[Part 1]

“What if you did the interiors in a light sage green?”

“You read my mind, Mom.” I sat curled up on the couch in my cottage, trying not to stare at the notebook resting on the coffee table several feet away. I hadn’t dared to open it yet and calling my mom was an effective stalling mechanism. I had taken a hot shower and was wrapped in multiple blankets, but when I closed my eyes I could see that terrible churning sky.

“So, uh, what else is going on with you?” I asked, desperate for a bit of normalcy. Or rather what had passed for normalcy between us since Dad’s accident.

“I’ve actually been meaning to tell you. You remember that travel agent I was working with last year? She called me today. Told me they’ve had a last minute cancellation for the cruise around the world! Over one hundred days, round trip from Miami! It leaves next week. I don’t know if you remember, but that trip had always been—”

“Dad’s dream.” I finished the sentence. “I think you should go. Dad would have wanted you to go.”

“Thanks, honey. I…” She paused. I could tell she was trying to regain her composure. “I’ll call you again before I leave.”

As I ended the call, part of me wanted to scream with questions, tell her everything, but I knew it would be futile. And besides, just how much did my mom know anyway? She was from New Jersey and though my parents had married here and lived here until I was in first grade, she had always been an outsider. It’s not like she had a good track record of believing me about this sort of thing anyway.

The previous night’s events had gotten me thinking, re-evaluating everything I knew about this place. After we moved away, we’d spend every summer up here, my dad going back and forth from Manhattan when he could get time away. Most of the time my mom insisted on renting a bigger sort of house than my uncle’s cottages, especially if it was on an island. She loved the novelty of taking a boat to get groceries, and so did I. I always imagined being a pirate smuggling loot. But one summer, the house we were renting wasn’t available for the last few days of our planned trip and rather than go home early, my uncle offered us one of the cottages. My dad was already back to work in the city so since it was just the two of us, my mom agreed to stay in Cottage 9.

I was seven years old and was glad for the extra time. My uncle’s dock was a great fishing spot, the water in the summer was often so clear and bright that it is not an exaggeration to say it could be mistaken for the Caribbean. I would often sit with my feet splashing around for hours, just watching the boats go by, lacing around the patchwork greens of the islands dotting the river, weaving in and out of the border between two countries. I’d keep a tally of their flags, stars and stripes versus maple leaves.

But that day I hadn’t been in the water. It was overcast and humid and I had spent the day mostly curled up with my sketchbook on the porch of our cottage. So I was taken aback when my mom burst through the door in an uncharacteristic rage.

“Nora! What is the matter with you? I thought you knew better than tracking wet footprints through the house?”

“I didn’t! I haven’t been swimming today.”

My mom shook her head in disbelief.

“Then what’s this?” She gestured inside. I sullenly followed her, brimming with injustice. My stomach sank. She was right. There was a trail of sloppy, wet footprints leading from the front door back to the bedroom, culminating in a large puddle in front of the door.

“It wasn’t me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. My mom was not pleased with the denial.

“I can’t believe you.” She threw me a couple towels. “Clean it up.”

My face burned in indignation, but I began to wipe up the footprints anyway. It didn’t take that long at all, but I was struck just by how cold the water was. It was absolutely freezing—strange for such a small amount of water on a hot day. It was unsettling, though, at age seven, I just assumed it wouldn’t be so odd if friendly woodland creatures traipsed around these cottages. I was more upset that my mother hadn’t believed me when I told her I didn’t make the mess.

I made sure she saw how mad I was at dinner, refusing to speak to her while inhaling my hot dog, pointedly looking past her while slurping my lemonade.

My mom sighed.

“Listen, Nora. I’m sorry for yelling earlier. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. Can we be friends now?”

“I didn’t do it at all, though!”

She shook her head as she brought our plates to the sink. While I tried to not be as cross the rest of the night, we both were mildly annoyed with each other and went to bed earlier than usual.

Despite the day’s unpleasantness, I immediately fell into a deep sleep, as only children can. I opened my eyes hours later. The clock read 3:00 in the morning. Confused as to what had awoken me, I sat up and looked around. My mom was sound asleep, the room was quiet. I decided I needed to use the bathroom, since I was already awake. As I carefully opened the bedroom door so as to not wake my mother, my bare foot made contact with another giant puddle of freezing cold water, sending a chill up and down my little body. I somehow managed to suppress a cry.

Down the hallway, I could see something in the living room. A person, it looked like, standing with its back towards me. Maybe Martina is back, I thought hopefully. She would often be doing things around the property at all hours, though she had been noticeably absent the couple days we had been at the Cottages.

I took several hesitant steps forward, eyes straining to see the visitor in the dark. The person appeared to be a woman, but it had long pale hair. It stood dripping wet from head to toe, as though it had just left the waters of the river. My heart began to palpitate frantically. Not Martina. Not Martina. Not Martina. Just then the floorboards under my feet made an agonizing creek. With unnatural speed, the thing’s head whipped around. I couldn’t scream, but tears began to flow down my cheeks in terror. The thing, maybe it had been a person once, had no eyes, just dismal pools of blackness, it’s nose long rotted away. It beckoned to me with dripping, emaciated arms.

“N..n..no,” I whimpered, shaking my head, as though that would dispel the nightmare before me. The thing’s mouth opened and it emitted a strangled, wretched shriek, as if the last breath before drowning. And that was the last thing I remembered before crumpling to the ground.

“Nora?! Wake up, Nora!” I awoke coughing up water, completely soaked from my head to my pajamas. I was on the ground, the dock glowed red before me in the first light of the sunrise.

My mother gathered me in her arms. She was sweating, so warm. I was so cold.

“What…what happened?” I asked feebly.

“I woke up and you weren’t in bed. There was a trail of water leading from the bedroom and out the door of the cottage. In the river, I...” My mother began to sob. “You were floating there. I ran as fast as I could and pulled you out.”

“Mom, it wasn’t me. It was the Wet Lady. She… she didn’t have any eyes.”

She pulled me in tighter and I clung to her nightgown, trying to banish the sound of that terrible cry.

“Shhhhh…It’s okay. You’re safe now. You were just sleepwalking. Sleepwalking to your favorite place. There’s no lady, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay.”

In the years that followed, I had assumed my mother was right, although I had never done any sleepwalking either before or since. Human beings, myself included, have an incredible ability to brush aside the unknown, especially the horrifying unknown. An essential survival skill, a feat of evolution. But now I knew better.

I tried to stifle a shudder as I reached for Martina’s notebook.

“Here goes nothing,” I said to no one.

On the first yellowed page, the notes began, in the same blue ballpoint pen as the cover. I recognized Martina’s handwriting.

Q1: Feb 1

Q2: May 1

Q3: Aug 1

Q4: October 31

They come to you.

Perform your ablutions (3x)

Do not interfere.

Burn the offering.

That was the only text on the page. Fiscal quarters? I would have laughed, had I not been so nauseated by the prospect of having what happened the night before be a quarterly event. I grabbed the notebook and went outside to find Martina.

I found her sitting in a folding chair at the dock, dressed in her warmest parka, a woolen hat with cat ears pulled over her head, a thick cat blanket wrapped around her legs. She was fishing.

“We need to talk,” I said waiving the notebook.

She shrugged.

“Did you read it?”

“I’m just at the first page and I already have questions.”

She shrugged again.

“Thought that page should be pretty clear to you. Especially after last night.”

“That happens four times a year*?* And what’s with the fiscal quarters nonsense? Taxes? Also, what does it mean to ‘burn the offering’?”

She sighed and looked down at her line into the water.

“First of all, the offering was the…let’s just call it the ‘leftovers’ from last night’s events. It’s always some macabre display. Just collect it, throw it in the fire and try to not think about it again. As for ‘taxes,’ it’s how your grandfather explained it to me, many, many years ago. The way he saw it, it was something owed. A never-ending obligation. So he called it our taxes.”

“Taxes to whom? Or what?”

She shook her head.

“That I do not know, doll. I’ve been around here for over fifty years and all I know is that you follow what that book says and you don’t get trouble. I’m not going to lie and say it gets easier with time.”

“Then why not tell me the day I got here? Why bother humoring me with my idiotic renovation plans? There’s no way I can open this place as a business!”

“Your grandfather did. Avoid the cursed cottages. Close the place down on…tax days.”

“Cursed cottages?”

“You really didn’t get past page one, did you?” She pointed to the notebook in my hand expectantly. I flipped past the first page. More neat printing in pen.

Cottages

Numbers 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15: maintain as usual

The remaining cottages had a series of—fuck it—taxes listed, along with a timetable for payment. My eyes immediately darted to Cottage 9.

Number 9

A pair of blue marbles. One freshly caught river perch. Confirm receipt of payment.

Payment schedule: every three weeks

Martina had carefully listed every date of “payment” for the past twenty years. I looked at the date of the most recent one. My heart sank.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Why do you think I’m out here freezing my ass off fishing in February?”

“Shit.”

“Oh, Cottage 9 is a piece of cake compared to last night.”

“Martina, I met the thing in Cottage 9. The Wet Lady. She almost drowned me when I was seven.”

Martina looked aghast.

“Impossible. When was this? You never stayed in any cottage besides your uncle’s.”

“Late summer 1999. A few days before Labor Day, I think.”

She swore as she pulled in a perch.

“Fucking Jake,” she said, taking out the hook. She tossed the perch into a bucket of water.

“Who is Jake?”

“My mother in Rochester was sick. In fact, she was on her deathbed. I was cocky; I thought it would be easy to train someone to do the cottage payments. I hired a college kid who needed some extra cash before the next semester began. Jake. Seemed bright to me. Eager. I arranged everything. All he needed to do was put the payment in the right spot on the right days and not let anyone stay at the cottages requiring … tasks. I left him a calendar with everything circled! And still he fucked it up. Now there were many ways he fucked up--I’m not going to get into all of that here. But now you’re telling me he fucked up even more than I thought when he let you and your mother stay in Cottage 9.”

“Who is she? The Wet Lady?”

Martina laughed dryly.

“The Wet Lady, eh? Never thought of her by that name, but I guess it fits.”

“To be fair, I was seven.”

“It’s a good description. Kids often have a knack for clarity. And don’t worry about tonight. I’ll handle it. As I said, this one is easy.”

“I appreciate your concern, but, Martina, when is the last time you had a vacation? Don’t you want to retire? I sure as hell didn’t sign up for a lifetime of being responsible for the world’s most terrifying tax regime, but here I am. My name was in the will. Let me learn. Let yourself rest for once. Move to Florida or something.”

“I’m a River Rat through and through, kid. There’s no Florida in it for me. But I hear what you’re saying. I thought it was unfair you got left with this on your shoulders. But…” She trailed off. Her shoulders sagged. She folded up her chair. I grabbed the bucket with the agitated fish.

“It’s hard for me to admit it. But it would be nice to have the help.”

“I promise I won’t be another Jake,” I laughed.

I thought she would chuckle at my attempt at humor, but instead I thought I could almost detect a tear.

“I pray every night you won’t,” she whispered, voice cracking.

++

She told me to meet her after dark, naturally, but that the exact hour wasn’t important. We settled on ten o’clock. I insisted on meeting at the motel, then walking over. I was not quite ready to be standing in front of Cottage 9 after dark alone.

We walked over in silence, with only the sloshing of the fish’s bucket as a rhythm to our movement. When we arrived, she handed me a leather pouch. I could feel the smooth marbles inside. The cottage looked completely ordinary, the same pretty wood trim around the gables as the others, an attractive porch, though the screen on this one was perforated in several spots. Martina hobbled over to the door and put down the bucket, splashing a little excess water over the side.

At the sound of the water, I could hear a scurrying sound from inside the cottage that froze me to my place, hand clenched around the bag with the marbles. Martina had hurried behind a bush just out of view and was violently gesticulating for me to put the marbles down and go. My chest was tight, I couldn’t move, my breaths came in short stuttering spurts.

Before I could shake myself out of my panic, the door flew open and there before me was the Wet Lady. The black holes locked on to me and it cocked its head, almost as if in recognition. I tried to lift my arm to offer the marbles but the thing let out that ghastly shriek, half gasp, half cry and lunged at me with preternatural speed, wrapping its wet, cold fingers around my neck. It began to squeeze.

Martina was screaming. “Nora! The marbles! The marbles, damnit!”

I shut my eyes tight against the horror choking the life out of me. With that burst of energy that only comes in moments of life or death, I raised my hand clutching the marbles and shoved it into the thing’s face. With a growl it dropped me sputtering to the ground and snatched the marbles out of the leather bag. Weak and dazed I began to crawl away slowly, hoping the creature’s interest was sufficiently diverted.

Almost gingerly, the Wet Lady placed one marble in each of its eye holes. The marbles began to glow a sickly white and it let out another shriek, this one not nearly as filled with malice. It plunged its bony arm into the fish bucket and caught the fish, shoveling it down its throat whole. Satiated, it glided towards the river, not giving me a second glance, terrible eyes illuminated, and dove into the water. I watched the light of the eyes fade as it sunk down to the depths.

I tried to sit up, my head throbbing uncontrollably. Martina stood over me, visibly relieved.

“I’m going to be okay,” I choked out.

“Well,” she said. “That was clearly a learning experience.”

“No shit.”

I went back to my cottage and poured myself some scotch with a trembling hand, but even that sweet peaty burn wasn’t doing much to calm my nerves. So I typed everything out again, forcing myself to put into words something that has haunted me since childhood. Crazy how well that seems to work. Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep now.

x

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[Part 7]

[Part 8]

[Part 9]

[Part 10]

[Part 11]