The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten Read online

  I looked out the window toward the town common… and that’s when I saw him. Or, rather, them, but even from the first moment, it was really mostly him.

  There were five of them, walking across the grass like kings and queens of the Earth. The wind itself seemed to hold its breath in their presence. They looked like teenagers, but they moved like they owned the town. In a way, they were an odd bunch: three boys, two girls, all different… but all physically striking. It would have been remarkable in an individual, but with all of them together, the effect was almost overwhelming. The girls were gorgeous, irritatingly so, even in jeans and button-down shirts—I might not be the prettiest girl here after all, which could complicate matters, though I could already see ways to use it to my advantage. They were even paler than me, though one was a petite red-haired thing and the other was proportioned like a runway model and ice blond. Of the boys, one was nearly seven feet tall, black-haired, dressed in red flannel and big enough across the shoulders to be one of Dwayne’s linebacker friends. Another was blond, shorter—though still tall by any ordinary standards—and muscular in a wiry sort of way.

  The last was slimmer, wearing a long dark coat that was halfway stylish, with a mop of brown hair almost exactly the same shade as mine. He had cheekbones so sharp you could have used them for bottle openers, and his lips… More about his lips later. He was the one who fascinated me the most instantly, and when he turned his head and looked at me, I felt an electric shock pass through me. He didn’t stop walking, and if I hadn’t been staring at him with all of my considerable attention I might not even have noticed, but he hesitated, a long pause between one footfall and the next, and he stared right into me in that instant before walking on, murmuring to the others, who didn’t so much as glance at me. Who very conspicuously didn’t so much as glance at me, I thought.

  Harry reappeared with brown paper sacks and plastic cups. “Who are they?” I asked gesturing toward their departing backs. “Do they go to my new school?”

  After glancing and squinting, Harry nodded. “Oh, sure, those are Doc Scullen’s kids. Well, not his kids, he’s only maybe ten years older than they are, they’re adopted, or foster kids, or something, except for the Scales, who are cousins or off-relations of the doc’s wife…. Let’s see, the big bear of a fella is Hermet Scullen, and the little redhead is Pleasance, and the one in the long coat is their brother Edwin. The blonde girl is Rosemarie Scale and the other guy is her brother Garnett. Heck of a family. Just moved here two, three years ago, but the Doc’s been a great addition to the community, and the kids seem all right, never get into any trouble.”

  “Maybe I’ll meet them at school tomorrow,” I said.

  “You could fall in with a worse crowd,” Harry said agreeably.

  BROOD TYPE

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK

  Harry’s house was a little gray farmhouse just outside town, bordered on three sides by fields, with a stand of trees in the back. Hardly a match for mom’s house over by Westcliff Drive in Santa Cruz, but I could cope. And there in front of the house was a truck—my truck, I guessed. I’d been expecting a beat-up old pick-up, possibly with the vague stink of pig manure clinging to it… but this… the thing was almost as big as a tractor-trailer rig, glossy black, with bulging headlights, a grille like a giant robot’s grin, and a flatbed in back big enough to carry a normal-sized pickup truck.

  “It’s a 1938 Ford V8 one and a half ton Marmon-Herrington,” Harry said, getting out of the car and beckoning for me to follow. “All wheel drive. Marmon-Herrington made trolley cars—and tanks—but they also did business with the military converting ordinary trucks into, well, pretty much super-trucks. This one used to belong to the Belgian army, Willy says, which means it’s more well-traveled than me, and I don’t doubt it’s made it through a few wars and could make it through a few more.” He coughed. “I know it might be… a lot of truck… but it’s gonna be the safest thing on the road by a good margin. Those little aluminum tin cans rolling around on the highways today couldn’t even make a dent in her.”

  “Her?” I strolled over to the truck and patted the hood, which was so tall I’d need a stepladder to look inside. “I think it’s definitely a him.”

  “Well, anyway, it runs great, Willy’s grandson Joaquin is some kind of mechanical genius. Still a stick shift, though. Is that going to be a problem? Your mom said you could drive a manual, but this one…”

  I’d once driven a tractor trailer to the edge of a cliff and then put a cinderblock on the gas pedal to send it over the edge, so I wasn’t too worried about wrestling with an old Ford’s transmission, but there was no need to go into specifics. “I’ll manage. I love it, Daddy. Thank you.”

  And I really did. I’ve always found it easier to love objects and machines than people. If you maintain them properly, and know how to use them, machines will do exactly what you want them to, every time, without variation. If only people were half so reliable.

  Harry led me into the house, and we feasted on our burgers and fries. The place was exactly as I remembered but—cliché, I know—it seemed smaller. I don’t know if it was all his years as a bachelor or just some sort of fundamental self-sufficiency, but Harry didn’t hover around me or try to make much more small talk. He took my bags upstairs to my room, which was just like it had been the last time I visited. I doubted the sheets had even been changed; Harry probably hadn’t changed his sheets in the years since I’d been here last. The room was essentially an anonymous place for a summer visitor. Well, I was settling in now, for at least the next several months. I told Harry I was tired after my long day, and he gave me my space.

  I got ready for bed, locked my door, and stretched out on the bed… which crinkled under me. I pulled up the covers and hissed through my teeth. There was an old plastic cover underneath the sheets. I’d had some… issues… with bedwetting when I was younger, and I felt a surge of humiliation and anger that Harry hadn’t thought to remove the plastic since my last visit.

  But no matter. Old news and ancient history. Tomorrow was a new day at a new school in a new town—anyway, new enough. I felt myself on the cusp of possibility. I was a little anxious, but only because there were so many unknowns. What would the other kids be like? The school was much smaller than my old one, just a few hundred students, and I was sure the entire senior class had deeply entrenched loyalties and ancient feuds stretching back to elementary school. I could navigate the social minefield at my own school blindfolded and hopping on one leg, manipulating opinions and opening old wounds at will to achieve my own ends, with never a misstep—all right, one misstep, which was why I was living in Lake Woebegotten now—but Lake Woebegotten High was going to be a whole new world, one I’d never even glimpsed, a place without maps or guideposts.

  I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and listened to the silence. No rolling waves, no hiss of passing cars, no cries of seagulls or college kids: just quiet, and the creaking of the house. Yes, I was going into uncharted territory, but I had the power of being a novelty in a place where novelties were likely highly prized… and people were essentially the same all over. Seen one, seen them all.

  Except for the Scullens, and the Scales… especially Edwin… they looked like something else. Something interesting.

  I love things that are interesting. They’re as hard to come by as a perfect crime.

  The next day I woke up early, because it pays to be up and around before anyone else, but I underestimated Harry’s Minnesotan work ethic: he was gone by the time I rose, with a note on the kitchen table weighed down with the keys to my beautiful monster of a truck. Blah, blah, will try to be home for dinner, blah blah, have a good first day at school.

  I showered, and considered my wardrobe. Autumn in Lake Woebegotten was colder than winter in Santa Cruz, so I’d invested in new cool and cold-weather clothes. I had some incredibly cute things, but I also had some… ordinary things. Call it protective coloration. Blending in with the rest of the he
rd. The temptation to dress myself in something cool and stylish and eye-catching, taking Lake Woebegotten High like a hurricane (or I guess a blizzard would be more appropriate given the locale) was strong, but it violated my fly-below-the-radar resolution. So I settled on a baggy-ish green sweater, and jeans, and black boots. Hair down, just a little make-up. I examined myself in the too-small mirror on the little girl’s vanity in my room and nodded at my reflection. Completely inconspicuous, like a little harmless bird. There was no point glamming up: I’d seen Rosemarie Scale and Pleasance Scullen walking across the grass yesterday, and I knew my own strengths and weaknesses enough to know I wouldn’t be able to overshadow them. So the situation called for a different approach.

  I pulled on a black coat and walked out to my truck, which I was already thinking of as Marmon, and climbed inside the cab. And I mean climbed—a shorter girl, like that little snip Pleasance, would’ve needed an elevator to get behind the wheel. I cranked it up and the engine roared like a furious lion before settling down into a low grumble. The radio didn’t work, but the heater did.

  I shifted into gear and pulled forward, and despite being what felt like ten feet up in the air, driving Marmon was remarkably easy. Of course, back home, it would have been a nightmare—ever parallel park a school bus?—but in Lake Woebegotten, where there were more parking spaces than pigs and idiots, it should be fine. I’d never been inside the school before, but I’d been there at some cruddy little summer carnival they had in the parking lot years ago, so I knew how to find it. A few minutes later I was pulling into the muddy gravel lot marked “Student Parking.” There weren’t any spaces marked out, and only one or two other cars parked haphazardly around, so I just parked as close to the school as I could and hopped out.

  Santa Cruz High has big columns out front in a sort of faux-Classical style that’s not uncommon for institutions of lower learning in central California, while Lake Woebegotten High was just a few low brick buildings with flat roofs clustered around a brick courtyard, and a scattering of trailers the color of old snow off to one side. I went toward the biggest of the buildings and stepped into a hallway that was like all school hallways, probably: scuffed floors, fluorescent lights, beat-up walls punctuated by beat-up doors. I found the door marked “office” and pushed my way inside to a cozy little space that could have been a dentist’s waiting room. A woman with orange hair and a face like tapioca pudding in a plastic freezer bag looked up at me and smiled. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m Bonnie Grayduck. I’m—”

  “Oh, yes, Harry’s daughter, of course.” She reached into a desk drawer without looking and pulled out a little map of the school—like such a dinky place needed a map, you might as well make a map of a gas station or a public toilet—and my schedule. English, Government, Trigonometry, French—oh well, those years of Chinese I’d taken would go to waste in this wasteland—then the blessed interval of lunch before Biology and Gym. Biology. Maybe this would be one of those classes where they let you dissect cats or pig fetuses. You can learn a lot about the world from cutting up animals.

  I confirmed that where I’d parked was fine and took the slips I had to get all the teachers to sign, I suppose to make sure I actually showed up for classes. As if there weren’t ways around that. I had a little time before my first class, so I strolled around the halls a bit, glancing at the map, getting the lay of the land. Other students began to arrive, but I didn’t pay them any attention—at least, not so’s they’d notice.

  Just before the first bell rang I crumpled up the map into a ball and tossed it into a trash can. I wouldn’t need that anymore. I’ve always had a good spatial memory. In English class I introduced myself to my teacher, a balding rabbit-faced man who might as well have been named Mr. WhoGivesACrap, who told me I could take any open seat. I chose a desk in the very back corner of the class, where I had my back to the wall and could see the door. Other students filed in, but none of them made an impression on me. None of them were there—the Scullens and the Scales. The rest of these people might as well have had used wads of chewing gum for faces, as far as I cared. The styles of clothes were different, and these kids were altogether a whiter bunch than my old Santa Cruz High classmates, but they were still part of the great undifferentiated multitude, to be noticed only if I had need of them.

  There were lots of glances and murmurs my way, but I mumbled responses to questions and stared at my feet. Let them think I was shy awkward new girl.

  The morning went on that way, with no particular moments of note. I made a couple of brief points of contact with some of the more vivacious girls, the kinds who might see a shy new girl as a project, someone to take under their wings. Always let people think they have the power; it’s much easier to control them that way. At least this way I’d avoid the awkward dance of trying to figure out where to eat at lunch.

  And lunch is where I saw them again.

  HAIRY STORIES

  NARRATOR

  Stevie Ray sat with his back resting against a tree near the postage-stamp-sized Indian reservation of Pres du Lac, trying not to doze off. He yawned, closing his eyes, and when he opened them again, three elderly Native American men dressed in flannel and denim stood in a loose semi-circle around him. Stevie Ray glared. “Indians creeping up silently on a fella through the woods? You don’t think that’s a little stereotypical?”

  Willy Noir grinned. “We weren’t all that quiet. Maybe a guy who didn’t hear us coming should think about having his ears checked out.”

  Stevie Ray stood up and offered his hand, but no one shook it. He sighed. “Dr. Scullen would like me to apologize on his behalf for his idiot son trespassing on your lands, if he did, which maybe he didn’t, but he probably came close, so anyway, he’s sorry.”

  Willy glanced at the other two tribal elders, who had faces as impassive as carved wooden—damn it, stereotyping again. As the only black man in the entire town of Lake Woebegotten, Stevie Ray was keenly aware of racial things, but heck, these guys were taciturn and inscrutable and other such things. Then Willy leaned over his walking stick and spat on the ground. “Never had a wendigo apologize to me before,” Willy said. “Can’t say as I like it much.”

  Stevie Ray rolled his eyes. “This wendigo stuff. We both know the Scullens and Scales aren’t wendigo—”

  “Wendigos,” Willy interrupted. “The plural is wendigos, not wendigo, they’re not like deer or moose.”

  “I thought it was Wendigeaux,” one of the elders said. “With an x. Like the French do it.”

  “Wendigi, maybe, like octopi and cacti?” Stevie Ray said.

  “Wendigos,” Willy Noir said, unperturbed.

  “Well, all right,” Stevie Ray said. “The point is, they’re not wendigos. They’re… you know.” He put his hands to the corners of his mouth and made fangs of his index fingers.

  Willy shrugged. “Our legends don’t really have those, but we have wendigos. I don’t think it’s a bad description. Wendigos used to be human, and then became something else, something immortal. They eat human flesh. The details are a little different, maybe, okay, but do your—” Here he imitated Stevie Ray’s fang gesture “—do they fear sunlight, or garlic, or crucifixes, or holy water, or have obsessive compulsive disorder? They don’t exactly fit the stories perfectly, either, do they?”

  Stevie Ray shrugged. “No, I guess not. But in the legends there are all different kinds of—”

  Willy interrupted. “And maybe one kind is a wendigo. My people—especially people like me,” he said meaningfully, “are sworn to protect the world from the wendigos. And the world needs protecting from the Scullens and the Scales, so I say they’re wendigos.” He wiped his mouth. “And yes, one of them was on our land, though I think he strayed over by accident in the midst of blood lust during pursuit of a deer. He ran right off our land again, and killed whatever prey he was chasing outside the limits of the rez, but trespass is trespass. I’m willing to concede it was an accident. No doubt about
whether he was here or not, though. I can smell him.”

  “That’s not so difficult,” Stevie Ray said, “assuming he was out on a sunny day.”

  One of the other elders snorted, and Willy cracked a smile. “You’re not so bad, Stevie Ray. Why do you play Renfield for those things?”

  “Let’s just say I have some philosophical interest in avoiding an all-out race war,” Stevie Ray said blandly. “Between you… hairy folks… and the ones you want to call wendigos.” Also because the Scullens pay me a lot. “Besides, I don’t work for them, I work for both of you, as a liaison. Did you have a message to take back to the Scullens?”

  “Just this. If it happens again, and one of the boys comes onto our land? Don’t expect them to come back.”

  Stevie Ray sighed. “I’ve seen those boys play hockey, Willy. They play rough. Could be one of them against you three wouldn’t be a fair fight. Could be it might be a little dangerous.”

  “Could we fight a wendigo as we are now? No. But you know… we’re not too hairy right now. We can get hairier. And one of the things that makes it easy to get all hairy—that makes it hard to not get all hairy—is having unnatural flesh-eating animated dead things on our land. Besides… what makes you think there aren’t any young people in Pres du Lac who’ve inherited our gift?”

  “Okay, okay.” Stevie Ray held up his hands. “I’ll pass on the message, least I can do, I was just saying, that’s all. But, you know, for flesh-eating dead things, they aren’t so bad. They’ve found, ah, non-human sources of nourishment. And they brought a lot of money to the economy. Dr. Scullen has a way of forgetting to send the people he treats bills, too. I mean, their kind may be known for drinking blood and treating humans as playthings, but heck, some people think my kind are all good at playing basketball, and some people think your kind are in touch with the spirits of ancient wisdom or else that you’re all drunks, so maybe these kind of generalities aren’t such a good idea, I don’t know, I couldn’t say, but it just seems to me.”