Beneath Still Waters Page 15
This sinkhole stayed.” Leeper looked around, smelling the
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air, breathing in the place. “And a lot of people lost their
little beach houses.” He gave a small laugh. “But they
learned respect for nature, Dan. Respect for . . . power.”
“So that’s why your house is on a hill.”
Leeper shook his head. “No. Not for that reason.” His
eyes were screwed into a permanent squint in the bright
sunlight. “What are you scared of, Dan?”
He smiled, made uncomfortable by the strange question.
And it suddenly felt like he was having this dialogue with
the moon. “I don’t know. My phone bill. My ex-wife—”
Leeper grabbed his arm and squeezed, hard enough to
send a quick, painful jolt traveling to Dan’s brain. “No,
dammit, what are you scared of?”
The question was in earnest, and if he wanted anything
from Billy Leeper—crazy or not—he decided he should
answer.
“Bridges. It’s a funny thing, but—”
“What else?” Leeper demanded.
“I don’t know. Being trapped, not being able to
breathe—”
“What else?”
And he remembered a day.
He was ten. Tension was in the air, wafting through his
home like some kind of smoky fire. Building, building, un-
til everyone—his mother, his two sisters—knew that some-
thing, something had to happen.
His father had lost his job—Dan never knew why—and
had come home. He started drinking, talking loudly, walk-
ing from room to room, and the tension, the icy cold feel-
ing in Dan’s stomach, grew.
By the time Dan knew that it would be best to be out of
the house, it was dark. A cold, dark November night, when
the room lights seemed a poor replacement for the sunlight
of a summer evening.
Dan’s room was a mess. As usual it was filled with the
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flotsam and jetsam of a boy’s life. Rocks, soldiers, scattered
coverless comic books, sneakers, dirty clothes. A real pigsty.
His father stormed into his room—on his random
prowl—and then out again. (The voice now unrecogniz-
able, loud, yelling his name. “Dan! Where the hell are
you?”)
He hesitated, but then he answered his father.
“Have you looked at your room, that goddamn garbage
dump of a room? Just what the hell do you—”
His mom appeared, ready to intervene. (His sisters, one
younger, another older, both had notice of storm warnings
and had hidden away.)
“I’m so tired of you screwing up this house, so sick . . .”
he said, lingering over the last two words.
And young Dan—prisoner—tried to explain. Which
was a big mistake.
“Don’t give me that crap, just don’t feed me that line—”
And again Dan protested, then realized—too late—that
he had pushed the wrong button.
His father’s hand came flying out of nowhere, smacking
him solidly across his face with a blow that knocked him
sideways, off his feet, banging into a nearby wall and tum-
bling down to the ground (where his father looked even
more powerful . . . more dangerous).
His mother yelled—a shallow, weak sound compared to
his father’s roar.
Dan saw something he never forgot.
Never.
His father wasn’t there. For that split second his father,
who took him to ball games, who played catch with him,
who liked to take Dan to his Little League games, was gone.
Vanished.
Something else was there. Ready to hurt him.
Liking it—
And then, with the palm of his hand glowing red, his
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father seemed to change. He looked at Dan. His lips moved,
then, when no words came, he turned and left the house.
Leaving the smoky vapor of fear behind him.
What do I fear?
That thing.
That horrible, living rage that was in my father that day.
And it’s in me.
He looked at Leeper, who nodded and started talking.
And Dan listened to his story. . . .
“Nobody found me that day. To tell the truth, nobody was
looking for me. It was past midday, I could tell that from
the sun. I got up, rubbed the bloody bruise on my head—I
later found out I had a concussion—and started walking
back to my house.”
He climbed the dunes slowly now, following the natural
rise and fall of the sandy hummocks.
“I didn’t tell my parents what happened . . . not at first. I
don’t know what I said. Boy, when Mom saw my cut and
got all excited, I broke down and started crying. Then I
grabbed her arm and yelled—actually yelled—that Jackie
Weeks was still down there. Still in the town.”
Leeper reached down and picked up a crumpled, rusty
Budweiser can. “Which was a lie.”
“A lie? But he didn’t come out with you?”
Leeper bent the can in half. “No, he didn’t. You see,
Jackie heard something inside the house, and he went in.”
Leeper laughed. “Jackie was always the brave one, a real
adventurer. A good friend. He would have loved World
War II.” He paused. “But he didn’t come out . . . so I had to
go in.”
“And?”
“Dan, the house was filled with people. Filled. All of
them having some kind of party. Talking and laughing. In a
few hours the water was going to come. At first I just smiled
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and stared at the whole thing, embarrassed, half expecting
Jackie to come bumbling over.”
“He wasn’t there?”
“Oh, yes, he was there. I just didn’t see him at first. I
mean, it was dark in there. Dark, shadowy. No electricity,
you know. It had been turned off. None. So I didn’t see
much. Then I looked down. The floor was wet, slippery, a
real mess. I didn’t know what it was . . . at first.”
Dan could picture the scene perfectly, and he knew what
it was.
“Blood?”
Leeper nodded. “Twelve years old, and I was standing
in a pool of blood, all over the damn place. Then my eyes
adjusted, and I looked at the table . . . the party table . . .
where five or six guests were eating. And . . . and—”
His voice caught in his throat, and it lost its gravelly,
rock-hard steadiness, quickly degenerating into a blubber-
ing, whimpering sound.
“Jesus, I saw Jackie there. God, I saw him on the table,
in pieces, strewn all over, while they picked at it, grabbed
at the pieces . . .”
A gull screamed. And Dan felt his heart start to beat
faster.
“I don’t know . . .” he started to say mindlessly, search-
ing for something to bring some normalcy to Leeper’s
words.
(We need some normalcy here.)
; Leeper grabbed his wrist.
“Then one of them, a woman, held up a piece, and God,
she grinned and offered it to me. Actually held it up and—”
He snorted and dug out a handkerchief.
His honking blow brought a momentary release from
his story.
Is he crazy? Dan wondered. Lost in some kid’s Gothic
memory?
“One of them grabbed me, but I squirmed away—they
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were all slipping on the floor. I ran as fast as I could . . . as fast as I could. Funny, Jackie was the real runner, the real
bolt of lightning.”
Leeper stopped, and Dan noticed that he was heading
back toward his house. “And they found the house?”
“They found nothing. No one believed my story. Hys-
teria, I think the doctors called it. Too many Saturday
matinees. By the time they started searching the house on
Scott Street, there was a foot of water covering the whole
town. But they found nothing. No blood. No Jackie. Just a
boarded-up old brown house. They went on searching for
days—and nights—all over the town. But I knew that he
was gone.”
Leeper led the way up the hill, climbing more briskly,
as if eager to get back to his fortress.
“That’s one hell of a story.”
“It’s not a story.”
“I only meant—”
“Sure.”
A few clouds were gathering in the east, dark clouds.
“And after that . . . what did you do then?”
“I went to school, lived with my family, tried to forget
Gouldens Falls, Jackie, and the whole thing.”
Leeper opened the door to his house and held it for Dan.
“And did you?”
Leeper smiled. “What do you think? You think I just put
that little event out of my mind, went on with my normal
life, and forgot all about it?” The smile faded. “You think
that’s possible?”
He walked over to the bookcase. His hand reached up
to the top shelf and removed an old marble composition
notebook. Its yellowed pages seemed loose.
“This is my first notebook on Gouldens Falls . . . and
the dam. Started it in high school.” He replaced it, then let
his fingers trail over the remainder of the shelf, passing a
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dozen others overstuffed with paper. “My first notebook . . .
leading to my last. A life’s work, Dan. Crazy, huh?”
Leeper stood there, transfixed by a dozen notebooks,
some bulging, fat with clippings.
“That’s how long it took me to learn about it.”
Dan stepped closer to Leeper. He was shaking.
“Learn about what?” Dan asked, in almost a whisper.
“The Club,” Leeper said, turning away from the books.
“They call themselves the Club. I learned about them,
about Gouldens Falls, and—”
He laughed, a hoarse, manic belly laugh that reminded
Dan of some crazy shaman he’d once photographed in
Kenya.
Talking to the moon, the interpreter had explained. The
shaman was asking the moon for its help.
Leeper’s laugh punctuated each word.
“And the—hah, hah—one that—oh, yeah—got away.”
He pointed at the shelf. “They’re all yours. The torch,”
he said with a grim chuckle, “is passed. Take them the fuck
out of here. Today. Just don’t tell anyone where you got
them from.” Leeper went to the window and looked out,
at the darkening shadows on the beach.
“ ’Cause if you do, he’ll come and get me . . . and I don’t
want to be got. Not now.”
The old man—suddenly a scared boy—shook against
the window.
“Now take them and leave.”
T W E L V E
James Morton liked to think of himself as a conscientious
state employee. Though the life of an emergency safety in-
spector was none too thrilling, it offered a nice pension;
regular, if small, salary increases; and, when he was lucky,
the occasional oddity.
Like the Kenicut Dam.
While the phrase they don’t make ’em like that anymore
was an overused cliché, to his mind it certainly applied to
this baby. In fact, he would have thought they didn’t even
build them this way fifty years ago.
First, it was done fast. Usually these small dams sank all
the pumps and plumbing under the base of the dam, well
into the ground. It was time-consuming, just like digging a
caisson for a bridge, but it made the wall of the dam just
that—a solid wall, really rooted to the bedrock.
But this dam was rooted to a solid slab of poured con-
crete, big, probably buried down fairly deep, but done too
fast. And what made it worse, all the pumping stuff was in-
side the wall. Okay for a small dam, but this wall was hold-
ing back a good-sized lake.
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How many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water?
Pressing against the wall, day after day, year after year . . .
A fast piece of work.
Still, checking the wall as he walked down the metal
stairs, everything looked in good shape. In fact, it looked
reassuringly strong, with massive stone blocks on both
sides of the spiral stairs leading down.
The lighting, though, was for the birds. Just a random
bulb hanging here and there.
He began to worry as he neared the base that his tungsten
lamp was fading, yellowing. He banged it, hoping to encour-
age a battery to a few more minutes of light. Just long
enough so he could check the leak . . . if there was a leak.
“I’m getting a bit too old for all this climbing around,”
he said, grunting. He was comfortable talking to himself—
an occupational necessity, he conceded. It didn’t bother
him to hear his voice echoing strangely around him, no one
answering.
He kind of liked it, actually.
He let the lamp fall on the main heater pipes, snaking
their way left and right. They looked in good condition.
“No problem,” he said, his yellowish lamp moving back
and forth.
But he could smell the water.
Then he stepped into it.
“Shee-it,” he said, allowing himself one of his infre-
quent lapses from his normally reserved speech. (Since
discovering religion ten years ago, he’d become a pillar of
his small Lutheran church. It was as much a part of his life
as his thirty-plus years of marriage.)
The water—ice-cold—quickly soaked his right foot. He
stepped back onto a higher, dry step of the staircase and
looked around for a pole or something he could stick into
the water to check its depth.
“Gotta be . . . something,” he said, craning right and
left, searching for anything he could use.
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His light dimmed a bit more.
“Ah, c’mon,” he pleaded. “Don’t make me go all the
way back up.”
The fading light picked up a twisted piece of wire
wrapped around a pipe. Not much, but he should be able to
use it.
“Great,” he said, leaning out over the railing. “Yeah, close
enough now,” he said, his fingers just about touching the
wire.
He dug an index finger under the wire and yanked. It
snapped off suddenly, and he tottered backward.
“Whoa, you almost went in the sink, Morton. There,” he
said, looking at his prize. “This’ll do fine.” He straightened
the wire, crouched down—
And stuck it in the water.
The waterline went past his fingers, almost touching the
sleeve on his New York State Public Works windbreaker.
“Oh, boy,” he said. It was two feet at least, maybe a tad
more.
A trickle yesterday, and now two feet of water.
“Not good, not good at all.”
He stood up and started searching the northern wall for
the source of the water.
He found it just where the site engineer’s report said it
would be.
Only it wasn’t as described.
Massetrino reported a thin crack, barely visible, with a
tiny line of water running to the ground.
That’s not what this was.
The lamp blinked, and he gave it a quick bang. He could
barely see the wall.
No, this was like a gash in the wall, a couple of inches
wide, and who knew how deep.
And the water poured out of it like an open faucet, plop-
ping down noisily onto the flooded floor.
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“Oh, boy,” he repeated. “This is going to take some
heavy repair work.”
He started up the staircase. “First I’ll have to call Al-
bany, tell Mr. Karl, get a time here on the double. Yes, sir,”
he said, climbing the stairs. His heavy boots held the water
uncomfortably, and he thought, When’s the last time a dam
went down? And he knew the answer. Ridge Hill, Ten-
nessee, 1954. Just a small dam designed to protect the wa-
tershed . . . to help flood control. It had been built in the
twenties, and built badly. And when it went down, it went
all at once.
A few people were killed . . . some kids, some people
fishing. Some houses in the water’s path washed away.
Now you see ’em, now you don’t.
But there was no town on the other side of that dam. No
town, and about one third of the amount of water.
This?
This would be an entirely different story. Entirely dif-