Echo Lake

by Letitia Trent

  At one point, he did offer her “some literature,” which she turned down, kindly.

  I do understand about your beliefs, she said. They just really aren’t for me.

  He nodded, sighed and dropped the subject.

  Eventually, after a few more words about community and friendship, she agreed to go. She promised to bring cookies.

  I’m sorry to turn down your materials, she said as he left, waving her hand to the neat, front pocket of his shirt. I have my own beliefs, she said. I understand what you are preaching and all, but I’m just not interested.

  He had only nodded, smiling tightly. I understand, he said, and I appreciate your honesty. I can only pray that you’ll change your mind.

  Her aunt Fran, according to Levi, had kept to herself (meaning she wasn’t a member of a church, Emily assumed, not sure what other community activities there were to be part of), but had been a good woman, a phrase that Emily didn’t know how to define.

  There used to be lots of Collins’s around here, Levi said. But you probably know more about that than I do.

  Emily thought he might want her to tell him more, to explain how an eighty-year old woman happened to be left alone without any family in a remote house, miles down a dirt road. But Emily had nothing to say. Her mother had left Heartshorne before Emily was born and had given Emily only her stories about her childhood and her distaste for the place. Emily had simply shrugged in response. It didn’t seem like the right time to launch into personal stories.

  Now that she knew how Fran had died, Emily walked through the house again, examining the walls and carpets and cabinets for evidence. What could have possessed somebody to murder such an old woman, a woman who owned little of value? Did Aunt Fran have a hidden heroin stash behind a false wall or a cache of machine guns under the shag carpet?

  Nothing had been stolen, according to Levi, and no messages left. Surely it wasn’t a suicide—Emily imagined that cutting one’s own throat was impossible, though she had heard of some people who wanted to die so badly that they stabbed themselves in the chest or set themselves on fire.

  She forced her mind away from the image of her aunt seated in a recliner, running a knife around her own throat, and instead touched the pencil lines that marked the doorframe inside the small, windowless bedroom. A mark to indicate a child’s growth? But as far as she knew, Fran had had no children. If she had, then they’d be living here instead of Emily.

  The rooms, though plain and bright, seemed cast in a reddish glaze now. This was the scene of a crime, no longer a normal house. Where had they tied the yellow police tape?

  Funny how all of the things that had been done in the house—making coffee, sleeping, arguing, presumably sex—were swallowed up by this one event, this event that probably had taken less than a few minutes. The murderer had come in and slit her throat as she slept, that’s what Levi had said. Maybe she hadn’t even woken up, and instead just drifted from a shallow sleep to a deeper one, her skin faintly wet, her throat itchy, and then gone into whatever unconsciousness or different sort of consciousness happened when you were no longer breathing.

  Had she been afraid, though? What if she’d woken up, confused by her own blood, trying to call to somebody before realizing that nobody was close enough to hear and her voice no longer worked? Had she wished she wasn’t alone?

  Emily walked back downstairs. The small upstairs rooms made her feel claustrophobic with their sloped ceilings and leftover furniture. Downstairs, she put on her shoes to walk across the red carpet. She’d have it pulled up and replaced. Surely you couldn’t get blood completely out of a carpet.

  She was certain that she should feel more afraid. She lived in the middle of nowhere, and her aunt had been murdered in this house. Plus, the pastor had mentioned other murders in the area. She felt jumpy, electric, but not afraid. Curious, but not afraid.

  Emily touched the walls of her new house, and walked to the window, avoiding the stain. The yard was impossibly green in the afternoon light and she sun glinted through the cracks in the green, little commas and triangles of yellow light.

  It was beautiful.

  She would call the police tomorrow and ask, demand, in fact, to know what they knew. And if she was not in danger, she would stay.

  But isn’t everyone in danger of something? And Emily wasn’t an old woman, asleep in her chair with her front door open. She locked her doors out of city habit. She woke at any strange sound in the night, or even unstrange sounds, like the television’s creaks and shifts in the humidity or the click of the ceiling fan. She was careful. Maybe she’d buy a gun.

  She opened the front door and made her way to the backyard, where the grass had grown up past her ankles, though it was sparse and infested with thick, hardy weeds that made the ground sharp under her feet. The yard made a neat semicircle around the back end of the house, ending in narrow passages through which Emily could circle back to the front yard and the dirt road. She pushed the dry hose aside with her feet and a small animal—a toad or enormous grasshopper—hopped away and into the woods.

  The forest gathered around her, green and heavy. It pulsed with the sound of cicadas. She watched the wall of green rustling with the wind. The grass crunched as she walked toward the forest, the dandelions and thick, thorny plants crackling under her heels.

  It was sweltering even under the overhanging trees, which bent down, caging the heat, fanning it lightly onto her head and bare arms.

  She didn’t know how much of the woods beyond the house were hers—the deed had said, and the lawyer had told her over the telephone—but she couldn’t remember the exact amount. More than five acres but less than ten. A number that had surprised but not astonished her.

  It seemed like such a responsibility, to own a piece of the woods. Maybe she would put up a fence.

  Her land was at the far edge of Echo Lake. If she walked straight through those woods (she didn’t know her directions well enough to know straight in what direction, but straight, the man had said, referring to the deed’s untranslatable lawyerspeak), she’d make it to the shores of Echo Lake eventually—after five minutes, ten?

  She stepped toward the woods, where the trees overran the lawn and the lawn dissolved into a mishmash of leaf and dirt. Something rustled in the grass and she stepped back, afraid of snakes. She had read the North American wildlife guide about Oklahoma and found at least five poisonous native species, the copperhead and cottonmouth being the most common. She’d memorized their various markings, their diamonds and stripes, their enormous, venom-heavy heads, and knew which appeared in the lake and which in the woods. She stepped carefully across the yard, examining each piece of ground before she let her feet touch it, her heart beating hard and her mind telling her fool, you can’t stay here. You can’t even walk barefoot without being afraid.

  •

  That night, Emily slept with the nightlight on in the upstairs bedroom. She cracked the window, despite her worry—she’d locked the windows below and deadbolted the door, surely nobody could climb to the second floor window. The sound of cicadas, first muffled by the glass, spilled into the room. The sound swelled and sunk, swelled and sunk, and what was at first soothing soon made her feel choked, the sounds pulsing in the empty room like an alarm. She turned on the fan, its constant, mechanical hum drowning the cicadas out, though she worried it would keep her from hearing if somebody got into the house through the front door or a broken window.

  She listened to the fan’s steady clicking and whirring and waited for sleep.

  Emily closed her eyes and played back everything her mother had ever said about Hearrtshorne. She extracted one positive characteristic, something Connie had said when she was drunk, happy, dancing around the kitchen with the clock radio tuned to a classic country station, the kind of music she only listened to when feeling very good or very bad.

  When something happens to one of their own in Heartshorne, they do something about it.

  5

  PARA
NORMAL OKLAHOMA:

  THE TOP FIVE PARANORMAL HOTSPOTS

  A well-kept secret to most, the Sooner State is a great place to raise a family, own an affordable home, or just get away at one of our hundreds of man-made lakes and state parks, but did you know that it is also a hotspot for a real-life paranormal investigation? Read our “What to Take on Your First Ghost Hunting Expedition” checklist and then check out these five paranormal destinations for your next ghost hunting expedition:

  1. Crying Woman Creek, Anadarko: Visit out this creepy destination in the outskirst of Anadarko at midnight; legend has it that if you park your car on the bridge and keep it running, your lights will go out spontaneously at the stroke of midnight and you might hear scratches on your car door. This sight lists number one due to the sheer number of reports we’ve received, so this destination is a must for Okie paranormal researchers.

  2. The Girl Scout Camp, Talequah: This town, home of the Cherokee Nation, is also known for one of Oklahoma’s greatest unsolved cases: the Girl Scout Murders of 1973, when three Girl Scouts were kidnapped from their tents and found dead the morning after, just feet away from their tent. If you visit the sight of the old Girl Scout Camp, just off of highway 20 near Emerald Lake, you might just hear the voices of those lost girls calling through the woods for help.

  3. Spook Light Road, Quawpa: Take Spook Light Road (also known as Roosevelt) right up to the county line at night and get your camera ready to catch the many light orbs that come out in the early morning hours. Stick around after 1 AM for the highest likelihood of catching something paranormal on camera (click here for Spook Light Road shots submitted by our readers).

  4. Crying Baby Creek, Pryor: The creek, supposedly the sight of a tragic toddler drowning in the 1960’s, has been plagued by paranormal reports ever since. Researchers and townsfolk alike report hearing both a baby crying and the shouting of grieving parents. Check out the parking spot and picnic table by the bridge over the spillway for the best possibility of EVP or photographic evidence.

  5. Echo Lake, Heartshorne, Oklahoma: This man-made lake, created in 1945, is one of the more unusual paranormal destinations in Oklahoma. Legend has it, every few years, the lake releases a poisonous green gas of mysterious origin that can cause illness.

  Some say that it is due to chemicals leftover from Old Heartshorne, abandoned and flooded to create the lake. Others claim it was a Native American curse. Others say it is ghosts of people murdered in Old Heartshorne, a famously lawless town located just thirty minutes South of Robber’s Cave National Park, a well-known hideout for criminals such as Billy the Kidd and Belle Starr.

  6

  Emily slept late and woke sticky, the blankets wrapped around her chest and legs like bandages. She had dreamed of the house, of the red carpet and Frannie knocking around somewhere in the walls like a mouse, but she could recall nothing else. It was hot in the upstairs room and Emily kicked her blankets off and shut the windows. It seemed cooler to keep the air out, as it was windless and when the wind did blow, it felt like a hair dryer in her face.

  Emily drove to Keno, the biggest town in Claymore county and the location of Wal-Mart, the only place Emily could find to buy what she needed for the pot luck.

  The Wal-Mart in Keno was in the process of expanding its already enormous spread across a flat, once-grassy field. Bulldozers and crews had already laid concrete across a stretch of weed-tangled green space next to the existing store. When she entered the store through the sliding glass doors, the air conditioning hit her and dried the fine layer of sweat on her face. An elderly man in a blue vest standing by the rows of interlocking parked carts smiled and asked her how her day was. He offered her a cart, which she turned down, and he ushered her forward with his wrinkled hands. When the sleeve of his button-up shirt slid up, she saw the tail end of a dragon tattoo grown pale and greenish with age.

  Emily navigated the narrow, overstuffed aisles to find a bag of cookies. People pressed against her with their shopping carts, children cried in the aisles, and women hefted 100-pack toilet paper rolls into their car-sized carts. The sheer excess was difficult to resist. The paper towels seemed so clean and fresh in their packs of eighteen, the six-packs of underwear folded neatly against their cardboard backing, and even pre-packaged food, like those soft oatmeal creme cookies, seemed wholesome and frugal when they came in boxes of fifty.

  She managed to leave with only a few groceries and a pack of chocolate chip cookies. They rustled dustily in the bag as she walked to the car and hoped that she wouldn’t look like a fool bringing something marked IMPROVED TASTE! to a pot luck. Was a faux-pas not to cook your own dish, even if you knew nothing about cooking and had only brought a skillet and a saucepan to heat soup? Would people look at her and her bag of cookies and immediately understand that she didn’t belong? She didn’t know enough about Heartshorne to even know how exactly to worry.

  •

  She passed the church and had to backtrack. Levi had told her that if she hit the Quick Trip she’d gone too far, and she had quickly passed the yellow sign. On her way back, she found it: squat, with a purely decorative belfry atop, partially hidden by arching trees.

  Inside, a man in starched, tan overalls, the fabric thick and inflexible like tarp, led her through the sanctuary, which was plain, all-wood paneling. He took her behind the pulpit, where a single painting of Jesus hung on the wall, and through a small door which led to a maze of turquoise-painted hallways that reminded her of one of her elementary schools with its dappled white ceilings and rough-surfaced walls above yards and yards of dull carpet.

  The church dining room was decorated with pink and purple fake flowers—wild roses and impossibly hued daisies—their fabric and wire stems tangled together in the bellies of dusty glass vases. Emily touched the plastic, clover-sprigged tablecloths and ran her fingernails over the flimsy material and the places where the white cotton poked out. These cheerful, shabby decorations made her think of other people’s mothers and grandmothers and dinners at her childhood friends’ houses. She had not minded the shabbiness then.

  She had wanted to live in those houses as a child and would have, if offered the opportunity through some fairy-tale means, changed herself into one of those girls. She could have slipped into their lives smoothly without as much as telling her mother goodbye. Then, she’d been in a constant state of embarrassment at the smallness of her mother’s life and their holidays celebrated alone over dinners that they’d be eating for days and days afterwards.

  In the dining hall, long, school-style tables were placed end-to-end in rows, chairs lined on either side. Most people had already claimed their seats by setting down their purses and Bibles.

  As a child, she had wanted nothing more than a community, family, friends, big groups of people meeting at long tables to eat together. But she’d gone too long without it, and now, she didn’t know quite how to act in such a place. People spoke to each other in the tones of resumed conversation. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed. She wished then that she had Eric with her. At least he was somebody familiar. She could turn to him and speak and people would think she was normal.

  All of the Bibles worried her. It was a church, of course, but Levi had said it was a community event, that everyone was invited. But had that just been something he’d said to make her come and assure her that she wouldn’t be spending the night fielding offers of prayer?

  As she scanned the room for empty seats, for people who looked sympathetic to strangers or better yet, strangers themselves, she noticed that she might be the only single woman over twenty-five—the people her age were clearly coupled, their chairs pushed close together, their fingers entwined while waiting in the food line. Some had children old enough to toddle or even walk, and some had babies strapped into highchairs who whacked their fat hands or spoons against the plastic tables.

  Groups of teenagers clung together, some wearing t-shirts featuring pictures of a pale, blue-eyed Jesus, either alive with a glow
ing heart or nailed to the cross, gaunt and bleeding from the forehead. The girls were as flush-faced and nervous as any other teenage girls in the presence of boys. The boys wore clean jeans and t-shirts and had short hair. No earrings or tattoos, or at least none that she could see.

  Hello, sweetheart.

  Emily jumped and looked down to find the source of the voice. An old woman stood at Emily’s elbow. She reached out with crepey hands and touched Emily’s shoulder. She smelled delicate and well-preserved, like a dried prom corsage.

  Are you new to our church family?

  The woman was small and impossibly fragile, her hair gray and thick, braided down her back. Her knitted shawl swallowed her shoulders. Her face, small-boned but fleshy and lined, gave an impression of beatitude.

  Oh, no, Emily said, I’m just here for dinner. She closed her eyes as the old woman’s hands moved down her arm and enclosed her fingers.

  Levi invited me, she said. He said it was a community event, open to everyone, she explained, as though defending her right to be here. She tried not to move away from the woman’s hands. It was wrong to be afraid of the elderly, the imperfect. She’d be elderly someday, too, clawing at people for attention despite the skin that hung from her bones, thin and spotted. But Emily was afraid of the woman, afraid the woman would say something incoherent or cough until she bled or trip and break her bones in her presence and that she’d somehow be held responsible.

  That’s good, the woman said, that’s good. She patted Emily’s hand. So many young people don’t come to church, she said. So many doing dreadful things to their elders. To their children. To each other. The woman shook her head.