Richard Laymon - The Lake

“ You don’t feel good, huh? Come on over and look at these. Then tell me you don’t feel so good.”

Mattie’s tone was serious. Leigh’s heart skipped a beat.

Mattie sank into a soft leather sofa, holding a large scrapbook on her knee. Leigh went over. Turning pale as she stared at the pages Mattie was flicking through.

Bodies.

Dead bodies.

Carved.

Placed in awkward, symmetrical, artistic positions.

Bodies of girls. Twisted. Writhing in their final death throes. Bloody. Naked…

Page after page of photographs.

Mono press shots. The blood all black and glistening.

A few in startling full color.

Head shots, showing the final agonies.

Faces pleading. Mouths wide. Screaming for the man with the knife to stop. PLEASE…STOP…

Leigh gagged, vomit lurched in her throat. She felt herself fold at the knees. She collapsed on the sofa.

“Wowww…,” breathed Mattie. “We gotta get outa here…But wait a minute, there’s something else. A letter…”

Leigh looked over Mattie’s shoulder at the bunch of creased, handwritten pages she was holding.

And read the words:

“I, Edith Payne, hereby…”

My God —not Charlie’s mother…

Quietly, the door opened.

FORTY-NINE

“Why, ladies. This is a pleasant surprise,” Mace said. “You wanna read my private stuff?” He snatched the crumpled pages from Mattie. “Here,” he said, thrusting them at Leigh. “Take a look, sweetheart. Ring any bells?”

“Mace, I’m sorry…”

“Oh, don’t be sorry, honey. I don’t mind you sneaking in here. Poking through my private things—”

“Wasn’t Leigh’s fault, Mace,” Mattie broke in calmly. “ I had your key. I decided to pay you a visit. Don’t blame Leigh. She came along for the ride.”

“Came along for the ride, huh?” A corner of his mouth lifted. But he wasn’t amused. His eyes were cold, dark as bottomless pits. Whatever it was he felt, he was holding it in. Keeping everything under control.

As always.

“So, Leigh. Thought you’d nose around, did you? Time you knew anyway. Time you paid the price. Finally. After…what is it now? Eighteen, nineteen years?”

“What d’ya mean, Mace? Eighteen, nineteen years?” Her heart lurched. Damn right she knew what he meant. What was he, Charlie’s avenging angel, or what?

Mace relaxed a little, easing into the game, getting conversational. “Read it,” he said. “And watch it all make sense, baby. Just a little reminder of that wonderful summer, all of those years ago.”

Slowly, Leigh took the letter from him. Meanwhile, Mattie’s eyes considered Mace. She was tense, ready to pounce if need be. One false move and she’d drop him. She knew she could, but she also knew that Mace was on the alert. She held still. Waiting.

“Go on, sweetheart. Read it. Put some coffee on, Mattie. We could be here for some time.”

He set himself down, legs astride a hardback chair. Grinning. Watching Leigh. Enjoying her discomfort.

“Hey, baby. Don’t mind me. Settle back in that easy chair, why don’t ya? Just want to see your pretty li’l face when you read what Deana’s granmama has to say!”

Mattie glanced at Leigh. Her eyes said, “You okay?”

Leigh nodded, briefly.

She sat on the edge of Mace’s armchair. With trembling lips, she looked at the yellowed pages. Ma Payne had a good hand. Legible. Of the old-fashioned copperplate school. Charlie said she’d been a teacher…

Leigh drew a deep breath. Quickly, her eyes scanned the pages, scarcely believing what she read:

“I, Edith Payne, hereby state the True Facts regarding my Three Children and the Terrible Events that took place after their Birth.On December 15, in the year of Our Lord 1963, I gave birth to three babies. Jess, Charlie and Tania. Their father was my husband Charlie Payne. My, but they were three fine healthy babies! Beautiful as ever three babies could be. My Gifts from Heaven, I called them.Firstly, I should state that I came to Lake Wahconda as a teacher. I taught the children of the lake people hereabouts. It was here I met and married Charlie Payne, a man of native Indian descent, and of little means and education. I tried to teach him to write, but he didn’t take kindly to this and soon gave up trying. He was a man content in his traditional ways.Charlie said little when the three babies came along, but from the start, he seemed fearful of our little girl. All the babies had a good head of dark hair, but Tania had more than the boys. Charlie insisted she was a child of ill-omen, mumbling some tale that a female child covered in black hair was a bringer of ill fortune. When he was liquored up, he spoke of this old legend, telling that a woman mating with a wolf at Full Moon would give birth to such a child.Charlie Payne was a simple man. He stood by his beliefs, and nothing I said could change his mind. Tania must die, he vowed, to save us all from misfortune. He was set on this path. I begged him not to kill our daughter, but he was deaf to my pleas.I knew he would soon kill Tania, so I stole Mary-Ann Baker’s baby while she was at the lake washing clothes. The child was barely a week old. I dressed her in Tania’s shawl and placed her in Tania’s cradle. I hid my own daughter in the woods. Charlie Payne took Mary-Ann’s baby, hacked off her head and sank her weighted body into the lake.This was a terrible thing to witness, and in my distress, I told him he’d killed the wrong baby—that this one was not ours. He demanded to know where I’d hidden Tania. Distraught, I told him in the woods. He went to find her. I hurried to the woodshed, took the ax and followed him. In his drunken state he tripped and fell in the undergrowth. I hacked him as he lay, screaming for mercy. I just hacked and hacked till he was dead.After the disappearance of her newborn, Mary-Ann Baker drowned herself in the lake. Folks still say they hear her ghost moaning in the night as she searches for her little one.

Teaching class and making baskets brought little enough money to support my children. People hereabouts were next to dirt poor themselves. So I gave away two of my little ones. I gave Jess to my friend Ellie Burke and her husband Tom, in Duluth. I believed Ellie would give him a good home and look after him well, as she herself had not been blessed with children. I gave my daughter to a family of travelers. They seemed good, honest folk who vowed they would care for her.I kept my baby Charlie. I loved him with all my heart, and as best I could, kept him away from all that is bad and wicked in this world.When my boy Charlie was almost grown, he took up with a no-good whoring slut. A vacationer she was, out for any innocent young boy she could lay her hands on. She seduced, then murdered him and walked free of this terrible crime. Accidental Death, they called it. But I know different.I pray that someday, God will repay this Jezebel in full for her wickedness. May her slate NEVER be cleansed of the terrible wrong she did my Charlie and me.Let it be known, this statement is for the eyes of my son Jess Payne only. Tania is long gone. Wherever she is, I hope she is happy.May God forgive me. All I want now is to Rest in Peace.Signed: Edith Mary Payne.

FIFTY

Stunned, Leigh let the pages flutter to the floor. She heard Charlie’s voice telling her “it” was in the lake. But hadn’t he mentioned a brother? Maybe that’d been his own conclusion.

If he’d been told he had a twin, he might’ve naturally thought “it” had been a brother. And it looked like Ma Payne hadn’t been in any goddamn rush to explain otherwise.

And who was Jess? Where does he fit in?

Mattie shot a quick glance in her direction. It said, Leigh. We gotta get outta here. Fast.

Agreed.

But first, we waltz our way past Mace?

Are you kidding?

“Where’s that coffee, Mattie? We sure could do with a shot here.” Mace watched Leigh’s face. Saw her bewildered, agonized frown. Saw how the past had leapt alive for her, prodding and poking her in all the most vulnerable places. He was enjoying the prospect.

“Time she learned the truth about her in-laws,” he thought, smiling softly. “The real truth about the genes her precious daughter inherited.”

All that Payne blood running through Deana’s veins.

His lips curved. His eyes glittered, black, sloelike.

Leigh got it, all right. No problem. The truth came at her thick and fast. She raised her head. Saw the smear of sweat gathering on Mace’s upper lip.

“He’s getting off on this,” she told herself. “He’s enjoying every minute of it.”

She knew it now. Jess was Mace .

Charlie’s brother. Deana’s uncle.

Oh my God, I don’t believe this. Please let it be some terrible mistake…

She thought about the insanity in the Payne family. Edith Payne, screaming at her, eyes dark and wild. Seems like Charlie’s pa was mad, too. Liquored up, and on another planet. A killer. Of a tiny baby. A baby hacked in such a horrible way. And Mace . Hard. Cruel. Raging when she’d uncovered him last night. Seen his black body hair.

Must’ve bleached the hair on his head to appear blond to the outside world. Trying to hide, eradicate, all trace of the familial black growth.

And Deana.

Oh my God, my darling daughter. Her thick black hair. The body hair she was always complaining about. From her father’s side. From the Payne side.

She pictured Deana, her own dark-haired daughter—the vision merging with Edith Payne’s Tania. But, she told herself gratefully, Deana had no manic streaks, no strange ways; nothing to say she’d inherited the “bad” Payne blood.

Thank God, Deana had West genes, too.

I was a bit of a rebel though, she reminded herself, recalling the hippie days, the demos, her anti-everything buttons pinned all over her clothes…A teenage rebel she’d definitely been.

But Deana hadn’t caused her that much trouble. Had she?

“Coffee. Black. And plenty of it!” Mattie brought in three steaming mugs on a tray.

“Gee, thanks, Mats.” Mace grinned. “Just what we need. A shot of good ol’ caffeine to get us all spiced up and rarin’ to go. What say you, Leigh darlin’?”

“Coffee. Sure,” Leigh said uncertainly. What a nightmare . Looks like he’s not going to let us go. So how do we get out of here in one piece…?

“Y’always did make great coffee,” Mace went on. “Am I right, Mattie?”

“Okay, Mace. Quit the bullshit. Whatever it is you and Leigh have got going here, I’m outta this place. You comin’, Leigh?”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mattie. You an’ Leigh ain’t goin’ anywhere.” Mace reached behind. Fingering his holster.

“Mace. You’re making one big mistake.”

“Come now, Mattie. You know better than to go against ol’ Mace. You know who’s boss around here.”

“Quit playin’ around, Mace, I put one call through and the cops’ll be buzzin’ around here like flies, an’ you know it.”

“Think so, Mats?”

“Know so, Mace. Just stay cool and let us pass.”

“You were breakin’ and enterin’, Mattie. And you, Leigh. Wouldn’t have thought it of you. So ladylike an’ all.”

“Mattie. Meet Mace, Deana’s uncle. Surprised, huh?” Leigh gave a mirthless laugh. She was playing for time. Trying to catch him off guard. What then? She’d no idea.

Go with the flow. Take our chances, I guess…