Latham's Landing (4 page)

We stood at the base of the stairs. There was
no trace of anyone, only my footsteps in the dust, and Sandy’s.

“
We came through there,” she whispered,
pointing. I saw what seemed to be a porch with many windows off to
one side of the house.

“
Can we get back that way?”

“
We walked over from the glass house,”
she sniffled. “We couldn’t find Alice. And we saw a light on at the
house—”

“
You were here at night—?” I abruptly
cut off, remembering that the electric lights here didn’t work.
Gulp.

“
We rowed over a few boats and a
mattress last night. We didn’t know there was one already here. We
tied up the boats, but a wind came up, and the ropes snapped. It
was dark, and there was nothing we could do until morning. So we
partied a little, smoked some grass, had a little sex, and fell
asleep.”

“
Something woke us around midnight.
That’s when we noticed Alice was gone. We were going to have to
borrow a boat anyway to get home, or our parents were going to
ground us for sure. When we saw the light on here, we figured Alice
had gone over to the main house for some reason.”

I gave her an incredulous look. Her lucidity
came back instantly, anger flushing her face.

“
Don’t look at me like I’m an idiot! I
know how that sounds! But we didn’t want to admit to ourselves that
something had happened to her. It was even scarier to think someone
had grabbed her to lead us to the main house. We couldn’t
not
look for her! What kind of friends would that make
us?”

I felt guilty, thinking of Sandy still in
here somewhere. “Let’s look then, but we need to hurry, okay?”

“
I’m all for working fast,” she said
worriedly.

“
What’s your name?”

“
Laura.”

“
I’m Tina. Let’s go.”

I’d already checked all the rooms, but I
checked them again, Laura in tow. There was nothing, except now
there were so many footprints I couldn’t be sure which were mine,
and which were Sandy’s.

“
No one’s here. Come on, Laura. There’s
nothing we can do but go get help.”

I walked with her back outside, heading
toward the raft. To my relief the raft’s rope was still tied
tightly. But my heart skipped a beat as the raft itself looked a
little deflated.

I ran down to it. A quick check revealed it
was leaking air. The wind had shifted it against the granite rocks,
slicing open a small gash in the sturdy rubber.

I grabbed the emergency kit from inside it
and took out the duct tape, plastering some over the hole. I didn’t
have anything to re-inflate the raft and didn’t want to risk
opening the air valve, in case more air got out. For all I knew, I
needed a compressor to inflate a raft like this. Laura wasn’t going
to be any help…

I checked my watch. It was nearly six. Shit!
Where had the day gone?

“
Stay here,” I said to her, thinking
fast. “We’re going to have to go slowly, with the raft damaged, and
we’re not going to get back before dark, most likely. We need some
kind of light. I’m going to run up there to where the car is and
check the shed.”

“
Okay,” she replied docilely, her eyes
vacant.

I sat her down near the raft and ran up the
stone steps. I reached the garage and shuffled through the car,
thankful that Sandy had left the door unlocked. There was no
flashlight, but there were some flares and a few light sticks which
I grabbed. I shut the door and ran back down to the raft to find
Laura gone.

Christ!
I looked around and glimpsed
her shadow near the rocks. She was near the base of the house, near
a door I hadn’t seen before. I screamed out for her to stop, but
she opened the door and went inside.

I ran as fast as I could over to where she
had been and opened the door.

Water lapped at my feet. This must be the
part of the house that had flooded.

I couldn’t see well. I grabbed a light stick
from my pocket and cracked it. Light revealed a hallway, maybe the
hallway that Laura had showed me the doorway to at the other end of
the house. It seemed very long, and there was a heavy gloom at the
other end. At the far end, something seemed to move in the
blackness.

“
Laura?” I called.

There was a faint splash, then another.

I looked to my right and let out a scream.
Bodies were drifting in the water. I counted at least five, but it
was hard to see, and they were tangled together. There looked to be
three young women and two young men. One of the women had long
black hair. Black hair like Laura’s.

I ran to her side, splashing through the
water and turned her over. “Laura!”

Her eyes were open and unseeing, her mouth
open in a scream. There were bruises on her throat from hands.

I turned around and ran for the door,
splashing through the water, cursing my stupidity. I got to the
door in a few seconds, but it had somehow shut behind me and now it
was stuck.

I yanked at it frantically, pulling hard.
Again, from behind me, there came a faint splash. And then
another.

Something was coming closer. Something from
the end of that long hallway of watery darkness.

I didn’t look. I just grabbed the door and
pulled, praying to God the fucking thing would open. With a rusty
creaking sound, it opened just a few inches.

I wedged my body in the gap and pushed with
my feet, sliding partway through. I flailed, pushing and pulling
with my arms, still hearing that methodical splashing getting
louder and louder. With a tearing of cloth, I shoved free of the
door and got out into the sunlight, whimpering with relief.

I turned to shut the door. There was a dark
figure walking out of the shadows through the water. It seemed to
be a tall man, but I only had a glimpse before I slammed the door
shut. I grabbed the nearest rock, wedged it in front of the door
and then backed away, breathing hard.

I stood there for several minutes, calming
myself, telling myself it was okay, I was okay. The sun was out;
there wasn’t any wind, really, so…

A splash came from the other side of the
door. Slowly, the knob began to turn.

I let out a shriek and ran for the raft. I
pushed it out into the water and started the motor, not caring that
my socks and shoes were wet. Then I gunned the motor, not caring if
I drowned, so long as I didn’t end up on that island as a
ghost.

The journey back took me almost two hours.
Some of that was because I wasn’t used to the engine or steering a
boat, and I couldn’t find a happy medium between stalling and top
speed. Some of that was because the duct tape came off, and the air
leaked out more and more, the closer I got to land.

When I got a hundred yards out from the dock,
I knew I wasn’t going to make it. A wind had come up, and it was
forcing me back toward the island, even as my motor tried its best
to propel me to shore.

I finally steered into the west outcropping
of the lake, where a stream diverted out. As the water finally came
over the edges of the boat, I stepped into marshy stagnant water
and staggered up on shore. I pulled the mostly deflated boat behind
me and collapsed, praising God, and swearing never to set foot on a
boat again.

Several hours later, Fred found me. I had lit
the flares, all of them, and he rode up on an ATV. Headlights had
never looked so welcoming.

He deflated and stowed the raft, saying he
could fix it, then gave me a ride back to the dock. There in his
office, over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, I told him everything.

He just nodded afterwards. “Expected
something like that.”

“
What should I do?” I said, shivering.
“I feel like I should go back there, Fred. I abandoned
her.”

“
Some people you can’t save,” he said,
shrugging and pouring another glass. “You told her not to go back
in there. As it is, you barely got out of there, girl.”

“
The police will want me to show them
where I found the bodies—”

“
I’m telling you right now, you go to
that island again, you won’t be coming back, no matter who is with
you. Understand?”

I swallowed and nodded.

“
You’re going to go in and have a good
night’s sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll go out and look for your
friend.”

“
Why doesn’t it get you?” I asked
shakily, taking a gulp of whiskey. “You’ve been going there for
years!”

“
It needs me to look after it,” Fred
said resentfully. “The damned house or whatever it is that lives
there knows that, Tina, and so it leaves me alone. But the day I
retire, I’ll never set foot there again. And I’m always careful,
never going there after dark. It was the damn fool kids who stirred
things up, or your friend, looking for her kin.”

For a while, we just sipped our whiskey in
silence.

“
She was a ghost, wasn’t she?” I
whispered finally. “Laura was a ghost.”

“
I’d say so,” Fred said, nodding once.
“She was sent to stop you long enough to trap you there, long
enough for the raft to deflate, or something to sink its claws into
your soul. It’s God’s truth I’d not be talking to you now, if you’d
stayed there past nightfall.”

The rest is a matter of public knowledge. You
probably know it all, but I’ll go over the basics.

Fred went out to the island early the next
morning. He drove first to the Sea Room and found the mattresses,
and other stuff, and hung up the phones, both of which he said were
off the hook. But once he did, they worked just fine.

He wasn’t able to find any fillings, he said,
but he admitted he didn’t look that hard. He checked outside, and
sure enough, there was some frayed rope tied to one of the bridge
supports, but no boats.

He drove back to the main house and searched
it, top to bottom. There was no sign of Sandy. He said he looked
for footprints, but saw only hers and mine.

Last, he went to the bottom door I had told
him about. He said that the rock was missing. Yet the place where
it had been was obvious. The door bottom was broken, where some
powerful force had been used to shove the door open over the rock,
shattering the half-rotted wood.

Inside, in the flooded part of the house, he
found the bodies. The worst news was that Sandy’s was there,
too.

There was an investigation, of course. A team
went to the island and went over every inch of it, probably much as
they had twenty years ago for Sandy’s cousin Henry. But they found
nothing. No fingerprints, except Sandy’s and mine. And the same was
true for the Sea Room, except they did find the kids’ fingerprints
there. All five of them.

The flooded part of the house was too decayed
to risk draining. Divers went in and looked around in the muck,
hoping to find Henry, whose body had never been found.

That led to more questions, when they brought
out the old skeleton of a young woman. Speculation was that this
was Latham’s wife, but nothing could be proven. And that was all
they found.

The house was boarded up, all its doors were
locked, and notices put up that trespassing was prohibited. There
was nothing more that could be done, or so the authorities
said.

Sandy’s Aunt Red told me that in a letter she
wrote, telling me not to blame myself, that she blamed herself, for
telling Sandy all she had of Latham’s Landing. She told me it
wasn’t my fault.

But Sandy wasn’t there in the water with
Laura, Alice, and the rest, not when I was in that water-filled
hallway. She was brought there later or her body was.

I tell myself she was dead when I fled. I
tell myself I searched for her the best I could, and I’d just be
dead, too, if I’d stayed looking for her any longer.

Yet I know in my guilty heart she wouldn’t
have left me behind, if I’d been the one missing. She’d have
stayed, even if it meant her life, or that we’d both be ghosts
there forever. And that thought eats at my soul.

The Origin of Fear

“
You’ll have
fun, I promise,” Nikki said, her eyes sparkling.

“
This isn’t a trip to an amusement
park,” Daryl replied curtly, leaning back in his chair. “We aren’t
a bunch of teenagers out for a thrill. When I say no alcohol, I
mean it.”

“
Speak for yourself,” Sam said,
laughing. “Sure, you’re going for some kind of research for your
thesis, but the rest of us are going because we think it’s
exciting.” He signaled the waitress. “Check, please.”

“
I’m not sure,” Marie said uneasily,
rooting in her purse. “Breaking into a house sounds like a bad idea
to me.”

“
If they’d let us go there legally, we
wouldn’t need to break in,” Daryl said irritably.

“
Like you told us, there have been some
deaths out there,” Sam said with a shrug of his shoulders. “It
makes sense the owners don’t want to risk any trouble for a little
cash.”

Daryl scowled. “Even that damn old man who
runs the docks refused to cooperate. I offered him a hundred
dollars. He turned me down cold.”

“
You shouldn’t blame him,” Marie said
defensively. “He’s just doing his job.”

Daryl grumbled something, then took the bill
from the waitress.

“
We’re going to have a blast,” Nikki
said excitedly, throwing her money down. “The best part is that
it’ll be close to Halloween.”

“
We can’t do it that night,” Daryl
warned. “They’ve got extra security on Halloween, because of past
pranks. Police patrol in a boat on weekends regularly, or so the
dock man informed me. It has to be a weeknight.”