Free Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant by Ramsey Campbell, Peter Rawlik, Mary Pletsch, Jerrod Balzer, John Goodrich, Scott Colbert, John Claude Smith, Ken Goldman, Doug Blakeslee Page B

her.
    Here, at a place with a name she couldn’t pronounce, they were right out in the middle of the desert. There was nothing here but rocks and the occasional piece of dead-seeming scrub. Rob told her that when the rains came every few years the area would briefly erupt into a bright and luscious riot of life. But, the rest of the time, it was about as dead as anywhere on the planet could be.
    To the untrained eye, the deserts were of no use to anyone, except the boffins who used them to test the efficacy of A-bombs to vitrify the flesh of Mother Earth. Rob had told her of the great mushroom clouds tall enough to rise above the distant horizon and the ash clouds that had blown in on unexpected winds after the tests.
    Of course, the desert concealed something of worth, or there wouldn’t have been such a good-sized house here. Even had an eccentric been taken with the remoteness of the spot, nothing more than a shack would’ve been plausible this far from civilisation. But, there was gold in the hills – or, had been, till the mines played out – and her grandfather had built this house here on the wealth he gained from the mining operations.
    Rob had been the foreman at the mine and had received a half-share in the house from Cammie’s grandfather, just as she had. Cammie suspected the old man had hoped the joint-inheritance would inspire them to marry. Rob had laughed at the suggestion, but, secretly, she found the prospect not entirely unthinkable; she rather liked him.
    In return for her share of the surrounding lands and a decent bank balance with which to manage them, Cammie had come to Australia to fulfil the stipulation that she spend at least a quarter of the year in the sandblasted, once-yellow, gothic-inspired wood-board house. There wasn’t exactly much to do out here, but she guessed that with inherited wealth she could afford to fill her time with books and records, or hosting soirees for the society friends she was certain she would soon make. Three months a year, especially if divided up, would pass easily. Particularly if things developed with Rob.
    Back in England, Cammie had been a shop girl on low wages in a nation still slaved to rationing, one that had won a war only to lose the peace. Down Under, everything seemed plentiful and she had the money to afford it. Just as her grandfather had done half-a-century before, she had abandoned everything she knew to start a new life on the far side of the world.
    Unlike him, she hadn’t abandoned a young family and left them destitute whilst building a fortune: James Atheling might have started with nothing, but he had soon climbed the greasy pole to wealth and power. Not a single penny had seen its way to her mother or aunt. She supposed this inheritance was a belated apology of sorts. Or, maybe some kind of ‘I told you so’, given his requirement that she emulate his relocation to Australia in order to inherit.
    “Your grandfather was a strange old coot,” Rob told her, “a good boss, decent and fair, who knew mining inside out, but strange, nonetheless.”
    He’d often told her that, but had never been too clear on why he said it: “It was his manner, how he was, you know?”
    She didn’t. The most she could establish was that he had been inordinately fascinated with the lakebed.
    “Used to sit out here on the veranda staring at it for hours,” Rob said. “Not sure why, it doesn’t look much different to anywhere else around here, just flatter.”
    He was right, yet she could almost understand her grandfather’s obsession with it. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something about it that called to her. Perhaps it was because the hard-baked ground was a lighter colour than the land around it so that it reflected the light of the moon and stars, giving it an ethereal quality by night. When the mist gathered upon it, a rarity in these parched, scorched lands, it looked even more magical. As Rob said, it looked as if the lake was