Beneath Still Waters Read online

  “Great,” Jackie said, gesturing at the town. “ ’Cause

  Gouldens Falls awaits.”

  It wasn’t his town anymore.

  Sure, the streets were the same, the houses, even the trees

  he used to pass as he made his way home.

  All the same, yet now totally different. The people were

  gone, and the town seemed to be waiting for something.

  “Isn’t this great?” Jackie said. “Hey, watch this.” And he

  turned to see Jackie reach down, pick up a stone, and fling

  it at a window. The glass shattered noisily.

  “C’mon, Jackie.”

  “What’s the matter? You think someone’s going to com-

  plain? They’re all gone, Billy Boy. For the next hour the town

  belongs to us.”

  He guessed Jackie was right. They were on Main Street,

  and it looked like a ghost town. The shops were all closed

  up tight, and down near the end of the block he saw the now

  blank marquee of the Glenwood Theater.

  The owner was probably going to use the big black let-

  ters in his new theater in Ellerton.

  He walked toward the theater, even as Jackie ran ahead,

  peering into each store.

  “No loot, Billy. They’ve taken everything.”

  Jackie ran up the block, noisy and excited, and Billy just

  couldn’t get himself to enjoy this. I want to leave, he

  thought.

  It was quiet here until we came.

  (His breath turned funny again. . . . )

  We should leave now.

  “C’mon, Jackie. Let’s get back.”

  “Sure, I just want to take a look at—”

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  9

  He watched Jackie freeze, his head tilted, as if straining

  to listen. “What is it?”

  “Shh!” Jackie took a step, first north, toward the end of

  Main Street, and then to the east, moving near one of the

  small side streets. “I hear something,” Jackie whispered.

  “Something like a kid, maybe a—”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  ( No. I gotta go. I gotta—)

  “Just listen,” Jackie hissed.

  He tried, craning his neck left and right, trying to pick

  up the sound that had Jackie glued to the street.

  Then he heard it, wishing that it had just been the wind

  or Jackie’s imagination.

  ( No. I gotta go. I gotta—)

  “Yeah. I hear something. It’s . . . It’s not a kid, though.

  It sounds like some lady. Yeah, some old lady calling out.”

  God, if it didn’t sound like a voice. Somebody was left

  behind. Yeah, somebody’s grandmother was left behind,

  that’s all. Forgotten when everyone left a few days ago.

  Sure, that’s what it was. . . .

  “Hot damn,” Jackie yelled out. “We’re gonna be heroes,

  Billy Boy. We’re gonna rescue someone.”

  Jackie walked down the side street.

  “Where are you going?”

  But Jackie kept walking.

  “I’m gonna find who’s calling out, Kiddo.” Suddenly he

  was afraid for Jackie—Jackie, who knew no fear.

  He ran up to him. “Look, I don’t think it was anyone.

  Maybe it was just something blowing in the breeze. A creak-

  ing door or something. C’mon, we gotta get back.”

  ( Please. )

  But his friend just looked at him as if he were crazy.

  “What breeze, lamebrain?” And he looked at the trees,

  perfectly still, not even twitching.

  So he walked beside Jackie, down Scott Street, not hear-

  ing the sound again, even though they both were quiet.

  10

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  Not until they were opposite a big brown house with a

  wraparound porch that curved to the rear of the house.

  And he heard the sound.

  It was a cry.

  He looked at Jackie thinking maybe he had imagined it.

  But then it came again, louder now, and oh, God, there was

  no question that it was coming from somewhere inside the

  house.

  No question at all.

  This big old brown house with all its shutters pulled

  down tight. Just like someone with their eyes closed. Like

  his dad on a Sunday afternoon, sitting in the dark green

  easy chair after dinner.

  Then Jackie wasn’t next to him; he was walking up the

  steps leading to the door.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “I’m going in. If there’s somebody inside, they need

  help. Coming?”

  Jackie grabbed the doorknob and opened the door.

  The sound was gone now.

  And then, with a shake of his head, Jackie was gone.

  Fine, ’cause he had no intention of following him.

  He’d just stand here, at the curb, with the morning sun

  in his face, watching leaves barely rustling, listening to the

  occasional bird, waiting for Jackie.

  Too long.

  It had been too long.

  He called out Jackie’s name.

  “Jackie! Find anything?” Then, louder, more urgent now.

  “Jackie!”

  A grackle screamed overhead in answer, and he jumped.

  He wanted to run now. Run all the way back to the fence

  and out of the dead town. He could watch it all get drowned

  while sipping pop and chewing on cotton candy up on the

  dam.

  “Jackie, come on out!”

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  11

  Where was he? In the basement, or somewhere where

  he couldn’t hear? Or maybe in the attic? Maybe he was just

  playing a trick on him, trying to scare him like he always

  tried to do.

  Sure. And the crying was maybe some old alley cat, hun-

  gry now that nobody was around to leave their garbage out.

  “Jackie!”

  He’d have to go in, inside this big old barn of a house

  with its windows covered. If Jackie was hurt, he’d have to

  help him. That’s what friends did. Sometimes you just got

  to do things you don’t want to do.

  Just like in Spy Smasher comics. There’s just times you

  gotta do things.

  He moved dully, almost forcing his sluggish feet to inch

  up the walkway. Hoping that Jackie would pop out. He

  climbed the steps. He opened the door.

  “Jackie? You can come out now. You spooked me out

  enough. Jackie?”

  He was standing in the hallway, so dark that he could

  barely see anything. And he smelled the stuffy, stale air of

  the house. And something else. Another smell. Just like—

  His breath went funny again.

  Frozen. He was frozen here. Unable to move farther

  into the house. Unable to leave.

  He heard steps and smiled.

  “Where were—” he started to say.

  But the steps were different. Slower, heavier. Not the

  steps of the fastest kid in Gouldens Falls Elementary School.

  And he stepped back, just a bit.

  Then someone was there. In the shadows.

  He saw a face, with small eyes and a mouth.

  Wet. The mouth was wet. Just like someone who gets up

  from the table to answer the door.

  “Excuse me, mister. I was just looking for my friend. He

  h
eard something and came in the house. Did you see—”

  But then his eyes picked up something else just barely

  12

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  glistening in the hallway. A shiny, wet trail that led from

  the old man back to the rear of the house. Like someone

  had dragged something and left a smear.

  And behind the man, he saw Jackie.

  His golden hair lying on top of the wet smear.

  ( No. I gotta go. I gotta—)

  And the man grinned, a wide-open smile that made

  Billy whimper.

  “Please.”

  And the man’s hands were on him, pulling him through

  the hall. And he screamed as loudly as he could. Moaning,

  twisting wildly in the hallway as the old man just dragged

  him along, and he tried to kick at him.

  But then he was in a big room, filled with people, all of

  them dressed up like it was a party, sitting, talking, laugh-

  ing, looking at him.

  Then they stopped. And the old man let him go.

  (The smell. Like when he and Jackie went fishing at the

  pond. When they cut the head off the catfish. Just to see

  what—)

  Someone moved behind him. Someone big and slow-

  moving.

  Someone who reached out for him.

  Caressed him.

  Held him gently by the neck and the legs.

  (And he thought of his warm bed, all rumpled from

  sleep, and a bowl full of Wheaties, and playing catch with

  his dad.)

  ( No. I gotta go. I gotta—)

  He pulled away, moaning and crying, slipping in all the

  stuff, all this—

  (Blood.)

  He turned and ran. If they catch me, I’m gone. Like the

  town. Gone forever.

  The front door was still open, and his Keds twisted

  through the murky corners of the hallway until he burst out

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  13

  onto the porch. And he kept on running, pumping, gulping

  the air, asking God over and over to please, please let him

  live.

  He never looked back. That would doom him. They’d

  catch me for sure, if I did that. Just had to keep going, had to reach the fence.

  He got to the fence, and oh, how he climbed now, hand

  over hand, feet chewing into the mesh, fast, faster, until he

  reached the barbed wire and tossed himself into the air.

  Toward the other side and safety. He didn’t see the rock

  he was about to crash into, because at that moment he dared

  to look back. Safety and home so close, he turned around.

  Then his head, flipping weirdly forward, banged into the

  rock. He yelled—a sound muffled by the thick woods—and

  a dark, almost calming blackness fell over him.

  And Billy Leeper lay unconscious.

  PART ONE

  1986

  O N E

  Fuck her, Dan Elliot thought for the hundredth time today

  as he waited, sweltering inside his Land Rover, to reach the

  tollbooth for the George Washington Bridge.

  I should have taken the Garden State Parkway, he real-

  ized with the keen navigational acuity so often provided

  by hindsight. He’d probably be in Ellerton by now, checked

  into the Motor Lodge . . .

  God, how he hoped it had a pool!

  And sucking on a Jack Daniel’s on ice.

  Fuck. Her. Just when things were starting to come to-

  gether, a couple of choice articles assigned and some real

  interest in his novel. (At least his agent said it was real in-

  terest.) Yeah, finally it was beginning to look like he might

  just have a career going, and they wouldn’t have to depend

  on her salary working as an accountant.

  But then she told him (screamed, actually) that she’d had

  enough. Enough threatening notes from everyone from the

  Southern Pennsylvania Cable Company to Messrs. Sears and

  Roebuck. Enough rush projects that had him either locked

  18

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  away in his office–cum–laundry room for weeks on end, or

  disappearing into the Amazon River Basin.

  And, she said pointedly, enough Jack Daniel’s.

  Fair. Okay. I can accept that, he thought, feeling like

  Tom Snyder interviewing an ex-girlfriend.

  Like hell I can. And once again he let his pain recede,

  not to vanish but to be savored at various moments until he

  could have enough drinks to blot out the whole mess.

  Like everyone else in the eight or nine crawling lanes

  waiting to cross the Hudson, he sat zombielike, holding on to

  the steering wheel, just inching ahead his Land Rover. Most

  of the people, hermetically sealed in their air-conditioned

  cars, looked up at him, sitting in the khaki-colored jeep in

  denim cutoffs, his T-shirt matted with sweat. Occasionally a

  woman driver would give him a slightly lingering glance.

  Despite his temporary dementia and need to shave, maybe

  he had not totally turned into some kind of toad.

  Jane may be gone for good. (She did, after all, take every

  stitch of her clothes out of the cabin— and every photo.) But in time he might soon enough be able to crawl out from under his self-imposed rock and face the world again.

  He reached over and picked up his Olympus mini-

  recorder. He pressed down the record button. “Get to the

  on-site engineer, Fred Massetrino, to set up a tour.” He

  clicked the recorder off, thinking for a moment, and then:

  “Check for the nearest dive shop, maybe in White Plains.”

  Click. Then again. “Get approval from the New York Water

  Commission, or whoever has authority.” Once more. “Call

  Omni to see if the check has been sent.”

  He put the recorder down as he approached the toll

  plaza. It’s amazing how slowly the people in the booths

  moved, as if this were the sleepiest damn day in the world,

  with just a few tired souls crossing the bridge.

  He handed the toll taker his two bucks and finally got

  his Rover out of first gear as he crossed the Hudson.

  There wasn’t any way he could look around as he

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  19

  crossed into New York, with the eight or nine lanes madly

  merging into three. It was like high-speed bumper cars.

  And that was just fine with him.

  Because he didn’t like bridges. Not big ones. Not small

  ones. And the sooner he was off, the better it suited him.

  Not that he ever told anyone of his secret fear. No, he

  didn’t want anyone laughing about some odd phobia he

  had developed, like the nervous wrecks who yelled every

  time their DC-10s hit a bit of turbulence.

  But it was different with him, different because he had a

  reason to be scared. Oh, yes. And as much as he didn’t

  want to, he let himself remember.

  He had been in Stamford majoring in journalism and

  beer blasts. It had been snowing, the first snowfall of the

  season. A wet, slushy fall that turned the roads into a shim-

  mering skating pond. And as usual, he had had a beer or

  two more than he should have.

  He was crossing the Housatonic River, on
an old bridge

  with an ornate iron guardrail, circa 1930.

  The railing was, unfortunately, long overdue for re-

  placement. Maybe even the whole bridge was.

  Suddenly a car to his left, a big black Caddy that he

  still saw in his dreams, cut in front of his Pinto. He turned

  sharply to the right. And then he straightened out. The

  only problem was, he couldn’t straighten his little Ford

  firebomb out. It just developed a nice, smooth slide. All

  steering totally inoperative, moving at a solid sixty miles

  an hour, right toward the neat Art Deco guardrail of the

  bridge.

  He didn’t believe it when his car went flying off the

  bridge, ripping the metal post out and separating the grid-

  work like it was so much taffy.

  Then he was airborne. A flying Pinto, he’d say, laugh-

  ing, when he told the story countless times later, leaving

  out his screams and peeing in his pants.

  And when the car hit the water, it snapped his head

  20

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  forward, breaking the skin in a neat, curved line on his

  forehead, leaving a scar, as the car sank to the bottom.

  Someone else would have panicked. No question about

  it. Here it was pitch dark, with icy water seeping in from

  the car’s bottom at an incredible rate, and the air suddenly

  becoming stale and dank. But not Diver Dan. If there was

  one place he was comfortable, it was under the water. He

  had done his share of night dives, plunging into everything

  from the Caribbean to the frigid waters of Lake George.

  And even though this was not exactly an ideal diving situa-

  tion, he knew if he kept his cool, he’d be just fine.

  He let the water seep in for a bit and then lowered the

  passenger window a few inches, just as he knew he should.

  The water shot across, knocking his head against his door.

  But gradually the car filled, until there were only a few

  inches of air left and the pressure was nearly equalized. He

  took a big breath.

  (And here he would demonstrate it for his impression-

  able dates or his fraternity brothers, comically puffing his

  cheeks out.)

  And opened his window all the way.

  The water was cold, but not as cold as he’d thought it

  would be. He crawled through the window and made his

  way up, wondering just how deep the Housatonic was and

  realizing it was a bad time to start thinking about that.

  Not too deep, he discovered as he broke the surface and