Anniversary

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window."

The kids groaned in unison.

“Not that one again, Dad!” Stephanie had heard it a dozen times, could practically recite it word for word.

“Yeah, tell us something new,” Dennis agreed, spitting s’mores crumbs everywhere.

“Ewww, gross!” Steph punched him in the arm.

“Pack it in you two, or it’s straight to bed and no story at all,” Dad warned, sensing world war 3 was about to break out.

Mom returned from the washroom, joining them beside the fire.

“Why don’t you tell them one tonight, Jackie?” He said. “You’re the horror writer, after all.”

Mom nodded slowly. “Okay, then.” She stared into the crackling campfire, as though in a trance. “This story happened right here, in these very woods, 23 years ago today.”

The kids settled down, marshmallows forgotten, ready to be entertained.

“It was the summer of 1999. Your father and I were just finished high school, and we set off on a camping holiday with our best friends, Dave and Elaine.”

Dad looked uneasy. “Jackie, are you sure about this…” he warned.

“Shhh, do you want a story or not? It was early July, and the air was humid and heavy with the high-pitched whining of a million mosquitoes. We’d set off late in the afternoon, and by the time we reached camp, it was dark. The guys offered to set up the tent, while Elaine and I went looking for firewood. It was easy pickings, there’d been no rainfall for weeks and the last storm had dropped plenty of good-sized branches.

I don’t know why we went further into the forest. Maybe too long spent cramped in the back of Dave’s Corolla had made us restless. Whatever the reason, Elaine and I left the pile of wood near the edge of the clearing and headed back in to explore by flashlight.

We walked down towards the sound of the stream, jumping every time we heard rustling in the bushes around us. It was exhilarating, the stars visible between the leaves overhead. A far cry from life in the city. I don’t remember if it was me or Elaine who suggested we go for a swim.

The water was frigid despite the heat in the air, fed by a mountain spring. It was blacker than the world around us, only the faintest moonlight rippling over the surface. We stripped down to our underwear and left our clothes in a pile on the bank, along with the torches. The bank was muddy, and we sank up to our knees in the silt before the bottom dropped out from below us, deep enough to swim. I can still feel the chill as I plunged in shoulder-deep, my legs numb and my skin breaking out in goosebumps.

We splashed around for ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the cold seeped through to our bones. The guys were calling our names, wondering what was taking us so long. I started swimming back towards their voices, surprised how far downstream we must have drifted in the darkness.

The current was stronger than I had realized. I struggled against it, though I was a strong swimmer, had been on the diving team at school. Elaine cried out in fear, as she too was caught in the undertow.

‘Just swim for the bank!’ I shouted the next time my head broke the surface. ‘Don’t try to go upstream, you’ll tire yourself out.’

She answered, but her voice was fainter than before. ‘Please, Jackie! Don’t leave me! I can’t breathe…’ She sounded terrified, and I remembered her inhaler, left in her shorts pocket no doubt.

I hesitated. I could feel my left side burning, a stitch from swimming so hard. For a moment I turned back towards her, wincing as I was tugged below the surface again, the long weeds tangling around my ankles like lost souls dragging me to my death.

‘Jackie, please!’ She was splashing frantically now, and in the distance I could make out the zigzagging pattern of flashlights through the trees – the guys were coming to find us.

‘You’ll be okay,’ I promised her, though I was no longer sure either of us would survive in the tumultuous water. ‘Just hold on a little longer, tread water… don’t give up!’

My mind felt fuzzy now, lack of oxygen from the repeated dunkings confusing me, leaving me unsure which way was up. I found myself praying, though to what or who I’ll never know.

‘Please let me live,’ I begged. ‘I’m too young to die, there’s so much more I want to do…’ At that moment I thought I’d give anything, anything at all, if I could just reach the bank safely.

Finally, the current released me and I was able to break the surface again. I gasped at the air in deep, rattling gulps. I no longer tried to reach Elaine - I think in my heart I knew even then that a sacrifice had been made. My life for hers.

My feet touched the bottom, and I scrabbled against the sharp rocks for purchase. The current was weaker here, and I pulled myself through the thick, cloying mud, grasping frantically at the clumps of razor grass. I felt blind and suddenly insignificant, as small and helpless as the voles and squirrels that no doubt lived in the forest around me. It felt like a lifetime I lay there, panting and crying as I waited for your father to find me.

Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Even though the air was warm, I shivered violently, curling up in a ball. The lights were drawing closer, and I let myself fade out of consciousness, welcoming the safety blanket of oblivion. Anything not to hear Elaine’s voice inside my head, over and over -

‘Jackie, come back! I want to live too!’

A log collapsed in the fire, flames bursting up and making the children jump. Steph looked at her father and saw that he was crying.

“Enough, Jackie! For God’s sake, enough!” He pleaded.

But Mom kept going, as though she was unable to stop, the words that had spent so long trapped inside now spewing forth, as black and cold as the river.

“I don’t remember the next few days. The police, the hospital, none of it. I guess I was the lucky one. They found Elaine three days later, washed up against a beaver dam three miles downstream. By then not even her own parents would have recognized her - bloated, bruised, with deep gashes from scraping over the rocks on the riverbed. It was a closed casket at the funeral, and I could feel the eyes of all her family boring into my back as I made my last goodbyes. The blotchy faces of her younger sisters, their eyes red-rimmed and watery. I placed my hand on the white coffin, and an electric shock travelled through my fingers, making the hairs on my arms stand up.

‘It should have been you,’ I heard, just as clear as you hear me now, only muffled a little by the layers of satin and wood between us. ‘you let me die.’

I ran out of the chapel, past Elaine’s family and their broken lives, past Dave, whose parents sat on either side of him, trying to protect him from memories that he would never escape. Past your father, who reached out to grab me, his face pinched with grief. I ran all the way home, and I threw myself on my bed and sobbed till I fell asleep, my pillow soaked in my tears.

But if I’d hoped to escape Elaine in my dreams, I was in for a terrible surprise.

I found myself back in the river, the smell of wet earth and decay strong in my nostrils. The weeds grabbed for me, and wherever they touched my skin it burned like acid, leaving angry red welts around my wrists and ankles. I opened my eyes and everything was brown and murky, and so cold it felt like ice crushing against my chest. I could no longer breathe, or move, or do anything other than watch in horror as she floated up towards me through the water.

Her eyes were black and glossy, her skin hanging from her face in jagged chunks, her mouth a torn red slash. She reached towards me, her fingernails wickedly sharp, gripping me like a vice, cutting me like barbed wire as she refused to let go.

‘It’s my turn,’ she said, over and over, night after night after night. Each dream worse than the last, each time her voice angrier than the time before, leaving me drenched in sweat and screaming as I fought to breathe once more.

Until today. The 23rd anniversary of that fateful night, the night my best friend called for help and I left her to die. Today I came here to put an end to the nightmares, to finally let her have what she wanted.”

Mom coughed, a wet, sickly, spluttering sound. Water poured from the ripped opening where her mouth had been just a moment before. Her eyes were black and glittering, and the flesh on her cheeks fell down in tatters, revealing the sickly white of bone beneath.

“It’s my turn now,” Elaine told them.