helen where are u right now

  K: on the roof

  K: of the hotel

  K: dad i saw her go in

  K: why would she do that???

  K: what am i supposed to do

  G: just stay there

  G: promise me you’ll stay

  G: where is henry?

  K: henry is here

  K: he says there’s something under the lake

  K: but i went in there. there’s nothing i can’t see anything

  K: mom is gone

  G: can henry see something?

  G: but i don’t care you 2 stay put

  G: promise me

  G: Promise

  Alternate Code Entry Received

  New Connection Detected

  G: line not secure

  K: dad

  G: LINE NOT SECURE GET OFF NOW

  Gabriel’s screen goes dark. He pries the device open and pulls out the memory unit, throws it on the ground and stomps on it. He can’t risk getting traced, or giving away his daughter’s location. He hopes Helen has done the same on the other end.

  Gabriel looks up from the ground and Kate Silverwood, his wife, the mother of his children and the love of his life, is standing in front of him.

  PART THREE

  Doctor Julius Dinkle paces irritably around the table at the center of the Council chamber, hands clasped behind his back. His tattered bowler hat sits at one end, in front of the Chairman’s old seat, a reminder to everyone in the room that Doctor Dinkle now occupies this position.

  No one speaks. Not the Tromindox with the deer skull around his neck, nor the assorted Council members, nor the digital creature whose face is filled with static at the moment. Doctor Dinkle passes behind each of the twenty or so of them as he makes his circuit around the table. In some situations this sort of walking around thing might serve to intimidate, but in Dinkle’s case he just comes off as a skinny, angry man in need of a new suit.

/>   “Where is he?” Dinkle finally asks.

  “How should we know?” deer skull says. “You were the one with all the codes. I thought you Council folks could track anyone. Apparently I was misinformed.”

  “We don’t wear radio collars like on some nature special,” an unpleasant birdlike woman says, her veiny white hands folded on the table. The light cast by the torches on the walls elongates the shadows and makes everyone look that much more crabby.

  “Well maybe you should consider it,” another Tromindox snaps. “You people sure can’t keep track of what’s going on, can you?”

  “Oh, shut up,” another Council member says, and the room erupts in arguments with hands and tentacles waving everywhere.

  “Enough!” Doctor Dinkle shouts. He has a loud voice for such an insubstantial little man. Everyone turns to the head of the table.

  “Look,” Dinkle says. “The Council Headquarters is a labyrinth. There are codes on top of codes and systems on top of systems. The former Chairman knows that, and he’s using that fact to keep himself under cover. He can sneak around all he wants, but the fact is, at some point he will reveal himself.” Doctor Dinkle looks around the room.

  “This is because he will make a mistake. All people make mistakes. So we don’t need codes, we just need to pay attention. Attention to what he wants. Attention to who he cares about. To the things he needs. He will show himself. In fact, he already has.”

  Doctor Dinkle slams a light sheet down on the table, possibly the same one the Chairman previously used to erase all record of Dinkle’s own existence. He pokes it, and up comes a map of Brokeneck, California.

  “Our friend has recklessly made a visit to everyone’s favorite town,” he says. “Had a little exchange with our friend, Gabriel Silverwood. Not a big mistake, but enough to reveal Mr. Silverwood’s movements. And I assure you, our Chairman friend will show up again.”

  Doctor Dinkle puts his knuckles down on the table. “But that’s not who I want. I don’t want the Chairman, and I certainly don’t want that idiot Silverwood. They are just pointers. Guideposts, if you will.”

  Doctor Dinkle looks around the room one more time, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “I want that stupid little girl.”

  RECORDING

  It’s me again.

  I just thought I’d say for the record: I am not a baby any more.

  I don’t need a babysitter, and I don’t need to be told to just sit around while the grown-ups do everything. I am fourteen years old.

  Mom seems to think that I should go sit in a highchair in this gross hotel, while she just disappears with no explanation. Nothing. Not even a warning. ‘Hey, I’m going to disappear into some stupid lake, see you in a week.’ Nothing. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

  Apparently, it’s okay when she needs something, like for me to hack some idiot’s muddy video camera or stuff like that. Then, I’m useful. But the rest of the time, get out of the way, the grown-ups are busy.

  Also, I am useful when I have dreams. And heal Tromindox. So that’s nice too. I’m so glad that I’m so useful to everybody.

  Now I guess the little girl is supposed to sit here with her stupid babysitter, Mrs. Woods, whoever she is, until the grown-ups come back. Just like when I was five. Maybe she’ll bring me back a souvenir from her trip.

  Oh, and another thing. This whole business with you being gone is a stinking pile of garbage—as if that wasn’t obvious by now. I mean, we haven’t laid eyes on you except on these little screens and dumb text messages. How do we know you’re not just running around doing what you want? You probably don’t care. That stupid knife you gave me never lights up. That’s because you’re not around, you’re not coming around, you’re gone.

  If you really cared what happened to us you would be here.

  And who ends up in prison, anyway? Losers, that’s who. Criminals and losers. They’ve tried to tell me that’s not how it all happened, but I’m sorry, if you end up in prison you did something really stupid—or really wrong—or both.

  So now I’m told you’re out of prison, we assume because you said so in some text message, but do you come see us? No. You just send notes from wherever you’re hiding out.

  I’m sick of it. I’m sick of waiting around for things that aren’t going to happen. None of it is going to happen.

  And what about Henry? I’m the one who has to calm him down when his parents disappear. He’s not fourteen. He’s nine. Nine.

  So I suppose you’re sitting around in the parking lot of some convenience store drinking beer or some stupid thing, and Mom—who has any idea what she might be doing? She certainly doesn’t care enough to give me any clue.

  Never mind. You’re never going to hear this message anyway.

  END RECORDING

  “How are the kids?”

  Gabriel rests his head on the tree trunk behind him. Kate sits next to him on the ground, their hands clasped tightly together between them. They are on a hill above the town.

  “Are you going to let me explain where we are?” Kate asks.

  “I want to know about the kids first,” Gabriel says.

  “They’re fine,” Kate says. “Henry is drawing a lot of things. He met another kid from the Guild, back when we were in the city. I’m sure the Guild is keeping track of him by now.”

  “How tall is he?” Gabriel asks.

  Kate smiles at her husband. This is a man who hasn’t seen his kids in a long, long time.

  “He’s tall. He’s a weed,” Kate says.

  “His hair? Still like yours?” Gabriel asks.

  “Yeah. White,” Kate says.

  They sit quietly for a few minutes. It’s an easy silence, as if they have never been apart at all.

  “Helen?” Gabriel says.

  “She’s… good. She’s fine,” Kate says.

  Long pause.

  “She’s…”

  “A teenager,” Gabriel says.

  Kate smiles, but her face looks sad. “Yeah,” she says. “She doesn’t trust me. Doesn’t believe a single thing I say.”

  “Ah, well,” Gabriel says. “She probably hates my guts too, at this point.”

  “Why would you say that?” Kate says.

  Gabriel looks toward the sky. The sky looks weird, here. “Because… look, I can tell, Helen doesn’t think I’m coming back. When we talk, she never asks any more. Remember when she was little, she would always ask, ‘Daddy, when are you coming to see me?’ She never, ever asks that any more. And I bet you’re right, she’s probably pretty pissed at you right now too.”

  “Because I disappeared,” Kate says.

  “I’m guessing that didn’t help,” Gabriel says. “She can’t live with you, she can’t live without you…”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Kate says, heaving the kind of sigh that comes out of a mother when she realizes something like her kid left for school without a lunch. “It’s just that I couldn’t risk her following me. You know if she knew how to get here, she would be here in a second. There is no stopping her. And I didn’t know what I would find when I got here. I get it, Helen is a big kid, but she’s still a kid. She does things that make no sense. Did I tell you she climbed halfway out of the car at ninety miles an hour?”

  Gabriel smiles. That’s his daughter.

  Kate glares at him. She knows what he is thinking. “Anyway, I can’t have her running all over. She doesn’t have the whole story, she doesn’t know who she is, and she’s a flammable teenager. That’s a bad combination. So, I went. I just went. I’m sorry. I was doing the best I could with what I had.”

  Gabriel places his other hand on top of hers. “Kate,” he says quietly, “you don’t have to explain it.”

  Kate smiles. “So now can I tell you where we are?”

  “We’re in a dumb little town in the middle of nowhere,” Gabriel says.

  “It’s a dumb little town alright,” Kate says, “but it’s also a dumb little town under a lake.” />
  Gabriel looks at his wife. He looks back up at the sky, the weird sky. That’s what it is, the sun is just a little bit… strange. The light coming down seems wavy.

  “Under a lake,” Gabriel says.

  “Yes, we are under a lake right now,” Kate says. “The Tromindox have created a stronghold here. Genius, isn’t it? Nobody knows it’s here. This town, the buildings, these were the original Brokeneck. Then, a long time ago, someone built a dam and the town was flooded out of existence. They left the whole thing underwater. This gave the Tromindox a ready-made headquarters. The folks in Brokeneck, the current Brokeneck, think people are going into this lake to drown themselves. They have no idea.”

  “So now it’s a place for the Tromindox to lure people into their web,” Gabriel says.

  “Exactly,” Kate says, “although I’m not sure yet how the Tromindox go about getting people to come in…”

  “I think I know,” Gabriel says. “I saw one of their victims. There was a lady here looking for her long lost son. Her name was Mrs. Chen. She was a mess. The Tromindox—it was a digital one, by the way—ate her up right there. They’re luring people in by telling them that they’ll find something here, something they want. Someone they want. It’s like setting a sick trap.”

  “It’s genius,” Kate says. “Give a human a portal, tell them there’s this magic place where they will find the one thing they want, and they come running. It’s too easy.”

  “So if Mrs. Woods knows about this, what is she doing about it with the folks in Brokeneck—the one on dry land?” Gabriel asks.

  “Well,” Kate says, “I think she’s got her hands full with Helen, and Henry’s probably in on the act too at this point. But she’s been letting the folks in the town believe the lake is cursed. It’s the easiest way.”

  “Nice,” Gabriel says. “And the folks in town are buying that idea?”

  “This is a place where a lady constantly knits a scarf in order to keep her zombie husband from coming around and bothering her,” Kate says. “So, yes, they buy it.”