The Reservoir (6 page)

Holly returned his smile and whispered, “Zack, I like you too, and not in the junior high way either.  But…”

“What?” he asked worriedly, as if she was about to shoot him down.

“We have a mystery to solve.”

“Oh, whew, I thought you were going to tell me to pack sand.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’d do it in a nice way,” he said.  “You’re a good person.”

“I’m not going to tell you to pack sand,” she assured him, squeezing his hand, “whatever the heck that means,” she added ruefully.  She shook her head.  “Zack, is it possible that maybe the oar got caught in a current below the surface.  I’m thinking, since there is a creek flowing into the reservoir, you know, the Siouxon, maybe the icy cold water meeting the warmer waters creates a current, or an undertow or something.”

“Have you ever felt anything like that before?”

She shook he head again.  “Well, no, but then, I haven’t covered every inch of this reservoir either.  Mostly, we hang out down by the bridge, at the cove we went to earlier.”

“Wish we’d stayed at that cove,” Zack muttered.  “If we had, Daniel wouldn’t be inside, possibly having a nervous breakdown.”  His jaw tightened at the prospect.  “God knows, I hope he’s okay.  He’s my best friend.”

Back in the cabin, Holly and Zack found Daniel crumpled in the recliner, wrapped in an old wool blanket. 

“We made him take a shower since he was shivering,” Niqui told them.  “He hasn’t said a word since he got out.”

“What took you guys so long getting back here?” Kendall asked Holly.  “We were getting worried.”

“We had some things to do.”

“Yeah, like make out in the truck,” Kendall muttered.

Holly glanced up with alarm.  She opened her mouth to speak, but Zack clamped his hand over her arm and met her eyes.  She spied the almost imperceptible shake of his head.  It wasn’t time to talk about their budding relationship.  It was nobody’s business.  Besides, they had bigger fish to fry right now.

Zack crossed the room to Daniel and knelt in front of him.  He reached a hand toward him and shook his shoulder.  “Daniel, look at me.”

He refused to budge.  His friends prayed desperately that he wasn’t already locked in some sort of deluded, mental state—or on the verge of a breakdown.  Could he bring one on by willing it true?  Were his fears of developing mental illness a self-fulfilling prophesy?

Zack spoke sternly this time.  “Daniel, look at me.  We have to talk about what happened out there.  Holly and I have some theories…”

Daniel finally brought his face around slowly and met his friend’s eyes.  He didn’t speak, but at least Zack had his attention.  That had to be good.

“Holly and I wonder if maybe you got caught up in a tree branch out there?”

“What?” Daniel cried, struggling to sit upright and watching Zack through wounded, accusing eyes.  He knew they were doubting him.  Probably thought he
was
crazy.  Well, he wasn’t.  He knew that now.  He wasn’t crazy.  “Tree branch?  There wasn’t any flippin’ tree branch.  Didn’t you see her, Zack?” 

Zack spread in hands in a gesture of frustrated apology.  No.  He hadn’t seen any girl.  There was no girl.  He refused to play into some ridiculous fantasy.  He and Holly had developed theories—very real possibilities as to what had happened on that lake.  Daniel was talking nonsense.  Daniel was talking
crazy
.

Daniel saw the pity on his friend’s face.  He shook his head furiously and swiped at his eyes.  “It wasn’t a damn tree branch.  It was a girl!  She was staring at me.”  He shivered, and Kendall hurried to get him a second blanket off the bed.  She draped it over him, but he only shrugged it off. 

“Daniel…” Holly said softly, moving to join Zack in front of their friend.

Daniel saw the doubt in Holly’s eyes too.  “I saw her, damn it!  She was looking at me.  She was so sad.  She was so strong!” 

Suddenly, his eyes widened and he leapt from the chair, nearly hitting Holly in the face with his knee.  Fortunately, Zack acted quickly and pulled her out of harm’s way.

“Listen!” Daniel cried, but took his voice down several notches.  He spoke quietly, measured now.  He was in control of himself.  “She was so strong.”  His eyes narrowed this time with apparent understanding of some truth known only to him at the moment. 

“Daniel,” Zack said softly.  “What are you trying to tell us?”

“SHE WAS SO STRONG!” he cried, and then broke into a knowing smile.  “She could have pulled me under!  She could have.  But she didn’t.  She just kept staring at me.  She wanted something from me.  She was desperate.  She wanted my help!  She has unfinished business.  You’ve seen the television shows!  You’ve seen the movies!  That’s it, guys!  She has unfinished business and needs my help.”

Daniel’s friends exchanged worried glances at one another.  Had he already gone off the deep end, or was he on the precipice?  Either way, they had to bring him back.

“Danny Boy,” Zack said softly, rising to his feet and taking him by the shoulders.  Listen to yourself.  There’s no girl in that reservoir.  It’s an impossibility.  She would drown.  Come on, think, buddy.  Please.” 

“Damn it, Zack!” Daniel roared.  “Aren’t you listening to me?  That girl is already dead!”

***     

The lengthy silence that followed Daniel’s declaration was interrupted by the ring of the antiquated wall phone in the equally antiquated kitchen.  Holly shook herself, to restore some semblance of calm to her mind and body, and then hurried to answer the phone.

“Hello.”

“Hey, honey, it’s Mom.  How are you doing?”

“Uh, I’m fine.”

“Honey, you don’t sound fine.  Hey, I tried your cell phone earlier.  I figured you’d be out on the water.”  Curiously, they’d always had service while out on the reservoir, but no service on its backs.

“Mom, I…”

“What?”

“I lost my cell phone.  I was taking pictures and it fell out of my hand and into the lake.”

The confession was met with stony silence.  Finally, her mother spoke in a stern voice.  “You know what this means?”

“I know.  I’ll pay for a new one with my own money.  I can’t believe it happened either.”

“Well, okay then,” her mother said, apparently satisfied with her daughter’s contrition and willingness to pay for another phone without arguing.  “Aside from that, how is everything going?  Did your friends arrive all right?  You know, I did ask you to call me as soon as everyone arrived.”

“Oh, Mom, sorry.  We were so excited to see each other, my memory went by the wayside.  I really am sorry.”

Her mother was silent for a moment, probably trying to discern who this obliging girl was at the end of the phone line.

“Well, okay then.  I do expect a call every evening.  Oh, before you go, since you don’t have a cell phone, give me your friends’ numbers.”

Holly obediently listed the numbers, and then yawned purposefully.  “Wow, I think I’m about ready for bed.”

“So you did go boating?  I know how it tires you out.”

“Mmmm, yes, sure did.  And I’m exhausted.”

“Okay, then, hon, I’ll let you go.  Remember, I’m trusting you.  Girls in one room, boys in the other.  David and Harry say ‘hi,’ by the way.”

“Okay, Mom.  Hi back to the boys.  Talk to you tomorrow.”

Click.

Suddenly, Zack was at her side.  “You handled that well,” he said with admiration in his voice. 

To demonstrate just how wrong he was about her reputed calm, she held a hand out to him, and he couldn’t miss the tremor.  “I nearly cracked,” she admitted.

He took her hand and held it close to his chest.  “We’ll get this sorted out.”

“We will?” she said, smiling tremulously and meeting his earnest gaze.  “You do understand your best friend is convinced there’s a dead girl at the bottom of the reservoir?  Wait, no, not at the bottom, but floating somewhere near the surface, and sometimes in the shallows, and sometimes in the deepest water, in order to communicate something to unsuspecting visitors.  Well, Zack, frankly, I have no interest in meeting this girl.”

“Yeah, I get that.  I’m with you on the last part, for sure.  I’ll forgo a face-to-face too.  But, uh, Holly, come here…”

He still had her hand as he lead her over to the recliner, where Daniel was once again sitting.  He was no longer wild-eyed, but instead, calm and apparently about to drift off to sleep.  In contrast, Niqui and Kendall looked wide-awake and horribly frightened.  They huddled together in a blue plaid chair that had also seen better days.

“What is it?” Holly asked, meeting Zack’s eyes.

“We need you to see something.”

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“Danny Boy, show Holly your leg.”

Daniel roused himself and stuck his leg out from beneath the blanket.  Holly gasped.  There was a perfect imprint of a hand on his ankle.

“Oh, my goodness,” Holly said, glancing heavenward for support.  She felt her knees go weak.  “What could have caused that?  Besides a hand, I mean?”  Her voice rose with each syllable, until Zack pulled her onto the couch beside him.  He draped an arm over her shoulders.  She leaned into him for support, without realizing she was doing so.

She felt her whole body trembling with fear.  There had to be a logical explanation for that imprint.  Surely there was a logical explanation.

“Holly, we need to talk,” Zack said.      He urged her up and through the door to the bedrooms.  He sat her down on one of the twin beds in the smaller of the two rooms.  Shaking with fear, Holly drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them—as if she expected something to reach out from under the bed and grab her legs. 

Zack sat down beside her.  The bed springs groaned under their combined weights.  Zack ignored the sound, but instead, pulled Holly close and offered soothing words.  She let him comfort her for a moment, but then she rallied, pulling away from him.  There simply had to be a logical explanation for everything that had happened out on the water.  There had to be.

“Okay, Zack,” she said, rising to her feet.  She felt unsteady for a few seconds, but still felt the need to pace.  If she engaged in some activity, her mind might possibly clear enough for her to make sense of that hand imprint on Daniel’s leg.  Suddenly, an idea came to mind.  “Zack, could he have done it to himself?  In the shower!  That has to be it.”

Of course, that theory didn’t portend well for Daniel’s sanity, but it nullified grabby, ghostly apparitions.

Zack emitted a long, weary sigh.  “We considered that, of course.  We had him put his own hand against the imprint.”

“And…?”

“He was angry we doubted him.”

“Yeah, okay, but did his own hand match?”

“Not even close.  The imprint was too small.”

“Wait.  Could one of the girls have left it on him when they were pulling him into the boat?”

Zack had already considered this possibility and tested the theory.  He shook his head.  “The imprint didn’t match either one of the girls.  We compared them.  Niqui’s hand was a little too big, and Kendall’s a little too small.  Besides, they had a hold of him by his vest.  Neither one remembers grabbing his ankle.”

Holly sighed loudly.

Zack raised his own hand, which was much too large to be a contender.

“I don’t know,” Holly mused aloud.  “People bruise differently.  Maybe Kendall grabbed a hold of his ankle but doesn’t remember in all the excitement.  Maybe bruising expands.”  She ran a hand through her silky blond hair.  “Oh, I don’t know.”

“It’s all good thinking on your part,” Zack said with admiration.  “But none of it explains this…”

He held out his arm for Holly to see.  Her eye’s widened.  There was a perfect imprint of a hand on his wrist.  The bruising was deep and already turning black and blue.  Holly reached a tentative hand toward the imprint.  Was it her hand?  She had made a grab for Zack in order to try to help him back into the boat.  But she was certain she had grabbed his upper arm, not his wrist.

She held her hand above the imprint, hovering tentatively, afraid to touch it.  Finally, she laid it against the imprint, aligning finger with finger, palm to palm.  It didn’t match.

It didn’t match
.

“How’s Daniel?” Holly asked Zack.  She was at the kitchen sink, washing their dinner plates.  The group had been so wound up over the day’s events, they had nearly forgotten that they hadn’t eaten since lunch time, with the exception of Niqui, who had made a sandwich earlier. 

“Daniel’s still pretty uptight, but he’s no longer carrying on about being crazy.  Of course, now he thinks the rest of us are crazy for trying to apply a logical explanation to an illogical scenario.”

“You mean a potentially
supernatural
scenario.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s how he sees it.”

Holly winced.  “Poor guy. 
We’re
deluded because we don’t believe him.  Zack, that doesn’t sound good—him thinking we’re nuts now.  I remember reading somewhere that people who are crazy often don’t have a clue
they’re
crazy.”  Holly paused for several seconds.  “Of course, a couple hours ago, Daniel was convinced he was crazy.”  She shook her head to clear it.  Things were getting confusing.  “But, there is the matter of those handprints,” she remembered aloud.  “How do we dispute the physical evidence?  I can understand Daniel being frustrated with us, considering the writing’s on the wall, er, the handprints are on the ankle and wrist.”

Zack conceded the point of a nod, and sighed heavily.  He was silent for a moment, processing.  “It’s probably better when a crazy person doesn’t know they’re crazy, if you really think about it.”

Holly shuddered, as if trying to shed the dark cloud of worry that had descended over the group.  “Let’s not—think about it, that is.  Did you give Daniel some Tylenol tablets?  It might help him sleep.”

“He wasn’t eager to take them, but finally swallowed them to get me off his back.  Frankly, I took a couple too.  I’m doubtful any of us are going to do much sleeping tonight.”

Holly glanced out the kitchen window.  Her eyes panned the reservoir.  She spied the moon twinkling on the now smooth-as-glass surface.  “Wind has died down,” she commented, and then her eyes lighted on the dock.  She could just make out the wooden form, with the boat tied beside it.  For a fleeting second, she worried about having left the boat out there without having buttoned up the canvas covers, but thankfully, it didn’t look like rain was coming.  Earlier, she had believed a storm might be brewing.