Something In The Water

Julius almost missed the turnoff.

The dirt road was obscured by pines and marked by a bent pole that looked like it used to have a street sign affixed to it. Used to being the operative phrase. To call it a road would be charitable; it was more like a glorified path, littered with loose rock and only a car’s breadth wide, so that if someone were coming in the other direction, one of the drivers would have no choice but to pull over.

Julius’s stomach growled as he white-knuckled the wheel, attempting to avoid the proliferation of potholes that littered the road. He had passed a supermarket thirty minutes back and he was beginning to regret not stopping. In his memory, town hadn’t been so far away from the Nest, but memory could be faulty, especially when it was dredged up from childhood. When he was seven, he hadn’t paid any attention to the surrounding land. The Nest was its own little world and it seemed weird to think of things like convenience stores and banks existing in the same universe. The things he did remember were simpler, emotional memory picking up where the physical left off: His father’s hand in his, cautioning him not to rock the boat; the smell of the lake in the morning; his family gathered around the scarred wooden table in the kitchen, rolling dice or flipping over cards and laughing, their voices carried out the window into the crisp night beyond.

The times spent at their little lake hideaway had been some of the best of Julius’s young life, so it came as a shock when his father announced after their final summer that he was selling the place; they weren’t going back.

“We needed the money,” his mother had told him, because his father refused to say any more on the subject.

Over the next year, his father changed. He grew withdrawn. Every evening when he came home from work, he’d retire into the living room, where he’d sit and stare at the television, a beer cradled between his palms. On the weekends, he used to get up early and go out fishing at the local river; sometimes he’d even bring Julius and his brother Ted with him. Mark Hannigan loved fishing, their mother used to say, half-joking, even more than he loved her.

But that all ended after their last normal summer. He became moody, temperamental; his face and body swelled to twice their normal size and his eyes gained a different quality. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they’d lost something. He’d sleep all day and be in the same place by nighttime, just staring at that television set, the bottles piling up beside him. Their mother cautioned the boys not to disturb him, but one night Julius had snuck up to the doorway, looking in at the back of his father’s head. The sound on the TV was on low, and when he stood on his tiptoes, attempting to see what his father was watching, he saw only a blank, black screen. The pictures weren’t even on.

For some reason, this singular memory was the one that stuck with him the most, haunting him; after that day, he no longer needed his mother to tell him to give his father space. Both boys stayed away from him the way one would a wild, unpredictable animal. After bedtime, the arguments would begin, his parents whisper-shouting at each other. Their voices were muffled downstairs, punctuated by the occasional sounds of doors and objects being slammed. Ted, four years Julius’s senior, would steal into his room and lay beside his younger brother, clamping his hands over Julius’s ears.

The boys were always close, and they became even closer when their parents inevitably split. They moved with their mother over the border to Vermont and life eventually adjusted to a new normal. They never really talked about what happened; their mother simply said the things were no longer working out. Ted had other theories.

“Dad went insane,” he would tell Julius conspiratorially after they were both supposed to be in bed. Julius didn’t know what to make of it, but it made him scared. If a person as solid and reliable as their father could just break one day, snap out of reality, any other number of terrible things seemed possible. Furthermore, his blood ran in their veins as well. What if it was hereditary? What if it happened to him or Ted one day?

Gradually, the fears had faded, as most things do with time. He’d grown up, gone to college, and went for his MFA. Somewhere in the first few years after the move, he’d discovered his love for writing, and it was writing he went to school for. Ted opted for the more reliable route of business, but Julius found there was a certain pull, a magic to putting words on a blank page that was inaccessible anywhere else. His first long work had earned him an agent at twenty-four, but he hadn’t managed to sell that particular book. He was hard at work on a second novel when he got the call that changed everything, the call that slammed him back to the past.

Julius jerked his foot down on the brakes when he saw it out of the corner of his eye; the faded red balloon tied to the mailbox. The blue line on his GPS was swallowed up; you are here, his phone said to him. Backing up, Julius turned down a driveway grown thick with pine needles and weeds. The body of the camp loomed at him through the trees, white-washed, faded wood reminiscent of the bones of an abandoned car, a skeleton picked clean by nature and time. For a moment he only sat, staring at it, the car idling in park. It was the same. Dirty, clearly neglected, moss proliferating on one side of the damp roof, but otherwise, it looked exactly as he remembered it. Like time had been rewinding as he drove. He felt seven again, the bittersweet tang of nostalgia pulling at his chest. The surreal nature of the past day washed over him for the hundredth time.

---

“Ted Hannigan.”

His brother answered his phone on the second ring.

“Hey, Ted, it’s me. Did they call you yet?”

“Who?” His brother’s voice on the line sounded distracted. He thought he could hear the sound of Emily, his two-year-old niece, vehemently protesting some form of injustice in the background.

Julius hesitated. “If it’s a bad time I can call back.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Ted’s voice got clearer as he moved away from whatever was taking place in the kitchen. “Amy’s here too. I have a missed call on my phone, but it looks like they left a message. Haven’t had a chance to listen yet. What’s up?”

He went ahead and said it. “Dad died.”

Ted let out a breath. Julius could imagine the odd mix of feelings congregating in his brother’s chest- they were in his own right now. And then the question, the confusion. The slight edge of anger.

“Why? He never made a single effort to reach out to us before. We didn’t even know where he was living. Why would anyone in his life decide we needed to know?”

“It was his lawyer,” Julius told him. “His death was unexpected and he never changed his will. Ted- we get everything.”

The line went silent. When his brother finally spoke, his voice was tight with repressed emotion. “You have got to be joking.”

“No. And Ted- one of the things he left us was the Nest. The Nest. I thought he sold it a long time ago! Mom said he sold it. If I’d known all this time it was in the family-”

“You can’t go there.”

“Huh?”

“I mean it, Julius.” Ted’s tone was grave. “Look, I know you loved the place, I know you’re thinking already of writing there, but you can’t. It’s not safe.”

Julius was nonplussed. “What do you mean, not safe?”

The line was quiet a moment. “Julius, I think that whatever happened to Dad to make him… the way he was, it happened there. I think that’s why we never went back.”

“He was mentally ill, Mom said it ran in his family-”

“Mom lied. She knows just as well as I do that something bad happened there, something wrong. You were too young, and you didn’t see him, that last day when he came back from his fishing trip.”

“What about it?” Julius felt wooden. He couldn’t believe he’d been the odd one out.

“Just promise me you won’t go there. At least not alone.”

“Ted, what-?”

“Just promise, okay?”

---

Julius turned the key in the ignition, silencing the engine, and a world of quiet rushed in to meet him. It was a misty morning, and a thick haze settled over the water beyond the slumbering camp.

He’d promised Ted, and at first he’d intended to keep that promise, he really had. But it gnawed at him. The next morning after the news, he’d sat alone at his desk, trying to finish the draft of his book. It was due in only a week now, but suddenly he couldn’t make himself concentrate. He kept thinking about his brother’s words, the real fear in his voice. Ted was not one to psych himself out over nothing.

Julius’s resentment grew alongside his curiosity. How was it that everyone in his family seemed to connect the Nest to his father’s madness when he didn’t remember a thing being amiss about that last trip? And why had no one told him, why did no one tell him even now what terrible thing they thought had happened? He knew it was childish, but he felt betrayed his brother hadn’t clued him in before now. I just want to look at it, he thought as he packed away a few changes of clothes, lugged a sleeping bag out to the car, packed his laptop and charger. I’m not going to stay. I just need to see for myself.

What it was he expected to see, he couldn’t say for sure.

Now he approached the house, taking out the key he’d been given and turning it in the lock. The door, warped by humidity, stuck for a minute before giving in in a rush of musty air.

The past rushed in on him, crowding him like a comforting old friend. Here was the little battered table where they played games as a family; here was the old couch, moth-eaten now and sagging a little in the center. There was the short hallway that led to his parents’ old room, and then, across the way, the big bed he and Ted used to share. For a moment Julius just stood staring before he walked through each room, opening drawers and windows and reliving the memories the place held.

The dark was falling and he was tired from the drive. Julius brought his sleeping bag in and situated it on his old bed. The sheets beneath were damp and smelt of mildew. He hadn’t even thought about what the state of a place left for fifteen years would be like, and he made a mental note to hire a deep cleaner or get some supplies himself while he was in town. Julius brought a book to bed with him and the bag of pretzels he’d been snacking on in the car, though it turned out there was no need for either. No sooner had his head hit the pillow than he was out.

He woke up hours later, covered in sweat. The sky was full dark outside the high window in his room, and he could hear the gentle sounds of the lake lapping against the shore, the soft creaking of the dock. His mouth was unbearably dry, and he reached for the water bottle he’d propped on the side table, only to find it empty.

Julius’s heart was pounding like a jackhammer in his chest. He struggled out of his sleeping bag and sat on the edge of the bed, letting his eyes adjust to the near-total dark. I shouldn’t have come here, he thought, in the stupefied kind of targetless horror that only occurs in three am panic attacks. I miss my own bed.

Calm down. He attempted to slow his heart rate, pulling off his sweat-soaked shirt and getting slowly to his feet. A mouse scuttled across the floor in the main room as he made his way to the kitchen table. The water outside was still swathed in mist, the cold sliver of the moon rising above it. From somewhere distant, he could hear the sound of music. A straining, lilting tune almost like a lullaby. At first he couldn’t locate the source, and then he realized it seemed to be coming from the lake. The song had a soporific, calming effect to it, and as he closed his hand over his water bottle, he lost himself in the soft, distant sound.

The next morning, Julius took an early trip into town, coming back with an entire car full of food and supplies. He bought a coffee maker and light bulbs and cleaning materials and was in the process of lugging everything into the Nest when he felt it. That unique, hair-raising sensation at the nape of his neck, down his back. He was being watched.

He turned and looked at the silent woods to the left of him, the fog-covered lake behind him. That feeling remained, like just beyond the mist someone was crouched, staring back at him. Julius bent and picked up a small, round rock, hefting it in one hand. He walked silently to the dock, its boards half-rotted by time and inattention. The mist was so thick that even from this close vantage point he couldn’t see the water. Julius wound up and threw the rock, out into the space beyond where his eyes failed him. He heard a splash, and then silence once more. Julius was about to turn back for the camp when another sound came from the lake. He thought at first it was a fish jumping, except there was no second splash as it re-entered the water. Instead, it sounded as if someone- something had simply emerged from the water, and now lingered there in the clouded air before him. The feeling of having eyes on him grew even stronger.

“Hello?” Julius ventured, hating the naked sound of his own voice.

A sudden cracking rang out behind him, and before he could spin around to face this new sound, a man’s voice followed it.

“Hey, you!”

Julius turned to see a short, squat man moving towards him from the edge of the woods.

“This is private property!” the man shouted.

“I own it,” Julius told him, standing his ground.

The man stopped a few steps away from him. He had a grizzled dark beard and ruddy cheeks. “Mark Hannigan owns this land,” he said as if to prove Julius’s lie.

“Mark passed away. I’m his son,” Julius said. “Julius Hannigan.”

The man looked assessing, cautious. Then he stuck out one pudgy hand.

“Leon Portnik. Pleased to meet you.”

---

“Sorry about that,” Leon said, handing Julius a beer. They were sitting outside of the other man’s place, a dark wood cabin Julius hadn’t even registered seeing through the trees. “It’s just I didn’t think any of you would come back.”

They were silent a moment, sipping their beers. Julius looked at Leon’s ruddy, honest face, and decided he might as well try. “He never did tell us why we never went back here. Do you know anything about it?”

Leon looked at him a moment, considering, then shrugged.

“You’re a grown man now,” he said. “I don’t see why not. And if you’re going to be doing up the camp again, you might as well have the whole story. I’m warning you though, you probably won’t believe it.”

“Try me.” Julius sat back in his chair.

“Your father thought he caught a mermaid.”

Silence. Then, “What?”

“Told you it was weird. He went out to the lake early like he normally did, fishing, but a couple hours later he comes back to my house. He’s knocking like crazy, face all white. Says he thinks he did something bad. ‘I caught this thing,’ he says, ‘and it’s not a fish. It’s part human, I swear.’

I asked him where it was, and he said, ‘the boat. Come out to the boat and look. It’s dead. Oh god, I killed it.’

‘I’m not knowing what to make of any of this, but he’s dead serious, so I follow him out to his boat. Nothing, though there is this dark type of stain at the bottom and the whole thing smells like fish. Your father, he starts staring around with frantic eyes, says he knows it was dead, and it was here. I tried to calm him down and it only made him more worked up. I’d never seen him like that in my life. ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen,’ he kept saying. ‘The fishing hook got stuck, I was looking at it, it couldn’t breathe. It suffocated. I killed it.’ I got him a drink and his wife came over and we was both trying to talk him down. But he kept saying he had to go, couldn’t stay at the lake, that if he did, something bad would happen. He was acting like he was…I don’t know if cursed is the right word. Maybe hunted.”

“My brother didn’t tell me anything about this.” Julius couldn’t keep the betrayal out of his voice.

Leon shrugged.

“Probably didn’t know. Mark’s wife- your mother- made him swear he wouldn’t tell. Wanted him to stop talking about it, not to put thoughts in her kids’ heads. I don’t know if she believed for herself, but his fear had infected her regardless.

“Do you believe it?”

The older man sighed. “I don’t know. I do know that there are strange things out there. I doubt he saw a mermaid, of course. But I think he had to have seen something, to be that afraid. On the other hand, I’ve lived here my whole life and never seen nothing. But every time I want to write it off entirely, I keep thinking of this thing my gran said to me once. She said to me, ‘Leon, you don’t take from this lake without giving back.’”

---

Julius walked back from Leon’s place in a fog, turning over all the impossible information he’d just heard. He felt oddly relieved. Up until now, he hadn’t realized he’d been fearing the worst: that his father had committed a crime out on those foggy waters or else been witness to one. That his dad wasn’t who he’d thought he’d been at all. But it seemed that after all, he had gone crazy, that it was nothing more or less than the wiring in his brain shorting out, as their mother said.

He switched on the little light by his desk and sat down, thinking. Only five days were left until his novel was due and he’d intended to get some work in tonight. Yet after a time, he changed his mind, closing the document he’d labored over for the past few months, and opened another, blank one. The cursor on his laptop winked at him. He took a sip of the second beer Leon had given him for the road and began to write.

---

Julius wrote all day and into the night, only stopping to make himself a couple of sandwiches, get another drink. It was a clear night, the clouds parting at last over the water, and he could see each and every star peppering the dark. He’d started with the intention of putting down his thoughts, the strange story Leon had told, but in time it turned into a different thing, a story of his own filled with foggy waters and mysterious creatures, of fantasy and tragedy and discovery. When he was finished, he loaded the file into an email and hit send. He didn’t worry over what his agent would think: he had the strangest feeling that for once in his writing career, every word had been gold and every chapter riveting. His head hit the pillow as the dawn light crept into the sky, and he slept the most solid, luxurious sleep he’d had in forever.

The next morning- or afternoon, rather- that strange, good energy was still with Julius. He made himself some coffee in his newly bought coffee maker and went out to the shore. The water was still clear of mist, and the air was warm with a touch of humidity, and Julius itched to take a quick swim. He stood in his trunks at the end of the dock and peered into the water, waiting for some form of hesitation to catch up with him; there was none. Whatever had come over him last night, it had acted like a ritual of sorts. He’d put everything onto the page, woven it into a tangled fiction, and now, in the broad daylight, it seemed just that: fiction. His father had had a mental breakdown. He’d swam in these waters many times as a kid. There was nothing to be afraid of.

With that, he arched off the dock in a perfect dive. The cold water enveloped him, shocking him to his core, before it warmed up around his body, the kinetic movement of his muscle and bone. He swam out a way and then back, completing a couple of refreshing laps before he breaststroked back to the old dock.

Julius thought about all the improvement projects he could do on the Nest, about having another steaming cup of coffee, about calling his brother - that old line about asking forgiveness and not permission floated up to him. He thought of checking his email for a reply from his agent- it was probably too soon but it didn’t hurt to look. He was so caught up in his thoughts that when he went to pull himself up onto the dock, he grabbed a splintered plank, a nail sticking out from its jagged end. He snatched his hand back, swearing, and dropped it to the water, where the blood floated away as it came gushing from his wound.

Julius was idly wondering when his last tetanus shot was when he felt the hand close around his wrist. Hand- or claw- he couldn’t tell which, and he didn’t have time to look before he was jerked bodily under the water. His nose burned as he accidentally inhaled, and he struggled frantically against the rough, iron hold.

Quiet now, said a voice that was wet and gurgling. He thrashed around and a face swum up in his vision. It was a scaled, pointed face with long fangs protruding from its mouth and yellow slitted eyes. There was something oddly human about it, but this familiar quality only made the thing more monstrous.

The claw-hands of the creature pushed him, down, down, until his head ached and he needed to breathe, but the shimmering light of the sun on the surface of the water was getting further and further away. A hot pain laced into his neck, and more blood bloomed in the water around him. Wetness invaded his throat, running down into his lungs. No, he thought as he felt the second cut, right below the first. Gills, he thought madly. It’s cutting me gills.

Julius’s vision darkened as more water pooled painfully in his lungs, weighting him down. He could no longer see it but he felt the creature as it leaned over him, whispering into his aching ears.

Breathe, it hissed, and laughed.