Salvage (6 page)

She eyed the envelope in his hand with the funeral home's letterhead, and the corners of her own lips turned down. "Oh," she said, suddenly flustered. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—"

"No, it's—I'm—"

"I didn't mean to pry," she said. "I just… You know we live right beside each other and I don't think we've ever said a word. Our bathroom walls touch—that's kind of intimate, I think, maybe I'm just weird—and I don't even know your name. That's a bit odd, isn't it?"

"I guess it is a little strange," Owen admitted, as much for the fact that neighbors of three years didn't know each other's first names as for her belief that their toilet tanks being separated by a foot-thick wall of concrete was a form of intimacy. He shifted the mail to his left hand, shook hers with his right. Her hand was fragile, anemically cold. "I'm Owen."

"Sophie. I'm sorry for your loss." She frowned. "Wow, that really does sound meaningless from a stranger, doesn't it? 'Sorry for your loss.' As if I know anything about you." She glanced at his chest, causing Owen to wonder if she was trying to get a look at his heart. "Your pain," she added, and he supposed she must have been.

He nodded, forcing a smile. "It's fine. Thank you."

She smiled wanly back, small features set in a pale face surrounded by single-shade brown hair chopped into bangs. He hadn't really noticed her before, hadn't clued in to the fact that a not-unattractive woman lived next door to him.

When's the last time you thought about anyone sexually?
he asked himself, and he knew he must have been depressed for a very long time when he realized he couldn't answer the question.

The silence drew out. Finally Sophie nodded, brushed her bangs aside. She opened her mailbox, grabbed the mail from inside, and locked it again. "Well," she said, "it was nice to meet you, Owen."

"Yeah, you too…" He'd lost her name already.

"Sophie," she reminded him with a patient smile. "If you need anything, to talk or whatever, my door's always open. I mean, of course, it's
locked
. In this neighborhood, are you kidding me? Just… you know,
knock
." With a shrug, she added, "I know what it's like to lose someone."

"Okay," he said, deciding at worst she'd lost a childhood pet, a tabby with fur the same single-shade brown as her hair, dead of feline diabetes. The last thing he needed was some stranger who knew nothing of real loss trying to yank him out of this—and he called it what it was—
depression
. Hope only exists to make the disappointments deeper. Hadn't his mother told him that often enough? He forced another smile. "Thanks again."

She stood there waiting for more. When he offered nothing, she nodded again and headed for the elevators.

Owen dumped the flyers in the recycling, considered tossing the bill from the funeral home in with it, and then took it with him. Sophie would be waiting for the elevator still; they were always slow. He hung back behind the corner of the wall, listening for the ding. Once the doors slid shut with Sophie nestled inside, he stepped back out into the empty foyer.

3

Owen sat on the leather sofa in his simple suite, off-white and black and deep, rich brown like Sophie Huang's hair. He was thinking about the man with the John 3:16 sign, which had turned out to be something entirely different, and wondering why his mind had made such a bizarre connection.
LORI'S WITH US NOW, OWEN
.

"Us," he muttered. "Is that what she was trying to tell me?" But of course,
she
wasn't trying to tell him anything; it was his own subconscious speaking to him through her, through the protest sign. The television, on mute, showed the reenactment of a murder in hazy colors. The killer looped a strand of wire around the throat of this week's female victim, and
pulled
...

Clearly, he still had doubts about her death. When he'd finally gotten through to the officer in charge, the officer had seemed certain Lori's drowning had been accidental. There was little Owen could do but speculate.

According to the police, Lori had rented a cottage on Chapel Lake with the purpose of going diving, but the whole thing had seemed entirely unlike her. Lori was more of a Cayman Islands diver, parti-colored fish and pink coral reefs and underwater caverns, with long sandy beaches to dry out and tan on. Owen couldn't imagine what she possibly would have been hoping to find, diving in cottage country where, aside from shape and size, all the lakes were virtually identical.

I have to know. Everything. All of it. Why she went and how it happened. I
have
to know.

Owen opened his laptop and looked up the lake. Peterborough Township's website said Chapel Lake was man-made, created in October of 1979 as a reservoir for a hydroelectric dam. He clicked the link to the town's website, and it came up a dead end: WEB PAGE NOT AVAILABLE. Even the cached site was blank. He scrolled through the other links. None of them were for Chapel Lake, either the town or the lake itself. According to one site he was able to find, the original town had been named Peace Falls, after the white settlers' name for the nearby Mushkoweban Falls. The present town of Chapel Lake lay on land meant for expansion of its neighboring village, Dunsmuir—a familiar name, Owen thought. They'd incorporated Dunsmuir into the new town of Chapel Lake before the dam was built and the old town submerged.

His search finally hit pay dirt in images: photo after photo of underwater wreckage filled the screen, green-gray neighborhoods of ruined buildings, swarming with freshwater fish. In one photo, an old wooden boat rotted on the caved-in roof of a shack, its hull encrusted with zebra-striped barnacles. Another showed a rusted swing set, chains hanging loose and furry with green and brown algae, the seats themselves missing, like some makeshift torture device.

Several photos showed why it had been named Chapel Lake: a church steeple standing like an obelisk in the middle of the water—an eerie sight, despite the sun-shiny setting. He might have thought it was a Photoshop job if photos hadn't been taken at so many different angles and times of day. In some, there were boats and water-skiers and Jet Skis shooting by in the background. In others, the water was low enough to see the church's bell tower. Several more were shot from underwater, some at a wide angle, distorting the church's features, shot low to capture bright ripples where the cross broke through the surface.

Owen closed the laptop, satisfied with what he'd found. But his curiosity lingered. He could see how Lori might have been interested enough to check out the lake for herself, as an experienced diver. She'd done wreck salvage before. She'd even worked as an underwater welder for a few months to make money for her next trip, much to the displeasure of Owen and their mother, who feared her death on a daily basis. This was salvage on a larger scale, though he supposed if the town had been sunk in 1979, there would be very little left of worth under Chapel Lake. Since she'd likely seen the same photos he'd just looked at and found the same scant information, she'd likely have come to the same conclusion herself.

There's gotta be more to it than that
, he reasoned.
Lori's a smart girl. She wouldn't have wasted her time up there, unless she knew something I don't
.

Without access to what she'd been thinking in the last weeks and days of her life, without a computer or a diary to work with, he supposed he'd never know. Lori hadn't kept an apartment the past few years, drifting from sublet to sublet, often sleeping on a friend's couch in between expeditions, or, as a last resort, Mom's house. Her computer, if she'd even owned one, and her diary, if she'd kept one, would likely be in the box at the house, gathering dust on her old bed.

He considered calling his mother and asking her to look, but when he'd brought up the idea of going through it himself, she'd been mortified, yet another nonstarter conversation in the Saddler house.

What then?

His thoughts traveled down to the parking garage and his hybrid (a car he'd bought after Lori's constant badgering that his previous one was damaging the environment), to where his brand-new diving equipment lay in the cool semi-darkness.

Should I try it?

On the way back from the job site, he'd considered recreating Lori's dive: to put on the wetsuit and mask, to let out enough oxygen from the tank so when he finally dunked himself underwater there would only be enough good air for a few minutes' breathing at most.

It would take too long, though, and by the time he got everything ready, he'd be likely to lose his nerve. Still, the idea was enticing, so much so that he stood up without further thought and crossed to the bathroom, where he began filling the cast-iron tub. As he undressed, his mind returned to the previous Saturday, to the imagined
drip-drip-drip
of the faucet in his mother's house.
It was calling to me even then
, he thought, and when he asked himself exactly
what
had been calling to him, he spoke the answer aloud: "The water."

All he needed was a little taste of what it had been like. More than anything, he needed to know. He might not figure out what had happened to her, but he couldn't shake the feeling that, before he made his way to Chapel Lake, this was the logical first step in his journey. To be close to her again. To feel how she'd felt. To know how it had ended. The moment he felt himself starting to choke, wanting to suck in air, breathing water instead…

"I'll call off the experiment," he told himself, standing naked before the tub full of water, and he flicked out the bathroom light, plunging himself into semi-darkness. Lori had drowned night diving. In the small amount of light from a lamp in the living room, he eased himself into water as cool as the lake in his dream. There might not have been moonlight when Lori went under, but there would have at least been minimal light from the cottage she'd rented on Chapel Lake. His imagination filled in the details for him: the cabin had oil lamps, providing her with a nice orange glow. The Himalayan salt lamp by the sofa would be a suitable equivalent.

He lay back, resting the base of his skull against the edge of the tub. When he did have baths—a rarity—he'd use an inflatable pillow. This time, he wanted nothing to come between him and the fantasy. The tub was large enough for him to stretch out comfortably, but a foot might sink too low and thump against the bottom, an elbow might thud against the side and spoil the illusion.

This has to be perfect
, he thought.

In water up to his neck, the nightmare came rushing back. The thrashing, the splashing, the choking for breath. He pushed the thoughts away, hoping to calm his nerves. Now was no time to chicken out, not when he was so close to knowing how it had felt. Like the handful of dirt he'd reached out and snatched from her graveside when all eyes had been on the minister, the need to feel how Lori had when she'd drowned was inexplicable, a morbid compulsion he couldn't deny. A part of him knew no good would come of it, but that part was small, and easily ignored.

He took a measured breath, let it out slowly. He took another, thinking,
This is how she died.

Then he slipped all the way under.

The water magnified every sound to near-supernatural proportions. He heard the radio in Sophie's condo, blasting some talk show, though the voices were muffled. Somewhere, someone zipped along on an exercise machine, a stair climber or an elliptical. The clatter of dishes from above or below, he couldn't tell; a toilet flushing; the rattle of a small animal chewing on its cage.

Soon all of these sounds drifted away. He heard his heart, thrumming steadily in his ears, and nothing more.

Ten seconds passed this way, thirty… until the urge to release his breath pressed heavily on his lungs. Finally, he opened his eyes.

A man stood over him.

More than a mere shadow this time, more than the dark shape he'd seen behind the shower curtain at his mother's house before Lori had shown herself to him the first time. He could make out the man's face, distorted yet familiar, through the ripples on the surface: a gaunt, wild-eyed face with dark, receding hair beginning to gray at the temples, and a dark mustache over an even darker smile. He wore a white loose-fitting work shirt and black slacks. A thin chain of burnished gold or brass hung from his wide, deep pants pocket to a belt loop. Owen took in all of this in the mere moments before his heart began to race and he instinctively drew back, plunging deeper under the water.

It's him, he thought. The one I saw that day, walking on water. Lori's ghost.

More rippling forms appeared behind the man, peering down at Owen's nakedness: eight stone-faced men and women in all, and a young blonde girl, all of them dressed in white garments.
Flock
was the word that sprung to mind, and he found himself thinking:
He tends to his flock like a shepherd
.

Behind them all, Lori stood shivering, fear evident in her eyes, while the man in the white shirt—
Shepherd
, he thought—rolled up his sleeves. Terrified and confused, Owen sprang up from the bottom of the tub. Breath exploded from his lungs, bubbling up toward the surface.

The Shepherd's hand plunged into the water, pushing down with enormous strength against Owen's sternum. He felt an ache from the man's strong hand like a bruise on his heart, a pain much like the loss of his sister, and he kicked out, soaking his attacker's shirt through to the undershirt beneath it, splashing the others, who stood huddled around the tub, watching without flinching, without mercy—even the child, the young blonde girl, didn't blink.

Only Lori turned away, apparently unable to watch.

Owen grasped the ghost's forearm. Horrifying images filled his head the moment his hand touched the man's bare skin—of fat, overfed beetles scrabbling out of skulls with scraps of withered gray flesh and a single eyeball floating in a red froth, its ocular nerve thrashing behind it like a fin, and of naked white bones strewn across a plain of sediment—and he jerked his hand away, strange black tendrils forming between the Shepherd's flesh and his palm and stretching out like saliva before being whisked away in the churning water. He gulped for air, desperately, his mouth filled with liquid. He tasted his own sweat, the dirt he'd unintentionally washed from his body, choking as it filled his nose, his throat, worse than the dream, worse than the nightmare. Strangely, the man's brown eyes held no malice; what Owen saw was something like bliss, a profound joy mirrored now in the faces of his flock, all except Lori—who, from her similar gown, was most certainly "one of them," just like it had said on the sign he'd thought he'd seen during the protest.