Chapter One
KADEN BOLTED OUT the door and down the porch steps, worried they were already dead.
The bucket he clutched swung wildly, soapy water sloshing out onto the cracked pavement as his foot hit the sidewalk. A repugnant odor, a noxious blend of foul and savory, assaulted his senses, akin to raw meat roasting at a barbeque. Why would anyone want to kill an animal, and even worse, cook and consume it? Kaden’s nose wrinkled in revulsion at the nauseating smell. He marched around the perimeter of the weathered house, his eyes fixated on his cherished bicycle, painted in his favorite shade of blue, mirroring the ocean and the boundless open sky. The titanium-white seat bore intricate blue threading around the edges, and multicolored tassels hung from the handlebars. The bike rested against the hedges that separated his house from the massive, wooded lot next door. The bike had been a gift on his sixth birthday from his father, his only request fulfilled.
Amid the lush green expanse of Appalachia, Virginia, riding his bike had become his consummate joy. Undulating mounds and shallow dunes peppered the landscape, offering wide open spaces for testing his bike’s durability. But on this day, there was no time for such things. He placed the bucket over the handlebars, mounted his bike, and veered onto the gravel road singing,
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are...”
Kaden, with his dark curly hair and ocean-blue eyes, exuded an angelic aura that matched his singing voice. He steered around the bend among red and white oak trees lining both sides of the road. Oblivious to everything else around him, he pedaled with unwavering purpose, his singular goal to reach the lake’s edge before it was too late. Kaden glanced over his shoulder to ensure there were no approaching cars as he sang the second verse of the nursery rhyme.
“...When the blazing sun is gone, when he nothing shines upon,
then you show your little light, twinkle, twinkle, all the night...”
He arrived at a clearing and transferred the bucket from handlebars to hand. With deliberate steps, he descended the embankment on a mission, careful to watch his step the entire way so that no arthropod would meet an untimely end beneath his feet. It would be awful to unwittingly crush an innocent bug trying to make it home safely to its family.
Upon reaching the lake’s edge, a flock of tundra swans flew overhead in the cloudless morning sky, emitting piercing high-pitched hoots. Kaden shielded his eyes from the radiant sun, granting him an unobstructed view of the swans adorned in alabaster plumage with long graceful necks landing majestically on the water. Nearby, a lone mallard fluttered her wings in the shallows, her ducklings following her in a frantic dance. Their tiny bodies bore the black stain of oil, hinde- ring their feeble attempts at flight. Kaden feared the mother, unable to recognize her offspring, might fly away and desert them.
He crept over to the beleaguered ducklings, his heart overflowing with empathy. “It’s okay, don’t worry. I’m gonna clean you all up. You’ll be just like new, and Mama duck will love her baby ducks again.”
With trembling hands, he gently submerged one of the four ducklings into his bucket of soapy water. Its tiny sneeze sprayed soap suds across his face, eliciting a delicate smile. Kaden worked tenderly, his nimble fingers navigating through the viscous oil. Some patches had the surfacing solidified, demanding a more aggressive effort to cleanse. The ducklings’ fate hinged on his determination to get them clean.
A rustling branch disrupted his solace, voices and sporadic laughter followed in the distance. Kaden placed the duckling gently on the ground and sprung to his feet. Just a stone’s throw away, remnants of an old and narrow fishing pier led into the lake, its wooden planks groaned under constant treading. Kaden braced himself for the arrival of strangers.
Two boys emerged and strolled onto the pier: Jeb and Travis, both tall and lanky thirteen-year-olds, were followed by Jeb’s younger brother, Charlie, a stout preteen who had recently turned eleven. Kaden observed their arrival with a mixture of trepidation and anger. As the trio converged on the fishing pier, they took turns bunting empty plastic bottles over the lake with a wooden bat. Jeb reveled in the moment when Charlie lofted a bottle his way. He sent it soaring far beyond the shore into the lake.
“That’s a homer!” Jeb declared.
“Nah, mine went out way past that,” Charlie said.
“You’re delusional. I left you in the dust.”
Travis snatched the bat from Jeb’s grasp. “It’s my turn,” he said. “Let me show you losers how it’s done.”
Kaden watched from a distance. Anger simmered beneath his stoic exterior, stifling him from speaking, and his expressive face was incapable of hiding it. Travis acknowledged him with a smirk and a nod before tossing a plastic bottle in the air and bunting it. The bottle landed ahead of the others in the lake. “What did I tell you bean-heads? I’m the master at this,” Travis boasted.
Kaden marched up onto the pier, still silent. He stared at the boys as if they were from another world. Jeb returned his stare. “What? You want a turn?”
Kaden shook his head.
“You got a problem or something?” said Travis.
Kaden didn’t answer. Travis looked over at Charlie. “Who is this kid?”
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”
Kaden stepped onto the edge of the pier and yelled at the top of his lungs at them. “Stop it!”
The outburst startled Jeb and Charlie, while it only amused Travis. “Oh, look, the little brat is throwing a temper tantrum,” he said.
“Stop what?” asked Jeb.
“The lake is sacred, and you people are poisoning it with all your garbage,” said Kaden.
“Sacred?” Travis scoffed. “What’s sacred about a stupid lake?”
Kaden shot Travis a contemptuous gaze. “And you,” he said, pointing at Travis with conviction in his voice, “your behavior is especially putrid.”
Charlie chimed in, squinting at Jeb. “What does putrid mean?” Jeb had no idea and left the question hanging in the air unanswered. “You should go home, little dude, before you get hurt,” said Travis. “Yeah, we don’t like little kids,” added Charlie.
Kaden, resolute, refused to back down. “This is my home. You go.”
Undeterred, Travis retrieved another plastic bottle from his backpack. “Well, this ain’t your lake. It belongs to everybody. We’ll do whatever we want to it.”
Travis tossed the bottle up into the air, and as it descended, he whacked it as hard as he could. The bottle soared into the sky before it dropped into the lake. Kaden bolted off the fishing pier and dashed to the lake’s edge. He rushed to remove his sneakers, and while fully dressed in his cargo shorts and plaid collared shirt, he waded into the water.
“What’s he doing?” asked Charlie.
“Somethin’s wrong with him,” Travis quipped.
Kaden swam up to the plastic bottle, grabbed it in one hand, and headed back toward the shore.
“Let’s give him some more,” said Travis.
Before Kaden could make it back to dry land, Travis bunted another plastic bottle into the lake, followed by another, and then another. “Hey, little dude, there’s another one. And don’t forget the one on your left,” Travis mocked.
He laughed hysterically at Kaden scrambling for the other bottles while struggling to hold onto the one he had in his hand. He finally managed to guide three of them back to the shore, though the last one had floated out much farther than the others. Kaden gazed at it, looking unsure of what to do.
“You think he’s gonna go after it? He’s looking at it pretty hard,” said Jeb.
“Who would be crazy enough to swim halfway across the lake after a bottle?” Travis replied.
“I bet he’s gonna do it,” said Charlie.
“No way,” Jeb said.
Unable to hear their conversation, Kaden softly counted backward to himself, “Seven, six, five, four, three, two...“ When he reached one, he swam out toward the bottle. The boys stood there in disbelief as Kaden slowly dog-paddled. Each time he approached to grab it; the bottle drifted farther away from him. His arms and legs fatigued after several failed attempts, and the stress from it tugged creases across his forehead. Kaden took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and without any forewarning, collapsed beneath the water’s surface.
Seconds ticked by and he had not emerged. Jeb was the first to express his uneasiness. “Hey, where did he go?”
The boys wandered several yards around the lake’s edge, searching for him. There was no movement in the water, only silence—an eerie, dire silence.
“You think he drowned?” asked Charlie anxiously.
“I dunno,” Jeb answered.
“We’re gonna get blamed for this if we stay here,” said Travis. “What’re you talking about? He needs our help, we can’t just leave him,” said Jeb.
“How can we help him, moron, if he’s underwater?”
“We go in after him.”
“We can’t,” said Charlie. “Rebecca says there’re parasites in the lake that swim into boys’ pee-holes and eat them alive from the inside.”
“She’s lying,” Jeb sneered. “Why do you believe every crazy thing she says?”
“Rebecca doesn’t lie.”
“Everybody lies; she’s no different.”
“She’s not like everybody. You don’t know her like I do.”
“Hey, will you two shut up and look?” said Travis. He pointed at
Kaden in the middle of the lake. He had emerged from the water and was floating on his back, unconscious, his arms spreadeagle.
“Oh no, is he dead?” asked Charlie.
“He looks dead,” said Travis.
Jeb sat on the ground and rushed to untie the shoelace on one of his sneakers.
“What are you doing?” Travis asked.
“What do you think? I’m going in after him,” said Jeb. He tossed his sneaker and hurried to untie the other.
“Travis has a phone. He can call for help,” said Charlie.
“Nope, it’s at home charging,” Travis said.
“It’s not enough time anyway,” said Jeb as he rolled off his sock. “You can put your clothes back on, superboy. Look who’s coming right at us,” said Travis.
Jeb sprang to his feet, one sneaker donned, and the other held firmly in his grip. Their eyes were fixed on Kaden floating on his back spinning toward them, but how? There was no current. There had never been a current in the lake.
Charlie gnawed on his thumbnail. “What’s going on?”
The boys shuffled backward as Kaden’s lifeless form drifted ominously to the lake’s edge. There he lay, suspended, floating above the water’s surface like a discarded plastic bottle adrift on the tide. Jeb made a move to pull him ashore, but a sudden commotion stalled him. From the thicket, a towering stag covered in reddish-brown fur, with newly-formed antlers, burst forth. Panic surged and the boys ran in the opposite direction but stopped short when they glanced back at the stag stepping into the water toward Kaden.
With anomalous strength, it seized Kaden’s shirt collar between its gnashing teeth and dragged him ashore. The animal dropped Kaden and raised its head toward the boys, challenging them with haunting amber eyes and a threatening stance. Fear engulfed Jeb and Charlie, causing them to flee. Travis wavered on the precipice of curiosity and self-preservation, lingering, as the stag, sensing an impending revelation, retreated a step.
As Kaden lay unconscious, blue-tinted dust particles escaped his mouth and nostrils, swirling above his head in a perpetual moving halo-like formation. Travis watched in awe, bewildered. Self-preservation finally trumped his curiosity and he fled into the woods in fear just as Jeb and Charlie had.
The stag, unrelenting in its vigil, nudged Kaden’s cheek with its wet muzzle, triggering an abrupt cough that expelled lake water from the corners of Kaden’s mouth–a sign of life. The ethereal blue dust particles suddenly reversed course and spiraled back into his body through his nostrils. After pausing to witness the reentry of every single particle, the stag sprinted away through the dense underbrush, vanishing as mysteriously as it had appeared.
