Cradle Lake (6 page)

“The sheriff does his own patrolling?”

Hank shrugged. “We're a small town. There's only him and two deputies.”

“They don't recruit you all for that sort of thing? Citizens on patrol and neighborhood watch and whatever else?”

Hank raised his eyebrows and examined his beer can. His expression relayed that he had never given it much consideration before. “Landry likes to keep pretty hands-on. One of those perfectionist types.”

“I hate those,” Alan commented, only half-joking.

“Guess you can't shake your own upbringing,” Hank said. “Can't take the boy out of the city, that kind of thing.”

Now it was Alan's turn to shrug and look overly casual. “Where I come from, a cop car slides past your house, you close your windows and hope the stray bullets don't come through the drywall.”

“Was it really that bad?” There was genuine fascination on Hank's boyish face. “Like, shoot-outs in the streets and things like that? The stuff they show on those
CSI
programs?”

It hadn't really been that bad growing up in the city, but Alan deliberately hesitated before he answered, hoping the moment of empty silence would fill Hank's head with all sorts of images of urban violence and moral decay.

“I guess it's just gonna take me a while to get used to things around here,” he confessed. “Even the air smells funny.”

“Funny?”

“Clean. Like, I've never smelled fresh air before.”

Hank didn't so much laugh as make a nasally
gah
sound way back in his throat.

“The trees, the fields, the mountains,” Alan went on. “It's like a Bob Ross painting set to a Louis Armstrong soundtrack.”

Hank leaned forward and, with one bronzed thumb, wiped a smear off one of the plastic baseball globes. “It's the untouched land. The fresh air coming down off* the mountains.”

“Yeah.” Alan let this sink in. “Speaking of the land, there's a path cutting through the trees at the back of my yard.” Since he'd followed the path to the clearing on that first night, he found himself waking up in bed at random hours every night for the past week, just thinking about it. As if he'd been dreaming about it—dreaming of
something
—but was powerless to remember anything about it as he came awake. “You know the one I'm talking about?”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “I think so.”

“There are these white stones along the path. A dozen or so, maybe more. They each have different symbols carved into them.”

Hank turned away from the mantelpiece and leaned back against a bookcase, folding and unfolding his arms. His thumb made irritating popping sounds on the beer can.

“I guess I was just curious what they were.”

“The stones?”

“The stones and the symbols, too. You've seen them, right?”

“I don't know,” Hank said. “I'm not sure.”

“You don't know if you've seen them?” He hadn't meant for his words to come out so combative, but once again Hank didn't seem to notice.

“No,” Hank said. “I mean, I don't know who put them there. Probably kids. Anyway, what's the big deal?”

“They seemed so precise, so deliberate. I didn't get the impression that kids carved those symbols,” Alan said. One was a triangle, one was two circles attached by a horizontal line, and another resembled the crenellated tower of a medieval castle. For a moment he thought about mentioning the strange birds, too, but realized there was no way to bring them up without sounding paranoid.

“Did you follow the path?”

“I did, yeah. It led to a small lake in a clearing. No bigger than a large pond, really.”

“It's probably best to keep out of those woods,” Hank said. His tone was matter-of-fact but almost forcibly so. He continued to fold and unfold his arms as he spoke. “We get bears coming down from the mountains in the summer and fall. They've been known to go through people's trash, and one even killed someone's dog on Broad Street last year.”

“No kidding? Bears?”

“Anyway, you don't want to accidentally run into one of those suckers going through the woods.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No. But I've seen the messes they leave behind. Garbage strewn all over the streets.”

“But you know nothing about those stones, huh? The ones with the symbols on them?”

Hank once again flashed his toothy grin. “That's the college professor in you, isn't it?” His big head looked like a pumpkin with sideburns. “Always trying to find answers to the unexplained? I mean, I totally envy you academic types. I wish I had it in me to be so smart.”

Footsteps sounded on the basement stairs. Don Probst,
who lived with his wife, Jane, two houses up from the Gerski house, appeared at the foot of the stairs. Alan had been introduced to him earlier that afternoon as the neighbors slowly gathered in Hank's backyard. Don was stocky, well-muscled, tan. A beer bottle sweated in one meaty paw.

“This some meeting of the special boys' club?” Don asked.

“Don the bomb,” said Hank.

“Seriously, am I interrupting?”

Hank waved a hand at him. “Heck, no. I was just showing Alan my baseball junk. And telling him how envious I am that he gets to sit around the house all summer until school starts.”

“Oh yeah,” Don said, crossing over to them. “At the community college, right?”

Alan nodded.

“Hope you don't get my kid,” Don said, rolling his eyes dramatically. “For the sake of your own sanity.”

“I get my students to listen pretty well,” he countered. “I take a gun to class.”

Don's sense of humor was about as sharp as a balloon. But after a few beats his face creased in some suggestion of a smile. He laughed, which sounded like the backfire of an old pickup, and jabbed a stubby finger in Alan's direction. “This guy,” he said, turning to Hank. “This guy, he shouldn't be a professor; he should be a comedian.”

When the three of them returned to Hank's backyard, the other neighbors were drinking around a large picnic table while Hank's barbecue sizzled in the background. The world smelled of hamburgers, onions, potato salad, charcoal. Young Catherine was making the rounds performing card tricks for anyone who'd grant her ten seconds of attention.
The men passed around cigars and swilled beer. Most of the women had gathered around one young woman whose swollen abdomen became the center of attention. Jane Probst had her hand on the woman's pregnant belly, and she was grinning like an idiot. Never quite able to understand how one person could just walk up and touch another person's stomach, Alan watched the women with a combination of distaste and sheer puzzlement.

Belly touchers,
he thought.
The whole lot of you.

His eyes connected with Heather's. She sat alone in a lawn chair, an unopened can of beer in her lap. Her stare caused his testicles to retreat into his abdomen. At that moment he was all too clearly aware of his ulcer.

Thankfully, Lydia broke the tension when she clapped and told them all that it was time to eat.

That night, at some ungodly hour, Alan awoke to find Heather's side of the bed empty. Fear shook him. He thought he could hear the shudder of pipes and the sounds of running water. Terrified, he thought of locked bathroom doors and tubs half-filled with pinkish water.

Blood pumping, he sprung from bed and called Heather's name. It was like shouting into an empty steel chamber. He raced out into the hall and found the bathroom door standing ajar, the light from the bathroom spilling onto the floor and the opposite wall in a crooked rectangle. A curl of steam roiled into the hallway from the bathroom, like fog rolling across a graveyard.

But the bathroom was empty. Water emptied into the tub, which was half full. The water was crystal clear.

Yet this didn't set his mind at ease. He staggered into the hallway, wondering if he was actually still dreaming …

“Heather? Baby?”

Still no answer.

Down the hall, the kitchen lights were off. So were the living room lights. He clicked on the lamp beside the couch, hoping to find his wife curled up there, but the couch was empty.

Jerry Lee whined from across the room, startling him. The dog stood by the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard, though the creature—seemingly equally as frightened as Alan—was looking at his master with moist, dark eyes that struck Alan as oddly human. Jerry Lee typically slept on the floor at the foot of the bed, as he had done in the apartment for many years, and Alan was surprised to find the dog standing here now, tail wagging.

Alan went quickly to the doors. Jerry Lee whined again but moved out of the way. Beyond the glass was nothing but pitch-black space. Alan ran his hand along the light switch that controlled the patio lights; they came on, casting white light onto the cement patio and the surrounding grass.

At first he didn't see anything. But then he noticed Heather standing in the tall grass, her back toward him and wraithlike in a sheer white nightgown, a vampire from an old Hammer film. She faced the line of trees at the edge of the yard, seemingly staring at the opening in the trees that marked the entrance to the dirt path.

Beside him, Jerry Lee barked. It was like a gunshot going off in an airplane hangar.

Alan unlocked the door and slid it open. He was wearing
nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms, and the cool summery wind suddenly chilled his bones and caused his chest to break out in gooseflesh. “Heather!”

She didn't acknowledge him.

He stepped onto the patio, the concrete rough and cold beneath his bare feet.

Behind him, Jerry Lee whimpered but did not follow him outside.

“Honey?”

Still no acknowledgment. In fact, as if in direct disobedience, Heather began walking toward the opening in the trees, toward the dirt path.

For whatever reason, this caused a hard lump to rise in Alan's throat. He broke into a sprint and closed the distance between them before she could disappear within the trees. He dropped a hand on her shoulder and spun her around.

Her face was frightening—a blank canvas. “Oh,” she uttered in a small voice. It was like waking a somnambulist.

“What are you doing out here?”

The question seemed to confuse her. She looked disoriented. He stared hard at her until recollection filtered into her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, though more clearly now. “I was looking for you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Out here?”

“I didn't know.”

“Didn't know what?”

Heather looked confused. “I just … I didn't know …”

“Why would you think I'd be out here in the middle of the night?”

“Because you whispered something to me. I was half-asleep. You whispered something in my ear about going down to the lake.” A small fissure formed in the center of her forehead as she frowned. “Didn't you?”

“No,” he said.

“
Someone
did.”

“It wasn't me.”

“But
someone
…”

“No one did. Maybe you dreamt it.”

“No,” she said simply. “I heard it.”

“Of course you dreamt it.” His heart was bursting.

“No.” She was calm but adamant. “I didn't dream it. I heard it. It was you.”

“Come on.” He slipped an arm around her waist and led her across the yard toward the house.

Sunday afternoon, a full week after they'd moved into the house, Alan found himself alone for the first time since arriving in town. Lydia had come by earlier and, after much prodding, convinced Heather to go shopping with her. Heather had pulled on a pair of wrinkled slacks and a blouse and, after searching around the house for her purse for nearly fifteen minutes, left with Lydia without saying good-bye to Alan. He was certain Lydia noticed the awkwardness between them—she wasn't blind—but she didn't say anything. Heather's bandages were gone now, and she took to wearing heavy silver bracelets to cover the scars, but Alan wondered if Lydia had noticed the bandages that first day when she brought over the casserole and the bottle of wine.

Nonetheless, he savored the solitude. He hadn't realized how much he had begun to feel like Heather's babysitter—no, Heather's goddamn
keeper
—since her suicide attempt. It hadn't even been a conscious thing; he just knew that he
never felt right leaving her alone. And the night he'd found her standing in the yard, staring at the trees? Even now in the relative safety of daylight, it chilled him to recall that event. What the hell had she been doing? When he questioned her about it the following morning, she couldn't even remember doing it let alone provide a reasonable explanation. With much unease, he wondered what he was going to do when school started in the fall.

Maybe that night in the yard was just a fluke and things will be different here,
he thought.
Maybe things will get better. This is a nice town and the people, however tedious, are nice, too. Heather might even find a friend in Lydia or one of the other neighbors and start living her life again. We can beat this; we can get past all the badness.

He hoped.

In the kitchen, he heated up some of the coffee from that morning in the microwave and listened to the silence of the otherwise empty house.

Jerry Lee poked his head into the kitchen, sniffed around, then admonished Alan with solemn eyes. Then the dog licked his chops and retreated down the hall, yawning.

“Lazy bastard,” Alan called after him.

He was contemplating cutting away some of the vines that crept along the house when he happened to notice one of those very vines crawling up the wall from behind the refrigerator. It startled him at first, as it looked nearly snakelike in its appearance. Only a few inches were visible, thin and curling at the tip, but he imagined it must have come up from the floor behind the refrigerator and was probably several feet long and thick as an electrical cord at its base.