Richard Laymon - The Lake

When Mike turned his head slightly to check the rearview mirror, Leigh twisted around and looked back. A pickup truck was close behind them. Reflections on its windshield prevented her from seeing inside. The pickup swung into the other lane, gaining speed. Her stomach tightened. As the truck pulled alongside their car, a young woman nodded a greeting through the passenger window. Leigh glimpsed the driver, a heavyset man in sunglasses, wearing a ballcap with its bill tipped up. She settled back into her seat as the pickup sped by. A safe distance ahead, it eased back into the northbound lane.

“Something wrong?” Jenny asked.

“Just that guy back where we got the gas. He gave me the creeps.”

“You and me both,” Jenny said. “Not that he did anything in particular to deserve it.”

Oh no? Leigh thought.

“Too much isolation,” Mike explained. “It has a way of warping the mind.”

“He was warped, all right,” Leigh muttered.

“I feel sorry for his daughter,” Jenny said.

“Who?” Mike asked. “Mary Jo? What makes you think she’s his daughter? She and her folks stopped by for gas last summer. Ol’ Jody bashed their heads and planted ’em out by the woodpile, kept the girl.”

“That’s not very funny, Mike.”

“I guess not. You’ve got to admit, though, some pretty weird goings-on go on around this neck of the woods.” He glanced at Leigh. “There was a fellow a few years ago, Ed Gein—”

“Don’t get into that,” Jenny warned.

“Well, I don’t want to frighten you, Leigh.”

“Then don’t,” Jenny told him.

“But I want you to keep your eyes open while you’re staying with us. Just because you’re not in the big city, don’t let your guard down. We’ve got our share of weirdos.”

Mike was Dad’s brother, all right. This lecture had a very familiar ring to it.

“Mike is right about that,” Jenny said. “We’ve never run into any problems, ourselves, but…”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that.”

“Nothing serious. But you do want to be careful, especially if you go around anywhere by yourself.”

“I will be,” Leigh assured them.

As she gazed at the tree-shadowed road ahead, her mind traveled back to Jody’s. The guy there had wanted her to see what he was doing. That’s why he spoke to her as she was leaving, so she would look at him, see his overalls sticking out like a tepee. His hand in there. Moving around. Rubbing himself. While he stared at her.

Mike’s story took hold. She finished in the bathroom and opened the door, and stumbled over Mike’s body. Jenny was sprawled atop the lunch counter, screaming as the man plunged a hunting knife into her belly again and again. He stopped. He turned to Leigh. His face was splattered and dripping blood.

“Now you’re all mine, sweet thing.”

Licking blood off his lips, he stepped toward her. The knife in his left hand carved slow circles in the air. His right hand tugged his zipper down, reached inside, and freed his huge, engorged penis. He slid his hand up and down, slicking his shaft with blood.

I’d bite it off for him, Leigh thought.

No, I’d make a break for it.

She pictured herself whirling around and locking herself inside the bathroom. He kicked at the door. Her only escape was through the window. A tight squeeze, but maybe…She boosted herself up. Started squirming out. And saw the girl, Mary Jo, standing in the weeds below with an ax in her hands. “Oh no you don’t,” the girl said, and grinned. “We got her cornered, Pa!” she yelled.

Leigh’s heart was thudding. Her mouth was dry. How in hell would she get out of this?

Don’t worry, she told herself. It didn’t happen, and it won’t. He’s a goddamn pervert, but we’re out of there. We’re all in one piece.

If he had tried something, Mike would have fixed him.

Unless he took Mike by surprise.

Don’t get started again.

Why did Mike have to tell him where we’re going?

He isn’t going to come.

He could leave Mary Jo behind to pump gas, run the grill, and look after the shop. Take a gun and knife out to his pickup truck.

“You goin’ after that gal?” Mary Jo asked.

“Prime stuff, weren’t she?”

“Well, bring some back for me, Pa. You know how I like gizzards.”

Good Christ, Leigh thought. I must be going nuts, thinking up this kind of garbage. “Hey,” she said, “maybe we ought to sing something.”

“Great idea,” Jenny said.

“Do you know ‘Waltzing Matilda’?” Mike asked.

“Just the refrain.”

“Well, you’re with a couple of teachers.”

“Yep,” Jenny said. “We’ll teach you the words.”

“Singing’s dry business,” Mike told her. “Better break out some brews.”

TWELVE

Her experience at Jody’s stayed in Leigh’s mind like a spider huddled in a ceiling corner—a black speck, always there and vaguely disturbing, but not much of a threat. So long as it didn’t start to travel.

During the first few days at Lake Wahconda, Leigh watched for the man. She went nowhere by herself. She knew he would not show up. But he might.

Even if he didn’t, Leigh had no guarantee that someone with a similar warp might not be lurking in the woods.

The western side of Lake Wahconda was fairly well populated: a vacation camp with a lodge and a dozen small cabins near the south shore, and a chain of eight or ten cabins and A-frames, with a good deal of woods between them, extending up to the north shore. The nearest island had a large stone house on it. The rest of the islands were uninhabited.

It was as if civilization had captured the western shore and the single island, then ventured no farther. Except by boat. Out fishing with Mike and Jenny, Leigh sometimes saw rickety docks, ancient rowboats, cabins and shacks hidden among the trees. She occasionally heard wood being chopped, a distant crack of gunfire. People lived along these shores. A few, anyway. But Leigh didn’t spot any of them; she didn’t want to.

As the specter of the man from Jody’s diminished, Leigh began to take the canoe out by herself. She enjoyed the peaceful solitude, the feel of her working muscles, the challenge of making the canoe glide over the water. But there was something more—a sense of anticipation. Alone on the lake, paddling the length of its western shore, she felt as if something mysterious and wonderful might happen at any moment.

The feeling was vague and without definition at first. On the fifth day of her visit, however, that changed.

They had gone out fishing in the Cris Craft early that morning until almost noon, so Leigh missed her morning canoe trip. After lunch, Jenny had driven into town for supplies. Mike stayed at the cabin to watch a baseball doubleheader on television. Leigh, invited to go into town with Jenny, had declined. She felt restless and eager. She wanted to be on the lake.

“I think I’ll take the canoe out for a while,” she told Mike.

“Fine,” he said, looking up from the television. “Have fun.”

Outside, she made her way quickly down the path to the shore. The outboard was tied at the dock, the canoe beached where she had left it yesterday. She tossed her rolled towel into the canoe, then lifted the bow and pushed. The aluminum hull scraped over the sand, then slipped easily onto the calm surface of the lake. Leigh hopped in. She scurried in a crouch to the stern. There, she knelt on a flotation cushion, picked up the paddle, and swept the canoe past the dock. Her sense of impending adventure was stronger than ever. It gave her flutters in the stomach.

Fifty yards out, she turned the canoe southward. The sun blazed down on her.

Soon, her blouse was clinging to her back and she felt sweat trickling down her sides.

On her morning trips, she was always perfectly comfortable in her blouse and cutoff jeans. But she had anticipated the afternoon heat, so she was prepared for it.

Resting the paddle across the gunnels, she looked over the glinting water at the shore. She was across from Carson’s Camp. She saw people on the diving raft, a few swimming, others sunning themselves on the pier. The sounds of laughing, yelling kids and a distant, scolding mother came over the water to her. All the kids she had seen there during the past few days were young. Too young. The oldest boy she’d spotted seemed no older than twelve or thirteen.

Which did not necessarily mean that a guy closer to Leigh’s age wasn’t among them.

And maybe watching.

Her fingers trembled as she opened the buttons of her blouse. She pulled the damp blouse off, dropped it across her knees, and struggled out of her cutoff jeans.

She was wearing her white bikini, not the one-piece suit that Mom had bought her at Macy’s. The sun felt hot on her bare skin, but there was a mild breeze that felt very good.

She took a deep, shaky breath, bent forward, and slipped a squeeze bottle of suntan oil out of her rolled towel. She forced herself not to look toward shore as she spread the oil over her shoulders and arms, over her chest and the exposed tops of her breasts.

She felt her nipples harden, a low tremor, and moving, liquid heat.

Suddenly, she understood.

Those restless feelings. That sense of expectation.

What she was expecting was to meet a guy while she was out here alone in the canoe.

A guy on vacation, most likely staying at Carson’s Camp. Someone lean and tanned and handsome to spend her time with. Someone who would fall for her. The lake and woods were so romantic, especially at night. She needed a boyfriend, a lover, to make it all perfect.

So where are you? she wondered, looking toward shore.

How come you’re not swimming out to meet me?

Here I performed this nifty striptease for your benefit.

You’ve got to be there. Right? So where are you?

She saw only kids, a few older guys who no doubt had wives and kids in tow. She didn’t want an older guy. That would be scary. And wrong. She wanted someone her own age, or close to it.

Leigh picked up the paddle, dipped its blade into the water, and sent the canoe sliding forward.

Maybe he was watching her right now, wondering about her, wanting to meet her.

She couldn’t expect a total stranger to come swimming out like Tarzan or something. Though that, she supposed, was exactly the type of adventure she’d been anticipating all along, even if she hadn’t realized it until now.

More likely, he would arrange an “accidental” meeting. Position himself out here in a boat, tomorrow, pretending to fish while he waited for her to come along.

Dream on, she thought. This is Boondocks U.S.A., and the chances of running into Frankie Avalon out here are about zip.

Frankie Avalon isn’t such a…Troy Donohue, he’d be more like it. Since you’re dreaming, dream big.

She smiled and shook her head at the irony of it. Hey Mom, hey Dad, get a load of your reactionary kid paddling around a lake with visions of Troy Donohue dancing in her head.

Nearing the southern shore, she turned the canoe around and started back. How come I’ve suddenly got boys on the brain? she wondered. It wasn’t that way at all, back in Marin. She hadn’t gone regularly with a guy since Steve when she was a sophomore, and that hadn’t been any great romance.

She would still be a virgin if it weren’t for that time she got high with Larry Bills last November. They shared a joint in his station wagon after leaving the Charles Van Damm. She hardly even liked Larry Bills. But that night, she was feeling lonely and horny, and the grass made her very horny, and it just happened. It wasn’t too bad, either. But she’d made up her mind, after that, not to get it on with anyone unless she really liked him. A lot. She found plenty of guys she liked, and scads of them who obviously wanted to make it with her, some calling her uptight when she refused, but she’d found no one special enough. Which had suited her fine. The need just wasn’t there.