Episode 9 - The Ghost of Big Hill Lake - pt. 1

Edna Pickett - SPONKED!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:57

The Bay Village Chronicles, Book 9: The Ghost of Big Hill Lake. A story for Pierce, Henry, Emma, and Maddie. And for everyone who has ever bought an old house and wondered who lived there before. A note before you begin. This is Book 9 in the Bay Village Chronicles. The crew has traveled west this time into Kansas to spend a week at Uncle Mike's new lake house. Pierce, Henry, Duane, and Bear are along, with Dwayne's siblings, Lois, Evelyn, and Sammy, still called Fredberry. The Jaderson sisters are home with their parents in Ohio this time. This trip belongs to the older crew. 19.7 acres just second tier to Big Hill Lake with a cedar-sided house, a wraparound porch, a 60 by 40 shop, and a 32-foot deep private pond with its own dock. The previous owner is, as far as anyone knows, fictional. As far as anyone knows. A little spooky. Mostly funny. Red with the lights on if you want. With the lights off if you're brave, with a beef stick on hand either way. Chapter 1. Westbound. Pierce Jaderson was from Kansas originally. He had been born in Kansas, raised in Kansas, and then two summers ago moved with his family to Ohio, which meant Pierce was now an Ohio kid on paper and a Kansas kid in his head. He had not been back since. Henry was from Kansas too, Henry was less philosophical about it. Henry's official position was that wind came from Kansas, that wind belonged in Kansas, and that the wind in Ohio was, in his words, imitation wind, technically wind, but missing the personality. That's not how wind works, Duane said from the front passenger seat. You don't know that, Henry said. I do know that. You know how some wind works, Henry said. Not all wind. Some wind is mysterious. This was the first hour of the drive. There were thirteen more. Uncle Mike, Duane's dad, was at the wheel. He was driving an enormous SUV with seven kids inside it and a roof rack full of duffel bags, fishing rods, three coolers, a portable crib for Fredberry, Bear's golf bag, two backpacks of Duane's essential equipment, and a single small suitcase belonging to Pierce, who had packed nothing because he reasoned they were going to a house, and houses had stuff. Uncle Mike had bought a lake house. He had been talking about it for two months. It was in Cherryvale, Kansas on 19.7 acres just second tier to Big Hill Lake, and Uncle Mike said the phrase just second tier to Big Hill Lake the way other people said Hawaii. The roster going west, Pierce ten, riding shotgun adjacent in the second row. Henry eight, beef stick already deployed. Duane ten, co pilot, new notebook open in his lap. Bear eight, golf clubs in the back, putter on his knees because he refused to be separated from it. Lois in the third row, doing some kind of stretch that did not look possible in a seat belt. Evelyn, also in the third row, watching the highway in total silence. Fred Berry, asleep in the portable car seat with a single Cheerio adhered to his cheek. The new notebook had two entries so far. The first said everything worth restarting is worth restarting well. The second said Lake House inventory pending. The old notebook, the famous one, with all the trap diagrams and zone plans and the unfinished sketch of the mysterious zone E, was currently in the hands of Victor Malone, who had stolen it last summer, which Duane preferred not to think about and also thought about constantly. Henry leaned forward. Are we writing in the notebook yet? We are writing in the notebook, Duane said. And what did you write? Inventory pending. What does that mean? It means inventory. Henry sat back, satisfied. Duane being himself again was a stabilizing thing for the whole vehicle. Uncle Mike, Henry said. What does second tier mean? It means we're not on the lake, Uncle Mike said. We're one property back from the lake. So we don't have the lake. We have a pond. What's the difference between a pond and a lake? A lake is bigger. How much bigger? A lake. Henry chewed. Bear from the back. How deep is the pond? Uncle Mike. Thirty two feet, give or take. Bear looked at his putter. That's deep. It's deep. Uncle Mike agreed. Evelyn, in the third row, made a small note of this and said nothing. They stopped twice for gas, and once at a place outside Indianapolis where Henry ordered a chicken sandwich, ate three bites, declared it emotionally underwhelming, and switched to beef sticks for the remainder of the day. Bear grated the chicken sandwich a four point one out of ten, then revised it to a three point eight because the bun was structurally insulting. Lois disappeared during the second gas stop and was found calmly, two minutes later sitting on the SUV's roof rack. How did you get up there? Uncle Mike said. I climbed, Lois said. There's nothing to climb. There was for me. Uncle Mike helped her down without further comment. He was getting used to Lois. The sun went sideways across Missouri. Fred Berry woke up twice, ate Cheerios, and went back to sleep. Pierce watched the country flatten and stretch out. The towns got smaller. The sky got bigger. The roads got straighter, which Henry said was the kind of straight that makes you wonder if you're being tested. Sometime after dark they turned onto a gravel road. The headlights swept over a wooden sign with the word Pickett carved into it. The sign was old. The carving was deep. Uncle Mike slowed the SUV and turned in. Who's Pickett? Henry asked. Edna Pickett, Uncle Mike said. The lady who used to own this place. Where is she now? Uncle Mike paused just slightly before answering. That he said is a story for tomorrow. Henry looked at Pierce. Pierce looked at Duane. Duane wrote something in his Chapter two. Welcome to Big Hill Lake. The house was made of cedar. It had a wraparound porch with two rocking chairs and one porch swing that creaked the way porch swings are supposed to creak, which is to say, on purpose. The roof was steep, the windows were tall. There was a big stone chimney on one end and a smaller stove pipe on the other, and Uncle Mike said the smaller one was for the pellet heater, which Henry asked about for ten straight minutes until Uncle Mike promised to show him. The front door was painted dark green. The doorknob was brass. The key Uncle Mike used had a small leather tag on it that said simply picket. Inside, a long open room with wood floors, a stone fireplace, a kitchen that opened to the porch, and stairs that went down to a full unfinished basement, which Uncle Mike said was where the kids would be sleeping in a big communal sleeping bag situation, because the house was small upstairs and the kids were not small in number. Henry looked at the basement stairs. How unfinished? Unfinished, Uncle Mike said. That's a range, Henry said. Concrete floor, studs, one bare bulb on a pole chain, two windows, no furniture, sleeping bags only. Henry nodded slowly. That is in fact unfinished. Pierce. It's an adventure. Henry, that's what people say when something is bad. The tour took twenty minutes. Two bedrooms upstairs. Uncle Mike took one, Fred Berry's crib went in the other. Three full bathrooms, which Duane wrote down as excessive but appreciated. The kitchen had a wood handled drawer pull on every cabinet. The primary bedroom opened directly onto the wraparound porch, which Bear immediately classified as the move. The back deck looked out across a fenced yard, past a line of trees to a glimmer of water in the distance. Big hill lake, just visible through the leaves the way Uncle Mike had promised. Then they went outside, and that was when the property revealed itself. The shop was sixty feet by forty feet. It was heated and cooled. It had three oversized overhead doors and built in workbenches along two walls and a restroom in the corner. And when Duane walked in, he stopped, set down his backpack, took off his glasses, cleaned them with the bottom of his shirt, put them back on, and said one word, very quietly. Yes. Pearce had never seen Duane speak in a single word before. Uncle Mike clapped him on the shoulder. It's a shop, buddy. It's a cathedral, Duane said. Uncle Mike, who was Duane's father who understood, said it is a cathedral. Pass the shop, a horse shed, fully enclosed, no horses, which Henry found suspicious and would not let go of. Why is there a horse shed with no horses? Where did the horses go? Past the horse shed, open grass, the kind that bends in waves when wind crosses it, and past the grass down a gentle slope, the pond. It was bigger than Pearce expected. Maybe an acre across. There was a small wooden dock that stuck out about fifteen feet over the water. The water was very dark and very still and very, in Henry's word, loaded. How deep again? Henry said. Thirty two feet, Uncle Mike said. And that's a building. That's a four story building. It's a pond, Henry. It's a building of water. Bear took out his notebook and wrote pond thirty two feet strong. Lois walked directly to the end of the dock without slowing down. Fredberry on Pierce's hip looked at the water and pointed. Wet, Fredberry said. Pierce. Yeah, Fredberry. Wet. Fredberry seemed satisfied with this. Beyond the pond, past a low fence, more land. Uncle Mike pointed. That's Army Corps, he said. Public ground that buffers the lake. Means we can walk straight from our back fence to the lake shore without crossing anybody else's property. nineteen point seven acres of our own and miles of theirs. Pierce looked at the woods stretching off into shadow. The sun was already low. The trees back there were big. Evelyn was looking at the same woods. Pierce noticed her notice them. She did not say anything. She rarely did. But her face had the look it got when she was filing something away. Back inside. Uncle Mike made grilled cheese, which Pierce had not asked for, but which Uncle Mike had figured out about Pierce some years ago, and never forgot. Henry got beef sticks plus grilled cheese. Bear got grilled cheese plus a side cup of macaroni. Lois ate standing up. Evelyn ate quietly. Fredberry got Cheerios on a plastic plate that he immediately upended. It was dark by the time they finished. Uncle Mike pulled the chairs around the fireplace and lit a small fire in it, even though it wasn't cold because he said, You should light a fire in a new house on the first night, on principle. Then he said, All right, you wanted to know about Edna Pickett. Henry put down his beef stick. Did I? he said. You did, Uncle Mike said. You very much did. Chapter three. The story of Edna Pickett. Uncle Mike was not a dramatic storyteller. He told stories the way he did everything else, which was calmly, with an even voice, and with the assumption that the facts would do the work for him. He sat in the rocking chair closest to the fire. The kids arranged themselves on the rug. Fred Berry crawled into Evelyn's lap and stayed there. Edna Pickett, Uncle Mike said, built this house in nineteen seventy one by herself. Mostly. By herself, Pearce said. Mostly, Uncle Mike said. She hired help for the roof. Everything else her. She was thirty one when she started. She was thirty three when she finished. Bear wrote Edna Pickett, Builder. She lived here alone for forty-one years, Uncle Mike said. Never married. Had one brother who lived in Wichita, came out every Thanksgiving until he passed in 2004. After that, it was just her. Just her, Henry said quietly. Just her. Uncle Mike said, and the property, and the pond, and the lawn. Henry, who had been doing fine, suddenly had a feeling about the word lawn. She kept the place spotless, Uncle Mike said, mowed it herself. Had a big riding mower, the orange kind. People in town said she'd be out there at all hours, weekends, weeknights, sometimes after dark, with the headlights on the mower, just going in big lazy circles. That sounds nice, Pierce said. It was nice. Uncle Mike said for her. He paused. The fire popped. One night in the fall of 2012, Uncle Mike said she went out to mow. Henry's eyes got a little bigger. And the next morning, Uncle Mike said The mower was gone, and so was Edna. Silence in the room. Even Fredberry was watching now the way babies do when they sense the grown-ups have changed register. Where'd she go? Bear said. Uncle Mike took a slow breath. This part is where the town story takes over, he said. Sheriff's people came out, searched everywhere, couldn't find her, couldn't find the mower, couldn't find tracks, searched the woods, searched the lake, came up empty. He paused. Eventually, somebody pointed at the pond. Henry, oh no. Uncle Mike. They dragged it, more or less. Ponds deep. Thirty two feet, like I said, and silty at the bottom. They thought they pulled up something metal way down, couldn't get a hook on it. Eventually they stopped trying. So she's down there, Henry said. Henry, nobody knows for certain. The official record says missing. The unofficial record, which is everybody in town except the official record, says she rode the mower into the pond. Why would she do that? Pierce said. Uncle Mike shrugged. People speculate. Folks her age on the back end of forty one years alone on a property they built with their own hands, sometimes have a sense of when they're done. Maybe she just rode out one night and didn't aim for the driveway. Maybe she had a moment. Maybe the mower failed. I don't know. Nobody does. He rocked the chair gentle once. Now, he said, the other part of the story. Henry, why is there always another part of the story? People in town, Uncle Mike said, say they still hear the mower at night. Out by the pond, late, sometimes summer, sometimes fall. Engine sound, headlight even. They say if you look out, sometimes you can see something moving across the grass. He stopped. He looked at the kids. Then he said in his even voice, for the record, I do not believe this. I think people in small towns make up stories about old houses. The house is great, the land is great, the pond is great. I bought it because it was a steal at the asking price and because the shop alone is worth what I paid. There is no lawnmower lady. Henry. You said it. Uncle Mike. What? Henry. You said the words lawnmower, lady. You called it a thing. You can't take that back. Uncle Mike looked at the fire. Bedtime, he said. Downstairs, in the unfinished basement, with a single bare bulb on, seven kids lined up seven sleeping bags in a row. Lois claimed the spot nearest the stairs without discussion. Evelyn picked the spot in the middle. Fredberry's portable crib went next to Evelyn because Evelyn was the most calming presence in any room. Pierce, Henry, Duane, and Bear took the back wall. The bulb clicked off and it was in a moment very dark. Henry I have a question. Pierce, don't ask it. Henry, my question is whether or not we should ask it. Pierce asleep, Henry. Henry was quiet for thirty seconds. Then he said very softly, What if we hear it? Pierce did not answer. Pierce did not in fact know. Chapter four The First Night. It came at two hundred fourteen AM and Pierce knew the exact time, because his watch had a glow button, and he had been looking at it every twelve minutes or so. He had not been able to fall fully asleep. The basement was darker than any room he'd ever slept in, the kind of dark where you sometimes wonder if your eyes are even open. At two hundred fourteen AM he heard it, distant, faint, outside, a low, steady hum, the kind of hum a small engine makes when it's running at a constant low throttle. The kind of hum a riding mower makes. Pierce did not move. He thought very calmly in his own head, it's a generator, it's an air conditioner, it's a car on the highway. It's a tractor at a neighbor's farm. It is any one of a hundred possible things that are not a riding mower. Then Henry said in the dark, in a voice so small Pierce barely heard it. Pierce. I hear it, Pierce said. Good. Henry whispered. I thought I was crazy. You're not crazy. I have been crazy in the past about things like this. Not this time. From across the basement, Duane, also awake. Pierce. Yeah. My watch puts the source roughly south-southwest of the house. That is the direction of the pond. Roger that, Pierce said. Which was something he had heard people say in movies, and which felt right. Bear. Should we look? Pierce considered this. On the one hand, looking would be brave. Gather intel useful. On the other hand, not looking would be very, very fine. We look, Pierce said. Henry. I hate that we look. They moved as quietly as seven kids can move, which is not very. The basement had two small windows up at ground level, each about the size of a shoebox. Pierce climbed onto a wooden support beam to reach the closest one. He cupped his hands around his face and pressed against the glass, and outside the moon was bright, the grass was silver, the pond was a flat, dark patch in the distance, visible through the trees. He saw nothing moving. He saw the dock, he saw the trees, he saw the woods beyond the fence. He did not see anything else. But the sound, the engine sound, was real. Steady, distant. Coming from somewhere out there. Then it stopped, not faded, stopped, like somebody had turned a key. Pierce held his breath for a count of ten. Nothing. Just the moon and the grass and the dark. He climbed down. It's gone, he said. Henry, what did you see? Nothing. What does nothing mean? It means nothing. There was a sound. The sound stopped. I didn't see anything. Duane wrote something in his notebook by the light of his watch. The pencil scratched in the dark. Evelyn, who Pierce had assumed was a Sleep said quietly from her sleeping bag. It was real. Pierce. I know. Evelyn. It was real. And it was the mower. And it stopped because it knew we were listening. Henry made a small sound. Lois. I'm going up there in the morning. Pierce. Up where? Lois. The pond? I want to see the dock when it's light. I want to look at the ground. Nobody slept much after that. Around dawn, Pierce drifted off for maybe forty minutes. When he woke up, a gray light was coming through the small windows, and Bear was already sitting up in his sleeping bag, fully dressed with his notebook open. Where are you going? Pierce whispered. Outside, Bear said. I want to see something. Pierce got up. They climbed the basement stairs as quietly as they could. The house was silent. Uncle Mike's bedroom door was closed. They eased open the back door and stepped out onto the deck. The morning was cool and wet. There was dew on everything. Bear pointed. On the wooden boards of the porch there were three small wet shapes. They were grass clippings, fresh cut, bright green, sitting in a small loose pile three steps from the door as if they'd been tracked there by someone's shoe. Pierce had not mowed the lawn. Uncle Mike had not mowed the lawn. Nobody had mowed the lawn. The grass was knee high in patches, which was one of the things Uncle Mike was planning to fix that week. Pierce looked at Bear. Bear looked at Pierce. Bear wrote in his notebook grass, porch, not ours. Don't tell Henry, Pierce said. Telling Henry is the first thing I'm going to do, Bear said. Pierce sighed. Yeah, he said. Chapter five. Daylight and a hole in the woods. By breakfast, Henry knew about the grass and he took the news the way he took most news, which was out loud. Grass, Henry said over scrambled eggs. On the porch, who put the grass on the porch? Henry, Uncle Mike said, pouring orange juice. What grass? There was grass on the porch this morning. Cut grass. Fresh, wet, like somebody mowed. It's grass, there's grass everywhere. It's a property. This grass was specifically deposited. Uncle Mike looked at Pierce. Pierce shrugged. There was some grass on the porch. Uncle Mike. Birds carry stuff. Wind carries stuff. The neighbor probably mowed yesterday and some blew over. We're a quarter mile from the nearest neighbor. Uncle Mike. Big wind. Henry stared at him. Uncle Mike. What? Henry. You don't believe yourself. Eat your eggs. Henry. Henry ate his eggs. After breakfast, Uncle Mike said he had to drive into town for supplies. He'd be back in two hours. The kids were to stay on the property, not in the pond. Not in the shop, without permission, and Lois was specifically not to climb anything taller than herself. To find taller than myself, Lois said. Lois, it's a fair question. No climbing, Uncle Mike said. That's the rule. No climbing of any kind. Lois considered this. I will interpret it broadly. Please don't. Uncle Mike got in the SUV and drove off. Gravel popped under the tires, the kids stood on the porch and watched him go. The dust cloud lingered for a long time on the gravel road. When the dust was gone, Pierce said, All right, now we explore. nineteen point seven acres is a lot of acres. They split into groups by terrain. Pierce, Henry, and Bear took the open grass and the back fence line. Duane and Lois took the shop and the horse shed. Duane wanted to inventory the workbench. Lois wanted to climb something even though she'd been told not to. Evelyn carried Fredberry on her hip and walked slowly along the tree line at the edge of the woods. It was Evelyn who found it. She was about a hundred yards from the back fence walking the boundary where their property met the Army Corps land. Fredberry was on her hip. She wasn't looking for anything in particular. She was just walking and noticing things, which was Evelyn's general mode. She stopped. She looked at a fallen tree. Then she looked at how the fallen tree was lying. Then she looked at it again because the way it was lying was strange. It had fallen across a small rock outcrop, and it had fallen in such a way that from the path the tree looked like it was just resting against the rocks. But from where Evelyn was standing at a slight angle, she could see that the tree was actually propped up on two smaller logs underneath, like somebody had wedged it there on purpose. Behind the tree and the rocks there was a dark opening. It was about three feet tall, maybe two feet across. Black inside. Evelyn looked at it for a long time, and then she turned and walked back to the house and got the others. All seven of them stood in front of it twenty minutes later. It's a cave, Bear said. It's a cave, Duane said. It's a hole, Henry said. A hole is not a cave. A hole is a hole. A hole that goes back, Pearce said, crouching and looking in. He couldn't see how far. Five feet, ten feet, more. Past a certain point, the dark just kept going. Somebody put that log there on purpose, Evelyn said quietly. It's not natural, the log is propped. Duane looked at the log, then at Evelyn. Then at the cave, then back at Evelyn. You're right. Lois ducked under the log, walked three steps into the cave and disappeared from view. Pierce. Lois Lois from inside. It's fine. It's just a tunnel. Pierce. Come back. Lois from a little farther in. There's a draft. Air's moving. It goes somewhere. Pierce. Lois come back right now. Lois reappeared, dusting off her hands. It's interesting, she said. We should come back with lights. Duane was already writing in his notebook. He had drawn the fallen tree, the rocks, the opening. He had labeled it cave one with a question mark, because Duane always assumed there might be more than one of something. Henry put his hands on his hips. So just to be clear, Henry said. We have a haunted lawnmower at night. We have a secret cave during the day. We've been here approximately fifteen hours. Pierce. Yeah. Henry, chapter six. The door that says picket. They did not tell Uncle Mike about the cave. This was a unanimous decision reached without speaking, the way kids sometimes reach decisions by simply not saying anything when the obvious thing would be to say something. Uncle Mike came back with groceries and lumber and a new mailbox. He asked what they'd done that morning. Pierce said explored. Uncle Mike said good and went to put the lumber in the shop, which was, for him, basically going to church. After lunch the kids gathered in the shop too, but for different reasons. Duane moved between the workbenches with the focus of a person who had been waiting his whole life to be in this exact building. What do we need? Pierce asked. Duane, eyes on the wall. Flashlights, headlamps, if any are charged, two ropes, fifty feet each, a ball of string, pencil, backup pencil, notebook, snacks. Henry. What kind of snacks? Duane, beef sticks. Henry, that's the right answer. Duane. I know. They went back to the cave at three in the afternoon. The light was bright, the woods were green. Even Henry, who was generally afraid of the cave in principle, felt better about it in sunshine. Pierce went first. He had to crouch to get under the propped log. Inside the cave widened. He could stand up after the first few steps. The air was cool and smelled like wet rock and old leaves. Duane came in behind him with the string ball, tying one end to a sturdy root just inside the entrance. He unspooled as they walked, marking the trail. Baron Lois came next. Then Evelyn, with Fredberry, who Evelyn had insisted on bringing because Fredberry was unusually quiet today and seemed interested. Henry came last, with both hands holding both rope ends like he was leashing the entire expedition to himself in case anyone needed sudden retrieval. Twenty feet in, Pearce's flashlight beam hit something that wasn't rock. He stopped. He turned the beam slowly. It was a wall, not a cave wall. A wooden wall. Boards fitted, weathered, brown, set into the rock as if somebody had built it there. And in the middle of the wall, a door. It was, the kids would later agree, exactly the kind of door that a door has no business being in a cave. Solid wood, old, but well made, heavy iron hinges, a black iron handle, a keyhole, and above the door, carved into a small wooden plaque set into the stone above the lintel, a single word in capital letters picket. Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Henry said in a small voice, That is her name. That is her name, Pierce said. On the door, Henry said. On the door, Pierce said. Nina. Duane had already crouched in front of the keyhole and was shining his flashlight into it. Standard pin tumbler, he said very calmly. Old skeleton key type. We'd need the actual key. Picking this is not a kid project. Possibly not even a Duane project. Barrett, try the handle. Pierce tried the handle. Locked. Pierce tried again, harder. Locked but solidly. The door did not budge. He looked at the others. Okay. Pierce said. We need a key. Henry. Why don't we just go bring Uncle Mike and break it down? Evelyn shook her head before Pierce could answer. It's a private door. Evelyn said quietly. It was hers. We shouldn't break it. We should open it the way she opened it. Pierce looked at Evelyn. Evelyn was watching the door with a steady expression. Fredberry on her hip was also watching the door. Fredberry was very quiet. Lady, Fredberry said. Everyone turned and stared at him. What did he say? Bear said. Evelyn. He said Lady. Why did he say lady? Evelyn. He says lady when he sees a lady. Henry. What lady? Evelyn looked around the cave, slowly. Her flashlight beam crossed the door, the walls, the floor. There was no lady. Fredberry pointed at the door. Lady, he said again more firmly. Henry, I would like to go back to the house now, please. Pierce. Yeah, he said very carefully. Yeah, let's head back. Duane marked the spot on the floor in chalk. He tied a small piece of red flagging tape to a stone next to the door in case the string came loose. They turned around and walked out slowly in the same order they'd come in. Fredberry didn't say anything else, but he kept his head turned back toward the door the entire way.