The Lake

I’ve lived here for as long as I can remember. Since the dawn of my memories I have watched the snow fall every winter, covering the vast eastern scapes with a thick layer of snow that would glitter in the sunlight on days God made the sky blue, the ice melting away in the summer to reveal swaying grasses that would dance gracefully to the whispers of the crisp breeze. Mother would send me out every morning to the church with Father Philomene and I would line up with all the other boys from the town at the entrance of the teaching rooms, our noses red and feelingless in the biting cold. We weren’t allowed to play with the girls, Father Philomene would never allow us to forget it, it was immoral to grant our attention to anyone other than our wife, he would say. But on some days, Oliver and I would sneak out behind the barren courtyard to the rocks behind the church to meet with Paulina and her friends to play jump rope and hopscotch together until we heard one of the Sisters’ footsteps slapping on the floor beneath the beams that lead out to our secret place.

Every Sunday, Mother took us all to mass and we would listen to Father Philomene talk to us about a new passage from the Bible. He would often repeat the same ones, Mother said it was because they were important but Father would say it was because he was senile and old. I didn’t know what senile meant, but it didn’t sound nice, which didn’t seem fitting for Father Philomene, he was a very nice man. However, the end of his wooden ruler when we couldn’t sit still was not.

“Withold not correction from the child: For if thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, And shall deliver his soul from hell.” he would say, peering at us through his foggy rimmed spectacles sitting behind our wooden desks, which smelled of age and rot sitting in the humid air of freezing winters.

After the mass, Mother would allow me to go play with Oliver in the town, we would run in the playground and go out as far as the fields near the lake in the valley, tall fronds that would brush past my bare legs in the summer when I wore shorts and bury my leather boots in the snow in the winter. But one thing that Mother always reminded me not to do was to not go to the lake far out beyond the fields. “Do not go down to the lake, Theodore, lest you wish to fall in boy” and I did not want to fall in, so I did not go. Father Philomene said the same to us at the end of every day. “Boys, remember to not go down to the lake, lest Satan catch you and drag you to the depths”.

Sister Octavia and Sister Henrietta would say the same as we left the church, as would Mr Morris from the greens shop in the square. Mr Morris always had a warm smile on his face and rosy cheeks beneath his gray beard, but when he would remind me to not go down to the lake, a strange sort of shadow would be cast upon his visage, and I knew that Mr Morris was wise, so I did not go.

It was in the winter of my thirteenth year that one day, after what had seemed like an eternal succession of hours listening to Father Philomene talk about the martyrdom of Saint Peter, that I headed out with Oliver to the fields, Paulina and Beatrice behind us. We had slipped out the back of the church from our secret place and ran straight down from the streets that wound out to the left of the town square. As Oliver ran breathlessly into the fields, he stopped to stare out into the expanse, a strange wildness in his chestnut brown eyes I hadn’t seen before. As he swept away his blond locks he turned his rosy cheeks to us.

“Why don’t we go a bit further today?” a mischievous grin creeping up his face.

“I don’t kno-” I began to hesitate before the girls cut me off.

“Yes! Let us go! Come on Theodore, it won't harm us!” Paulina ran after Oliver, her brown wild hair swaying across her back as she ran and forcing me right behind them as we trudged through, the snow crunching beneath our boots. When Oliver had said, “a little further”, I didn't think he would go past the old pine that stuck out of the ground in all seasons, but he kept running, his breath rasping and catching in his throat as he pushed forward. Towards the lake.

“Oliver, stop!” I cried out, but it was without success, he kept running and girls behind him. Beatrice whipped her head around to shout.

“Come on Theodore!” and before I was aware of what I had done, my boots were buried in the snow at the shore of the lake, a thick layer of glassy ice glazing over the black extent of murky water was all I could see.

“Oliver let’s go back,” I rasped

“No! I want to try to walk on the ice!” he chirped, taking his first step onto the ice.

A blind panic washed over me as I remembered all those things that Father Philomene had said about the lake and I followed after Oliver, making countless failed attempts at grasping his wrist, and flailing in the air as I slipped, but Oliver seemed strangely steady. I kept sliding across the inky verglas, my heart pounding in my throat and my fingers red and swollen from the biting cold until I wasn’t just a couple steps in, I had followed the boy over one hundred feet in. I reached for his gloved hand again, I dropped onto my knees, my hands slipping across the ice and bile creeping into my mouth, waiting to hear the unmistakable cracking below me, but I did not hear it. As a wave of relief washed over me, I opened my eyes again to meet the dark abyss underneath my body. And I stared, I stared into the black below and saw something. I squinted hard to make it out but just after I had stared long enough, I wished that I hadn’t as my heart sank down to the pit of my stomach.

Glassy and blank eyes stared up at me, dozens and then hundreds, their pupils frozen wide, as if their last sight had been the embodiment of terror itself. Wrinkled hands faced up at me, their palms up open to the sky as if in a silent and pointless prayer. Their ghost white lips hung slightly parted, as though trapped in an eternal scream; not a single breath escaping them. A raw, desperate cry ripped out of my gut before I could realise I was screaming in horror as I slid backward and I locked eyes with one of them, and for the split second that I met their eyes, I could have sworn their pupils moved.

“Oliver! Oliver! Come back! We must go!” I choke on my own words, grasping for a way to stand, ”Look!” as Oliver's eyes drifted down slowly, as if his mind couldn’t comprehend the sight it had laid eyes on. When the boyish color vanished from the skin. Beneath us, rolling out in every direction, lay a graveyard of the bodies trapped beneath the lake. None of them were identical, each horrified face carried its own story but each one was just as pale and expressionless as the next. But they weren’t floating freely; they were tied down. Tethered by slick gray roots that grew out of their backs, pulling them towards the vast abyss below.

His face painted with horror as he slipped and fell face flat onto the ice meeting the cold gaze of one of the bodies as tears began to form in his eyes and a sob wracked his small frame.

“No… it’s not possible, he was just…” he laid his hand on the ice and I shifted across the surface after him. Denying what sight my eyes had just met.

The blank gaze of Father Philomene stared up at me, his rimmed spectacles placed perfectly on his face.