Joyce felt the warmth next. It ran over her skin and inside her too, like a swallow of Christmas brandy, coating her innards. The sensation distracted her from Trudi's splashing, and indeed from her own jeopardy. She watched the darting water, and the bubbles breaking the surface all around her, popping like lava, slow and thick, with an odd detachment. Even when she tried to touch bottom, and couldn't, the thought that she might drown was a casual one. There were more important feelings. One, that the air breaking from the bubbles around her was the lake's breath, and breathing it was like kissing the lake. Two, that Arleen would be swimming this way very soon, the golden collar of hair floating in the water behind her. Seduced by the pleasure of the warm water, she didn't forbid herself the thoughts she'd turned her back on mere moments before. Here they were, she and Arleen, buoyed up in the same body of sweet water, getting closer and closer to each other, while the element between them carried the echoes of their every motion back and forth. Perhaps they would dissolve in the water, their bodies become fluid, until they mingled in the lake. She and Arleen, one mixture, released from any need for shame; beyond sex into blissful singularity.
The possibility was too exquisite to be postponed a moment longer. She threw her arms above her head and let herself sink. The spell of the lake, however, powerful as it was, couldn't quite discipline the animal panic that rose in her as the water closed over her head. Without her willing it, her body began to resist the pact she'd made with the water. She began to struggle wildly, reaching up to the surface as if to snatch a handhold of air.
Both Arleen and Trudi saw Joyce go under. Arleen instantly went to her aid, shouting as she swam. Her agitation was matched by the water around her. Bubbles rose on all sides. She felt their passage, like hands brushing her belly, her breasts and between her legs. At their caress the same dreaminess that had caught Joyce, and had now subdued Trudi's panic, took hold of her. There was no specific object of desire to carry her under, however. Joyce was conjuring the image of Randy Krentzman (who else?) but for Arleen her seducer was a crazy quilt of famous faces. Dean's cheekbones, Sinatra's eyes, Brando's sneer. She succumbed to this patchwork the same way Joyce and, a few yards from her Trudi, had. She threw up her arms and let the waters take her.
From the safety of the shallows Carolyn watched the behavior of her friends, appalled. Seeing Joyce go under she'd assumed there was something in the water, dragging her down. But the behavior of Arleen and Trudi gave the lie to that. She witnessed them plainly giving up. Nor was this simple suicide. She'd been close enough to Arleen to observe a look of pleasure crossing that beautiful face before it sank. She'd even smiled! Smiled, then let herself go.
These three girls were Carolyn's only friends in the world. She could not simply watch them drown. Though the water where they'd disappeared was becoming more frenzied by the moment she struck out for the place using the only stroke she was faintly proficient in: an ungainly mixture of doggy-paddle and crawl. Natural laws, she knew, were on her side. Fat floated. But that was little comfort as she saw the ground falling away beneath her feet. The bottom of the lake had vanished. She was swimming over a fissure, which was somehow claiming the other girls.
Ahead of her, an arm broke the surface. In desperation she reached for it. Reached; snatched; connected. As she took hold, however, the water around her began to churn with fresh fury. She made a cry of horror. Then the hand she'd grasped took fierce hold of her, and dragged her down.
The world went out like a pinched flame. Her senses deserted her. If she was still holding somebody's fingers she couldn't feel them. Nor, though her eyes were open, could she see anything in the murk. Vaguely, distantly, she was aware that her body was drowning; that her lungs were filling with water through her gaping mouth, her last breath leaving her. But her mind had forsaken its casing and was drifting away from the flesh it had been hostage to. She saw that flesh now: not with her physical eyes (they were still in her head, rolling wildly) but with her mind's sight. A barrel of fat, rolling and pitching as it sank. She felt nothing for its demise, except perhaps disgust at the rolls of blubber, and the absurd inelegance of her distress. In the water beyond her body the other girls still resisted. Their thrashings were also, she presumed, merely instinctual. Their minds, like hers, had probably floated out of their heads, and were watching the spectacle with the same dispassion. True, their bodies were more attractive than hers, and thus perhaps more painful in the losing. But resistance was, in the end, a waste of effort. They were all going to die very soon, here in the middle of this midsummer lake. Why?
As she asked the question her eyeless gaze offered the answer. There was something in the darkness below her floating mind. She could not see it, but she felt it. A power—no, two powers—whose breaths were the bubbles that had broken around them and whose arms the eddies that beckoned them to be corpses. She looked back at her body, which still struggled for air. Her legs were pedalling the water madly. Between them, her virgin cunt. Momentarily she felt a pang for pleasures that she'd never risked pursuing, and would never now have. Damn fool that she was, to have valued pride over sensation. Mere ego seemed a nonsense now. She should have asked for the act from every man who'd looked at her twice, and not been content till one had said yes. All that system of nerves and tubes and eggs, going to death unused. The waste of it was the only thing here that smacked of tragedy.
Her gaze returned to the darkness of the fissure. The twin forces she'd sensed there were still approaching. She could see them now; vague forms, like stains in the water. One was bright; or at least brighter than the other. But that was the only distinction she could make. If either had features they were too blurred to be seen, and the rest—limbs and torso—were lost in the shoals of dark bubbles that rose with them. They could not disguise their purpose, however. Her mind grasped that all too easily. They were emerging from the fissure to claim the flesh from which her thoughts were now mercifully disconnected. Let them have their bounty, she thought. It had been a burden, that body, and she was glad to be rid of it. The rising powers had no jurisdiction over her thoughts; nor sought any. Flesh was their ambition; and they each wanted the entire quartet. Why else were they struggling with each other, stains light and dark interwoven like a barber's pole as they rose to snatch the bodies down?
She had assumed herself free prematurely. As the first tendrils of mingled spirit touched her foot the precious moments of liberation ceased. She was called back into her cranium, the door of her skull slamming behind her with a crack. Eyesight replaced mindsight; pain and panic, that sweet detachment. She saw the warring spirits wrap themselves around her. She was a morsel, pulled back and forth between them as they each fought to possess her. The why of it beyond her. She would be dead in seconds. It mattered not at all to her which claimed the corpse, the bright or the less than bright. Both, if they wanted her sex (she felt their investigations there, even at the last), would have no joy back from her, nor from any of them. They were gone; the four of them.
Even as she relinquished the last bubble of breath from her throat, a gleam of sunlight hit her eyes. Could it be she was rising again? Had they dismissed her body as redundant to their purpose, and let the fat float? She snatched the chance, however small it was, pushing up towards the surface. A new shoal of bubbles rose with her, that almost seemed to bear her up towards the air. It was closer by the instant. If she could hold on to consciousness a heartbeat longer she might yet survive.
God loved her! She broke the surface face-first, puking water then drinking air. Her limbs were numb, but the very forces that had been so intent on drowning her now kept her afloat. After three or four breaths she realized the others had also been released. They choked and splashed around her. Joyce was already making towards the shore, pulling Trudi after her. Arleen now began to follow. Solid ground was only a few yards away. Even with legs and arms barely functional Carolyn covered the distance, until all four of them could stand up. Bodies racked with sobs they staggered toward
s dry land. Even now they cast backward glances, for fear whatever had assaulted them decided to pursue them into the shallows. But the spot in the middle of the lake was completely placid.
Before they'd reached the shore, hysteria took hold of Arleen. She began to wail, and shudder. Nobody went to comfort her. They had barely sufficient energy to advance one foot in front of the other, never mind waste breath in trying to calm the girl. She overtook Trudi and Joyce to reach the grass first, dropping down on the ground where she'd left her clothes and attempting to drag on her blouse, her sobs redoubling as she struggled, failing to find the armholes. A yard from the shore Trudi fell to her knees and threw up. Carolyn trudged down-wind of her, knowing that if she caught a whiff of vomit she'd end up doing the same. It was a wasted maneuver. The gagging sound was sufficient cue. She felt her stomach flip; then she was painting the grass in bile and ice cream.
Even now, though the scene he was watching had moved from the erotic to the terrifying to the nauseating, William Witt could not take his eyes off it. To the end of his life he'd remember the sight of the girls rising from the depths where he was certain they must have drowned, their efforts, or pressure from below, shoving them up into the air so high he saw their breasts bob.
Now the waters that had almost claimed them were still. Not a ripple moved; not a bubble broke. And yet, could he doubt that something other than an accident had occurred in front of him? There was something alive in the lake. The fact that he'd seen only its consequences—the (failings, the screams—rather than the thing itself, shook him to the gut. Nor would he ever be able to quiz the girls as to their assailants' nature. He was alone with what he'd seen.
For the first time in his life his self-elected role as voyeur weighed heavily upon him. He swore to himself he'd never spy on anyone again. It was an oath he kept for a day before breaking.
As to this event, he'd had enough of it. All he could see of the girls now were the outlines of their hips and buttocks as they lay in the grass. All he could hear, with the vomiting over, was weeping.
As quietly as he could, he slipped away.
Joyce heard him go. She sat up in the grass.
"Somebody's watching us," she said.
She studied the patch of sunlit foliage, and again it moved. Just the wind, catching the leaves.
Arleen had finally found her way into her blouse. She sat with her arms wrapped around her. "I want to die," she said.
"No you don't," Trudi told her. "We just escaped that."
Joyce put her hands back to her face. The tears she thought she'd bettered came again, in a wave.
"What in Christ's name happened?" she said. "I thought it was just . . . flood water."
It was Carolyn who supplied the answer, her voice without inflection, but shaking.
"There are caves under the whole town," she said. "They must have filled with water during the storm. We swam out over the mouth of one of them."
"It was so dark," Trudi said. "Did you look down?"
"There was something else," Arleen said. "Besides the darkness. Something in the water."
Joyce's sobs intensified in response to this.
"I didn't see anything," Carolyn said. "But I felt it." She looked at Trudi. "We all felt the same, didn't we?"
"No," Trudi replied, shaking her head. "It was currents out of the caves."
"It tried to drown me," Arleen said.
"Just currents," Trudi reiterated. "It's happened to me before, at the beach. Undertow. Pulled the legs from under me.
"You don't believe that," Arleen said flatly. "Why bother to lie? We all know what we felt."
Trudi stared hard at her.
"And what was that?" she said. "Exactly."
Arleen shook her head. With her hair plastered to her scalp and mascara smeared across her cheeks, she looked anything but the Prom Queen beauty of ten minutes before.
"All I know is it wasn't undertow," she said. "I saw shapes. Two shapes. Not fishes. Nothing like fishes." She looked away from Trudi, down between her legs. "I felt them touch me," she said, shuddering. "Touch me inside."
"Shut up!" Joyce suddenly erupted. "Don't say it."
"It's true, isn't it?" Arleen replied. "Isn't it?" She looked up again. First at Joyce, then at Carolyn; finally at Trudi, who nodded.
"Whatever's out there wanted us because we're women."
Joyce's sobs climbed to a fresh plateau.
"Keep quiet," Trudi snapped. "We've got to think about this."
"What's to think?" Carolyn said.
"What we're going to say for one thing," Trudi replied.
"We say we went swimming—" Carolyn began.
"Then what?,"
"—we went swimming and—"
"Something attacked us? Tried to get inside us? Something not human?"
"Yes," said Carolyn. "It's the truth."
"Don't be so stupid," Trudi said. "They'll laugh at us."
"But it's still true," Carolyn insisted.
"You think that makes any difference? They'll say we were idiots to go swimming in the first place. Then they'll say we got the cramps or something."
"She's right," said Arleen.
But Carolyn clung to her convictions. "Suppose somebody else comes here?" she said. "And the same thing happens. Or they drown. Suppose they drown. Then we'd be responsible."
"If this is just flood water it'll be gone in a few days," Arleen said. "If we say anything everyone in town will talk about us. We'll never live it down. It'll spoil the rest of our lives."
"Don't be such an actress," Trudi said. "We're none of us going to do anything we don't all agree on. Right? Right, Joyce?" There was a stifled sob of acknowledgment from Joyce. "Carolyn?"
"I suppose so," came the reply.
"We just have to agree on a story."
"We say nothing," Arleen replied.
"Nothing?" said Joyce. "Look at us."
"Never explain. Never apologize," Trudi murmured.
"Huh?"
"It's what my daddy says all the time." The thought of this being a family philosophy seemed to brighten her. "Never explain . . ."
"We heard," said Carolyn.
"So it's agreed," Arleen went on. She stood up, gathering the rest of her clothes from the ground.
"We all keep quiet about it."
There was no further sound of argument from any source. Taking their cue from Arleen, they all proceeded to dress then headed back towards the road, leaving the lake to its secrets and its silences.
II
____________ i ____________
AT FIRST, nothing happened. There were not even nightmares. Only a pleasant languor, affecting all our of them, which was perhaps the afterglow of coming so close to death and walking away from it. They concealed their bruises from view, and went about being themselves, and keeping their secret.
In a sense it kept itself. Even Arleen, who had been the first to voice her horror at the intimate assault they'd all suffered, rapidly came to take a strange pleasure in the memory, which she didn't dare confess, even to the other three. In fact they spoke to each other scarcely at all. They didn't need to. The same strange conviction moved in all of them: that they were, in some extraordinary fashion, the chosen. Only Trudi, who'd always had a love of the Messianic, would have put such a word to what she felt. For Arleen, the feeling was simply a reinforcing of what she'd always known about herself: that she was a uniquely glamorous creature, for whom the rules by which the rest of the world was run did not apply. For Carolyn, it meant a new confidence in herself which was a dim echo of that revelation she'd had when death had seemed imminent: that every hour without appetites fulfilled was wasted. For Joyce, the feeling was simpler still. She had been saved from death for Randy Krentzman.
She wasted no time in making her passion known. The very day after the events at the lake she went directly to the Krentzman house in Stillbrook and told him in the plainest possible terms that she loved him and intended to sleep with him. He d
idn't laugh. He simply looked at her with bewilderment, then asked her, somewhat shamefaced, whether they knew each other. On previous occasions his forgetting her had practically broken her heart. But something had changed in her. She was no longer so fragile. Yes, she told him, you do know me. We've met several times before. But I don't care if you remember me or not. I love you and I want you to make love to me. He went on staring at her through this speech, then said: this is some joke, right? To which she replied that it absolutely was not a joke, that she meant every word she said, and given that the day was warm and the house empty but for the two of them was there any time better than the present?
Bewilderment had not undone the Krentzman libido. Though he didn't understand why this girl was offering herself gratis, an opportunity like this came along too infrequently to be despised. Thus, attempting the tone of one to whom such proposals come daily, he accepted. They spent the afternoon together, performing the act not once but three times. She left the house around six-fifteen and wended her way home through the Grove with a sense of some imperative satisfied. It was not love. He was dim, self-centered, and a sloppy lover. But he had perhaps put life into her that afternoon, or at least offered his teaspoonful of stuff to the alchemy, and that was all she'd really wanted from him. This change of priorities went unquestioned. Her mind was crystal clear on the need for fecundity. On the rest of life, past, future and present, it was a blur.
Early the next morning, having slept more deeply than she had for years, she called him up, and suggested a second liaison, that very afternoon. Was I that good? he enquired. She told him he was better than good; he was a bull; his dick the world's eighth wonder. He readily agreed, both to the flattery and the liaison.