The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 15

Gene Wolfe Hunter Lake

“You’ll get arthritic eyes,” Susan declared, “if you keep watching that thing. Turn it off and listen a minute.”

Ettie pressed MUTE.

“Off!”

Obediently, Ettie pressed the red button. The screen went dark.

“You know what Kate told us. There’s a lake here — a beautiful lake that isn’t on anybody’s map.”

“I did the Internet search, Mom. Remember?”

“And you sit watching an old TV with rabbit ears in a rented cabin.” Susan was not to be distracted. “You know what your father says — people who get eyeball arthritis see only what they’re supposed to see, like that TV screen. Their eyes stiffen-”

Ettie brought out the artillery. “If Dad’s so smart and such a good father, why did you divorce him?”

“I didn’t say he was a good husband. Come on! Get your coat. Don’t you want to look for a haunted lake?”

Thinking it over, Ettie decided she did not. For one thing, she did not care for ghosts. For another, she was pretty sure this was a dream, and it might easily turn into a bad one. A haunted lake would give it entirely too much help. Aloud she said, “You’re going to write a magazine article and get paid. What’s in it for me?”

“I’ll take pictures, too,” Susan declared. “Lots of pictures. It’s supposed to be very scenic. If a ghost shows up in one of my pictures, the sale will be a…”

“Snap,” Ettie supplied.

“Foregone conclusion.”

The car door slammed, and the car pulled smoothly away from the one-room log cabin that had been their temporary home. Ettie wondered whether she had left the TV on and decided she had. Would Nancy Drew have remembered to turn it off? Absolutely.

“The Indians performed unspeakable rites there,” Susan continued. Studying Ettie from the corner of her eye, she concluded that more selling was in order. “They tortured their white prisoners, gouging out their eyes and scalping them while they were still alive. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Native Americans never did anything like that.” Ettie sounded positive, even to herself.

“Oh yes, they did! A hunter found the lake hundreds of years afterward, and took his family there for a picnic because it was so pretty. His little daughter wandered away and was never seen again.”

“I knew I wasn’t going to like this.”

“Her spirit haunts it, walking over the water and moaning,” Susan declared with relish.

“You can’t possibly know that.”

“It’s what everybody says, Kate says. So today we’ll find it — you and me, Ettie — and we’ll stay out there all night and take lots and lots of pictures. Then I can write about how a sudden chill descended at midnight, a chill our struggling little fire could not dispel, seeming to rise from the very waters that-”

“Mother!”

“Harbor the ghosts of hundreds of Mohicans massacred by the Iroquois and thousands — no, innumerable — Iroquois massacred by white settlers, waters said to harbor pike of enormous size, fattened for centuries upon-Ah! There’s the farmhouse.”

It looked horrible, Ettie decided. “Burning that down would be an improvement.”

“They’re old and poor. It’s not polite to make fun of old people. Or poverty.” A wrench at the wheel sent the car gliding into a farmyard from which no chicken fled in terror.

“They’re dead, if you ask me.” Ettie pointed toward the little cemetery that should have been the front yard. Its cast-iron fence was rusting to pieces, and its thin limestone monuments leaned crazily.

Susan took her key from the ignition. “Just a private burying-ground, Ettie. Lots of old farms have them.”

“Right in front of the house?”

“I think that’s touching. They cared about their dead.” They were climbing broken steps to a ramshackle porch innocent of paint. “Probably they sat out here on rockers and talked to them.”

“Cozy.”

“It is, really. The dead are nearer the living than you know, Ettie.”

You’re dead yourself, Ettie thought rebelliously, and ohmyGod how I miss you.

Susan knocked. The knocks echoed inside the old farmhouse. There was no other sound.

“Let’s go,” Ettie suggested.

“I’m right here, dear.”

“I know you are,” Ettie said. “I’m scared anyway. Let’s go. Please?”

“Kate says there’s an old man here who knows precisely where Hunter’s Lake is. I’m going to question him and tape everything he says. I’m going to take his picture, and take pictures of this house.”

Somebody behind them said, “No, you’re not.”

Ettie found that she had turned to look, although she had not wanted to. The woman behind them was old and bent, and looked blind.

Susan smiled, laid a hand on Ettie’s shoulder and tried to grasp that shoulder in a way that would make it clear to Ettie that she, Susan, was counting on her not to misbehave. “Mrs Betterly?”

“Ain’t no business of yours, young woman.”

“My name’s Susan Price,” Susan continued bravely, “and my daughter and I are friends — good friends — of Kate Eckert’s. We’re looking for Hunter’s Lake — ”

The old woman moaned.

“And Kate said your husband would help us.”

“He won’t talk to no women,” the old woman declared. “He hates women. All of us. Been fifty years since he spoke civil to a woman, he told me once.”

Susan looked thoughtful. “My daughter isn’t a woman yet.”

“Mother!”

“Really now, Ettie. What would Nancy Drew say?”

“ ‘I’m getting out of here,’ if she had any sense.”

“He won’t hurt you. How old is he, Mrs Betterly?”

“Eighty-seven.” The old woman sounded proud. “He’s ten year old’n me, and won’t never die. Too mean.”

Susan gave Ettie her very best smile. “You see? What are you afraid of? That he’ll hit you with his walker? He might call you a name, at worst.”

“Or shoot me.”

“Nonsense. If he shot little girls for asking polite questions, he’d have been sent to prison long ago.” Susan turned to the old woman. “All right if Ettie tries?”

“Door’s not locked,” the old woman said. After a moment she added grudgingly, “That’s a brave little gal.”

As though by magic, Ettie found that her hand was on the doorknob.

“He’ll be in the parlor listenin’ to us. Or if he ain’t, in the sittin’ room. If he ain’t in the sittin’ room, he’ll be in the kitchen for sure.”

The hinges are going to squeak, Ettie told herself. I just know it.

They did, and the floorboards creaked horribly under her feet. She closed the door so that her mother would not see her fear and pressed her back against it.

Outside, Susan endeavored to peep through several windows, returned to her car, and got her camera. “All right for me to take your picture, Mrs Betterly?”

“Just fog your film,” the old woman said. “Always do.”

“Then you don’t mind.” Susan snapped the picture, being sure to get in a lot of the house.

In it (it appeared immediately on the back of her camera) the old woman was holding a bouquet of lilies. “Where did you get the flowers?” Susan asked.

“Picked ‘em,” the old woman explained. “Grow wild ‘round here. Buttercups, mostly.”

“Where did they go?” Susan tried to hide her bewilderment.

“Threw ‘em away once your picture was took.”

Inside, Ettie was poking around the parlor, pausing every few seconds to look behind her. The carpet, she noticed, was too small for the room, torn and moth-eaten. Dust covered the bare floor, and there were no footprints in the dust save her own.

He isn’t here, she thought. He hasn’t been here for a long, long time.

And then: I could take something. A souvenir. Anything. None of this stuff is doing anybody any good, and I’ve earned it.

There was a glass-topped case at the end of one of the divans. It held old coins and arrowheads, and the top was not locked. She selected a worn little coin with a crude picture of a Native American on it, and slipped it into her pocket. It had not looked valuable, and she would have it always to remember this day and how frightened she had been.

There was no one in the sitting room and no one in the kitchen. No one in the dining room, either.

A crude stair took her upstairs as effortlessly as an escalator. He’s old, she thought, I’ll bet he’s sick in bed.

There were three very old-fashioned bedrooms, each with its own small fireplace. All were empty.

He’s gone, Ettie told herself happily. He’s been gone for years and years. I can tell Mother anything.

Outside again, speaking to Susan from the porch, she said, “Do you want everything, or just the important parts?”

“Just the important parts.”

“Where’s the old lady?”

“She went away.” For an instant, Susan forgot to look perky. “I turned around, and she wasn’t there. Did her husband call you names?”

That was easy. Ettie shrugged. “You said you just wanted the important stuff. Here it is. He said for us to go home.”

Susan sighed. “That’s not what I sent you in to find out.”

“Well, that was the important thing.” Ettie did her best to sound reasonable.

“All right, everything. But leave out the names.”

“Okay. He said, ‘Little lady, that lake’s a real bad place, so don’t you ever forget you’re a grown woman and got a Ph.D. and a daughter of your own.’ Am I supposed to do the dialect?”

“No.”

“Fine. He also said, ‘If you got to go there, you time it so your alarm goes off before anything bad happens. You go home. One way or the other. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Get on home.’“

Curious, Susan asked, “Did he really call you ‘little lady’?”

“Heck, no. You said to leave out the names so I did.”

Susan sighed. “I suppose it’s better that way. How did he say to get to the lake?”

“He didn’t.” Ettie shrugged. “Want me to go in and ask him again?”

“Will you?”

“Not unless you tell me to.”

“All right. Ettie, you get yourself back in there and tell him we must find Hunter Lake. Don’t take no for an answer. You have to be firm with men, and you might as well learn now.”

Nodding, Ettie went back inside. It would be smart, she told herself, to spend quite a bit of time in there. She pulled a book off the shelf in the parlor and opened it. The Alhambra by Washington Irving. It looked as though it had never been read.

After a minute or two, she realized that her mother was trying to peer through the very dirty window-pane and the filthy curtains, and went into the sitting room. There was a nice old rocker in there. She sat in it and rocked a while, reading Washington Irving.

Outside again, blinking in the sunlight, she realized that she had never really decided what to say when she came out. To buy time, she cleared her throat. “You really want to hear this?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Okay, first he asked me all about you. That was after I had said you kept sending me back in. He said you sounded like a real bitch, and if you came in he’d get the chamber pot and throw shit at you.”

“Ettie!”

“Well, you said you wanted to hear it. After that he explained to me about Hunter Lake. He said didn’t I know why they called it that? I said because a hunter found it. He said that was wrong. He said it was ‘cause it hunted people. He said it could move all around just like bear and climb trees-”

Susan stamped her foot. “We want directions.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“Did he give you any directions? Any directions at all?”

“Just go home. I told you that the first time.”

“We need directions, not stories. Go back in there and tell him so.”

Ettie walked through the empty house, slowly, stopping to stare at things and open drawers, until she felt that something was following her. When she did, she hurried back outside, slamming the door and running down off the porch. “I’m not going back in there! Never! Never any more. You can ground me forever! I won’t!”

Susan studied her, her lips pursed. “That bad, huh?”

“Yes!”

“Did he give you directions?”

Mutely, Ettie went to the car and got in. Two minutes passed before Susan slipped into the driver’s seat next to her. “Ettie?”

Ettie said nothing, and Susan started the engine.

“Get out of here,” Ettie told her. “Pull out onto the road again. Turn left.”

“That’s away from the cabin. I thought you wanted to go home.”

“Home-home,” Ettie said. “Not away-home. Turn left.”

“Our bags are back at the cabin.”

“Left.”

Susan turned left.

“Go down this road,” Ettie said, “ ‘til you see a road off to the right through the corn field. There’s no sign and it’s easy to miss.”

Wanting to do more than glance at her, Susan slowed instead. Twenty miles an hour. Fifteen. Ten.

“Slower,” Ettie told her. “Follow it to the woods. Stop the car and get out. Look for the path. Follow the path to the house. A Injun named George Jones lives in the house. He knows. Give him ten dollars.”

“You said ‘Injun’,” Susan muttered. “You never even say Indian.”

Ettie said nothing.

Half a mile later, Susan saw the road, braked too late, backed up, and turned down it — a red-dirt road barely wide enough for a farm truck, two ruts flanking a strip of grass and weeds.

When the road would take them no farther, she and Ettie got out.

“Please don’t lock the car,” Ettie said. “I’ve got a feeling we might want to get in and get away quick.”

Susan stared, then shrugged. “I think I see the path. I’m going down it. You can wait in the car if you want to, but it may be quite a while.”

“You won’t leave the keys?”

“No.”

“Two will be safer than one,” Ettie said.

The house was a shack, perhaps ten feet by fifteen. An Indian woman was tending a tiny plot of vegetables. Susan said, “We’re looking for George Jones,” and the Indian woman straightened up and stared at her.

“We need his help. We’ll pay him for it.”

The Indian woman did not speak, and Ettie wanted to cheer.

Susan opened her purse and took a ten-dollar bill from her wallet. She showed it to the Indian woman. “Here it is. Ten dollars. That’s what we’ll pay him to guide us to Hunter Lake.”

Something that was no expression Susan had ever seen before flickered in the Indian woman’s eyes. And was gone. “He fish,” she said.

“In Hunter Lake?”

Slowly, the Indian woman nodded.

Susan breathed a sigh and gave Ettie one triumphant glance. “Then take us to him, or tell us how to find him.”

The Indian woman held out her hand, and Susan dropped the ten into it. The Indian woman clutched it, wadding it into a tiny ball.

“How do we get there?”

The Indian woman pointed. The path was so narrow as to be almost invisible even when they were on it. A game trail, Susan decided. “Deer made this,” she told Ettie.

If Ettie spoke, twenty or thirty feet behind her, she could not be heard.

“They need water,” Susan explained, “just like us. They must go to Hunter Lake to drink.” Privately, she wondered how far it was, and whether her feet would hold up. She was wearing her jogging shoes, but she rarely jogged more than a couple of blocks. Ettie, in jeans, T-shirt, and loafers, was probably worse off still. But younger, Susan told herself. Ettie’s a lot younger, and that counts for a lot. “Ettie?” She had stopped and turned.

“Yes, mother?”

“Am I going too fast for you? I can slow down.”

“A little bit.”

Susan waited for her to catch up. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

Susan bent and kissed her. “Really, dear. I love you. You know that. I’ll always love you.”

Ettie shook her head. “That’s not how it will be. Not really. I’ll always love you, Mom.”

Susan kissed her again. “Now tell me what’s troubling you.”

“I was wondering if I’d turned off the TV before we left.”

“Really, dear?”

Ettie nodded.

“Is that all?”

“Why I’d told you that stuff. About the Native American. All this. I could have just said he wouldn’t tell, only I didn’t.”

“Because you’re an honest, decent person, Ettie.”

Ettie shook her head. “Because he made me. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.”

“Well, come on.” Susan turned and began to walk again. “It’s probably right over the next hill.”

“It’s a long, long way,” Ettie said despondently. “Besides, this path doesn’t even go there. We’ll walk until we’re too tired to walk any more, and be lost in the woods. Nobody will ever find us.”

In point of fact, Susan was right. The path skirted the crest of the hill and descended sharply through close-packed hardwoods. For almost twenty minutes Susan and Ettie picked their way through these, Susan holding up branches for Ettie, who hurried under them, waving away mosquitoes.

As abruptly as the explosion of a firework, they emerged into sunlight. Water gleamed at the bottom of a steep hillside thick with ferns. On the other side of the gleam, water like molten silver cascaded down the face of a miniature cliff.

Susan raised her camera. A hundred yards or so down to the water — from here, she could only suggest that by showing a few fern fronds at the bottom of the picture. Then the water, then the cliff with its waterfall, then white clouds in the blue sky, and thank God for sky filters.

She snapped the picture and moved to her left.

“Are we really going to stay here?” Ettie asked.

“Only overnight, dear. We’ll have to carry some gear from the car — not the tent, just the sleeping bags and a little food. It won’t be all that hard. Will you want to swim?”

Ettie shook her head, but Susan was looking through her viewfinder and did not see her. It wasn’t really a hundred yards, she decided. More like fifty. She snapped the picture, and decided the next should be taken at the water’s edge.

“Mom…”

She stopped and turned. “Yes, Ettie? What is it?”

“I wish you wouldn’t go down there.”

“Afraid I’ll fall in? I won’t, and I doubt that it’s very deep close to shore.” Susan turned and began walking downhill again. She was a little tired, she decided; even so, walking down a gentle slope over fern was remarkably easy.

“Mom!”

She stopped again.

“Where’s the Native American man, Mom? Where’s George Jones? He was supposed to be down here fishing. I can see the whole lake. There’s nobody here but us.”

Suddenly, Ettie was tugging at her arm. “It’s coming up! Get back!”

It was, or at least it seemed to be. Surely the lake had not been that large.

“It’s a natural phenomenon of some kind,” Susan told Ettie, “like the tide. I’m sure it’s harmless.”

Ettie had released her arm. Ettie was running up the slope like the wind. A loafer flew off one foot as Susan watched, but Ettie never paused. She walked up the slope to the spot, found the loafer, and looked back at the water.

In a moment more it would be lapping her feet.

She turned and ran, pausing for a moment at the highest point of the path to watch the water and take another picture. That was probably a mistake, as she realized soon after. The water had circled the hill, not climbed it. She ran then, desperately, not jogging but running for all that she was worth, mouth wide and eyes bulging, her camera beating her chest until she tore it off and dropped it. The Indian shack was nowhere in sight; neither was her car. Woods gave way to corn, and corn to woods again, and the water was still behind her. When the land over which she staggered and stumbled rose, she gained on the water, when it declined, the water gained on her with terrifying rapidity.

Ettie had turned back to look for her, limping on tender feet. She met the water before she had gone far, and thereafter ran as desperately, leaving a trail of blood the water soon washed away. Twice she fell, and once crashed straight though a tangle of briars whose thorns did nothing at all to hold back the water behind her.

“Here, Ettie! Over here!”

She looked to her left, and tried to shout Mom. There was precious little breath left for Mom.

“It’s our cabin! Over here!”

It was not. The cabin they had rented had been of logs. This was white clapboard.

“Get in!” Susan was standing in the doorway. (Behind Susan, Ettie glimpsed the flickering television screen.) Ettie stumbled in, and fell.

Susan slammed the door and locked it. “It’ll try to get in under it,” she said, “but we’ll pack it with towels. Clothes. Anything.” She had thrown her suitcase on the bed. She opened it. Ettie raised her head. “I’ve got to wake up, Mom.” “We’ll beat it!” Briefly, Susan bent to kiss her. “We’ve got to!” Then Ettie faded and was gone, and Susan was alone in the clapboard cabin. Water crept past the towels and her terrycloth robe to cover the cabin floor. When the water outside had risen higher than the windowsills, it crept under and around the sashes to dribble on the floor.

Henrietta woke sweating, terrified of something she could not name. Through the closed door, Joan said, “Everything’s ready, Mom. You want to have your Mother’s Day breakfast in bed?”

“No,” Henrietta whispered. More loudly, “No. I don’t want to stay in here. I’ll be out in a minute, Honey.”

There were two robes in her closet, terrycloth and silk. Henrietta put the silk one on over her nightgown and tied its belt with a sudden violence she could not have explained.

The bed was a mess, sheet and blanket twisted and half on the floor. Pausing to straighten it up before she left the bedroom, her eyes caught the dull red of old copper. Once the worn little coin was in her hand, memories came flooding back.

Bacon and waffles, real butter and almost-real maple syrup in the sunshine-yellow breakfast nook, and Joan spraying Pam on the waffle iron. “Coffee’s on the stove,” Joan announced.

Henrietta sat, put the penny on her plate, and stared at it. A minute passed, then two. At last she picked it up and dropped it into a pocket of her robe.

“Do you know,” she told Joan, “I’ve just recalled how your grandmother died, after being wrong about it all these years. She drowned.”

“Sure.” Joan held the steaming coffee pot. She filled Henrietta’s cup. “Fluid in her lungs. Uncle Ed told me.”