By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain (4 page)

He reached for her hand and her heart quickened, but he only wanted the chalk.

He took it from her and began to write on the side of the poor thing. She opened her mouth to say they shouldn't but then closed her mouth when she saw he was writing her name on the pebbly turtle skin. He wrote his name beneath hers.

“In case anyone else tries to say they found it,” he told her. Then he said, “Your name ought to be on a plaque here. Our names ought to be together forever. I'm glad I found him with you. There isn't no one I'd rather have been with.”

“That's a double negative,” she said.

He kissed her. Just on the cheek.

“Yes, dear,” he said, like he was forty years old and not ten. He gave her back the chalk.

Joel looked past her, down the beach, into the mist. Gail turned her head to see what he was staring at.

She saw a series of those Russian-doll shadows, collapsing toward them, just like someone folding a telescope shut. They were mother-shaped, flanked by Miriam and Mindy shapes, and Gail opened her mouth to call out, but then that large central shadow suddenly shrank and became Heather. Ben Quarrel was right behind her, looking smug.

Heather stalked out of the mist, her drawing pad under one arm. Coils of blond hair hung in her face. She pursed her lips and blew at them to get them out of her eyes, something she only ever did when she was mad.

“Mother wants to see you. She said right now.”

Gail said, “Isn't she coming?”

“She has egg pancake in the oven.”

“Go and tell her—”

“Go and tell her yourself. You can give Mindy her chalk before you go.”

Mindy held out one hand, palm up.

Miriam sang, “
Gail, Gail, bosses everyone around. Gail, Gail, is really stupid
.” The melody was just as good as the lyrics.

Gail said to Heather, “We found a dinosaur. You have to run and get Mom. We're going to give it to a museum and be in the paper. Joel and I are going to be in a photo together.”

Heather took Gail's ear and twisted it, and Gail screamed. Mindy lunged and grabbed the chalk out of Gail's hand. Miriam wailed in a long, girlish pretend scream, mocking her.

Heather dropped her hand, grabbed the back of Gail's arm between thumb and index finger, and twisted. Gail cried out again and struggled to get free. Her hand flailed and swatted Heather's drawing pad into the sand. Heather didn't give it any mind, her bloodlust up. She began to march her little sister away into the mist.

“I was drawing my
best
pony,” Heather said. “I worked on it
really
hard. And Mom wouldn't even look at it because Mindy and Miriam and Ben kept bothering her about your stupid dinosaur. She yelled at me to get you, and I didn't even do anything. I just wanted to draw, and she said if I didn't go get you, she'd take my colored pencils away. The colored pencils! I got! For my birthday!” She twisted the back of Gail's arm for emphasis, until Gail's eyes stung with tears.

Ben Quarrel hurried to keep alongside her. “You better still buy me my cowboys. You promised.”

“Mom says you aren't getting any egg pancake,” Miriam said. “Because of all the trouble you've caused this morning.”

Mindy said, “Gail? Do you mind if I eat the piece of egg pancake that would've been yours?”

Gail looked over her shoulder at Joel. He was already a ghost, twenty feet back in the mist. He had climbed up to sit on the carcass.

“I'll stay right here, Gail!” he shouted. “Don't worry! You've got your name on it! Your name and mine, right together! Everyone is going to know we found it! Just come back as soon as you can! I'll be waiting!”

“All right,” she said, her voice wavering with emotion. “I'll be right back, Joel.”

“No you won't,” Heather said.

Gail stumbled over the rocks, looking back at Joel for as long as she could. Soon he and the animal he sat on were just dim shapes in the fog, which drifted in damp sheets, so white it made Gail think of the veils that brides wore. When he disappeared, she turned away, blinking at tears, her throat tight.

It was farther back to the house than she remembered. The pack of them—four small children and one twelve-year-old— followed the meandering course of the narrow beach, by the silver water of Lake Champlain. Gail looked at her feet, watched the water slop gently over the pebbles.

They continued along the embankment until they reached the dock, their father's motorboat tied up to it. Heather let go of Gail then, and each of them climbed up onto the pine boards. Gail did not try to run back. It was important to bring their mother, and she thought if she cried hard enough, she could manage it.

The children were halfway across the yard when they heard the foghorn sound again. Only it wasn't a foghorn and it was
close
, somewhere just out of sight in the mist on the lake. It was a long, anguished, bovine sound, a sort of thunderous lowing, loud enough to make the individual droplets of mist quiver in the air. The sound of it brought back the crawling-ants feeling on Gail's scalp and chest. When she looked back at the dock, she saw her father's motorboat galumphing heavily up and down in the water and banging against the wood, rocking in a sudden wake.

“What was that?” Heather cried out.

Mindy and Miriam held each other, staring with fright at the lake. Ben Quarrel's eyes were wide and his head cocked to one side, listening with a nervous intensity.

Back down the beach, Gail heard Joel shout something. She thought—but she was never sure—that he shouted, “Gail! Come see!” In later years, though, she sometimes had the wretched idea that it had been “God! Help me!”

The mist distorted sound, much as it distorted the light. So when there came a great splash, it was hard to judge the size of the thing making the splashing sound. It was like a bathtub dropped from a great height into the lake. Or a car. It was, anyway, a great splash.

“What was that?” Heather screamed again, holding her stomach as if she had a bellyache.

Gail began to run. She leapt the embankment and hit the beach and fell to her knees. Only the beach was gone. Waves splashed in, foot-high waves like you would see at the ocean, not on Lake Champlain. They drowned the narrow strip of pebbles and sand, running right up to the embankment. She remembered how on the walk back, the water had been lapping gently at the shore, leaving room for Heather and Gail to walk side by side without getting their feet wet.

She ran into the cold blowing vapor, shouting Joel's name. As hard as she ran, she felt she was not going nearly fast enough. She almost ran past the spot where the carcass had been. It wasn't there anymore, and in the mist, with the water surging up around her bare feet, it was hard to tell one stretch of beach from another.

But she spotted Heather's drawing pad, sloshing in on the combers, soaked through, pages tumbling. One of Joel's sneakers tumbled with it, full of the cold, green water. She bent for it automatically—he would want it back—and poured it out and clutched it to her chest.

Gail looked out at the plunging waves, the tormented water. She had a stitch in her side. Her lungs struggled for air. When the waves drew back she could see where the carcass had been dragged through the hard dirt, pulled into the water, going home. It looked as if someone had plowed a tractor blade across the beach and into the lake.

“Joel!”

She shouted at the water. She turned and shouted up the embankment, into the trees, toward Joel's house.

“Joel!”

She spun in a circle, shouting his name. She didn't want to look at the lake but wound up turned to face it again anyway. Her throat burned from yelling, and she was beginning to cry again.

“Gail!” Heather called to her. Her voice was shrill with fright. “Come home, Gail! Come home,
right now
!”

“Gail!” yelled Gail's mother.

“Joel!” Gail shouted, thinking this was ridiculous, everyone shouting for everyone else.

The lowing sound came from a long way off. It was mournful and soft.

“Give him back,” Gail whispered. “Please give him back.”

Heather ran through the mist. She was up on the embankment, not down on the sand, where the water was still piling in, one heavy, cold wave after another. Then Gail's mother was there too, looking down at her.

“Sweetie,” Gail's mother said, her face pale and drawn with alarm. “Come up here, sweetie. Come up here to Mother.”

Gail heard her but didn't climb the embankment. Something washed in on the water and caught on her foot. It was Heather's drawing pad, open to one of her ponies. It was a green pony, with a rainbow stripe across it and red hoofs. It was as green as a Christmas tree. Gail didn't know why Heather was always drawing horses that looked so unhorselike, horses that couldn't be. They were like double negatives, those horses, like dinosaurs, a possibility that canceled itself out in the moment it was expressed.

She fetched the drawing pad out of the water and looked at the green pony with a kind of ringing sickness in her, a feeling like she wanted to throw up. She ripped the pony out and crushed it and threw it into the water. She ripped some other ponies out and threw them too, and the crushed balls of paper bobbed and floated around her ankles. No one told her to stop, and Heather did not complain when Gail let the pad fall out of her hands and back into the lake.

Gail looked out at the water, wanting to hear it again, that soft foghorn sound, and she did, but it was inside her this time, the sound was down deep inside her, a long wordless cry for things that weren't never going to happen.

CREDITS

 

“Introduction” by Sam Weller and Mort Castle. Copyright © 2012 by Sam Weller and Mort Castle.

“A Second Homecoming” by Ray Bradbury. Copyright © 2012 by Ray Bradbury.

“The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” and “About ‘The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury'” by Neil Gaiman. Copyright © 2012 by Neil Gaiman.

“Headlife” and “About ‘Headlife'” by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 2012 by O.W. Toad Ltd.

“Heavy” and “About ‘Heavy'” by Jay Bonansinga. Copyright © 2012 by Jay Bonansinga.

“The Girl in the Funeral Parlor” and “About ‘The Girl in the Funeral Parlor'” by Sam Weller. Copyright © 2012 by Sam Weller.

“The Companions” and “About ‘The Companions'” by David Morrell. Copyright © 2012 by David Morrell.

“The Exchange” and “About ‘The Exchange'” by Thomas F. Monteleone. Copyright © 2012 by Thomas F. Monteleone.

“Cat on a Bad Couch” and “About ‘Cat on a Bad Couch'” by Lee Martin. Copyright © 2012 by Lee Martin.

“By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” and “About ‘By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain'” by Joe Hill. Copyright © 2012 by Joe Hill.

“Little America” and “About ‘Little America'” by Dan Chaon. Copyright © 2012 by Dan Chaon.

“The Phone Call” and “About ‘The Phone Call'” by John McNally. Copyright © 2012 by John McNally.

“Young Pilgrims” and “About ‘Young Pilgrims'” by Joe Meno. Copyright © 2012 by Joe Meno.

“Children of the Bedtime Machine” and “About ‘Children of the Bedtime Machine'” by Robert McCammon. Copyright © 2012 by Robert McCammon.

“The Page” and “About ‘The Page'” by Ramsey Campbell. Copyright © 2012 by Ramsey Campbell.

“Light” and “About ‘Light'” by Mort Castle. Copyright © 2012 by Mort Castle.

“Conjure” and “About ‘Conjure'” by Alice Hoffman. Copyright © 2012 by Alice Hoffman.

“Max” and “About ‘Max'” by John Maclay. Copyright © 2012 by John Maclay.

“Two of a Kind” and “About ‘Two of a Kind'” by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Copyright © 2012 by Jacquelyn Mitchard.

“Fat Man and Little Boy” and “About ‘Fat Man and Little Boy'” by Gary Braunbeck. Copyright © 2012 by Gary Braunbeck.

“The Tattoo” and “About ‘The Tattoo'” by Bonnie Jo Campbell. Copyright © 2012 by Bonnie Jo Campbell.

“Backward in Seville” and “About ‘Backward in Seville'” by Audrey Niffenegger. Copyright © 2012 by Audrey Niffenegger.

“Earth: (A Gift Shop)” and “About ‘Earth: (A Gift Shop)'” by Charles Yu. Copyright © 2012 by Charles Yu.

“Hayleigh's Dad” and “About ‘Hayleigh's Dad'” by Julia Keller. Copyright © 2012 by Julia Keller.

“Who Knocks?” and “About ‘Who Knocks?'” by Dave Eggers. Copyright © 2012 by Dave Eggers. (A different and untitled version of Dave Eggers's story appeared on the National Public Radio program
This American Life
in 2011.)

“Reservation 2020” and “About ‘Reservation 2020'” by Bayo Ojikutu. Copyright © 2012 by Bayo Ojikutu.

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, the image accompanying “Weariness” by Harlan Ellison®, copyright © 2005 and 2012 by the artist Hubert J. Daniel.

“Weariness” and “About ‘Weariness'” by Harlan Ellison®. Copyright © 2012 by the Kilimanjaro Corp.