It Calls Me

I’m staring out the window across my boyfriend’s newest travel/romantic getaway destination. A vast expanse of glistening clear water peaks from between what seems like a forest of trees. (But, everything on the far western side of Washington kind of feels like you’re smack dab in the middle of a forest.) My heart rises and plummets in unison.

I’ve always had contradicting feelings of awe and danger surrounding lakes. I think it has something to do with the fact that I got locked in a bathroom at what was supposed to be a fun, summer homeschool party when I was very young. That lake was man-made, but the feeling was the same. The uncertainty of what was swimming around where we couldn’t see, right under our toes. In that lake we thought we knew what it was. A gigantic goldfish that had been rumored to live there since the lake was first dug into the ground. It---or something at least---brushed up against me that day as well. Before I got myself locked into a bathroom alone.

That’s definitely how phobias are made. It checks out. I still don’t like the idea of deep water I can’t see into. But I go places like this nonetheless. My boyfriend, Jack, has a love for the outdoors that I can’t quite comprehend. Of course, I love being in nature occasionally and for the sake of inspiration, but he would live in it 24/7 if it had a built-in gaming setup.

“Look at the lake, Hector!” He exclaims, a large grin on his face, on the verge of bouncing up and down in his seat.

My name is Helvetica, like the font, but his nickname for me had stuck since we were just friends in our teens. It was typically either that, ‘Hel’, or simply ‘H’.

“It’s a lake, for sure,” I feign being unamused. In reality, it’s a gorgeous one. The sun’s rays bounce off of its clear blue surface and produce crystalline little diamonds that float on top. The trees around it are a gorgeous emerald green. A huge island completely carpeted with trees lays nearly in the center of the oblong body of water.

“Not just any lake. Lake Crescent!” he exclaims, “I’ve always wanted to go here!”

“Where exactly are we going anyway?” I turn to ask.

“I rented us a sweet Air B’n’B cabin out here. Rustic, no wifi, just the kind of escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life that we need, I think.” He turns that excited, toothy grin to me.

“I guess…” I reply, unsure. Of course, I don’t mind the idea of unplugging, but I’ve never been keen on staying long in places that are unlikely to have even spotty cell reception. That’s just asking for trouble.

A few minutes later, we’re rolling up the dirt driveway to a quaint little modernized log cabin. The outside appears to be basic, made out of logs bundled together. But, inside, it’s clean, insulated, and uniquely modernized. It has a refrigerator, a microwave, all the accessories and electricity needed for life in the 21st century, minus the typical Wi-Fi router and modem of course.

“Babe!” I hear Jack yell from the other room. I hurriedly bolt across the cabin from the kitchen.

“What? What?! Are you okay?!” I turn the corner into the living room and find him pointing happily at an old rotary telephone.

“Look at this sweet landline!” He once again turns that goofy grin at me.

I take in a deep breath. “Yeah, it’s awesome. But could you not give me a heart attack next time? I thought you were injured…” I always worry about him so much.

“Okay, okay sorry,” he apologizes. “Let’s just get settled and go to bed, okay?”

“Sounds great to me,” I smile back.

We finish unpacking and fall asleep quickly from the exhaustion of a road trip and excitement for the day ahead.

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“Helvetica…”

“Baaaaabe,” I moan sleepily, “whaaaaaat?”

“Wha...I didn’t say anything…” He mumbles, still mostly asleep. He rolls over and just goes back to his blissfully ignorant slumber. Must be nice.

I, on the other hand, am possessed by a morbid curiosity about the origins of that sound. I roll slowly, quietly, out of bed and grab my heavy jacket for my journey through a cabin without a heater and into a chilly August, Washington night. I glance briefly at the ancient grandfather clock on my way out the door: 11:55 pm.

I am greeted outside by the smell of fresh water and a harsh wind trapped in the basin of the lake. A mere sliver of a waning crescent moon hangs eerily in the night sky, the only illumination for my mission. The trees whisper around me and the lake folds over itself violently with the force of the night air rushing over it. If you listened intently enough, it would sound like everything around you was calling you, summoning you.

I start towards the lake, wanting but wondering if I dared to find the source of that voice—if I hadn’t just imagined it in the first place. As I slowly approach the surface, the temperature seems to drop a few degrees with each step I take.

‘Is that normal for lake water? It must be happening because it’s dark and windy out here.’ I rationalize to myself.

When I finally reach the shallowest part, I look out a bit further towards the deeper, more sinister parts of the lake.

Mysterious shadows move underneath the surface. Swirling down further and further. So clear, and yet so unfathomable that you still can’t see to the bottom. A calling. Beckoning me to take a leap and sink down into the depths.

“Helvetica…join us...” The whispering voice now has an odd lilt to it. It sounds like a playful song, garbled by the pressure of water and the whoosh of the determined wind.

A piercing sound rings out. I fall to my knees, desperately clutching my hands over my ears to block the noise. But it’s pointless. It’s not coming from the air around me. It’s clanging and shrieking inside of my own head. I’m struck by a sudden wave of nausea. Chills rake down my spine like the bony hands of a corpse.

The shadows in the water swirl faster and faster and up and up. The wind relentlessly beats the water into towering waves. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a pale hand reaching upwards and outstretched.

“HELVETICA!”

The whispering song-like voice is now a scream to match the ringing in my ears.

I just stand there, frozen and dumbstruck.

Something forcefully yanks me back from the edge of the water, sending me flying across the sand in the general direction of the cabin. I struggle to inhale as the oxygen is knocked from my lungs upon impact.

‘What the hell was THAT?!’ I lay there looking up at the stars, breathing heavily, trying to make sense of the situation. I sit up and frantically glance around me, dazed and confused, to try to locate my savior. I’m all alone on the shore of Lake Crescent in the middle of the night. No one else in sight.

I get up and brush myself off, pain shooting through my back, shoulders, and buttocks.

I glance again, nervously, at the dark lake. The waves are calmer now; the air back to it’s normal ethereal chill.

I turn around and shuffle back inside with some difficulty. I lay down and try desperately to go back to sleep, trying to convince myself that ‘maybe, this is all a dream’.

I close my eyes and lay there for a few minutes. Restless, but trying to remain still in the hopes that I can trick my brain into shutting my body down.

It’s no use.

I toss the covers aside, slip into my boots, and wander aimlessly out of the bedroom and into the living room. I sit down at my laptop, prepared to watch some YouTube videos to calm my mind and make it easier for me to drift into a peaceful slumber.

Instead, I type a phrase into the Google search engine, not expecting very accurate results: “hand in water, Lake Crescent, WA”.

Typically, I try to research places beforehand. I find that I have a certain...sensitivity to paranormal and supernatural phenomena. Things are drawn to my energy or something. I’m not open to them on purpose, but it’s hard to completely shut it off. I don’t like going somewhere without knowing what I could encounter, even if there’s only a very small possibility.

My results yield information about the “Lady of the Lake”, general questions about the lake, and articles about its beauty, lore, and intrigue.

Instead I type in “lake crescent wa deaths”. No commas, no capitalization. A long list of drownings and disappearances greet me, coupled with the same website for the “Lady of the Lake” much further down in the results—less relevant as she didn’t actually die there, not that that makes her story more comforting.

She was murdered somewhere else and dumped into the lake. A medical anomaly and the breakdown of the ropes binding her let her be discovered, pristinely preserved.

A beautiful and mysterious lake with a very dark and tragic past then.

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Before I know it, crisp morning light is gleaming through the curtains, attacking my harrowed, sleep-deprived eyes. ‘Ugh, morning? Already?’ I struggle up out of my chair, my knees stiff from the hours of research. Research that provided me only with more questions, not answers.

‘I just need some coffee to clear my head, then maybe I can get back to it, or go down to check out the lake again while Jack is still sleeping.’

I empty some pre-ground coffee into the filter, fill the reservoir up with water, and start the machine. The sound and smell of percolating coffee consumes me for a moment; comforting me, just as it always has.

Until now, that is.

Instead of the normal sound of coffee brewing and dripping down into the pot, the machine starts making intense whirring noises and rocking aggressively back-and-forth. The peaceful process turned chaotic. Coffee spills out in all different directions—basically anywhere but into its designated area. Grounds fly out of the top haphazardly. A Pollock-like pattern of wet and dry coffee lays splattered out over the tile countertop.

“What the fuck?!” I scramble to pull out as many paper towels as I can. Frantically trying to contain the random mess.

The whirring of the coffee maker intensifies, morphing into the whispers of dozens of distant voices. “Don’t”, “No”, “Not safe”, “Water”, “She wants”, “Leave”, “You”, “Go!”

The kitchen lights flicker hectically on and off, on and off, and in between as well—the point at which a switch is only half-flipped.

“I don’t understand! You’re all talking at once!” I scream into the empty air.

Suddenly the cute little whiteboard by the front door shakes. A dry erase marker floats through the air towards it.

It writes slowly, shaky and straining with effort: ‘NO WATER’.

My stomach plummets.

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After that stressful scene I make my way back into the bedroom to see Jack and hopefully achieve some comfort in his presence. I push the cracked door wide open only to find an empty bed. ‘No, no, no, no. Where is he?!’

I fling open the bathroom door. Nothing. The closet—my last ditch option—is also empty. Panicking, I glance out the bedroom window at the lake. ‘Oh no, what is he doing?!’

Jack is in the middle of our area of the lake, canoeing. It’s his first time. I can’t imagine why he didn’t wait for me. This was the thing he was the most excited for on our trip. ‘He should have at least told me! He shouldn’t be out there!’ My new information from the spirits protecting me has convinced me of that at least.

I bolt outside, waving him down. “Hey!” I project my voice as much as my lungs will let me, “Come on in! You shouldn’t be out there! It’s dangerous!”

He continues floating on towards the area of the lake ironically named ‘The Devil’s Punchbowl’.

“What?!?!” He shouts back, hands cupped around his mouth to amplify the sound.

‘Fuck, he can’t understand me.’

I scramble to get the other canoe out onto the water. Thankfully, I’m faster at rowing than he is. Although I know from experience that this is going to cause me a lot of pain later on.

“Babe! Get back here! You need to get out of the water!” I yell again as I begin to close the gap between our two canoes.

“What do you mean? Why?!” He looks at me confused, questioning.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a dense shadow move beneath the water. Out from the six hundred foot drop that is ‘The Devil’s Punchbowl’.

“Babe, now! ROW!” I scream louder, terror encasing my voice as it does my entire body.

"What do you mean?! Why?!" He yells back, flustered and looking at me like I'm insane.

I gesture to the water. To the shadow swimming rapidly toward him.

I see the fear in his eyes as reality takes hold. Something he doesn't want to believe is real, but has suddenly become a threat. I wonder, briefly, what he sees in the dark water as it quickly approaches the surface to pull him under. He picks up the paddle and begins to row frantically back to shore.

The wind picks up, pushing him back. The current turns against him, making his efforts to escape useless. His enemies, now under the creature's control.

The shadow stops under his canoe. Jack looks up across that portion of the lake directly into my eyes. We both know that he's doomed. His eyes are hopeless blank spaces as he comes face-to-face with the nameless beast.

A slimy, shriveled pale hand shoots out of the water, firmly grasping Jack's upper arm. He looks at me again, opening his mouth to shout something else, sheer terror and panic in his eyes. Before he gets a chance to, he's abruptly yanked into the lake; arms and eyes reaching out to me as he's ritualistically dragged down into the haunted depths.

“NO! JACK!” I continue my paddling with much more vigor than before. ‘I’m not sure exactly what I can do to help him...but I have to try. He can’t die! He just can’t!’

His canoe hovers. Still now in the silent lake.

I reach it after what feels like an eternity and look down as far as I can see into the transparent layers of the lake. I can barely make out two shadowy figures about twenty feet down; one long and pale, the other shimmery and distorted.

‘They haven’t gotten too far.’ I impulsively take a huge final breath and dive in after them, unsure of what I will do if I reach them.

The lake is an unsettling, icy void once I'm submerged. The crystalline appearance fading to endless inky blackness with only a miniscule gradient of navy blue separating the two. The water pulls me downward, without much effort on my part. As I descend, the vague outlines gain substance.

One is obviously Jack, but not as I remember him. His form is faded, nearly transparent. He has an otherworldly glow to him—the shimmer I saw earlier. The creature clutching him is definitely not human. Her top portion vaguely resembles that of a naked, skeletal woman. Ribs and bones barely disguised by a thin layer of flesh. Pale gray, slightly scaly skin covers her humanoid parts. The lower half is a long tail resembling that of a fish. It’s much more scaly and a darker gray than her skin. Her long, bony, claw-like fingers are wrapped around Jack’s neck.

“Ah, Helvetica. You made it,” her voice resonates in my mind. Her face contorts into a full shark-toothed grin. Large, yellow eyes nearly bulging out of her skull.

“Let him go!” I yell back with my thoughts. “It’s me you want, right?!”

She laughs, bubbles spewing out in chaotic streams from around her mouth. “Silly girl. Sometimes I forget how well my magic works.” Her grip on Jack gets tighter, tighter, tighter, until he explodes into a million bursts of light.

“No! Jack!” Boiling, pointless tears flood my eyes.

“You still don’t get it?” She snarls at me.

“Get what?!” I scream.

“Jack hasn’t existed for quite some time. My illusion magic recreates lost loved ones and plants false memories about their passing. His only purpose was to bring you to me.”

“You’re lying! He can’t have been fake!”

“Why do you think you have this nagging subconscious fear that something will happen to him?” She pauses a second. “It already has. Here, I’ll show you.” She snaps her skeletal fingers.

I’m overwhelmed with emotions and flashes of past events. A goodbye as Jack left for his ‘guys’ trip’ to go camping. A call. A panic. An insanely fast drive to the hospital. A verdict. A funeral. A heavy feeling. An invisible boulder sitting on my chest, over my heart. Grief. A hollow, empty pain.

My breath leaves my body as my emotional state knocks the wind out of me.

“See? He died a long time ago. But don’t worry. You’ll join him soon. And your power will sustain me for another century. Too bad you never got to realize it yourself.”

I can’t move. My body is either in shock or she’s controlling the water to keep me from swimming to the surface— to survival. Water enters my lungs quickly now. The lack of oxygen triggering endorphins that make it easy to let go. To be able to see Jack.

“Sleeeeep,” that same sing-song whispery voice that I heard that first night calls from far away as the world fades to a bottomless, obsidian void.