Gray Lake: A Novel of Crime and Supernatural Horror

Gray Lake: Chapter 3

The car kept coming, kept roaring, though not even its headlights were anywhere in sight.

The cool, slightly fetid lake air curling in around them carried hints of the drive-through fried chicken they’d gorged on earlier in the jeep. The greasy, meaty odor combined with the amplified snarl of the approaching engine made Brian imagine a ravenous, cartoonish amalgam of car and carnivore: a razor-toothed, slobber-slathered maw instead of grillwork; furry wheels with sharp claws all along their circumference digging into the macadam and churning it up, spitting a chunky dust devil plume of pavement in its wake; murderous black eye slits in the feral, yellow-glowing headlights; a flailing, whiplike tail instead of an antenna rising over the trunk, madly lashing the air behind the car as it ate up the miles and bore down on them.

But Iggy’s imagination was obviously going in a much different direction. His tight-faced look of concern was genuine. Brian smirked to himself. His geeky little buddy was spooked. It was the paranoia that came with weed – another reason Brian had decided not to try it. Not that he really blamed Iggy – the engine really was getting horrendously loud, and they still couldn’t see any headlights. But it had been true in elementary school and it was still true now – Brian never missed an opportunity to screw with Iggy’s head.

“Okay,” Brian said. “Then we’ll split the difference between that car turning off Deadman’s Hill and it driving past us. I predict that car -” Brian held his fist to his forehead as if he were fiercely concentrating “- will stop right here at the public access.”

They’d played this game since they’d learned to drive last summer, before junior year, but neither of them had ever predicted this option before.

“Jesus, no!” Iggy sprang up off his butt and off the Jeep, bounding onto his tattered sneakers and turning back to implore Brian. He made a slash in the air with his skinny right arm. “No! Do not let it stop here! Seriously, we don’t want that car stopping here!”

Brian hesitated. “Ig, it’s a game.”

“Please, Brian, make it do something else. Don’t let it stop here.”

“What, with my psychic powers or something? I didn’t smoke any weed, remember? Why don’t you use your special powers, Indica Man, you’re all clairvoyant and telepathic and mystic these days.”

“Just say it’ll do something else, okay?”

Brian shrugged. “Okay, it’ll do something else.” Still perched on his elbows on his Jeep hood, Brian twiddled his fingers in the general direction of the hill, as if he were a wizard lazily casting a spell. Brian saw the tension slip from his friend’s muscles even as the growling reached a fever pitch and a glow finally backlit the crest of Deadman’s Hill. Brian couldn’t help but laugh.

There was a break in the engine growl that sounded like – no, it couldn’t have been – it sounded like a burp or a hiccup with a slightly high-pitched squeal to it. It had sounded … almost organic. It had been a backfire, of course – what else could it have been? – but now unquestionably inorganic headlights peered over the hilltop, casting their beams high over the boys’ heads and cleanly slicing the air between the thin strip of shore and the brilliant starspray of the galaxy above.

The shadows of the treetops seemed to blur and smudge and drip and run as the growling car began its descent, and in the suddenly Dali-esque shadowscape of the lake, Brian had a vision of the night transformed, embodied into a woman or girl: The willows and slightly swaying pines were the dark length of her hair, ruffled by the breeze; the flashing silver maples gently twinkling black-white-black in the yellow headlight beams were the flash of her eyes; the road was the curve of her smile. And the lake itself, he now realized, was her mind, the depths of her being, everything behind the shadowy, shifting, flickery mask of her beautiful face … everything he could never truly know about her. He thought of the old poem from English class – “She walks in beauty, like the night.” How did the rest go?

All of this in a flash. Then her image faded back into the night and he couldn’t retain or recall the picture, though he still wanted to.

The shadows solidified as the car eased down to the bottom of Deadman’s Hill - but Brian found himself now agreeing with Iggy, pushing at the car with his thoughts, willing a separate wish on every separate star in the Milky Way above that this fierce, growling engine and whatever darkness it carried wouldn’t stop here on the public access.

And it didn’t stop at the access.

Nor did it drive by.

Brian knew Deadman’s Hill well. He ran seven miles almost every day that weather permitted – he used a treadmill when it didn’t – and his turn-around point was just beyond this beach, as Lakeview turned off toward Burr Oak on another hill behind them. If you went straight at the bottom of Deadman’s Hill instead of following the curve of the road, you’d run smack-dab into an ancient, gargantuan oak that thrust up out of the tangle of lower vegetation. He could picture it clearly - a heart containing the words “Bill & Mary” was carved deep into its trunk. He wondered each morning who those long-ago lovers might have been. The car was heading for the oak as if that lovers’ heart were its target. He and Iggy had watched hundreds of sets of headlights ease into the curve before the oak as they made their way past the public access. The shadows thrown by the headlights of the supernaturally loud car - including the shadow of the big oak - were wrong.

Iggy saw it too; Brian could see his friend’s shoulder muscles cringe at exactly the point when he expected a collision with the oak.

And then the oak’s shadow was gone. The only shadows now were of the scrub between the two of them and the big tree. It looked for all the world as if the car had driven through the gigantic trunk.

And still the car roared forward, its engine grumbling, sputtering and echoing out across the lake, its headlights cruising directly over the water now, illuminating curls of steam that were rising up off the surface. The twin headlights burned into the boys’ retinas, bearing down on them now, headed straight for them, lights large as wrecking balls, seeming to fill their minds with their blinding bright, the boys’ fear melding with the engine’s animal growl.

Straight for them. Feet away, almost to the shore.

And then the headlights and the engine simultaneously cut off.

Dead.

Gone.

The engine didn’t chug to a stop. The headlights didn’t fade. It was sudden and final and without question, like an ax thwacking into wood or a prison cell door slamming shut. The car – its engine, its lights – had been there, out over the water, headed directly toward Iggy and Brian. A collision had been imminent as they’d stood there, paralyzed with fear.

And then it was gone.

Brian was still on the Jeep hood, lying prone, but his muscles weren’t responding to any command. He found his fingers had attempted to claw into the hood. He saw Iggy was still standing, rooted to the sand, palms spread at his sides as if he were a gunslinger getting ready to draw. Iggy’s knees were bent – the gunslinger was also ready to flee – but he was staring fixedly at the spot where the car had been, apparently unwilling to turn away should the spectral vehicle suddenly reappear.

“Ummm,” Brian heard himself say. “I think we should maybe leave.”

“Right,” Iggy said, but neither of them moved at all for a second. They could hear the small, lapping waves reaching the shore and, it seemed, the wind touching each individual twig and leaf in the vegetation.

In the next instant, they were both scrambling for their seats in the Jeep.

 ***

This novel will be serialized one chapter per week and will be available in full here on Wattpad for six months after being posted in its entirety. It is also available in print, Kindle - http://bit.ly/GrayLake (Amazon) - and all other major ebook and phone  formats  - http://bit.ly/GrayLakeSmashwords