came here to vacation in the summer. It was really the only place they could come. Jay owned the cabin they stayed in each year. His dad have moved to Illinois for work as a young man, but Jay had returned, seeing the need for health care in the area. He could tell that it bothered his dad to have to rely on his own brother to be able to afford a vacation, but it didn’t bother Tanner. And it sure didn’t bother Jay.
Uncle Jay loved Tanner. It was obvious. Tanner was the son he would have had if he’d had married and had kids. Tanner was easy to love. Good, clean, healthy, smart, honest, and best of all, kind. Good heart, good mind.
“Why don’t you get a better set of tools, Uncle Jay?”
“These work fine.” Jay said, bent over the engine compartment of the boat. Tanner had pulled the boat out of the water the night he’d met Jen and towed it back to town with his pickup for Jay to help him work the crap out with. Jay could easily afford the finest tools made, but was quite content to use the same old set of Craftsman tools he’d had since he was hot rodding Camaros in high school. Tanner thought he was the second smartest man in the world. His dad, for all his shortcomings, was the first.
“You need to run this motor, bud. I mean blow the shit out of it sometime. It’s never going to idle smooth with his lopey cam in it anyway. This motor wasn’t built to idle.”
“I get into to it from time to time, but this time of year there are so many guys out on water skis…”
“I know what you mean. If you’re cutting along at 60 miles an hour and some bonehead decides to make a blind right turn in front of you, there isn’t a boat made with a brake.”
“Yeah. I take it to the shallow end of the lake where they swim, and you can’t open it up, so I go to the deep end, and that’s where all of the fisherman are.”
Jay laughed to himself. He was too nice a kid. Any other teen age jackass with a 400 horse inboard ski boat would be shooting rooster tails over the fishing boats and laughing while he did it.
Tanner was soaking carburetor parts in solvent. The venturis had become gummed from running too rich. He looked at the baffles and flues and jets and wondered how the hell the thing would ever work in the first place.
“We found this weird lake house.”
“Who’s we?”
Tanner hesitated. Now he had to tell about Jen.
“She’s a girl.”
“I should hope “she” would be!”
“I mean, I met a girl. She’s really nice, and, well…”
“Hot?”
“Um, yeah. I guess…”
“What lake house?”
“You know how the deep side of Chetawkwee, you know, the back side, is pretty unsettled.”
“Yeah. There’s not much access back there. Gets pretty close to the state park, too, and I think the state would frown on cutting a swath through those deep pines just to put in some lake houses.”
“We were trying to get the boat to smooth out, kind of idling along the back there and she saw this deer.”
“In the water?” Jay said, jokingly.
“On the shore, At the edge of the deep pines.”
“OK. Then what?”
“While she watched it run away, she saw this house that was almost hidden it was so packed into the woods. It looked like it was really old, but it just never got finished, and the raw wood just looks like the trees around it.”
“I didn’t think there were any houses back there. I don’t know how you’d get to it without cutting some logging road chains.”
“Well, there’s a house out there, and it’s a strange one. It’s like somebody gave a shot at a lake house and gave up. Not like they moved out, or anything. More like they just, I don’t know. Stopped coming. Or maybe. I don’t know…”
“Vanished?” his uncle said. Tanner turned to look at him. The large man had tilted his head up from his work. Tanner met his gaze.
“Yeah! I guess. It was a weird place, man…” Tanner thought about how to describe the place. He didn’t have to.
“It’s an old faded barn looking house, right?” Jay said.
“Wah? Have you been there?”
“Are you kidding? I grew up around here, remember? A couple of families shared it or something like that. They just never finished the place, or kept it up, and eventually just left it. Hell, it looked haunted when they owned it! But then, over time it got really run down and vacant looking, so every high school kid in this county went out there to scare the hell out of each other at one time or another. Or at least they’d get up to the porch, come back, and tell everybody they’d been inside. It’s falling apart and very dangerous.”
“Will you promise me something, Tanner?” Uncle Jay never called him by his name. It was always “Bud” or “T”. It caught his attention.
“What?”
“Don’t go back there, ok?”
“Sure.” His uncle’s tone said – gently, but firmly – that the conversation was over.
They set back to work, Tanner reassembling the parts of the four-barrel, and his uncle bolting down the intake manifold. They didn’t talk again for a good while.
The Walk
Jen just felt like going out, but her mom had taken the car into town. Her dad and brother were both asleep. A lot of naps occurred during the day at the lake house. So Jen just put her Nikes on and stuck her hands in her pockets, and started walking. She walked for a while, down familiar roads that led to town, but decided to head down a logging road, passing the chained gate with the sign stating “No admittance- State use only”. She figured that meant only cars. It’s not like she was going to do any recreational logging.
The trees changed almost immediately, as if they were less timid of the road, pressing in on it, crowding over it. At first, it felt kind of like being in a tall cathedral, green stained glass light flowing down from the canopy. After a while, as the light got darker and darker green, the feeling was less spiritual; more claustrophobic. She didn’t know why she didn’t turn back. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been out long enough. She just kept walking, wondering why she kept walking. Not a sense of freedom or adventure. More of purpose.
She started to shoot sidelong glances into the trees on either side. Shadows started to stretch out from her, deeper into the woods as if the giant old pines were crowding around to get a better look at her. She felt watched. It was very quiet, and at first this calmed her but soon she found herself wondering why there was NO sound. No birds, no bugs, nothing. None of the summer sounds that permeated the ears almost day and night at the lake. In fact, she expected to be able to hear the sounds of the lake – distant boats, drunken shouts from boaters – but nothing. Finally, she forced herself to stop walking, just to see if she could. The stillness was interrupted only by her heartbeat. She turned to look behind her, wondering if indeed it was time to turn and head back and was quite surprised. The road behind her looked different. It didn’t look like the road she had just been on. Two minutes ago, not more than fifty yards behind her, she’d crossed a fallen pine, rotting on the road. There was none in sight, although the road stretched straight for some time. And even that was strange. The road HADN’T been straight. It had woven around the larger, older trees, but now it lay very straight behind her. Now she could really hear her heart beat. She turned, despite her doubts and started back, keeping her head down for a little while as if not looking at the surroundings for a while would make them appear more normal.
When she looked up she was surprised to see a jeep sitting in the middle of the road not more than forty yards away. That’s odd, she thought. She didn’t hear anything approaching. She hadn’t heard a sound. Sitting at the steering wheel was a boy or man. He looked young, but it was hard to tell at that distance. He was waving at her in a familiar way, and she strained to recognize who it might be. Despite the predicament she’d found herself in, she found it very hard to walk towards the jeep, even though it appeared to be a way out of this. What if he was dangerous? Why did she suddenly
have a headache? Slight at first, but building as the moments went by. Still, she walked forwards.
The boy waved. It was a boy after all, of indeterminate age. She was close enough to be sure. And he was smiling.
“Hey, are you lost?” the boy asked.
“Not really. Just headed back.” She felt reluctant to tell him where she’d been or where she was going.
“Where were you headed?” he asked. This caused her to get defensive for some reason. She found herself instinctively making up a lie.
“I was just headed for town, but I guess I took a wrong turn”
“I can give you a lift.” He said. She really didn’t know why she’d said this until after she’d accepted the ride and climbed into the old jeep. She felt an instinctive need to be around other people. Why?
“Thanks.” She said. “I’m Jen.”
“Nice to meet you. You live around here?” he asked instead of offering his name. This also set her radar off. For some reason she didn’t press him on this, either.
“My folks have a place on the lake, but they’re in town. I was going to meet them there.”
“Well, I can give a ride home if you’d rather head that way.
”No, town’s good, if you can do that…” she said. Some little voice of safety in her head told her to go to where people were. He nodded, his tussle of auburn hair flopping against the light freckles on his forehead. He was kind of cute, but she felt the need to keep her eyes on him. Every nerve in her body was