Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

“Okay,” James said.

Amelia reached out and squeezed both his hands.

James walked away.

Amelia walked the other way.

And as she walked, she thought about what she’d just done. It was right, she told herself. Had to be. Couldn’t sit around for twelve more days thinking about a house that didn’t exist. Couldn’t spend the rest of her life talking about the time when she was seventeen.

She’d seen people like that. Mom and Dad’s friends. Stuck. Snagged. Submerged.

She cried as she walked but she walked bravely. And every time she looked over her shoulder, looked to see if James was still standing where she’d left him, maybe even walking toward her, she saw only emptiness. Darkness. Like the areas of the lake the sun couldn’t reach.

Fuck, Amelia thought. Fuck because it hurt. Fuck because she was right. Right? She was right to do what she did and James was right not to fight it.

They knew.

They both knew.

This was right.

The air grew colder and Amelia hugged herself, trying to fight it. Trying to stay warm and bright in a cool dark place.

Another right.

Another left.

She looked over her shoulder.

James?

Did she want him to come for her?

She faced ahead again, facing the homes on the street.

One caught her attention. No lights on inside. But the shape of it. The size.

Amelia left the sidewalk, crossed the front lawn, went to the house.

At the front door, she pulled her phone from her pocket.

She called James.

“Hello?”

“James. Come to Chesterfield and Darcy,” she was whispering, excitedly. Like she was whispering and screaming at once. “Come now.”

“Amelia. We just—”

“I found it.”

Silence. Then not.

“Found it?”

“The front door… they fixed it… someone fixed it… and… and… there are three steps up to the front door, but you can tell… you can tell what it was like before. Come now, James. Hurry.”

“Chesterfield and Darcy.”

“ Yes. Oh my God, James. Oh my God the windows. The roof. Come now. ”

Amelia hung up. She backed up from the front door, backed up far enough so that she was able to see it all at once.

She fell to her knees on the lawn.

The feeling she had wasn’t happiness. Wasn’t relief.

It was different.

Deeper.

“James!” she cried out, smiling. “I found it!”

Far away, as if muted by layers of water, unseen waves, she heard footsteps on the concrete sidewalk. The thud-drumming, drum-thudding of James coming to see it for himself.

“I found it!” she yelled.

She felt the growing space, too. But not the space between her and James. Rather, the space beyond them, as if the two of them were the world and all else stretched, receded, became a shoreline, too far to see.

Amelia closed her eyes.

She opened them.

The lights had come on. Inside the house. The lights had come on.

James was getting closer. She could hear his shoes on the sidewalk, could hear him calling from somewhere in the same endless body of water.

“Amelia!” he called. Closer. “Where is it?”

“That one,” she said, pointing now, not sure if he could hear her. That was okay. He would see for himself in a moment. Finding a good place just took a little navigation. “That one,” she said. “Where the lights have come on…”

For the craziness of courtship.

For the heart of a house of horrors aflame.

For Allison.

Bird Box

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Malorie

Josh Malerman is a New York Times bestselling author and one of two singer-songwriters for the rock band The High Strung. His debut novel, Bird Box, is the inspiration for the hit Netflix film of the same name. His other novels include Unbury Carol, Inspection, and Malorie, the sequel to Bird Box. Malerman lives in Michigan with his fiancée, the artist-musician Allison Laakko.

joshmalerman.com

Facebook.com/​JoshMalerman

Twitter: @JoshMalerman

Instagram: @joshmalerman

A House at the Bottom of a Lake is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Josh Malerman

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Originally published in paperback in the United Kingdom by This Is Horror , in 2016.

Hardback ISBN 9780593237779

Ebook ISBN 9780593237786

randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

Cover design and illustration: Pye Parr

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