The Lake, Pt. 9

Here’s the whole thing if you’d like to read it in one sitting.

Tam sat down on the muddy banks, her feet inches from the water that lapped against the shore in gentle licks.

She made another stop in town before reaching the park. She wasn’t keen on her last meal being a dripping, greasy burger, never mind one from a local drive-through sporting an archaic neon sign and flashing bulbs racing around the edges. But she didn’t want to waste time sitting in a restaurant. Besides, the thought of her last meal being eaten in the God-forsaken dying little hamlet was hard enough to stomach. At least this way, she had the beautiful, mysterious, dangerous lake to watch. And, she had to eat. She’d been sitting here all day, watching, listening to birds sing, reading a novel. She didn’t nap though … not a chance of that.

The heavy orange sun sank into the darkening, graceful, rolling hills, splashing melon and flower colors over the western horizon above them. In the east, the brooding dark woods surrounding the still waters loomed and menaced.

She licked running mayonnaise from her fingers, and flicked a fat drop of grease into the still water. When she shifted, the thick, weighty chain around her midriff clanked, a weird homage to Jacob Marley’s self-forged binding of sin. It wrapped around her three or four times and then uphill from her body, around a massive, ancient oak three or four more times and down to her again, in an oval. There was little slack, and the loop closed in the shackles of the heavy brass padlocks.

Tam refused to acknowledge the entire harness was only as strong as the chain’s weakest link, and didn’t let her mind wander toward what happened if the lake critter pulled her in half using her safety harness as a knife.

She looked down as birds twittered and rustled in the trees, and patted the solid steel axe the old shopkeeper sold her. A heavy rubberized handle to cushion shock — she didn’t know how much she’d need that — and a thin blade. The thick, rawhide work gloves in the mossy patch next to the axe added a level of comfort, but not much.

Still, she’d have the proof no one bothered to get for more than thirty years … if she succeeded and lived to get back to town.

Tam stuffed the last of her crinkle-cut, soggy French fries in her mouth and slurped on her chocolate milkshake. If nothing else, she was full. Above her, in the cooling autumn sky, the moon stared down as it waxed toward full. Stars winked on in the east, the horizon succumbing to the impending night. Crickets sang their love songs, frogs crooned from the tall weeds. And the black water shimmered under the orb above.

She tossed remnants of burger bun into the water. They dropped onto the surface and bobbed back up with a blip, blip sound.

A sigh escaped her. She realized Will Huckabee — his ghost, or whoever impersonated him — never showed. She’d hoped for at least one last look at that taut, corded body and melting cowboy smile. She wondered if he’d been married in life, or if he’d been seeing someone when he vanished. Who looked for him? Wondered about him? Worried about him? Cried over him?

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