Stephen Gallagher - The Boat House

"Come with me," she said, and she placed the book safely in the shelter of the porch. "There's something I want you to see."

Pavel was on edge, sensing the moment that was coming even though its details had yet to become clear.

He said, "Is it far?"

"It's no distance at all," Alina said, and she took his arm to guide him down.

"Wake up, Jed," Diane whispered gently. After parking the Zodiac on the gravel by the side entrance to Liston Hall, she'd said Home at last in what she'd hoped was a confident, untroubled voice, and she'd turned around to find him with his eyes closed and his mouth open and his comics still held close to his chest. His eyes fluttered now as she spoke. She knew that she could probably walk him up to his bedroom and undress him and put him into bed, and he wouldn't remember anything about it in the morning. He'd say that he did, but he wouldn't.

"Come on," she said as she slipped her hand behind his head, and she supported him as he groped and fumbled his way out onto the gravel. There he winced, and peered around, but already his eyelids were drooping again. One of his comics fell, and she picked it up as she began to guide him toward the house.

The stranger had followed her for some of the way, of that much she was certain. There had been far off headlights in her rearview mirror for some considerable distance. She'd cut the Zodiac's own lights and pulled into an off the road layby which consisted of a picnic area and a screen of trees with a No Camping sign, and she was pretty sure that she'd managed to lose him; she heard him pass and saw his lights as a flicker through the bushes, and then she'd waited another ten minutes in case he came back. He hadn't. She'd inadvertently led him toward the valley and the lake (She'll be somewhere close to water, he'd said) but at least she would take him no further.

Jed thought it was all some kind of big adventure. Tomorrow, he'd probably think it had been some kind of a dream. She'd let him go on thinking so. She wondered if Pete would see her note and call her tonight, or if his interpretation of the word urgent meant that sometime in the morning would do. Would that matter? Surely nothing was going to happen before morning.

Jed came first. Always. Every time. That was the principle she believed in, anyway, even if she sometimes found her behaviour drifting away from the ideal.

First thing tomorrow, if he hadn't been in touch, she'd go down to the yard and tell Pete about everything that had happened. He could decide how much of it to believe, if anything.

A few hours couldn't make any difference.

So now, with her hand gently cradling the back of his head, she steered Jed onward in the direction of his room.

Alina has stayed a few paces before him on the descent to the shore. Pavel has been stumbling in the darkness and having trouble keeping up; she seems to move with hardly any effort, and she never puts a foot wrong.

Finally, they reach the water's edge. There hasn't been any rainfall in a while and the level has dropped, making a narrow strip of shoreline which ends at the high water point like a bite taken out of the turf. This small, temporary beach is covered in twigs and straw debris that has dried out in the heat of the days and which now crunches underfoot like the bones of mice. Alina draws him across, and turns him to face the valley; the vestigial light of the long day is enough to block in the shape of its immense sides, even now.

She says, "This is it. What do you see?"

"Water," he says. "Mountains. Stars."

"Does it remind you of anywhere?"

"Home," he says, even though it doesn't. The mountains are too high and the stars are all wrong, but he knows that this will be what she's expecting to hear. She sees it differently, and he hasn't sought her out to argue.

"It is my home now," she says. "Stand at the edge. Don't turn around."

Nervously, he does as he's been told.

From behind him, she says, "Do you know what you're asking?"

"I think I do."

"Watch, then. Watch the water. But I have to warn you, it's already too late for me to let you go."

So he watches the lake as it catches whatever faint lights are available to it; close inshore, it seems to be stirring as the unseen rocks just below its surface warp and change the patterns with their mass. It flexes and shines like enchanted oil, a magic mirror onto a world of madness.

Exhaustion, he tells himself. Exhilaration. That's all it is.

She says, "Who sent you to me?"

"Nobody. I followed a woman who said she knew you."

"How did you meet?"

"What?" He hasn't fully understood the question, simple though it is; he's being distracted by shapes and shadows that seem to be forming under the water.

"Can you see anything in the lake?"

"No. Just reflections."

"Try for a little longer. And then I'll tell you what I can see, How did you come to be talking about me?"

"I put out a message for you, on the radio. She heard it and called in."

"What did she look like?"

"Taller than you, dark…"

His voice trails away.

"You've seen something?

"No."

"Then close your eyes, and just listen. I'll describe it for you."

He closes his eyes, and she begins to tell him; she begins to show him her world through the eyes of the Rusalka.

She describes how the first of the figures rises from the water and stands a little way offshore, starlit and cadaverous and with water sluicing from it. The second rises as a dark female form beside this. Both are like thin shells of hard matter around an infinity of darkness and stars; there's no glint or glow to suggest whether they have eyes, or pearls for eyes, or anything at all.

Pavel's eyes flicker open for a moment. He sees only the surface of the water, undisturbed.

"Did she drive a big car?" Alina says. "A car like a truck?"

"No… I don't…"

He screws his eyes shut again. Against all reason he wishes that he could see what she's describing, because to see would be to enter her world completely.

Others rising from the water; an old man, three young, straight wraiths, a couple of children, a carpenter… and then from out beyond them come a number of stags, a few cats and dogs, birds popping up and trying to unfold their sodden wings without success and without any kind of sound at all. They face inward in a half circle, an audience of the dead summoned for a performance of the living.

And of all this, Pavel sees nothing.

"You've made such a long journey," she says. "Now there's only one last step to take. Can you manage it alone?"

He opens his eyes, then, and looks down at her. The face that he knows so well is now just angles and planes in darkness, all expression lost; there's little to tell between the girl on the shore and the creatures that she imagines to be in the lake. He tries to read sympathy there, he tries to read encouragement; but these are hopes rather than solid certainties, where the only real certainty is that she's probably much too far-gone in her madness for him ever to be able to carry her home.

He'd hoped that he might somehow be able to take her back. Or at the very least, for the two of them to find some corner where they could build a kind of happiness. But he knows now that this can never be.

She pushes him, taking him by surprise, and he stumbles and loses his footing on the bank. When he hits the water he almost falls, but then he manages to get his balance on the lakebed. The water is surprisingly cold, soaking into his clothes and making them heavy. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and turns back to face Alina; she hasn't moved.

"What was that for?" he says.

"You want to be with me," she says. "I'm showing you the way."