The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten Read online

  “I know they’re behaving themselves now. That’s why we made the truce with the Scullens—well, not we, but my ancestors, and I was awfully annoyed to see them come back here a couple of years ago. But we also know it’s an effort for them to stick to food that doesn’t think and talk and have hopes and dreams. You have to understand, Stevie Ray, things like that live forever unless you stop them from living… and when you live forever, the chance of you making a mistake or losing control isn’t a question of whether or not, it’s just a question of when. And when they do slip, when they witness a car wreck or something and start smelling blood and lose control of themselves… aren’t you glad to know me and my occasionally hairy friends and family are around to protect you?”

  “Great,” Stevie Ray said. “Werewolves are going to protect us from vampires? That makes me feel real comfortable, as a human.”

  After Stevie Ray left, the quietest elder said, “Did he say werewolves? He thinks we’re werewolves?”

  “That fella,” Willy Noir said, “is a fella who watches too many dumb movies, is what I think.”

  A LITTLE LUNCH

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK

  I gazed across the cafeteria, and there they were, sitting in a little island all their own in a corner: the Scullens and the Scales, leaning together and talking among themselves, like they were a species apart. (That was a feeling I could relate to.) I became aware of a sort of twittering and realized the girls I’d “befriended”—a blonde called Jessica or Jenny or something, I’d call her “J” and she’d think it was a nickname, and Kelly, a petite brunette, though she looked like a heifer in comparison to Pleasance. “Those are the Scullens and the Scales,” J said. “I know, I saw you looking at Edwin, he’s a dream, but he doesn’t date, I don’t know if it’s a religious thing or what, they keep to themselves.” I detected a note of bitterness in her voice, and knew he’d rejected her—or, more likely, failed to notice her existence. “But at least he’s single,” she said, pitching her voice low. “The other ones are… together. The big one Hermet and the blonde one Rosemarie, and Garnett and that tiny little Pleasance. I don’t care if they aren’t related by blood, I know Dr. Scullen and his wife adopted them, but they all live in the same house, so I think it’s unnatural, they might as well be brother and sister, it’s just not right, and Garnett and Rosemarie really are brother and sister, the Scales, but I guess they’re not dating each other, so—”

  “Have they always lived here?” I interrupted, still gazing at Edwin. His jawline… his nose… his lips…

  J shook her head. “They lived up in Canada or something I guess? But they’re American, Dr. Scullen was just working up there. They moved here a couple of years ago, and they live a ways outside of town, mostly keep to themselves.”

  “He will be mine,” I said. I probably shouldn’t have said it out loud, but there you go.

  J giggled. “It’s good to aim high,” she said, a little doubtfully.

  “I wonder if I have any classes with him,” I mused. If I didn’t, I’d have to see about making some adjustments.

  Kelly said, “Let me see your schedule.” Classes had been going on for a week, I realized, so she might have some idea of his movement. After poring over my schedule for a moment, she said, “You have biology with me after lunch. Edwin’s in that class. But are you really going to…”

  “I might say hello,” I said.

  Just then Edwin happened to look up, and caught my eyes. He stared at me, and frowned—hardly the reaction I wanted. He looked away, said something to his pseudo-siblings, and then all of them got up from the table and left together.

  I walked with Kelly to biology, a long low room with lab tables fitted with gleaming metal fixtures to attach Bunsen burners. “Good luck,” Kelly murmured before taking a seat at one of the tables. Naturally, she already had a partner, which made me wonder who I’d be stuck with—I hoped not that baby-faced nerd Ike who’d chattered at me in one of my earlier classes and trailed me like a yapping dog to the cafeteria. I’d smiled at him, because having a geek in reserve could be useful, but I didn’t want to make conversation, I just wanted to observe Edwin and plan.

  I took my slip of paper to the teacher, who read it at least five times before ever so reluctantly signing it. When I turned back to the tables, every one had its requisite pair of students… save one.

  Edwin sat at the table, and I walked toward him, eyes shyly downcast. If he had a reputation as someone who didn’t date, a charm offensive wouldn’t work. I needed to draw him in, be a shy and tantalizing enigma. I might contrive to accidentally touch his arm during class, or—

  I noticed his face. I mean, I’d been noticing his face, but I really noticed his expression now, and it was furious. He must really enjoy sitting alone, because he didn’t like the idea of a lab partner. Or did he just not like the idea of me as a lab partner? It hardly seemed possible that it was a personal dislike, as we’d never even spoken—how could he have anything against me? People loved me.

  I sat next to him, and he moved to the far end of the table, his chair scraping. He stopped looking at me, at least, staring down at his hands, clasped white-knuckled before him on the table. As the teacher lectured—something about parasites—Edwin never moved a muscle. His jaw was clenched so hard I was afraid his teeth would break. I did my best to ignore him… but even though I’m normally the world’s champion ignorer, it bothered me. There are so few things I want, after all, and I usually get them—but if he was like this, he would be hard to win.

  Up close, he was even more beautiful, unfortunately, and I thought about moths drawn to flames, and flies to flytraps. I was not happy with being the moth; I was much more accustomed to being the flame.

  When class ended, Edwin sprang to his feet and bolted out the door. The A/V nerd, Ike, intercepted me at the door. “Hey,” he said. “You need help finding your next class?”

  “It’s gym class,” I said absently. “I’ll take a wild guess and assume the class is in the gym.”

  “Hey, that’s my class, too!” he said, as if we’d just discovered a mutual passion for something incredibly obscure, like 16th century antique furniture or dressing up in Ewok costumes.

  “Mmm,” I said, and Ike took that as an invitation to walk with me.

  “Man, did you kill Scullen’s dog or something?” he said, and I twitched a little, though I hadn’t killed anyone’s dog in ages.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ike shrugged. “He acted like you were his worst enemy, and he hardly ever even seems to notice anybody.”

  “Oh, was that the boy at my lab table?” I asked innocently. “I didn’t talk to him.”

  “Yeah, Edwin Scullen. He’s a weirdo anyway, so screw him.”

  This from someone who probably still had Spider-Man bedsheets. “Mmm,” I said again, which was all the encouragement he needed to chatter on about himself and his stupid friends and their plans to go to the lake sometime before the weather got too cold.

  In gym class Coach Syph gave me a uniform—eww—and I stood around and avoided playing volleyball. I’m good at volleyball—I’m good at everything—but I wasn’t interested in being recruited to any sports teams or otherwise calling attention to my athleticism, something that had been a problem in the past, as I have a competitive streak it’s hard to tamp down. I’m trying hard to be content with just knowing I’m better than everyone else, without having to demonstrate it all the time, so I flubbed a few serves and missed a few volleys and generally made myself unremarkable.

  People are much more surprised when you dislocate their shoulders or choke them unconscious or chase them down in the woods if they think you’re physically graceless.

  WISE COUNSEL

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK

  I didn’t see Edwin or his siblings again that day, though I did have to dodge Ike a few times. I wanted to stalk Edwin out to the parking lot, see what kind of car he drove, all that sort of
thing, but I had to turn in the papers my teachers had signed. I walked to the office, where the orange-haired secretary was deep in conversation with one of the oldest men I’d ever seen. He was scrawny, with dirty whitish hair, and I could see the shape of his skull under his face, and the veins and muscles in his neck sticking out, like all his infrastructure was showing. He had on a nice gray suit, though, made only slightly silly-looking by a little red bow tie. The man gave me a smile that was all teeth and no eyes. “Ah, the chief’s daughter. Hello, dear. I’m Superintendent Levitt—well, I was, before I retired. I allowed the county to woo me back, and now I’m acting principal.”

  He was obviously some kind of ancient pillar of the community, but there was something funny about him, but also something kind of familiar. Those eyes… they were the eyes of someone who knew a joke nobody else did, and the joke was on you. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Enjoying our school so far?”

  “Everyone has been very nice,” I said carefully.

  “Mmm, well, why wouldn’t they be?” He patted the secretary on the shoulder—was I imagining things, or did she flinch away from his hand a little? Interesting. “Just step on through there—” He pointed down a short hallway “—and chat with our guidance counselor, Mr. Inkfist, for a moment before you leave.”

  “Oh, I’d love to, but I should get home, my dad will be—”

  “I imagine Harry’s at the three-car pile-up that just happened over on the state road,” Mr. Levitt said blandly. “Or so my police scanner would suggest. You have a few minutes to get some guidance.” Another cold smile, and then he just stared at me, and I knew he’d keep right on staring until I went where he said… or didn’t, but if I didn’t, there would be consequences, and what those consequences might be, I couldn’t entirely predict. Also interesting. Two interesting things in one day… though Edwin was a rather more pleasant sort of interesting than this cold-eyed old man.

  More to get away from him than anything else, I went down the hall to the office he’d indicated, a tiny closet of a thing. A middle-aged man with gray hair at his temples was sorting through a pile of folders in a distracted way, so I knocked on the door. He looked up. “Yes? Ah, yes, Miss, ah, Harry’s daughter, um—”

  “Bonnie Grayduck.”

  He nodded, a pained look on his face. “Grayduck. Not Cusack, that’s right. Your mother’s maiden name.”

  I seesawed my hand. “Well. I think it’s only a ‘maiden’ name if she ever gets married, which she hasn’t, yet. And she never wanted Harry—Dad—to adopt me, so Grayduck it is.” His discomfort was delicious. “It’s okay, Mr. Inkfist. Being a bastard isn’t so bad.”

  “Ah, well, youthful indiscretions, and, ah… We’ve gotten off. I mean. On the wrong, er, footing. Foot. Feet.”

  I slung my bag onto the floor and dropped into the chair across the desk from him. “Does it bother you, me being born out of wedlock? It’s only… that happened a pretty long time ago. And I didn’t have much to do with it.”

  “Of course not!” He held up his hands. “No blame accrues to you, that is, not that there’s any blame of any sort, officially speaking of course I don’t have an opinion about it one way or another, which doesn’t mean you should have a child out of wedlock, not that I’m suggesting you’re the sort of girl, that is young woman, who—who—” He sighed and put his head in his hands.

  Light dawned. “You’re… Pastor Inkfist. I remember, Harry took me to your church when I used to visit when I was a little girl.”

  He looked up and smiled weakly. “Not a man of God anymore, though I hope still a godly man, I try to be, but, oh, well, of course I’m strictly secular, technically speaking, here on school grounds, and ah—”

  “How’s the wife?” I said. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but I could still see the pale patch of skin where it had been for who knows how many years.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Did Harry tell you? That’s… Well. Hard for me to counsel my flock about their own marriages and other travails when my own wife… when I wasn’t able to keep my own marital house in order. My wife is fine. Last I heard. Though we don’t speak often. So, things being as they were, or as they are, I put aside my calling, and chose to serve in another way, here, as a guidance counselor, instead of standing in the pulpit.”

  Standing in the pulpit with everyone staring at you, I thought, thinking how your hussy of a wife did… whatever it is she did. Or how you did whatever it was you did, though to look at you, I bet it’s all on her.

  “So.” He laced his fingers together and rested his hands on top of the desk. “I just wanted to see how you were settling in, on your first day.” His smile was a tiny bit strained, but far more genuine than that old lizard Principal Levitt’s.

  “Not bad,” I said nonchalantly. “I’ve met some nice people. Especially the Scullens and the Scales.” I watched him carefully, and was rewarded with a tiny frown.

  “I don’t know them well,” he admitted. “They’ve only been in town a few years, but they seem like a good family, or families, or… no, family.”

  “They don’t go to your church—your old church—then? I was hoping to see them there.”

  He shook his head. “No, they, ah, no.”

  “So they’re Catholics.” In Lake Woebegotten, you were Lutheran, or you were Catholic, unless you were that crazy guy Gothic Jim who lived in the woods and worshipped the moon or Satan or whatever. Harry was Lutheran, and so, by extension, was I.

  “No, they don’t attend Father Edsel’s church either,” Mr. Inkfist said. “They… I suppose they’re not terribly spiritual. Good people though, very good, especially Dr. Scullen, he does a lot of wonderful things for the community. Still, it’s good you’re making friends already, I’m delighted, I know it must be hard moving to a new town, a new school, leaving everything you knew behind.”

  “I look at it as a fresh start,” I said. “The beginning of the rest of my life. A good, sharp separation from the life you used to know can be good for you—shake you out of your old habits, force you to think about the decisions you’ve made and how you got where you are in life, and where you want to go.”

  “That’s a very healthy attitude,” he said doubtfully. “Well, ah, did you get your teachers to sign… Oh, good. Everything looks to be in order. If you have any problems, or need any help, about school or anything else, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “Sure thing, Reverend,” I said, and rose, walking out of the office, and putting in a little extra sashay as I went. Might as well give the ex-pastor something nice to sin about later in his lonely bedroom.

  PSYCHOSOCIO

  NARRATOR

  After the Grayduck girl left, Principal Levitt appeared in David’s office in that way he had, materializing like smoke rising from a hole in the ground where something noble or useful used to be. “Counselor,” he said. “How was your meeting?”

  David hemmed and hummed and even hawed a bit, wondering if Levitt had been listening at the door; it wasn’t beyond him. But he owed Principal Levitt his livelihood—he’d given David this job, saying a man needed useful work to keep him occupied, especially if his wife and his faith deserted him, in that order. Principal Levitt had actually been School Superintendent Levitt until his retirement a few years back. He’d agreed to come out of retirement and effectively accept a demotion to run Woebegotten High after the old principal, Mr. Jorgenson, ran off with the old guidance counselor, also coincidentally named Mr. Jorgenson (no relation), along with the entire contents of the football team’s booster club fundraising account. So here they were: David not entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing, and Mr. Levitt so profoundly overqualified that he could probably float through the days with his eyes closed. One day, David thought, it would be nice to feel confident and not full of doubt, but now that he’d lost his path to God, that day was probably even more distant than it had been a year ago, when—

  “Inkfist!” Levitt shouted, and David sna
pped out of his reverie.

  “Erm, sorry, I was thinking about, ah, what was the question?”

  “The Grayduck girl,” Levitt said patiently, sitting in a chair across from David. “What do you think of her?”

  “Oh, she seems nice, ah, gregarious? She’s already making friends, I think she’ll do fine—”

  Levitt sighed. “You didn’t read her file, did you?”

  David winced. “I skimmed it, I didn’t have much time, I’m afraid—”

  “You skimmed it, but overlooked the letter from her old principal, right on top? Maybe you should read it.” Levitt moved papers around until he found the folder on David’s messy desk, removed a single sheet—a photocopy of something written on a sheet torn from a legal pad—and handed it over.

  David read it. Then he read it again. He considered reading it a third time, but that would only get him more upset. “That girl… she did this?”

  Levitt shrugged. “Nothing proven, of course, no charges brought, nothing official, which is why that note isn’t written on school letterhead, I’d guess. But the principal clearly put enough stock in the rumors to send us a note warning us to keep an eye on young Bonnie, just in case.”

  David frowned. “Do you think her father knows? I mean, how could he not know?”

  Levitt shrugged. “The girl lived with her mother. The mother knows, no doubt. But a girl like that… I bet she has her mother wrapped around her finger and firmly on her side, so they may have decided to keep it from Harry.”

  David blinked. “Should we tell him?”

  Levitt laughed. “You’re so prompt to violate student-counselor confidentiality?”

  “Ah. I didn’t—I didn’t realize there was such a thing.”

  Levitt showed his teeth. “You might have read your orientation packet, David. You have to maintain confidentiality with your students, with three exceptions: if you think the child is being abused, in which case you’re legally obligated to tell the law, though in this case the law is Bonnie’s dad, so let’s hope Harry isn’t the child-beating type, it could get awkward; if you think the student is going to kill herself or someone else, you tell me, and I’ll refer it to a psychologist who has an arrangement with the school; and in the case of a student disclosing something that could cause serious and foreseeable harm, like plans to run away from home or set a house on fire. Do any of those apply?”