Spider Lake (5 page)

He made his way to the dock and stepped into one of the rental boats which were moored there. He used a coffee can to quietly bail out the rain water which had accumulated in the boat over-night. He would be bailing out all six boats later that morning for the renters. It was going to be a long morning. He lit his Coleman lantern and kept it at it’s lowest setting and began to row the quarter-mile trip across the bay to where he and Matt had built their tree fort. Beyond the range of the light from the lamp, Ben could see nothing.

In the north woods at night, during a new moon or an overcast, without a lantern you could not see your own hand right in front of your face. Ben was wishing that it was a clear night with a full moon so he could get his bearings, but he rowed on quietly into the black void trying to keep his oars moving as evenly as possible. The gentle rain came in broken spurts, and with each new rainfall, his lantern would loudly hiss. Ben could hear odd sounds from the darkness which didn’t quite sound like fish jumping. The sound was more like a ker-plunk than a splash and he wondered what odd night-creature might be making the dreadful noise.

Before long the boat had reached the far shore. Ben could see above him the overhanging branches cast in the orange glow of the lantern just as he was bumping against the exposed roots on the bank. He was nearly scared out of his wits when out of the pitch black came a whisper: “You missed the mark by an eighth of a mile!”

“What the heck Matt! You could have warned me with a flashlight or something instead of scaring the living daylights out of me!”

“I threw a few rocks!”

“Get in the boat. We only have a couple of hours before daylight!”

The boys took turns rowing the boat west across the large expanse of the main lake towards the dim light which was on a pole in the clearing of the girl-scout camp. As one boy rowed, the other would keep watch in the front and the only words whispered were, “Left” or “Right” or “Starboard” or “Port.”

They had turned off the gas lantern, and it seemed to them as they were crossing the largest part of the lake, that they were really traveling through deep space, headed towards some distant galaxy. The falling drizzle manifested a kind of sun-dog or halo around the distant lamp, a sight which made it look other-worldly.

The girl scout camp was deserted. The docks had been put out, and the raft was in place, but the girls would not be arriving for another week. They tied the boat down to the dock and made their way through the lighted clearing towards the path which led to the edge of the Rule estate. Once at the edge of the woods, they were again in utter darkness. The rain was starting to fall more steadily now, and the boys were reluctant to stash their rain gear in the gunny-sack they brought along.

“You think we could keep our rain gear on?” Matt asked.

“Yeah sure! Why not put on a clown suit and tie a cow-bell around your neck Matt. I will paint a bulls-eye on your back and you can draw old man McCann’s fire while I take a look around.”

“Funny. Very funny.” Matt said as he was rubbing charcoal on his face.

The combination of the rain and the thought of trespassing on the Rule estate with old man McCann and his rock salt had dampened both boys’ spirits, but they had come too far to turn back. Ben produced a flashlight and a pair of binoculars from the gunny-sack. He covered the lens of the flashlight with a thin piece of cheese-cloth using a heavy rubber-band to diffuse the light.

They made slow progress on the dark path in the dim light of the flashlight, and more than once one or the other would stumble across an exposed root or a rock. As they got nearer to the mansion property they could begin to see the light which lit the grounds of the estate, and the dark silo of the low stone fence which marked the border of the property. They turned off the flashlight and made their way over the fence. They were now in no man’s land. They dared not talk, and as planned, they began to army-crawl through the woods to the edge of the clearing.

Ben was sure that he would soon see old man McCann burying a box of treasure in one of the flower beds under the cover of darkness. When the boys reached the wood’s edge, they left a few branches in front of them for cover. It was there that they got their first glimpse of the mansion up close. In the light of the electric bulb from the pole in the clearing, they could see that the building was in better repair than they had previously thought. The only view they had ever had of the mansion had been by boat, and the distance of the structure from the shore was more than the length of a football field. From the lake, the off-balance look of the Victorian mansion with it’s odd-shaped roof, its tower and cupola made it look like a classic haunted house from the movies. Up close it seemed well... much newer.

The beds of raised dirt around the house were numerous. Plants of various sizes and shapes had begun to sprout from them, and nothing seemed at all out of the ordinary. Ben held up his field glasses to get a better look at the place. He moved the lenses back and forth over the beds and then the house, and he paused at each window. The rain and the damp had rendered the binoculars almost useless. They returned magnified yet blurred images. In the East the sun was still below the horizon, yet just above the tree-line you could begin to see a faint light. Ben felt disappointed.

To his right, Matt whispered, “Let me look.”

Ben didn’t answer. He continued to look through the glasses for anything which might seem out of place.

“Let me look Ben!” slightly louder.

As Ben was handing Matt the binoculars, a light turned on in one of the lower windows of the mansion. The two boys froze, each holding one side of the pair of binoculars. They held that same absurd position without moving a muscle, barely breathing, eyes bulging, jaws dropped, and just as they were beginning to relax their statue-like posture, they heard the back door open. Then the unmistakable sound of a chain rattling across iron.

The boys were trying to process that odd sound when it became all too clear to them. The next thing they heard in that dim light was a low guttural growl. Ben almost felt his guts move and twist at the sound, and the weakness that washed over him just before the adrenaline kicked in made him want to puke. Next to him from his right side he could hear a low, almost primal moan start to crescendo into an audible scream, and then he realized it was Matt, still holding on to his half of the binoculars.

Then the still unseen creature let go the most vicious array of blood-curdling growls and barking and snapping that could only be described as hellish. The chain was now rattling across whatever wrought iron it was coming in contact with in an almost imperceptible hum. The hound from hell was making a bee-line straight towards them. Rounding the corner from the shadows into the dim light, all the boys could see was a huge dark hairy shadow, two red eyes, and a giant set of teeth. Ben felt his urine as it left his bladder. Matt was now in a full scream which sounded like “Doooooooooooog!” and Ben thought he might blow a mental gasket if he kept it up.

Just before the hound reached them, it came to the end of its tether. The crazy forward momentum it once had was stopped instantly at the end of the heavy chain. The beast was flipped violently backwards and landed on its back, legs kicking, and in its confusion it had even ceased it’s awful hellish noise which was replaced by a yelp. As it was furiously trying to regain it’s footing, the two boys flight instinct had finally kicked in, and they were on their feet and running through the woods as fast as their legs could carry them. Both were being battered by low branches and both fell often in the dark on poor or unseen footing, each time getting up and resuming their flight.

From behind them the hound was back at it’s vicious growl-barking, and then old man McCann was yelling: “You stay the hell off of this property! This is private property! If I ever see you around here again I will fill your sorry asses with rock salt! Ya hear?” And to make his point clear, he let a shot go in the darkness. The boys could hear the rock salt spinning through the branches and leaves of the trees above them, and as they were vaulting over the low rock fence, old man McCann let another shot go from his second barrel just for good measure.

When they made the path they were in a full sprint. Nothing was holding them back now. They still ran in zigzag fashion, and when they reached the edge of the clearing where the boat was docked, they dove down into the shadows and listened. Off in the distance behind them the dog was still barking like a rabid animal, but the sound was not getting any nearer. The Hell-hound was still chained. They grabbed the stashed gunny-sack and ran across the lighted clearing to the boat. They hoped that old man McCann could not see them as they rowed in the opposite direction of the mansion grounds with the light growing in the eastern sky.

Neither boy felt like talking. The whole morning was a disaster, and Ben was sure that he would be found out and be in big trouble once he got home.

The barking was not extraordinary, dogs barked all the time, but the gun-shots from the Rule estate must have waked everyone in the vicinity of the lake, including his mom. One thing that was really bothering Ben was that the binoculars were gone. Had he or Matt dropped them where they lay at the edge of the clearing? Or had they been dropped in the woods? He couldn’t remember.

en thought about his conversation with Dr. Levine as he drove home that morning. His head was pulsing with a sharp pain, and the memory of the puffer-fish and the fall came back to him and made him feel embarrassed. He felt the back of his head again and a now there was a sizable bump in the same place where he had cut his head. He noticed for the first time, as he looked in the rear-view mirror that he looked ridiculous with his head wrapped in the gauze which held the bandage in place. His blood-stained shirt completed the whole trauma-victim look. He decided to stop at the local drug store despite his absurd appearance, to pick up some much needed Aspirin, a bottled water, and a small writing pad.

The young woman at the check-out counter gave him a double-take as she was ringing him up. “Oh my God Mr. Fisher, what happened?”

Ben wondered how she knew his name. Then he thought, “She has been filling our prescriptions for years. She probably knows everyone in the vicinity and what medications they take.”

“I was mugged by a couple of girl scouts outside. I wouldn’t buy their thin mints.”

She looked at him in disbelief for a split second, and then she realized he did not intend for her to know what had happened, and gave him a slight smile. “You will want to put some ice on that when you get home.”

“Thanks for the advice.” Ben said as he punched in the code of his debit card.

“You might want to avoid the girl scouts on your way out.” She smiled.

He smiled back and said, “I will Janice.” He took notice of the name pinned to her smock.

Ben wasted no time opening the Aspirin bottle outside the pharmacy and as he was washing the bitter pills down, he noticed that the girl scouts sitting behind their folding table avoided looking at him. They didn’t ask him if he would like to buy their cookies. He smiled again.

Jill was sitting on the front porch steps as Ben was pulling into the driveway. The boys were skate-boarding across the street in the cul-de-sac. Ben sat in the car for a long minute. He felt anxious. He knew his wife would be waiting for him on the porch. He also knew she would be grilling him about the visit to the shrink, and he had hoped he could sneak in and change his shirt and remove the bandage before she seen him. He thought about making up a story about how he hurt his head, but he was never a good liar, and he guessed it would be better to just tell the truth. He climbed out of the mini-van.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?”

Ben realized that his wife had said almost word-for-word what Janice the pharmacist had just said. He thought about giving her the same girl-scout line, but he knew Jill would not find it funny. She had never appreciated his sarcasm.

“I fell and hit the back of my head.”

She came to meet him in the driveway to get a closer look, and gently touching his head she said, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. It looks worse than it is.”

“Where did you fall?”

“Now the interrogation begins.” he thought to himself. “Let me get cleaned up, and I will tell you the whole story. I really don’t want to stand outside in the driveway looking like a trauma victim with a bandaged head and a bloody shirt.”

“Can you at least tell me how your session went? Was it helpful?”

Ben thought about the word “session.” It was a foreign sounding word that had never been used in any previous conversation with Jill before, and it gave him a very uneasy feeling. It made him feel like a mental patient. “Please Jill, give me five minutes to get cleaned up, and I promise I will tell you everything.”

He went inside, and afterward, sitting in the living room, he told her the whole story.