Episode 10 - The Ghost of Big Hill Lake - pt. 2

Edna Pickett be Sponkin' 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Chapter 7. The Second Night Closer. Dinner that night was burgers off the grill on the back deck. Uncle Mike grilled. Henry asked seven questions about pellet eaters. Bear asked four questions about the depth of the pond and got the same answer four times. Pierce ate two burgers. Lois ate one and a half, and then went off to do something on the porch railing that Pierce decided not to investigate. Evelyn ate slowly and quietly and watched the tree line. Nobody mentioned the cave, nobody mentioned the door, nobody mentioned the word picket carved above the door. When Uncle Mike asked what they'd done in the afternoon, Pierce said hiked, and Bear said verified pond depth. And Henry said emotionally regrouped. And Uncle Mike, after a long look at Henry, said, Alright then, and let it go. The bulb clicked off in the basement at 10:30. Pierce lay in his sleeping bag and stared at the ceiling, which he could not see. He thought about the door. He thought about the keyhole. He thought about Fredberry saying lady. And what that could possibly mean. And why it bothered him so much. Fredberry had never said lady without there being a lady in the room. Fredberry's vocabulary was small but consistent. Pierce had no answer for this. And so he stopped thinking about it. He thought instead about grilled cheese. Grilled cheese was a more soothing thing to think about than a one-year-old identifying a person in an empty cave. He drifted. He woke up because someone was at the window. Not the cave window. The basement window. The small shoebox window near the ground. It was Lois. She'd climbed off her sleeping bag, walked across the basement in total silence, and was standing on the wooden support beam with her face pressed to the glass. Pierce sat up very slowly so as not to wake anyone else. He could hear again the sound, the mower. Distant. Steady. But closer than last night. Definitely closer. He climbed up onto the beam next to Lois. Out the window the moon was bright, the grass was bright silver. And across the yard, slowly, parallel to the back fence, something was moving. It was the size of a riding mower. It was the shape of a riding mower. It had a single dim, yellowy headlight pointed forward. It was moving in a slow, steady, very even line. There was a shape on top of it, a person sized shape, not clear, not solid. More like the suggestion of a person, like a shape made out of light, fog, and moonlight. It was wearing what looked like a sun hat. Pierce did not breathe. Lois did not breathe. Behind them in the dark, Pierce heard Henry whisper Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. Apparently Henry was also at a window, and Duane was at the other window, on the other side of the basement, with his flashlight off and his notebook in his hand, which he was not writing in because he wasn't taking his eyes off the figure on the lawn. Bear was on a chair behind Pierce, peering over his shoulder. Evelyn was already at the window next to Lois, having moved without anyone noticing. Fredberry was awake in her arms. Fredberry was looking out the window. Fredberry pointed. Lady, Fredberry said very clearly. Mao. The figure on the lawn slowed. The mower turned. It made a slow, careful, lazy circle the way Uncle Mike had described Edna's mowing. The headlight swept across the yard, across the back fence, across the lower edge of the basement windows, across the kids' faces. Henry made a small noise that wasn't quite a word. The light passed. The mower kept going. It traced a long arc away from the house toward the pond. It rolled down the slope, and it stopped at the edge of the dock. The shape on the mower turned. The hat turned. Pierce had the very clear, very strong feeling that whatever that shape was, it was looking back at the house. Specifically looking at the basement windows, specifically looking at them. Then all at once the headlight went out. And the mower sound went with it, gone, like a switch. The lawn was empty, the dock was empty. The pond was a flat, dark disk, nobody moved, nobody spoke. After a long time, Bear got down off the chair and walked over to his sleeping bag and crawled into it and pulled it over his head. Henry, I am sleeping in a single human pile with everybody tonight. Pierce, yeah. They dragged all seven sleeping bags into the middle of the basement and the crib and arranged themselves into something that was technically one large dog pile. Pierce was the last awake. He stared at the dark ceiling, and he thought she saw us. Then he thought she's not trying to hurt us. He didn't know how he knew that. He just knew it. And the not trying to hurt us did not make it less spooky, but it changed it somehow. It made the spookiness shape like a question instead of a threat. He fell asleep eventually, he dreamed about a key. Chapter eight Lois Goes Down. In the morning over pancakes, Pierce called a meeting. Uncle Mike had gone to the shop to start a project. The kids had the kitchen to themselves. Pierce sat at the head of the table. Henry sat to his right. Duane, notebook open, sat across from him. Bear had his notebook open too. Lois was on the kitchen counter because Lois preferred counters. Evelyn was at the other end of the table with Fredberry, who was eating a pancake with both hands. Pierce said, Okay, here's what we know. He counted on his fingers. One. There is a thing on the lawn at night. Two. It is shaped like a mower. Three. There is a person shape on top of it. Four. Fredberry can see it and identifies it as a lady. Five. There is a door in a cave on this property. Six The door says picket. Seven. We don't have the key. Bear. Eight. The pond is thirty-two feet deep. Pierce, that doesn't matter for this. Bear. It might. Pierce paused. He looked at Bear. He looked at Evelyn. He looked at the pond out the window. He said, Why might it matter for this? Bear. Where did Edna go? Pierce, the pond. Bear. What was she on? Pierce, the mower. Bear. Where are her things? Pierce stared. Bear. If you keep a private door in a cave, you keep the key on you. If you go into the pond on a mower, your stuff goes with you. The key might be down there. Henry. That is the most terrifying logic I have ever heard. Duane, writing, that is also extremely correct. Lois from the counter. I'll go. Pierce, what? Lois, I'll go down. I'm the smallest. I'm the fastest. I can hold my breath the longest. I will dive the pond. Henry, no. Lois. I'm doing it. Henry. We have the whole Bay Village Chronicles ahead of us, Lois. We cannot lose you in Book Eight. Pierce. Henry Henry, I'm invested in the long arc. They went outside after lunch with a story for Uncle Mike about swimming at the dock just on the surface, only Lois and only with all of us watching. Uncle Mike, who was deep into the shop and assembling something that involved a saw, said don't drown and waved them off. Duane Ever Duane had already built equipment. He had a rope harness made from climbing webbing he'd found in the shop. He had a weight belt made from a tool pouch and two five pound dumbbells from Uncle Mike's storage box. He had a snorkel mask. He had a waterproof headlamp. He had a small mesh bag for retrieval. He had a chalkboard slate on a lanyard for underwater communication. Which was, frankly, optimistic. He laid the gear on the dock. Bare. Conditions check. Pond surface temperature. Lois with her hand in the water. Warm. Bare. Visibility. Lois. Bad. Bear. Bottom temperature? Lois. We'll be cold. Duane. Maximum dive time on a single breath. No scuba. 45 seconds. Conservatively. We'll do three dives, two minutes between each. If she comes up empty after three, we stop. Pierce. Lois. Are you sure? Lois looked at the pond. She had the look she got before she did something she knew was going to be hard. Calm. Focused. A little bored even because Lois treated difficult things the way other kids treated chores. I'm sure, she said. Pierce. If you find nothing, we stop. I'll find something. She put on the mask. She clipped the weight belt. She held the slate in one hand and the mesh bag in the other. She sat on the edge of the dock with her legs in the water. Henry was standing twenty feet back from the dock. I am providing moral support from this distance. Which is a real roll. Bear. Acknowledged. Duane held the rope. Pierce held the rope behind Duane. Bear held the safety line. Evelyn knelt at the edge of the dock with Fred Berry in her lap. Lois took a deep breath. She dropped. The first dive lasted thirty-eight seconds. She came up holding nothing. Thirty-two feet is a lot of feet. She gasped. I only got to maybe twenty before I had to come up. Pierce. Take your two minutes. She breathed. Bear timed her. At two minutes exactly, she sat up and said, Go. She dropped. Forty-one seconds. Came up empty again. The bottom is soft, she said. My hand went into mud. Couldn't see anything. Pierce. One more. Lois, one more. She breathed. Two full minutes. The pond was perfectly still. She dropped. This time it was longer. Pierce started counting in his head when she went down. Twenty seconds. Thirty. Forty. Forty-five. He looked at Duane. Duane was looking at his watch. Fifty seconds. Pierce reached for the rope to pull her up. Lois broke the surface with a huge, gasping breath. She held something up over her head. It was rectangular. It was dark. It was covered in pond mud. She slapped it down on the dock. It was a metal lunch tin, the old kind. Dome top.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Latch on the front, sealed shut. Chapter nine. What was inside?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

They did not open the tin on the dock. Pierce, in a moment of leader mode clarity, said not here, and the others nodded because the dock felt very exposed and the pond felt very nearby, and the day was getting close to afternoon, and the woods were closer than the woods had been at lunch, somehow. They brought the tin to the basement. Specifically they brought it to the corner of the basement that was farthest from the windows. And they sat in a circle around it, and they set it in the middle of the circle, like a thing that had to be handled correctly. Fredberry, in Evelyn's lap, looked at the tin. Lady, Fredberry said. Evelyn. Yeah. The latch was rusted shut. Duane worked it loose with a screwdriver from his pocket. It took a minute, when the latch finally clicked the lid resisted, then released with a small, dry sucking sound. The rubber gasket inside the lid it held. The contents were dry, three items. One, an old iron key. The size of Pierce's pinky finger, heavy, cast iron, the shape that fit a skeleton key keyhole. Two. A folded letter. Plain paper, folded into thirds. The paper was yellow at the edges, but the writing on the outside was clear, in a careful steady hand. To whoever finds this. three. A small black and white photograph, square, old, the corners worn. It showed a young woman, maybe thirty years old, standing in front of a cedar sided house that was unmistakably this house, only newer. She was wearing work pants and a button-down shirt and a wide brimmed sun hat. She was holding a hammer in one hand. She was smiling not at the camera but at something off to the side. Her face was bright. Bear. That's her. Pierce. That's her. Henry. She looks really nice. Pierce. Yeah. Henry. That makes me feel worse. Evelyn picked up the photograph with both hands and looked at it for a long time. Then she set it down gently on the basement floor. Pierce looked at the key. Pierce looked at the letter. Pierce looked at the others. Do we read the letter first? He said, or do we open the door first? Duane immediately. Door first. Letter is private. Letter should be opened in the room it was meant for. Bear. That feels right. Henry, that feels very right. Pierce, door first. Lois. I want to come. Pierce, you always come. Lois, I want to be on the record as coming. Pierce noted. They went out the back, around the shop, past the horse shed, across the open grass, along the fence line, into the woods. The afternoon was gold and slow, cicadas, birds, the kind of summer day that, on any other property, would have felt completely normal. They reached the fallen log. They ducked under it, one at a time. They followed Duane's string into the cave. The flashlight beams found the door. Pickett above it in the carved letters. Pierce stepped up to the door with the key. He paused. He looked back at the others. Just so we're clear, Pierce said. Whatever's behind this door is something Edna Pickett built, privately, for herself. Forty years ago. She didn't want anybody seeing it, probably. Evelyn. She wanted somebody to see it eventually. Pierce, why do you say that? Evelyn. She put a letter in the tin. To whoever finds this. She wanted somebody to find it, or somebody. Pierce looked at her. Evelyn was nine years old, and she was right about everything. Pierce put the key in the lock. He turned it. There was a soft, dry click. Old metal, old mechanism still working perfectly. He pushed the door, it swung in. The room was small. Maybe ten feet by ten feet. The walls were rock, smooth by hand in some places, left rough in others. The ceiling was low enough that Pierce, who was tall for ten, could reach up and touch it. Wooden shelves had been built into the rock walls. On the shelves tools, a pickaxe, a folding shovel, a coil of rope, a box of candles, a tin of matches, two tin cups, a small kerosene lantern which Duane immediately picked up, shook gently to confirm fuel, and set aside as functional. Against one wall a small wooden workbench. On the workbench a coffee mug dust coated with the dried ring of long ago coffee still visible inside. A pencil. A small carved wooden bird painted blue. A pair of reading glasses. Above the workbench, a paper map of the property pinned with rusted thumbtacks. The map showed the house, the shop, the pond, the fence line, and the woods. There were pencil markings on it. Lines, arrows. One line went from the pond, curved through the woods, and ended at a point that Duane identified after a moment as exactly where they were standing. The line was labeled in Edna's careful hand, tunnel route Bear. She was building a tunnel. Duane. She was building a tunnel from the pond to the cave. Bear. Why? Duane, very quietly. Because she could. Pierce understood immediately. He understood it the way he understood about Uncle Mike and the shop. Some people, when they have a place they love, and the time to themselves and the tools at hand, just start building. Not because they need it, because it's there to be built. On the workbench, next to the coffee mug was a small leather bound journal. And tucked into the back of the journal in the same careful handwriting was a folded letter. Two letters, actually. One in the tin, one here. Evelyn picked up the journal.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Chapter ten The Letter.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

They sat on the floor of the room. Duane lit the lantern. The light it threw was warm and yellow and made the rock walls look softer than they had under the flashlights. The room felt suddenly less like a secret and more like a place. A place somebody had built a place that had waited. Evelyn unfolded the letter from the journal. The paper was the same yellow at the edges, but the writing was the same steady hand. Pencil. Slow, considered. The way somebody writes when they're saying something they mean. Evelyn looked at Pierce. Pierce nodded. Evelyn read it out loud. Hello, whoever you are. She paused. Her voice was very small in the room, she kept going. If you're reading this, you've found my hideaway. You found the door, which means you found the tin, which means you went into the pond, which means you cared enough to look. I'm glad it was you. Henry made a small sound. Pearce reached over and put a hand on Henry's shoulder. My name is Edna Pickett. I built this house in 1971, and I built this room in nineteen seventy four. And I started the tunnel in nineteen seventy-nine, and I never quite finished it. The tunnel was going to come out at the pond under the dock, where I could come and go without anybody seeing me. Not because I had anything to hide, because I liked the idea. A person should have at least one secret way home. Bear wrote down a person should have at least one secret way home. Bear underlined it twice. Evelyn kept reading. I've lived on this land most of my adult life. I built it with my hands. I know every tree on the property, every dip in the grass, every rock under the pond. I have been happier here than I expected to be. I have been lonelier here than I expected to be. Both can be true. Pierce was watching Evelyn read. Evelyn was reading carefully like she was handling something fragile. If you're reading this, I'm probably gone. I don't know when and I don't know how, but I know that I'm not going to leave this land if I can help it. So if you found my room, please understand. This is still my place. I built it. I love it. I am asking you to take care of it. I'm asking you to leave it better than you found it. And I am asking you, please, if you can, to finish the tunnel for me. The plans are in the journal. The work is half done. The hard part is over. The rest is yours if you want it. Evelyn paused. She turned the page over. There was one more line on the The back. I'm not done here yet. Signed Edna Pickett, june twelfth, nineteen eighty five. Nobody said anything. Duane had the journal open in his lap and was already quietly looking at the tunnel plans. His face was the focused Duane face, but it was also a little something else. Pierce wasn't sure what to call it. Pierce had a similar feeling and didn't have a name for his version of it either. Henry was holding the back of his neck with one hand, looking at the floor. Bear was writing slowly in his own notebook. Lois was sitting cross legged, very still for Lois, looking at the lantern. Evelyn folded the letter and put it back in the journal and held the journal in her lap. Fred Berry and Evelyn's other arm was asleep. Pierce said, She's not haunting us. Evelyn, no. Pierce, she's just here. Evelyn. She's just here, and she's been waiting. Henry. For what? Evelyn looked at the tunnel plans in Duane's lap. For someone to notice. She said. They sat in the lantern light for a long time. Nobody was in a hurry to leave. Eventually Pierce stood up. He looked around the room. Slowly. He looked at the coffee mug. He looked at the carved wooden bird. He looked at the map on the wall. We can't finish a tunnel, Pierce said. Duane, we can't finish a tunnel. Bear. We can't finish a tunnel. Henry. Thank you. Thank you for all saying that out loud. I was afraid we were going to say we could finish a tunnel. Pierce. But he paused. We can let her know we know. Pierce said. We can show her we found it. We can do that. Evelyn. How? Pierce. I don't know yet. Duane, looking up from the journal. I think we leave her something. Bear. What? Duane. Something she'll see. Pierce. Where? Duane. On the dock. Pierce nodded slowly. Tonight, Pierce said. Chapter eleven The Offering. They worked through the afternoon. They did it quietly. Without telling Uncle Mike, who was happily occupied in the shop with the new mailbox and a project involving saw horses and what he kept describing as a really nice piece of cedar. The kids drifted in and out of the kitchen and the basement and the porch, looking to anyone watching, like kids on a normal vacation day. Which is to say, not at all suspicious. They gathered things. Lois brought the metal lunch tin, washed and dried. Pierce brought the letter, refolded carefully, placed back inside. Bear brought the photograph, slipped inside the letter, like a bookmark. Duane brought a sheet of paper from his new notebook with a single drawing on it. The tunnel route from the journal recopied in Duane's neat pencil with a small note at the bottom and his careful printing. We found it. We'll take care of it. Thank you. He'd shown the drawing to the others first. Pierce had read it twice, Pierce had said very quietly. That's right. Evelyn brought one more thing, without telling anybody. She'd found it on a shelf in the kitchen, in a small dish next to the back door where Uncle Mike had said someone had left it for him as a housewarming. It was a tiny carved wooden bird, painted blue. The matching bird, the one to Edna's. Whoever had left it had no way of knowing. Evelyn had picked it up and looked at it, and put it in her pocket without a word. Now she set it on top of the folded sheet of paper in the lunch tin. Two blue birds, one in the cave room, one in the tin. Pierce, watching her do it, did not say anything because there was nothing to say. They added one more thing. Uncle Mike had been planning to mow the back forty all week, and had finally done a small section that afternoon, the strip closest to the pond. There were fresh cut clippings still lying in the grass where the mower had left them. Bear gathered a handful, fresh cut, wet slightly. Bright green. He laid them in a small loose ring around the lunch tin. He did it without being asked. Bear, the planner, the noticer of details, the keeper of small ceremonies. Pierce looked at him. Bear. It's the right thing. Pierce. Yeah. At sundown, they carried the whole thing to the dock. They walked slowly. Henry walked in the middle of the group because of course he did. Fredberry was on Evelyn's hip again, very quiet, very awake. Pierce set the tin at the end of the dock, just past where Lois had dropped in. He arranged the ring of clippings around it. He stepped back. Henry. What do we say? Pierce. I don't know if we say anything. Evelyn. I think we say thank you. Pierce thought about it. Thank you, Pierce said quietly. Edna. For the door. For the room. For the letter. For the place. Henry. And the grilled cheese is great here. Pierce, Henry. Henry, that was for me, but also it's true. The house is great. She made a great house, she should know. Pierce paused. Yeah. Pierce said. You made a great house, Edna. We like it. Lois. And the pond is deep. It's a good pond. Bear. It's a 9.1 pond. Duane. I want to finish the tunnel one day. When I'm older, I can't do it now, but I will. Evelyn was last. Evelyn said very softly. It's still yours. Fredberry in her arms leaned his head against her shoulder. Fredberry said, Lady. Then Fredberry waved. He waved at nothing, he waved at the dock. He waved at the air past the dock. He waved like he was saying goodbye to somebody. Evelyn turned around and walked back to the house since the others followed. Nobody looked back. That night in the basement. The kids did not sleep in a pile. They each went to their own sleeping bags. The bulb clicked off. The mower sound came once around midnight, far away, not approaching. Just the sound of an engine somewhere, idling the way an engine sounds when nobody's in any hurry. It ran for about a minute and then it stopped, gentle, like somebody had eased the key. Pierce heard faintly what might have been wind, or might have been somebody walking slowly across grass, the way somebody walks when they're not in a rush, when they're just enjoying the night air. Then nothing. Pierce slept. He did not dream.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

It was the best sleep he'd had all week.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Chapter twelve Going Home Morning at the lake house was bright. The grass was wet with dew. The pond was a flat mirror. The sky was the color sky gets in late summer in Kansas, which is very, very wide. Pierce went out onto the back deck in his bare feet. He was the first one up. The dock was empty. The lunch tin was gone, the letter gone, the photograph gone. The ring of grass clippings was not gone, it had been moved. It was no longer in a ring, it had been arranged in a small, neat shape just past the end of the dock, in the wet grass at the edge of the water. It was the shape of a heart. Pierce looked at it for a long time, then he sat down on the deck steps and put his chin in his hands. He sat there until the sun was over the trees. Uncle Mike came out a little later with a cup of coffee. He stood on the deck and looked out across the property. You know what? Uncle Mike said. I slept like the dead. Pierce, don't say it like that. Uncle Mike, what? Pierce. Just don't. Uncle Mike. Slept great is what I'm saying. Quietest night I've had since we got here. No engine sound, no grass on the porch, not a thing. Pierce. Yeah. Uncle Mike took a slow sip. I'm starting to think, he said, that this house just needed some people in it. Pierce, yeah, he said. I think so. Breakfast was pancakes, Henry had four, Bear had three, then asked for two more on principle. Lois ate standing up. Evelyn ate with Fred Berry, who was eating a banana with both hands and getting most of it on his face. Duane sat at the table with his notebook open. He had written at the top of a fresh page in his neat printing Tunnel Project Picket Property Cherry Vale KS Status on hold estimated completion future. Underneath a smaller note when older When bigger tools When still here. Pierce read it over Duane's shoulder. Pierce, you're serious. Duane, I told her I would. Pierce. You did. Duane, so I will. Pierce did not argue with this because Pierce had known Duane all his life, and Duane, when he wrote something down, meant it. They packed up after breakfast, sleeping bags rolled, cooler refilled, Bear's golf bag back on the rack. He had not played any golf, but the bag had been comforting to have. Fred Berry's portable crib folded, Lois's small bag of stretching equipment that Pierce hadn't realized she had brought. Henry's beef stick supply, which had been somehow restocked from town. Bear took one last look at the pond before they got in the SUV. He wrote in his notebook Big Hill Lake Property. Overall trip score nine point six, lost zero point four for personal stress, recovered most of it through meaningful resolution will return recommend. He showed it to Henry. Henry, that's higher than I expected. Bear, it earned it. Henry. Yeah, Henry said. It did. They piled in, Uncle Mike started the engine, gravel crunched under the tires, and as they pulled out, Pierce looked back at the property through the rear window. The house was small in the distance now, cedar sided against the trees, the wraparound porch, the chimney, the shop with its three big doors, the pond just visible past the slope of grass, and at the edge of the woods between the back fence and the tree line, in a patch of shadow that was almost but not quite a person shape, something moved. Just a flicker. A tilt of light, the suggestion of a brim of a hat. Then it was gone. Pierce blinked. He looked at Henry next to him. Henry was looking at him. Nada. Henry had seen it too. Neither of them said anything. Henry after a moment took a beef stick out of his pocket. He broke it in half. He handed one half to Pierce. Pierce took it. They chewed. The gravel road bent. The trees rose up around them, the property disappeared behind the bend. Henry finally said, You think she's okay now? Pierce thought about it. He thought about the heart shape in the wet grass. He thought about the carved blue bird and the matching one in the cave room. He thought about Edna Pickett, age thirty three, smiling at something off camera, hammer in her hand in front of a house she had built. Yeah, Pierce said. I think she's okay. Henry nodded. He looked out the window. Kansas slid by flat and bright, all the way to the horizon. In the front seat, Uncle Mike turned on the radio. In the third row, Lois did a stretch that was not possible. Evelyn beside her opened the journal in her lap very gently and started reading it again from page one. Fred Berry, in his car seat, was already asleep. And Duane, riding shotgun, opened his new notebook, turned past the pages of tunnel plans, found a clean page, and wrote at the top, Bay Village Chronicles ongoing. Then underneath smaller, we are coming back, coming soon. Bay Village Chronicles, Book 9. Back in Bay Village, Victor Malone has been quiet for a long time. Too long. Duane's old notebook is still out there, and so is Zony. The Picket 10 is on a shelf in Duane's room now with a folded letter inside it. Somewhere in Cherry Vale, Kansas, the lawn is being kept deep by somebody nobody can see.