Stuart Woods - Under the Lake

“Wow,” Scotty said, softly. “I want it to happen to me just like that.”

“Hang in there, kid; you never know.”

“Do you ever miss the Times?” she asked. “Would you go back?”

“Sometimes,” he said. God, how he missed it. “I think it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever go back. They say you can leave the Times once for another love, so to speak, but not twice. I’ve only left once, of course, but somehow, I don’t think they liked it very much.” That was an understatement, he thought. They had offered him the best thing going, and he had turned it down. They didn’t like being turned down.

“Listen,” she said, “is your back really cured?”

“You bet.”

“You can screw, and everything?”

“And everything.”

“Don’t tell me, show me,” she said, pushing her chair back from the table.

As she headed past him toward the bedroom, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him. With his teeth he pulled the front of her T-shirt out of her jeans and pushed his tongue into her navel.

Scotty made a little noise and peeled the T-shirt over her head, exposing the beautifully shaped breasts which had always appealed so much to Howell. He bit the nipples, which leapt out at him. She unzipped her jeans, pushed them down, kicked them off and surprised him by climbing so that her knees were resting on the arms of his chair. He pushed his face into the mound of hair and opened her with his tongue. Scotty was now biting off tiny yells. She was pulling his head into her, and for a moment, Howell thought he would suffocate, but he couldn’t stop. Within less than a minute she was coming noisily, shouting her delight.

Howell scooped her up in his arms and swept her toward the bed. Then he was out of his own clothes and into her, moving with slow, shallow strokes. He pulled her legs up over his shoulders and, very slowly, slid more and more of himself into her until, finally, she was panting and laughing.

His arousal had started with Leonie, that afternoon, and now he had an outlet for it. Both women were in his mind as he brought Scotty to orgasm again, then again. Finally, he came with her, shouting with her, rocking the bed until he thought it would collapse. He rolled over, and she lay on top of him, their sweat mingling.

“Johnny,” she said, “I’ve done my share of fucking, but never in my whole life was it like that.”

“Me, either,” he said, weakly. “Listen, Scotty, I want to be straight with you…”

“Yeah?”

“Look, I’m just coming out of a marriage that didn’t work, and it was my fault, all of it. I feel as if I’m in bed with you on false pretenses.”

“Listen, sport, there was nothing false about what we just did.”

“Yeah, well, I feel that way, too, but I just don’t want you to expect too much of me.”

Scotty turned on her side and put her head on his shoulder. “Johnny, I’ve been stuck up here with nobody, and I mean nobody even to spend an evening with, let alone make love to. I like you, really I do; I think we’ve become friends. But that’s enough for me; is it enough for you? Are you looking for somebody to be in love with you?”

“Oh, no,” Howell said, with sincerity. “I don’t think I could handle that right now.”

“You like me? Are we friends? Do you feel close?”

“Yes, I do. I really do.”

“Well, then, as long as we seem to have slid into this wonderful patch of screwing, why don’t we just ride it out, so to speak, and see how it goes?”

He kissed her on the top of the head. “I think that’s a marvelous idea,” he said. Then, drained and shattered, he fell soundly asleep.

Sometime past midnight, Howell woke with a start, sat straight up in bed. The linens were in disarray. Scotty lay sprawled beside him, face down, naked. He was immediately aroused, wanted her.

But what had wakened him? He had been dreaming the dream, he knew that, but some sound had interrupted. Had it been inside the house? He got his feet on the floor and made his way gingerly into the living room. He didn’t want to turn on the lights. Anyway, the embers of the fire cast some small light. As his eyes became used to it, he saw the girl again.

He froze. She was in the same position as before, standing at the window, her back not quite to him. The light wasn’t good, but he had never seen her for more than a second or two, and he wanted a longer look. Afraid even to blink, he studied her dim outline carefully, and this time saw something different. Although she was small and slight, she seemed to have more shape than he had noticed before; there was something more mature about her. He took a deep breath.

“Kathleen,” he said, softly.

She turned slightly toward him; her face was in shadow, but she seemed to be looking directly at him. After a moment, she turned back toward the window.

Howell took a step toward her, then another. She stepped back into a shadow and seemed to become part of it. She was gone. Howell moved to the window; he wanted to see what she had seen. Outside, lit only by stars, was the lake, just as it always was. He pushed open the french doors and walked onto the deck, out over the water.

There was no moon; the silence was perfect; the crickets had stopped. A chill climbed up his naked skin. Now he knew what had awakened him; not a sound, but a sudden absence of sound. Once before, he remembered, the crickets had stopped.

He looked about him in the darkness, but he could see nothing, no one. His fingers found the deck’s railing, and he leaned against it, stretching to see further. Then, with a loud crack, the weathered railing suddenly gave way and he pitched forward into the darkness, down toward the black waters of the lake. He grabbed a breath, held it, and waited for the cold shock.

But there was no water, only grass at his feet. He was standing in another place, and he knew with certainty that he was not himself; he was another man. He felt ill, felt terribly hung over. He looked wildly about him, completely disoriented. It was still night, but there was no cabin in this place. And no lake.

He stood in a patch of grass and ferns on a forested mountainside and looked out over a valley. There was a house below him, something less than a mile away, with cheerfully lit windows and smoke curling up from the chimney. The floor of the valley was covered with a thick ground fog which reached the steps of the house. Suddenly, the noise of a car engine caused him to turn to his left. An old car, a convertible, sped past him, perhaps twenty yards away, and headed down a road which led into the valley. A childish compulsion to identify all automobiles caused him to say aloud, “Lincoln Continental, 1940.” The voice was not his.

He watched as the car moved into the ground fog of the valley and approached the house. It stopped in the front yard, and a man got out and approached the house. Someone met him at the door and admitted him. Howell heard the screen door slam, and, a moment later a yell, a scream – a man’s voice. Howell was gripped with a thick dizziness, and time seemed to pass. Then he heard the slam of a car door and heard the engine start. The car turned onto the road and headed back the way it had come, toward where he stood. It was moving fast, and in a moment he would be able to see the driver. Already, he could see a glow from the instruments inside the car. There… There, he could nearly see…

A blinding white light filled his vision, obliterating house, car, everything, then the light was black, and he was upside down, cold, choking, struggling desperately for his feet and for air. He surfaced, gagging and spitting, sucking air into his starved lungs. He brushed the water from his eyes, saw the dock, and made for it. When he had climbed out of the water, he did not stop to rest until he was up the steps and back on the deck. Avoiding the broken railing, he looked out over the lake. A cloud drifted away from the moon, revealing everything as it was before. The crickets were chirping loudly.