Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

Amelia smiled.

He looked so funny up there, treading, looking down at her, the bubbles rising beside him. Just then he looked like a man to her. The teenage boy masked within.

James, she thought. Come make love to me.

They’d talked about it. She knew he was thinking about it, too.

Come make love to me.

She felt love for him then, the physical sensation of it leaving her body, rising up through the pool water, then through the lake water, traveling the light of his beam.

Suddenly James flipped, as though he’d felt the feelings she’d sent him. When his head was where his flippers had been, he swam toward her. Toward the swimming pool that should not be, had no right to be, but was all the same. Amelia embraced it. The magic. Frightening or not, it was magic. Water upon water, moving in different directions, the temperature in the pool warmer than the temperature out.

No hows. No whys.

Come to me…

James broke the surface of the pool far to Amelia’s right, and through the fresh ripples he’d created, Amelia saw that a form remained treading by the ceiling where he had been.

Amelia sat up fast. She planted her flippers solidly on the floor of the pool and rose. She stood half in the pool, half in the lake.

She pointed, up, to where James just was, breathing quicker now, shaking her head no, no there’s nobody there, nobody treading where James just was.

James came to her as she had silently asked and wrapped his arms around her.

Amelia resisted, shoving him away, pointing to the ceiling with the beam of her light.

Look, she tried to say. LOOK!

But her voice was muted by the mask.

As if comprehending in slow motion, moving slower than the feeling of dread rising within him, James looked to where Amelia was frantically training her beam.

A black dress floated high above the indoor pool. Its dark fabric flapped with unseen waves. But its position was what scared James most.

Like someone’s wearing it.

The hem rippled beneath the symmetrical shoulder straps. The waist was slimmer than the hips.

Amelia and James did not move. They did not cry out. They stared.

Then the dress started to sink, to fall toward them in the pool.

James wanted to believe it was chance, the way the dress seemed to be filled out, the way it looked.

Like someone was in it.

Like someone could swim up to it, then slip easily through the bottom, arms extended, with a mind to wear it.

Amelia held a hand in front of her mask.

James couldn’t move. He was rooted to the floor of the pool’s shallow end. As Amelia raised her other hand, blocked her face from the fabric, James watched the dress fold over upon itself, then twist in a way that no person could.

Not if someone was in it.

The dress floated away before it reached them.

Amelia lowered her arms and looked at James. They lit each other’s masks with their respective beams.

“Up,” James said.

Amelia nodded. And then James saw something more startling than the dress itself had been. In Amelia’s face, James saw fear.

You’re not supposed to be afraid, he thought. You’re the one that makes this all okay.

But Amelia was scared.

And still… she smiled. And the expression she wore was like that of a woman after a close call in a car.

Up, she mouthed. And they swam up. And as they exited the basement, James looked back, shone his light into the shadows, and saw no dress.

But he thought of it. Continuously, as they swam up the stairs, he thought of the black dress falling and how it hadn’t looked like an errant article of clothing at the mercy of unseen undulations. No, it had behaved much more like a discarded dress that someone had taken off and tossed from the ceiling toward them.

They ate lunch on the raft. Turkey sandwiches and chips. Bottled water. They were exhausted. Diving itself was more of a workout than either of them usually got, but the experience in the basement took something extra out of them.

The sun felt good. Being above the surface felt good, too.

It always felt like night down in the house.

“You look good when you’re tired,” James said, his toes at the edge of the raft. Neither dangled their feet in the water.

“I was really scared for a second there.”

“I know you were. I was, too.”

The raft bobbed on steady undulations.

“I honestly thought somebody had found us,” Amelia said. “I thought somebody had seen the canoe and come searching for us.”

James wondered at this. He hadn’t thought of it from that angle. Not at all. When he saw the dress floating above the pool, his mind had gone to a much darker place than hers. And yet maybe being found out was as dark a thing as Amelia could imagine.

“I love you,” James suddenly said.

“I know you do. You didn’t swim away when I was scared.”

“Is that how somebody knows?”

James recalled how he felt immobile beneath the dress. How nothing in the world could have moved his flippers from the indoor pool.

Amelia smiled. It was good to see her smiling.

“That’s how I know,” she said.

They stared into each other’s eyes, then Amelia looked down to the roof. James watched her breasts against the red fabric of her bikini top. Despite being so afraid less than half an hour ago, any movement of her muscle beneath her skin, any view of her skin at all, excited him.

Amelia suddenly kicked her feet to the edge of the raft and shoved off into the water. She swam out a few feet so that she was directly above the roof. She stared into James’s eyes as she treaded water, the whole huge house beneath her.

It was a challenge, James thought. Something like one. Amelia was telling him she wasn’t scared. Or perhaps she was telling herself.

We got spooked today, James thought. So do we continue?

This, he thought, was Amelia’s way of saying, Yes. We continue.

He jumped in after her. For the first time since discovering the house, he experienced that nerve-burning sensation of something much bigger than himself beneath the water. Like the famous poster from Jaws, he was the very small swimmer cresting the surface, the many teeth of the house below.

When he reached her, they embraced. James did so partially out of fear. But Amelia, he could tell, had already moved on from the floating dress. They kissed and their mostly naked bodies pressed against each other, as their bare feet propelled them, kept them stationary above the roof of the house. Amelia stuck a hand deeper into the water and felt James’s hard penis through his yellow bathing suit. She wanted to make love to him then, right there, high above their secret.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered in his ear.

James pulled his face from hers. It was easier to forget about the basement now.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said. “One hundred percent, yes.”

They laughed because it was both awkward and assured. They laughed because they were embarrassed and they were brave, too.

These feelings warred and mingled within them both, as the water beneath experienced rotations of its own: pockets of warm, pockets of cold; pleasing water across their legs, their bellies, replaced, suddenly, by the icy tips of unseen fingers and the tips of tongues, tickling their bare skin from the deep, wanting perhaps to take hold of them, wanting to pull them deeper, deeper into the lake, deeper into the house, deeper in love, deeper…

Tomorrow.