Beneath Still Waters Read online

  ing books only rumored to exist, and when he came back,

  he started talking to the Club. They became interested in

  his strange pursuit.”

  “They bought all that stuff?”

  “Not at first. Who would? But he did something that

  convinced them.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in the third notebook, June 8,1934.”

  Dan tried to remember—so many yellowed clippings.

  “I don’t—”

  “Parker Finney. Town drunk. Accidentally shot himself.

  The wound was fatal, and he should have died in minutes.”

  Leeper paused. “Only Hustis got to him, and whatever he

  did, it saved his life and convinced his friends to devote

  themselves to this new ‘science.’ ”

  Dan laughed. “I don’t know. It seems a bit farfetched.

  More strange tales from the Hudson Valley and all that.”

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  197

  “Let me finish. At first the Club used their new toy—

  whatever it was—to help people. Farmers prospered, ba-

  bies recovered from the flu, boom time for Gouldens Falls.

  But there was a price for all these good things, and slowly

  some of the townspeople became aware of that price.”

  “Price? What kind of price?”

  Leeper shook his head. “I don’t know. Not for sure. All

  I could find out was that some of the townspeople just dis-

  appeared. Dozens of lifelong parishioners stopped going to

  Reverend Passworthy’s church. Then some Gouldens Falls

  people, Arnold and Jim Browder, were arrested in Pennsyl-

  vania. They had a young couple tied up with ropes and

  gagged in the back of their truck.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “The papers didn’t say anything . . . didn’t even specu-

  late. They just treated the Browders as a pair of crazies on

  some kind of rampage.” Leeper pulled off an exit ramp.

  The sign read shooters hill road, and it ended in a dark

  crossroads with only a boarded-up house perched on a

  nearby field.

  Too damned strange, Dan thought. Driving along this

  deserted road, the moon looking positively alien, and mad

  Billy Leeper (’cause Leeper might just actually be crazy)

  talking about weirdness from the thirties.

  Leeper stopped the jeep. Then he killed the lights.

  “Don’t want any state trooper bothering us. Just need a

  break before I take us back.” Leeper looked up at the moon.

  “So I went to get the police report from the Buck Hill

  County police records bureau. It cost me a hundred dollars

  under the table,” he said with a laugh. “But it told me more

  than I wanted to know.”

  Dan heard a car approaching from behind them, the

  hum of its engine rising as it reached them, then falling off

  quickly as it streamed off.

  “The Browders babbled out some crazy story about the

  Club, something about the city paying them back. The report

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  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  said they seemed more scared of Hustis and his friends than

  the police.”

  “And what did the police do?”

  “They notified the Gouldens Falls police, of course, and

  locked the Browders up. Three days later the brothers

  hanged themselves—side by side—in the same cell.”

  Leeper fiddled around in the glove compartment of his

  jeep and pulled out his pipe.

  “It’s all in the notebooks, Dan. You could read it your-

  self . . . if there was time. Even after that I still didn’t know what was going on, not really, and how it would end.”

  He filled his pipe with some sweet-smelling tobacco

  and lit it. Pungent smoke filled the small cabin of the jeep.

  “For that part of the story I had to track down Reverend

  Duncan Passworthy.” Leeper looked right at Dan, his eyes

  glowing now. “He was on my list of old Gouldens Falls

  people—the ones still alive—to speak to. I didn’t know if

  he was living. I found him in a Lutheran nursing home in

  northern New Jersey. At first he wouldn’t talk to me about

  the town, the dam, anything. When he found out who I was,

  he told me just enough to scare the hell out of me.”

  Leeper paused. “It was the worst thirty minutes I ever

  spent with anyone.”

  Dan licked his lips.

  “Passworthy said the Club owned the town. Completely.

  What started as a friendly group soon bred fear and terror

  in everyone. Those who didn’t do as the Club said, had un-

  fortunate ‘accidents.’ You’ve seen the clips. Passworthy’s

  church became a ghostly shell. Nobody would risk com-

  ing. He feared for his life. Slowly Passworthy started meet-

  ing with a few other people . . . a handful of brave souls.

  They had secret meetings, with each of them deathly afraid

  that the Club would find out . . . and afraid of what the

  Club would do to them.”

  “Nasty group.”

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  199

  “There’s more. Passworthy said that Gouldens Falls

  was supposed to be the first town . . . the first of many.”

  Dan stuck his head out the window a bit, gulping in the

  fresh air. “And Passworthy and his friends stopped them?”

  “Yes. But he wouldn’t tell me how. He only said that the

  reservoir was planned to bury many things . . . many things.

  They convinced the governor in Albany to help them, and

  he ran the project through all the red tape.”

  “Did they kill them, the Club?”

  “He told me only two more things, two things I’m going

  to tell you now, Dan.” Leeper puffed on his pipe, the bulb

  glowing a fiery red. “He said he put his story in a diary—

  telling everything. Underneath the nave of his church.

  Buried with the town. With everything. It’s under the third

  stone from the north wall.”

  “Not exactly a handy location, under a couple million

  gallons of water.”

  “And Passworthy said something else. He said that they

  failed. That they didn’t end it. Because. Dan, one person

  got away. Passworthy said if he ever came back, it would

  start all over again. Maybe worse than ever before.”

  Leeper started the jeep, startling Dan. He edged it for-

  ward, turned left, and took it onto the ramp leading to the

  Taconic Parkway south.

  “He’s back, Dan. The last member of the Club. Martin

  Parks. And that’s why all this is happening. And,” Leeper

  said, giving him an uncomfortable grin, “I’m afraid you’ll

  have to get that diary.”

  S E V E N T E E N

  Sometimes, Dan thought, you get your wish.

  After all, he actually wanted to dive down to the sunken

  town— yeah, because he wanted the story behind its inun-

  dation.

  Now his wishes had been granted. And what better story

  than some mysterious diary buried for fifty years under a

  lake?

  He lowered his battered tanks gently into the back of his

  Rover. It wouldn’t do to go waking up his neighbors in the

 
; motel. Leeper sat inside Dan’s room, on the bed, sketching

  an old map of the town, indicating just where the church

  was.

  It was all so strange. Like giving directions to Aunt

  Mathilde’s. Just make a left at the drugstore and keep on

  going until you see a graveyard. Can’t miss it, chum, even

  under a couple hundred feet of water.

  The moonlight made his scratched-up yellow tanks look

  iridescent. He would have liked to have been using Tom

  and Ed’s gear, top-notch stuff. And the radio—damn, that

  would have made him feel a whole lot better.

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  201

  ( After all, we’re talking about a lake that has a pen-

  chant for making people disappear.)

  But at least he had Russo.

  That was an amazing stroke of luck. The police had told

  Dan that Russo was staying at a friend’s house. They gave

  Dan no trouble about giving him the number. He knew that

  Russo had taken Ed’s and Tom’s drowning’s bad. Susan

  said Rogers had to order him to stop patrolling the waters

  looking for a sign of them.

  So it didn’t take much for Dan to convince him that it

  was worth their while to go out, before dawn, and continue

  looking for them.

  The cops on the shore probably wouldn’t question

  Russo. After all, they had already seen Dan with the other

  two divers.

  He didn’t, to be sure, tell Russo anything else—not a

  word about the Club, the diary, and the other ravings of

  Billy Leeper. That would have been a sure way to lose

  Russo’s help. Let him think that they were just going to

  look for the now surely dead divers.

  That’s all.

  As for the other stuff . . . well, even he wasn’t sure

  how much he believed. It wouldn’t be the first time a

  group took over a town—conservative businessmen do

  that all across middle America. And Dan knew that inter-

  est in cults became something of a fad in the twenties and

  thirties.

  But even if one of the leaders of the cult got away, how

  could it have anything to do with this?

  Dan wanted to doubt, wanted to look at it as if it were

  just another weird tale, a new folk legend from the misty

  hills of the Hudson Valley.

  More likely there was some kind of current—a freaky,

  periodic swirling movement in the water. A whirlpool that

  pulled down Tommy Fluhr, then the divers, pinning their

  bodies somewhere . . . down there.

  202

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  (And what of Fred . . . all chopped into sections? How

  does he fit that theory?)

  No theory is perfect, he told himself.

  He checked that the tanks were securely positioned on

  the small, flat bed of the Rover, and he walked back into

  the room.

  “All set,” he said.

  Leeper looked tired and shaken. He handed Dan the

  map. “Let’s go over it,” Leeper said.

  It was five a.m.

  James Morton stood in the roadway of the dam, looking

  and listening for the sound of a truck. The repair crew had

  been due fifteen minutes ago, and he hoped that his direc-

  tions hadn’t been too confusing.

  His wife always said, laughing good-naturedly at him,

  he’d have trouble giving directions to go around the block.

  Just a darn tendency of his to mix up his right and left.

  Ambidextrous, he called it.

  Just as he was about to go look for a phone and call his

  office, he heard the truck. They stopped at the police barri-

  cade with the sign announcing that the roadway was tem-

  porarily closed due to construction and flashed their

  lights at Morton. He gave them a wave, ran over to the gray

  New York State Public Works truck. The crew consisted of

  two long-haired young men dressed in T-shirts and jeans,

  and Stu Schmidt, completely bald, built like a wrestler, and

  dressed in an immaculate olive uniform. His voice was jar-

  ringly loud and assured for such an early hour.

  “Had to wait for one of these young fellows to get his

  ass out of bed,” Schmidt said. He stepped down from the

  cab and stuck out his hand to Morton. “Good to see you

  again, Jimmy. So what do we have there?”

  The two young men sleepily unloaded pipes and hoses

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  203

  from the back of the truck, laying them out carefully on the

  road.

  Morton led Schmidt around the barrier, toward the road-

  way, and down to the dam’s interior.

  “It’s a bad leak, Stu—a couple of feet of water at the

  base, with an additional fifty gallons an hour pouring in.”

  Schmidt whistled. “That’s no little drip.”

  “Fortunately it’s easy to get to, and the dam still has

  electricity all the way down.”

  “Good thing.” Schmidt gestured at the platforms in the

  roadway. “What’s all this crap?”

  “The town’s celebrating the dam’s construction this

  week, if you can believe it. Speakers, fireworks, picnics, all

  that stuff. You see, you’re sort of the cavalry coming to the

  rescue.”

  “What else is new?” Schmidt laughed. “Well, we’ll do

  our best, Jimmy. The cement trucks will be here around

  noon. If all goes well, we’ll be able to give your dam a

  clean bill of health by Millertime.”

  “Good,” Morton said. Then he hesitated a moment.

  “There’s one other thing I should tell you . . . though it’s

  not really a factor now.”

  “And just what might that be?”

  “They had an earthquake here Monday . . . about a five

  or six on the Richter scale. Might have shaken things up a

  bit down there. I thought you should know.”

  They reached the heavy metal door leading inside the

  dam wall. Morton unlocked it and pulled back on the handle.

  “Well, thanks for that bit of comforting information,

  Jimmy. You won’t mind if I don’t tell my boys about that.”

  He smiled “They tend to get fidgety enough as it is.”

  Morton grinned back and led the broad and burly Schmidt

  through the narrow doorway.

  204

  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  Dan loaded the small police boat, feeling a bit like a school

  kid playing a prank. Russo’s no-nonsense attitude certainly

  helped them bulldoze their way past the two cops on duty.

  One cop wanted to tell Chief Rogers, wake him up and

  check out if it was okay. Russo simply gave him a wither-

  ing stare and shrugged.

  “If you want to wake your Chief up just to see if we can

  help look for my partners, you go right ahead. Don’t blame

  me if he rips your head off.”

  Russo knew he technically outranked them, and they

  both remembered seeing Dan on the first day.

  “Okay,” one of them said, hedging. “We’ll check later.”

  “In the meantime we’re going to do some searching,”

  Russo declared, pushing past them.

  Dan saw som
e workers on the roadway, unloading

  heavy equipment from the back of the truck.

  About time they got to that leak. And he remembered

  Fred leading him down the dungeonlike stairs.

  “Let’s go,” Russo said in a voice that brooked no dis-

  agreement, and he helped Dan finish loading his diving

  equipment into the boat.

  Billy Leeper stood there oddly frozen, just watching

  them and looking at the lake.

  Dan looked over at him, curious at Leeper’s sudden,

  strange silence. “You okay, Billy? Anything wrong?”

  Leeper shook his head.

  Than Dan recognized the obvious. Something he should

  have known. It’s the first time Leeper’s been here in fifty

  years.

  Fifty years. And he must feel like the boy he once

  was . . . scared, oh, so scared.

  “Bill . . . you all right?”

  “Yes. It’s just—you know—strange.”

  Dan nodded. He bet it was. Down there was his home-

  town . . . down there was Jackie Weeks . . . down . . .

  down . . .

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  205

  Leeper turned away. Dan thought he heard something, a

  sound like crying. He stepped out of the boat and went to

  Leeper. He put his arm around him and, in an unnatural

  gesture for him, pulled the old man close.

  “I didn’t expect this,” Leeper said, looking out at the

  lake. “The feelings, the memories. It’s all too much. I

  shouldn’t have come.”

  “I don’t know about that. Without you we’d know

  nothing.”

  “Let’s go, Dan,” Russo said.

  The sky had faded to a lighter gray. A faint tinge of pink

  in the east signaled sunrise. Dan wanted to get going before

  someone showed up on the scene to stop them. “Okay,” he

  said.

  Leeper turned and stuck the map in his hand. “Take an-

  other look at it before you go down. It’s going to be mighty

  confusing.”

  “I bet.”

  Dan got to the boat, and Russo quickly untied it. The

  small inboard motor broke the early-morning quiet. He

  brought it to a spot only a hundred yards away from shore.

  “How about a bit farther out, Jack, a bit north?”

  Russo had stopped the boat and flipped on the sonar.

  He’d been a pretty somber fellow before, but now, Dan

  thought, he was absolutely morose. “No. This is where

  I lost contact with them. If we’re gonna look for them,

  this is where we’ll start.” The small sonar screen came to

  life.

  “Yeah, but if some kind of current got them, I thought it