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A Midnight Swim By Billy Madison Yazoo city MS
I hear her calling me at night. The sound was faint at first, but as each new night comes and goes, I can perceive the sound of her mewling whispers, thick with the mud and grit at the bottom of the lake, gurgling my name. Her words are carried to its muddy surface and released by the gaseous bursting of the lake’s bubbles. Her voice does not scare me anymore, and yet when I hear it in the dead of night, I quake and shiver in my bed, pulling the covers over my head like a terrified child who has just seen his closet door inch open a tiny bit on a dark winter night. No, it’s not her voice that scares me. It is the very fact that this dreadful sound doesn’t frighten me that frightens me. I knew it would happen. It was with the inevitability of a burning plane barreling earthward that I awaited the first night that I would hear her summoning me with her sodden voice. You see, my condition is one common to my family line. My mother had it before me, and her mother before her, and her father before her. All my brothers suffered from this odd and fatal malady. My father, having married into the accursed bloodline, was spared the direct effects of this mental malfunction, but was stricken with his own kind of breakdown as he watched his beloved wife spiral into her tragic state of insanity. It wasn’t that rippling, murky pool of water behind our cabin that claimed my father. It was a bullet fired from his own gun. I lie now in my bed, staring at the ceiling. My white knuckled hands clench the edges of my worn flannel blanket, pulling it up over my chest and tucking it close to my chin. Even in the tenebrous darkness of my room, I can see the paleness of my knuckles, clenched and tightened as they are, like shivering arthritic claws. The light of the waxing gibbous moon shimmers through the dusty blinds covering the large window set into the wall right next to my bed. This light is split into bars that dissect the shadows upon the far wall, reflecting off the mirror, where it glimmers like a pair of shining eyes watching me sleep. I can see the russet hue of the wooden door that opens into a short, uncarpeted hallway that leads to a cramped and drafty den, where another wooden door of similar color to this one opens onto a rickety patio that I helped build eleven summers ago, and descending from that patio is a set of creaky steps leading down to a barely detectable trail that winds its way through swaying and overgrown weeds to the mucky banks of the quiet, murky lake that has become the source of all my nightmares. “Malcolm.” My family has lived in this same log cabin for many generations. Despite the drafty air that slips through the cracks and despite the creaky floorboards and despite the sagging roof and despite the sometimes dreadful and sometimes serene isolation, this place is home. And no member of my family has ever dreamed of leaving it. How do we even know it would do any good? Maybe every place has its own menacing, nameless lake, beckoning with its lapping waves to those of us who are attuned to hear its aqueous murmurings. Or maybe this one can reach us no matter where we try to hide. I had heard my parents speaking in hushed tones of how my grandmother, dead before I was born, had shortly after her thirty-fifth birthday begun hearing the voice of her father — my great grandfather — whispering to her from beneath the surface of that calm and inconspicuous body of water. They spoke in whispers, hoping that my brothers and I would not hear, about how the voice had grown more and more tempting to her, begging her to take first one step, then another, then another into that lake. I had heard them speak of it, but it wasn’t until my mother had reached that same unfortunate age, the age which seems to be the tail end of my family’s lifespan, that I saw these symptoms they spoke of firsthand. “Malcolm!” I had been speaking with her at the time it first happened, asking her if she could buy me a new pair of shoes for school because the sole had torn loose from one of the old Converse All Stars she had bought me three years previous. But even as I spoke, I could see the glassy glaze of distraction upon her eyes. Her mind had been elsewhere. I tugged on her sleeve, and startled, she jumped, offering her surroundings a confused once-over. I was angry with her for not listening to me, and she offered a quick apology. She must be hearing things, she said. Exasperated, I walked away, unaware of the dreadful portent that this seemingly insignificant exchange had entailed. I sleep now in the same bed I slept in then. I have never moved into the bedrooms vacated by my parents or any of my lost brothers. I couldn’t bear to inhabit the places that once belonged to them. The bedroom is the seat of memory. Sleep is inherently tied to the mind, and thus it is this room more than any other that we come to haunt when we pass away. And it was in this very bed that I was awakened several nights later after the Converse conversation in the kitchen. It was the sound of the front door closing that stirred me. She had tried to shut it quietly so as not to disturb the rest of us sleeping soundly, but I have always been quite a light sleeper, and the nearly inaudible click of the door shutting may as well have been a shotgun blast in my ears. My eyelids unfolded like window shades thrown violently open and I sat bolt upright in my bed, staring at my bedroom door, from behind which the disturbing noise had originated. Drawn to the strange sound in the way that only a curious and terrified child can be, I pushed back the blankets and slowly slid out of my bed. My feet recoiled when they fell upon the cold hardwood floor, urging me to crawl back under the blankets, pull the sheets over my head, and go back to sleep. My heavy eyelids tended to agree with them, but I knew that I had to see what the sound had been. I crossed the floor and carefully turned the knob of my door. It slid open, revealing the darkened hallway leading to the cramped den. I stepped through it, staring hard into the shadows, hoping my rapidly accustoming eyes would see anything lurking in the darkness. I crept into the den, my feet falling in sync with the loud, rhythmic, and overwhelming ticking of the antique grandfather clock that inhabited one corner of the room. The front door was open, and I could hear the ominous hissing of the wind shaking the trees and foliage in the forest that surrounded our house. I could see the fallen brown leaves of autumn dancing across the porch like beetles skittering with great rapidity toward whatever it is that most entices a beetle’s mind. I pushed open the door and stepped through. “Maaalllcccooollllmmm The wind rose to a sibilant crescendo, howling through the trees like some antediluvian vengeance spirit, some livid banshee, that wanted to swoop down from the swaying branches that jutted from the tops of the trees like inverted lightning bolts and snatch me up. I shivered as the chill wind bit into every inch of my exposed skin, but still I had to press on. Something drew me down the path that led toward that lake. I imagined — or was it fair to dismiss it as mere imagination? — that I could see someone or something, clad in flowing white robes, floating down the trail, as if levitating, far ahead of me. I could not help but to follow. I continued down the trail, tailing the mysterious figure far ahead of me throughout the night. There were many times that I was sure this stranger had spotted me, and it began to speed up, hoping to outrun me, weaving in and out of the swaying, overgrown weeds that surrounding and covered the trail. But I held tight to the path, clinging to my chase with all the determination of a rapacious lion pursuing its quarry. And even despite all my resolve in my pursuit, there came a moment when I lost sight of that faint white haze of fabric that my eyes had remained focused on. Still I could not give up, and I kept moving forward. Moments later, the leaves and tree branches and overgrowth gave way to the muddy bank of the black lake. And there I saw my mother, standing in her white nightgown at the edge of the lake. It had appeared that she was levitating like some Hindu fakir as she moved down the trail, and this illusion was doubly strong now, as her feet were submerged in the loose and sucking mud that pulled her down to the ankles into its putrid muck. She turned to observe me as I emerged from the weeds, and the smell of rotting algae suddenly became overpowering. She shook her head, telling me I should never have followed her. As she spoke, her voice was fragile and wispy, as if we were standing upon a Himalayan peak, carrying on our conversation in the thin atmosphere there. And then she said something that I am loathe to repeat here, because even to this day, hearing these words sends the creeping shiver of gooseflesh rippling up and down my arms and spine. “They call me,” she said. And then she stepped into the lake. She continued toward the center of the cold body of water, the illusion of levitation still quite present. My legs wanted so much to propel me forward, to help her, but I couldn’t find the strength to force my frozen limbs into motion. I stood there, petrified, as she turned and moved forward, disappearing beneath the surface. Even then I couldn’t make myself move. I stood there, whimpering and crying, as the wind wailed and howled like a murderous wendigo ready to snatch me up by my hair and torture me for letting my mother go. And when strength finally did return to my numbed limbs, all I could bring myself to do was fall to the ground and curl myself into a fetal ball. “MALCOLM!” When I awoke the next morning, I was in my bed. A sigh of relief escaped my lungs, for it had all seemingly been a dream. But when I threw back the blankets, I saw the thick mud caked upon my legs and clothes. Wide eyed and terrified, I bolted from my bed and threw open the door, eager to see if my mother was anywhere to be found. Instead, I found my father. He was slumped upon the couch sobbing. He patted the brown cushion next to him, urging me to come sit by him, for he had some terrible news to tell me. I already knew, but II said nothing. Shame at my inaction spurred me into silence. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he told me that she had been gone when he awoke this morning. Given my mother’s insomnia, this was not unusual for her, but suspicions were confirmed when one of my brothers had gone down to the lake to go fishing and had found my mother’s nightgown lying in a muddy ball upon the bank. There was no sign of her. But we all knew where she was. It wasn’t long after this that my father ate a bullet from his own gun. And when he was gone, my oldest brother took care of the family. By the time he had reached the fateful age and had gone on his own fatal midnight stroll, we were all old enough that we needed no caretaker. Still, we stayed together in that house. None of us wanted to leave. None of us wanted to be alone. Even with that damnable lake so close by, beckoning to us, we could not go. One by one, my brothers disappeared beneath the brown surface of that evil body of water. And now I was the last. And 1 just turned thirty-five a week ago. “Come be with me, Malcolm!” Lying here in my bed, I shiver in the chilly air. My window is closed, but still that sibilant sound, so like the howling wind on that dreadful distant night, is clearly audible to my ears. I can hear moist, shuffling footsteps on the planks of the creaky patio. I can hear the front door opening. And suddenly, a quick midnight swim doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. |