SHE FLOPPED OVER ON IT, HUNCHED UP LIKE A CAT, HISSED AT THE
BOYS THROUGH HER CRAZY HAIR AND RAN AWAY ON ALL FOURS TO
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LAKE TO FIND HER MOM THAT HER DAD
HAD PROBABLY KILLED AND HIDDEN OVER THERE ALREADY, AND
THIS IS HOW LEGENDS ARE BORN, SIR.
“Well, yeah, that was Friday night. Saturday night was — [4 letter bleep] — that was when I saw what I saw, yeah. Which I don’t know I should be repeating, even for history. But… well [same bleep]. I mean, Bear, your teacher, that’s his real name, he knows all this already. He was in cabin 4, the 6th graders. So I guess it’s okay. He won’t put this paper on the wall, I’m pretty sure.”
AND HERE’S WHERE I WENT FULL GERALDO.
“You gonna believe an article by a reporter who wasn’t there or you going to buy the story of the guy who WAS there? Nobody saw what I saw. It was Amy Brockmeir, none of that mistaken identity bull [bleep]. That’s easy to say from the armchair, I mean. But I was there, little miss, feet on the ground, lump in my throat the size of a cantaloupe. This was Saturday night, our last night there. I don’t know why we hadn’t all gone home already, with kids dying left and right. I’d got up to pee, but the privvies, they were all the [bleeping] way to the other side of camp. On the way over, I rounded this 1 corner — at first I thought it was a badger, I guess. I can still see it, I mean. You know how a badger, when it’s eating, it kind of bunches up in the middle, like it’s humping whatever it’s eating? Strike that, don’t write that down, shouldn’t have said it. But I think they eat that way because of something to do with how their throats are. Rolling at the spine, it forces the food back faster than just an esophagus can.”
IF YOU THINK I SAID ANYTHING ABOUT HUMAN CENTIPEDE HERE, SIR, THEN THINK AGAIN. I DIDN’T WANT TO STOP HIM.
“Trigo, that was her, yep. Number 4. She’d just moved to Proofrock 2 weeks before school let out. Her dad was the new dam keeper. This is 2 or 3 dam keepers before Jensen, who’s there now. Being the dam keeper, that’s like working a lighthouse. Don’t know what her dad thought he was signing on for. They were just over from Montana. She was either Italian or Indian, olives or arrows, I never knew.
But you could tell she could scrap if she had to. She had this way of looking at you, too. I’ve only ever seen that look again once, across all my years. The day my daughter was born. But anyway, yeah — with Stoakes it was wasps. Howarth, a fall. Walker, a cooking pot. But now it’s — Amy Brockmeir, she was EATING, I piss you not. And then she looked up to me over the Trigo girl. What was left of her, I mean. Amy’s hair was matted up, her nightgown all in rags. The lower part of her face was all black with — well, with what she’d [serious bleep] been doing to the dam keeper’s daughter. I used to always imagine what if I’d ran over, right?
What if I’d tackled Amy Brockmeir off her. She didn’t die right away, either, the — the dam keeper’s daughter. But she couldn’t say anything. Her throat was… it’s why I was the one who had to tell that it had been Amy Brockmeir. That I’d seen her, that she was the only one at camp with hair like that. The next night Mr. Trigo locked himself in the control booth of the dam. He was crazy with being sad, blamed himself for bringing his daughter to this godforsaken place, you know how it would have to be. That night the lake came all the way up to the bank building before Don Chambers shot out each corner of the only window in that control booth. Lake came all the way to that 2nd brick on the sidewalk. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, the water sloshing up like that, to swallow us all. And when I heard about Don Chambers shooting that glass out, I think that was when I felt these 5 points on my chest for the 1st time. He was Marshall Dillon, I mean. He was Chuck Connors.
JADE WATCHES MOSTLY HORROR, THANKS.
“Before your time, before your time. And yeah, that article’s right about Amy Brockmeir. She ate her blanket in the state hospital. I hear they pulled 2 feet of it up her throat. Ask me, that proves it. But, like I was saying, all we’d been saying around the fire all week was ‘Lake Witch,’ ‘Lake Witch,’ so that was where my head went at 1st. Which is why I didn’t run tackle her off that Trigo girl. But [bleep], I was 11, and had, well, had HAD a full bladder, right? [Bleep] straight I got up on my getaway sticks, made for the water. That was the 1 place we knew Stacey Graves couldn’t go, because of Ezekiel’s holy singing being already under there, and his tolerance for witches being so famously low, so that was where I hid, and I never looked around, kept my face down as long as I could hold my breath, and maybe a little longer than that even, but all that meant was that in my head I had to see her scratching and clawing at the surface of the water right over my back, not able to reach into it. But like I say, I was 11. Stacey Graves was just a story to get us home before dark. What’s worse in the real world are messed up kids like Amy Brockmeir. Sorry to burst your bubble about the Lake Witch, there, little miss. [bleep]. This badge means I have to traffic with evidence, though, not urban legend. And remember, eyewitness testimony is only as good as the head behind those eyes, and I was just a kid then, only 11. But Don Chambers explained what I’d seen to me, and it made sense the way he said it back, going slow through it so I could hear it was important. When I heard him telling my story back to me, I mean, even I could hear it for the campfire story it was. There were some facts in it he could use, though, like the crazy hair, the nightgown, and he used them to keep us all safe, and that was it for Camp Winnemucca. It’s for the best, too. Bad memories over there.”