Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

“What is that sound, Marcy?” Amelia asked, her eyes bright and afraid.

“What sound?”

Amelia got up. She looked to the opposite end of the aisle, where whoever walked on the other side would no doubt show, would no doubt come sloshing for Amelia.

“Oh Jesus, Marcy. I have to go.”

“ Go? Are you crazy, Amelia?”

Amelia backed up to Marcy, felt her behind her, but didn’t take her eyes off the end of the aisle.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice shaking. “I have to go. I have to go. Now.”

“Amelia, you can’t—”

Amelia gasped as a woman passed the end of the aisle. She was wearing a green tank top and bright orange shorts. Sunglasses and a visor. She carried a snorkel she’d just taken from the aisle over, and her flip-flops made squishy sounds as she passed.

Amelia looked at Marcy.

Then she broke out laughing. It wasn’t hard to do.

“Amelia, what the hell ?”

Then, Amelia’s name again, this time spoken from the end of the aisle where the woman just passed.

“Amelia.”

A boy’s voice.

Before turning to face him, Amelia knew who it was. How could she not? She’d replayed his voice a thousand times over the last week.

“James.”

James stood shamefaced at the end of the aisle.

No, Amelia thought. Not shame. Fear.

“I’m sorry I came to your work,” he said. “But it came to my house last night.”

Amelia didn’t respond. Not directly.

“Marcy,” she said, still staring at James. Her voice was firm, the firmest it’d been in a week. “Can you leave us alone for a minute?”

“Sure thing.”

Then Marcy slipped out of the aisle behind her and Amelia and James faced each other in silence.

It came to my house last night.

And no response from Amelia. As if she wasn’t surprised.

We left the lake, they both thought, in their own words. But the lake wants us back.

One week.

One week apart.

Amelia rushed to him.

She hugged him hard. All of her warring emotions found room to breathe and she cried. But she smiled, too. James gently held the back of her head and pulled her close, closer, until it felt like nothing could pull her from his grip again. Not even waves.

“James,” she said. “James, are we going crazy?”

“We need a third party,” he said. “We need to tell someone.”

“No,” Amelia said. “Not that.”

James looked deep into her eyes. Were he and Amelia at the same place with this? Or was Amelia somewhere deeper?

“Then what? What do we do?”

“Hear me out,” she said, pulling her head from his chest. Facing him.

“Okay. What?”

She paused. She breathed deep. And she told him.

“We need to go back.”

“Amelia…”

“We need to introduce ourselves, James. We need to say hello.”

James held her. He’d come to Darlene’s with a mind to do whatever it was Amelia thought they should do. But he couldn’t hold on to the word hello and it slipped from between his fingers and splattered, wet, to the grocery store floor.

“Okay,” he said, loving her, in love with her, wanting her to be happy. “Okay.”

But as she hugged him he understood that he wasn’t just doing what Amelia wanted to do. The moment he said okay he’d felt a relief he hadn’t known in seven days.

No, Amelia wasn’t in any deeper than James was. She’d just figured out a reason to do exactly what he wanted so badly to do.

To go back.

Back to the house.

We should introduce ourselves. We need to say hello.

“Do you think it will welcome us?” he asked, horror and relief somehow mingling in his blood.

Amelia nodded.

“We live there, too, James. We live there, too.”

Paddling across the first lake felt different because they were paddling toward some thing, not some place.

Squeezing through the graffitied tunnel felt different because they pushed in order to reach some thing , not some place.

And standing on the raft, looking down into the water, felt different because they both believed something was looking back, through the windows of that wonderful, magic place below.

James dove in first, no doubt in an effort to show Amelia he was on board with her idea, though he didn’t feel much different inside. And yet the moment his shoulders split the cool water, as the surface spread like lips, sucking him in, James understood there was really no other option. Because the only other thing to do would be to not come back. And they couldn’t do that. They wouldn’t do that. This was their clubhouse, their tree house, their secret, theirs.

Swimming toward the muddy lake floor, sensing Amelia had broken the surface above him, James recalled a time when he was ten years old. He and some friends had a clubhouse of their own. They called it Potscrubber and Potscrubber was no more than a huge cardboard box, cut open, placed against two trees, creating a bivouac, a shelter for their secrets, too. The box itself had once been used for a dishwashing machine and the label potscrubber was on the inside of the clubhouse, always in sight.

James reached the bottom, lowered his flippers to the mud, and felt the familiar sinking, the becoming one with the foundation of the plot.

Their plot.

He thought of the spider they found in Potscrubber.

Derrick looked it up in his encyclopedia and said it was poisonous. Called it a brown recluse and said one bite could kill a man. Jerry said Derrick had the wrong spider, said they looked alike but that wasn’t it. Derrick didn’t want to go back. Said they should leave Potscrubber, too, just leave it there in the woods. Wasn’t any good anymore.

But Jerry wanted to get rid of it. And so did James.

The friends returned to Potscrubber.

Amelia touched down beside him and they turned to face the house together. They shone their lights into the darkness on either side of the house first, as if looking for ( someone in the yard ) movement. Their beams extended into forever, or nothingness, as both felt the same. They illuminated the front windows. They were very aware that they were looking for someone. Checking ( is anybody home? ) for faces. That’s what they were there to do.

To introduce ourselves.

James thought of the spider bites on Jerry’s arms and legs. The chunks the doctors had to take out of Jerry’s right thigh and left biceps. How his clothes hung slack ever after.

Amelia tapped James on the shoulder.

Are you ready? she seemed to be asking.

James nodded. He was ready.

Amelia swam ahead, through the half front door.

James followed.

In his light, flecks of mud rose in a circle around her flippers. In her light, he saw the inside of the house, piecemeal, in parts. It had been a week. A week without.

It felt savory, the brief images, relief.

Suddenly Amelia turned around and swam back to James. She gripped him by the sides of his head and pressed her mask against his. Peace. James and Amelia. Back underwater. Back in the house.

What had he lost after all? Nothing. He’d lost nothing.

Amelia said something, words he couldn’t understand. Then she was off. Swimming into the darkness.

And James followed.

Deeper.

Deepest yet.

Inside, swimming apart, then together, Amelia vanished behind a partially opened door. James paused to shine his light under the pool table, into the corners, the murky blackness falling in, rolling in, whenever he drew the light away. Amelia saw it, saw the darkness at bay, saw the darkness return, by the flickering, anxious movements of James’s light. James saw it, too, saw the edges of the dark like physical planes, touchable down here, always down here. He saw it gripping the beam of Amelia’s light like black hands, black lips, swallowing.