Beneath Still Waters
Page 25
He didn’t sit.
“Chief, there are four people gone, down in that reser-
voir. Four people in four days. And you don’t have a good
goddamn clue what the hell it is. Do you?”
Rogers just stared.
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“Do you?”
The police chief shook his head.
“This might have some answers, some clues. Maybe
there’s some weird current in there, some fatal design flaw in
the dam . . .” He tried to keep things as acceptable to Rogers
as possible. “This diary may have some of the answers.”
Rogers looked at the soggy book, now in three pieces.
“Sit down,” he said quietly. “Please.”
He sat. And watched Rogers look at the tin box . . . and
the book.
Rogers started speaking, slowly. “There’s a man in
Hawthorn. He works with ephemera. Old magazines, books,
all the stuff collectors like to restore. From time to time the
local police in the towns around here use him to work on dis-
tressed material. Stuff that’s been burned, damaged, or wet.
Like this.”
“Call him,” Dan pleaded. “Tell him to drop everything
and work on this.”
Rogers looked at Dan. He picked up the telephone.
“Okay. But I want you here.”
Dan smiled. “Am I under arrest?”
Rogers didn’t smile back. “You could be. You bulldozed
your way past my men to a restricted area.” He paused.
“But let’s just say you’ll hang around here. Till I’ve got
some of this diary back . . . if any of it does come back.
Agreed?”
Dan nodded.
Rogers’s secretary came onto the line.
“Sally, get me Wilson Smith.”
T W E N T Y
James Morton stood to the side and admired the great Stu
Schmidt at work. Schmidt kept up a constant barrage of or-
ders aimed at his now very lively workers, telling them ex-
actly how to move the heavy PVC tubing down into the
dam wall. Stu himself carried two of everything to their
one, even the great coils of plastic tubing over his shoulder,
like they were so much fishing tackle.
But even Stu Schmidt was a bit subdued inside the cav-
ernous dam.
“It’s worse than you told me, Jimmy. The water’s com-
ing in fast. Too fast. I want to get this pumping started be-
fore we try to get a temporary cap on the leak.”
He was right, of course. It was coming in a lot faster
than the previous day. From a trickle to a spray to . . . now
this—like a small fire hose left half open.
“Will you need any more help?”
Schmidt grinned. “Nah. We’ll manage here all right.
We’ll just take a bit longer. You hear that, boys?” he
shouted at the two workers, going off for more equipment.
“We’re talking overtime here. Just don’t drag your fannies
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too much.” His eyes twinkled as he looked back at Morton.
“Good kids. Just like everyone else these days, though.
Lazy.”
He watched Schmidt arranging the coils of tubing.
“We’ve got ten, maybe twelve hours of solid pumping
here, Jimmy. Won’t be able to use any concrete until it’s
been dry down here for a few hours. I told Eddie up there to
hold the cement truck till tonight. We’ll let them know
when we’re done.” Schmidt looked down at the sizable
pool at his feet.
How deep was it now? Morton wondered. Ten . . .
twelve feet? That’s a lot of water, and a lot of pressure for
the outer wall.
He watched Schmidt crouch down close to the water, as
if he were trying to look into it. “There’s only one thing that
bothers me, Jim.” Schmidt turned and looked right at him,
then gestured at the dam wall. “Just how strong are these
walls? They’re more than fifty years old. They weren’t built
for this kind of treatment.”
Morton took a step off the landing, down the spiral
staircase, closer to Schmidt. “Oh, I imagine they’ll hold all
right. There’s a lot of stone and concrete down here.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
He heard Schmidt’s workers coming back down the
stairs.
Schmidt stood up, surveyed the tubing. “That should be
enough to start pumping. If—”
Morton felt the vibration. Like electricity, he thought.
Yeah, like when he was a kid and touched a socket—just to
see.
So faint, it tickled the bottom of his feet.
“Hey, what’s—” he heard Schmidt start to say.
Then the vibrations started to grow, seemingly rising up
from his feet, up from the water, spreading until everything
seemed to be slightly out of focus. Jittery.
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“A quake,” Morton said, too quietly to be heard. Then
louder.
But by then it was all too obvious. He tumbled back,
then down onto the metal floor of the landing. Schmidt’s
great bald head turned left and right, looking, looking . . .
The leak widened. One, two, then three inches. The wa-
ter shot straight out now, rocketing across the pool. It hit
Schmidt square in his bowling-ball face and knocked him
against the far wall.
Morton tried to stand, but his right arm just wouldn’t
move.
Someone screamed above him. Then another voice.
More screaming above the noise of the water.
Why can’t I get up? he thought. What’s the—
He looked at his arm.
Like tumbling into a mousetrap, he’d fallen back onto the
landing, his arm dangling up into the staircase leading up.
Somehow the metal staircase had twisted, groaned, and
corkscrewed, imprisoning his arm.
“Stu . . .” he yelled. “Stu!”
But Schmidt had tumbled into the water. Maybe he’d
been knocked out by the jet that had gushed out and pushed
him against the wall.
The two workers. Surely they could help. “Hey, guys!
Get down here quick. Hurry!”
But the only answer he heard was some more pained
groans, just barely audible over the sound of—
The staircase, loose, away from the heavy bolt that kept
it attached to the twin walls of the dam. Loose, twisting,
like it was alive.
I can’t feel my arm.
He could see it. It was there, all right.
Just—hah, hah—no . . . can . . . feel.
“Stu,” he said again, helplessly.
The water rose.
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Fast now, lapping at the steps below, then climbing,
visibly climbing as it started to fill the base of the dam.
It reached his feet, lying just a few inches below his
metal pallet.
I’m trapped.
In that moment he thought of his wife, his kids, mowing
the lawn, taking a nap on a Sunday afternoon. A cold beer.
He closed his eyes.
He f
elt the water at his back.
And a sound.
(Someone’s coming! Yes, he heard a sound, above the
moans of the workers. Yes, they must be trapped also.)
It was the door leading down to the dam! Yes, it was
moving! Moving!
Shut. It slammed. A loud, final noise. The light bulb
sputtered on and off, then off.
The water was at his shoulder, his ears, his cheek. Cold,
clammy water.
He prayed.
She tossed the last flower in: a yellow mum. Then she
watched them drift, floating, slowly moving away from the
shore.
Out to where Tommy had died.
She felt naked now without the flowers. They had given
her a purpose for being here. Now other feelings started to
move through her. And questions . . .
How had Tommy died? He’d been a champion swim-
mer, one of Ellerton’s stars. A cramp?
She looked down at the flowers, swirling, swirling.
Faster, now, it seemed to her. Moving in a circle, picking
up speed.
A rose sank beneath the water.
Plop.
Just like . . .
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“I have to go, Tommy. I’ll be—”
It happened as soon as she spoke.
The ground shook, and the flowers in the water seemed
to blend together. She reached out to balance herself. She
grabbed a small tree.
But then the ground lurched again and she fought to
keep her balance. The angle of everything seemed wrong,
as if she were on a hill.
She reached to the left, but there was nothing there to
stop her from falling onto the mossy ground. Onto the odd
little plants, black, mushroomy things that filled the ground.
The rumbling stopped.
“Thank God,” she said, knowing now it was just another
earthquake like the one from a few days ago.
(An earthquake. She remembered that from her geology
class. Made it somehow sound all safe, just to name it. An
aftershock. They can go on for days.)
And it was over.
She started to get up.
She was stuck.
“What the—”
Emily looked down at her hands, at the small black
things she had popped. Now she was tangled in something,
something like a blackish vine. She pulled back with one
hand, knowing that surely it would come snapping up.
It didn’t move. Nor, when she tried, did the other hand.
Her legs, tan, bare, also were covered with the blackish
stuff. “Oh, shit,” she said, and she wriggled back and forth,
pulling on the stuff.
“Great. Now I’m going to have to wait here until some-
one gets me out of this . . . this junk whatever it is.”
She looked around. There were hundreds of them, thou-
sands, stretching from the edge of the water all the way back into the woods.
It was like being in a spider web.
She grinned at the image.
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“Well, might as well start hollering for help now.” Sooner
or later someone would hear her. No problem there. None
at all.
She felt the tendrils tighten.
“What?” She licked her lips.
But nothing more happened. It was like taking a notch
up in a belt.
She heard movement in the water.
A boat! Great! Now I’ll get out of this—
But the sound came from out in the lake.
Out there.
The sound of someone swimming.
She turned her head and looked out at the water.
Stroke, stroke, stroke. It was someone swimming toward
her with a nice, steady, smooth style. A sleek Australian
crawl, a fast swimmer.
A swimmer like Tommy.
The swimmer reached the shore, stopped. And looked
up at Emily.
Tommy.
(She was crying now. Saying his name through her gasps
and tears.)
“Tom—mee—”
He stood up.
Still wearing the electric-blue Speedo bathing suit. And
outside of a few very obvious nicks and gashes in his
body—like three-day-old bait that’s been chewed by some
cagey crab—he looked pretty well intact.
Except for his face.
It was a gray, sunken thing. With eyes shrunk to tiny
pricks of blackness. And the mouth—so rubbery, fishlike.
He stepped close to her.
She could smell him.
Her stomach heaved, spasming over and over as he came
closer.
He opened his mouth.
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(Like a spiderweb.)
“Tom—mee!” she screamed.
“Don’t open the door,” Samantha ordered. “You know
what Momma says.”
Joshua stood at the door.
“Don’t. Until Mom comes back.”
She watched him to see if he’d really do what she said.
“But where is Mommy, where is—”
“I don’t know. Maybe she had to go to the store.”
Joshua’s lower lip began to quiver, a sure sign that he
was about to cry. “But . . . but that was a long time ago . . .
a long time.”
And it was. Samantha still measured such things by TV
shows, and she and Joshua had watched cartoons all morn-
ing until they gave way to the talk shows for stay-at-home
mothers.
The cereal they had both wolfed down seemed like a
long time ago.
“Still, Mom says never open the door when she’s not
here. Never.”
“But where is she?” he wailed, crying now.
She went to him. Gave him a squeeze.
“C’mon, scuzzbucket, she’ll be back soon. Sure she
will.”
Will she? Samantha wondered. Every car she heard roar
past she hoped was her mom’s. But none of them slowed.
“Let’s go watch some more TV.”
“You . . . you could call someone.”
He was right. They had a list.
A special list. People to call, it said in big letters. In case
anything happened. To Mommy. Or Daddy.
People to call. For help.
“Okay, I’ll call. But I bet Mom will be mad that we just
didn’t wait, you know, like big kids would.”
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She imagined that she was Joshua’s sitter. Yeah, and her
mom would be so proud when she got home.
Such a big girl!
She walked, with Joshua trailing behind her, to the
kitchen phone and the list.
“I’ll call Elaine,” Samantha said, pointing to the first
number, her mom’s best friend’s.
She could reach the phone easily now—a relatively re-
cent accomplishment. She picked up the receiver and held
it next to her ear.
She started dialing the number.
She heard nothing.
You were supposed to hear a sound. A hum. Then those
little beeps. Sure.
She hung up and tried again.
Nothing.
“What’s wrong?” Joshua asked.
Samantha shrug
ged. “Dunno. It’s not working.”
Then an idea, a brainstorm. “That’s where she pro’bly
went . . . to tell someone to come and fix it. That’s why she
had to leave. Couldn’t call, now could she, Joshie-washie?”
He raised his tiny fist to her, a warning against using his
most hated nickname.
“And you know what she’d want us to do?”
“What?”
“Be good . . . keep the doors shut tight.”
“Right.”
There, she’d solved that. Now all we have to do is watch
TV and wait for Mom to come home.
Which she hoped was real soon.
“Whaddaya say, sprout? Bored enough yet?”
Claire shook her head, then smiled at her.
She’s so serious, Susan thought. Claire was curled up
on a padded secretary’s chair—somehow maintaining her
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balance. It was just a cubicle, her office, with a couple of
cheapjack coatracks on the particle-board divider, a small
two-tier filing cabinet, and the ever-present computer ter-
minal.
All morning Susan had been checking the computerized
morgue for other towns that had fallen under siege,
hostage to either some maniac or some wandering sicko.
She accumulated a hefty file. None of it, unfortunately,
seemed to shed a bit of light on what was happening to
dear old Ellerton.
Despite her annoyance, she didn’t mind having Claire
there—not really. It was soothing to see her curled up with
a book, watching her mom at work. Sure, they’d have to
deal with Claire’s nightmares eventually. But for now, this
was okay.
She sat down and opened a photocopied file just sent up
from the press library. It contained the most recent reports
on Tom Fluhr, crazy Fred Massetrino, the two divers (with
an addendum on Dan Elliot, listing some of his published
credits).
She felt guilty about how she had let him have it the
night before.
Right between the ears.
It had just been the wrong time for him to lay any of that
paternalistic macho bullshit on her. She was a reporter—
no, a writer—and the last thing she needed was someone
playing Indiana Jones to her damsel in distress.
She smiled. Perhaps she’d been a bit too hard. She liked
him. He was different, fun, and he turned all the right
switches—a rare occurrence these days.
She’d call him later, perhaps invite him over. After
Claire had gone to bed. Her smile broadened.
“Mom, what are you laughing at?”
She tossed her head, shaking the imaginary wisp of hair