The Woman Stood On The Ice

When I was ten years old, I saw a woman stood atop the frozen pond that lay just minutes from my house. The evening was crisp, and my woolly gloves were damp from playing in the snow. All my fingers had gone numb.

Wrapped up in my favourite navy scarf, I heard a joyless chuckle flutter through the air. I followed the sound, hypnotised by its tone.

It came from her. The woman stood on the ice. I watched curiously as she smiled and waved at me through the mist. Even as a child, I was aware of how dangerous her actions were, but something about her calm demeanour calmed me, as well. When I look back on it, I’m glad she smiled at me. If she hadn’t, I would have been far more frightened when she fell through the ice. In moments, the woman disappeared from my view. Cracks in the water were all that remained.

My parents called the police as soon as I told them what I’d seen. Law enforcement searched the pond all day. A body was never found.

When I was sixteen years old, I attended my first therapy session. I hadn’t been able to sleep through the night for six years. Though I tried to forget what I’d seen that night, the woman’s strange behaviour had stayed with me. Haunted me. I couldn’t help but wonder who she was, whether she had any family, whether there was any chance she could have survived. It was unlikely. But her body...

Death rarely forgets to leave behind a body.

My mother had hoped counselling would help distract me from those kinds of thoughts, perhaps even encourage me to think about things like drugs and sex and grades. Things ‘other teenagers’ thought about.

It didn’t.

When I was nineteen, I went to University to study Fine Art. Every painting, every project would be of her. Icy blues. Misty greys. Pallid whites. She followed me everywhere.

My tutors adored my work. They used to say there was a ‘heartbreaking beauty’ to my pieces. A beautiful sorrow.

When I was twenty three, I graduated and found myself a job in illustration working for a small, independent magazine. It didn’t pay much, but enough to live. My studio apartment looked over a bustling city. Such a contrast to the woodland that surrounded my childhood home, that surrounded the pond.

Sleeping hadn’t gotten any easier thirteen years on, though I tried my best. Alcohol helped. Scotch on the rocks was my favourite sedative. Every time I drank it, I’d imagine tiny women falling though the cracks of my ice cubes.

When I was twenty seven, my father died from a heart attack. It was sudden. Unexpected. I moved back to my hometown to care for my mother, who was grief-stricken. Sometimes I wondered whether her mourning had stifled my own. I tried to find sadness within myself for the loss of my kind father. I never found it.

Every night, as I stared at the pond from the window of my childhood bedroom, my mother screamed and wailed violently.

When I was twenty nine, my mother joined my father. Peacefully, in her sleep. Or so the doctors told me.

When I was thirty, there was only one death that refused to leave my mind. The one I’d witnessed twenty years ago. The woman that stood atop the ice had stolen more of my thoughts than my own parents’ passing. Questions surrounding that night gnawed at my mind incessantly. I couldn’t leave them unanswered any longer. I had nothing else to live for.

I decided that I would discover the truth about the frozen pond once and for all.

When I was thirty five, I was just as clueless as I was to begin with. I hadn’t learnt anything new about the woman. A body still hadn’t been discovered after all these years. But I wasn’t crazy. I knew I wasn’t. What I saw happened. The only thing that remained from that night... was the pond itself.

December was fast approaching, and the pond had frozen over just as it had so long ago. As I stood on the outskirts of the ice, I could almost envision her standing right in the centre, how calm and serene she seemed. My mind wouldn’t settle. I needed to get closer.

One step.

Two steps.

Almost slipped. Kept my balance.

Three steps.

Before I knew it, I was stood just where she had once been. Right in the middle of the pond. I felt a strange sense of accomplishment, despite not having moved any further with my investigation. Confronting what had been plaguing my mind for so long was indescribable. Freeing. Frost tickled the tip of my nose as I took in the scene around me. Stars twinkling in the sky. Branches swaying in the breeze.

And, stood right before me, a young girl wrapped up in a navy scarf.

I waved.

I felt a crack beneath my feet.

I fell.

And as I sunk into the icy darkness below, my fingers numb, I smiled brightly.