A House at the Bottom of a Lake

25

It’s warmer, Amelia thought. Warmer like an indoor pool ought to be. Like when somebody says it’s bathwater. Bathwater, Amelia thought, soothing and smooth, enveloping, tomblike, like a womb.

She rolled onto her back and sank to the concrete bottom. The tank struck first and she looked up through her mask, through the independent surface of the pool, into the lake water that held James, suspended so high above her.

Amelia smiled.

He looked so funny up there, treading, looking down at her, the bubbles rising beside him. Just then he looked like a man to her. The teenage boy masked within.

James, she thought. Come make love to me.

They’d talked about it. She knew he was thinking about it, too.

Come make love to me.

She felt love for him then, the physical sensation of it leaving her body, rising up through the pool water, then through the lake water, traveling the light of his beam.

Suddenly James flipped, as though he’d felt the feelings she’d sent him. When his head was where his flippers had been, he swam toward her. Toward the swimming pool that should not be, had no right to be, but was all the same. Amelia embraced it. The magic. Frightening or not, it was magic. Water upon water, moving in different directions, the temperature in the pool warmer than the temperature out.

No hows. No whys.

Come to me…

James broke the surface of the pool far to Amelia’s right, and through the fresh ripples he’d created, Amelia saw that a form remained treading by the ceiling where he had been.

Amelia sat up fast. She planted her flippers solidly on the floor of the pool and rose. She stood half in the pool, half in the lake.

She pointed, up, to where James just was, breathing quicker now, shaking her head no, no there’s nobody there, nobody treading where James just was.

James came to her as she had silently asked and wrapped his arms around her.

Amelia resisted, shoving him away, pointing to the ceiling with the beam of her light.

Look, she tried to say. LOOK!

But her voice was muted by the mask.

As if comprehending in slow motion, moving slower than the feeling of dread rising within him, James looked to where Amelia was frantically training her beam.

A black dress floated high above the indoor pool. Its dark fabric flapped with unseen waves. But its position was what scared James most.

Like someone’s wearing it.

The hem rippled beneath the symmetrical shoulder straps. The waist was slimmer than the hips.

Amelia and James did not move. They did not cry out. They stared.

Then the dress started to sink, to fall toward them in the pool.

James wanted to believe it was chance, the way the dress seemed to be filled out, the way it looked.

Like someone was in it.

Like someone could swim up to it, then slip easily through the bottom, arms extended, with a mind to wear it.

Amelia held a hand in front of her mask.

James couldn’t move. He was rooted to the floor of the pool’s shallow end. As Amelia raised her other hand, blocked her face from the fabric, James watched the dress fold over upon itself, then twist in a way that no person could.

Not if someone was in it.

The dress floated away before it reached them.

Amelia lowered her arms and looked at James. They lit each other’s masks with their respective beams.

“Up,” James said.

Amelia nodded. And then James saw something more startling than the dress itself had been. In Amelia’s face, James saw fear.

You’re not supposed to be afraid, he thought. You’re the one that makes this all okay.

But Amelia was scared.

And still… she smiled. And the expression she wore was like that of a woman after a close call in a car.

Up, she mouthed. And they swam up. And as they exited the basement, James looked back, shone his light into the shadows, and saw no dress.

But he thought of it. Continuously, as they swam up the stairs, he thought of the black dress falling and how it hadn’t looked like an errant article of clothing at the mercy of unseen undulations. No, it had behaved much more like a discarded dress that someone had taken off and tossed from the ceiling toward them.