Haunted Legends (37 page)

Bernice took a leave of absence from work that stretched into retirement. Going back simply wasn’t an option; seeing new faces in Dixie and Karla’s classrooms, how life went on without missing a beat, gutted her. Li-Hua remained in the counselor’s office. She and Hung had come very late to professional life and neither could afford retirement. Nonetheless, everything was different after the accident. The remaining Redfield Girls drifted apart—a couple transferred, three more called it quits for teaching, and the others simply stopped calling. The parties and annual trips were finished. Everybody moved on.

One night that winter, Li-Hua phoned. “Look, there’s something I need to tell you. About the girls.”

Bernice was lying in bed looking at a crossword puzzle. Her hands trembled and she snapped the pencil. “Are you all right, Li?” Her friend had lost too much weight and she didn’t smile anymore. It was obvious she carried a burden, a secret that she kept away from her friend. Bernice knew all along there was more to the story surrounding the accident and she’d pretended otherwise from pure cowardice. “Do you want me to come over?”

“No. Just listen. I’ve tried to tell you this before, but I couldn’t. I was afraid of what you might do. I was
afraid,
Bernie.” Li-Hua’s voice broke. “Karla called me on the night it happened. None of it made sense; I was groggy and there was a lot of shouting. People sound different when they’re scared, so it was a few seconds before I recognized her voice. Karla was panicked, talking very fast. She told me they’d lost control of the car and were in the water. I think the car was actually underwater. The doors wouldn’t open. She begged me for help. The call only lasted a few seconds. All of them started screaming and it ended. I dialed 911 and told the operator where I thought they were. Then I tried the girls’ cell phones. I just got recordings.”

After they disconnected, Bernice lay staring into the glow of the dresser lamp. She slowly picked apart what Li-Hua had said, and as she did,
something shifted deep within her. She removed the cordless phone from its cradle and began to cycle back through every recording stored since the previous summer, until she heard the mechanized voice report there was an unheard message dated 2 a.m. the morning of the accident. Since the power had been down, the call went straight to voice mail.

“My God. My God.” She deleted it and dropped the phone as if it were electrified.

Once her ankle healed, she packed some things and made a pilgrimage to the lake. The weather was cold. Brown and black leaves clogged the ditches. She parked on the high cliff above the water, the spot called Ambulance Point, and placed a wreath on the guard rail. She drank a couple of mini bottles of Shiraz and cried until the tears dried on her cheeks and her eyes puffed. She got back into the car and drove down to the public boat launch.

The season was over, so the launch was mostly deserted except for a flatbed truck and trailer in the lot, and a medium-sized motorboat moored at the dock. Bernice almost cruised by without stopping—intent upon renting a room at the Bigfish Lodge. What she intended to do at the lodge was a mystery even to herself. She noticed a diver surface near the boat.

She idled in front of the empty ticket booth, and watched the diver paddle about, fiddling with settings on his or her mask, and finally clamber aboard the boat.

She sat with the windshield wipers going, a soft, sad unintelligible ballad on the radio. She began to shake, stricken by something deeper than mere sorrow or regret; an ancient, more primitive emotion. Her knuckles whitened. The light drained from the sky as she climbed out and crossed the distance to where the diver had removed helmet and fins. It was a younger man with golden hair and a thick golden beard that made his face seem extraordinarily pale. He slumped on the boat’s bench seat and shrugged off his tanks. Bernice stood at the edge of the dock. They regarded each other for a while. The wind stiffened and the boat rocked between them.

He said, “You’re here for someone?”

“Yeah. Friends.”

“Those women who disappeared last summer. I’m real sorry.” The flesh
around his eyes and mouth was soft. She wondered if that was from being immersed or from weeping.

“Are you the man who comes here diving for clues?”

“There’s a couple of other guys, too. And a company from Oregon. I think those dudes are treasure hunting, though.”

“The men from the company.”

He nodded.

She said, “I hate people sometimes. What about you? Aren’t
you
treasure hunting? Looking for a story? I read about that.”

“I like to think of it as seeking answers. This lake’s a thief. You know, maybe if I find them, the lives that it stole, I can free them. Those souls don’t belong here.”

“I had a lot of bad dreams about this lake and my sister. I kept seeing her face. She was dead. Drowned. After the accident, I realized all along I’d been mistaken. It wasn’t my sister I saw, but her daughter. Those two didn’t have much of a resemblance, except the eyes and mouth. I got confused.”

“That’s a raw deal, miss. My brother was killed in a crash. Driving to Bellingham and a cement truck rear-ended him. Worst part is, and I apologize if this sounds cruel, you’ll be stuck with this the rest of your life. It doesn’t go away, ever.”

“We’re losing the light,” she said.

Out in the reeds and the darkness, a loon screamed.

Afterword

The inspiration for “The Redfield Girls” originates from a particularly spooky bit of topography near my own neck of the woods in Olympia, Washington.

A popular tourist destination, Lake Crescent fills a glacial furrow at the foot of Mount Storm King on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s a gorgeous locale, abutted by the Olympic National Forest, a region of immense evergreen trees and rugged mountains. One of the coldest and deepest lakes in North America, it is also allegedly cursed. Ancient legends of the
Klallam people have it that the depths are home to malign spirits eager to drag trespassers to their doom. In more recent times, a married couple vanished while driving along the cliffs near the water—some personal items were recovered, but neither they nor their car were ever found. The most famous tale concerns the 1937 murder of a local woman by her husband, who then sank her body in the lake. The corpse surfaced seven years later, preserved by the severe cold of the water as a kind of soap statue, and led to the husband’s trial and murder conviction.

Ghosts, demons, mysterious disappearances, and assorted macabre tragedies—such is the dark side of Lake Crescent. “The Redfield Girls” is the first story I’ve set in this region, but I suspect it won’t be the last.

Pat Cadigan has twice won the Arthur C. Clarke Award—for her novels
Synners
and
Fools—
and been nominated for just about every other science fiction and fantasy award. Although primarily known as a science fiction writer (and as one of the original, and only female, cyberpunks), she also writes fantasy and horror, which can be found in her collections
Patterns, Dirty Work,
and
Home by the Sea.
The author of fifteen books, including two nonfiction and one young adult novel, she currently has two new novels in progress.

As soon as the hitchhiker got into the Mondeo, he knew he’d made a mistake. That happened sometimes. After you’d spent several hours on foot, a car would finally, mercifully-thank-you-God swerve into the breakdown lane and stop. You’d approach with caution and when it didn’t suddenly pull away in a tire-squealing display of so-called humor, you’d run toward it thinking that your luck must be on the upswing because it was a very nice car, maybe even brand new. The people who rolled down the window would smile at you with clean, friendly faces and ask where you were going, not sounding at all like they were going to give you a Coke spiked with roofies and leave you to wake up in the woods the next morning stripped of all your worldly possessions, including your clothes.

So you’d practically leap into the backseat and even as you were sighing with relief because it was now starting to rain, you’d suddenly realize that the music coming out of the expensive in-car stereo was a live recording of an untalented child’s violin recital or Wagner’s operas or country music’s one hundred best-loved hymns. And as the rain pounded down and late afternoon turned to early evening, you’d have to decide which was more important: being dry or being sane.

In this case, the two women in the front seat were gigglers. They giggled like girls and they did it a lot. It wouldn’t have bothered him quite so much if they’d actually been girls, but they were both far from it—early forties at the youngest, probably older. Hardly ancient but definitely too old for giggling.

Of course, he’d already known before he’d climbed in that this might not be the smoothest ride he’d ever taken. From where he’d been standing halfway up the entrance ramp, he’d had an unobstructed view of the car circling the roundabout in the wrong direction—a sure sign that one of his fellow Americans was behind the wheel. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen an American do that, nor was it the most cringe-worthy. Sometimes he had been tempted to pretend he was Canadian.

But sweet God, he’d been standing on that damned entrance ramp for so long and it was starting to look like rain.

“Hi, I’m Doni,” said the one in the driver’s seat—no, that was the
passenger
seat. He kept mixing them up. “And that mad woman behind the wheel is Loretta.”

“Hiya.” The mad woman winked at him in the rearview mirror. The wind from the half-open window had blown her short, nearly platinum blond hair into a shapeless mess. The other woman had a mass of thick, curly dark hair caught up in a large plastic clip. They were such opposites he couldn’t help thinking it had to be deliberate, as otherwise they seemed similar to him. Their giggling certainly was.

“Are you two sisters?” he asked, and winced as they giggled some more.

“Nope, just very old friends,” the dark-haired one told him.

“Hey, who are
you
calling
old
?” the other woman demanded with feigned outrage.

“Friends of long standing, then. Is that more acceptable to you, madame?”

“Much better, thank you.” The driver flicked another glance at him in the mirror. “So, where are you headed?”

“Aberdeen,” he replied, watching big fat raindrops splatter on the windshield.

“We’re going to Scarborough. Just might make it by nightfall, too, if we’re lucky.”

“Dunno, could be asking entirely too much of luck,” said the dark-haired woman.

“My geography isn’t what it should be,” he said. “Is Scarborough that far away?”

“It is if it takes you forty-five minutes to get out of Heathrow after you pick up your rental car,” said the blonde.

“Not used to driving here?” he asked.

“One way to put it. You know, Doni actually bet me that you wouldn’t get in the car after seeing my little
oops
with the roundabout.”

“Well, to be honest, I’m surprised you stopped for me,” he replied. “Women almost never do.”

“Since we’re being honest, it was pure self-interest.” The driver’s giggle was sheepish. “I was actually hoping you were a Brit and I could get you to take over the driving.” Another quick glance at him in the rearview mirror. “I don’t suppose you’re experienced driving in this country?”

“Sorry. Plus my license is expired. Forgot to renew it before I left.”

The dark-haired woman frowned over her shoulder at him. “Jeez, you’re just no damned good to anybody, are you?” She managed to keep a straight face just long enough to make him wonder if she were serious. Then both women giggled and he made himself laugh to show he was a good sport. Then all at once she frowned at him again, this time with concern. “You’re not buckled up back there, are you? You really ought to be.”

He found himself unexpectedly touched by her solicitude. Dutifully, he struggled with the belt, which kept jamming every time he pulled it out. Then, when he finally managed to get it the right length, he couldn’t find the buckle.