Cradle Lake (20 page)

“It means stop and don't go any farther. It means turn around and don't look back.”

What had the old Indian woman said when he'd asked her about the upside-down triangular sigil on the stone marker in her yard? What had she called it?
A barrier and a warning.

“But what if somebody was to approach the lake from a different direction and not from the path? Like if someone happens upon it coming through the woods from a different—”

“There is no other way to approach the lake.” George Young Calf Ribs's voice was curt.

Alan thought of the night he spent bumbling around in the rain in an attempt to shortcut through the woods, the rain coming down in torrents through the trees and creating a muddy, pine-needled stew of the ground. That afternoon, he'd been certain he was heading in the right direction and that his shortcut would surely cross the dirt path or that he might empty out into the clearing itself. But that had not happened; he'd simply meandered around the fog-dense woods, becoming more and more disoriented with each passing minute, until he'd finally stumbled into his own backyard.

There is no other way to approach the lake …

“The symbols can no longer be trusted,” George continued. “They are in disharmony with the land.”

“I don't understand. What is it you want? Why have I come here? Somehow—in some way I can't begin to understand—you knew I'd come here … but for what purpose? What is it you have to tell me?”

“Leave that house immediately,” he told him. “Burn it to the ground so no one else can live there after you. Do it before it's too late.”

“Too late for
what?”

“Things are already set in motion.” He cast his gaze toward the sky. “You must leave me now. Head back before night falls.”

“But I've got so many questions—”

“You must go before it grows fully dark. Leave me.”

“Please.” It came out as a reluctant whimper.

George Young Calf Ribs did not speak further. Keeping his eyes trained on the darkening sky, he commenced with a chanting tessitura that stirred the hairs on the back of Alan's neck to attention.

With the assistance of the old woman's walking stick, Alan rose and hiked back around the Devil's Stone, pausing to cast a final glance at George Young Calf Ribs. The old Indian remained chanting and staring at the storm-pregnant clouds, his profile illuminated with a flickering glow from the fumarole's firelight.

It began to turn towards night as he followed the river down the valley and toward the veil of trees, the sky a twilight blanket of glittering jewels at his back. The temperature had dropped considerably, and the sweat from his excursion down from the Devil's Stone froze on his skin as he hiked, chilling him.

When he reached the woods, the half-moon was already up in the eastern sky cradled in a nimbus of wispy gray clouds. He pushed on quickly through the woods, focusing on the crunch of dead leaves beneath his feet underscored by the solid, periodic
clink
of the metal-tipped walking stick striking the occasional stone.

George Young Calf Ribs's words echoed in his skull, and the image of him crouched over the firelight with his black eyes and red skin like an old catcher's mitt burned into his mind.
Things are already set in motion,
he'd said just before telling him to leave.

What did that mean, exactly? Did he somehow know Alan had been going to the lake? Surely, if he possessed the preternatural foresight to anticipate Alan's arrival, then something as simple as reading his mind perhaps would not be beyond him. And was it reading his mind, or had his arrival here today been more than enough to give him away? After all, had he not been going to the lake—had he not spoken of the symbols and found the Indian's name written in blood in the old Moreland house—he wouldn't have sought him out.

Sure, I just gave myself away. Son of a bitch.

From somewhere startlingly close by, someone spoke a single word
—hey
or
wait
—to him in the darkness.

Alan's sneakers skidded in the dirt. He stood as stiff as a board, his heart suddenly crashing against his ribs. The voice—it had been a man's voice; he was certain—did not come again.

The old woman's warning rushed back at him, with all the fury of a passing locomotive:
If you hear things moving around you in the forest—and you will—do not look at them. If they speak to you, do not answer them.

Despite this warning, Alan found himself about to call out to the darkness in response to the mysterious voice. He even opened his mouth, the words about to spill from his throat, when something off to the right of the path caught his eye: a shape, a shadow. A
second
shadow, one right behind
his own
shadow, stretched along the underbrush in the pale glow of moonlight. Alan held his breath.

They are spirits of those who have been lost. It may also be the
Tsul Kalu,
the slant-eyed and sloping giants coming up from
the Shining Rock just to see the white-faced man who passes.

Closing his eyes, he managed two or three shaky breaths. He shut his mouth, reopened his eyes, and continued down the path. Trying desperately not to glance back at the shadow he knew was following him, he heard a second set of footfalls only a few paces behind him, crunching through the underbrush. He tried to convince himself that it was an animal—a possum or even a fox—and that the word he thought he'd heard was nothing but a mind trick.

But the shadow? The shadow following me in the shape of a man?

Of course. Yet maybe it was the old Indian himself, returning from the Devil's Stone.

Sure,
he thought.
Sure.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to turn around and look.

Knew he
shouldn't
look …

After a while, the second set of footsteps faded away. When Alan finally summoned enough courage to look, his shadow was the only one that followed him through the woods. As quickly and silently as his visitor had arrived, he'd left.

The half-moon was directly ahead of him and opposite the mountains when he reached the old woman's clapboard house. A pale-colored light issued through one of the grimy windows, casting a white-yellow square on the slouching porch. A tendril of smoke corkscrewed up from the stone chimney.

He set the walking stick against the stone marker with the three-sided sigil on it. Then he climbed into the Toyota and took two deep breaths, for some inexplicable reason anticipating the engine failing the moment he turned the
key in the ignition. When it started up, he silently thanked God while wondering why he'd been so worried. Spinning the wheel, he bounded around the property and headed toward the rutted roadway and away from the old woman's house.

Not wanting to catch a glimpse of anything in the woods on either side of him as he drove, he kept the headlights off until he was back on the main road. It was probably the smartest decision he'd made in weeks.

Hours later, Alan arrived home to find the house dark and the air pungent with the scent of burning coffee. He called Heather's name, as it wasn't late enough for her to be in bed yet (unless she hadn't gotten out all day), but she didn't answer.

In the kitchen, he found a pot of coffee trembling and boiling over on the stove. It was an old stovetop percolator, some ancient relic that had been passed down through Heather's family until it found its way into their home. Muddy coffee belched out of the spigot and splattered against the stovetop.

He clicked off the burner and walked down the hallway, calling Heather's name again. A sliver of light issued from beneath the partially closed bedroom door at the end of the hall. Something turned over in his stomach—

—that rattlesnake sound, that shaking of maracas behind a closed bathroom door—

—and he rushed to the door, flung it open—

“Hon,” he managed, freezing in the doorway.

Heather was sitting cross-legged on the bed wearing sweatpants and a too-tight T-shirt that made her breasts look fuller. Kleenexes were balled in her lap. She looked up at him, her face blotchy and red, her eyes brimming with tears. Her lower lip trembled. “I'm sorry,” she said, her voice just barely above a whisper. “I'm sorry for ruining your whole life.”

He could only stand there, not moving. “What is it?”

“I can't give you what you want.”

“I want you.”

She smiled wanly.

“You're scaring me,” he said.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. So sorry, Alan. I'm sorry.”

He cringed inwardly each time she said it.

“So, so sorry …”

“Did you do anything?” he asked. He'd hidden all the pills in the house, including her Ativan, but she still could have found some. Or maybe she'd done something else. He silently cursed himself. There were household cleaners under the goddamn kitchen sink that he only thought about just now. “Did you … take anything?”

“I just want to sleep.” Heather eased down on her side, the bed groaning beneath her.

“Answer me.” His voice was dry, hollow. “Did you take any pills?”

“No.”

“Did you take anything else?”

“No. Yes.” She laughed. It was a horrid sound. “I took a detour.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Off the path. A detour.”

For one terrible second, he thought she was talking about the path that cut through the woods and led to the lake. For some reason, the idea of Heather walking down that path and finding the lake horrified him. But when she spoke again, he was somewhat relieved to find that she was speaking metaphorically.

“We had one path chosen for us, one life,” she went on, “and I turned around and went another way. My body did it. I didn't want it to but my body did it. I'm sorry.”

“It's nothing to be sorry about.” Alan couldn't move from the doorway; he could only stare at the curve of her back as she lay on the mattress, not facing him.

“So, so sorry …”

Trembling, he went down the hall and into the kitchen. He stood for a long while in front of the telephone on the wall. He contemplated calling information, telling them he wanted the phone number for Dr. Lawrence Chu, that he was ready to have Heather committed. He even reached out for the receiver. His hand shook.

Acid funneled up his esophagus and scorched his throat. Instead of picking up the phone, he opened the window and pulled a chair next to it. He sat and lit a Marlboro, exhaling smoke out the window. The air coming in smelled cool and untouched: the fragrance of midsummer. He smoked the Marlboro down to the filter and when he was done lit a second one and repeated the process.

What now, sport?
said his father.
What happens now?

“Quiet,” he whispered, silencing him.

When Alan finished his third cigarette, he shut the window and went to the bathroom where he washed his face and hands and took a misoprostol tablet for his ulcer.

In the bedroom, Heather was still reclining on a mound of pillows. She had turned on the CD player in his absence, Ryan Adams singing “Mockingbird” in a cool voice. Her face was colorless and slack, her eyes recessed into deep pockets. Her gaze conveyed the lethargy and surrender of someone frighteningly near death. Strands of dark hair hung around her face like trailing cobwebs.

“My head hurts,” she said and rolled back over, turning away from him.

He crawled into bed behind her, spooning her. Soon his eyes spilled water on the pillow where he rested his head. Holding her tightly, he wondered if she could feel his heart beating through her body, pounding with fear in the midst of their embrace.

Alan awoke sometime in the middle of the night just as the laughter of dead children faded into the ether. He sensed them somewhere above him, floating like vapor, swirling around his sleeping body. In his semiconsciousness, he even waved a hand in the darkness above him, stirring dust motes in the bands of moonlight that spilled through the slats in the blinds.

He thought,
This is where things fall apart. This is the part where the monster comes shrieking—scales and fangs, claws and horned appendages—to the surface.

He had been dreaming of Cradle Lake.

And something George Young Calf Ribs had said …

Lying there. Thinking in a fog of silence.

Eventually, he rose from bed as the first rays of sunlight cracked the sky. By accident, his naked foot came down on a pair of Heather's panties that had been summarily discarded on the floor. He thought of inchworm snatches of gelatin tissue buckled, quivering, atop a mattress stained with blood. How many crazy things were there in this world? How many sick fucking things that chased away a peaceful night's sleep?

In boxer shorts and a Metallica T-shirt, he staggered down the hallway like an extra in a George A. Romero film. At the end of the hall, he stood shivering in a panel of light—a streetlamp coming in through the front windows. This side of the house was still shrouded in nighttime. His stomach boiled; sweat sprung from his pores and cascaded in torrents down the slopes and concavities of his body. He went into the kitchen.

Something the old Indian had said …

For a long time, the lake remained hidden from man until it was made visible to the People from Yowa, the Great Spirit. It healed the sick and the lame and gave spiritual and emotional peace to those possessed by evil thoughts. It was to be used and treated with respect …

Alan went to the refrigerator and opened the door, wincing at the interior light and half-expecting to see those hideous vines in there again. But there were no vines.

It healed the sick and the lame and gave spiritual and emotional peace to those possessed by evil thoughts.

He removed a gallon jug of water from the fridge,
uncapped it, guzzled. It chilled his entire body and exploded in a gush in his stomach—ice water versus the boiling belly ulcer. The ultimate death match. Taking the jug to the sink, he emptied the remainder of its contents down the drain.