A House at the Bottom of a Lake

9

Murky, James thought, swimming head down, his hair floating above his head like short seaweed. He couldn’t see much, not yet. Just the roof that seemed to vanish at the edges, drift off into the darkness of the deep.

He swam to it.

Far above him, in a place he could not see, a cloud moved from in front of the sun and some light crested the lake, warming Amelia and revealing, for James, a piece of the house itself. Not quite like curtains parting, but as if a magician’s naked hand pulled aside to show him a window it’d been hiding.

James looked down to the glass and felt the vertigo of being high up, like looking down into the courtyard of the mall, or the pause at the top of the Demon Drop at Cedar Point. How big was the house? How many stories?

He swam toward the glass. More details emerged.

Siding. Brick. A windowsill.

The flashlight was tied to the elastic band of his swim trunks. Treading by the side of the house, then planting his toes to the bricks for support, he untied the flashlight and brought it to the glass. He pressed his nose to the window.

Space, he thought. As if the word counted for many other words. Room. Bedroom. The Unknown.

It was much too dark to see anything and really the flashlight just reflected hard off the glass, becoming a second glowing circle on the window.

He pushed off and swam deeper.

Another window, a story lower than the first.

Two stories. A two-story home at the bottom of the lake.

He looked up, hoping to see Amelia’s face through the surface. But it was all an unintelligible impression up there. Strong solid colors rippling. For a moment it looked like he could see her, could see someone, a giant’s head, a head as large as the surface of the lake, peering down into the water at him. Then the impressions faded out at the edges, and James couldn’t make out anything up top.

Without knowing it was coming, he reached the bottom of the lake and felt his feet sink into thick, soft mud. He was standing next to the house, impossible as it sounded. He reached out, into the darkness, into the murk, and flattened his hand against the bricks.

It was real. There was no doubting that.

A rush of cold water passed over his back, hugged him, nudged his fingertips off the bricks and onto glass.

Another window. A first-floor window. James shone his light at it.

Blackness. Couldn’t see a thing in there.

He had a sudden vision of someone talking to Amelia up top. Telling her they had to leave. Explaining the house, cracking the mystery, flattening the mystery whole.

A maritime police officer, perhaps. A fisherman.

What do you mean you were curious, miss? What is there to be curious about? There’s a two-story home at the bottom of every lake in the United States!

But there wasn’t a home at the bottom of every lake. As much as the idea suddenly comforted him.

He cupped his hands and pressed them against the glass.

Nothing. Couldn’t make anything out. Looked like the possible outlines of furniture. But that was impossible.

Right?

Beginning to feel the tightness of holding his breath for too long, James shone his light up, taking in, for the first time, the full scope of the house.

A big one. Bigger than James had ever lived in.

Suddenly he imagined Amelia lying in a bed in a second-story bedroom. He imagined swimming up to the glass, treading outside, knocking on the glass, waking her.

Let me in?

Then he thought of waterlogged mattresses. Fabric about to burst with fish bones and muck.

He shone his light to the left of him and saw the edge of the house and knew that, if there was a front door—of course there’s a front door, it’s a house, James—it was around that corner.

His lungs told him to get up top. Go see Amelia.

Instead, he walked, astronautlike, toward the brick edge of the house.

A thought occurred to him, natural as it was: If the front door was open, why not step inside?

At the corner of the house (the house!) he looked over his shoulder, into the blackness, the rest of the 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.”