Black Lake

1

As I snuck away in the wee hours of the morning, I wondered if anyone would ever know what really happened.

After years of keeping the secrets of that wretched house to myself, no one will hear it from me.

All I care about now is getting as far away as possible, and as quickly as I can.

They didn’t see me go, thank God. When the men get together, they never see me. It’s like the beers and the chips miraculously appear before the greedy slugs. I’m invisible. I used to resent it, but now I see it for what it is: a gift.

Wiley hasn't seen me in years. Unless supper is late, he doesn't know I exist.

(For the record, supper is never late. That's just his excuse for tooling up on me when he's pissed at something or someone else. Invisible people make good punching bags, because when you're finished with them they just disappear.)

I'm disappearing for real. I wonder how long it will take him to notice.

They were always smugglers. They talked up their newest big game like I couldn’t hear their plans. They set up their stockpiles in the sheds out back like I couldn’t see the pickups backing in and the goods being off-loaded.

If they’d asked, I could have told them the internet address could be traced. I probably wouldn’t have, but I could have. No, it was more interesting to sit back and wait for the onslaught.

I knew they’d come. They have guns. So do Wiley and his men. They’re duking it out over soap and toilet paper.

I slipped out through the closet’s trapdoor, into the cellar and out the bulkhead doors that Wiley usually keeps padlocked. I relocked them once I was out. No escape there, guys.

They never noticed the few items I took from the sheds and stashed in my little rowboat. Fishing was never their thing; the boat is as invisible as I am. I have my pole, bait and tackle. I have cooking gear; food; clothes, blankets and a little tent; soap and toilet paper.

Ha!

The world is closed, but the forest can be mine for now. I’ll survive.

2

It took me two days to get all the way across the lake. I’m not crazy—I didn’t go from east shore to west straight across—the lake is huge! I followed the shoreline to get this far. Besides, If Wiley bothered to look for me, he’d be looking out toward the center of the lake.

Better not to be there.

I know someone showed up itching for a fight the night I slipped away, but I don’t know who they were—other smugglers, maybe.

Or perhaps the law.

Either way, there was gunplay going on; I have been glad of my escape plan ever since. I want to believe they are all gone from there now, and Wiley won’t bother with me, but I can’t be sure.

Thank goodness for the relative isolation of Black Lake!

I don’t know how something this vast isn’t more well-known, but it has worked in my favor the last few days. Until I got to this side, I didn’t see another living soul.

Once I made a landing, I could see that there was a place a bit south of me. It’s not small, like the house I’ve been living in the last few years. Wiley built that place years ago, and it has just the one bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and the great room, with a cellar underneath for storage and canned goods and such. The place isn’t much bigger that the storage sheds he put up around the back perimeter.

No, this place has a nice long dock and a deck with seating and umbrellas on the shore, and back away from the water is a two-story house that looks…well, rich.

I set up my tent well away from the water and back in the trees where the people in the lake house aren’t likely to see me. I pulled my little boat out of the water and into the trees, too.

I keep an eye out, and fish when I can, but it has been a while since I managed to catch anything.

It’s weird.

I noticed that the woman from the house likes to take her boat out in the early hours of the morning to fish. For days I’d drag my sleeping bag to the edge of the trees and lie on my stomach, my chin resting on my hands, just watching her. That lady casts her line like a ballerina onstage, and it’s lovely to see her, dancing against the backdrop of sunrise and the reflected colors of sky in the water.

If I could paint, I’d flick my paintbrush on canvas in harmony with her movements and capture every graceful swoop of the line arcing over the water, and every flexed muscle as she scooped her catch up with her net.

That sounds a little romantic, I suppose, but it’s just that I know and appreciate grace when I see it.

She hasn’t been catching fish lately, either.

But she’s been watching the water closely, and I can see that she’s afraid of something out there.

I don’t blame her. I’ve seen it, too.

This morning we all see it…

3

Agatha likes to fish in the early morning hours.

I just want to sleep.

She tells me now she’s been seeing this every morning for the last week, and she’s dragged me out in the boat to watch.

I’m cross with her, but curious, too, so I focus my eyes on the still surface of the water, certain that what I will see will turn out to be a fish jumping or a water bug landing.

But—

What the hell?

A bubble–quite an impressively sized one–rises out of the water and pops. The water ripples out from there, and as the waves move, they get bigger and faster. By the time they reach the boat, they are strong enough to give the skiff quite a rocking.

Holding on to the sides of the boat, I turn and meet Agatha’s wide blue eyes with my own. “You see?” she gasps. “I told you!”

“Why are we even out here?” I cry. “What was that?”

Agatha starts the little outboard motor and points the boat at the dock. “I don’t know,” she says, “but I haven’t caught a fish in a week!”

As we work to tie the boat to the dock, I keep looking over my shoulder toward the middle of the lake. I catch Agatha watching, too.

Suddenly, another bubble breaks the surface out there, and it has to be bigger than the first one, because we can see it clearly. We race down the dock to the shoreline, suddenly frightened, and from the shore, we watch the bubble burst and the waves ripple and grow. In seconds, waves big enough to wet us from head to toe break land.

Wet and gasping, we stare. The sun rises. Water droplets refract rainbow prisms off a scaly black fin.

We run.

4

I see them when they leave their house and go down to the dock and get into their boat. I watch as she takes the handle of the outboard motor and aims them toward the center of Black Lake.

My heart is pounding, because I have been up for a while, lying on my sleeping bag and watching the water. A bubble here, a bubble there—it should seem random and ordinary, but the bubbles seem…purposeful.

The sun hasn’t cleared the horizon, but it is light enough to see those bubbles rise, swell and skim the surface of the water before bursting. They appear to be searching.

My stomach does a slow roll when I see a bubble burst near their boat, sending a wave that rocks the vessel like a child’s cradle.

I want to feel relieved when I hear the outboard roar to life and see them heading back to the dock at full speed, but I don’t. I’m terrified.

As they tie the boat up at the dock, they take nervous glances at the water. My nervous glances are at them—I’m watching the water, mostly.

Another bubble, the largest I have seen, glides toward them, bursts and sends water rushing at the shore.

They’re wet down, but the waves didn’t get close enough to…

To what?

I start running toward them, no longer concerned with hiding. They need to get further back from the water.

She sees me coming, and yells for me to hurry. I try.

I think, Damn it! I finally escape Wiley, and now this?

I can see the bubble out of the corner of my eye and veer away from the shoreline, headed back toward the trees at an angle as she yells at me again.

The bubble pops.

The water is coming!

Dear God! The water—

Aughhhh!

5

I see her running up the shoreline toward the house and yell, “Hurry!”

She doesn’t know it, but I’ve seen her watching me fish. I think she escaped from that smuggler nest across the lake, the one where all those idiots shot each other to death over toilet paper and liquid hand soap.

They found bodies dumped in the water under the little dock in front of the shack over there. I've wondered if that polluted the water enough for the fish to just...disappear.

Guess I was wrong about that.

The cops said there were signs a woman had been there, but they couldn’t find her.

All I can say is, good for her. She got away.

Sheesh. What kind of life would that be?

Until this past week, I thought the craziness of the outside world was going to leave us in peace. We’re alone out here; we like it that way.

This thing in the water, though—it can’t have anything to do with the virus.

Can it?

“Hurry!” I yell again, and the woman makes an effort, pumping her arms and stretching her legs as she sprints across gravel.

But one of those shiny bubbles rises to the surface of the water, much closer than before. It swells to enormous proportions and *POP!*

Displaced water rushes the shore, slams into the woman and knocks her down.

I turn and start running toward her.

6

“Agatha!” I yell, turning to run after her.

“Hurry, Alan!” she cries. “She could be hurt!”

“Who?”

“She—the woman who—what the hell? Where did she go?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that when Agatha had been yelling “Hurry! Hurry!” she was talking to someone other than me.

I didn’t see her. But Agatha insists she was there, running after us, and I believe her.

There’s no one here now.

“The water took her!” Agatha is racing in circles in the spot where she’d last seen this mystery woman.

I can see another of those bubbles rising. I grab my wife by the arm and scream, “Run! To the trees! Run, Aggie, run!”

Honestly, I expect her to argue, but she’s seen it, too, and she nearly outruns me as a gigantic wave pursues us up the beach.

We run into the forest and circle around the back of our house. We enter through the garage and race upstairs. When we get to the bedroom, we hurry to the sliding doors and go out on the balcony, which offers a view of the lake that is generally breathtakingly beautiful, especially as the sun is rising.

It’s breathtaking now, but not beautiful.

Bubbles cover the water, rising and swooping toward the shore on all sides, bursting and sending waves onto the land, catching a rabbit here, a deer there, a lone coyote having a last drink before heading to its den to sleep.

I suppose they might have screamed, but we’re too far away to hear that—thank God.

Agatha’s face is pale, and her voice shakes as she repeats, “The water took her.”

“It’s not the water,” I reply. I point to the black shape, just under the surface of the water in the middle of the lake. The sun has hit the water just right, casting iridescent rainbows on the shining black scales.

“Is it a fish?”

“Well…” I don’t know what the hell it is. It has scales, but… “Whatever it is, Aggie…it’s casting.”

“Fishing,” Agatha muses. Suddenly she bolts back inside. I hear her retching from the bathroom. I’m not surprised.

I watch as a wave washes over a brown bear. It vanishes in the backwash. “Jesus.”

Aggie is behind me, sobbing. “It caught her,” she says. "It cast out its bubble and caught her in the waves!"

“Yes.”

I can’t stop staring at the lake.

The water is rising.

It’s not possible!

The dock is underwater.

Water is inching over the deck. The chairs topple and float away.

“Alan!” Agatha screams, grabbing my forearm in a death grip. She points. “What’s happening?”

I wonder what our chances are. Can we get to the car before the ground floor is flooded? Can we get out of the garage and onto the road?

A huge wave crashes against the front of the house. Water splashes us, and we rush off the balcony and slam the door shut. The next wave crashes against the door.

I think it’s too late.

I hope I’m dreaming. I didn’t want to get up early to go out on the boat with Agatha in the first place. I could be sleeping.

I take a step backwards, away from the glass door.

The carpet is wet. I hear the splash as my toe hits the floor.

Damn.

I look at Agatha. She looks at me. I can tell she sees the truth on my face.

She takes my hand and leads me to the bed. We bury ourselves under the quilt and wrap ourselves around each other.

“It’s a dream,” I say, and then I kiss her.

She sighs. “A nightmare…”

But she kisses back.

We make love and try to ignore the slosh, splash, gurgle of the rising water…

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