A House at the Bottom of a Lake

10

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.

Before she reached any larger room, her light showed her a mirror on the hall wall.

Don’t look into it.

It was the first thought that came to mind. Just like when she’d told herself not to look in the mirror at home when she had a feeling she looked like shit.

Just like it, but not just like.

Don’t look into it.

Of course the space (the whole house, the lake, too) surrounding her beam of light was a blackness as dark as burial. And the objects that were revealed, in the beam, rippled unnaturally. Yes, an underwater mirror in a pitch-black house might have been a bad idea.

But Amelia couldn’t resist.

Bubbles erupted from between her lips as she gasped, mutely, catching sight of her face in the glass.

Medusa.

But not Medusa. Just Amelia. Not a wrinkled gray Gorgon who turned you to stone, but rather a distorted representation of a young woman, her skin as pale as the drapes in a morgue, her hair floating like seaweed (snakes) above her frightened but curious face. It was such an everyday task, looking in the mirror, that she’d instinctively expected to see her everyday face. But this woman, this her, this Amelia had rippling skin, cheeks half an inch higher than they normally were. Lips curled up at their ends in a false smile.

Even her eyes looked different. Unfocused. As if Amelia were privy to the one sight no person truly wanted to see: This is what she might look like dead.

Found dead.

One day.

Found drowned.

Drowned.

Amelia needed to get back to the top. Needed to get air.

She shone the light once more, deeper into the house. A pair of matching bubbles escaped her nostrils.

Then she swam from the mirror, back to the foyer, toward the half front door.

You’re not gonna make it and James is gonna call the police and they’re gonna find you floating down here. Or maybe not floating… maybe they’ll find you flat on the floor, like that coatrack, disobeying the laws of a lake.

She crossed the threshold and tried not to think about what it would feel like: drowning. Was this it? The earliest stages? The last few moments before a person understood there would be no getting back up?

Would she see stars first? Would she black out before or after the pain of it became unbearable?

James. Swim toward James.

Amelia exited the house and foolishly thought about turning back, to close the door, as if she’d been rude for leaving it open. But there was no door to close and her arms and legs were already propelling her up. Up.

Up?

She couldn’t see the surface above and for one insane second she thought maybe she was swimming down.

She was starting to believe she was going to die.

Curiosity killed the cat and the snooping seventeen-year-old girl.

James would mistake her floating body for a living one. He’d think she was joking.

First dates. And whom would he tell about this date? Just as he’d told Amelia about the girl who broke her arm bowling, who would hear about the girl that went diving and popped out of the water as a bloated, veined corpse?

But death hadn’t happened yet.

No blackout. No stars.

She swam harder, pulling herself up, as if the water had rungs of its own.

The last thing she saw before breaking the surface was the second-story window, partially shadowed by the roof.

Is there a dresser up there? she wondered, absurdly, too close to passing out. A nightstand and a wardrobe, too?

Then she broke the surface and all her terrible imaginings dissipated into the air she desperately breathed.

Part horror, part triumph, the sound echoed across the third lake and chilled James cold.

“Hey!” he called, gripping the canoe’s side. “Holy shit! Are you okay?”

Amelia wiped snot from her nose and lips.

“We need scuba gear,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s what I—”

“It’s furnished, James.”

They locked eyes. James in the canoe. Amelia treading water four feet from the ladder.

“It’s what?”

“It’s furnished.”