The Devil of Echo Lake (21 page)

L I A R

Billy’s vision swarmed again. He fell forward into darkness.

Part III

And the Forest Will Echo with Laughter

Fourteen

“Don’t you know there ain’t no devil?

There’s just God when he’s drunk.”

-Tom Waits

Rachel Shadbourne stepped out of hiding when she saw Billy fall face-first into the puddle he had been talking to. Tossing her caution like clutter from the top layer of her purse, she ran to him, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and pulled his head out of the water.

He didn’t cough.

That wasn’t good.

Her leather pumps sank into the mud under his weight—bad footwear for this midnight Girl Scout expedition, but she didn’t own anything more appropriate. She had never been a Girl Scout, never owned a pair of hiking shoes, never learned CPR.

“Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” she whispered, dropping him to the ground. She realized she was afraid to touch him and almost laughed out loud. Here was her idol, alone with her in the dark woods, perfectly vulnerable, and after dragging him out of the water, she was afraid to touch him? But she was aware of her limits: all she knew of resuscitation was what she’d seen on TV and in movies. And how did that apply to someone who had inhaled water?

Did you need to do something different, or just start pumping their chest like usual? She had seen countless actors over the years, rolling victims onto their backs and lifting under the neck to clear the airway. But what if rolling him onto his back made him drown? Was she supposed to do the opposite and try to drain the water out of him? Force him to expel it with that Heimlich thing? Oh fuck, indeed.

She knew that if she did nothing, he would probably die. But the caution and self-protection she had tossed when she’d left her voyeur’s post behind the tree were crowding in around her.
You’re a crazy fan who’s been stalking him. If you touch him and he dies, people will accuse you of killing him.

Superimposed on the face she knew and loved so well, now glazed with a thin coat of muck, she could see the front page of a newspaper.

Below

KENNETH STARR TO ADDRESS HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE,

a smaller headline,

ROCK SINGER BILLY MOON DEAD AT 27, FEMALE FAN SUSPECTED OF FOUL PLAY.

Rachel rolled Billy over and tilted his head back. He wasn’t breathing and he
might
have water in his lungs, but she didn’t know what had caused him to pass out in the first place. Heart attack? Was he on drugs? Which ones? This was a subject she knew a little more about. Coke could give you a heart attack but it wouldn’t make you hallucinate a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. Acid might get him talking to his reflection, sure, but it wouldn’t give him a heart attack. Heroin? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Could be a combination. Nothing she could do about it.

She placed her hands on his stomach, one atop the other and pumped three times. She knew it wasn’t CPR but hoped it would make him throw up the water and maybe even some pills or something with it.

No reaction.

She squeezed his jaw, and his mouth opened. She could smell garlic on his breath. Was that Chinese food? Gross. Not quite how she would have imagined getting this intimate with him. She put her finger down his throat, careful not to scratch him with her long black nail.

Nothing. His gag reflex was disconnected.

Now she tried her best imitation of CPR, pumping on his sternum and puffing hard into his mouth. The fear of cracking his ribs made it a half-hearted effort, but that other fear—that he was slipping away to a place where even paramedics wouldn’t be able to reach him—was fast eclipsing the first. She pumped harder.

The thought of paramedics brought her cell phone to mind but even if she could get a signal, it would mean abandoning the resuscitation attempt at the crucial moment. There was no time.

But I don’t know what I’m doing. I could be killing him.
Her own heart was pumping enough beats per minute for the both of them. It occurred to her that she hadn’t even checked him for a pulse. Now she tried, feeling his wrist, then his throat, but all she could feel in her fingertips was her own.

She didn’t know if you could get 911 on a cell phone, and even if it worked, where would she tell the dispatcher to send the ambulance – the woods near Echo Lake Studios, by the tree and the puddle? Yeah, right.

What the hell was he doing out here in the middle of the night, anyway, talking to a puddle? Just what in the hell was he doing, flirting with death when he was supposed to be finishing his new album? Without thinking, she slapped him across the face, hard.

You like his Gothic death trip just fine in the lyrics and photos. What’s the matter, girl? The real thing a little too real for you?

She wound up and slapped him again. Harder. Three things happened. He sprayed blood from his nose, spewed swamp water from his mouth, and drew a loud, ragged breath. Her eyes widened. She used all of her strength to roll him onto his side and beat the heel of her hand between his shoulder blades.

He squinted through a coughing fit, then rolled onto his back of his own volition, his head settling in her lap. He blinked, confused, at the dark shape of her against the indigo sky now infused with the first dirty light of November dawn. His brow furrowed. He said, “You’re real.”

“Shh. Don’t try to talk yet. Take it easy.”

“Why did you lead me to him? What do you want from me?”

She didn’t know what he was talking about, and for a moment, she no longer knew what she wanted from him. She brushed wet hair from his forehead. Billy swatted her hand away, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked at the blood on his fingers. Then he was reeling like a cornered animal, scrambling in the dirt, trying to get his cramped legs under him, muttering, “Get away from me. Stay ‘way from me.”

Rachel held her hands up, not moving but ready to catch him, watching him try to stand. Billy stumbled, but when she reached for him, he pointed a finger at her, staggering and groping for the nearest tree with his other hand. Now that he was conscious, he looked dangerously deranged: eyes blazing from his dirty face through a mask of blood and drool. Then he said something she'd never imagined hearing from him, “Get back, witch!”

She laughed. She knew it probably didn’t help to laugh when you were being called a witch, but she couldn’t help it. It was just such a relief that he was alive, even if he was out of his mind on some crazy trip. But the laughter seemed to make him worse, so she shut up. Then, gathering her composure, she said, “Billy, you almost died. Calling me a witch is a funny way of thanking me for pulling you out of the water. You hafta calm down. And I always kinda thought you were
into
witches.”

For a little while he said nothing, just stood there swaying from a branch, examining her in the fast-growing light. She rummaged in her purse.

At last, he said, “You’re not Olivia.”

“Rachel,” she said, holding out her hand to him, a small cellophane-wrapped peace offering glinting on her palm in the first real rays of sun through the misty air.  “Mint? Might do you some good. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and chalking all of this up to low blood sugar.”

Billy took the candy and looked at it like it was a fuel cell for a jet pack from the third star in Orion’s belt. Clearly, he was reassessing the situation. When he unwrapped it like an idiot child and popped it in his mouth, she took a wad of tissues from her bag and dampened them in some crushed snow. “I’m going to clean that blood off your face, okay?”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded.

Wiping his face clean, she got a pretty good look at his eyes. The pupils weren’t overly dilated for someone in low light. It struck her as strange that she knew those eyes so well and yet this was the first time she’d seen them in person.

“Are you on anything, Billy? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“No.”

“No, you don’t mind the question, or no, you’re not on anything?”

“I’m not on drugs. Who are you?”

“I’m Rachel.” She said with a crooked smile.

“Yeah, you told me that, but who are you? What are you doing here?”

She really didn’t have a good, plausible excuse for being here, of course. She hadn’t expected to need one tonight because she’d only intended to watch from a safe distance when she saw him leave the studio with the flashlight. A lot had happened since her decision to leave her lookout post beside the farmhouse and follow him into the woods. She couldn’t predict how this would play out, but she felt sure there was nothing to gain by lying about what she was doing here. There were no excuses he wouldn’t see right through. Then again, he
would
be dead right now, if she hadn’t been following him. And that couldn’t just be a coincidence. A man of his sensibilities would see that.

“Actually, I’m a fan. I wanted to meet you.” She bit her lip.

His eyes shot to her purse and back. His face formed an expression that, as best she could read it, was made of equal parts disbelief and horror. He said, “At four in the morning, when I’m taking a piss in the woods, you wanted to meet me?”

“It’s not exactly like that. And you know, I doubt you crossed a creek and walked a quarter of a mile to relieve yourself, okay? At least
I’m
being honest with
you
. I was hoping to meet you at a better time, but I followed you out of concern.”

“Concern?”

“And curiosity.”

Staring at the ground, he said, “When exactly did curiosity become concern? When you found me face down in the water?”

“Actually, I was full-blown terrified by then.”

He took a step toward her now. She stepped back.

“So you were watching me the whole time,” he said with an edge. “What else did you see?”

“I don’t know.”

This was so weird. She already knew what his angry voice sounded like. Knew it like the feel of her favorite fingerless gloves. And now it was directed at her, not at some mythical ex-lover or authority. She felt a warm awakening between her legs and was surprised by it. Still, she gathered her wits, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and touched the almost heart-shaped glass pendant that hung from a black choker at her collarbone. Finding courage, she said, “
I
saved you.
” Nothing more in her defense, just the plain fact.

It had the desired effect, for a few seconds his face mixed a dash of guilt into the simmering anger. He softened his tone and asked again, “What did you see, Rachel?”

She hesitated, couldn’t think of a polite way to put it, so said it in a quieter voice, as if a lower volume would cost him less, “You were talking to yourself. Talking to your reflection, I think.”

“Did I answer myself?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean. And I didn’t hear everything you said, I swear. Look, could we go somewhere indoors to talk? It’s freezing out here.”

“Go somewhere? You mean like the police station, so you can explain about how you were stalking me?”

“You’d be dead now if I wasn’t.”

Billy took a pack of cigarettes from the inner breast pocket of his jacket, examined the limp cardboard, and gingerly withdrew one far enough to see how wet it was. Too wet. He pushed it back down. “Where do you live?”

“Minneapolis.”

“You came cross-country to stalk me? Are you staying with someone?”

“I’m renting a cabin.”

“Do you have a car?”

She shook her head.

“How long’s the walk to your cabin?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, let’s go there.”

Her heart jumped into her throat. She said, “You don’t want to go back to the church and get cleaned up?”

“No. I can’t go back there.”

“Why not?”

Billy only shook his head and said, “I just can’t go back there. I need to think first. I need to sleep and think before I go back there. Can I do that at your cabin?”

“Of course. You can take a shower too.”

Billy looked intently at the black pool. When he pulled his eyes away to look at her again, she thought he looked like the shocked survivor of a car accident. He shivered and ran his hand through his hair. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Fifteen

While Billy Moon was following wolf tracks into the woods, Jake was at home standing under the twenty-watt bulb that illuminated the stovetop in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with Allison, reading her last journal entry while she slept. He read the words a second time, a soft dread compressing the air in his lungs.

Jake,

It’s almost 1:30 and you’re still not home. I really miss you lately. I tried to stay up to talk to you. It makes me sad that even though we ‘live together,’ I’m stuck with writing to you if I want to tell you how I feel, or even if I want to bounce something off of you like how tonight I was thinking it might do me some good to go visit my parents for a while. I haven’t called them yet, so I don’t know if I’ll go, but I was thinking of maybe leaving next week.

Seeing as I haven’t found a job yet, there’s no reason not to and with you gone all the time, there isn’t much reason for me to hang around here. Would you care if I go? I’m lonely. Maybe going home would cheer me up. Talk to you soon, I hope.

Goodnight,

Ally

His eye kept retracing that one line,
Would you care if I go?
It revolved in his head like a skipping record. Then a charge of anger illuminated the oppressive atmosphere within him.

I’m working for
us,
and all she can think about is how bored she is.

Jake read the entry again, this time reminding himself that, if he didn’t read between the lines, it only said what it said. Nothing more. There was no reason to jump to the conclusion she was leaving him. Of course she was lonely. Would he prefer it if she
didn’t
miss him? Or missed him but didn’t tell him? He had to admit that he had been too busy and under too much pressure to dwell much on missing her.