CURRENT DAY
The lake house was like stepping through the Looking Glass with Alice in that old children’s tale everything hazy and distorted. Of course, I’d been inside since returning to town, but now things were … different.
The dead animals on the walls had been taken down by Cindy and the rest of the crew. The old-timey red drapes that clashed with the lime green paint were gone; bundled up in a corner of the room, like a bloody tumor. I stood in the doorway, Cindy breathing down my neck, unable to force my legs to move closer to the bedroom.
When I found out the lake house was mine, it couldn’t have come at a better time. Jason was the breadwinner in our marriage, his salary as a principal dwarfing my meager part-time earnings from teaching; so, when I filed for divorce, there was no doubt that I would be the one leaving. I couldn’t afford the mortgage on our 300K house; I could barely afford the cheap apartment I was renting across the lake while I waited on these renovations to finish up.
But my inheritance from my parents offered me a new solution: I could either sell the lake house for a decent profit—houses here were worth much more than they used to be when my parents were my age now—or I could keep it as a rental property, using the money as an extra source of steady income while I figured out what to do about teaching and where to live.
There was a third option: staying in Hillendale, keeping the house for myself. But I certainly didn’t want to do that. There were good memories here, but also ugly ones.
Hillendale, albeit a small town, was a great investment these days, according to my realtor. People rented out houses and cottages here every summer, some of them for upward of $500–1,000 per night. City people with money were dying for a slice of the “rugged” life, nestled in this small Kentucky lakeside town. Although the houses here weren’t at all what I would consider “rugged”.
I’d allowed the realtor to pressure me a bit, finally taking out a home improvement loan to do the repairs on the lake house. If you’re going to rent it out, or even sell it, you need to do it right. Maximize your profits, the realtor had explained. She was right about the house needing improvements: it had sat empty for years, our days of family visits and vacations long gone.
The whole house had that unused smell about it—damp and musty, like the inside of a sealed-up tomb. It needed a lot of work, inside and out. Landscaping, concrete patio repairs, gutters, carpet…
More work than I’d initially expected.
Most of my visits had been short and sweet, checking on the state of repairs and collaborating with the company I’d hired to do the job. The past few weeks, their work has mostly been done on the exterior.
But tonight, here I was … stepping inside it, moving back through time…
The house was a maze—scaffolding in the living room, buckets of unopened paint, tools, and ladders clogging up every open space and pathway.
I forced myself onward, putting one foot in front of the other, snaking around the crew’s equipment.
“It’s in there,” Cindy said, her voice raw like she’d just been screaming. I flinched at the sound of it; I’d nearly forgotten she was behind me.
“Which room?”
She pointed down the long dark hallway that led to the main bedroom, the one my parents slept in every summer when we came to the lake.
“Wait.” I turned around to look at Cindy. In the low-lit living room, I could see her face, the pallor of her skin almost green. As I stepped closer to her, I caught a whiff of something sour, perhaps vomit on her clothes.
“What were you doing here this late, Cindy?” It was an important question, but nothing that couldn’t have waited until after I looked at what was in that bedroom. But I needed to know; her late-night presence here was not only unusual, but it was also unnerving and unprofessional.
Cindy stammered, “I-I…”
“It’s okay. I just want to know why.”
Cindy lowered her eyes. “I had a row with my husband. A bad one, worse than usual. I live over in Greenville, you know?”
I nodded, although I wasn’t as familiar with Hillendale or its neighboring towns as I should have been. Greenville wasn’t far, I did know that; just a short commute for her to the site each day.
“I didn’t know where else to go, and I tend to focus on my work when I’m upset. I love breaking shit when I’m pissed.”
“Breaking shit?”
“Yeah, that’s why I brought my sledgehammer. We’re going to knock down the wall between the master and the spare, create a walk-in closet, yeah?” Cindy said.
“Yeah.” My head was spinning. I couldn’t remember all that was on the agenda; and with whatever was going on now, none of it probably mattered anymore.
“I started smashing and it felt good. I figured the guys wouldn’t mind me getting an early start … but then I stopped for a smoke break. And…”
“And?”
“And while I was smoking, I took a look around the rooms. I wanted to size them up, get a feel for what it would look like when we were done. That’s when I opened the closet,” Cindy said.
With that, there was no more time for stalling. Slowly, I entered the hallway, eyes focused on the room at its very end.
The door was open, the room casting an orange, ghostly glow from within. For a moment, I could almost imagine my parents in there: Dad on the left side of the bed with his reading glasses, working a crossword; Mom on the right, buffing her nails, hair twisted up in rollers as part of her nighttime routine.
But when I stepped inside there was nothing, just an empty room. The bed and the nightstands were gone. My parents were gone. And the door to the bedroom closet was open.
“Did you call the police?” I asked Cindy, breathlessly, frozen six feet away from the closet.
“No. I wanted to call you first.”
It seemed like a strange reaction, but I was grateful she had called me. I had to see this for myself. Had to see if it was real.
As I approached the closet, I could sense that Cindy was no longer behind me. When I glanced back, she was hovering in the doorway, bracing her hands on the frame.
I took a breath and stepped closer. There was no lighting in the closet. A memory came out of nowhere: Mom bitching that Dad was too lazy to install a light fixture and she had to reach in blind for her clothes. That was around the time the fighting started…
All of Mom’s summer clothes were gone now—the shirts and shorts, the flimsy summer dresses, and jumpers… All that remained was a long metal bar and a handful of dingy wire hangers.
And the long black dress bag on the floor of the closet.
I knew without opening it that that was where the body laid. The bag obviously contained something solid, the sides bulging. The shape of shoulders and … and a head.
“You zipped it back up after?” I said, flabbergasted, looking back at Cindy.
“Yeah. I couldn’t… I didn’t want to see those eyes anymore.” Her voice shook.
Squatting down on my haunches, I reached for the slim black zipper at the top of the bag.
“Wait. Maybe we shouldn’t touch it anymore… Maybe we should call and wait for someone to…”
But it was too late to go back now. I couldn’t wait another second. I had to see whose body was inside that bag.
Cindy made a strange gurgling noise as I tugged the zipper all the way down, exposing the secrets within.
SUMMER OF ’98
“Can you keep a secret?” Kathi Jo asked.
We had borrowed her mother’s banana yellow kayak. Although I’d offered to take a turn, Kathi Jo held tightly to the oars, rowing farther and farther from the bank. Our houses grew smaller and smaller as she rowed us further into the lake.
I was surprised my mom had agreed to it; I was only thirteen and she never let me swim in the water without her keeping a watchful eye. But Kathi Jo’s mother had jumped in with a “yes” before my mother could respond, and as it turned out, Kathi Jo was a year older than me; she was fourteen. She’s an excellent swimmer. I’m sure they won’t go far, Isabella had reassured my mother, for which I was grateful.
“I can keep a secret,” I said. Scooting forward on the hard yellow seat, we were so close our knees were touching.
Kathi Jo had mentioned a body. That had to be some sort of joke, right?
“I found bones in the basement when we moved in, in this tiny little nook in the wall. At first, I thought they were plastic, some sort of Halloween shit left behind. But then … I touched them. They weren’t props, that’s for sure. Something terrible happened in that house,” Kathi Jo said.
A chill ran from the base of my neck all the way down the length of my spine. My family had vacationed here every summer since I could remember—how many times had I played close to the house next door? I’d never gone inside it. But there were times when I’d been afraid that someone was in there, looking out the windows, watching when it was supposed to be empty…
“What kind of bones?” I asked.
Kathi Jo held the oar steady. I stared at the chipped black polish on her nails.
“Some of them could be animal bones. It’s hard to know for certain. But one of them is clearly a jawbone … I’m starting to think maybe it’s a full body, the skeleton in pieces…”
So, that’s what she meant by wanting to see a “body”.
“What did your mom say about it?”
Kathi Jo shook her head solemnly. “I didn’t tell her.”
“What! Why?” Sometimes I couldn’t stand my mom and dad, but if I found a body—or bones—in the house, I sure as shit would run screaming for them.
“I knew she’d call the cops and then they’d take them. Or worse, they’d take our whole house. Mom just bought this place. I don’t want to move again … not after all the stuff with my dad…” Kathi Jo said.
Kathi Jo stopped rowing and bit her lip. It was a nervous tic that over time, I’d come to recognize and find endearing.
Two things struck me then about Kathi Jo: she hadn’t had an easy life, and she was the bravest person I knew. I couldn’t imagine finding random bones in my new basement and keeping that all to myself.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked. It came out louder than I’d intended, my voice echoing across the fog-covered lake, bouncing back and forth through the trees. I prayed our mothers weren’t sitting out back, overhearing everything. Sound really travels on water.
“Not me. Us. Now that you know the secret, what are we going to do? How are we going to solve this?” Kathi Jo asked.