Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

James cocked his head to the sky.

“Do you smell that?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said. But she wondered what he thought it was. “What do you smell?”

“Old age!” He turned around and smiled at her.

Amelia smiled, too. She thought of the first lake. Should they go back to it?

“It’s not so bad,” she said, wanting to remain positive. “If this was the first lake we saw today, I don’t think it’d look so dismal.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It’s all about comparisons.”

“I think I’d’ve felt the same.”

“Even if we hadn’t seen the other two?”

“But we did see the other two.”

“We did.”

It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t huge, either; about half the size of the first lake and two-thirds that of the second. There were fewer trees at the shoreline, and they could see where the mountains slipped coldly into the water. They were paddling toward them.

Unvisited.

The word seemed to float up and out of the water, slip wet into Amelia’s mind.

“Are you hungry still?” James asked. “We didn’t really finish our lunch.”

The question was jarring, Amelia thought. Out of place. But why?

Because you guys were eating lunch on the second lake. This is the third lake now. Things are different here.

She looked over the edge of the canoe. A fish floated on its side, a foot below the surface.

Dead, Amelia thought.

But it was more like the fish was looking up, looking at her.

“I’m okay,” she said, but the fish unnerved her. Was something wrong with the water? Dead fish in a lake was, of course, natural. But it was more about the look in the fish’s eye, like they’d made actual eye contact, fish and girl.

“I’m always hungry,” James said. “As a kid I used to eat two… holy shit! ”

Amelia looked quickly to James. She’d been thinking of the fish when he yelled. Was he yelling about the fish?

“What?” Amelia asked. Scared. “What?”

He lifted his paddle out of the water and Amelia did the same.

James was staring at the lake’s surface, wide-eyed, too wide-eyed.

Amelia looked.

She saw it, too.

A roof.

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh my God. ”

They drifted past it, over it, a small bird in its sky, a tiny airplane for two.

“Was that a…” James started but couldn’t finish.

“Yes,” Amelia said. “That was a house. ”

It was true then; they’d both seen it. A house. Submerged. A rooftop beneath the surface. And yet it was so dark down there…

James snapped back first, jammed his paddle into the water, and started paddling in the opposite direction, driving the canoe in reverse. Amelia did the same.

Then they drifted.

Over the house again.

The house.

Underwater.

Without speaking, they gripped the edge of the canoe at the same time, their fingertips touching the chipped paint. Sunlight tap-danced across the surface, a glittering curtain, a welcoming, a reveal.

But not much of one.

“Oh my God,” Amelia said again.

It’s all she could think to say.

“It’s huge,” James said.

If the shingled roof was any indication, it was a big house.

Beneath them.

Underwater.

They looked at each other at the same time and it was stated silently that they were going to check it out. They were going to go into the water. No self-respecting seventeen-year-olds on a first date could paddle away from this.

But first, for a minute or two, for now… they just stared.

“We’ve got a ladder,” James said, shaking it loose from the life jackets and towels on the floor of the canoe.

“So we can get back in,” Amelia said. This was not a question. This was her accepting the turn the afternoon had taken.

The roof rippled with waves unseen, undulations beneath the surface.

Amelia started laughing. What else was there to do? Unless the roof was floating, there had to be a house beneath it. James joined her in laughing.

What else was there to do?

“It’s a fucking house !” she said. Then she squealed because she was on a first date and they’d discovered something crazy enough to call magic.

James draped the ladder over the canoe’s edge. When the rungs clacked against the chipped paint, he felt a twinge of guilt. Uncle Bob. Did Uncle Bob know about this roof?

Still smiling, feeling the charge of discovery, Amelia looked across the lake to the entrance of the tunnel. A half-hole from here. Cartoonish, too. Like someone had painted it on a dip in the mountains.

It’s not a real entrance, she thought. It’s a solid wall. Then she shook the silly thought aside but couldn’t shake a truer one.

The tunnel makes for a slow getaway.

She looked back to the submerged roof. James was shaking his head slowly side-to-side. He looked at her and they laughed again, lightly, in the way something uncanny can make someone laugh. Not funny. Impossible.

“All right,” James said, gripping the rope ladder. “Who’s going first?”

The individual rung looked like kindling in his hands. Amelia had a vision of the ladder erupting into flames. No easy way back into the canoe then, either.

But what unnecessary dark thoughts to have.

“I’ll do it,” she said. No wet blanket today.

James looked surprised.

“Really? Shouldn’t I?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Fine. You go first.”

“No. You go first.”

“No, no. Really.”

“I think I need a minute to get used to the idea,” she said. She was excited, but she was scared. There was more than just a tip-of-the-iceberg quality to the roof. Who knew the size and scope beneath it? “But we definitely both have to do it.”

“I’m so glad you’re saying that,” James said. “We could just as easily paddle away and pretend this never happened, too.”

“Could we?”

“Well, I…”

No, he thought, looking into her bright eyes. Just then she looked very dry to him.

James scanned the shoreline. There was no sign of life. No angry old man to holler at them. No resident in sight to tell his uncle Bob what he and the girl had been up to. It felt to James like they were in the center of a silent room. A room of their own.

He checked the surface of the water. He was looking for snapping turtles. Snakes. The bubbles of something breathing below.

What a terrible turn the date would take if James were to dive in and get bitten by a moccasin. But the longer he stared at the surface, the more the rippling roof looked like a painting. Oils. Like diving into that, into its false reality, would prove to be much worse than anything a snake could deliver.

“Amelia,” he said, and he discovered he liked saying her name. Amelia. She was looking back at him, waiting for him to say whatever he was going to say. Her body looked smooth, pure, against the red of her bathing suit. He suddenly felt like he hadn’t been looking at her enough. Her body. The curves, the slopes, the skin. “How do you think it got down there?”

“God’s dollhouse.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you just make that up?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounded like a movie title.”

“Haha. Thank you.”

“I think it was built down there.”

“Probably not.”

“Had to be.”

“I don’t think so. I think it broke the ice.”

“Ice?”

“Yeah. Someone tried to move it across the lake.”

“Wow. That’s interesting. But these lakes never ice over.”

“Well, see. Someone should’ve told them that.”