Marisha Pessl - Night Film

The dog froze and howled another warning bark as it stared down the grassy hill toward Graves Pond, ears pricked.

A second dog appeared, this one bigger and all black. It loped around the house exactly in our direction, stopping some twenty yards from the terrace where Hopper was hiding. It growled ominously. Then, nose to the ground, the dog loped up the hill toward us, zigzagging through the grass.

“Get back to the canoe and wait for me there,” I whispered.

Nora hesitated.

“Do it.”

Petrified, she took off, barking exploding around us, as I ran in the other direction out onto the lawn. I headed straight down the incline, racing past the terrace and along the stone path, making a beeline for the privet. When I glanced over my shoulder I saw what I expected: Both dogs were chasing me now, plowing through the tall grass.

I tore along the hedge, finding an opening, and barreled blindly through, careening down a white-pebbled path overrun with weeds.

The dogs sounded close behind me, paws ricocheting across the stones.

I appeared to be running through a garden maze, tall walls of privet growing high around me, birdbaths scarred with lichen, plants clinging to trellises. I could make out crumbling statuary — a headless girl, a man’s naked torso entwined with a snake. Colossal shrubs — probably once topiaries — rose around me, their animal shapes long melted away.

I tripped down some steps and raced into a narrow alcove with a dried-up fountain, a wrought-iron gate.

I stopped, listening.

The dogs sounded as if they’d multiplied, coming from every direction.

I crept over to the wrought-iron gate.

Suddenly a dog leapt up on the opposite side, snarling. I lurched away, expecting, at any moment, its jaws to sink into my arm, but only frustrated yowls exploded behind me. I swung back out, instantly spotted another dog bounding toward me at the opposite end of the corridor.

I bent down, finding a hole in the hedge, and scrambled through, running out into an open yard, a large swimming pool at the center covered with a plastic tarp.

I sprinted to the farthest corner and bent down, yanking off my gloves, groping at the nylon strings.

I could hear the dogs whimpering, searching for the way in. I managed to undo a few knots, pulled back the tarp, and almost gagged when I saw what was inside.

It was putrid black water.

I yanked off my backpack, plunged my boots in first, and then, gritting my teeth, slipped inside, the icy water seeping into my clothes, swallowing me up to my neck. I pulled my backpack in — doing my best to keep it dry, though there was only about a foot of space between the tarp and water. I removed the camera from the front pocket, yanked the corner of the tarp back into place, and, blinking in the sudden darkness, floated away from the opening.

Instantly, I heard that insidious jingling. The dogs had found me, barking, racing around the perimeter, whining, their paws clicking rhythmically across the flagstones.

I fumbled my way along the perimeter as quietly as I could, groping at the broken tiles covered in slime, the coldness starting to eat away at me.

I kept my eyes on the ribbon of light cutting between the tarp and the side of the pool, my left foot striking something underneath me. A drowned deer? I’d reached the next corner, kicking my way around it, a ripple of water splashing a little too loudly. I froze.

I could hear footsteps, heavy-set. Someone was coming, striding along a paved path and entering the yard.

“What is it, boys?” It was a man’s low voice.

The dogs whimpered as they continued to race around the pool, the man coming closer. Then he stopped.

Cordova?

Suddenly — the powerful beam of a flashlight danced across the tarp, sending a spasm of panic through me, the gold circle gliding to the corner where I’d crawled in.

I pressed my back against the tiles, trying to remain motionless.

I heard faster footsteps, the whisk of the tarp being flung back.

The flashlight sliced across the water, illuminating blackened leaves and branches, disembodied shapes — frogs, maybe squirrels — floating deep inside the pool.

The beam hovered a few feet from my backpack, slipping closer. I tucked the camera under the tarp on the ledge, took a deep breath, and carefully sank all the way underwater, pulling my backpack in behind me. I fell a few feet and then opened my eyes, trying to ignore the searing sting, watching the beam of light slip over my head.

I waited, my lungs feeling like they were going to explode, trying to remain calm. We’d been fine, the three of us, just a few goddamn minutes ago. How had it all unraveled so quickly?

The beam hovered over me for a few more seconds, then at last slipped away to inspect another corner. I floated back to the surface, gasping for air.

Suddenly a sharp scream pierced the night. It sounded like a woman.

Nora?

The dogs erupted into vicious barking, their paws thumping, flashlight streaking away. I heard fumbling, then footsteps striding across the stones.

Soon there was only silence around me. They were gone.

I grabbed the camera, then kicked back toward the opening, but when I reached the corner, I saw the tarp had been pulled back into place. Ignoring my alarm — my mind instantly killing me off, evoking my corpse wafting through here with the other debris — I reached out, my fingers groping underneath the plastic.

The strings had been retied.

I set the camera on the ledge, pulled my backpack over, fumbling inside the front pocket, found the pocket knife, yanked it open with my teeth, and, gripping the knife awkwardly in my frozen fingers, began to saw at the ties.

I managed to sever a few. I shoved the backpack out first, then blindly heaved myself onto the pool’s edge, freezing wind instantly pummeling me. I lifted my head and saw with relief — I was alone.

I crawled to my feet, dragging my backpack up over my shoulder. I grabbed the camera and staggered across the yard, heading toward the arched opening in the hedge, rancid water squelching from my boots with every step.

I hoped Nora was safe and Hopper was with her. I’d meet them back at the canoe and we’d come up with a new plan.

The dogs — and the man with the flashlight — appeared to have gone quite far, because the night was still again.

I stepped outside the enclosure, finding myself on another stone path, what had to be the garden’s western boundary. To my right, beyond a stretch of overgrown lawn, loomed a forest of dense pines, vast and black, and to my left, sitting high on the hill, beyond tangled greenery, the mansion.

It remained in darkness.

I took off across the grass and into the cover of the forest, following the tree line southward, back around the hill toward Graves Pond. A dank cold was shuddering through me, but I ignored it, trying to break into a jog. My legs wouldn’t respond. I stumbled over branches and tree trunks, cutting east when I could see a clearing to my left — shimmering water through the trunks. Within minutes, I reached the same mouth of the stream by which we’d entered the pond and lurched across it, thigh-deep in the water and mud, moving as fast as I could up onto the bank.

I reached the western side, traipsing along the shoreline, and saw with relief — and amazement —the small branch Nora had stuck in the mud.

“ Nora, ” I whispered, walking straight into the woods.

When I found the fallen log, I stopped dead.

The branches and dirt had been thrown aside.