Mystery Lake
[29] Evening
Roxy had only been of legal drinking age for part of the year, though it was forbidden in the dorms. Needing a drink, or at least something to spice up her spiced cider, was more of a general sentiment than a request. Though it seemed like the old lady would oblige if asked.
Moments later, she mentioned, "I can refresh your drinks or offer up something a little stronger. There's a wine cellar. We own the second and third floors and the basement. Brandy or sherry perhaps?"
That name elicited an instinctive shudder from Roxy and a slight fidgeting from the others. The old woman picked up on that and suggested a few different options. Layla went for the offer first, which surprised Roxy a little. Ross followed, and Miranda followed his example. Chiara asked for a tiny bit, and Jake and Roxy finally requested the same.
Even without supernatural interference, they probably wouldn't make it back to Grand Rapids before nightfall. The updated Google Map live traffic had a lot of red and yellow scattered about, if she could trust it.
Sifting through her phone apps, she found a recent text message that she hadn't gotten the chime about. It was just her eldest brother, Russell, checking in with his weekly text message to see how his little brother, Joel, was doing. For a split second, Roxy was tempted to just spray out the details of everything that had happened.
Hey, bro. I am now a petite, cute, emotional gal with insecurities about my mediocre boobs and a long way to go to regain my impressive muscles. I've been reading a trashy romance novel that practically squeezed out the last traces of my masculinity through tears over the dumbest, ham-fisted scenes. Jess is doing well; she has a massive slab of man meat between her legs now...
Yeah, not a single word of that was going to work except for maybe "hey, bro." And that vague response was just going to invite oodles of follow-up requests and FaceTime. She couldn't just leave him hanging, either. He would sniff out the silence and imagine the worst possibilities. He always genuinely cared about what his other brothers were up to, much more than their parents ever did. Shit, this random old lady cared more about her than that crappy part of his family. They sure as hell weren't getting a text message, but Russell deserved one, even if it was full of blatant lies and omissions. She had a few more hours before he'd get concerned, since now he knew that she'd read it.
Some strange, new part of her that felt like the giddy gal who Jake placed so much love within desperately wanted to gush forth a frantic range of gratitude and love for all the things, big and small, Russell took care of. Her eyes got a little bleary, but she quickly blinked that condensation away and set the phone down.
Maggie Triton... though that felt far too formal for her age but perfectly apt to her attitude... soon returned with an assortment of drinks and a wide range of glass sizes, perfect for savoring the smallest samples and making full fills perfectly modest. It didn't take long for the spirits to soothe some of the worst anxieties crackling in the air. Roxy wasn't sure who among them was legally allowed to drink, but frankly, she didn't care. And the old lady had the same attitude. Eugene flipped through the back pages of one of the books but had nothing new to offer. A menagerie of urgent and idle unanswered questions floated around like some strange species of colorful deep-sea critter.
The others knew that she felt someone else inside her. That should have been the most pressing question, but the opportune moments were swaddled in so much confusion along with the urgent fury of what that bastard tried to do to her. Perhaps some of them thought that this other she thought was with her represented a stressful break that shouldn't be pressed on, or else more cracks would appear.
The voice she spoke with and the way she commanded Ross to strike back felt like more than a mental episode. But she had no idea. How could she know if she was going crazy or not? The multitude of things that constituted reality now felt crazier than genuine madness.
Yes, there was a rigorous timeline of events to reveal, but what emerged in the uncertain void was casual conversation. Eugene turned the books or placed them at his feet around his chair as he elucidated, his word, about the oddity of how they found him.
"I have insomnia issues most nights because it always feels like there's so much research I want to do and need to do to keep up on the latest developments and how much is being published in the paranormal community. Not to mention broader interests like collecting, modeling, and a variety of other things. Even without the electronic lure of the Internet, there's so much that I need to focus on that it's an absolute blessing to have Mom to ground me and remind me of what I should be doing. By the way, yes, mom, I got your message about the roof. I'll get the things I need for the patch this weekend. And I picked up the mail and left it in the main inbox for you before I started my nap. … Anyway. About what you asked." In the middle of his conversation, Eugene got up and did some dirty dishes over by the kitchen, folded a few things together, and scrubbed the drainboard. Roxy raised an eyebrow.
With the accent and flavor of this ongoing multitask, shifting from one to the other on that end of the room, Eugene reflected and relayed, "I have always been fascinated by hypnosis. My father, who was a skilled diagnostician, also performed quite a bit of hypnotism and treated it like a game with me and my little sisters."
The old woman chimed in, "Dee Dee is always so adamant about being the one who can go the deepest into trance. She was heartbroken when Peter refused to hypnotize her when she spontaneously started sleepwalking and getting night terrors. Vivian has always been so talented but has never cared. Far more interested in imagining cartoon designs than visualizing instructions. And you had the hardest time. That's why I'm so proud of you... as I always am. I'm sure dad would be so delighted and eager to share his special words." Eugene smiled calmly and leaned his head back, rubbing a finger around his right eye.
He glanced around at the others and noted, "We digress. But hypnosis was always a challenge for me to understand what I was supposed to do and to calm my mind properly. It wandered wildly, even though I've never been diagnosed as having a deficit of attention. I've often suspected that part of it was anxiety because I tend to be naturally anxious, though I probably don't look it. And I'm digressing. A couple years ago, I realized I wasn't sleeping well or enough, and I almost dropped a practically priceless item I was putting away. I had to fix that. Fortunately, I kept in contact with a guy my father trained many years ago. He's really good, and he lives in town."
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Again pausing from the main thrust of the story, Eugene offered up this man's information for the group to optionally add to their phones. His stated reasoning referred to the usefulness of hypnosis in recalling supernatural events that might be blocked, seemingly erased, or otherwise hindered by unnatural forces. Not that he was suggesting that they had anything of the sort, but he just wanted to make sure they were aware of this local resource in case anything came up that required jostling loose.
Roxy actually gave the prospect some casual thought. She didn't seem to have any gaps in her memory. The only suspicious spans were shortly after they had left the lake, when she had plunged into the romantic narrative. After that, practically everything involving the Hollows wore the cloak of illusion. Not that she was particularly interested in spilling all the illusions of that dark space. Pretending that what she ate during the first half of her stay had the taste and consistency of a decent breakfast kept her from feeling any greater disgust.
Curiosities about the agent and his partner might be worth prying into, but she had seen enough in a horrifying glimpse of what seemed to dwell beneath his face. Then, seeing the truth about the bastard at the truck stop was not an avenue she wanted to explore. Otherwise, there were some suspicious sections when they drove without normal traffic or any of the expected rest stops and refueling stations. Maybe it was worth looking into, but she didn't know.
Eugene expanded on his experiences with his father's hypnotist protégé. He used a blend of techniques to finally get past what Eugene thought were his limitations. And what he enabled for him was a musical trigger for deep and not easily interrupted sleep. The gray-haired man relayed that if they tried to physically shake him, as they mentioned was their next option if the call didn't work, he might rouse briefly before settling back down. But he would probably wake up eventually. The trigger broke in case of emergencies and had inherent weaknesses.
Aside from this anecdote, Eugene leaned on another matter that came up. One curiosity of paranormal studies that had recently intrigued him was the possibility that ill health, current issues, and other unbalanced matters were sometimes related to repressed, suppressed, or simply buried matters just beneath the surface.
In particular, Eugene was aware of studies in which real, medical doctors took patients into deep past regressions, even past life regressions, in the hopes of finding sources of problems. Roxy shouldn't have been skeptical about any of this, considering the day she'd had, but she still felt a twinge of uncertainty. Eugene acknowledged similar inklings.
When he was under hypnosis, it was a long and uncertain process. But they discovered one thing in particular: Eugene had been a woman in a previous life. This practically colored his cheeks as brightly as the reddish portions of tie-dye splattered across his clothes. He mumbled through many of the details and stammered through others. The woman, Erica Burke, lived in the mid-21st century. In the future...
Unfortunately, they never really plumbed her experience for details about this era because, whenever it came up, it was like running into radio interference that jolted Eugene out of his trance. Instead, they focused on her fears, issues, and traumas. In the admittedly shaky and nebulous theories of what this was supposed to do, unlocking the stuff that bothered Erica and integrating it with Eugene should have cleared up his issues. But all that appeared to be a longer and more painstaking process than simply setting up sounds that made him sleepy and woke him up later.
Miranda leaned forward, quite interested in this tidbit. She did a lot of listening and a little bit of questioning about the vague details before announcing, "There's one thing that I sort of forgot to mention that I wanted to bring to your attention. We managed to take several gallons of lake water with us. I experimented with it and found it to be of highly pristine quality, which now makes sense with what you suggested about its origin."
Eugene's eyes widened visibly. "You brought that lake here? Does it still have the same effect even when separated from the main body?" That was easy to confirm with the mention of Roxy being exposed by a thrown bucket of water. And there was another incident subsequent to that. Eugene delighted in all these details. Their timeline was currently glossed over, but that didn't seem to bother him as he dashed his pen through the margins of one of the books to make specific notes.
His intense energy about the lake water was matched by a reserved, quiet uncertainty, with certain questions restrained in his mouth like a worn marble with uneven sections that no amount of moving around could possibly resolve. It wasn't the most difficult prospect for Roxy to at least guess where the man's mind was going.
Meanwhile, his mother waffled between a cheeky grin barely sheltered behind her fingers and an inscrutable Zen pose. She seemed to be quite amused by her child's display. What that meant, Roxy didn't know. But the way they spoke and interacted seemed genuinely lively, healthy, and respectful of each other. It suggested the mother would have been happy no matter what her son chose to do or be. It warmed Roxy's heart and made her wish that her family situation could be the same. If only.
She wanted to offer more; she wanted to dive deep into so many things, lay out all the information they had, and figure it out together. She wanted all that, but whatever wave she was riding from arguments, lakes, monsters, and more was fading fast, and her coherence was dropping. Soon, this day would be over, but she needed to rest even sooner.