“What’ll it be, old timer?” Jessie says.

“Weeellll ….” Tom judiciously studies the full range of bottles, smacking his lips in anticipation. After a moment, he tilts his chin toward his chest, rolls up his brown eyes to study her. A wide grin stretches across the bottom half of his face.

Jessie tries to laugh it off, but something bothers her about the transformation, joke or not. Just like in the car, she gets the sick feeling Tom’s face isn’t a face at all, but an interchangeable mask.

“Now then,” he says, his voice suddenly sinister, gravelly. “I’m awfully glad you asked me that, Lloyd … because I just happen to have two twenties and two tens right here in my wallet.” Tom pulls a beat-to-hell brown wallet from his back pocket and slaps it down on the bar, making Jessie jump and take a step back.

“Jesus, dude.”

Tom’s rictus grin breaks and he laughs, knocking the hard wood with his knuckles. “Come on, Jess. The Shining? I’m Jack Nicholson, you’re Lloyd the bartender. That scene was classic.”

Jessie blushes, feeling stupid. “You need to work on your Jack impression,” she mumbles.

“Yeah, probably. But seriously, how about you pour us a couple shots of some of that Maker’s back there?”

Jessie turns around, her eyes watching Tom in the mirror’s reflection to see if he stares at her ass. Or does that creepy impression again—this time when I’m not looking. She plucks the bottle of Maker’s Mark from a shelf, sets it on the bar. “Do you think they’ll care?”

Tom scoffs. “Jess, even after all this …. You don’t get it, do you?”

Jessie reaches below the bar, finds two thick glasses—surprisingly clean, considering they’d likely been sitting there, untouched, for months. “Get what?”

Tom leans in and, whether he knows it or not, his face falls back into that stupid Nicholson impression, eyebrows hooded, eyes wet and vicious. “Brad’s rich, that’s what. Like, rich-rich, you feel me? He plays it down, of course, but where you and I worry about things like tuition and groceries? Brad could write a check to the university so large it would get his name on the fucking library.”

Tom straightens, shakes his head. Jessie notices his playful mood has dissipated, and the Jack Torrance look in his eyes fizzled back to normality. He’s just Tom again. When he talks, he sounds distant. Distracted. “To wit, mon cheri, he certainly ain’t gonna mind us drinking a dollar’s worth of shitty whiskey.”

Jessie nods and pours their drinks. When she’s done, they clink glasses. “To the lake monster,” she says.

“Sure, to Nellie, or whatever the fuck her name is,” he replies, then shoots back the entire two fingers she’d poured him. “Hot Jesus,” he yells. “Couple more of those and you’ll be kicking me out of bed in the morning.”

Jessie laughs coolly, refills his glass. “I don’t think so, Romeo.”

He turns thoughtful again. “Yeah, well….”

Jessie shifts her gaze toward the lake-facing rear windows. The late afternoon sun has given the water’s surface a golden-red hue and infested the surrounding trees with receding tendrils of yellow sunlight pushed back by shadows.

Tom sips his drink this time, also contemplating the lake. “Strange ….”

“What?” Jessie wonders how much of the day remains. She would have liked to have gone for a swim.

Tom smiles sheepishly. “I just think it’s weird, you know … how water can be so transparent but still hide so many secrets.”

Jessie raises an eyebrow. “Deep, Tom.”

Tom finishes his drink, winces before grinning. “Exactly.”

ON THE REAR DECK—A weathered old thing pocked with rusty nail heads and creaking in mild protest at points when stepped upon—the four friends sit in fold-out lawn chairs, their stomachs full of hamburger meat and alcohol, and watch the sky turn from dusty blue, to pink, then dark as eggplant before revealing outer space. Silently, they watch as the occasional winking star wakes up to spark the canopy above. A warm ruby glow slowly dies behind the tree line as if a dying fire raged just beyond, burning away the day.

The lake reflects the sky’s magic show until it, too, becomes nothing but a glossy black reflection of nothingness—an abyss broken only by the silver tint of light from a crooked crescent moon—the glowing surface now the face of a ghost in a looking glass.

Jessie’s tranquility is jarred by a nudge at her elbow. She jerks away reflexively, then blushes to see Brad standing beside her, holding a chunky tumbler filled with an inch of brown liquid.

“My special treat to you all,” he says, handing another glass to Tom then to Blake. He stands before them in nothing but jeans and a white T-shirt, poised like an actor on a stage—a monologue from Hamlet, perhaps—the darkened trees and star-flecked sky a painted canvas behind him, setting the scene for the audience. “In your rather cheap bar glasses is a splash of Hennessy Paradis Cognac. A special reserve I keep tucked away for special occasions.”

Jessie studies the dark liquid in her glass, sets it in her lap, and covers the top with her hand, suddenly nervous that a bug might go for a late-night swim in her (presumably very expensive) drink.

“Before you drink, I’ll say three things. First, don’t expect this every night,” he says, lifting his drink. “This is a one-time deal.”

Tom chuckles appreciatively while Jessie presses her palm harder against the glass’s ridge.

“Second, while this is normally something one would sip over the length of a Cuban cigar and some late-night campfire stories, I’m going to ask that you knock it back in one gulp. Take it in all at once. I want you to feel the explosion of flavors that only a mouthful of such an exquisite, sensual liquor can provide.”

Blake mutters something Jessica can’t make out, Tom laughs, and Brad holds his glass aloft. “I want to thank you all for coming with me on this little adventure,” he says, his smile dazzling in the growing dark. “To good friends.”

Jessie lifts her glass. “To good friends,” she says, along with the others.

“And here’s to the breezes that lifts skirts above kneeses,” Tom bellows with a cackle. Jessie watches as Blake and Tom down their drinks, then notices Brad watching her. His eyes sparkling like the stars, he raises his glass to her and slugs back the cognac, then closes his eyes as if relishing every moment.

Eager to taste what is likely the priciest drink she’s ever been handed, Jessie looks down once more at the brown pool of liquid, dark as ink.

Then she tilts the glass to her lips and swallows it all.

PART THREE – THE LAKE

JESSIE IS UNDERWATER, FLOATING IN frigid black emptiness.

Innately, she knows she’s sunk far, far below the surface. She’s naked, her skin pale as snow; almost luminescent. Her legs kick lazily, arms spread out to her sides as if balancing her body—but to what end? There is no up, no down. There is only the great vacuity of her surroundings, squeezing in on her, slowly crushing her throat, her lungs; pressuring her brain to such a degree she begins to see bright spots of white amidst the dark. She wonders how much longer she can hold her breath. She wonders if she’ll die.

Before she can ponder the thought further, a light appears high above—a pinprick in the fabric of this freezing world. A beacon, shining down, calling to her. She holds out a hand, catching the taut string of light so it smears against her palm. Slowly she begins to rise toward the source, which is now expanding, growing brighter, larger. Closer.

Like a distant sun, it’s warm against her skin and she begins to kick, to swim up and up, higher—toward salvation, she hopes. Toward life.

When she reaches the surface, however, she does not burst through into warm air, does not rise above the water at all, but instead meets a ceiling of ice. Hard and thick, impenetrable. Panicking, she begins to beat on the ice, her hands screaming in agony as her knuckles split and blood smokes the water, illuminated by the light she’d followed, which she now realizes is not a light at all, but an eye—a great single eye watching her through the frozen barrier.

Terror clouds her mind and she’s unsure how to proceed. Does she break through the ice and slip into the embrace of the monster waiting on the other side? Or does she drown; let herself slip into the great depths of this underwater world, drifting forever downward, her body nothing but the shell of a burnt-out star, detritus floating through a boundless universe.

She pulls her bloodied hands back, begins to fall away … when the great creature widens that blindingly bright eye, thrusts its massive bulk against the barrier between them. The water thrums with the blows of its weight and Jessie only now fully comprehends the immensity of the thing. More lights begin to appear and she realizes it’s opening more of its eyes; white lights cover the breadth of the world above—a hundred moons, a thousand—all of them glaring at her with a hunger so fierce she feels it in her bones, feels the pull of it in her gut, as if her body is rebelling against her mind, her will, demanding to be food, needing to be consumed by this impossible creature.

Another hard blow and this time the ice cracks—a sound like thunder in her ears. Overcome with terror, Jessie opens her mouth and begins to scream.

Begins to drink.