Summer at Forsaken Lake (5 page)

“What do you mean, there’s no sound?” Hetty demanded. “How can you make a movie without sound?”

“You’ll see. That’s how everybody used to do it. Ever hear of Charlie Chaplin?”

“N-no. Who’s he?”

“I’ll explain later,” Nick answered with a laugh.

“Lights!”

The projector whirred into action and the screen flickered to life. In the first grainy images, the camera peered over the shoulder of someone sitting in a chair reading the front page of an obviously hand-printed newspaper. The headline, in enormous letters, read:
The Seaweed Strangler!
The person then turned to page two, which read:
Written, Produced, and Directed by Will Mettleson
.

“Daddy!” cried Hetty as the credits faded to black. “I can’t believe we’re watching a movie he made.”

The first real scene unfolded exactly like the one Nicholas had read, except that the person in the boat almost fell overboard as he stood up to aim the rifle at the Seaweed Strangler. They all laughed at that, and at
the frame reading
Bang!
that appeared as the person shot the poor creature, and again when the Seaweed Strangler stumbled and fell face-first in the water as he chased after his attacker.

“Who are those boys?” Hayley asked.

“Just kids from the neighborhood,” Uncle Nick answered. “Summer people, some of them. Not sure about all of them, but the Seaweed Strangler is definitely Jimmy Brennan—used to live down the road. Kind of a pain in the neck. Always a little too good-looking for his own good.”

Nicholas’s ears perked up.

Brennan! That’s the second time today I’ve heard that name
.

After that first scene, the movie was hard for them to follow because it was unfinished; some scenes were edited, but others were not. Some were in order; some appeared not to be. And there were definitely gaps in the story, which consisted for the most part of a series of revenge killings by the Seaweed Strangler, who—not surprisingly—strangled his victims with a length of seaweed. Then, with no warning, the camera tilted down to the sand, where the words
The End?
appeared letter by letter, as if written by an invisible hand.

As the tail end of the film slipped through the projector and onto the take-up reel, the twins stood up, clapping and cheering.

“That was so good!” said Hetty. “Let’s watch it again.”

“Did Daddy really do all that himself?” Hayley asked. “He actually wrote that story?”

“He did,” said Uncle Nick, rewinding the film. “Of course, there’s the legend.”

Nicholas’s ears perked up again. “Legend?”

“Well, maybe ‘legend’ is too strong a word. But there were stories.” He paused, looking at the girls. “You two sure you want to hear this? Wouldn’t want you to have nightmares. Or be afraid to go out on the water tomorrow.”

Hayley’s eyes were wide with anticipation. “Tell us!” she shouted.

“No, wait!” said Hetty. “I’m not sure. Maybe I don’t want to know. Remember that time I watched that show about those bugs that crawled into that guy’s brain and started to eat it?”

“She slept with her head under the covers for a year,” said Nicholas. “But that was a long time ago. You’ve watched all kinds of scary stuff on TV since then and I haven’t heard you complaining.”

Hetty squeezed her eyes shut, thinking hard. “Okay,” she said, opening them again. “But if I have nightmares, I’m telling Mom it’s your fault.”

With the film fully rewound, Uncle Nick turned the projector off and sat back on the couch. “The story got started about the time your dad started spending summers here. It was early spring—middle of March, just after the ice broke up—and a couple of fools decided to go for a sail
in their brand-new boat. Just couldn’t wait another month or two like normal folk, I suppose. Didn’t know how to sail, but that didn’t seem to bother them. They were up there at the north end of the lake, by Onion Island, and I’m sure everything was fine until the wind kicked up a bit. Now, no one saw it happen, so this is just speculation on my part, but they probably capsized—and since it was an open boat with a heavy keel, it sank like a stone, and the two knuckleheads drowned.”

“That’s horrible!” Hetty exclaimed.

“What’s so scary about that?” asked Hayley.

Uncle Nick held up his index finger. “Wait. I’m not done. You see, they only found one of them. The other never turned up. Same thing with the boat. Not to this day. The stories really got started after our numskull sheriff talked to some reporter from Cleveland. Told him that when they found the one fellow, he was wrapped from head to toe in seaweed.”

“Cool,” said Hayley.

“Ewww,” said Hetty. “I hate seaweed.”

“Before you knew it,” Uncle Nick continued, “people were talking about some mysterious Seaweed Strangler and blaming him for the whole shebang. Which was bad enough, but then old Mrs. Lindeman swore up and down that she was sitting on her porch one night and saw the boat—the one that disappeared—sail right past her house. Said she recognized it from the pictures. When she went down to the shore to get another look, it was gone.
Perfectly clear night, she said. And she was just the first. After hers, there were lots more sightings—including one by your aunt Lillie. They all happened just before three o’clock in the morning—2:53, to be exact—or so people said. Problem was, the stories just got crazier and crazier, and whenever anybody sat up late
trying
to see it, they never saw anything.”

“I guess that explains that painting of Aunt Lillie’s up in my room,” Nicholas said. “The one called
2:53 A.M
.”

“I’d forgotten about that,” Uncle Nick said, smiling at the memory it evoked. “Lillie was going to give that one to your dad, but I think she ended up liking it too much to give it away. It was one of her favorites.”

“Did she believe in the Seaweed Strangler?” Hetty asked.

“She believed that she saw a boat one night, and that’s about it. Nobody with half a brain believes in some creature running around the lake strangling folks with seaweed. The boat sank. Those two dingbats drowned. End of story.”

* * *

At seven-thirty the next morning, the four of them—plus Nick’s usual sailing partner, a life-jacket-wearing Pistol—sat in the cramped cockpit of
Goblin
, eating ham and eggs cooked by Nick on the tiny stove in the cabin below. He served it to them on translucent red plates (“Just like the
ones in the book!” Hetty exclaimed) and started the day’s sailing lesson by pointing out, and then quizzing them on, the different sailing terms and parts of the boat: port and starboard, mast, boom, tiller, rudder, mainsail, mainsheet, winches, cleats, halyards, and so on, until Hayley declared that her memory was full.

“Sorry, Uncle Nick, but I just can’t remember another single thing. Can we please just go sailing?”

And off they went.

It was a perfect day to learn to sail. With the twins tucked safely out of the way in the cockpit, Nick showed Nicholas how to raise the mainsail with the boat pointing straight into the gentle wind, coiling the halyards neatly when he finished. Then, on the “go” signal, Nicholas unhooked the mooring line from the bow, Nick hauled in the slack in the mainsheet and pushed the tiller to starboard, and they were sailing.

No one said a word for several minutes as
Goblin
silently sliced through the ripples known to sailors as “cat’s paws.” Hayley was the first to break the spell, whispering to Hetty, “It’s so
quiet
.”

“It’s not always this quiet,” Nick said. “When you get a stiff north wind and some whitecaps, she’ll make some noise. Okay, Het, one more question for you: Are we on port or starboard tack?”

Hetty screwed up her face, looking left and then right. “Starboard?”

“That’s right! The wind is coming over the starboard
side of the boat. And I think we’re ready for the jib. Nicholas! You think you can handle that? I’ll head into the wind a little bit to make it easier for you. Just get it up there and snug it up good and tight.”

Nicholas was a fast learner; he stood at the mast and pulled the halyard, raising the jib. When it was all the way up, he wrapped the line around the cleat just the way Nick had shown him.

“Good boy! Okay, Hayley, now, you see that line right there? That’s the jib sheet, and I want you to pull it in until that sail stops luffing, er, flapping. Good, good … perfect!”

With both sails drawing,
Goblin
picked up speed, her blue topsides digging in a bit deeper.

“How fast are we going?” Hetty asked, leaning over the rail to watch the water slip by.

“Twenty-five miles per hour,” Hayley guessed.

Nick had a good laugh at that. “Maybe four knots. Sailors use nautical miles, and one knot—or one nautical mile per hour—is a little more than a regular mile per hour.”

“No way, Uncle Nick,” said an incredulous Hayley. “We’re going faster than four miles per hour!”

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “
Goblin
is many things, but fast is not one of them. How are you girls coming with
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
?”

“They just lost the anchor, and now they’re out at sea,” said Hayley. “It’s kind of scary.”

“Ah, but they’re in a sturdy little boat—just like this one.”

“Is this
Goblin
exactly like the one in the book?” Nicholas asked.

“Not
exactly
, but she’s pretty darn close—the closest thing I could find when I was looking for a design to build. They’re the same size, same basic hull shape, same sail plan. I always liked the look of the cutter rig. We’ll put up the stays’l later. Remember, that’s the sail on the little boom in front of the mast. Then maybe we can get her all the way up to
five
knots. All right, Nicholas, come back here so I can teach you how to steer.”

With a huge grin on his face, Nicholas sat on the cockpit seat opposite his uncle and took the tiller in his hand.

Nick showed him how to find a spot on the land to aim for, always watching the angle that the forestay made to the horizon, and how to make gentle corrections when he got off course. The twins watched his wake carefully, pointing out every little wiggle with a
tsk-tsk
.

“You’re a natural,” said Nick. “I can tell already that you’re going to be a good sailor—people either have a feel for it or they don’t. Now, you see that dark spot on the water ahead? That’s what we call a ‘puff,’ a place where the wind is stronger and, lots of times, where the direction of the wind changes a little, too. A good helmsman is always scanning the water ahead, looking for puffs, so he can prepare. This time, I want you to just do what you’ve
been doing; pretend you didn’t see it, so you’ll feel it in the tiller.”

Nicholas bit his lip in anticipation, not sure what was going to happen when
Goblin
hit the darker water. He was on a steady course, aimed at a flagpole on the shore, when suddenly the boat heeled over several more degrees and started to turn to the right on its own. He pulled harder against the tiller, finding it difficult to stay on course for the flagpole, and glanced nervously at his uncle.

“You’re doing fine—doing fine. Now feel the difference when I do this.” As he let the mainsheet out a few inches,
Goblin
stood up noticeably. “Feel that in the tiller? Less pressure, right? Mainsheet’s kind of like the gas pedal. When you start to heel too much, take your foot off the gas a little.”

Nicholas nodded, getting back on his original course with no trouble.

“Let’s do it again,” said Hayley.

“Let’s not,” a more nervous Hetty replied.

“I’m sure we’ll have more opportunities,” said Nick. “But there’s lots more to do. Time to put you two to work.”

For the next three hours,
Goblin
made her way up and down the lake, never straying too far from home, and by lunchtime, the three Mettleson children, Nick declared, were no longer landlubbers. They were officially sailors. At noon, they anchored in the cove where their father had filmed the first scene in
The Seaweed Strangler
and
feasted on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carrot sticks, and warmish cans of soda.

The twins, eager to try out the minuscule sink, volunteered to clean the dishes while Nicholas and Nick scrubbed the decks. When the girls finished, they lay down on the cushions in the cozy little cabin and began to formulate a plan of their own.

“Can we sleep here tonight?” Hayley shouted up at her uncle. “It would be just like in the book!”

“Well, I hope not
exactly
,” he said. “I’d rather not have
Goblin
drifting out to sea in a heavy fog. But I don’t see why not, as long as I can have one of the long berths. I’m too tall—and too old—to sleep in the forepeak.”

“Jim Brading slept on the
floor
,” Hetty reminded him.

“I’m definitely too old for that,” said Nick with a laugh. “It should be a nice night, and you kids can use your sleeping bags, I suppose.”

“Yay!” shouted the twins.

“Everybody ready for lesson number two?” Nick asked. “Come on, Nicholas. I’ll pull up the anchor, and you take us out of this cove.”