Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

There was no sense of being watched, not exactly, it was something much less focused than that. As if all that blackness was one dumb eye, pointed in his direction, capable of simply observing the small teenage boy at the base of the house, with no brain to transmit the news to.

Not watched. But seen.

James took the turn, shining his light ahead, and saw another window. A front window. A simple thing anybody would see if they were pulling up to the front of the house in a car.

His chest constricted, his head starting to throb, James continued past a garden of seaweed below the windowsill. The mud was getting softer, and he trained the light at his feet. The shadows of the fluttering seaweed fooled him into thinking he saw fingers draw back into the folds.

Then James stepped on something much harder than the lake’s mushy bottom.

It was a single stone step. Maybe more of them were buried.

He looked up.

James was looking at the front door of the house.

He gasped, if such a thing can be done underwater, and the bubble that escaped his throat was perhaps the last one he had left.

It wasn’t a full front door. It was half of one; the left half, still hinged, swaying in unseen waves, pulses Amelia couldn’t feel above. There was no right half of the door and James thought it looked like the wood had been intentionally replaced with darkness.

Come, it all seemed to say, the left half swaying. Come in.

He made to move, made to come in.

Then stopped.

He needed to breathe. Needed to breathe now.

Using the mossy, slick step as a springboard, he bent at the knees and sprang up.

As he cut through the water he had a terrible vision of himself dying on the way up: a corpse by the time he broke the surface, Amelia screaming as a decayed and flaking James bobbed in the water less than two feet from the green canoe.

He closed his eyes. Almost felt the change occurring; life to death. Dying while moving. The quick wrinkling of his skin. The shrinking of his lungs, his bladder, his heart.

Then he actually did feel something.

Something like thick noodles along the full side of his body, from his chest to his toes.

Something like hair.

Still rising, James opened his eyes and saw he was passing the dark square of an upper-story window, just as a new cloud covered the sun again, and any more visibility was taken.

When he broke the surface he breathed huge, and saw the canoe was much farther from him than he thought it would be.

Amelia was sitting in the middle of it, staring at him without speaking. A figurine, James thought, fashioned to look desperately investigative.

“We need scuba gear,” James called, swimming toward her.

“What?”

“Scuba gear. We need to take lessons.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going back down there,” James said. “And we’re gonna wanna stay down there longer than we can hold our breath.”

“We are?”

“The front door is open. Half a door. Hard to explain.” He reached the canoe and held tight to the ladder. He was breathing hard. “It’s a little freaky,” he said. “But man… it’s awesome.”

Amelia felt a chill.

The front door is open.

James climbed the ladder.

“Go on,” he said. He unhooked the flashlight from his waist and tossed it to her. “See for yourself.”

Half a front door. Hard to explain.

But that pretty much explained it.

Amelia didn’t like being down here one bit. Didn’t like the world of open black behind her ( like a bloated, gibbering madman planted the house to draw you and James in, a carrot for the teenage donkeys, a madman that’s gonna suddenly explode from that darkness, his slobber floating up to gather about the canoe, as he grips you by the hair and drags you inside his house, HIS house, Amelia ), didn’t like the open half of the door, the way she could swim right in with no resistance at all.

It was impossible not to imagine something living inside: a watery creature, undiscovered, unlisted, nesting.

This is insane, she thought.

But wasn’t it fun, too? Wasn’t it also the most thrilling thing she’d ever seen?

Knowing her time below was short, she’d swum straight for the front door James had told her about. She didn’t stop at any windows, didn’t try to look inside. So, standing on the stone step, handrails ( handrails! ) on either side of the small stone porch, she had more air to spare than James did when he arrived at the same spot.

Shining the light along the four rectangular sides of the half door, as though to somehow symbolically create a passage through light, Amelia did not hesitate to enter the house. Scared or not, this was thrilling.

By her bare toes she sprang up from the stone step and swam into the house.

Using her arms in a kind of breaststroke, the flashlight showed her the door frame, then a piece of a wall, then nothing, because the light was behind her. She thought for a moment that it was no different from entering an abandoned house on the side of Chauncey Road. She’d done that once with a good friend named Marla. Together they took photos, believing they were capturing the truest essence of living and life.

Emptiness.

But when she brought her arms forward again, with a mind to propel herself deeper into the house, the light showed her something that caused her to do something she’d never done before in her life.

Amelia screamed underwater.

It was a coatrack, nothing more, and there wasn’t even a coat hanging to make her think she’d seen a person. And yet…

It didn’t belong here, she knew. Certainly didn’t belong here the way it was, standing, erect, as though ignorant of the thousands of pounds of water and waves enveloping it.

It’s not bobbing, she thought, shining the light to the floor where the base of the coatrack was firmly flat to the wooden boards. It’s not bobbing or floating or even leaning.

She was in a foyer, this much was clear. Beside the coatrack was a small table, the place someone would perhaps place their keys when they returned from town.

There was even a glass bowl on the table. The exact place for keys, Amelia thought.

Her lungs felt tight from the lack of air.

Why isn’t the bowl floating? she wanted to know. Why isn’t everything?

She shone the light behind her, to the half door, absurdly frightened of seeing a face there, the homeowner, a man in an overcoat perhaps, standing on the mossy front step.

Who let you in?

She swam a foot deeper into the foyer, saw the table wasn’t so small after all. It was more of a credenza; a gorgeous piece of Victorian woodwork that didn’t look waterlogged, didn’t look bad at all for being at the bottom of a lake. In fact, Amelia believed it looked usable, as she ran her fingers along its surface, then the rim of the glass bowl.

Because she had expected to find nothing in this house, nothing but fish and rotten wood, the reality of touching the glass confused her. In a way, the contact removed any veil of magic.

This is impossible, she thought. All of this. Impossible.

She looked to the ceiling, expecting to see clutter above, small rocks or dead fish obeying the laws of physics, flat to the plaster.

But the ceiling was bare.

But not bare.

A lightbulb.

She shone her own light ahead. A hallway. From the foyer to the rest of the house.

Despite the fact that she needed to breathe, soon, Amelia crossed the foyer. Her mostly naked body was very cold, and getting colder the deeper she traveled into the house. But she badly wanted to see one more thing before leaving. One more piece of verification before she swam up to the canoe.