'Fantastic,' Helen said.

Abilene didn't know whether they were talking about the fresh air or the scenery.

Now that she had recovered from the stifling atmosphere of the kitchen, it was the view that amazed her.

The rear grounds of the lodge.

She stepped to the edge of the stairway for a better look. Finley was already there, camera to her face. Abilene halted beside her and muttered, 'Weird.'

'I'll say. But neat.'

The lodge cast a heavy shadow halfway across the swath of level land. The far half was bathed in dusty golden light from the late afternoon sun. The end of the field and both its sides were walled by dense forest.

It looked like an oasis.

A picnic area.

A park that had seen better days.

Gazing at it, Abilene felt strange mixtures of excitement, nostalgia and apprehension.

A red brick barbecue stood in the shadow, its chimney almost as high as the porch. A lone picnic table remained near the edifice. There may have been many such tables, once, but only this one remained. It was weathered like driftwood (like the totem poles out front, Abilene thought), and littered with leaves. Weeds climbed its legs.

Off beyond the barbecue was a strip of concrete that resembled a miniature runway - the runway of an airport abandoned long ago. Dandelions grew in its web of cracks. Abilene could see enough of its faint markings, however, to know that it had once been a shuffleboard court.

A ruin, now.

In the days before it was a ruin, in the days before weeds overpowered the trim grass, people had probably played croquet on the part of the field behind the shuffleboard court. Abilene could almost hear the soft clack of colliding wooden balls.

And the ring of a horseshoe clanging into a steel stake.

If they played shuffleboard, she thought, they had to play croquet and horseshoes.

It must've been nice. Peaceful, idyllic.

She turned her eyes to the swimming pool. It was way off to her left, far enough from the lodge to be clear of the afternoon shadow, close to the line of woods at the northern side of the lawn. Several flagstone paths converged on it. The pool's stone deck, like the forlorn shuffleboard court, was littered with forest debris and seamed with weeds. From here, the pool looked empty. At one end was a high dive, a low board, and a slide.

'I wonder where the hot springs are,' Helen said.

'I'm sure that's just a regular pool,' Abilene said.

Lowering her camera, Finley started down the stairs. Abilene went with her and heard the others following.

Underneath the porch, she found another pool.

'Oh, wow,' Finley said.

'Yeah.' She walked toward it.

The pool, nestled close to the rear of the lodge and entirely sheltered by the porch, was only about six feet wide - seven or eight feet long. Its granite walls were filled to the brim with gently moving water - water that entered from an archway in the wall of the lodge and flowed slowly away down a shallow stone channel at the north side of the pool.

The water looked remarkably clean. Abilene supposed that its constant motion must sweep away leaves and such, and wash them down the channel.

'Fantastic!' Helen blurted when she saw the pool. 'This must be it, huh?' Rushing past Abilene, she knelt at the edge and dipped a hand into the water. 'It's hot!'

'It comes from the lodge?' Cora asked, sounding astonished.

She and Abilene both squatted down and peered through the archway. The opening was the width of a doorway. Above the waterline, it was less than a yard high. In the shadowed gloom beyond it, Abilene could see nothing except a softly undulating surface of water. 'Looks like another pool in there,' she said. 'And a big one.'

'They must've built the lodge right on top of the spring,' Helen said.

'Didn't your guidebook tell you that?' Vivian asked.

'It wasn't a guidebook. It was something called, The Omnibus of Great Unsolved Murders of the Twentieth Century.'

'Should've known someone was murdered here,' Vivian muttered.

'That's what makes it interesting.'

'So what is a hot spring, anyway?' Finley asked.

With a shrug, Helen said, 'Water that's hot and comes up out of the ground.'

Abilene laughed. 'You're a walking encyclopedia.'

'I don't know. I'm not a geologist.'

'Are they something like those geysers at Yellowstone?' Finley asked.

'I don't suppose they shoot up,' Helen said. 'Nobody'd build a lodge on top, if they did.'

'Why don't we go in through here?' Cora suggested, scooting away from the edge of the pool and starting to pull off a shoe.

'We'd get wet, that's why not,' Vivian said.

'So?'

'It'll give you a chance to wash your hand,' Abilene pointed out.

'How do we know the water's clean?'

'It's natural spring water,' Helen said.

'From deep in the bosom of Mother Earth,' Abilene added. 'How can it not be clean?'

Vivian tilted her head sideways as if thinking about it. Then she said, 'Shouldn't we explore the rest of the lodge first?'

'I want to start by going right through there,' Cora said, and pointed at the archway. Barefoot, she stood up and pulled off her T-shirt. Then she reached behind her back and unhooked her bra.

'I think she's serious,' Abilene said, and began taking off her own shoes and socks.

Helen looked around. As if satisfied that no strangers were lurking about, watching, she started to strip.

'Hey, Fin,' Vivian said, 'why don't you and I go around to the front? We can meet them on the other side.'

'I don't think we should split up,' Abilene said.

'I don't think we should go wading into this place butt naked,' Vivian said. 'Somebody might be here.'

'Then keep your clothes on,' Cora said, stepping out of her shorts and panties.

'We haven't even got towels. Fin and I could go on to the car and pick up towels for everyone and...' She gave up on that suggestion when she glanced at Finley and saw the safari shirt come off.

'Just stay with us,' Cora said. 'What's the fun without a little risk?'

Following Cora's example, Abilene rolled up her shoes and socks inside her clothing. Helen did the same, but she left her bra and panties on. Finley, as usual wearing no bra or panties in the first place, made a bundle of her outfit. She tied it tight with her pink knee socks. 'Can somebody take this for me?' she asked. 'I've got my camera to contend with.'

Abilene held out her arms, and Finley tossed the bundle to her.

Cora, sitting on the edge of the pool, lowered her legs into the water. She looked up at Finley. 'Make sure you keep that thing off,' she said.

Finley grinned. 'Hey, how am I supposed to keep a video history of our adventures if I leave my camera off?'

'You wanta die?'

'Not particularly.'

'Let's have her tape us,' Abilene said. 'She can mail it to the Sigs.'

They all laughed at that. Even Vivian.

'Those poor sons of bitches,' Cora said, scooting forward and standing. The water came halfway up her thighs. 'They never knew what hit 'em.' She stepped forward and gasped as she dropped. When her feet met the bottom, the undersides of her breasts were touching the surface. 'I guess there's a ledge.' She shook her head and grinned while the others laughed.

'Should've gotten that on tape,' Finley said.

Leaning forward, Cora reached out and grabbed her bundle of clothes. Abilene stepped down onto the ledge and hopped off it. The water felt like a hot bath. Too hot for a day like this. While she picked up the bundles, Helen and Finley climbed in.

Vivian, still laughing, unbuttoned the front of her sundress, pulled it down and stepped out of it, being careful not to let it touch the granite under her feet.

'You're coming in after all?' Cora asked.

'No risk, no fun.'

'Atta girl.'

She clamped the dress against her side to keep it from falling, and had a tricky time removing her bra. Would've been a lot trickier, Abilene thought, except the flimsy red garment opened in front.

Grinning, they all watched the spectacle of Vivian hopping and teetering as she struggled to take off her shoes, socks and panties with one hand. Done, she allowed the shoes and socks to rest on the granite while she made a roll of her dress and underwear.

She entered the pool, then picked up the sock-stuffed shoes with her free hand. She held the shoes and bundled dress overhead.

'Now don't you dare let them touch,' Abilene warned.

'Yeah,' Finley said. 'Those shoes'll make mincemeat of your dress.'

Cora looked around as if to make sure nothing had been left behind. Then she turned toward the archway. 'Want to go first?' she asked Helen.

'Oh, that's okay.'

Cora started forward, Vivian close behind her. Helen went after Vivian. Abilene, following her, glanced back. The camera rested on Finley's shoulder. Its tiny red light was off, so she wasn't taping.

'Move it along, Hickok,' she said with a grin.

Abilene turned away.

Cora, the small bundle of clothes perched atop her head and held steady with one hand, waded into the darkness of the lodge.

'Native bearers,' Finley said, 'following the Great White Hunter through unmapped regions of darkest Vermont.'

'Oomgowah,' Abilene said.

'Watch out for water snakes and crocodiles, ladies.'

'Very funny,' Helen said.

'There might be snakes,' Abilene said.

'And piranha,' Finley added. 'I think I feel a nibble now.'

The talk, though all in good fun, made Abilene uncomfortably aware of being naked in strange waters. With both hands busy holding the bundles overhead, she felt totally vulnerable. She half expected something squirmy to slide against her. As she followed Helen under the archway, she pressed her thighs together and clenched her buttocks and walked with short steps as if her knees were bound together.

Nobody's yelling, she told herself. Everything's probably fine.

But they aren't talking, either, she realized. All she could hear from inside the lodge was the soft sloshing of water.

Then she was through the archway.

Cora, Vivian and Helen had spread out. They were wandering about in chest-high water, turning slowly, their heads swiveling and lifting. They looked like a trio of bizarre tourists gaping at a wonder.

Abilene waded forward. She heard Finley moving behind her. Then came the quiet hum of the camera. It sounded very loud in the stillness. But nobody looked around. Nobody objected.

Abilene began wandering about, moving generally toward the pool's far side as she turned and surveyed the place.

It reminded her strongly of indoor swimming pools she'd known in Illinois - at the Y, at the high school - before moving to California after her sophomore year. It had the same dank air, the same acoustics that intensified every sound so that even the soft lapping of the water seemed to echo.

But the pools she'd known had been twice the size of this one. They had never been hot. And they hadn't smelled like this. Instead of a chlorine odor, the air here smelled heavy with sulfur.

She supposed the smell might have been unbearable, but fresh air came in along with daylight from broken windows near the ceiling on two sides of the pool. One row of windows, which she'd noticed from outside while standing under the porch, stretched along the back wall. Another several windows crossed the shorter wall at the north end of the room. Those weren't sheltered by a porch, and narrow strips of sunlight, golden and swirling with dust motes, slanted down from them at sharp angles. The bright strips lighted only one corner of the pool, and the water at that corner glowed like honey.