Date: 2012-06-09 16:42:13+02:00

AT DIAMOND LAKE

William F. Nolan

“I don’t understand why you won’t go,” his wife said. “I just don’t understand it.”

“We’ll go to Disney World,” Steve told her. “They say it’s a real kick.”

“To hell with Disney World!” she said sharply. “I want to go up to the lake.”

“No, Ellen.”

“Why no?”

“It’s too damn cold up there in the fall.”

“And this summer, when I wanted us to go up for the Fourth of July, you said it would be too damn hot.”

He shrugged. “I’m going to sell it. I’ve got it listed with a realtor.”

“Your father dies and leaves you a beautiful redwood house on Diamond Lake and you won’t even let me see it!”

“What’s to see? A lake. Some woods. An ugly little cabin.”

“It looks charming in the scrapbook photos. As a boy you seemed so happy there.”

“I wasn’t. Not really.” His eyes darkened. “And I’m not going back.”

“Okay, Steve,” she said. “You can spend your vacation at Disney World. I’m going to spend mine at Diamond Lake.”

Ellen worked as an artist in a design studio; Steve was vice president of a local grocery chain.

For the past five years, since their marriage, they had arranged to share their two-week vacations together.

“You’re being damned unreasonable,” he said.

“Not at all,” she told him. “What I want to do seems perfectly reasonable to me. We have a cabin on Diamond Lake and I intend to spend my vacation there. With or without you.”

“All right, you win,” he said. “As long as you’re so set on it, I’ll go with you.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll start packing. We can drive up in the morning.”

It took them most of the day to get there. Once they left the Interstate the climb into the mountains was rapid and smooth; the highway had been widened considerably since Steve was a boy. When his father had bought property on the lake and built a cabin there, the two-lane road had been winding and treacherous; in those early days the long grade to Crestline, five thousand feet up, had seemed endless. Now, their new Chrysler Imperial swept them effortlessly to the summit.

“We need something special to celebrate with,” Ellen said as they headed into the heavily wooded area. “I want to get some champagne. Isn’t there a shopping center near the lake?”

“The village,” Steve said, his hands nervously gripping the wheel. He’d been fine on the trip up, but now that they were here… “There’s a general store at the village.”

“Are you okay?” she asked him. “You look sick. Maybe I’d better drive.”

“I’m all right,” he said.

But he wasn’t.

Coming back was wrong. All wrong.

A darkness waited at Diamond Lake.

The village hadn’t changed much. A boxy multiplex cinema had been added, along with a sports clothing store and a new gift shop. All in the same quaint European motif, built to resemble a rustic village in the Swiss Alps.

Ellen bought a bottle of Mumm’s at Wade’s General Store. Old man Wade was long dead, but his son—who’d been a tow-headed youngster the last time Steve had seen him—was running the place. Looked a lot like his father; even had the same type of little wire glasses perched on his nose, just the way old Ben Wade used to wear them.

“Been a long time,” he said to Steve.

“Yeah… long time.”

Afterward, as Steve drove them to the cabin, Ellen told him he’d been rude to young Wade.

“What was I supposed to do, kiss his hand?”

“You could have smiled at him. He was trying to be nice.”

“I didn’t feel like smiling.”

“Can’t you just relax and enjoy being up here?” she asked him. “God, it’s beautiful!”

Thick pine woods surrounded them, broken by grassy meadows bearing outcroppings of raw granite, like dark scars in a sea of dazzling fall colors.

“Do you know what kind of flowers they have up here?”

“Dad knew all that stuff,” he said. “There’s lupine, iris, bugle flowers, columbine… He liked to hike through the woods with his camera. Took color pictures of the wild life. Especially birds. Dad loved scarlet-topped woodpeckers.”

“Did you walk with him?”

“Sometimes. Mostly, Mom went, just the two of them, while I’d swim at the lake. Dad was really at his best in the woods, but we only came up here twice after Mom died. When I turned fourteen we stopped coming altogether. I tried to get him to sell the place, but he wouldn’t.”

“I’m glad. Otherwise, I’d never have seen it.”

“I’ll be relieved when it’s sold,” he said darkly.

“Why?” she turned to him in the seat. “What makes you hate it so much?”

He didn’t answer. They were passing Larson’s old millwheel and Steve had his first view of Diamond Lake in fifteen years—a glitter of sun-bronzed steel flickering through the trees. A chill iced his skin. He blinked rapidly, feeling his heart accelerate.

He should never have returned.

The cabin was exactly as he remembered it—long and low-roofed, its redwood siding in dark contrast to the white, crushed-gravel driveway his father had so carefully laid out from the dirt road.

“It looks practically new!” enthused Ellen. “I thought it would be all weathered and worn.”

“Dad made sure it was kept up. He had people come out and do whatever was needed.”

He unlocked the front door and they stepped inside.

“It’s lovely,” said Ellen.

Steve grunted. “Damp in here. There’s an oil stove in the bedroom. Helps at night. Once the sun’s down, it gets real cold this time of year.”

The cabin’s interior was lined in dark oak, with sturdy matching oak furniture and a fieldstone hearth. A large plate-glass window faced the lake.

On the far shore, rows of tall pines marched up the mountainside. A spectacular panorama.

“I feel like I’m inside a picture book,” said Ellen. She turned to him, taking both of his hands in hers. “Can’t we try and be happy here, Steve—for just these two weeks? Can’t we?”

“Sure,” he said, “we can try.”

By nightfall, he’d conjured a steady blaze from the fireplace while Ellen prepared dinner: mixed leaf salad, angel hair pasta with stir-fried fresh vegetables and garlic, and apple tart with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

She ended the meal with a champagne toast, her fire-reflecting glass raised in salute. “Here’s to life at Diamond Lake.”

Steve joined her; they clinked glasses. He drank in silence, his back to the dark water.

“I’ll bet you had a lot of friends here as a boy,” she said.

He shook his head. “No… I was mostly a loner.”

“Didn’t you have a girlfriend?”

His face tightened. “I was only thirteen.”

“So? Thirteen-year-old boys get crushes on girls. Happens all the time. Wasn’t there anyone special?”

“I told you I wasn’t happy here. Do we have to go on and on about this?”

She stood up and began clearing the dishes. “All right. We won’t talk about it.”

“Look,” he said tightly. “I didn’t want to, but I did come up here with you. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it isn’t enough.” She hesitated, turning to face him. “You’ve been acting like a miserable grouch.”

He walked over, kissed her cheek, and ran his right hand lightly along her neck and shoulder. “Sorry, El,” he said. “I’m letting this place get to me and I promised myself I wouldn’t. It’s just all this talk about the past.”

She looked at him intently. “Something bad happened to you up here, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know…” he said slowly. “I don’t really know what happened…”

He turned to stare out of the window at the flat, oily-dark expanse of lake. A night bird cried out across the black water.

A cry of pain.

The next morning was windy and overcast but Ellen insisted on a lake excursion (“I have to see what the place is like.”) and Steve agreed. There was an outboard on his father’s rowboat and the sound of the boat’s engine kicked echoes back from the empty cabins along the shore.

They were alone on the wide lake.

“Where is everybody?” Ellen wanted to know.

“With the summer people gone, it’s pretty quiet. Too cold for boating or swimming up here in October.”

As if to confirm his words, the wind increased, carrying a sharp chill down from the mountains.

“We’d better head back,” said Ellen. “This sweater’s too thin. I should have taken a jacket. At least you were smart enough to wear one.”

Steve had turned away from her in the boat, his eyes fixed on the rocky shoreline. He pointed.

“There’s someone out there,” he said, his tone intense, strained. “On that dark pile of boulders.”

“I don’t see anyone.”

“Just sitting there,” Steve said, “watching us. Not moving.”

His words suddenly seemed ominous, disturbing her. “I don’t see anyone,” she repeated.

“Christ!” He leaned toward her. “Are you blind? There … on the rocks.” He was staring at the distant shore.

“I see the rocks, but… Maybe the wind blew something over them that looked like—”

“Gone,” he said, not listening to her. “Nothing there now.”

He pushed the throttle forward on the outboard and the boat sliced through the lake surface, heading for shore.

A hawk flew low over the wind-scalloped water, seeking prey.

The sun was buried in a coffin of dark gray sky.

It would be a cold night.

At one A.M., under a full moon, with Ellen sleeping soundly back at the cabin, Steve had crossed the lake to the boulders. He felt the cold knifing his skin through the fleece-lined hunting jacket; the wind had a seeking life of its own. He was able to ignore the surface cold; it was the inner cold that gripped him, viselike. A coldness of the soul.

Because he knew.

The motionless figure he’d seen sitting here on these humped granite rocks was directly linked with his dread of Diamond Lake.

And, just as he had expected, the figure reappeared—standing at the dark fringe of pine woods. A woman. Somewhere in her twenties, tall, long-haired, with pale, predatory features and eyes as darkly luminous as the lake water itself. She wore a long gown that shimmered silver as she moved toward him.

They met at the water’s edge.

“I knew you’d be back someday,” she said, smiling at him. Her tone was measured, the smile calculating, without warmth.

He stared at her. “Who are you?”

“Part of your past.” She opened the slim moon-fleshed fingers of her right hand to reveal a miniature pearl at the end of a looped bronze chain. “I was wearing this around my neck the last time you saw me. You gave it to me for my twelfth birthday. We were both very young.”

“Vanette.” He whispered her name, lost in the darkness of her eyes, confused and suddenly very afraid. He didn’t know why, but she terrified him.

“You kissed me, Stevie,” she said. “I was a shy little girl and you were the first boy I’d ever kissed.”

“I remember,” he said.

“What else do you remember,” she asked, “about the night you kissed me, here at the rocks? It was deep summer, a warm, clear evening with the sky full of stars. The lake was calm and beautiful. Remember, Stevie?”

“I… I can’t…” His tone faltered.

“You’ve blocked the memory,” she said. “Your mind dropped a curtain over that night. To protect you. To keep you from the pain.”

“After I gave you the necklace,” he said slowly, feeling for the words, trying to force himself to remember, “I… I touched you… you didn’t’ want me to, but I�”

“You raped me,” she said, and her voice was like chilled silk. “I was crying, begging you to stop, but you wouldn’t. You ripped my dress, you hurt me. You hurt me a lot.”

The night scene was coming back to him across the years, assuming a sharp focus in his mind. He remembered the struggle, how Vanette had screamed and kept on screaming after he’d entered her virginal young body… but then the scene ended for him. He could not remember anything beyond her screams.

“I wouldn’t be quiet and it made you angry,” she told him. “Very angry. I kept screaming and you punched me with your fists to make me stop.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “So sorry. I… I guess I was crazy that night.”

“Do you remember what happened next?”

He shook his head. “It’s… all a blank.”

“Shall I tell you what happened?”

“Yes,” he said, his tone muted, dreading what she would say. But he had to know.

“You picked up a rock, a large one,” Vanette told him, “and you crushed my head with it. I was unconscious when you put me in your father’s boat… that one.” She pointed to the rowboat that Steve had used to cross the water. “You rowed out to the deep end of the lake. There was a rusted anchor and some rope in the boat. You tied me, so I wouldn’t be able to swim, and then you—”

“No!” He was breathing fast, eyes wide with shock. “I didn’t! Goddamn it, I didn’t!”

Her voice was relentless: “You pushed me over the side of the boat into the water, with the anchor tied to me. I sank to the bottom and didn’t come up. I died that night in the lake.”

“It’s a lie! You’re alive. You’re standing here now, in front of me, alive!”

“I’m here, but I’m not alive. I’m here as I would have been if I’d been able to grow up and become a woman.”

“This is all—” His voice trembled. “You can’t really expect me to believe that I’d ever—”

“—murder a twelve-year-old girl? But that’s exactly what you did. Do you want to see what I was like when they took me from the lake… after the rope loosened and I’d floated to the surface?”

She advanced. Closer, very close.

“Get away from me!” Steve shouted, taking a quick step back. “Get the hell away!”

A little girl stood in front of him now, smiling. The left side of her head was crushed bone, stark white under the moon, and her small body was horribly swollen, blackened. One eye was gone, eaten away, and the dress she wore was rotted and badly ripped.

“Hi, Stevie,” she said.

Steve whirled away from the death figure and began to run. Wildly. In panic. Using the full strength of his legs. Running swiftly through the dark woods, rushing away from the lake shore and the thing he’d left there. Running until his breath was fire in his throat, until his leg muscles failed. He stumbled to a panting halt, one hand braced against the trunk of a pine. Drained and exhausted, he slid to his knees, his labored breathing the only sound in the suddenly wind-hushed, moonlit woods. Then, gradually, as his beating heart slowed, he raised his head and… oh, God, oh Christ…

She was there!

Vanette’s ravaged, lake-bloated face was inches from his—and her rotted hand, half mottled flesh, half raw gristle and bone, reached out, delicately, to touch his cheek…

Two years later, after Ellen had sold the lakefront property and moved to Florida, she fell in love with a man who asked her what had become of her first husband.

Her reply was crisply delivered, without emotion. “He drowned,” she said, “at Diamond Lake.”

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