Deep Water

The air was still, and the surface of the lake was as smooth and bright as a mirror laid out under the moon. I could see the stars reflected as clearly as when I looked up into the sky. The boat cut a path through the glassy water, leaving a warbling trail of ripples behind us as we pushed out towards the center of the lake.

A sharp breeze bit at my nose and fingers, cutting through my coat and making me shiver. Marya and I huddled close together in the boat, sharing our warmth and stifling giggles. The night was eerily silent, too cold for even insects to be active. The water lapping at the sides of the boat was strangely loud in the vast quiet.

Going out on the lake at night wasn’t really that big of a deal, unless you bought into any of the strange rumors about the mysterious hole near the middle. A perfect circle of dark water in the relatively shallow lake. No one knew exactly how the hole had gotten there, it had been around as long as the town as far as anyone knew. No one knew exactly how deep it was either. Every attempt at measuring its depth had failed.

Just that last summer, the marine biology department at the local university had brought in a remote diving device built for ocean depths, just to shut everyone up. The drone had reached a depth of one mile, impossibly deep for the small lake, before the signal was lost completely. When they’d tried to reel the camera back up, the end of the cord had been cleanly cut.

The rumors had gone wild after that, about sea monsters and vast underground caverns and portals to other worlds. Kids had spent the summer daring each other to dive down into the hole for a laugh. No harm had come of it, but the kids who had gone in had come up shivering and sputtering. Apparently the water in the hole stayed near freezing, regardless of what temperature the rest of the lake was.

It was hard to see the hole at night, but the lakebed was calm and settled, and the moon was bright. Leaning over the edge of the boat, I could just make out the odd circle as we approached it.

That dark, yawning pit was oddly mesmerizing. The size of the opening didn’t change, but as I looked at it, the edges seemed to swell outward, growing and beckoning as if to swallow me up. I shivered, trying to shake off a feeling akin to vertigo. It was at least a mile deep, possibly more. I was dangling over the edge of the boat, staring into an abyss like leaning over the edge of the Grand Canyon. There was something dizzying about the distance beneath me, even if the water would catch me.

“Creepy, huh?” I asked Marya, trying to shrug off the chill that settled into my spine. My voice was dull and flat in the quiet.

“Super weird, that’s for sure,” she agreed, leaning over the other side. “Do you think it’s really a bottomless pit?”

“Wouldn’t it be boiling from contact with magma?”

“I don’t know. This thing doesn’t make any sense.”

“Do you think something’s down there?” I asked.

“Who knows?” Marya said.

Anything could be hiding in something so deep. A mile down would break past sea level, was deep enough that light wouldn’t reach the bottom. The pressures that far down would crush most living things. It was well past the line where the water would hold a human down, and you could no longer depend on your ability to float back to the surface. What kind of things might live down there in the freezing dark, ready to reach out and slash through a camera cord, as cleanly as if they’d used a knife.

I shivered again, leaning back in the boat. The cord had probably gotten caught on a sharp rock or something. I was just freaking myself out.

Lake beds are known for their sharp rocks, after all.

“What do you think cut the cord?” I wondered aloud, hoping Marya would say something clever and I could laugh about it, breaking the eerie silence. Marya didn’t respond though, and when I turned around, the boat was empty. “Marya?” I turned all the way around, checking every part of the small rowboat. There was nowhere to hide on a craft that small. She wasn’t there.

“Marya!” I shouted into the silence. The surface of the lake was as still as glass, even the ripples the boat had made on our way out had settled, and I hadn’t heard a splash, she couldn’t possibly have fallen in. “Marya! This isn’t funny—Marya!”

I pulled a flashlight out of my bag and shone it down into the water in case she had fallen in somehow. There was nothing, on either side of the boat, only the fathomless depths of the pit. She would have had to drop like a stone to fall out of sight that fast, unless she was right under the boat.

I leaned as far over the side as I could, rocking dangerously and sending waves of new ripples across the painfully still surface. My breathing was hard and loud. I couldn’t quite see under the boat. If she were swimming just under me she would still be able to keep out of sight.

A little further out and the boat lurched threateningly. I threw myself back, landing on the bottom of the boat with a startled shriek that echoed off the trees. I didn’t want to go in that water. It was so dark, and so cold, and I was right over the hole and whatever was down there. I could so easily imagine going over the side, being dragged down by the water soaking into my heavy winter clothes. Sinking into that impossible darkness as my lungs burned and the cold stung like needles all over.

“Marya!” I shrieked, laying on the bottom of the boat. There was no other sound. No animals in the trees, no movement in the water, not even the distant sound of cars on the highway. It was perfectly silent. Somehow, I was perfectly, entirely alone. Marya wasn’t in the boat, and she wasn’t in the water near the boat. Without a sign or a sound she was just…gone.

As panic built in my chest, I managed two coherent thoughts. I needed to call for help. I needed to get someone down to the lake to find Marya before something bad happened.

I dug around in my coat pocket, fumbling with my phone, my fingers numb and trembling. It was dead. I pressed the power button again and again, but the screen remained blank. It shouldn’t be dead. It was charged when I left the house. We were going to take pictures. I checked the battery, making sure everything was snapped together tight, but the phone refused to turn on.

I sat up in the boat and screamed.

“Marya!”

“Yes?”

There she was, seated in the front of the boat right where she had been. She looked exactly as if she’d been sitting there all along, still in her winter coat, dry except for the water that had splashed up on her jeans as we’d pushed out into the lake.

“Marya!” my voice broke with relief, and she grabbed hold of me, stroking my hair and rocking. “Where were you?”

“Don’t cry,” she said softly, calmly. “Everything is fine.”

I let myself be soothed, focusing on the fact that she was fine, and that we were both safe in the boat. Shore was only a few minutes of rowing away, and I felt the gentle pressure of her arms around me. My breath came in ragged sobs that sounded too loud. Marya’s breath made no sound at all. There was no breath on top of my head where hers rested.

And she was cold. Even through my jacket I could feel how icy cold her arms were. My ear was pressed to her chest, but nothing sounded there. The night was silent apart from my own breathing and the pounding of my own pulse in my ears.

“Don’t worry,” Marya crooned, as I went still in her arms. “You’re safe.”

The silence stretched, and the lake was glassy smooth again. I sucked in a breath and pulled away from her, looking up into Marya’s face.

It was distinctly Marya’s face, but something was off. Her expression was too fixed. She wasn’t blinking. I backed away from her, trembling, and she smiled.

“It’s alright,” she assured me. “We only needed one.”