THE DARK LAKE
by Andrew Marr, OSB
Chapter the 1st
“Is it the fear and anger of so many people that weighs on you?” asked Father Clement.
Ted Sloane, the mayor of Milton, leaned back in his chair and tried to think. It helped that Father Clement was willing to wait patiently for him to reply. The burly, nearly bald priest never gave the impression that he knew what he was doing. Somehow, that was reassuring to the mayor, who preferred Father Clement to the more self-assured minister of his own church.
“The fear and the anger of so many people has weighed on me ever since I was elected,” Ted replied. “But actually, that’s gotten a little better since the library received a windfall that has allowed them to continue work on the new wing.”
“Has something else been added to your burden, then?”
Ted Sloane stared out the window for a moment while pondering the question. Before he took office, he thought he knew how difficult the job would be, but after taking office, he realized that the administrative work was nothing compared to carrying the pain of everybody in the town.
“It makes me feel stupid to say this,” the mayor said softly, “but I see no reason why I should feel the way I do.”
“You can feel stupid about it if you want,” Father Clement replied with a slight twinkle in his eye, “but you don't have to. When we’re depressed, we don’t always find a tangible reason for it.”
“Do you think I should see a doctor and ask for an antidepressant?” asked Ted.
“I don’t know,” the priest replied. “It might be a good idea to check that out. First, though, let’s try this: If you had to state in one simple sentence what your gut feeling about Milton is right now, what would that be?”
Gut feelings did not come easily to Ted and he wished Father Clement wouldn’t push him in that direction. Even so, he decided to go along with the priest and he gave himself a moment to let his gut feelings rise to the surface. Father Clement sat patiently in his chair, making it clear that he was willing to wait all day if necessary. When an image came to Ted, he knew it was the right one.
“I would say that it feels as if everything in Milton is a shade darker than it was,” Ted answered.
Father Clement grunted. The telephone rang. Father Clement winced and lifted the receiver.
“Audrey says it’s an emergency,” said the priest. “I’ll be as brief as possible.”
“Father Clement speaking,” said the priest into the phone. Father Clement listened briefly, then almost dropped the phone. “This is the first I’ve heard this news,” Father Clement stammered. “Has any family contacted you about this?” Father Clement frowned as he listened further. “Well, I can ask Scott if he wants to help me plan the service . . . Yes, I could do it at eleven o’clock on Friday. May I call back later to work over the details? I am in conference right now.” Father Clement was visibly shaken by the time he had written down the phone number and hung up the receiver.
“What happened?” Ted asked him.
“I was told by an undertaker from a funeral home I’ve never heard of that Evelyn Lear has just passed away.”
“Evelyn Lear?” the mayor gasped. “Then another light has gone out of Milton.”
“If you think Mrs. Lear was a light for this town,” said Father Clement, “that makes two of us, even if we are the only ones who think that.”
“Given her reputation,” said the mayor, “I was amazed when, after I took office, I found out that she was supporting social services for the poor almost single-handedly.”
“She was,” the priest affirmed. “Our food pantry would have had much less to offer this past winter if it wasn’t for her.”
“Is any family coming?”
“Not that I know of. The funeral director said that he was instructed to ask Scott Simpson to help me plan the funeral.”
“Scott Simpson?” the mayor asked. “He’s the last person I would ask to plan my funeral.”
“He’s a much nicer kid than most people give him credit for, as I can attest by experience,” Father Clement replied. “Well, let’s get back to you.”
“Uh—yes, I—I said that everything seems a bit darker than it did. I suppose that’s a sign of depression.”
“I suppose it is,” Father Clement replied. “However, now that you mention it, I have to say that I also have the impression that Milton looks darker and feels darker than it did.”
“We could be imagining it,” Ted suggested.
“We could, but our imaginations agree. Either we are both projecting a depressed state of mind on reality, or the reality is that it really is darker.”
---------------
Sheila Armstrong tried once more to play the passage of the Beethoven sonata she was struggling with and, once again, she stumbled over the same notes. The frown on Miss Shepherd’s face did not help. The constant humming of Shawn’s toy train right above her head upstairs was one more distraction she didn’t need. It was no wonder her piano teacher looked so depressed when she was saddled with a nephew like Shawn, Sheila reflected.
“You are making the sonata more pathetic than pathétique this afternoon,” said Miss Shepherd. “Have you been practicing?”
“Yes,” Sheila replied, stung by the play on words and the injustice of the accusation. “Really, I have! I got this right yesterday, but today everything’s going wrong. I dropped my schoolbooks twice and I spilled milk all over the lunch table and now this!”
“I know it's a hard life,” said Miss Shepherd with little show of sympathy.
The lines of her face and the tone of her voice constantly reminded Sheila that she had troubles of her own.
“That train makes it hard for me to think,” added Sheila.
“It keeps Shawn quiet,” Miss Shepherd replied. “Besides, you'll have to learn to play against a lot more noise than that. At a music conservatory, you'll be practicing in little rooms where you’re bombarded by dozens of other instruments in the neighboring rooms. You'll wish then that your only distraction was the drone of a spoiled brat’s toy train. Now try this passage again. It shouldn’t be that difficult to get the right notes in the right places. And while you’re at it, try to think ahead to the return of the main theme so that it doesn't sound as if you chopped the movement into bits and pieces.”
Slightly gratified that Miss Shepherd also thought Shawn was a spoiled brat, Sheila poised her hands above to piano, but before she managed to play anything, a crashing sound from upstairs startled her.
“The rate of train wrecks is escalating in Shawn’s little world,” said a weary Miss Shepherd over a muffled exclamation of obscene language.
“I guess that’s part of the fun of having a train set,” Sheila replied.
Sheila recollected herself and tried once more to make the slow movement sound like music, but with little more success than before.
“Only a slight improvement,” Miss Shepherd sniffed. “Now remember, it isn’t just a matter of the time you put into practicing, it’s the quality of your practicing that counts. Try thinking about what Beethoven is saying musically. The notes don't say anything unless you make them say something.”
“I know,” said Sheila with little enthusiasm as she packed away her music and pulled herself away from the piano that dominated the living room, relieved that the ordeal was over. While she had been playing, she thought the lamp's light over the piano had grown dimmer, but Sheila, tired of making excuses for her shortcomings, said nothing about that.
Miss Shepherd sat down at the piano and sank her fingers in a Chopin nocturne as if Sheila was gone already. If the spring air outside were not so inviting, Sheila might have lingered to listen to her play. The fresh air, however, could not dispel the sense that something was wrong, although Sheila could not put her finger on what the problem was. Even with the sun out the clear sky did not seem very bright and the spring air left her feeling sightly cold. Sheila wondered if air pollution from the factories was darkening the sky, but then she remembered her father talking about a lawsuit he was working on to force factory owners to pay up on their unemployment benefits. That meant the factories were only giving out half the pollution they were capable of. So, what else could be making the sky so dark? Sheila asked herself. She wished she could ask somebody about that but there was nobody in Milton she could talk to about anything.
Sheila pushed back the large round glasses that kept nudging their way to the front of her nose, then started to climb the hill up to the corner. Living only a block away from her teacher was handier than taking a city train half-way across Philadelphia, but Sheila missed Miss Ferguson badly. Although Miss Shepherd was a competent musician, and she said many of the same things that Miss Ferguson said, it was not the same. Miss Ferguson could tell her to listen deeply for what Beethoven was saying musically in such a way that Sheila could hear what she meant. Miss Shepherd somehow cast a shadow over the music when she talked about it. Sheila had some hope that she might be able to make a career for herself in music, even if she fell short of being a star concert pianist. Having to switch to an inferior teacher in her fifth grade year was no help to those aspirations.
Still, Sheila knew she had to accept the fact that she lived on the other side of the state from Philadelphia, in Milton, south of Pittsburgh, where the people were familiar to each other but strange to her. At least a law firm in town had given her father a job. She could only hope this firm would be one that didn’t try to impose shady deals on her father that he couldn’t live with.
By the time Sheila reached the top of the hill, she suddenly felt colder and everything looked darker, as if a thick cloud had just obscured the sun, but there was still not a cloud in the sky. Yet, Sheila saw a dark cloud covering a house right across the street from her. A closer look told her that a black limousine was parked in front of the house. Two stone lions guarded the front porch of the house. A newspaper was sticking out of the mouth of one of the lions, apparently the paper carrier's way of being funny. One of the girls who had half-heartedly tried to make Sheila feel at home told her that the neighborhood grouch lived there, Sheila had shrunk away from the house ever since.
Without meaning to be nosy, Sheila slowed her pace and then stopped altogether. The front door of the house opened, seemingly on its own, and a man wearing a black suit carried a stretcher carrying a covered body out of the darkness framed by the door. Another man in black followed, holding up the other end. If this was the neighborhood grouch, she would no longer snap at her neighbors in this world. Sheila leaned against a tree, hoping to melt into it so that the undertakers would not see her. As expertly as a pair of insects born to the job, the men in black packed the corpse into the back of the limousine, closed the car doors, started up the motor, and drove the car slowly down the hill. The darkness of the car and the men's suits lingered about the hilltop. Death had not yet taken anyone close to Sheila, and she shuddered at the thought that one of her parents might one day be driven off in a black car like that.
The eerie silence surrounding was disturbed by the sound of hoof beats, sounding exactly like the sound track for a Western her father liked to watch for old time’s sake and the shouting of several men. Fearing she might be trampled by invisible horses, Sheila pinned herself back against the tree. First, she saw clouds of dust form in the back yard of the house where the neighborhood grouch had lived, and then she saw half a dozen cowboys riding white horses. The foreheads of the horses shone so brightly that Sheila had to half-close her eyes. The cowboys wore wide-brim cowboy hats and their faces were covered with red neckerchiefs like bandits. Sheila edged her way around behind the tree, then peeked out to see what was happening. At the command of their leader, the cowboys pulled out their pistols and aimed them at the street light closest to the dead woman’s house. They fired several shots, none of which seemed to hit the light, but Sheila was certain that the street was made a shade darker. The cowboys yelled in triumph and held out gunny sacks under the streetlight as if gold coins were dropping down out of it. Sheila shivered. This was not making any sense at all. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t dreaming, but she had to be. And if she was dreaming, what was going to happen to her when she fell asleep that night? Then the gang leader pointed to the street light across the street, right by the tree where Sheila was hiding.
“Another dose of light for the king!” the leader cried.
“Whoopie-Hi-Yo!” the other bandits yelled back.
Just as the horses entered the street, a car turned the corner and headed straight toward them. A scream stuck in Sheila's throat. She tried to turn away, but she couldn't. She winced when she heard the squeal of breaks.
“Don’t you kids know better than to play in the street?” yelled a man.
Sheila could hardly believe it. What could the driver have seen? How could he have looked at the cowboys riding their horses and think they were normal children playing in the street?
“This is serious business, partner,” the leader boomed back.
Paying the irate driver no further mind, the bandits shot up the streetlight above Sheila’s head and held out their sacks once more. At such close range, Sheila thought she saw faint streams of light flowing into the bags. More unsettling, the cowboys no longer looked like people; they looked and acted more like manikins dressed as cowboys. Most unsettling of all, Sheila saw that it was long golden horns that were making the horses’ foreheads so brilliant. One of the unicorns winked. Sheila’s heart almost stopped. Could it have winked at her?
“We have just enough time to catch the next train on Railroad Shawn’s Corelee-Carlin line,” the gang leader announced. “There’s a freight car reserved for us.”
The bandits drove their unicorns down the hill where they disappeared in front of Miss Shepherd's driveway in clouds of dust.
“They couldn’t mean Shawn the Superbrat,” said Sheila to herself, still frozen to the tree. But she didn’t know who else the bandits could have been talking about.
Before she could unglue herself from the tree, Sheila heard the sound of quick, heavy footsteps. Not knowing where she could hide this time, Sheila froze and hoped for the best. A boy with a newspaper sack on his shoulder ran past the tree and skidded to a halt at the driveway where the horses had disappeared. Sheila cringed when she recognized Michael Bullinger, Just seeing this boy on the streets of Milton the day she arrived was enough to make Sheila think her family should never have moved to this town. Michael walked up Miss Shepherd’s driveway far enough to peek in the back yard, then he shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t care about not seeing anything. Then he walked in Sheila’s direction. There was no question that Michael had seen her. Sheila decided that her only hope was to walk away as normally as she could and pretend that nothing had happened.
“Hey! Fish Bowl face!” Michael called out.
Sheila felt like calling Michael a name five times as bad, but she swallowed her words and walked more briskly down the street. To her dismay, Michael’s footsteps quickened and suddenly the gangly boy was blocking her way.
“I mean you—you with the cute pony tail!”
Michael stared at Sheila, his eyes wild as they were cold. With his matted dark-blond hair and unwashed face, he made her wish that anybody else at all was in front of her instead of this boy.
“My name is Sheila, not Fish Bowl Face or ‘You With the Cute Pony Tail,’” Sheila retorted, giving Michael as hard a return stare as she could.
She could hardly believe she was standing up to the obnoxious boy as much as she was. All her life, people had told her she had no aptitude for Assertiveness Training. To her surprise, Michael’s face softened a bit.
“Hmm. Thought you probably had a name. Most people do. Okay Sheila, did you see anything strange just now?”
“What do you mean?”
Michael shrugged.
“Oh, cowboys riding unicorns—that sort of thing.”
That answer gave Sheila the shivers. In spite of what she had just heard with her own ears, she could not believe that Michael would about the unicorns and the bandits who rode them.
“Your face gives you away,” said Michael. “Don’t worry. I don’t think you’re crazier than I am.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” said Sheila tartly.
She wasn’t prepared to find Michael as minimally clever or sympathetic as he was showing himself to be and that seemed almost as strange as seeing the bandits ride unicorns down the street.
“Come on Sheila,” Michael urged. “I know you think I’m a bad sort and probably the last person you want to talk to. I don’t blame you. I am a bad sort, but once in a while I try to be decent and do what’s right. All I can do is promise that I’ll try real hard not to hurt you or let anybody else hurt you if you talk to me.”
Sheila gave Michael a long, hard look while the boy appeared willing to submit to as piercing an examination as Sheila chose to give him. She knew she was gullible but, even so, she was quite sure she saw no trace of insincerity in the way Michael spoke to her.
“You seem pretty serious about something,” said Sheila.
“You’re fu—you’re right about that,” Michael replied. “Now, are you going to tell me what you saw or are you going to go home and fret about it because you probably can’t tell your parents what you saw?”
Sheila, knowing that Michael was right about her parents, much as she loved them, decided to swallow her reluctance to talk.
“I saw a group of cowboys riding horses—I mean I thought they were horses but then I saw horns on their foreheads, so they were unicorns—the cowboys covered their faces with kerchiefs—you know—like outlaws in the Westerns—and they came riding from behind that house up there—“
“The one with the lions on the porch?”
“Yes. The outlaws shot up the streetlight in front of the house, then they crossed the street and almost got hit by a car and then they shot up another streetlight—only it didn’t look like any bullets hit the light because they didn’t break the glass—and then the cowboys put out their gunny sacks and caught something—or thought they did. Then one of them said they could catch a train Shawn’s line—you know—the brat who lives . . .”
“I know who you mean,” said Michael. “He’s a kid I wouldn’t trust as far as a snail can walk in five seconds.”
“He’s got a toy train in his room that he runs all through my lessons,” said Sheila.
Michael pursed his lips.
“Hmm. What then?”
“Those guys rode down to Miss Shepherd’s house and disappeared in her driveway. Now try believing that if you can!”
Sheila put on her most defiant face and expected Michael to laugh her out of town but, to her surprise, he gave every indication of taking her seriously.
“Hmm. Are you sure that these outlaws were riding unicorns?”
“See! I knew You wouldn’t believe me,” said Sheila. “I suppose you don’t believe in unicorns.”
“I know unicorns exist—at least in certain worlds,” Michael replied. “The only thing I find hard to believe is that unicorns would allow outlaws to ride them.”
“Oh.” Sheila thought about that for a moment. “I don’t think the unicorns liked it. When I saw them close up, the outlaws looked more like mechanical plastic toys, and I—I think one of the unicorns winked at me.”
“Well, that’s easier to believe,” said Michael. “But if plastic outlaws can treat unicorns like that, then something’s wrong. Did you say they came out from behind Mrs. Lear’s house?”
“I don’t know her name. I hear she’s the neighborhood grouch—or was.”
Michael turned a shade paler.
“Was?”
“I saw a black limo parked in front of the house when I came out from my lesson,” Sheila replied, “and then I saw a couple of undertakers carry out a body.”
Michael’s face clouded over.
“That would have to be Mrs. Lear.”
“Did you know her?”
“Yea. She was a lot nicer than you’d think.”
Sheila was amazed to see Michael, of all people, speak kindly of an old grouch she thought everybody hated, but there was no mistaking Michael’s feelings about her.
“What’s this all about?” Sheila asked.
This time it was Michael who was hesitant to say something.
“I think you owe it to me to tell me what you’re thinking,” Sheila persisted.
“Okay, you’re right. It wasn’t easy for you to tell me what you told me. Have you by any chance noticed that everything seems darker than it ought to be?”
Sheila felt a small electric shock of recognition that another person would voice her own secret worry.
“Yes, I have.”
“Then you are a human being with a real pair of eyes. Want to come help me check this out?”
A couple of minutes ago, Sheila would have screamed “NO!” and run away. But the past couple of minutes had changed everything.
“Okay.”
Sheila followed Michael up to the top of the hill to the house where the neighborhood grouch had just died. With a start, she realized that right next to the house was St. John’s Episcopal Church, where she and her family went to church. Michael knocked on the door as if pounding on it could bring the woman back from the dead, but he received no answer. He walked around towards the back of the house, then stopped short and jumped in front of Sheila. Sheila herself cried out when she saw a large gray wolf squatting in the middle of the back yard.
“Hold still,” Michael cautioned. “I don’t think he’ll hurt us.”
At that moment, the wolf showed no indication that it intended to attack; its eyes were fixed on a floodlight that wasn’t on and its mouth was open as if it were howling at the moon.
“What do you think that wolf is doing?” Michael asked Sheila in a whisper.
“I—I don’t know—I don’t hear anything, so I guess it’s not howling—it almost looks like it’s drinking something.”
“Hmm. If the wolf’s drinking the light, then it’s no wonder it’s getting dark around here. I’ll have to report that to my friends. Let’s go.”
Sheila was glad to get away from the wolf before it noticed her and decided it was hungry. Michael walked back down the driveway and headed toward the church next door. As they reached it, Father Clement and the mayor of Milton, came out.
“Father Clement!” Michael called.
The priest turned to Michael with a bemused look.
“What is it?” he asked.
“This girl here—Sheila’s her name—told that an undertaker just came and tool Mrs. Lear’s body away.”
The priest and the mayor exchanged somber glances.
“That is precisely what their colleague told me just now over the phone,” Father Clement replied. “I am supposed to ask Scott to help plan the funeral.”