After the Lake
by A. C. Wise"Do you believe in ghosts, Gram?"
"Why, child?" The old woman looked up from her knitting in the sun. "Spirits troubling you?"
"I don't know." Rue tucked her legs up under her, her gaze drifting beyond her grandmother's shoulder to the blurred landscape beyond the window.
"I've been having dreams."
"Everybody dreams, child."
Bone needles clicked steadily in the golden light and dust filtered over the old woman, making her almost translucent, caught in the rays.
"They just seem so real."
Rue caught her breath a little, seeing again the misty landscape that had haunted her for three nights past. The dreams were always the same - Rue woke up in the house, knowing it was empty and feeling the dream was real. She walked out barefoot into the night and she could feel the chill of the earth soaking all the way up through her bones. Then she was standing at the edge of the lake, looking at the still water - utterly still - covered with mist. It was just before dawn in the dream and the sense of waiting,of something just below the surface of the water, just beneath the veil of mist watching her, was so unbearable that inevitably she always woke choking back a scream.
"Do you ever feel - haunted, sometimes?"
Rue looked up, her bright eyes focusing on the old woman for the first time. Even under Rue's piercing gaze, the old woman remained indistinct - almost blurred like the landscape, anchored only by the steady click of her needles and the rocking of her chair.
"Haunted is just not being able to let go."
Gram looked up and her blue eyes - as blue as the still waters of a lake - fixed Rue, shivering all the way through her and leaving her cold.
Rue woke to the sound of her heart; a soft tympani beat just below the surface of her skin. What might have pulled her up from the depths of sleep, she could not guess, but she strained, listening for anything beyond the hush of her blood. Mist, lying close about the cottage walls, had smothered all noise, leaving only an eerie stillness. Every now and then though, Rue though she could hear the soft whisper of waves lapping against the smooth stones that bordered the lake.
She could feel it when she fixed on the sound; the motion of water - twin to the beat of her blood. There was something below the mirror-surface of the lake, turning slowly in the cold dark. When Rue closed her eyes she saw herself crouched on the shore, her hands red with blood to the elbow, tears on her cheeks hidden by her tangled hair. She was picking up the smooth round stones, leaving bloody fingerprints behind and placing them inside something she could not quite - and did not want to - see.
Her eyes flew open and Rue gasped. Something haunted the night; something silent and silver and still, which slunk and pressed close to the walls, stalking Rue. Hot tears squeezed up behind her eyes and her heart ached; too close to the surface of her skin.
Barefoot, she crept to the door, listening to the stillness once again. There was a chill even inside, as the mist sought cracks beneath the windows, between the boards and under the door. All Rue could hear was the hammering of her heart. Not even the sound of her grandmother's soft habitual snores reached her, and Rue was afraid to look to the cot crowded in the corner near the stove lest she find her grandmother was not there and she was all alone.
With a dream-like slowness she reached for the door; when she touched the knob, her palm was slick with sweat. Her heartbeat seemed to echo words over and over again; open the door, open the door, while everything in her cried out that she must not. Closing her eyes Rue wrenched the wood back. Mist whispered in with insidious hands that crept up beneath her moon-white gown and left raised goose bumps on her skin.
Rue opened her eyes and peered out into the empty night. There was something left on the step, blurred by her tears. She knelt, not wanting to, but needing to see. On the stoop was a perfectly rounded stone from the river's edge - wet with water, though there was no rain and tinged ever so slightly with the pinkish-red of diluted blood.
Rue blinked down at the object in her hand, turning it so it winked in the light. She had been wearing it the day she had met him. How long had it been since she had hidden it in that secret place between the bed and the mattress? Why was it that last night she had dreamed of stones, and this morning she had woken with it in her hand?
Behind her she could hear her grandmother moving steadily about the kitchen, lifting the heavy kettle from the stove and pouring water for tea. As Gram turned and approached with two steaming mugs, Rue hastily closed her hand, almost guilty, hiding the object within.
"Thank you."
She accepted her mug, still feeling the object imprisoned in her other hand; smooth and heart-shaped; the soft gold dented and bruised in one place as though it had been closed between a pair of particularly sharp teeth.
"Maybe I was wrong - "
Rue was scarcely aware that she spoke aloud and looked up sharply, feeling her grandmother's eyes on her. Gram only smiled serenely, her blue eyes dazzling in the gold light as she moved to her customary chair. As the old woman reached for the bone needles set nearby, her sleeve rode up to show scars ringing her arm like a series of bracelets. When Rue blinked, the marks were gone, and there was only wrinkled skin and the faint blush of blue veins running a network underneath.
"Is everything all right, child?" Gram asked as she leaned back, the steady clicking rhythm of the needles seeming to mock the too-fast beat of Rue's heart.
"I just thought I saw - "
Rue trailed off, shaking her head. Then spoke again suddenly, before she could catch back the words.
"Do you think there are still wolves around here?"
Her eyes, the same blue as Gram's, fixed the old woman steadily. Rue studied Gram's face, looking for any flicker that would break the still surface, but the old woman only nodded slightly in time with the rocking of her chair.
"I suppose there might be. The woods are dark and deep and they might keep any number of secrets if they had a mind to. Why do you ask?"
Gram did not look up from her knitting, but Rue could feel her blue eyes nonetheless, and she swallowed hard.
"I just thought I heard something last night, that's all."
She drifted up from her chair, suddenly restless. Outside the air was fresh and chill and Rue made her way to the garden, looking for late vegetables, but her eyes searched the earth all around the cottage as well, looking for fresh tracks in the dirt that were not there.
Rue dreamed hot breath on her throat. She dreamed animal scent and animal weight and the sharp tang of sex in the air. She moaned; parting damp thighs and the dream suddenly changed. She turned in her sleep and opened her eyes to a frozen gaze of marble-white; Gram's dead eyes, open and unseeing, fixed upon her. There was blood at Gram's throat, blood all over the bed, pooling and dripping over the sides, as if terrible teeth had torn the old woman apart.
"How could you?" Rue screamed in her sleep and she sat up in her dream, glaring at the dead woman in bed beside her; hate burning in her eyes.
A sound that was not a sound dragged Rue up from the dream. She had fallen asleep clutching the locket, and her hand ached where it dug into her skin. She gripped it as a talisman now, unwilling to let go despite the pain. There was a sick, cold feeling in the pit of her stomach as she sat in the center of the bed, feeling the still night spread its vastness around her.
"Please, no." She whispered.
She knew she would have to rise, knew she would go to the door and open it as she had the night before. She knew what she would find; a second stone beside the first, dripping icy water from the lake, slowly pooling on the step and dripping onto the ground.
There were eyes in the mist, and voices too, whispering cruel words close against her ear. They whispered of an empty cottage in the woods, where only Rue remained, and there was an empty bed beside the cold stove. They whispered of a shape, turning silver and slow beneath the mirror waves. They whispered of blood and stones. They called her murderer in voices that yipped and barked and howled.
"No, please no!"
Rue drew her knees up, pressing her hands over her ears and rocking back and forth as tears squeezed out from her closed eyes.
"No." She whispered.
"Gram is downstairs and there is nothing out in the dark or in the lake."
But in her mind's eye she saw Gram walking from the empty cottage to the lake's misty shore. Moonlight broke through the clouds overhead and showed Gram's bones beneath her translucent skin. At the water's edge she lifted her cotton nightgown over her head, and only then did Rue see the blood on her thighs and her arms and the bloody footprints, scattered like rose petals behind her as Gram began to walk steadily over the mirrored surface of the lake.
When she reached the center Gram turned, and Rue almost screamed as she saw the hole where her grandmother's stomach had once been - now ragged and red and showing the lake and the mist on the other side. Gram's eyes were terribly clear; blue and silver like the lake and they fixed Rue with a sad gaze before the old woman disappeared, as insubstantial as the mist around her.
"No! It never happened! It never happened!"
Rue pounded her closed fists against the side of her head. Hot tears leaked between her lids and still gripped in her hand, the point of the heart shape locket broke the skin, so blood dripped from her palm to fall in droplets on the white sheets.
"I'm sorry." Rue whispered and her head was bowed.
She was standing at the edge of lake, dizzy and a little sick still. She turned the locket over and over in her aching palm, speaking in mumbled tones to it, because she could not bear to look at the surface of the lake.
"I think - " She faltered, and her voice broke.
"I think I killed the only man I ever loved. I think I killed the only man who ever loved me. And I'm sorry. I - "
She opened her hand and looked at the gold, gleaming dully beneath the overcast sky.
"I - ."
With sudden violence she flung the locket, breaking the mirror-still surface of the lake.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Just please make it stop! Make it stop!"
She sank to her knees on the stones and lowered her head, wetting them with her tears.
"Do you think the dead can come back to life? Do you think if they died violently, or someone hurt them while they were alive, do you think they could come back and try to hurt that person as badly as that person hurt them?"
Rue's voice shook and she looked at her feet and the floor instead of Gram. There were shadows under her eyes and hollows in her skin that showed lack of sleep. She was bone-thin too, like a ghost herself, disappearing to the tick of the needles, that went on and on. Rue could not bring herself to raise her head, to see Gram, translucent in the light, showing bones and scars. After a long time, Gram spoke over the steady rocking of the chair.
"Dead is dead, child, nothing changes that, though sometimes a person can want something so much that they start to see things, ghosts. They start to think they're haunted."
Rue could feel Gram's eyes, lake-cold, even though she kept her head bowed.
"I said I was sorry." She whispered. But the old woman made no response. There was only the ticking of the needles and the steady rocking of the chair and an emptiness that pressed all around.
"He's a wild animal child and animals don't change. Maybe you think you've tamed them, but sooner or later, they always turn - that's the nature of the beast. It's the fire and darkness inside that's as much a part of them as their skin."
"You're wrong! There's love, I know! I know it! Love can conquer anything."
"Oh, child, child, child. Someone's been telling you fairy tales..."
Rue listened to the stillness, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She was sitting in the middle of her bed, her back stiff and her eyes like silver coins, straining into the dark. She had not slept, so she could be sure that she didn't dream, and she listened, waiting for the sound of the ghost-step that left no prints on the ground. She listened for the sound of a stone gently placed gently on the step - like the building of a miniature cairn.
"I know you're out there. I know you're watching me."
All moon-gold eyes in the dark and dripping silver fur; he would come for her. After so long dreaming and turning in the dark he would break the surface of the lake and creep up to the door. His jaws would be vengeance. Rue imagined his weight upon her; his animal breath, the fetid stench of meat and wet fur. She imagined his teeth and his claws. She imagined letting go.
No more dreams, no more blood on her hands, no more stones on the door. She listened to the mist and the silence and the night's cold crept in to freeze her in the bed. The sheets, once white, were stained rust-colored around her; as if a great act of violence or a great act of passion had taken place here and the bed had never been cleaned.
"I love you."
Rue whispered and saw harvest-moon eyes in the mist. She imagined running her fingers through the wet fur, feeling the rough stitches and the scar - jagged and long - covering a belly full of stones.
"I only did what I had to do."
But that didn't matter. He would take her in his jaws, which she could almost feel now - a ghost-touch closing on her flesh. He would drag her down over the smooth stones at the shore, pull her into the cold silver lake, and she would sink with him. They would turn in the dark, like a dance, like a dream and the water would wash all the blood away, like crimson ribbons, unraveling all their sins.
"I'm ready," Rue whispered. "I'm waiting."
Her hands trembled, clutching the rust-colored sheets. Her hair spilled over her shoulders like a red cloak, now shot through with silver; the same color as a wolf's fur. There was winter in her eyes.
"I'm ready."
Rue whispered again and her breath frosted in the air. The night's silence answered her, as still as the unbroken surface of a silver lake.
© A. C. Wise
A.C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal, Canada and currently lives just outside of Philadelphia. Wise's work has appeared, or is forthcoming in, numerous publications including Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, Lone Star Stories, and the anthologies Into the Dreamlands, Jabberwocky 3, and Shadow Regions, among others.