Part One
When I was seven, the weird smell started. I was still waking up near the lake, but it was happening less frequently. Though it had already completely stopped for Jace. It started for him shortly after it started for me, I was jealous that he could have a calm night’s sleep while I kept waking up in the cold. I also started having nightmares shortly after I turned six, but to this day I’m unable to recollect them.
Like every summer, it was searingly hot. We were used to it though, me and all of my siblings would go out to the lake. Kaylee was the one watching us, she never participated. “Child’s Play” is what she called it — she was nearly an adult, after all. But the rest of my siblings joined, Alex, who was thirteen, didn’t seem to mind playing with us. We’d have water fights, as I mentioned. But we also used stones, sticks and various other materials from the ground to build walls in the shallow parts of the lake. The walls had multiple purposes in our games of pretend, sometimes they were used as hide-outs when we played soldiers, other times they were the walls of our home as we played family. Maybe it was weird, to play family, since we were actual family, but we still liked doing it.
My other sister, Sarah, was two years older than me, and she often took reign on what and where we played. We just let her — even Alex, who was older — since we knew Kaylee would pick her side, and we didn’t want to get in trouble. It didn’t matter too much though, Sarah had a great imagination, and it didn’t really matter what we played, as long as we got to cool down in the water.
The best way to describe the horrid smell was a mixture of rotten eggs and the expired meat at the bottom of our fridge. The smell didn’t come from nowhere, or everywhere, but from an extremely specific spot of the woods. The smell was worse on the first day, but after a few days we became desensitized to it, it went from vomit inducing to something that just made you feel a little nauseous and dizzy when you stay around it too long.
“Shit. What’s that smell?” Kaylee mumbled, whispering her curse, but we did hear it, causing us to let out a string of giggles — we were all still at the age where cursing was funny. She stood up from the bench with a scrunched-up face, clutching her cellphone.
“Do you guys smell that?” she asks, walking closer to the edge of the lake where we were making our walls, she crouches and looks at us. Her face still scrunched up.
I lifted my head up and inhaled, short and quick, the smell hit instantly and my nose scrunches up, I shudder. It was weird that I didn’t smell it before Kaylee noticed it. I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I inhaled once again, this time deeper, only this time I gagged, nearly throwing up in the water beneath me.
“How long has that been here?” Sarah asked, getting out of the lake.
“What is it?” interjected Jace.
Kaylee bit her lip, looking around and trying to see if the smell was coming from something around the lake. But, as soon as she found nothing — as soon as she figured out that it came from behind the trees — she dejectedly shook her head. We weren’t necessarily afraid of the woods, we played in it nearly every day, I think it’s because we never had the clear pictures that I have now. I can’t speak for all of my siblings, but to me, the woods gave me a feeling of wariness, like if I wandered too far away, something bad would happen. I tried not to stray from the lake — it was like a protective instinct.
“I don’t know.” Kaylee started, walking away from the bench. “I’m not sitting near it, though.” she said, sitting down on the grass on the opposite side of the lake. She looked back on her phone. We all followed her, not wanting to be near the smell either.
“What do you guys think caused it?” Jace asked as he swam towards Kaylee, following the rest of us, who walked on land.
“Maybe…The Teens had a food fight?” Alex suggested with a grin on his face. He was starting puberty, and suddenly the teenagers of the neighborhood seemed cooler to him than ever. Nearly every sentence he said started with “The Teens”. We didn’t have many interactions with them, causing him to see them as more mysterious and cooler.
“Why would they do that in the woods?” Sarah asked, annoyance clear in her tone. Though she was younger than Alex, she was more mature and quick-witted.
I looked over at Kaylee, while Alex and Sarah kept arguing about whether or not The Teens could have possibly had a food fight. I wanted to see if she was going to investigate on what was causing the smell, but she didn’t seem interested as she typed quickly on her phone, her nails clicking loudly on the screen.
“Kay? Can I take a look?” I asked, usually I wasn’t a child who often asked for permission, usually I just did what I wanted to do with hopes that I wouldn’t get in trouble. But, as I said, I had a feeling of wariness surrounding the woods, it made me feel like I should ask for permission. For my own good. Secretly, I hoped she’d say that she was going to do it herself.
“No, you can’t.” she answered, without even looking up at me.
“I don’t think The Teens would play with rotten food.” Jace interrupted, finally causing Alex and Sarah’s argument to stop. They started getting sticks and stones for new wall in silence.
We kept going to the lake after that, but we made sure not to get too close to where the smell was coming from. When we were near, we felt nauseous and dizzy due to how gross it was. Kaylee even started bringing a jacket so she wouldn’t have to sit on the bench, and she thought sitting on the floor was disgusting. That’s how bad it was. The first week or two, we didn’t do anything against it, but the question of what it was lingered on our minds,
We couldn’t stay away for too long though; we were once again playing in the lake. This time we were swimming, Kaylee was supervising us again. But she was, as always, engrossed in her phone.
“I can’t handle that smell.” Sarah mumbled after she came up from under the water.
“Neither can I.” I said as I splashed Jace with water as he tried coming close to me with a wet, gross-looking stick.
“Maybe we should see what it is…it can’t be that bad.” Alex said, getting out of the lake and heading towards the smell, I grabbed his ankle before he could take even one step more.
“Kaylee said we couldn’t!” I whisper-yelled, pulling him back towards me. This nearly caused him to fall backwards, I let him go and he grabbed his shirt from the grass, pulling it over his head.
“I’m going to check it out.” he stated determinedly. Sarah got out of the lake first, then Jace, and then finally I got out after moments of consideration. We all pulled our shirts on, I was sure we all felt the same — like we couldn’t let anyone go alone. I looked over at Kaylee and hoped that she would notice is and ask what we were doing, but she didn’t look up from her phone even once. I don’t remember the last time she went an hour without it. I believe that Alex was the only one brave enough to start this because he was old enough to stop being afraid of the weird things that happened. Kaylee was like that too. It seemed like the older you get, the more you forget about all of it. When she found me when I was five — she seemed so casual about it, almost unconcerned.
“Maybe we can clean it up.” Jace said innocently.
“I’m not cleaning the mess of others.” Sarah snapped, tying her hair in a short ponytail.
“Well, if we don’t do it, we have to keep dealing with this disgusting smell. It’s probably expired food that someone threw out.” Alex voiced as he started walking away in the direction of the smell. We all followed him. Sarah was hot on his trail, I could tell they both wanted to be the leader of this “investigation”, like they always wanted to be.
“So…we’re going to clean people’s expired food?” she asked exasperatedly, I could tell she was rolling her eyes. I looked at Jace, lifting my eyebrows, which caused him to shake his head with a chuckle. It seemed like Jace and I were the only two of our siblings that never argued.
“They probably put it in bags, why are you always so dramatic? If you want to keep smelling it, go back to Kaylee.” Alex snapped.
“Stop it.” I said when I noticed that Jace wouldn’t stop them. I looked back over my shoulder at Kaylee, to make sure that she really didn’t notice us walking away towards the smell, into the trees. Nothing was in sight yet, the smell did get increasingly get worse with every step we took.
It took us a few minutes to find it, that horrid smell now before us. It was in a clearing that I’ve never seen before, the sight was disgusting and the stench even worse. I gagged once again, only this time a little bile did come out. It’s difficult to describe what we’ve seen. They were bugs, not only bugs — a handful of hares. There were so many bugs, laying crushed and unmoving on the forest floor. They were about the size of a dime and were brown in color. The egg smell seemed to have come from them, but it was hard to distinguish. I could barely look at the hares, their coats stained and crusty from blood that was seeping from unidentified wounds.
“I’m not cleaning that!” shrieked Sarah as she turned away, her hand clamping around her nose and mount to keep the smell out. God, I can’t express the real terribleness of the smell with just words alone. Before I knew it, Jace had turned around and started running back from the lake, Alex followed. Only Sarah and I stayed.
“I didn’t know we had hares.” I mumbled, not knowing what else to express. Sarah groaned and I turned around too, moving to stand closer next to her.
“That’s what you’re worried about? Who would do this?” she asked, I could see the sadness in her eyes. Sarah loved animals, bonded with them easily, so I could imagine that the sight would have been very upsetting for her. Not like it wasn’t for me, but I didn’t feel a connection with every animal I came across.
It took us a moment to collect ourselves. Then, we also started running back to the lake too. When we came back, Kaylee had noticed we were gone. She was mad at us, nearly yelled about how she told us not to go out and see. She didn’t ask what we saw. We didn’t try to tell her. We promised never to wander away again, investigation wasn’t our thing, we all told each other.
The smell never left my nose, neither did the sourness of the bile that came up my throat. The smell disappeared during spring, but it came back every summer.
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