Don't Touch

They say the body that rises from the water is cleansed, but she was covered in filth when they found her.

Her body was floating amongst the cattails, gray and blue and purple and every other color she shouldn't have been.

They told me she had been rotting there for at least two days but that they'd know more once the autopsy results got back.

We didn't learn much, as you could imagine.

For a week straight, I would make the forty-five-minute drive to Lake Cress, sitting on the bank where they found her, in a sort of trance.

I would feel her there when I went. I told her our parents were trying their best. I told her that I knew she waited for me, and that's why I kept going back.

I told her I'd go into the lake, too. If that was what she wanted.

After that conversation, her presence left me completely.

Maybe she was never really there. Maybe I just felt her because I wanted to.

Wishes are powerful things, especially ones that come from the grieving mind.

It had been a month of pain, a month of emptiness, a month of defeat, when the next high school student had been reported missing, a boy about our age. It wasn't uncommon for teenagers to flock to Lake Cress, and it seemed death was just the thing to spur them on. Someone discovered it, and they died because their curiosity got the better of them.

Just like my sister.

The police reported it as another freak accident, but I knew why my sister had died at the lake that night.

I knew I wasn't the only one, either.

"We both know my sister didn't kill herself," I said, sliding into her boyfriend's car after school one day.

"What— Em, you can't just help yourself to other people's cars!"

"You know, and I know. We were both there that night. We know what happened."

"We don't know anything. You need to stop."

"She loved you, Ben. She would have done something stupid for you."

He was quiet after that before he put his head in his hands, squeezing his hair so hard I thought he'd rip it out.

Then he drove away. We cruised for a few minutes before I realized we were pulling into the parking lot of Kurt's, a local family-owned diner.

"We're going to get something to eat. We're going to leave, and we're going to live just like we would've otherwise. We're going to grieve, we're going to be sad, and then we're going to go back to normal because if we do anything else, we'll be the ones floating in that lake."

"You can't be serious."

"You're her little sister. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you."

"You can't promise something like that."

"But I can."

So we did just that.

The other kid who had gone missing was found a couple of days later, just like my sister. It was infuriating, knowing what we knew.

We couldn't go to the police or our parents. This was something no one should have to live with; they didn't deserve that.

Ben gave me rides to and from school. He came over after baseball practice on days he didn't have to work. We wouldn't do anything, not really. It was more companionship than friendship. If we were alone, we'd go crazy, so we'd sit in almost complete silence for hours, watching movies, doing homework. He brought over a console one night, and we played shooters until the sun came up. I wasn't any good, but that didn't matter.

We were surviving. The very best that we could.

No one else went missing. That lake was cursed, and no one wanted to test fate, not with two of us dying there.

Two in total, all in that lake, floating and lifeless and so, very dead.

Ben was a year older than me, like my sister, and graduation meant he was moving away. It was a year of loneliness, a year of running thoughts and buying concealer for baggy eyes. He came home on the weekends, and our relationship went from one of necessity to one that felt warm and kind. He was like a brother, and our parents loved having him around. He was one more thing my sister had loved, and he made them smile in ways that were rare now.

Ways that I never could because when they looked at me, all they felt was fear.

Fear that they would lose me, too.

That's why when he asked me to come and live with him after my graduation night, I did.

I started attending his college, and he helped me with my classes when he could. Ben made sure I left our apartment every few days, even if it was just to buy groceries. I wasn't one for the outside world, and he knew that, so he'd bring me home presents every week or so, a new video game, book, maybe even a CD.

I told him to stop buying me things, but he told me to get better first, and then we'd talk about paying him back.

We both knew he would never let me do that.

My mother called a month or so after I had moved in with Ben with some news I would rather not have heard.

"Baby?"

"Hey, mom. Is everything okay?" She only called me "baby" if something was wrong.

"Another girl went missing this week. I think she was a year younger than you, new to the area. That lake again... They're holding a public meeting tomorrow night in city hall. They want to ban that area; it's too dangerous. It's such a tragedy."

I told Ben about the phone call that night after he came home from his evening class.

"Do you..." I started, not quite able to voice it out loud. "Did we kill those people by not saying anything?"

"No. You can't do that to yourself. Blame me. I told you to be quiet."

"It's not like I wanted to tell anyone anyway. You're giving me an out!" I shouted at him.

Ben just smiled and sighed, pulling me into a hug.

"We need to tell someone," I whispered, and he slowly let me go.

"You were right."

He was so severe all of a sudden, his lips quivering if I looked closely enough.

"We had run off together. She said she found something back in the forest, some kind of hole at the bottom of a tree. The burrow wasn't very big, but I managed to pull out this relic anyways. At least, that's what I think it was, knowing what I know now." He paused after that, catching his breath.

I sat on the couch then, and he walked over to kneel in front of me, smiling shakily as he finally raised his head.

"It took me, first. I felt something push me to the ground, and when I looked up, I saw its face. It was like a shadow, no skin, no hair, but I could tell it was looking at me. It licked my face with its tongue, and it burned as if someone had just poured boiling water all over my cheek. It started dragging me back towards the lake, but then she...she wrenched that stone statue from my hand and held it tight to her chest. The shadow disappeared, and I saw her standing there above me, smiling, right before she dropped to the ground. I tried to reach her, Em, I promise, but it was too quick. It had learned from its mistake with me. I couldn't see it anymore, not without that statue in my hand."

Ben was a good person; I determined then. For the longest time, I had feared he was only taking care of me because he felt guilty. I think that was part of it, but he cared about me enough on his own to tell me the truth about that night.

I just reached for his hand and squeezed it as he sobbed. I cradled his head in my lap, stroking his hair as his body shook. He gripped me tight like he was afraid I'd leave him, too.

"You're saving me now, and that's all that matters," I told him, and he squeezed my hand in response.

We slept on the couch that night, watching one of my sister's favorite movies until we both dozed off.

"We should burn that tree and that thing," I said, nearly with a snarl the following day.

"It will just keep coming back. It drags them in, and once they're dead, it takes it back to the tree and waits. After it pulled her in, I went back there, and it was right where it had been before. Like nobody had even touched it, except the ground was soaked around it. It wasn't until a few weeks later that it was dry again."

"Then we steal the statue. As long as we touch it directly, we can bury it where no one will ever find it."

Ben called our friends who knew the truth, and we all drove back to Lake Cress that weekend, determined to lock it away. There were six of us who made the trip.

Carly was my sister's age. She was still dating her boyfriend at the time, Max, so they came together. She told me that they were still living in the area, going to the local college to save enough money to move out together across the county.

Andreas gave me a hug when he showed up. I hadn't seen him since our graduation, but he'd always kept in touch, even going so far as to call Ben in order to reach me when I'd go off the grid. Caleb showed up soon after, hands in his pockets and apologizing for being the last one to show.

We were all there at least thirty minutes earlier than we had decided, anyways, too nervous to stay away. The need to finish this felt more pressing than our fear. That we all agreed on.

Everyone followed the prediscussed dress code. Long sleeves, gloves, jeans, knee-high socks, and boots. We wrapped scarves around our necks and pulled masks down over our faces. The goal was to cover ourselves completely. Ben's theory was that as long as our skin didn't touch the statue or the tree or the ground around it, that thing wouldn't be able to get us.

It was dark, but the moon, nearly full, gave us plenty of natural light to work with along with our battery-powered flashlights.

Ben said he would do it because he'd touched it once before and knew what it felt like. No one argued.

We made it to the tree, and Ben stared at it for a good five minutes before he bent down in front of the burrow at its roots.

"Ben, are you sure?" Max asked him then, putting a gloved hand on his back for support.

"No more lives lost. That's what we agreed on. I'm doing this. Andreas, the safe."

Andreas and Caleb heaved over a small safe, one with a twisted lock. Caleb told us it was an old safe of his dad's. He had changed the combination with his eyes closed, so no living soul could open it with the lock, even if they found it someday.

It was the best we could do.

Ben reached down into the burrow and pulled out the statue. It was still dripping wet.

"Is it supposed to look like that?" Andreas asked.

"It's vile," Ben muttered before tossing it into the safe, not wanting to hold it a second longer. Caleb slammed it shut and spun the dial. Carly knelt down on the grass beside it and tried to pull it open, but the door was sealed.

"It's done," I said faintly, tears trailing down my cheeks. There was a sigh of relief that passed over the six of us, and then laughs and cheers. Max and Carly were screaming at the sky, clutching each other tightly. It was a morbid party, celebrating our lives because they very well could've ended tonight.

We decided that Lake Cress deserved a break. Caleb's parents had ties to a cruise line, and so the six of us, for a discounted price, took a week-long cruise out into the Pacific Ocean, the largest ocean in the world.

What better place to conveniently drop a locked safe than that?