A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman

Author:Josh Malerman [Malerman, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: This Is Horror
Published: 2016-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

20

They built the raft, a sturdy nine-by-six rectangle of uneven logs, held together with enough twine to form a second layer, a blanket of rope. They found their wood at the forested borders on shore. They dragged heavy timber through mud and overgrowth, carried them in tandem upon their shoulders, singing the song of the seven dwarfs. They cut one tree down. One. Because James believed the raft needed that one strong middle piece, so that if all else failed, if the rope somehow untied itself and all else drifted away, they’d still have that one solid trunk to hang on to, to rebuild around, to call home. They spent hours working, treading above the house, their bare feet close to the roof, almost close enough to stand on it. They took turns, exhausting themselves, laughing about it, debating it, happy to be making it, a place they could sleep, close to the house, so close that it was almost like owning it or maybe just like owning the house outright after all.

When they were finished, when the last knot was tied, Amelia secured one end of independent rope to the jutting end of the center log and James went under, swimming the rope around the home’s short chimney, tucking it under the brick ridge at its zenith. It felt great, he told Amelia when he broke the surface again, sending ripples toward the canoe (toward the raft, too), felt like they had done yardwork, or built an extension, or, at the very least, had added.

“An addition to the house,” Amelia said, laying a mattress pad and a blanket on the uneven logs.

James secured the canoe to the rope that held the raft to the house.

Then they sat on the edge of their raft and let their bare feet and ankles dangle in the water.

Amelia kissed him. She grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him until he leaned back, until he was lying down. She crawled upon him and kept kissing him and then James kissed her in return, running his hands over her shoulders, her lower back, her legs. The sun baked them from above as she straddled him. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts. James was breathing hard, tracing their shape beneath her bathing suit, squeezing them, kissing her neck. Amelia reached behind her back and untied the top, letting it slip past her shoulders, letting it fall to the logs that supported them. James kissed her breasts, tasted the lake water, wondered if every moment with Amelia would forever come coupled with the taste of the third lake.

They slid closer to the edge of the raft, James’s hands upon her ass now, trying to roll her over, wanting so badly to get on top of her, to spread her legs apart, to feel the strength of her thighs against his body. He kissed her neck and shoulders and arms and eyelids and everything that showed. Amelia moaned in response and James

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