What the Lake Borrows

      The camping trip came together suddenly. In twenty years of friendship, Dex never mentioned Lake Whippegon, or the island, or that he camped there every spring alone.

      If Brigette hadn’t grown weary of his secretive trips, I’m sure it’d still be a mystery. His mood was sour when he asked us to come, and I could tell he did so under duress. I thought about saying no, but Julie and I were having a rough time in our marriage, and she and Brigette had already set their minds on going. Julie told me the day we were leaving that Brigette threatened him with a divorce if he went alone.

      We parked at a remote pullout in northwestern Oregon and locked up the vehicles. The snow’s recent departure from the mountains made the trail soft under our booted feet. Dex was the only one who knew the way, so he led. I brought up the rear, behind Brigette.

      We filled up our canteens at a freshwater spring, and Dex gathered old man’s beard in a ziplock. Late in the afternoon, we came to it: a black, glass-surfaced maar lake with a timbered islet in the center. A good span separated the shore’s prehistoric trees from the island, and I understood, looking at that deep water, why stories of water beasts had been written by my ancestors.

      It felt good to take the pack off my sweaty back, and I headed to the edge of the water to relieve myself.

      “Don’t piss in the lake, Fred,” Dex told me as he walked into the brush to find his hidden canoe.

      “Dex the mighty keeper of the forest has come to dinner,” I said under my breath.

      “He’s sharing this place with us, dick,” Julie hissed. “Show some respect.”

      I pissed in the bushes instead.

      When Dex returned, I jokingly asked him if peeing in the water would anger his gods.

      He took the canoe off his shoulders and set it in the water.

      “It’s just something we don’t do,” he said and mouthed something quietly to the water.

      “Do we all need to pray?” I asked.

      Julie swatted me on the arm and said, “don’t be a dick, Fred.”

      These comments were not out of the ordinary for our relationship, and Dex was typically light-hearted. I could see I had offended him somehow, though we’d joked in the past about his native roots and he joked about my whiteness and nobody got offended.

      “I used to come here with my grandfather as a boy,” Dex said turning back to untie the paddles lashed onto the crossbars of the canoe. “Just me and him. Grandpa wouldn’t have brought women here. He was old-school. Or probably white boys either.” He said this last piece with a wry smile.

      Dex told us where to set up camp; there wasn’t discussion on this. Though there were spots with better views, he chose a place surrounded by coniferous trees. The island’s rocky surface meant our tents couldn’t be staked, and likely a big wind would take our camp to Oz. I remember asking if we could set up on a rock shelf overlooking the lake instead.

      “No, Fred. We must camp here. The lake can be unpredictable.”

      He said nothing else about it, and his tone told all of us not to push further. His mood had been poor all day, and he’d been abnormally quiet. When he did talk, he was curt. Julie and I busied ourselves putting up our tent, rain fly, and getting settled into camp. Brigette did the same.

      Dex worked furiously on gathering wood and quickly built a fire, which he said must stay burning in his non-negotiable tone.

      The late afternoon drizzled, and the rest of us retreated to our tents. Julie and I watched the rain run down our fly and didn’t speak. Brigette kept quiet in her tent while Dex leaned two heavy boughs against each other over the fire, before walking along the perimeter of the island in a slow, deliberate way. He’d taken his boots off, and stepped on the balls of his feet over the slippery flat rocks. When he returned to camp, the rain stopped, and he removed the limbs from over the fire. The walk seemed to lighten his mood, and he resembled the friend I had known since high school. We roasted hot dogs over the fire, and Julie poured us beer from the growlers.

      The fog emerged just after nightfall, quickly covering the lake and island. Dex seemed concerned about its arrival. The fire seemed its only repellent; any venture away from it and you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you. Dex tended it maniacally.

      I’d been talking to Brigette and Dex about the constellations: the Milky Way, Orion’s Belt, and the North Star— when Julie interrupted me mid-sentence: “Nobody wants a lecture, Fred.”

      There she was, my authentic wife, and her mouth.

      Before the night came on and the fog rolled in, there’d been peepers, but now it seemed they had abandoned us. I taught high school. Silence wasn’t new to me. It was Dex sitting opposite me at the fire, who finally offered a joke, easing the conversation forward. Dex had a quick wit, and Julie seemed to always find him charming, which aggravated me more.

      Before the silence could get hold again, Dex asked, “How’s Megan doing?” while poking at the fire.

      “She’s discovering who she is right now,” Julie answered. I didn’t like the way she looked at Dex, like they had an inside joke. I felt the need to interject.

      “Who she is, is a teenage idiot,” I quipped.

      “All teenagers are like that,” Julie retorted dismissively, as if I knew nothing of children. I’d been trying to keep our squabbling under the radar, but found myself sick of suffering these arrows in silence.

      Dex and Brigette avoided our eyes, which told me we needed to stop.

      I tried to redirect the conversation. “You know, I read an interesting thing about Oregon.”

      “Oh, God,” Julie replied with a substantial eye roll. I turned to say something.

      “We shouldn’t fight here,” Dex said, the fire reflecting in his dark eyes.

      “Do the gods forbid it?” I asked.

      Dex looked down at the fire before his eyes met mine. “There are many things in the world we do not understand, Fred. Special places, special circumstances, special rules. I never understood my grandfather’s ways, but I respect them. We shouldn’t leave the fire tonight.”

      “But I have to use the bathroom,” Julie said.

      “If we have to leave, it should be in pairs,” Dex answered. “I have to go as well. Anyone else?”

      Me and Brigette shook our heads no, and Dex and Julie stood and walked away.

      Brigette always seemed a good woman to me. At first, I thought of her as too quiet, but now I appreciated that about her. The fog changed shape at the edge of the firelight as if testing how close it could come. I’d read accounts of fog that turned out to be smog (London), gases (volcanoes), or clouds of decaying matter (swamps), and my mind pondered such possibilities. Then Brigette spoke.

      “Does Julie carry wipes with her?”

      “What?” Is all I could think to say to the odd question.

      “Wipes. Does she carry bathroom wipes in her pockets?”

      “No.”

      Brigette took a long drink off her beer and looked back into the fog where Dex and Julie had gone to use the bathroom.

      “Why?” I finally asked.

      “Isn’t it weird that Julie went to the bathroom and didn’t stop at the tent to get toilet paper?”

      I thought this over and we sat in silence until Dex and Julie returned.

      My mind stayed busy after I closed my eyes, but I fell asleep. It was the middle of the night when the sounds of Dex and Brigette’s lovemaking woke me, and I realized Julie was gone from the tent and I had a piss that wouldn’t hold until morning. I found my camp shoes and moved in the opposite direction of Dex and Brigette’s foray. I was sure I’d find Julie on the trail to the bathroom spot.

      Away from the fire, the fog consumed everything. The rocky outcropping next to the lake where we’d all been using the bathroom was difficult to find. Dex had blazed the small trees along the trail with an ax, so I could make my way slowly using the marks as a guide once I got within reach of them. I was glad to move away from the moans even though part of me wouldn’t have minded seeing Brigette naked.

      The wet night air stuck the clothes to my body, and I thought I heard footsteps while relieving myself.

      “Julie, you out here?”

      A moan came from the water, not quite a word, but not an animal’s noise either.

      “Julie?”

      Something large moved in the brush ahead, and I froze. I knew the island didn’t have any large mammals and my heart raced. My skin began to itch, and I wondered if the fog contained some bastardized, polluted water.

      “It was just an owl or something,” I told myself.

      “Talk to yourself often, stranger?”

      The sudden voice made me stop. I knew who it was, but couldn’t see her.

      “Brigette? But I—I thought I heard you and Dex.”

      “Mm-mm.”

      “What are you doing out here?”

      I could see her hands reach out of the fog first. They were soft, and she pushed them into my face before stepping where I could see her. Her eyes were big, and my being a foot taller exaggerated their size in the hazy night.

      “What are you doing out here?” I asked again. I didn’t push her hands away.

      “You came looking,” she whispered.

      Brigette wore a slip. She tilted one shoulder, then the other, and it slid to her feet.

      She gently tugged my arm indicating I should follow. The musculature of her back worked gorgeously with her swaying butt, and I brushed my hand along her spine and then withdrew it quickly.

      “Brigette, you’re dripping wet.”

      She turned to look at me, her eyes seemed even bigger. She looked impossible in a way that made me question if I was awake.

      “Have you been swimming? This lake is freezing.”

      “Mmhmm.”

      She moved my hand to her breast and stood on her tiptoes to kiss me, and I kissed her back. A surge of warmth ran through my chest. She gently guided me backwards. I assumed she knew a soft place to lie and followed her guidance. We moved down to the lake shore and onto a small shelf of rock a few feet from the water. Brigette pulled teasingly away and lay down on her back. She smiled and wagged a finger for me to join her.

      I eased my camp shoes off and then my clothes. I’d be lying if I said I felt guilty. The water was rippling now under the thick fog, lapping onto the rocks next to Brigette, who arched her lower back off the ground to meet my hand.

      I felt her thighs on mine and eased into her.

      In truth, I’d been fantasizing about Brigette for years. Julie’s mouth wore my nerves thin, and though the realization of Dex and Julie having an affair made me angry, this somehow neutralized the sting of betrayal. If I’d had time to think it over, I may have even liked that Julie cheated, it meant I wasn’t the one who went outside the marriage first.

      There was something animalistic about Brigette’s silence. And then I heard Dex yelling in the distance. As I went to pull away, she crossed her legs behind me and brought me back into her.

      “Brigette, are you nuts?”

      She smiled, a crazy smile. Her legs were scissored around me now and I couldn’t pull away.

      “Brigette?! Your husband is coming.”

      I knew we wouldn’t be able to see Dex until he was on top of us with that damn fog, but it didn’t seem to concern Brigette.

      “Brigette. Goddamnit. You’ve got to let me go.”

      She turned to the water, her legs still securing me against her.

      “Brigette!”

      “Fred! Fred! Listen to me. Don’t go into the water,” Dex yelled from a distance that was hard to gauge.

      Brigette’s smile diminished. She shimmied and something popped in her abdomen. I was still inside her and god help me, perverted or not, still hard. She wasn’t paying attention to me now, and her spine seemed to turn flexible, though her strong legs didn’t give an inch around my waist. She rolled onto her belly and began dragging me toward the water with her arms.

      “Dex, help me! DEX!!!” I screamed.

      I started punching her in the back of the head, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. I tried to stand up, but she snapped me back to the ground as if I were a child.

      “Fred! Where are you?” Dex called.

      “Down by the lake. HURRY!”

      The fog seemed to lose its strength and I could see the lake now. I was pulling back with everything I had, and then I saw them: people standing on the surface of the lake. Their shapes, black voids, started coming towards the shore as this thing dragged me forward. There was a rock the size of a bowling ball within reach, and I got my hands around it. My knees were scraped bloody from being dragged on the ground, but I barely noticed. As I started to pick up the rock, she turned, like a snake turns when you’ve got its tail, and slapped it away. It clunk-clunked down the rocky beach. I started digging my hands into her back; grabbing and twisting to no effect. I punched her in the back and it sounded like a drumbeat and felt like I was hitting a punching bag. The water was inches away now. I saw a rocky foothold and slid my bare foot into it. This would be my last stand. She turned to rake me with her fingernails when my leg held and I tried to fight her off with my fists. My toes started to slip, and I felt resigned to my fate. Moans came from the water.

      Dex burst through the fog, flashlight beaming.

      “Fuck,” he said and shone the light onto freak Brigette. The light seemed to remove some type of glamour the night fog had given her. Her teeth were sharp. She had the outline of a woman, but her eyes were too large, her abdomen had twisted backward. She recoiled at the light, and I felt my waist go free before she slipped down into the water like an otter.

      “Dex. Oh my god.”

      I tried to stand up, but the grip she’d had on my waist cut off the blood to my legs, and Dex had to help me.

      “Listen, Fred. We don’t have time for this I saved your dick stuff right now. We need to leave.”

      “What the fuck just happened, Dex?”

      “We need to get back to the fire,” he said, dragging me along.

      “I saw people, Dex. There were people coming towards us on the water.”

      “They’re not people.” He said this knowingly, and it chilled me.

      “What are they?”

      “Let’s just get back to the fire first. Then we’ll talk.”

      Only coals remained when we arrived at the campsite, and I slipped into my tent to get clothes before helping Dex gather wood. Julie was still gone, and there was no sign of real Brigette.

      “Where is Julie?” I asked Dex.

      He remained silent, and I watched as he quickly got the fire going.

      “We have to find her.”

      Dex stared at the fire in silence.

      “I heard you and Brigette,” I said.

      He ignored this. “Did it let you inside of it?” he asked.

      I lied.

      “Who did she look like to you?”

      He stared at me hard, and I felt like he knew.

      “Julie,” I answered.

      He looked out at the lake, then me again. A sappy knot popped in the fire.

      “What is happening, Dex?”

      Before he could answer, a voice called out from the fog.

      “Fred! Fred! Help!”

      I turned away from the fire and started toward the voice. Dex grabbed my arm.

      “We can’t leave the fire until the night is over now.”

      I slapped his hand away.

      “That’s Julie out there, Dex.”

      Dex looked down. “No. It isn’t.”

      “Is it another of those things?”

      He nodded.

      “How do you know?”

      He pointed at a seat and sat down himself.

      “Did I ever tell you about my grandfather?”

      “No.”

      “He brought me up here every spring after the ice went out to perform the rites.”

      “Rites?”

      “Just listen, Fred. My grandfather said the spirits long for feelings. They can’t have that on their own, they need a body and for the feelings to be already there. That’s why we always had to be alone in this place.”

      “Why didn’t they jump inside of us?”

      “Women are easier. They’re built to carry other life inside them. I heard what my grandfather said, but didn’t understand. I didn’t fucking understand. I thought the walk would be enough.”

      “Where is my wife, Dex.”

      Dex took a deep breath but continued to ignore me. “Spirits don’t just take control of the woman, Fred. The spirits need to satisfy the woman’s desires so they can feel through her body. They want to feel alive again. No body, no emotions.”

      “Are you telling me Brigette had the hots for me?”

      He nodded.

      “So Julie is out there with a spirit inside her?”

      He nodded again.

      “Dex?”

      “Yes.”

      “Did you have sex with Julie?”

      His eyes told me he did.

      We sat together until the morning by the fire when the birds began to sing and the rest of the fog lifted. He traced the island and smudged the cornerstones. I wondered what I’d tell our daughter.