Sunlight travels millions of miles across space, but only penetrates the upper layer of the sea – to swim straight down is to reach further than the stars. At twelve years old, there was no greater thrill than flirting with the abyss.
Welcome to Candar Lake. The blistered, red sign disappeared as Mom spun the steering wheel and set us down the rocky path. Trees squeezed in around both sides of the road. Overhead, their interlocking canopies blotted out the sun – until the car cleared the entrance and rumbled across the parking lot. Anticipation wriggled around in my gut. I stretched the strap of my red goggles and secured them over my eyes.
“Cole!” I had unbuckled my seatbelt and flung open the door before mom had a chance to park. I raced across the cracked asphalt and picked my way through the tall grass, eyes peeled for geese droppings. Soon, the hill sloped down and gave way to the shore of Candar Lake.
Mom trudged through the grass with her work bag. “Shit,” she said, staring down at the bottom of her sandal. “I mean, crap. You’re supposed to wait for the car to stop.”
“Sorry.” The blue-green water rippled and sparkled. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
She collapsed down onto the seat of a picnic table, its wooden skin tattooed with slurs and signatures. “Go ahead, Cole,” mom sighed, waving me away. She reached into her work bag and set her laptop on the table. “Have some fun.”
The surface of the lake was flush with Summer, with lily pads and clumps of moss and stray leaves from the surrounding forest. Winding trees stooped around the far edge, reaching for the water with scraggly branches. A rope-swing hung from a grand Oak, twisting like a snake in the wind.
With each step the grainy sand shifted beneath my weight. Trickling down the slope, until the line where water’s touch met ground, and all was turned to mush. Brown, mucky sand stuck to the soles of my feet as I waded into the icy water. Slowly, allowing each inch of my body to acclimate to the chill. Some inches were worse than others.
Silhouettes danced beneath. I waited for the daring fish to approach my legs, then stomped. The shadows raced away through the cloud of dust.
The too-tight goggles bore into my skin, juicing my brain like a lemon. I walked until my toes could just barely reach, until the water lapped at my chin like my dog.
It wasn’t long before Mom began to snore. I watched her, head slumped down against her keyboard. I watched the rope swing dance. I watched the empty lifeguard chairs. And then I turned away from the shore, and swam. Scything my arms through the water and splashing with my feet. I swam until the far edge of the forest didn’t seem that far, its treeline towering from above. I swam until mom’s snoring became a distant echo, and quiet settled in the air. I swam until I reached the center of the lake. Totally engulfed by its shimmering body.
I aligned myself upright and treaded in the water. Bobbing up and down. Sunlight poured down from the sky, and reflected in the water as a glimmering X. Marking my treasure.
I dug my fingers under the strap, and untangled my hair from the goggles. Its bright, plastic red and my fair, tan skin were the only flashes of color in that vast cold. I dangled the goggles from my finger. Edged them until the strap clung to the last inch of my tip, and then I tilted down and let the goggles sink into the darkness.
“One. Two. Three,” I counted, and ducked my head under the water. My eyes stung as they adjusted to the gray-green world. The goggles sank in slow motion, red-rimmed lenses filed with water. It bore down past my knees, and I caught it with my foot. Success.
Again, I dropped the goggles. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.” I plugged my nose with my fingers and plunged down. The monochrome landscape reminded me of the barren moon, of empty, starless space. As I descended, the chill grew sharper. It climbed up my body and through my skin, delving deep into my bones and freezing my marrow. My reserve of oxygen had begun to run thin when I discerned the goggles from the encroaching shadow. I reached and hooked my fingers around the strap, gripping it tight as I turned up to the surface and rose towards the light.
I repeated the ritual once more.
“One. Two. Three. Four. Five.” The goggles grew smaller as the seconds ticked by. My stomach churned, and my lungs filled with helium. “Six. Seven. Eight, Nine, Ten!”
I took a deep, deep breath, and dove headfirst. Blowing out through my nose. I pushed with the downward current, which seemed to hold me in embrace. We fell together, gravity and I, our limbs entangled, skin against skin. The light fell away, rushing back to the sky.
My lungs began to squeeze tight, and the pressure crept into my ears. And still, I swam deeper, deeper through the cold which sliced at me, which by all means should have been ice. And at the last edge of the light, I glimpsed a flash of bright red. I made my final push – the pressure all around me, all of my organs scrunching inwards – gliding down with my arms stretched out, to save the goggles before they became indistinguishable from the darkness.
The goggles landed. On the lake floor, I presumed.
The lake floor shifted. Not sand but skin. Pale and wrinkly and sloughing off the boy’s bloated body. His bulging stomach, his inflated hands and peeling fingers. His fat, hotdog lips – purple and red and glued together. He hung in the water, half submerged in the darkness. Black infection ran through his veins. The last kiss of starlight made him glow like a ghost, like an angel. I reached out for my goggles. I reached out for him.
The drowned boy opened his waterlogged eyes. A warbled scream escaped from his fish lips. “COLD!” I gagged. Water thrusted in through my mouth, into my lungs. The boy writhed and spasmed in slow motion, grasping out for me with his torn fingers. “COLD!” I choked on lake filth. I sank, closer to the boy and his wall of shadow. “COLD! COLD!” I felt his sagging skin brush against mine – felt his blubbery fingers work their way around my ankle – felt his heaviness dragging me down.
I kicked and thrashed and he wouldn’t let go. “COLD!” he pleaded, he begged. I dug my fingers under his and kicked into his ballooning gut – the boy fell away, swallowed whole by the abyss. I watched as the darkness crept up his outstretched hand. Reaching for the warmth of my skin.
I swam up and up and up. Towards the distant glimmer of the sun, up and up and up. Through the dead, frozen water, up and up and up, against the pull of the darkness. Until finally I burst out into the open air, hacking the poison out of my lungs. Gasping, retching, I paddled furiously to stay afloat. “Mom! MOM!” She didn’t stir, slumped forward at the bench in the grass. A miniature. Powerless from this distance. All around the water trembled and whirled about me. My unheard screams skipped across the surface and echoed, echoed, echoed.
I lay atop the white comforter of my hotel bed. A man-grown. My arms and legs dangle over the edges of the mattress. TV chatter blurs into the background, and my eyes grow numb from the screen’s artificial glow. I turn to my side, and watch the city through the doubly-thick window.
A flight of dark clouds rolls in from the coast. The storm sheds its weight in heavy downpour. Battering the window with rain, thud-thud-thud, the droplets smearing themselves across the glass. The empty streets and dark storefront signs and skyscrapers are reduced to streaky blur.
I can still hear his voice calling to me. Rising from the deep. Drifting into my ears. I roll off the bed and yank the cord, shuttering out the evening gray. As I circle the bed and click on the overhead light, my phone starts to rumble on the dresser. I reach for it, flip it up. Mom.
“Cole?” Her voice is muffled by the storm.
“Hey, mom. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything’s- hey!” A dog yips in the background. My fingers curl up, and squeeze the softness out of my pillow. “I think Tucker misses you,” she says.
“Make sure to give him a hug, for me.”
“Will do. So, how’s Boston? How’s work?”
“Wet. The last conference was today, and I’ll be heading back home on Monday. I still have the weekend to muck about, I guess.” I lay the pillow at the head of the bed. “Why did you call?”
“You remember Candar Lake, right? We went all the time when you were younger.”
Cold air creeps in through the window and pools about my ankles. “Mom. Tell me.”
“The town just called. They’re dozing down the forest and filling in the lake.”
“That’s…” I trail off, let the sound of the downpour trickle into the empty air. “Why?”
“Advancement of public works and community safety,” she says in a mechanical tone. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Cole. This must be hard. I still remember when they shut down my favorite bar-”
“No, Mom, that’s wonderful!” I imagine the trucks backing across the stone parking lot, up the grassy hill, and down to the shore – pouring dirt and rubble into the water. Suffocating all of the bad memories beneath a thousand tons of waste. “Wonderful. Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“What? Cole-”
I hang up the phone, and throw it down onto the mattress. It bounces and skips across the room, cracking against the plaster wall. I run to the window and undo the shutters, pressing my palms against the chilled glass.
I think of all the beach days and the pool parties I’ve had to skip. There were times where I couldn’t even shower – haunted by that boy and his peeling, green skin. As if his hand never let go, as if I’ve been chained to Candar Lake all these years.
Relief washes over as the rain clears out Boston’s streets. It’s over. His body will turn to sediment under the weight of the next generation, all of its love and ambition.
Mom’s right. I used to swim all the time, I loved it.
I slip into my shoes and race down the carpeted hotel hallway.
Darkness peers in through the tall windows of the hotel lobby. A scrawny man sits under the front door awning, taking shelter from the rain. Inside, the room is crowded with white couches and reclining chairs which sit empty under the wall-mounted television sets – running cartoons, filling the lobby with exaggerated voices and bright colors.
“Hello?” A broad-shouldered woman sits behind a computer at the front desk. A mop of dark hair hides her face like a veil. “Excuse me.” She’s surrounded by shelves stocked with candy bars and chip bags. Assorted wrappers lay strewn about her desk In lieu of a bell, I knock at the wood.
The woman looks up, and unplucks one of her earbuds. “Hi,” she says. “You want something?”
“Could you tell me where the pool is?” I check the nametag pinned to her gray uniform. “Aubrey?” I think she’s older than me. But it might just be the bags pressed under her eyes.
She blinks. “Ah.” Aubrey points through the wall. “Down this hallway, take the first left. Through the gym. And you’ll need your keycard to swipe in.” Aubrey leans forward and looks me over. “You’re going to swim in jeans?”
I step back. “Ah, no-”
“Well, you can’t swim in nothing.” Aubrey rattles her crimson-painted nails against the desk. “Adult swim or not-”
“-I’m not swimming. Not tonight.” Aubrey stares at me, her lips cemented in a straight line. “Just testing the waters.”
“Right,” Aubrey says, stifling a laugh. “Let me know how it goes.” She plugs her earbuds back in and clicks around on the computer. I shake my head and start down the hallway. My shoes squeak against the spotted, rubber floor of the gymnasium. Past the empty treadmills and the floorbound weights stands a frosted-glass door. Pool. Open 6am-12pm. Adult Swim 10pm-12pm. No lifeguards. No diving. The handle beeps, flashing a green light as I swipe my card.
A hand bubbles up from the depths of my brain, clawing its fingers through filmy, gray matter. I tighten my grip on the handle, and imagine myself sealing my mind’s wrinkles with dirt and cement.
A wall of sour-sweet chlorine shoves its way through the open door. I shoulder through the smell, so old, so heavy, thick enough to gag on. Misty green floor tiles lead past the rough-hewn towels and down – where the pool lies in wait.
A camera cranes its neck down from the corner of the ceiling, watching with a glassy stare. Artificial breeze rumbles in the overhead tubing. Rain-splattered windows line the walls. Through a row of unkempt bushes I spot the back-end parking lot. Streetlamps stand watch over the sleeping cars. The room is empty. The pool and I are alone.
The milky water is dead still, forever untouched. Through the chemical glare I see the pool’s floor, swirling patterns of white and blue tiles which run lengthwise across the room. A silver ladder emerges from the bottom and clings to the edge of the deep end, while a staircase in the opposite corner leads down into the shallow water. All is warped in the pool’s reflection – the white, bulb lights seem to sprout up from the tiles, glowing like alien planets. Midnight windows peer out into the darkness beneath the floor. An inverted world where the rain rushes up to the sky.
I pull the back of my shoe’s heel, and unfurl my socks. The pale, sandy floor is rough beneath my feet. I walk in circles around the room, brushing my hands against the bristly, wicker chairs. Waiting for the windows to crack and the darkness to flood in.
I graze the surface of the water with my foot. Cool, not cold. Circles grow out from the point of contact and spread to the far corners. When I pull back, hungry air clings to the wet skin.
I lay on my chest, skin scraping against the grooves and edges of the floor. My fingers dance and swerve through the water. Stirring up invisible, chemical fumes that make my brain wobble. I hold my wrist under. Quelling the flames and the smoke which fill the clustered veins. From there, calmness spreads throughout. As the water steadies itself, my reflection becomes coherent, becomes me.
The next morning, I brave the damp Boston streets and purchase a pair of purple-pink swim trunks. They’re too small – hiking up my legs whenever I walk. And the interior netting chafes painfully against my inner thighs. But I wear them all the same, sitting at the edge of my bed. Listening to the intermittent dripping of the bathroom faucet.
Come evening, I take the elevator down to the first floor and waddle through the lobby. Aubrey rests her elbows on the front desk, crunching into a bar of chocolate. “Back for more?”
“That’s right.” I pat down my legs, straightening out my bathing suit. “I forgot to wear my nametag yesterday. I’m Cole.” “Hi Cole.” Aubrey rubs her knuckles under her baggy eyes. “So, the water was up to your standards?” “It’s a low bar. I haven’t been swimming for years.”
“Be careful, then.” Aubrey grins. “My manager will make me clean up your body if you drown.” “I’ll stick to the shallow end, then.”
“Start with some warm-up” Aubrey says, waggling me away with her painted fingers. “And have fun!”
Down the hallway, through the gym. The pool-room is silent but for the thrum of the air conditioner, the whir of the filter – like a diaphragm, pulling in, pushing out. I shove my shoes and socks under one of the chairs. The windows are smudged with drying tears. Though the rain has stopped, the emptied clouds refuse to move on; leaving the sky a stark, starless desert.
With my arms taut around the silver bars, I place my foot on the ladder’s first step. There I stand, with my back to the water. The longer I wait, the warmer the water feels – like a hug around my ankles. I take another step, sinking down to my waist. Above, the air tousles and teases at my naked skin. But the pool is reinforced against the chill, is warm and pulsing with Summer heat. I take another step, reaching down with my foot – and then something frigid brushes against my ankle.
I clamber up the staircase, gasping, spraying water across the scratchy floor. Warmth trickles down my chest and drips down around me.
It’s nothing. It’s over. I press my hand to my thumping heart.
But it’s not over. Even if Candar Lake is hundreds of miles away. Even if ten years have passed, I am still that shivering, helpless twelve year old.
My fingernails dig into my chest. I lean over the edge of the pool. Beneath layers and layers of reflection lies a crumpled shadow. A slender, red-haired boy, limp in the water. His hair hangs about his head like a cloud of fire. No older than I was that day. No less scared than I am now.
No lifeguard. No diving.
And I am no boy.
My teeth lock against each other. I tilt my head up and the air seeps in through my nostrils. I shut my nose and, through the tremors and the bubbling nausea, find the will to jump.
The splash of my body hitting the water goes mute as I sink under. Quiet settles. My eyes inch open, braced against the sting of chlorine. As I glide towards the boy, his figure becomes more clear – his long eyelashes and his lips, pursed in peaceful sleep. His skin is bone-white and burns under the brilliant red of his hair.
My feet land atop the glassy tiles. I squat down and shove my arms under the boy’s back. With his fading warmth pressed close, I start for the ladder. Hoisting the two of us up, rung by rung, against the drag of his dead weight.
I take the boy’s hand and squeeze it. Please, be okay. We’re going to be okay.
He squeezes back with a wiry grip.
Rays of light filter through the shifting surface of the water. At the final rung, I heave the two of us up – but my head cracks into something hard, and I nearly lose my grip on the ladder. The hell?!
Once I’ve steaded myself and feel secure against the wall, I reach up for the surface. I run my fingers along the cold ceiling, then press against it with my palm. It shifts against my touch, ripples outwards, yet won’t let me through. The pool is solid. Like a curtain of glass, rolling and shifting. Fuck! I pound with my knuckle. The skin breaks, the water doesn’t.
The boy’s fingers clamp around my wrist.
“COLD!” I hear the warbled scream that has echoed in my nightmares for a decade. It rings clear in the water, and now I understand. “COLE!” The red-haired boy pulls with a strength beyond his slender arms. The tiled floor descends, giving way to a vast darkness, that abyss which has always called my name. “COLE!” A black vein shoots up and pierces the boy’s back – and his limbs slowly inflate, his stomach bulges and dares to burst. His skin peels like chipping wallpaper and turns an asphyxiated purple. “COLE!” With his thick, wrinkled fingers, the infested corpse wrenches me from the ladder. My fingers edge slowly across the rung – closer, closer, until finally my grip is lost and I’m careening down into the icy depths.
Impossible. This space should be filled with dirt. This space cannot exist, and yet it swallows me all the same. I do as I did before – kick and thrash – but the darkness has learned how to keep hold of its prey.
This, truly, is the greatest, most penetrating of thrills. The final pumping of your heart, the explosions in your ears which resonate throughout your skull. The abyss, which has lured you in, and now closes its crushing weight around you.
A pair of faded red goggles drifts down from above, filtering in with the cracked glasses, broken toys, and rusted jewelry which hang in the water. All of the treasures which slip from our fingers, which tempt us to swim downwards. Beneath them, from the bottom of this impossible space, rises a mountain of rot and decay. Young and old, man or woman, the water welcomes all. I wonder who this boy was, before he drowned and became what I can only understand as bait. I know then that I am just another body, another boy – no one has ever, can ever save me. I close my eyes.
Claps of thunder sound from above. Clouds weren’t empty, after all.
A shining sun burns through the reds of my eyelids. The boy’s grip loosens.
Splash. Fizzing bubbles. Something descending from above.
A smooth hand with a strong grasp latches onto mine. Mom? I wrench my eyes open. Aubrey, in her gray uniform. She swims up and I kick with her. We rise from the endless void, toward the radiant glow of a white sun – one of the ceiling lights, half-submerged. The boy’s fleshy fingers squirm and try to wriggle free. I hold on. I will not let go, will dredge up the depths and finally face this monster.
Aubrey lugs herself up the ladder. And then me, sputtering and gulping up the filtered air. I brace my feet against the base of the ladder and, with the last of my strength, pull – fighting against the wriggling corpse as it races towards the darkness. Aubrey hooks her arms under my shoulders and we are one, wrenching the boy out of the water, the nightmare from my brain. His blubbery skin leaks out a viscous ink as it tears across the jagged floor. The bloated corpse writhes about like a dying fish. With milky, waterlogged eyes he watches Aubrey and I as we cough up our lungs, and stand to our feet. It tries to copy us, and collapses.
“Aubrey. I thought I was going to die.” I look back to the light – the neck of the bulb dangles from a knotted cord of wire. “How did you know?”
“You thought I just listened to music and slept at my desk?” Aubrey wipes her mouth, glances up to the camera. “I thought I’d keep an eye on you. Not that I expected- well, whatever the hell that is.” The rotting body spasms and rolls towards the water. I climb to my feet and kick into its swelling stomach, sending it sprawling against the wall.
“Cole…” it murmurs through its puffy lips. On land, it isn’t so much terrifying as pathetic.
“What’s the takeaway here?” Aubrey asks, waving away the putrid stench. “Don’t save drowning kids?”
“I don’t know. But it knows my name. And it’s not just this boy – it’s all of that darkness, waiting down there.”
“Welp.” Aubrey claps her hands together. “This is evidently beyond our understanding. So let’s beat this thing to a pulp and call it a day.”
That instant, the wire gives – sparks shower down from the thread as the light crashes down into the water. I jump back, pulling Aubrey to the far wall. The pool sizzles and snaps and, to our left, the boy’s stomach bursts – inky blackness sprays out and splatters the wall. His skin sizzles into the empty air, leaving only a wretched stain. “They do not pay me enough to clean this shit.” Aubrey flicks the lights off, and shines her phone in the dark room. We walk to the pool’s edge and stare down at blue-white tiles and the dead, sunken bulb. The abyss has receded.
Aubrey shoves me into the water. “Hey-!”
And then she jumps in after me. Splashing me in the face. I splash back. She hoists me up in her arms and we spin around the pool, tracing the edge until the current moves with us.
“What if it comes back?”
“We’ll just drag it out again.”
We swim together in the darkness. For the first time in ten years, I feel truly, wholeheartedly safe.