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When it was done and some time had passed, the whole thing seemed like a dream, but dreams have cracks in them, and now and again I fall through them.

In those dreams, I remembered all that had happened, sometimes realistically, but frequently less so. Creosote Johnny would have legs, Kate Conroy was still tugging on that door, and Jack Sr. sat silent as the water in the lake rose up through the trees and tipped over into the bowl of land that contained the golf course and the great country club with its many rooms.

The water would snap the walls, break through the windows, and finally, as if in answer to Kate Conroy’s pitiful cries, the door would open easily and the water would rush in thick as mercury. It would wash over her and everything else, seal the living and the dead and all the country club inside a pulsating wad of tainted silver that would float away and rise into the night sky.

Between the wet moon and wet stars, there would be an empty gap in the vast sky as immense as a solar system. The gap would have sharp, blackened teeth. The open mouth of Creosote Johnny. Great eyes like balls of cosmic fire would blaze in the sky above that mouth, and all the contents of the silver gob would be sucked into that mouth like phlegm being inhaled. There would then be flashes of lightning inside the mouth and rolls of thunder like Japanese drums, followed by the wild, deafening screaming of souls. And then the mouth would close and there wouldn’t be even a murmur. The red eyes would fade and the sky would be black and sleek and clear without moon or stars.

The reality was much the same, but simpler. The bowl of land where the country club stood filled with water and muck and nothing survived. The pseudo-castle proved less stable than the buildings in the original Long Lincoln. It was like cardboard and plywood before the tremendous mass of rolling water. It came apart. Fragments of the roof were found miles away where the lake broke open and filled streams and flooded pastures and drowned cows and a handful of humans. Scatterings of wet photos and soaked videos were found. They added to the better evidence Ronnie had saved. The stuff I had hidden in the house next door to Mrs. Chandler, as well as the materials in the Moonshine Castle. The FBI became involved.

Bodies of the city council members were never found. Kate Conroy’s wheelchair was discovered in a tree, but not her. No Jack Sr. either. No Estelle Parker. She may well have made it away before the water washed through the country club, but it’s doubtful.

The open tunnel door on the hill and the open door in the country club down in the cellar no longer sealed out the wet. Turbulent waters tucked the tunnels tight. Curiously, both Flashlight Boy’s and Jack Jr.’s bodies were located, tangled together in a ball of mud at the foot of the steps that led up and out to the hill.

Chief Dudley’s longtime lover, Duncan, packed up in the dead of night and decamped for parts unknown.

I got Christine to come back. The sale of the paper had not been fully executed, and she became publisher and editor again. I wrote the rest of my articles and have used them to sell a book for a nice advance. Everyone feels certain, odd as it all is, true as it all is, that it will be a bestseller. I bought a house already, or bought it with the bank, and I hope I’ll be able to pay for it with the profits. The house I bought is the one next door to the Chandler home. No ghost with its head blown apart has appeared from the closets.

All manner of things came out when the city council members were gone. People who knew things, but had not before said things, talked.

We never found the body of Mrs. Chandler or my car that contained her. My guess is it and her are at the bottom of the lake, like those other cars were.

Ronnie and I tried out our relationship for a while, a few months, and it was nice, and then suddenly it wasn’t. Jim Crow, like a warlock, still rides the wind in East Texas, especially in a town like New Long Lincoln. Even with its main bad old souls departed, there are remnants. It was okay by me, but it was too much for her. Too many whispers, too many changes even for someone with a mind for change.

I go out to the Candleses from time to time, and sometimes I have dinner with them and Ronnie and her fiancé, Buck Rogers.

We laugh and talk and get along fine, and I die each time his hand touches her, remembering the joy of her flesh, the thrill of her touch.

But it is what it is. Not all skies stay sunny. Not all hopes are fulfilled.

Mr. Candles still trains me in boxing. I use his garage gym sometimes when he’s otherwise involved. They are still like the parents I wished I’d had.

An interesting thing was discovered, and Shirley gave me this news. She came to the house I’ve bought on the edge of town, looking beautiful and smart and prim. In her little sweet voice, she told me that the DNA test I had finally taken had been compared to the DNA in the bones and skin that had been in the back of my father’s car. The results were not what I’d expected.

It was my mother.

The starred tooth was a lie. A dentist was finally located, and he confirmed that she had in fact had it replaced in those months she was gone. He could tell. The entire tooth was new. I wouldn’t have thought it. Nor would I have thought the jewelry was hers. Seemed she changed everything about herself, like a snake shedding its skin.

That and the DNA killed the idea that she might be out there somewhere. She wasn’t. I had my parents cremated. I put my father’s ashes in the lake where he wanted to be. My mother’s ashes are on a shelf in the bedroom I’ve turned into a study. They are in a bright blue urn. I’m considering what I will eventually do with them. No answers have arrived.

I guess she’d wanted out of her old life altogether, but there had been one last connection between her and my dad, divorce papers, last words—I can’t say. But it had ended with her death. I feel certain now that my father killed her. As had been previously suggested. There was a moment of anger, a quick eruption, and that which had been beautiful and enticing was suddenly stone-still. It might have happened on one of his trips away from the house to get gas or buy groceries with the last of our money. The night we left for the lake, she had most likely been tucked behind the Christmas decorations in the garage.

I must have gone to the bathroom before we left, or gone to get a last bag or a favorite item, and forgotten about doing that. No other way to explain it. Dad had wrapped her in a blanket I didn’t recognize, bent her into an embryo position, and boosted her into a suitcase and then into the big Buick’s trunk next to the spare tire.

At last I finally knew who he was, and though it was not a pleasant realization, the facts were out. And my mother was as mysterious as ever.

With my mother in the trunk of the car, Dad had planned to take us all away to Moon Lake. To go down to the bottom of his old world where there had been happier days. Down where he and my beautiful mother had first met and had their hearts sparked by love.

My father no longer comes to me in my dreams.

My name is Daniel Russell. I dream of dark water.