Quarry Lake
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Copyright 2014 ©Kelson Hargis
Cover Art: Drowning Girl. All images are used under Fair Rights and the use thereof does not implicitly or otherwise indicate any endorsement on the part of the image owner in part, or whole of the content contained herein. A full disclosure of the Creative Commons legal use of these images as displayed here or otherwise may be obtained at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en.
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Also by Kelson Hargis: “Language Arts” “Don't let those innocent cherubs on the wildly out of place cover fool you, this little ditty comes at you like a runaway freight train. The author nails you and then just won't let up. Language Arts has one of the most intriguing concepts I've read lately: the power of language.” —Ed Morawski, Amazon.com
Other free stories by Kelson Hargis:
“Nuked” an essay on personal heroes (about a 5 min. read). “Sublime, magnificent, deeply meaningful. You have created a masterpiece of human emotion.” —Marcus R., Readwave.com.
“Breeze” an essay about the supernatural in everyday life (about a 4 min. read). “Brilliant piece, beautifully written. You describe the supernatural moment with elegance. I love how you tie it together at the beginning and end with the idea of synchronicity.” —Emma T. Readwave.com
“Acta Somnium” (The Dream Journal) a horror, thriller short: All your dreams will come true (about a 15 min. read). “—Chilling, disturbing in a way reminiscent of Stephen King.” Second look video reviews by S.I. D., Wattpad.com
Quarry Lake
A ghost story
by Kelson Hargis
Copyright 2014 Kelson Hargis
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Whit
Chapter 2: Whit & Sharon
Chapter 3: Whit & John
Chapter 4: Tachycardia
Chapter 5: Quarry Lake
Chapter 1: Whit
Ghosts beset Whit not long after the loss of his brother John though only fragments of their summer day at the Quarry Lake remained for him. The memories could be better called pictures. They pervaded his recollections in the same way that the presentations of his childhood lessons did before there were televisions in every classroom; goofy slide shows warning about things like "stranger danger" with a tone in the recording to change the slides. His reflections about that day always conjured a slide show image of the unblinking hysteria in John's gaze as his visage slowly slid beneath the dark, still water of Quarry Lake.
John's body was never found. Only much later in life did Whit discover that Quarry Lake was ridiculously deep in the center. The shallower perimeter is piled with garbage beneath the surface. Every family in the county dumps everything there, refrigerators, box springs, cars... Something must have snagged John before dislodging and dragging him into the deeply submerged catacombs. Whit stood at the tall edge not even wet yet on the record hot day paralyzed by fear in his jean shorts.
John seemed immediately to be taken by something from beneath the surface upon jumping in. Monstrous serpents and fish stoked the fear of Whit's imaginings as he stood there, sobbing, calling John's name over and over again until dusk.
He could still feel the sting of his father's slapping, upon finding him, then the heat of his weeping over him in the night before they even knew John was gone yet.
“Where's Johnny!” Dad yelled over and over again, holding Whit's face in both hands, gazing accusingly into his eyes.
Flashlight beams emerged from the woods raking the quarry clearing and chain link fence. All Whit could manage was a mute gaze out over Quarry Lake as others gathered around. A couple of the men wanted to jump in to search for John. There was an argument about the darkness and the junk in the lake.
But his father, grasping his pain and confusion, just rolled from his knees before Whit, sitting. He wiped his face with both hands, mouth agape, gazing out over the dark lake with a look not unlike John's last. And he cried.
That was the extent of Whit's whole memory of his older brother. He didn't even remember what John looked like immediately after. Not until Whit saw him from his bedroom window upstairs the following summer.
John smiled, soaking wet, beckoning Whit in the dark of a cloudy night. Whit never followed John without knowing why. John pervaded his dreams that night doing all of the things older brothers do. A whole childhood was relived for Whit.
A tense unease filled the kitchen the next morning as his parents quietly fumbled through their routines.
Until Whit just blurted it out, “Saw Johnny last night...”
His mother spun from the kitchen counter, knocking pancake batter to the floor.
“Sonofabitch!” his father exclaimed, jumping up, wiping the remnants of it from his hip with a napkin. “What?” he asked.
Heat flushed Whit as the blanched, confused, and pained expressions of his parents bore into him.
Whit's psychiatrist wasn't surprised that it was one year to the day after the drowning. He assured them all that it was a positive development. John was re-emerging into Whit's consciousness in a very healthy and natural way. That is until over many sessions Whit kept describing his sightings of John. The way John never spoke. The way John coaxed him out onto the roof one rainy night. John beckoning Whit from across a busy road was the last straw. That was when the medicating started. Whit hated the way it made him feel so much he just stopped talking about John.
And Whit was positive that mentioning Sarah's appearances just like John's was a bad idea. Sarah eventually spoke to him unlike John. She had drowned in the very same waters decades before though she was never wet when she appeared. At first she too was mute staring at him from afar. Her eyes darted over him as if disbelieving, he existed. Sarah bolted every time he moved toward her. He felt as if he were the one mysteriously encroaching on her reality. Until she whispered into his dreams always just far enough from behind so he couldn't see her.
He wondered if she still wore the weird pink and white checkered one piece swimsuit looking so like a sleeveless jumper that at first he didn't even realize, she was wearing a bathing suit.
“I know where John is in the lake,” were Sarah’s first words to him. “The lake is so still he's usually not far from me. It gets real narrow at the bottom and stuff has piled up over us.”
Her visits were always the same only growing more frequent as he aged. Until, frustrated, he learned how to dream lucidly just to make it stop. Whit expected a demon, corpse, or the monster of the lake, the first night he was able to turn on her. But there she stood as always in that ridiculous suit.
“Stop! Just stop it! I know where he is. Why should I care?” he said.
She just shook her head like an angry girlfriend, disappearing. She returned to his dreams with a little more patience, “because of what happened. That's why you should care; it's not right.” She said.
Only many nightmares later when he summoned the courage to return to the lake in his dreams, diving in, did she explain.
“Something we don't understand happened with you and John. You carried something away with you that night Whit. Everyone here has sensed it, becoming restless,” she said, “it's never going to change unless the connection between you and John is broken somehow.”
That was about right... Whit thought with a chuckle many years later. Now, with mom and dad long gone after years of the binge drinking that losing a child seemed to ca
use, Whit, middle-aged himself, was positively lousy with spirits. Years refining lucid dreaming allowed the ghosts to crowd his sleep with messages to the living.
The most terrifying one was a hideous Native American woman overpowering his dreams. She never really explained what she wanted. But she was there in his home too. He smelled her. Felt her chill. Then accidents would happen. The most terrifying misfortune being a kitchen fire threatening to rage out of control before suddenly subsiding.
“This is wisdom?” she once asked of him from beneath an angry crow, dressing him down with her dark gaze from the far edge of his doctor's parking lot.
As always, a long blink and she was gone. Whit thought that the crow would be too. But it wasn't. The crow remained perched high in a tall oak, cawing, and flapping its wings at him until he sped off in his worn out Jetta. Only when he stopped charging fees for his readings did her visits subside somewhat. Though she did appear every now and then holding a black feather. John and Sarah visited less and less over the years too. Others still came and went. Some talking. Some not. The spirits always kept their distance though so they couldn't be reached. Except in dreams wherein the specters swirled about him, hovering like the musty odor of the aged, he thought.
That's why Whit stood, poleaxed, his heart aching when Sarah and John appeared again together in the large, wooded backyard of his childhood home...with a new girl between them. She avoided his gaze, dripping; arms extended down and entwined, pivoting side to side slightly in shorts and a tee reading “Love Pink.” Her long, soaked hair was wrapped around her throat for some reason. John and Sarah were both dry now in the same attire as always. Whit blinked to break the spell. He wondered as usual what it was about the spirit world that impeded the change of fashion.
His subconscious kicked and screamed as he wondered from his garden back into the home that he inherited for his laptop. A yearning arose in him as he perused countless internet pages of missing persons. The fear of uncertainty palpitated his heart.
He deeply wanted to stay the creepy old man that lost it when his brother died; the guy that conversed with the unseen in public occasionally. Whit wanted his home to stay the one bereft of children on Halloween.
Yes, he even wanted to stay the pauper who lived on a modest inheritance and even more modest grief counselor's donations.
Then, there she was. He thought her hair was darker. But it was wet. Tara Luke stared back at him from a classic grade school photo with bright eyes and two missing teeth. Yes, she was local. Tara was eight. She was also missing less than a week. Whit wondered how the Amber Alert escaped him. He rose trembling. He surveyed the loud trappings of his dining room; it had changed little by little over the years.
Each new girlfriend added her touch until, exasperated by his nightmares and obsession with death, they moved on. The parade of bad taste produced a hodgepodge of colors and shapes. Tara: that was her name. He couldn't concentrate. His childhood of serious meds was exacting its toll again. He'd helped on missing person's cases before—just never proactively.
That is why he was shaking. He couldn't tell anyone where Tara was. The first time he told cops that he knew someone had passed—and how—was the last. Whit became the prime suspect briefly. (He learned then too that his story grew into an urban legend that he had pushed John into the lake from the highest point.) His latest psychiatrist was also obliged to inform Whit, he too was interviewed. Whit was seriously screwed up. But he wasn't a killer is the way he imagined the conversations going.
But was that the reality? He had been negligent somehow hadn't he? He combed foggy memories for dreams of Sarah from years ago. She certainly blamed him for something even if he couldn't recall what exactly. Then it struck him. All of these years he'd never thought to do it. He had to find out more about Quarry Lake.