There is something in the waters near our ancestral home, but no-one believes me.
Back when I was eleven, my dad got a letter stating we had inherited a plot of land containing an antique home from the 1700’s near a small riverstream. It had recently belonged to my great uncle who had neither a spouse nor children. I hadn’t heard of the man before but my father told me that near the end of his life, he had become completely isolated, so much so that he didn’t even attend my grandpa’s funeral, his brother’s. All the old man would do was stand outside all day, staring at the shallow water of the river, as if he was looking for something. But not too long ago, he had mysteriously disappeared, without a trace. Some say he drowned, seeing how he spent a majority of the time near the river. But search parties never found a corpse, not near the house nor down the stream. And thus after weeks of searching, he was proclaimed dead by the authorities. The official story states he wandered off in a state of confusion and likely died somewhere in the wild of hypothermia or starvation. But the real truth is that no-one cared, we didn’t even know when exactly he disappeared to begin with. It could’ve been hours, it could’ve been weeks, it could’ve been years. In fact, if it wasn’t for the inheritance note, we might not have known at all.
That month my father decided we would go and check out the house to see what we could do with it. We drove for hours, past the safe and secure confines of our home city, through the dark neighboring forests. There weren’t any modern roads leading to the house, so we unexpectedly had to make a big part of the journey on foot, following an unlit overgrown dirt road. I remember it vividly, the big trees looming over us in the dark, their branches and leaves weeping with the wind, warning us of the dangers ahead. Along the road there wasgrass and reeds so high you could get lost in them. Somewhere, even though we were still far removed from the river, I swore I heard the burbling of water, ever so gently, leading the way.
Deep in the night, we finally arrived at the house. It was barely visible, decrepit and overgrown. The grass that had, once upon a time been faithfully warded off by former inhabitants, had completely overtaken the area, growing long enough to touch my shoulders. While my parents had a look at the house, me and my older brother explored the area a bit when suddenly we found ourselves at the edge of a river. It was at least 10 steps wide from shore to shore and flowed at a steady pace, yet unlike earlier, it was completely silent. The both of us could swear we saw the water move yet in terms of sound, the river might as well not have been there. Furthermore, when I looked into the river I couldn’t see the bottom. I remembered my dad saying it was extremely shallow, yet it felt like looking into a mirror. The surface of the water was so reflective I could make out even the most miniscule detail on me and my brother’s faces, I could see the full moon in all its splendor, I could even count individual stars. Yet when I looked up, the stars were barely visible and the moon was small and barely noticeable.
That’s when my brother said it; there is something in the water.
As he stepped forward and his feet touched the river, ripples spread across the surface, yet it didn’t make a sound. A feeling of panic overtook me as the images were distorted by my brother’s disturbance. As if by instinct, my legs gave out and I fell to my knees. My eyes frantically tried to puzzle together the now fragmented reflection, almost desperate to behold them again. My head lowered more and more until my nose almost touched the surface of the river as if pulled closer by some invisible force.
A bit further in the water I saw the reflection of my brother, now standing in the middle of the river, his own eyes looking back up at him. His feet were barely submerged, so we knew there couldn’t be anything hiding under the water yet the longer we were staring at that beautiful mirage, the more it seemed like something was there. Something that was hidden behind that intriguing reflection and spying at us, all we had to do was see past the surface of the water. My brother kept muttering; it’s watching us from the waters, there is something in the waters, but I can’t see it.
Before he knew it, he lowered his head, lured in by the promise of discovering what was underneath the surface of the water. At that point he was already kneeling in the stream, but he was not wet in the slightest, nor was there a trace of mud on his pants. Then at last, his head disappeared past the reflective barrier, submerged past his neck, deeper than shallow water would ever allow.
That was when I felt the urge to submerge my head in the water as well, to see for myself what was there, past the glimmering reflection, at the bottom of the beautiful river. Who is waiting there for me, who is watching me? I had to know. Both wonder and fear overwhelmed my heart as I readied myself to plunge down there.
But before I could do so, I was awoken from the trance by my mother pulling me to her side. When I came to my senses I saw my father dash through the river, calling out my brother’s name. They asked me where he had gone, that they had been looking for us for hours. I was confused and turned my head to where my brother had stood in the river.
He wasn’t there anymore and when I looked down at the river again, I saw only myself staring back at me.
We left the area the same night. My brother was never seen again and it was assumed he wandered off into the wild and died there of hypothermia or starvation. But I knew better, I even warned them. Something was watching us from the depths of that shallow river, something was in the water and it took my brother.
But no-one believed me.
There was no body for the casket, only a picture, staring at us from behind the protective glass of the photo frame, like a prison keeping his image sealed away forever. During the funeral it almost felt like he was watching me from underneath the surface of the photo, his piercing gaze luring me away from my seat. Even when they buried him, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling he was watching me. At one point I even felt the sudden urge to see what was behind the glass of the picture frame, past the photo. After all, a photo is nothing but a reflection frozen in time and I craved its secret.
For years it plagued my mind. Every window I passed, every river I crossed, every mirror I looked into, all I wanted to know was what lay past their reflection. During the day and at night, my mind was plagued by the same question: what was there looking back at me.
But I can’t handle it anymore, the pills stopped working and everyone else has moved on. Not me, I have to see what’s there. I can’t go another restless night awake in fear, lying in my own sweat.
Tonight I will return to the river and I will find the truth there. To whoever reads this, I suggest you do the same. Because you can only be sure something is there when you’ve seen it and only then will you be able to be at peace.
Something is watching us from the waters, I swear it.