There's A Boy In The Lake

There's a lake on the edge of town and there's a boy inside it.

I want to tell the world about it, or at the very least just the neighbouring town. But I can't now. It's much too late. So I'll tell you, instead.

Mosswood lake, they called it, though the kids call it booger water. Murky green and stinking of decomposition.

We spent many summers there, you and I. When we were younger, of course. Before it was christened booger water, of course. Back when the banks were clean and gleaming and the water was so clear you could cach a fish just by plunging your hand straight into it with enough quickness and dexterity. Well, I could, at least. It always irked you that you couldn't manage it as swiftly as me. Oh, you surely caught your fair share. But it took you...longer, didn't it? The careless ease with which I used to plunge my hand into the gently lapping water and draw out a silver, wriggling fish! The glee on my face, I expect, was particularly troublesome to you. Though of course, you'd never let on. And I'd never caught on.

Not for the longest time.

Remember the summer the days began so cool you could see your breath but fizzled into a heat so scorching you could fry an egg on the handlebars of your bike?

Remember the summer the lake ran almost dry with the heat and we flung off our hats and gloves and scarves from the morning chill and ran around the edges with sticks in our hands, trailing patterns against the baked mud, feeling like we were in a giant gurgling sink and someone had just pulled the plug?

(Remember how I couldn't find my scarf afterwards?)

Remember picking red flowers and sticks from the bank and racing them in the water when the wind finally caught?

Remember finding the dead cat washing up on the bank? Grey and bloated and reeking of foulness and decay in the blazing sun?

(Remember picking it up and tossing it at me?)

And then we grew, and as so often childhood friends are wont to do, we branched apart. Different social circles, different interests, different studies.

But you watched, didn't you?

Trips to the lake became fewer and further between, until eventually, they dried up altogether. Just like the lake water did that one Indian summer.

(and it never came back the same after that, did it? it came back different and wrong. it came back infected and strange and...stinking. it came back like it had a score to settle, and I suppose in some ways, it did.)

Life plodded onwards and the summer stayed, mostly, typical. Long and dry but never quite as hot as the one that took the lake water. The one with the dead cat.

(the one you killed)

I went out with girlfriends and rode my bike in the spring and picked berries to blend into smoothies. I heard the stories about the missing animals and they made me shiver, though never once did they make me think twice about wandering into town alone in the afternoons, or taking walks through the park. Why would they? I was a teenager and the world happened around me, not to me. Yes, very sad business with all of those cats and dogs, would you like to go for a milkshake with me?

It wasn't until the first boy went missing that things really started to change. One sure fire way to shake up a small town is for a young child to go missing. Not just missing. But vanished. Not a trace of him to follow.

Of course back then, things were different. They didn't have the ways to track people down we do today. And even the technology that did exist, we sure as dollars to doughnuts didn't have available in our little town.

So the boy was gone and everything changed after that. We were the good people of a good town no more. Everything tightened up. Parents were stricter. Streets were quieter. Everyone was scrutinised with deep suspicion. Neighbours who had known one another for years no longer met one another's gaze. Co-workers were curt and polite but the question always lingered...

who did it?

It was, if I had to put a time on it, around here that the lake really started to rot. It wasn't quite booger water yet (or at least if it was such amateur nicknames were far below my mature sixteen year old sensibilities) but it was getting close.

He had gone missing in the Spring and come the Winter, he was finally found. Not by me, you understand, but a queer thing had happened that made me feel as though I was part of it. You see the area he was found was a walking trail that lead along the outskirts of town towards the suburb I lived in. A walking trail I took, mostly through Spring and Summer on my way to school when it was bright enough to walk. A walking trail I took scarcely come Autumn and Winter unless my father was tied up in work and couldn't collect me from school. Time enough had passed that many parents doubled efforts to keep tabs on their children after the disappearance had lapsed, just a little, and my father allowed me to walk home.

I walked right past the body, you know?

But I didn't see it.

There would have been many questions, of course, had anyone known I had been in the area only hours before its discovery.

How did you miss it? The bright red scarf? The sour smell? The trail of red flowers?

But nobody knew, and so I faced none of them. Which was fortuitous, because I wouldn't have had a single answer for any of them. How had I missed it? Hadn't I noticed the smell? The mangled remains wrapped in a scarlet scarf? The missing limbs never to be found? The flowers scattered atop in a monstrous imitation of a grave?

But I hadn't, which of course, made you very angry.

That night I thought of the dead boy and the dead cat and the red scarf and I vomited into the bathroom sink. It tasted acrid and foul and it felt like an exorcism of a sort. But I didn't get everything out, even after cramming my fingers so far down my throat I drew blood, so the red scarf stuck with me.

Because the scarf, of course, was mine.

And I think part of me might have known it already.

It was several weeks until the next one, but come it did. A girl this time. Only three years old. The crime scene where the boy was discovered still active and yet, here was another. Like a line of evil domino's tipping over.

Families began to uproot. People who had spent their entire lives, born and raised several generations deep in our town, fled. The lake began to grow noxious and it was at this point that I first remember the term 'booger water' being thrown around by the kids in my neighbourhood. Of course, people began to declare this the work of a serial killer. It was whispered, at first. But once the match was lit, the fire was caught.

She was found, of course. Eventually, she was found. Or at least, most of her.

I knew of less details this time around, and for that I was grateful.

In another patch of woods, not far from my house but, then again, in a small town nothing is too far from anything.

The rash of cats and dogs disappearing ebbed and flowed in this time, though of course these had taken a back seat to the children.

There was no talk of leaving in my household, and I never did think to ask why. To this very day, though there is much to be uncertain of, this matter likely mystifies me the most. Though it is far to late for any clarity on the matter.

Those of us left waited and watched. Collective breaths held. Collective hands wringing.

I rarely saw you through any of it. The odd glimpse in the school hallway. The flash of your bike cycling home. The back of your head as you stretched up to grab a carton of milk in the local shop. Little things. Normal things. Inconsequential things. I saw you but I didn't see you, if that makes sense?

But you saw me, didn't you?

It was a Friday when it happened. It was the final Summer of my high school life and I was walking home with a head full of exams and deadlines and college applications. It was a Friday and it was the first real heatwave since the lake had dried up and it was the patch of woods that two Summers prior, the body of a butchered young boy in a red scarf had been discovered.

My red scarf.

I remembered very little but a flashing, sharp pain on the back of my head and then blackness. I remembered waking, groggy and nauseous with my hands clumsily bound together. I remembered the foul, hot smell of the lake, and for the first time really seeing how green and rotten the water had become.

I remembered your wet, haggard breaths and your wild eyes as you yanked me roughly past the edge of the tree line and towards that putrefied water.

I sobbed, of course. Howled too.

You silenced me with rough kicks and harsh, rasping words.

It was all for me, you'd said. All because of me. It was my fault for being such a big, giant bitch and leaving you. Didn't I know your father used to hit you until he'd up and left? Didn't I know your useless, leering mother hated you too? Didn't I know I was supposed to be your friend and keep you company? Didn't I care that I had left you behind? Didn't I see that you were lashing out? Trying to get my attention?

You spoke and your spittle flew and I knew you had done it. All of it.

They say sometimes things click together like a jigsaw but this was different. It was almost like I'd always known, only finally someone had drawn up the curtain on the whole damn situation and finally I could see it all laid out in front of me like a toy train set.

I won't go into too much detail about what happened next. After all, you know. You were there.

But after the first disappearance of the young boy my mother had gifted me a small and wickedly sharp pocket knife. For self defence, you understand. And scared as I was-

(terrified, really)

-I think I was your first adult. Or at least, nearly adult.

It's one thing to bind a child, and another thing entirely for someone grown.

I never spoke of it, you know. Not to anyone.

Once it was done I rolled you into the booger water and went home. I should've told but I didn't. I should've been caught, but I wasn't. I should've felt something, but I didn't.

Your father was gone and, as it turned out, you had already taken care of your mother.

(and I'm almost certain I laid you to rest together)

They thought you had run and nothing ever resurfaced to correct them. And never once, in all the years since, has there been a summer as hot as that first one. Hot enough to dry it up and prove otherwise.

There's a boy inside the lake and I put him there.

There are lots of other people in the lake too, but he put them there first.