Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

“An addition to the house,” Amelia said, laying a mattress pad and a blanket on the uneven logs.

James secured the canoe to the rope that held the raft to the house.

Then they sat on the edge of their raft and let their bare feet and ankles dangle in the water.

Amelia kissed him. She grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him until he leaned back, until he was lying down. She crawled upon him and kept kissing him and then James kissed her in return, running his hands over her shoulders, her lower back, her legs. The sun baked them from above as she straddled him. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts. James was breathing hard, tracing their shape beneath her bathing suit, squeezing them, kissing her neck. Amelia reached behind her back and untied the top, letting it slip past her shoulders, letting it fall to the logs that supported them. James kissed her breasts, tasted the lake water, wondered if every moment with Amelia would forever come coupled with the taste of the third lake.

They slid closer to the edge of the raft, James’s hands upon her ass now, trying to roll her over, wanting so badly to get on top of her, to spread her legs apart, to feel the strength of her thighs against his body. He kissed her neck and shoulders and arms and eyelids and everything that showed. Amelia moaned in response and James finally did get her to lie down, on her back, and he bent at the waist to kiss her side, her thigh, to bite her. With his head toward the house, he looked over the edge of the raft, through the surface of the water, where the sun struck the roof, and he saw a single eye, looking back up at him, somebody crouched upon the roof of the house.

“Oh fuck!” James said, shoving himself toward the middle of the raft, away from the edge, away from Amelia, away from the water.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Amelia was up quick and on her knees now, crawling to the raft’s edge. She saw the eye flitter, then vanish.

She stared. James crawled beside her and stared with her. Their shoulders touched but rather than feeling safe for being so close, they both leaned away from the contact.

Darkness below. Nothing on the roof.

Then a plop three feet from the raft and both screamed as a fish leapt out and sank quickly back into the water.

“Jesus!” James yelled.

There was a pause between them. As the water settled.

Then they both started laughing.

James had a hand on his naked chest and was alternately laughing and breathing hard, the way people do when they’re not scared anymore, but some of the fright remains.

“Jesus,” Amelia said. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Well, I really thought I saw something for a second there.”

“So did I. I saw a fish eye.”

“So did I.”

They laughed again. Amelia didn’t make to cover her breasts and James couldn’t stop looking at her. Didn’t want to stop looking at her. They got on their bellies, side by side, their faces suspended over the edge of the raft. The sun was hot on their backs and their reflections were dark and rippling.

“Maybe it’s a good thing that happened,” Amelia said, speaking to James’s warped reflection. James understood what she meant.

How close had they been?

Amelia breathed deep.

“You think we should do it in there?”

James stared at her dark reflection. Her eyes sparkled for a beat, then went black again.

“In the house?”

“Yes. Why not? It’s special to us.”

Special to us. This was true, but James could hardly believe they were talking about it at all, let alone the where of it.

“Our first time,” he said. It would be the first time for either of them. “In the house.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her.

“That’s possible, right?” he asked. “I mean… underwater… people can do that?”

“I think so.”

Both seventeen. Both virgins. But both saying yes.

“Yes. Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Yes.”

They didn’t do it that day. Instead, they swam, they explored, they made adjustments to the raft, they ate lunch, they ate dinner, and they slept, for the first time, floating upon the third lake, in the darkness, listening to the crickets and frogs, a small symphony of life, crying out from the shoreline at the base of the mountains. They heard fish break the surface, plop back into the water. They thought of the oscillating eye they’d each seen down close to the roof. They watched the moonlight and were mesmerized by the patterns it made. There were hypnotic patterns in everything out there. The sounds, the smells, the sights. And the feelings, too, of holding each other, under a thin blanket, drifting.

But not from the house.

Drifting to sleep.

Tethered to the house.

Tied.

“I love you, Amelia,” James whispered. But Amelia was already asleep. Already floating, in the middle of the third lake.

Amelia woke to the sound of splashing. But not quite splashing. More the sound of someone or something emerging, pulling itself out of the water.

Her left arm was asleep. She’d been lying on it. This always happened when she fell into a deep sleep. So she rubbed her arm, shook it, tried to bring it back to life. James snored lightly on his back. She could see the tip of his nose in the moonlight. The rest of him was in shadow.

Amelia sat up. The water’s surface was partially twinkling with scant moonlight. She could hear gentle waves lapping against the raft.

James rolled onto his side and fully vanished from sight. Like he’d wrapped himself up in the shadows, cold without them.

Amelia scanned the shoreline.

What woke her?

A fish, no doubt, just like the fish they’d seen leap near the raft after spotting its eye below the surface. Just a fish ( no doubt ). Except maybe a little doubt. A drop at least. Because it sounded like someone had either gotten out of the water or lowered themselves back in.

She watched for movement.

She listened.

She looked over James, beyond the edge of the raft, to where she knew the house to be.

Tethered, they hadn’t drifted, couldn’t drift anymore.

But there was no sparkle of moonlight, no light at all over where the house must be, and Amelia saw nothing.

She reached for her wet suit and paused.

What was she thinking of doing? Diving at night? And if so… would she tell James?

I just wanna know what made that sound. That’s all.

But it was a strange motivation. What were the chances that the same fish that had woken her would be swimming through the halls of the house?

The vision of herself below, buried by all that moonless black, alternately thrilled and worried her. She wasn’t sure why this should bother her at all. It wasn’t any lighter inside the house during the day. Their flashlights provided 100 percent of the light they used. So… what was the difference between diving at noon and diving at night?

Possibly, Amelia thought, it was knowing that the world above was as dark as it was below, two layers of blindness, night upon night.

Endless black.

And yet… the stars. Not as bright as she would’ve liked, but they certainly gave her something.

She looked to the edge of the raft, beyond her bare feet. She looked to shore. She looked to the surface of the lake, to the large area of impenetrable black that seemed to hover above the house ( our house ) like it was made of something more than water.

What was it about the stars that, no matter how they lit up the night sky, they couldn’t remove the night?

Amelia stood up, carefully, aware that she could lose her balance, could misjudge the boundaries of the raft, could slip into the water.