PROLOGUE
The ebon hole of the storm drain some called
Cat's Eye Tunnel. A thin stream of water trickled down the center
of the concrete tube, its sides not quite dry to the touch.
Ignoring the faint smells of algae and waste, the boys crawled for
what felt like quite a ways in the damp, dark pipe. Their ears
strained against the shadows, past the faraway plink-plink-plinks of water dripping somewhere
further down the line. Nor was there any mistaking the skritching
sounds.
"Rats!" a voice yelled in the
dark.
"Oh, snap!" another called
out.
Gavain and his younger brothers
scrambled on all fours, sloshing through the brackish water,
rushing towards the light of the opening until they tumbled out of
the pipe. Piling onto one another, they formed a twelve-limbed
beast that writhed in its own laughter. Gary and Rath were
practically twins: the way their momma raised them. It was easier
on the budget and it simplified fights if they both wore the same
outfits. Gary, six, bright-eyed and innocent, idolized Gavain.
Though a little bigger than Gary and only five years old, Rath had
a potty mouth that sailors envied. Both had the scrawny physique of
angry twigs. Their youngest brother, Wayne, stayed home with their
mother. Sick again.
"Get your butt out my face." Gary
shoved Rath.
"Who yelled 'rats'?" Gavain
asked.
"Gary."
"Get that bad boy," Gavain said,
knowing full well that it was actually he who had made the
scratching sound. "Let's kick his li'l butt."
Gavain scooped Gary up and tossed
him easily over his shoulder. He smacked his little brother's butt
a couple of times, over Gary's playful squeals of "no" and "stop",
before letting Rath get a piece. Gavain, nine and a half, felt a
generation older than the other two. Tallest in his class, with the
same weedy thinness of his brothers, Gavain loved both of them, but
– in his heart of hearts, in that shadowed place where all secrets
lay fallow – he admitted to being partial to Gary. The boy's
unquestioning, unflinching idolization helped, but it was more the
simple, no, innocent way that Gary approached the world. Gavain
envied him his purity and wished just for a moment he could reclaim
any sense of his own.
After letting Gary tumble from
his grasp, Gavain leaned back against the grassy creek embankment
to stare at the clouds. The thin creek divided their housing
complex, Breton Court, from the rest of the neighborhood. Some
days, it was the same sad stretch of trilling water serving as a
receptacle for collecting trash. Other days the creek seemed to
stretch out into infinity, an event horizon of adventure and
mystery. Today it was both.
They laid on the grass of the
sloping hill. The rear fences of houses caged Dobermans and
Rottweilers, who barked incessantly at their presence. From their
hillside vantage point, they could see all of Breton Court. Gavain
liked this spot, the wide creek separating Breton Court from the
residential neighborhood. He'd been chased by bullies through the
court, his rare black face in the area too tempting a target for
the white thugs. His speed kept him out of harm's way for a long
time. Then, nearly cornered, he turned and dashed toward the creek.
He leapt its breadth, landing flush on the other side. It was as if
he crossed a border check and the bullies didn't have their papers
in order. A natural dividing line.
"Look what I found." Rath held up
a bent piece of discarded metal pipe.
"Here's another piece." Gary
first held his pipe to his eye, scanning the neighborhood like it
was a telescope before mounting it on his shoulder, like a bazooka.
"Boom."
"Yeah, c'mon, we've got to kill
our enemies," Rath declared.
Gavain watched the two of them
scamper toward the overpass the creek ran under. Stifling heat
thickened the air, making it akin to breathing steam. His brothers
pantomimed shooting at the unsuspecting cars as they drove past. He
meandered after them, just in time to break up the inevitable. No
matter how much or how little money they had, no matter what school
they attended, no matter which doors opened and closed for them in
the maze of opportunities life afforded, boys would be
boys.
"I said I was going to blow that
one up." Rath swung his pipe at Gary.
Gavain separated them. Forgetting
who he was for a moment, they turned at him with a feral grimace.
"Don't hit me with that," Gavain said in an unmistakable, no longer
playing, tone. "F'real. I ain't playing with you."
The sternness of Gavain's voice
shocked them back to their senses. Rath slunk a short distance
away, pouting, before contenting himself to shoot at more
unsuspecting cars, unhindered by his distracted brother. The
dreamy, distant stare – which so often filled Gary's eyes –
signaled him drifting into his imagination. Whatever thoughts
occupied his mind in that moment would find their way back to his
little stack of "his papers" at home. Not quite a journal, more
like a collection of stories and daydreams that he chronicled, such
as his comic strips with doodles in each corner that depicted two
super-heroes fighting when he flipped the pages.
"'Mother, may I go out to
swim?'/'Yes my darling daughter./Hang your clothes on an alder
limb/And don't go near the water.'" Gary sang, dragging the length
of pipe behind him.
"You little bitch!" Rath chased
after him, in his halfstalking lope which indicated a mood to bully
or get into mischief. He knew he was the tougher of the two. He
hated the softness his brother had and hoped to toughen him up. It
was either that or spend the bulk of his days as his brother's
shadow protector. Which, all told, he didn't mind too
much.
"Watch your mouth!" Gavain
yelled.
"All right… preacher."
Preacher. The word spat at him with the venom of an
ill-considered epithet. Gavain loved going to church, especially
Sunday School. His class was small, so the teacher lavished extra
attention on him; easy to do with an eager student. So, at his
instigation, the brothers often played church, building blanket
cathedrals in the living room. Gavain recited his favorite Old
Testament stories (Noah, Moses, Jonah) and led songs while his
brothers amened and sang along, happy just to be playing any
variation of forts with him. They all knew it would only be a
matter of time before his friends claimed him and he spent his days
running around with them instead of spending time with his little
brothers. At nine, the call of the streets beckoned with its siren
song.
"Momma used to sing that to me,"
Gary said.
"Cause she thinks you're a girl.
She still tucks you in too," Rath said. Gary lowered his head, with
a splash of shame as if hit with too close a truth, obviously too
sensitive to play insult games with Rath. He always took them too
personally and hated the idea of hurting people for
amusement.
"I know where we can go." Gavain
changed topics, speaking more under his breath than to anyone in
particular.
"Shut up." Gary had pretty much
exhausted his comebacks in one shot.
"No, you shut up," Rath
retorted.
Gavain stage-sighed. "Forget it.
I'm going without either of you. I don't have time to babysit, no
how."
It didn't matter who said what,
the apologies rang with the same cheery melody, a chorus of "Wait
up, Gavain" and "Yeah, we're sorry." Whenever they turned on him,
or even got too out of line, the simple threat of abandoning them
was usually enough to straighten things out. Gavain reveled in the
adulation that bordered on respect and the power that accompanied
it. He smiled a wan, yet victorious, smile.
"Where we going?" Gary
asked.
"To the lake," Gavain
said.
"But that's so far."
"We're almost there already."
Gavain's tone didn't invite debate.
"Quit whinin', you can't come
anyway. You too little," Rath said.
"Momma said I could go with you,"
Gary whispered.
Their momma's parting words
slowed Gavain's steps. Look after your little
brothers. "Fine. C'mon then."
The trio followed a trail known
only to Gavain. This marked the first time he had taken them to his
special spot. He retreated there to read, and think, be by himself,
away from his brothers and the responsibilities of them. Though
they only lived two miles from the park, Gavain had deemed his
brothers too young to make the trip before; now they walked along
the creek bed, its low flow revealed slippery rocks under the late
afternoon sun.
Across from the Indianapolis
Colts training facility, Eagle Creek Park, a national reserve
spread out in open invitation. A brief traipse through the woods
allowed the boys to bypass both the main gate (with its honor box:
fifty cents for walk-in visitors to the park) and the ranger
stations along the main roads (police, even wanna-be police, was
still police). When they reached the old rusted-out fence, he knew
that they neared their final destination. Long gashes, wounds of
age and curious teenagers, marred the evenness of the links. Gavain
pushed back the torn bit of fence barring their path. Flecks of
rust painted his hand orange as he pushed through the low-lying
branches occluding the dirt-worn and matted grass that served as
their walkway.
His spot was a natural alcove of
shore and trees, as if a giant mouth had taken a bite out of the
park forest and backwashed sand. Dark sand, far from sunbleached,
lined the small inlet as waves lapped against it. The tree line
dropped off sharply at the water, skeins of roots revealed by
erosion. A tire on a rope hung in forlorn innocence from an old
tree whose branches shaded a good chunk of their spot. Constructed
to launch canoes before it dawned on the bureaucrats running the
park to do so near the main beach and charge people for the
privilege, the rickety boat launch bobbed on tires. Testing its
mildewed boards, Gavain imagined himself walking the plank of a
dilapidated pirate ship. The sun glinted from the water, its shards
of light held Gary and Rath in rapt attention.
"You sure it's all right to be
here?" Gary asked in an almost awe-struck whisper. "We didn't bring
any clothes to swim in. Or towels."
"Damn, fool. You know momma
wouldn't let us go swimming," Rath said.
"Just swim in your underwear.
It'll dry out on the way home," Gavain reassured him with a
smile.
That was all the encouragement
the boys needed, shucking their clothes over near the tree roots
and running to the water's edge. Warm gusts of wind blew towards
them; tiny, lazy waves sloshed against the shoreline. The alcove
lay around the bend from the main beach, like a forgotten part of
the park, fenced off (or fenced in) to keep people from wandering
off. With the occasional boat horn belching in the distance, he
knew they weren't alone. On such a beautiful picnicking day, the
beach proper had to be crowded and all the shelters full.
However, nary a sound drifted
into their alcove.
A strong breeze rushed off the
water. It was downright frigid in the shadows where Gavain watched
the boys play. They wobbled on slick rocks, their arms flailing to
steady their balance as they acted out kung fu movies. Gavain
already regretted letting them watch The Five
Deadly Venoms. Discarded in their frolic, the branches piled
at the dock. He feared that he'd have to confiscate their
improvised weapons, especially if it occurred to them to battle any
unsuspecting underwater enemies. The last thing he wanted was some
sort of lightsaber duel in the water. Their private hideaway did
its job, enchanting the boys. It wasn't often that they played near
anything that wasn't concrete or plastic. They had some relatives
that owned a farm or something down in Jeffersonville, but they
were their father's side of the family. Momma never quite fit in
with the family.
The innocuous chattering of the
boys strained Gavain's nerves, but only in a
bemused-by-the-familiar sort of way. The boys beamed, amusing
themselves, and that gave him time to read. He pulled a tattered
copy of Danny Dunn and the Smallifying
Machine from his back pocket, surprised by how much he
enjoyed the ludicrous series. There was a quaintness to them that
he liked.
Then something at the back of his
mind nagged him, an unscratched itch. He searched for a word to
describe the feeling. The water mesmerized him. Breathing in the
loamy smell of leaves, the stiffness of the breeze, he realized
what the feeling was that he couldn't shake. The weight of eyes
followed his every movement. Someone watched him, exactly the way
the little Korean beauty salon owners watched him when he bought
stuff for momma. Someone on a rock down the beach, barely within
sight: a body, light as bleached bark, nearly white in the furtive
sun and slight of build, a woman perhaps, watched them.
Making sure
those children didn't cause any trouble, he thought. He'd
been on alert for indignant park rangers, full of their authority,
coming to scare them off. The possibility of a chase gave him a
thrill to look forward to. Not that he expected anyone else to be
here: it kind of ruined his illusion that only he knew about the
place. The woman stole away into the trees.
"Hey, did you see her?" Gavain asked.
"See who?" The boys answered in
unison. Sand somehow managed to dust both of their fresh faces
though neither was even up to his knees in the water.
"The woman over by the trees. She
was staring at us."
"Probably a park ranger." Gary
turned from Rath as if the two of them had to caucus before
deciding the proper response.
"Then why didn't she come chase
us?" Gavain asked.
"Probably one of those sun
bathers then."
"Was she naked?" Rath finally
chimed in.
"Don't listen to him. There
probably wasn't no woman. He just trying to scare us again." Gary's
eyes widened in a tacit plea to not taunt them anymore.
"I wasn't, but that does remind
me of a story." Gavain squatted over an overturned log, drawing in
the sand with a twig, waiting for the boys to come over to him.
They did, they always did. "You remember that nursery rhyme you
were singing earlier, Gary? Do you know what it's about?"
"No." Gary searched for his own
twig and began to draw in the sand.
"There was this old witch without
a name but folks called the Lady of the Lake."
"I don't believe in witches,"
Gary said, not quite looking into Gavain's eyes.
"Do you want to hear this story
or what? Anyway, you see there was a woman who lived by a lake much
like this one. One day she goes out for a swim, but the water…"
Gavain trailed off, making his voice sound haunted, for good
effect, especially if he wanted to frighten the boys into caution
around the water. "Water can be a powerful thing, scary, but they
don't make movies about it. It's not something that puts on a mask
and chases you through an old house. It's deep. Strong. Mysterious.
And things live in it. Things that scientists don't know about or
can't explain. Maybe the Lady of the Lake got caught by one of
those things. Maybe she became one of them. Maybe she was the
mother of all of those creatures. All folks say is that she
drowned, but every seven years, she comes back to claim a life, a
life that should've been hers. Sort of a guilt offering. She comes
for those who wander too close to the water's edge, grabbing their
ankles with those long arms of hers, and pulls them to her, draws
them to her underwater kingdom. And you don't want to see her in
the water. Her skin is slightly blue and puffy from being drowned
and all. She has long hair, greenish like it's wrapped in seaweed
or somethin'. And she greets them with a kiss, a kiss full of her
long sharp teeth. She stares at you with those big dead eyes of
hers. She couldn't help herself. It was in her nature. They're the
last thing that you see before you take your last breath.
"BOO!" Gavain yelled and jumped
suddenly.
The boys reared back and screamed
before hitting each other and laughing.
"Bitch done wet hisself," Rath
said.
"Boy, I ain't gonna tell you
again." Gavain tossed his stick at him. "Watch your
mouth."
The boys scrabbled off, unfazed,
splashing into the water.
"You comin' in?" Gary turned and
asked. Gary had a way of asking for things that sounded not only
like a command, but as if his whole life depended on you giving
into him.
"Yeah, in a minute," Gavain lied.
"Hey, if you can't stand up and be above the water, you need to
come back closer." He didn't want to have to get wet if he could
help it. His brothers might have bought the idea of their clothes
drying out on the walk home, but the idea of wet, bunched-up
underwear rubbing against him for an hour didn't appeal nearly as
much to him as it did them. Visions of having to swim after one of
the knuckleheads caused his fear of deep water to rear itself
again. He wanted to spend more time in the water, but the shore was
as close to the water's edge as he dared go. He shielded his eyes
with his hand to better study the deceptive calm of the flat
surface. Gary jumped into the water. Not used to the acoustics of
the woods, Gavain thought he heard a second splash a little further
away. It might've just been an echo. He scanned the periphery
anyway.
The water exercised a strange
fascination over him. He lost track of time, idling his minutes
away, not really reading his book but only holding it in front of
him while he studied the water. The splashes of his brothers grew
faint. The book fell from his limp grasp. The lolling waves lapped
against the sheltering embankment. The swishing susurrus made it
easy to ignore the rising uneasiness that washed over him. The
sobering shimmer of light, the dispassionate gaze of the deep, the
sibilant call of the waves, held him in a spell that reached to an
ancient, yet familiar part of his soul. The seaweed, like trees
helplessly caught in a strong wind, unfurled, forming a chain that
pointed toward the deeper part of the lake. The brown murkiness of
kicked-up lake bottom swooshed about, as if something stirred to
life. The water. A war waged within the waves, breaking the
smoothness of the water.
That was when he noticed that
Gary was in trouble.
Gary slapped at the surface, his
head cocked up at an odd angle, as he fought the water rather than
swam in it, spitting out mistakenly inhaled gulps of water. Rath
was nowhere to be seen. Gavain clambered down the embankment, each
bob of Gary's head an eternity whenever it ducked under the waves.
The drooping branches whipped at Gavain. He stumbled over an
exposed tree root and fell face down into the wet sand. Lines of
smallish footprints criss-crossed the dark sand. They could've been
the boys' footprints, but there were so many. Gavain stumbled to
his feet and waded frantically into the water. Not a strong
swimmer; he swam well enough to get where he wanted to go, but had
no technique beyond his floundering variation of the dog paddle.
His lungs burned as he took in gulps of water. He splashed about in
near panic and tried to reach Gary who seemed only a few yards away
from him. Frustrated tears stung his eyes. The water flowed thick
and heavy, the painful rush of it towed against him like bottled-up
rage. He strained against the water, but made little progress. The
tide, too strong, swept them further out into the lake. Gavain
thought that he glimpsed someone. A woman.
"Help them! Help them! They're
drowning!" he cried out.
Gavain swam across the sucking,
parallel to the shore; it was all he knew to do, desperately
fighting against the watery vacuum that threatened to yank him
under. He scanned for any sign of his brothers. Gavain stretched
out his arm, almost within reach of Gary's hand. Gary's face turned
toward him, blanched and exhausted, like a boy who'd seen a ghost,
but was too tired to run.
"Gary." Gavain dug his arms into
the water, his measured strokes like swimming through quicksand. He
reached out toward him, spotting Gary's terrified eyes, his body
seized in some invisible, powerful grip. The water climbed higher
along Gavain's chest. The tug gnawed at him. He shivered, suddenly
aware of how cold the water was; too cold for such a day. The water
seemed so dark, murky. A cloud covered the sun and created deeper
pockets of shadows beneath the waves. No, this shadow was small,
heading towards him just out of reach.
Rath. Eyes bulged out, his face
frozen in a rictus of panic.
Something scraped against Gavain
with the bite of coral, like the sharp, thick nails of a large
hand. The splashing ceased. Gavain searched for any sign, any
shade, that could've been Gary. Nothing. The waves, its anger
spent, subsided. Gavain imagined how his brothers spent their last
moments. Their arms outstretched, fighting for air, their minds
wondering where he was. Where was their big brother? He was
supposed to look after them, protect them from bad things. Bad
people. That was when he knew.
She had come for them, with her
yellowed sinews, black blood pulsing through her veins. The Lady of
the Lake, her belly bloated with the rage of the sea; head lolling
from side to side, caught in its own current. He remembered
something like hands brush against him. Like hands, but not
hands.
He never forgot the
hands.