Cradle Lake (26 page)

Heather must have heard the honks and thought he was summoning her, for she came out of the house in a blouse that emphasized the slight bulging of her abdomen. She had started to show recently, and she had found enjoyment purchasing maternity clothes.

“Well,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat, “that was sort of rude.”

“I wasn't honking at you.” He was still eyeballing Hank in the rearview mirror.

“What took you so long? We're gonna be late for the appointment.”

Alan didn't tell her he'd taken the long way home on the off chance he was being followed by Landry. And in actively keeping such information at bay, he couldn't help but realize the absurdity of it, too. After all, what point was
there in giving Landry the slip? The sheriff obviously knew where he lived. In that regard, why would Landry want to follow him in the first place?

They're trying to get inside my head, mess up my thoughts.
He pulled out of the driveway too fast; the Toyota's undercarriage barked and Heather shot him a barely perceived glare.
They're trying to protect their precious fucking lake. And they're keeping tabs on me now, watching me around the clock like a goddamn prisoner.

It angered him to think that he had to abide by their rules, their restrictions. Who were they to tell him he couldn't swim in a goddamn lake? What authority did they have over him?

None.

“I don't want to be late, but I still want to get there in one piece,” Heather said, watching the car's speedometer climb.

“Sorry.” He eased the Toyota to a slow gallop. His mind was reeling, and his knuckles were white as he squeezed the steering wheel. Taking deep breaths, he loosened his grip and ran the back of his hand across his sweaty brow.

Heather frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding forcibly calm to his own ears. “Why?”

“You seem nervous.”

“Do I?”

“Are you worried about something?”

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

“I've been feeling fine, you know.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

He took the moment to glance in the rearview mirror to see if anyone was following him.

“Everything's gonna be okay this time. I can feel it.”

“Me too,” he lied. “I can feel it, too.”

They arrived at the hospital with only a few minutes to spare. Alan let Heather out at the entrance, then parked in the garage. Riding the elevator to the third floor, he felt jittery and unlike himself. When the doors swished open and a rotund woman with a walker got on, he was quick to pop out of the elevator before realizing he was only on the second floor. He hurried down the corridor and took the fire stairs up one flight.

Heather was already with Dr. Regina Crawford when Alan arrived in the examination room.

“There's the proud papa,” Dr. Crawford said, not looking up from the dials on the sonogram monitor.

Alan stepped toward the back of the room, his hands fumbling with each other in front of him. For some reason, his heart was slamming in his chest and he couldn't get himself to calm down. Sweat broke out along his chest, dampening his shirt. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been to the lake—two or three days ago?—and wondered if its effects were wearing off.

Dr. Crawford assisted Heather in lifting her blouse, exposing the pale white bulb of her belly. Dr. Crawford got a white towel and tucked it partway into the waistband of Heather's pants, then folded the section of towel over her groin. She took a tube the size of a canister of caulk and squirted bluish gel onto Heather's stomach.

“Cold,” Heather said.

“Sorry, hon.” Dr. Crawford put on a pair of rubber gloves. “Have we been feeling any movement?”

“I think so. It's hard to tell.”

“You'll probably only feel the really extreme movements. All those small kicks and jabs will just feel like indigestion at this point.”

“God knows I've been feeling
that,”
Heather said and offered her doctor a crooked half smile.

“Okay, here we go,” Dr. Crawford said, and the sonogram monitor blinked once, twice.

Alan held his breath.

What is it?
Jimmy Carmichael's voice said from the back of his head.
What's got you so rattled, sport? Ain't you been heading down them happy trails, boyo?

For a split second, he worried if the sonogram would find nothing—that there was no baby inside Heather …

Stop it.

Static, morphing shapes alternated on the screen. A tubular protrusion grew in size as Dr. Crawford manipulated the transducer across Heather's abdomen. On the monitor, the protrusion gave way to an ovoid chamber. The thing within the chamber moved with surprising forcefulness.

“Hold on,” Dr. Crawford said, still manipulating the transducer. “Roll a bit on your side, so I can get a better view.”

Heather rolled over with a groan.

Alan remained standing against the wall, his hands still fidgeting with each other.

In the center of the monitor sat the suggestion of a tiny cranium and the slender, tapered swipe of a small shoulder and arm. A foot, all five toes clearly visible—

(in the bag)

—on the screen.

“Oh, wow,” Heather breathed.

As Dr. Crawford once again adjusted the transducer, the image on the screen rolled onto its side, bringing its profile briefly into relief.

Alan released an audible gasp.

A single oblong eyeball fitted above two narrow slits for nostrils … a mouth like a ragged slash through which he swore he could make out the suggestion of teeth filed into sharklike points …

Both Heather and Dr. Crawford turned to him.

He smiled at them weakly, then looked back to the monitor. The child's head turned away from him, presenting only the back of its skull. He could see the contours of the brain. A normal-shaped head. Alan blinked and convinced himself, by the stares of both his wife and the doctor, that he was seeing things, that his eyes were playing tricks on him and everything was fine.

Nonetheless, he had to ask. “How does everything look?”

“We seem to be coming along nicely,” said Dr. Crawford. “We're going to take a few snapshots and measure the head, the hips, the leg bones. We can better narrow the due date based on the rate of growth.”

Alan ran a hand along the back of his neck. His palm came away moist with perspiration.

After Dr. Crawford had taken the measurements and snapshots, she said, “Okay, folks. If we can get the little fellow to turn around again, we might be able to determine the sex—”

“No,” Alan said, and it was nearly a bark.

Again, both Heather and Dr. Crawford turned to him.

“I mean, we haven't discussed whether or not we want to know,” he quickly amended. But in reality, he didn't want to see the baby turn again. He didn't want to see what it looked like.

“Oh,” Heather said.

Alan looked at her. “Is that okay?”

“Well,” she said, “I guess it might be nice to be surprised.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Dr. Crawford said. “Because if you don't want to know now, you won't know until you deliver.”

Heather's gaze volleyed between Alan and the doctor.

“I can have you both look away,” Dr. Crawford suggested, “and I can take a peek myself. Then I'll write it down on a piece of paper. If you change your minds at any time, you'll have your answer in an envelope.”

“Yes,” Heather said. “Do that.”

“Okay. Just roll over on your side some more, honey. And I'll tell you when to look away from the screen. You too, papa.”

Alan turned away.

A minute went by before Dr. Crawford said, quietly and to herself, “Okay, there we are.” Then louder: “You folks can turn back now.” She replaced the transducer on its stand beside the monitor and peeled off one rubber glove.

By the time they left Dr. Regina Crawford's office, Alan was already beginning to feel somewhat better.

Heather was in high spirits. She held on to the envelope Dr. Crawford had given them with the sex of the baby written inside, tempted to open it. In the end, she stuffed it into her purse and turned the car radio up loud, singing with an
old Leonard Cohen song.

They stopped for dinner at an Italian restaurant outside of town and had a nice time. The food and ambiance calmed him, and by the time darkness settled over the town and they returned home, Alan was feeling pretty damn good.

Yet later that night he awoke in a panic. Sweating, breathing heavily, he was again overcome by the sensation that someone—or something—else was in the house with them. He flipped the sheets off and pulled on a pair of dungarees. Again, he searched the house but could find nothing. The vines had been a constant nuisance, but he had been fastidious about cutting them away each time they appeared, climbing a wall or winding through a space in the floorboards, and there were no more vines to be seen. He retrieved the stepladder from the pantry and climbed into the attic. But there were no more vines up there, either.

The weather is getting colder,
he told himself, replacing the stepladder to the pantry.
The vines won't start growing again until the spring. They'll get brittle and die off when winter comes.

Or so he hoped.

His ulcer was simmering in the pit of his stomach. Instead of climbing back into bed beside his wife, he laced up his sneakers and pulled on a hooded sweatshirt, then crept outside. It was dark, and a low cloud cover kept the stars from shining. The moon was visible in the distance, a scythe-shaped grin behind wisps of clouds. A flashlight would have been beneficial, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. Anyone could be watching. Cautiously, he scanned the street for Landry's police car, but the street was empty, silent. No lights were on in the Gerski house.

He crossed the backyard. He could see the path clearly
now, as the leaves had fallen from the trees. He hesitated before entering the woods, recalling what Cory Morris had pointed out to him on Halloween night: the pale, fleeting visage of a man—or what looked to be a man—and that nondescript, lumbering
thing
he'd glimpsed moving through the trees. Was it the Great Spirit? What had George Young Calf Ribs called it? Yowa? Or possibly the thing that had taken those campers out on Packer's Pass, the thing the old Indian at the bar in Devil's Stone told him about? Alan couldn't recall the Cherokee name for it, but he remembered all too clearly the translation: He Who Lives in the Woods.

A chill traced down his spine.

Then a moment later, steeling his courage, he cut through the trees and started down the path.

Thanksgiving Day at the Gerski house carried with it the subtle nuance of deception. Alan felt it the moment he and Heather came through the front door, a casserole dish in Heather's hands, a bottle of Chianti in his.

Catherine took the casserole dish from Heather and asked if she could touch Heather's stomach. Heather smiled and told her sure, and the girl caressed the side of Heather's abdomen with hesitant wonder. Then Heather and Catherine disappeared into the kitchen where Lydia was pulling the turkey out of the oven.

Hank invited him into the living room where he opened the bottle of wine and poured them both a glass. Hank made a brief toast and they clinked glasses. Alan recognized the Paul Desmond record that was playing on the stereo:
Late Lament.
It was one his father had listened to, his old man's taste in music perhaps his only redeeming quality.

“So,” Hank said, “did you find out the sex of the baby yet?”

“No. We've decided to wait.”

“Oh, well, okay.” Hank grinned, his teeth already purpling from the Chianti. “You wanna step out back? I got a couple of cigars we could smoke.”

He'd been trying to quit smoking in preparation for the baby, but it hadn't been going so well.
Fuck it,
he thought, following Hank to the backyard. There was plenty of time left for him to quit.

The sky was overcast. Great charcoal-colored clouds had settled upon the distant treetops like horizontal bands of smoke. The distinct scent of burning firewood hung in the air.

Hank unwrapped two cigars, cut them, and handed one to Alan, along with a butane lighter. Alan lit his cigar, then handed the lighter back to Hank, who lit his own, sucking on the end vehemently. Both men expelled plumes of grayish smoke into the still air, where it appeared to float away and join the distant clouds.

“You been feeling good?” Hank asked. “You look good.”

“Sure,” Alan said.

“About ready to be a dad?”

“Yeah, I think I am.”

“Well,” Hank said, examining his cigar between two fingers, “I guess you don't have much of a choice now, huh?” He chuckled but there was nothing humorous about it.

It was at that moment Alan sensed an undertone. His guard went up immediately.

“Listen,” Hank said, “I've been meaning to bring up something, but I didn't want to do it in front of the women. I was hoping you and I would pick up where we left off—
you know, drinking beers together and what have you—but you've been pretty busy with Heather and the pregnancy, I guess. Which is understandable. No hard feelings is what I mean.”

“What is it?” The cigar suddenly tasted bitter. “What did you want?”

Hank seemed uncomfortable. “Well, I mean, I don't want you to think I'm
accusing
you of anything. It's just … see, I've been thinking about some things and …”

“Spit it out.”

Hank sucked on his lower lip. He wouldn't look Alan in the eyes. “Heather told Lydia you guys couldn't get pregnant.”

A cold worm moved in Alan's stomach. “Did she? When?”

“Months ago. Before the pregnancy. Remember when I asked if Heather was all right? About … about the scars on her wrists? Well, Lydia talked to your wife just like I talked to you, and Heather told her about what happened in New York. She told her about the miscarriages and how you two couldn't have children. She told her about that night in the bathroom.”