The Lake Fisher

Prologue

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Its flame curled an incandescent light through the eucalypts and stringy bark to the beach, where earlier they had been fishing from the rocks. Neither of them spoke, nor did they move, and from the cabin they made dark silhouettes against the flat silver of the lake.

The moon glowed bright in the nightclear above and spread a twilight that magnified the silence of the world that surrounded them. An hour had passed since either said a word; and the only movement came from their breath, which billowed short and even before vanishing in the cold.

The lake was always dead that time of night. The men, who were old friends from the town over the mountain, had been fishing there most of their lives, and rarely did they see another soul after sundown. The fish there tended to retreat in the darkness. And in darkness they both found peace enough for a catch. Theirs was a routine of reminiscence by campfire, and before sunset they would clear the rocks and gather dry branches and kindling and layer them over twirled sheets of newspaper, strike a match, and talk long into the evening as they stared into the flame.

The waters by the cabin were the worst of all fishing they would encounter. The bed there sat beneath ribbons of algae and the jags of fallen trees and to fish by worm was to guarantee the loss of a hook, and the fish there, if there were any, never took to the lure. And so they never went there hopeful. But it was understood that a catch by the cabin had become something of a Holy Grail in all their fishing on the lake.

No sooner had they poured water on the last of the fire when the taller man turned after feeling a warmth on his back. The other followed his gaze, and instantly they were frozen, transfixed by the candlelight from afar as their mouths held open, and their eyes watered unblinking in the cold air. The campfire hissed as the water soaked into the coals, and then there was nothing, and not even their pulses could be heard, then, and the whole land was silent. And the flame in the window burned tall, yet its wax did not melt, and the longer it burned the brighter came the light that it cast through the shadows.

The hours passed, and the fingers of the men started to twitch; tears and sweat collected on their cheeks and dripped from their chins and both wheezed desperate in the quiet. They could not move, but still they could see, and hear. Their faculties were heightened, and so when the sound came, when the twigs snapped and the snapping started to quicken, the mount of their struggle almost prevailed. But they were powerless in the light. The candle flickered in a wisp of breeze an aura against the glass, and briefly, for the shortest moment, they glimpsed something in the dimness behind.

Clouds drifted from eastward a windtorn wool over the stars and converged around the falling moon. There a wedgetail eagle glided back to its nest above the cliffs, serene and careless, as a fog flattened across the water and pushed slow up the rocky beaches of the lake.

The man was alone. In the near distance the cabin sat innocuously, and the candle in the window no longer burned. His cheek was warm with the speckles of blood, and ripples on the water behind him spread undulant from a wake that ended suddenly over the deep.

Inside, he screamed. He screamed long into the night, so that his mind deafened in the absence of sound, and his frustration became equal to his fear—until again the sound came and the snapping drew near, and his fear rose so that it rendered the paralysis broken.

His voice then carried to every corner of the lake and echoed back from the cliffs. A voice that was no longer his own, but a fragment of himself chewed and given back unrecognisable by the night. The very last of him, that wasn’t him at all, soon faded back to nothing, and the lake, once again, was silent.



One

The potoroo drinks

under black opal nights

peaceful, without heed

of the bunyip



Two

The station wagon rattled from the bitumen to the gravel, and the gumtrees were replaced by blackwoods and mountain peppers as the rocky parapet by the fall was overtaken by moss. Molly turned to check on Bobby, who was gazing out the window, and she smiled. The day was clear when they left, but here the ravine held moisture to a dankness that made him feel transported to a dream. He met Molly’s smile with a bigger one of his own.

She was glad that he came. Jeremy had been worried at the first how she’d take to a package deal, to the two of them inseparable, but to her their bond was a telling expression of his nature. It made him easier to trust. And there was nothing charitable in her love for Bobby. His curiosities and affections made her feel young again, and his example had become an anchor to grounds that adulthood so often sought to bury. She looked at his rapt expression and felt the rush of sympathetic bliss. He was exactly where he belonged.

The radio crackled as the signal was lost at the crest. “There’s a few tapes in the glove box,” Jeremy said. Molly rifled through the pile, and pulled out Sonia Dada.

Lover started playing. Bobby hummed along, and soon they were all singing in off-key harmonies with a fervour that more than made up for whatever was lost in pitch.



Three

They decided on the far side of the lake, away from the designated camping ground, where two camper vans were already parked. Jeremy reckoned it was for the better privacy, joked about smoking pot and skinny dipping—Good luck with that, she’d replied—but Molly knew they were both just way too introverted to enjoy themselves otherwise. A fact learnt the hard way the previous summer, when a convoy of travelling retirees wouldn’t take no to wine and couple’s trivia, which trivia was MC’d by an old war veteran whose only questions came from a seemingly endless supply of archaic military history.

“Never again,” they’d said, in unison.

And so the secluded patch near the old cabin it was.

Bobby leapt from the backseat and scouted the area as though he were tasked with a serious reconnaissance, while Molly and Jeremy walked to the lakeside. A light wind feathered over the water to their feet and brought wavelets to gentle laps on the shore. She leaned into his chest and felt the warm sun on her skin and idealised a romance in the sparkles and solitude, there alone with her two favourite men, mental snapshot taken, another moment, from then on, that she’d never forget.

It wasn’t long, however, before disaster struck. Jeremy unfolded the tents and both were covered in patches of green and grey mould, with thick concentrations no amount of scrubbing would ever make a dent in. It was so bad the spores made a cloud on release and he couldn’t help laughing at the predicament it left them in. Molly, less amused, said, “For fuck’s sake Jem. They should’ve been aired and dried after the rain.”

At that moment they both heard a branch break in the scrub. It was Bobby, circling the old cabin, inspecting the exterior for hidden entry points. They looked at each other knowingly, immediately recognising the cliché. Introverts tended partial to horror, and misfortune’s billeting of stranded campers in abandoned log cabins was a trope they were all too familiar with. And why not, Molly thought. If it was horror that awaited them, then her only hope was that its author showed more originality than the evident banality of the set-up so far.



Four

Inside, the dilapidation of the exterior was a lot more pronounced. Doorways leaned strange geometries with the warping floor, which was rotten at the corners and from various breaks sprouted moss and creeping vines and unsunned stalks of bracken. The smell of wet wood hung moist in a haze. Several windowpanes were broken. The cupboard doors in the kitchen were torn away; the ceiling sunk in precarious bellies, and in the places it gave way the tentacles of more vines crawled; and its wooden walls splintered, pressured together by thick roots that over decades had pierced through the shallow foundation underneath.

“Airbnb at its absolute finest,” Jeremy said.

They arranged the gas burner and lamp and laid a wide blanket on the least shitty stretch of floor, and Bobby blew-up the mattresses.

The plan had been bushwalking and fishing and fish for dinner, but the earlier disruption coupled with the overwhelming serenity of the landscape had justified a blank cheque—at the least for the first day, Molly said. She grabbed the glasses and JD from the boot, and all three sat on a log by the water.

“Here’s to another chapter,” Jeremy said, raising his glass, and to the peninsula before the cliffs their laughter could be heard, and as dusk fell, the flickering light of the campfire could be seen.

They settled with the glowing coals, and Bobby, drunk, left his every marshmallow too long in the flame.



Five

Wind gusted awash through the trees and the cabin bent and creaked as the lamp stuttered from the bench. Bobby lay on his back with a hand outstretched, snoring, lost to oblivion, his snoring so loud it competed favourably with the wind. Jeremy spooned into Molly’s back with an arm across her breast, pulled her close, and kissed her softly on the neck. A contrast to environment in which his embrace warmed to her core, and it was a running tingle beneath her skin, her every thought gone. Another snapshot for the gallery, set to the soundtrack of Bobby’s snoring.

Jeremy turned off the lamp and they were covered by darkness. A trapezium of moonlight fell over the floor and ended at Bobby’s feet. There a show of shadows was cast: branches, gnarled and sinuous, swayed rhythmic in haphazard time signatures; and a million leaves rustled ocean-like as they drifted from the room into sleep.

Hours passed. The gusting wind drew back, and Molly, lightly-slept, woke to the silence. She yawned and raised her head. Jeremy’s back had parted, and where before they seemed distant, the coldness of the walls now bent over close, and sinister.

She flung the cover back and went to the window.

Outside, fog covered the ground milky around Stygian trunks to the shining mirror of the lake. Her eyes took a moment to adjust, so stark was the refraction—and she gasped.



Six

“Jeremy,” she shouted, somehow in a whisper. “Wake up.”

When he didn’t respond, she backed from the window and tiptoed quick to the bed and shook him by the shoulder, and the first thing he saw was her eyes wide-open in the moonlight, which had expanded across the room.

“What’s the matter,” he asked, adjusting to the urgency.

“Just come look.”

He pulled up his socks and put his jacket on, and noticed then that she was standing beside the window, not in front, to avoid being seen by something outside, tense with what looked like paranoia, or fear. Seen through his hangover, a lot to absorb on waking.

“Hurry,” she pleaded.

He went to her side and she moved back to allow him the same vantage. He slowly moved forward and, knowing there was no reason to doubt her seriousness, peered carefully through the first exposure of glass. His eyes widened before an immediate retreat, expression even more bewildered than hers had been. “What, the fuck, is that,” he said. “You could’ve warned me.”

Bobby ruffled in his sleeping bag and raised his head.

“Jeremy,” he whispered, groggy.

“It’s nothing mate. Go back to sleep.”

“Shouldn’t we get him up?” said Molly.

“Let’s find out what’s going on first.”

“What, you’re going out there?”

“They might just be campers, you know, on a stroll.”

“Jem, they haven’t moved. They haven’t moved an inch. Look how they’re standing.”

He glanced through the window again. The two silhouettes were in the same position as before, their arms straight and stiff down their sides, bodies faced directly towards the cabin. As though two burly mannequins had been planted and left there as scarecrows. Far and away the weirdest, creepiest thing he’d ever seen, and it was less than sixty paces away. Fuck that, he thought.

He took a deep breath. “Well, this isn’t good.”

Their heartbeats pounded audible in the cold and it was one waiting instruction from the other. Finally, Molly said, “We have to go see.”

Jeremy sighed and looked over at Bobby, who was fast asleep. Molly had always been the braver one. Jem jumped at pretty much anything: insects, skinks, thunder, the possessed girl in The Exorcist. A startle reflex so sensitive it would be emasculating for most, that in his case became a regular source of endearment for how quickly he laughed at himself. She was brave enough for the both of them, he decided. Besides, it wasn’t like they lived on the Serengeti. They weren’t in a warzone. Their biggest, possibly only threat, was being bitten on the arse by a redback at his uncle’s place.

Yet for all her courage, Molly was realistic when faced with a genuine danger. And two men standing motionless in the dark was a difficult thing to stay optimistic about. She pulled Jeremy back, and with a new resolve, looked at the two figures again. Their black stillness, she realised, was something of a vacuum—anything presumed of their nature, would be a projection of her own. That they were trying to incite fear seemed possible, but the sheer strangeness of their presence was so great that less rational explanations were just as much so. It was their direction that spelled sinister. Whatever cause they had, whatever murderous or psychotic narrative they were partaking in, it was to Bobby, Jeremy and herself that it pointed.

The motor of Bobby’s snoring rose through the cabin and broke the reverie of her thinking. She’d never seen Jeremy so scared before, and she knew, with Bobby there, the scenario he was fixated on.

“Wait here with him,” she said. “If they meant us harm, they’d have done it by now.”

He knew she was lying, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to object. Without a word, he grabbed the torch, while she grabbed the kitchen knife they’d brought, and handed it to her.

“I’ll watch from here,” he said, kissing her temple.



Seven

Fog swirled on the ground behind her as she walked. Through the leaves above she could see the moon, swollen, almost full, aglow with indifference. A bluish haze hung between the shadows, static but for the twigs snapping beneath her feet.

The closer she came, the more her thoughts and heartbeat slowed down. The attitudes of the men were unchanged with her approach and no less menacing was their appearance; and it was within the weight of that growing reality that Molly found herself calm, her fear set aside by a lucidity crystallised in the impetus of the present.

She started walking faster, veering sideways, scanning the trees, her footsteps loud over the sticks and bracken. She rounded inwards and looked again at the men, less than ten paces away on the shallow beach. They still hadn’t moved. And it was only then that it occurred to her, so taken by the situation she was, and perhaps knowing it would be useless, that she’d forgotten the first diplomatic step.

She called out, “Are you fellas alright?” —and she waited.

No answer.

At that distance the moonlight reflected lurid from the pebbles up their bodies and she could just make out their faces.

Faces that were impossible to see from the cabin, and yet, from where she stood, were the most horrifying thing about them. So much so that curiosity impelled her out of the shadow, and she turned the torch on.

The men were old. Dressed in tattered fisherman’s gear, unshaven, but healthy looking, one shorter than she was, the other much taller. Their eyes were wide open, and neither blinked, or reacted to the light. So to their mouths, which were drooling, and their faces shined with the wetness of sweat.

The reality suddenly hit her. These men weren’t dangerous; they were prisoners—and they were paralysed.

Her heart skipped a beat. Fear charged through her like lightening and she stumbled backwards and turned, and stopped just as she was about to sprint.

In the cabin window ahead, a candle was burning.



Eight

Bobby scratched the mozzie bite on his arm and rolled over and felt the hardness of the floor on his shoulder. The mattress had deflated while he was sleeping.

He didn’t care how. He’d checked for punctures and double-checked the plug was tight, so it wasn’t his doing. Something else was to blame, and after a brief reflection, he didn’t think about it again.

He was a tough egg, Molly would say. And tough eggs could sleep just fine without the softness of air underneath.

An orange bloom in his eyelids started to register. There was light in the room. Molly and Jeremy were up, he figured, and they’d turned the lamp on. He opened his eyes. Their bed and the room were both empty. The lamp sat grey on the bench and the light on his face was coming from the shelf under the window. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and yawned. Breath puffed from his mouth like thick smoke. Fucking cold, he thought.

The light was a flame. A white candlestick with a tall yellow flame, balanced on a golden candleholder. He stood and walked over and it flickered.

The cold was coming strong through the wide-open door. There was no wind outside and everything was dark.

“Jeremy,” he called, from the porch. “Molly?”

“Hello?”

No answer—they’d had more drinks and gone for a walk, forgotten about the door, let the cold air in. He turned and went back to the candle. It reflected on the dusty window so it was difficult to see through, so he leant forward and binoculared his hands on the glass, and between the trees he could see someone standing on the beach. They were just a shadow and it looked like they were staring at him.

He put his gumboots and gloves and woollen jumper on.

It was freezing outside. Wasting no time, he stepped careful, avoiding the rocks and dips he’d seen when they arrived, which he could no longer see for the shadows and fog. The moon broke through the trees in places. Where its light came down the ground either sparkled with dew, or puffed like snow, and without any noise around it was the most beautiful night-time place he could remember.

He passed the last tree and met the full freshness of night and it was so light compared to the bush it felt like the day. When he saw who the person was, he smiled.

“Hi, Molly,” he said gently, not wanting to disturb whatever she was up to.

She didn’t say anything. Her body was stiff and her arms were straight and she didn’t look at him. Something was wrong.

“Molly..?”

Up close, it was barely her at all. Her eyes and mouth were open and her expression was like she’d been frozen at the same moment she received an electric shock. This was nothing like any of the games they played. When he poked her arm with his finger, her body didn’t budge. Something was terribly wrong.

And where was Jeremy?

He stepped back to look her over properly. She kept staring ahead and it was like he wasn’t even there. Why would Jeremy leave her like that if he loved her? Tears welled in his eyes. He ran forward and grabbed her by the shoulders and tried shaking her. But her body was rigid, as though she was made of stone. He took several steps back and sat down and hugged his knees, and he cried.

Molly said it was good to cry. Even the toughest eggs cried sometimes, she told him once. Tears came from the same inside place love did, and there’s no-one in the world with more love than you, Bobby. All hearts have shells, and if you don’t release the pressure of the heart when you need to, the shell eventually breaks. So never hold back your tears, mate. And if anyone tries to make you feel bad, know that you’re stronger, smile back at them, and keep crying until all the pressure is gone.

And so for an hour he sat there. He said her name again and again and looked and waited for her to come back to him, but nothing changed.

He got to his feet, and saw she was crying. He put his arms around her, whispered that he loved her, pulled away—and then he felt a warmth on his back, and it was the warmth of someone’s breath when they were standing too close. He turned around, but there was no-one there. Just the candle in the window, which lit the trees and groundfog like a tiny sunrise. Its warmth beckoned him back to the cabin. Molly would be okay. The moon was low and the sun would be there soon and Jeremy would come back and help her.

It was then that he saw Jeremy in the window behind the candle. He was standing exactly like Molly was, his eyes so wide Bobby could tell, even from that distance, that it was the same. He walked over the pebbles and into the shadow and his footsteps were noisy in the silence.



Molly watched as he walked away, tried again and again to call his name. To warn him, and tell him to run. Yet she only managed a feeble wheeze that she herself could barely hear. The candle had stopped burning when he came and he was barely a shadow when he left. She listened to the snapping of the sticks receding into the dark, the creak of the porch, the shut of the door. And then it was the same cold static in the stillness. The quiet land frozen in time; a snapshot she was lost in, that she never asked to remember.

Jeremy was gone. His blood trailed from the bush over the rocks into the water and lightly glistened in the moonlight. She was glad Bobby didn’t notice. That he hadn’t sat down further to the left; that it was too cold to smell, and too dark to see without already knowing it was there.

Molly didn’t trust her gut easily—one bad call in a hundred was enough for a humble scepticism of the rest. But her gut feeling about Bobby was different. With bare a shed of reason, she knew he was safe. He would find his way home when the day came, and, one day, when the grief had passed, he would find happiness again.

The sweetest guy she ever met.

When the water stirred behind her, and the warmth was on her skin, she heard him calling Jeremy’s name.

And she let go.

Her body was torn backwards at breakneck speed over the lake, and under. Deep beneath the ribbons where the lost fishing hooks lay, and her arm reached out, one last time, clawed desperate for the pale sunlight that glimmered far above.