Frozen Terrors

A boy turns on his side, barely aware of his waking existence until his turning pulls the warm shielding of his blanket from his face. A biting chill jars him awake as cold air creeps across his face and works itself into the top of his clothes. After quickly returning the blanket to its protective place, he tries to work through the fogginess crowding his thoughts. He remembers a party around a fire near a cabin. He remembers the trek deep into the woods, despite the condemnations of departing winter. He remembers the alcohol and a girl and stumbling into a side room with an air mattress. He remembers fumbling and trying to kiss the girl, and the sounds of her sleep before its shade enveloped him too. The boy vaguely remembers rustling and feeling as if on waves chased by distant laughter.

He hears and feels movement on the air mattress next to him. His heart began racing in his chest.

“Ge…Genevieve, is that you?”

The movement stops, “Jacob…what the hell are you doing, why is it so co..”.

Genevieve suddenly sits up, despite Jacob silently reaching out to stop her. The top half of the blankets fly off them both in a sudden movement. The bite of the cold hits them, instantly seeming to set its chill into their bones.

“Oh god, what is going on?”

“I, I don’t know”, Jacob responds.

“Are we, are we in the middle of the freaking pond?”, she asks shaking.

“What”, Jacob sits up in confusion, still feeling the lasting effects of the night, “what are you talking about?”

Sudden realization dawns on Jacob as his eyes adjust to their surroundings in the light of the moon. His eyes follow an anchor rope secured to netting under the mattress, tracing it back to the shoreline

“They put us in the middle of the pond”, Jacob rubs his eyes and shivers, “you were passed out and I must have passed out too, they always do pranks like this”.

Genevieve looks to Jacob with enough heat in her eyes to thaw the ice, yet he still feels another shiver creep up his spine, “Some real great friends you have, Jacob”.

“I wouldn’t say they are friends, honestly I came mostly because I heard yo…”, attempts to say in defensive determination.

“Whatever, I am not sitting out here waiting for the sun” Genevieve says in anger before moving the blanket out of the way and placing one booted foot on the ice.

“Hey wait”

Genevieve ignores him and attempts to stand after pulling her other foot out from the blanket. She stops like a stone statue as the ice beneath her footing lets lose an audible crack.

“Don’t move Gen”.

“Jacob, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to”.

Jacob looks down at the ice and then around the area, to see if the ice is visibly fractured. He begins to look back at Genevieve when something catches his eye. A black section of the ice seems to shift ten feet from the mattress on the opposite side from Genevieve. Jacob tries to focus on the area when he hears something rubbing on the air mattress. He glances back toward Genevieve and notices hers shaking and the pant legs of her snow pants chaffing against the plastic of the mattress. Jacob’s eyes begin to shift back toward the area on the ice that caught his attention.

Genevieve’s shaky voice stops his movement, “Ja…Jacob, does this pond have fish?”

Jacob rolls his eyes, “Nothing that can survive the winter, they stock it some in summer”.

Genevieve’s voice is still unsteady, “Is there anything else, that…that can live under ice?”

Jacob begins to verbally discount her question, when she speaks again, “Because…I…I think there is looking at me..b…below my feet”.

Jacob’s blood seems to run colder then even before. Jacob’s eyes slowly drift to feet when the black ice beneath Genevieve’s feet suddenly blanches white as if the darkness was pulled downward out from it.

Jacob reaches out to pull her back on the bed, while she slowly sits back down.

He shifts closer to her his eyes glued to the ice, “G…guess I was wrong, I don’t know much about fish anyway, I don’t know much about anything”.

“This is stupid Jacob, I just want to get out of here, and leave these stupid woods, and stupid people behind”, Genevieve looks at Jacob sideways, “I didn’t even want to be here in the first place”.

Jacob looks up at her, “I didn’t either, peer pressure and all that”.

Genevieve rolls her eyes, “Yeah, I am sure you were pressure real hard into creeping into a bed with a passed-out girl”.

Jacob flashes red partly with anger, mostly with embarrassment, “It wasn’t like that, you kissed me at the fire...I thought”.

Genevieve turns on him with anger, “What you thought Jacob, is that I was Sarah, or that Sarah was me, either way, that’s a you problem, to which the answer is no, and the solution is getting out of here, so how exactly do we, do that?”

Jacob flushes redder than before, the anger leaves him, but the embarrassment remains.

He looks back to the anchor rope and the faint set of footprints near it, “I think if I walk along the rope to the bank carefully, I can pull you in from there”.

Jacob looks back to his fellow prank victim expending a response but is met only with an impatient stare.

Jacob sighs, “all right then”.

Jacob begins to shift himself to the edge of the bed with the rope.

Genevieve decides on last minute encouragement, “Hey look, I am sorry, just…be careful, ok?”

Jacob nods before planting both of his feet on the ice. He takes a deep breath before standing slowly, listening for the working sounds of shifting ice.

He looks back at Genevieve and attempts a reassuring smile, “All good so far, only forty feet or so to go”.

Genevieve offers a reassuring smile back, but neither of them are sure they believe it. Jacob turns his attention to the task at hand and makes his first step forward. Outside of some mild creaking the ice continues to hold as he begins to take one more, and then another, until his confidence truly begins to return. Jacobs manages to reach a spot about ten feet from the mattress towards the shore when he decides to look back at Genevieve.

“See, just have to be slow and steady”, Jacob’s eyes lock on to her as he speaks and he notices she seems to be more distraught then even before, “hey, Gen what is wrong, I am going as fast as I can”.

Genevieve slowly raises a shaking hand to point towards Jacob, “Jacob, y…your feet”.

Confused Jacob looks down, only to freeze every muscle still in his control, only to notice the trembling ones even more. Where the ice had been white before now shows as black as the night sky even in the full moon’s light. Directly below each of his feet the ice is shadowy black and seems to be expanding. First the two pools grow separately, then connect as one under his right leg. As Jacob starts to shift his weight off the leg the ice gives way beneath it. His leg plunges beneath the ice and into the bone chilling water below. He catches himself from falling in further than just above his knee.

Will trying to ignore the pain of the cold, and Genevieve’s scream, Jacob pushes on the ice with his hands and opposite leg to pull his leg out from the water. He pauses momentarily hearing commotion behind him.

“Gen, calm down, you are going to make it worse over there, I will be fine”.

There is no response from Genevieve but another cry, “Gen I said calm…”.

Jacob is cut short by a sudden sharp pain in his leg, and he momentarily lets it fall back in. The pain worsens for an instant before going numb, and the pressure dissipating. Jacob cries out in pain and frustration before pushing with all his strength and freeing his leg. At first, he does not understand what he sees.

“Gen, there…there is something wrong”.

Jacob sees the blood, and recognizes it, but it takes him a moment to understand what the cause is; a long tear in his winter pant leg shows a deep gash in ankle, and his missing boot reveals two missing toes. Jacob screams again, as he begins to push himself back towards the mattress.

“Gen…Gen there is something in the water!”

Jacob keeps pushing back eyes stuck fact to the hole in the ice his leg had ben in. Jacob only stops when he his hand and rear hit frigid water. Jacob lets out another scream of confusion and terror as he sits in the pooling water and turns to look for the mattress and Genevive only to see the air mattress torn, void of air and sticking half out of another hole in the ice.

Jacob tried to comprehend what he is seeing when shadows move beneath him again. He tried to yell for help, but no sound escapes as the ice beneath him breaks free and Jacob plunges into the freezing water. As the shock settles, Jacob tires to reach for the moon light when a glimmer catches his eye. He looks down to his left to lock eyes with Genevieve. He reaches for her, but she is moving away from her as if being pulled down and away. Jacob reaches for her again but stops short as realization sets in. As Jacob turns himself around, he looks deep into the flickering moonlight water beneath the surface of the frozen pond. And there it was, coiled in the darkness, staring at him without eyes yet with vision unfathomable. Every moment that ever was, is, or ever could be held the creature as witness. Jacob realizes that he was not the first or last, and the creature looks at him as a new puzzle. Jacob’s discovery of this existence hangs in unison with the reality of his fate.