We were at the lake the weekend before the 4th of July.
Our first taste of teenage freedom — Paul and I had driven out meet April at her family’s lake cabin since we had both just gotten our driver’s liscences. It was two and a half hours of pavement away, so we drove in shifts. When it was his turn, I rolled my window down and screamed into the wind, feeling it whoosh cold through my hair.
I wish our parents had stopped us. They could have decided we weren’t ready to drive that far unsupervised. April’s parents could have forbidden her from inviting two boys who were obviously both in love with her to stay at the cabin. I wish I didn’t have to carry this with me.
We were sitting by the reedy lake, relaxing as the sun set over that damp earth — the whole world to ourselves.
“You guys ever been for a night swim?” April asked.
Neither one of us had. We were both such city kids, so being out here unsupervised was a totally new experience.
I floated, kicking my legs, looking at the night sky. The stars spread out above me in a majestic panorama — there were so many more of them than I’d ever seen from the city. I drifted, held up by the cool water, thinking of how small we all were in the grand scheme of the universe, wondering if either Paul or myself would end up with April, what life held for us after our final of high school.
“Fireworks,” April said as the sky lit up in a flash of red.
“I thought we were alone,” Paul said between breathestrokes.
“That’s so weird. There’s never anybody out here,” April said.
The sky showered with blooming flowers that burst in bright flashes across its velvet surface. “This is like. . . professional,” I said. I’d played around with bottle rockets, firecrackers, roman candles — everything a regular person could get their hands on. This was way above that pay grade. It was a real show. “Who is this for?”
“Bigfoot,” Paul said as we splashed around each other, treading water and craning our necks to watch the sky.
“The cult that lives outside the town about ten miles from here, they do weird shit. Maybe they’re throwing a private show on the other side of the lake,” April suggested.
“They’re not a cannibal cult or anything, are they?” I asked.
“They’re hungry for YOUR FLESH!” April said, pretending to lunge toward my throat.
We all laughed feeling the rumble in our chests from those explosions in the sky. They exploded in brilliant reds, greens, and magentas against the backdrop of outer space and smoke. I could feel April floating so close to me and watching those fireworks and I couldn’t help but think this is it — this is the moment we first kiss.
“Are the fireworks getting closer, or is it just me?” Paul asked.
Sure enough, each set of explosions was nearer than the last. The mortars exploded pounded my chest like a bass drum.
“Are we safe? I don’t want to get blown up,” I said.
“Smithereens, they’re gonna blow us to smithereens!” April joked.
“We’re in the water. Worst case the ash floats down to us,” Paul reassured me, always the rational one.
By that time we’d drifted out pretty far into the water without even meaning to. Well, far for me. It might not have felt like far for April, because she spent enough of her childhood on the lake to become a good swimmer. But I was self taught and pretty unnatural in the water.
“They’re right on top of us.” I couldn’t believe what was happening. The flashes had moved from the other side of the lake all the way to where we were swimming.
“Guys, look at the water,” April said.
The smoke from the fireworks must have floated to the surface of the lake and settled into long tendrils that looked like they were about to reach out and grab us. But it was just smoke, right? It must have been a coincidence that it looked like some giant eldrich spider drifting closer to us.
“The smoke must be interacting with the water vapor. That’s why it looks like tentacles,” Paul offered as an explanation.
“Let’s start toward the shore. I’m getting creeped out,” I said.
“Come on, when are we going to get the chance to have fireworks explode right on top of us like this? We should stay out,” April said.
Each incandescent flash illuminated the creature as it flickered in and out of existence, stalking closer and closer to us. I started paddling toward shore with or without my friends.
I wish I had tried just a little harder to get them to come with me.
After a couple minutes I made it back to the dock and hauled my dripping body out of the lake. Paddling had worn out my arms, so the felt like limp noodles when I pulled myself out of the water. It always feels like gravity is twice as powerful than normal pulling yourself out of the water like that, but difficulty aside I made it up onto the wooden dock.
When I looked back, the smoke creature was nearly on top of April and Paul.
“Hey! The smoke’s nearly to you. You should come back to shore,” I called out to them. I’m not sure if they heard me over the crash of the fireworks going off right above their heads.
In the next flash I realized that thing had definite shape. It wasn’t simply long lines of smoke that the water or an optical illusion made appear as an animal. It had a central mass and its ten or twelve legs jutted out as if it was crawling across the surface of the lake.
With each explosion in the sky two orbs illuminated in the same color as the flash. Eyes.
“GET OUT!” I screamed at them.
I swear, even then I thought it was all just some sort of illusion — my mind organizing the smoke’s nonsense pattern into a tangible shape. But then one of the tendrils rose into the air, and I was shocked when I realized Paul’s body rose with it.
It’s long tentacle had wrapped around Paul’s neck and swung him around like a ragdoll. I don’t know if he died immediately, but I like to think death came quickly, that the thing suddenly jerking him out of the water snapped his neck and it was lights out, that he didn’t experience the pain of what came after when the thing slammed his body again and again into the water.
April’s scream cut through the noise of the explosions.
I wish I could say that I was brave, that I dove into the water and saved her, that my love outweighed my survival instincts. But I froze.
Somewhere, in the back of my brain, from all the stories of superheroes I’d ingested, there was a part of me that had always thought if I was in a life or death situation I’d rise to the occasion. But in this moment I was forced to see that life wasn’t like that. I wasn’t like that. I wouldn’t put my life on the line.
April paddled in my direction as fast as she could.
After the thing tired of thwacking Paul’s corpse against the water it started to pursue her. As it neared, I could see it more clearly, but my brain still couldn’t process what it was. To this day, I have no idea.
I tried telling myself she was going to make it, but in my heart I think I already knew that the thing was too close. She was maybe two thirds of the way back to shore when the abomination swiped its tentacle out at her leg. It grazed her skin and she screamed, but she kept swimming toward me.
“Grab my hand!” I yelled and ran to the end of the dock.
She was nearly to me — “Just a little further. You can do this. Don’t let this thing rip you away from me like this.” I willed her on. But the thing — the smoke, the shadow, the monstrous thing I still don’t understand, it was gaining on her.
April was frantic, swimming as fast as she could. She was only a body length from me as she swung out her hand, trying to grasp mine. Her fingertips brushed against my outstretched fingers, but didn’t manage to grab on.
That’s when the smoke wrapped its tentacle around her ankle.
She screamed again as she swung her arm out and we locked our grips around each other’s forearms. “Help!”
I pulled as hard as I could, but that thing was too strong. It lifted her into the air just as it had Paul. I tried to pull her out of its grasp, but it was going to pull me into the water with it.
I let go.
Whenever I see fireworks I immediately flash back to the image of April’s face widening in terror as thing thing flung her body into the air. And I crumble.
It smashed her body into the water again and again until eventually it tired of playing with her corpse. Then it turned to me. I tried to scramble to get away from the water, but that thing simply stared at me for a moment with enormous, reflective eyes. It could have reached me, but it didn’t. And I’ll never know why.
It simply disapated in a gust of wind, as if it was normal smoke. With its departure the fireworks stopped.
I pulled April’s body out of the water, but there was nothing I could do.
The rest of the night was a blur. I know I ran in to tell April’s parents about what happened. I woke them up and dragged them outside, not making much sense in the moment.
Nobody believed me. They said the shock of the event must have done something to my psyche. April and Paul’s deaths were ruled drowning. We were stupid kids who went out to swim in the middle of the night without taking safety into consideration, a cautionary tale to convince teens of the importance of having a life guard on duty.
Nobody even paid attention to their broken, bruised bodies. There was no evidence for the fireworks we saw that night.
But every 4th of July I hole myself up and turn on music as loud as I can, trying to drown out the sounds of explosions. Inevidably, I happen upon them sometimes and I’m transported back to that night, to the tentacle wrapped around Paul’s throat — his eyes bulging, to April’s hand slipping from mine. I see it all in slow motion, millimeter by millimeter as she’s pulled from my grasp.
I see lights in the sky and I know that thing in the water is still there, waiting.