The Curse of Still Water Lake

Nearby settlers claimed that Still Water Lake froze over when the winds stopped blowing one winter; that the summer sun never made it over the mountains. More seasoned travelers traded rumors of angry gods and child sacrifices as they passed through the Chippewa trading post at the head of the trail. Jack Fowler considered himself a man of science and reasoned that talk of the unthawing lake was either rancid scuttlebutt or a greatly exaggerated climatological oddity. His older brother, however, believed wholeheartedly in phantoms of every shape and sort.

Both men held to their position with pride, with the result that they now found themselves knee-deep in snow and unsure of the exact moment when they lost the trail. It was a frigid winter night, and the waxing moon shone down on them through layers of leaves and needles. Jack could almost feel the ice crystals in his throat between breaths as he chased his brother up the side of a mountain, panting as he strained to keep up.

“Remind me again why this couldn’t wait until morning?” he gasped.

“She won’t show herself in the light of the sun,” Roger shouted back, his voice muffled by layers of fur and snow.

“So the only way to find your goddess is to trek blindly into the wild and let her kill you? You could have mentioned that before we set out.”

“Umelatt isn’t a killer,” Roger said, stopping so that they could catch their breath together on the ridge. “She’s the opposite: Goddess of Bounty. The key to our dream.”

“I’ve never dreamed of catching my death a thousand miles from home.”

“This will be our home, Jack. No more trapping. No more bartering. We’ll build a whole community right over there and live like kings.”

“Beheaded?” Jack scoffed, letting his sarcasm boil over the wondrous sight of the valley below. It stretched out for miles, ghostly white under the moon but skirted with forests on every side. A gleaming, crystalline lake lay at one end, with an unbroken clearing cascading away to the place Roger pointed. Everything leaned toward the tip of his finger, willing them to build there. The winds died and a surreal hush enveloped them.

“I never said French kings,” Roger chided, clapping his brother on the shoulder. “Come on, she’s supposed to live at the bottom of the lake.”

“I thought that’s where they drowned the kids?”

“A kid. And that’s just a story. I thought you didn’t believe in the legend?”

“I believe people make up stories to cover their sin,” Jack said, shivering as they crept down the hill to the lakeshore. “Why are you happy to trust some ancient force that traded human lives for prosperity?”

“Because I got this,” Roger whispered, delving through the layers of fur and buckskin around his neck to retrieve a wooden amulet. It was hand-carved, a coarse deer with an ornate marble stopper shoved between the antlers. Water splashed around inside as he held it up and shook it for effect, the stone winking in the moonlight.

“Another trinket? What did you trade for this one?”

“Nothing. I found it.”

“Where?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Why won’t you say?”

“Because I know how you’ll react,” Roger shrugged and pushed his way through the snow to the rocky banks of the lake. “Besides, I asked that Indian trapper about it.”

“Of course he did, you probably paid him extra for it.”

“I told you, I found it. And he offered me ten dollars if I left it with him, so it must be real.”

“Ten dollars?!” Jack shouted, his voice echoing across the valley. “We could be sleeping on goose down next to a roaring fire right now. Probably not alone, either.”

“That’s small thinking, Jack. Why pay for a hotel when you could own one? And the whole town with it!”

He turned back toward the lake and ripped the stopper from the statue. The wind picked up, carrying a thousand disembodied voices carried across the valley. The ice cracked and shifted with a thunderous moan, and the moon faded away. Soon, the only light was an ominous blue-green glow beneath the frozen waves.

“Roger…”

“She’s coming, Jack!”

“This isn’t right. Give me the statue.”

“NO!”

“Give it here!”

Jack lunged forward, but Roger had seen this attack countless times before. He held out an arm, just as he had when they were boys, and pushed his brother away. Jack battled through, swinging wildly at Roger’s outstretched arm, but he couldn’t reach the amulet. The pair of them edged forward, the elder dragging the younger until the rocks gave way to ice. Jack pulled hard, wrapping himself around his brother and fighting to drag them both ashore, but it was too late. They collapsed into the frozen lake, the bottle tipping over as Jack made one last desperate effort to seize it.

Crystal-clear water trickled from the spout. More than the statue could have held; slowly at first, then in a rushing torrent. The lake thawed, frigid tendrils of water shoving the men apart. Jack screamed, then gurgled as the lake swallowed him. Everything was black and cold and miserable, as though his very soul had frozen in place. He heard Roger shouting in the distance, and the pain in his chest melted away.

Water cascaded around him again as the lake relinquished its grip, dropping the brothers on the lake floor. It swirled around them, forming a dome that made the valley above refract and contort. And then, from the churning depths, she emerged.

Umelatt was beautiful in a way that defied logic or explanation. Not human, but not animal either. Her features were soft but fierce, and she towered over them like an ancient oak with a crown of horns and antlers. Her hair floated in wild strands around them, woven together with moss and vines and silk that melded with her body, and when she spoke they heard only a chorus of birds and insects.

“ωнσ ѕυммσηѕ υмєℓαтт, тнє вσυη∂ℓєѕѕ σηє?” she sang, the words evaporating through them.

“We… we did,” Roger stammered, pushing himself into a reverent crouch, but shielding his eyes against the cruel reflections of the moonlight in their roiling cage. “Jack and me. I was hoping…”

“уσυ ѕєєк му вℓєѕѕιηg?”

“Yeah… yes, ma’am.”

“αη∂ уσυ нανє ¢συηтє∂ тнє ¢σѕт?”

“I, uh…”

“Cost?” Jack said, glancing at Roger and seeing his panic reflected back.

The goddess turned on him, her hair suddenly ablaze and her eyes smoldering like coals in a dying fire. The chirping of birds and insects rose to a cacophony of agonizing screams and moans as she reached out for him, gnarled and bony fingers materializing in the dark.

“тнє σηє ѕυƒƒєяѕ ƒσя тнє мαηу!”

Her words tore through Jack’s mind as she grabbed him. He reached out to resist, but the loamy lake floor melted away in his hands. He screamed and fought, clods of mud and sand erupting as he snatched desperately at the indifferent earth. The darkness gobbled him up, tendrils of greenery closing over everything until he could see nothing but Roger reaching out to grab his hand, the amulet raised high above his head.

Nature shuddered to a halt as the goddess tossed her head again, her face stretching out of the depths until her doelike nose was inches removed from Roger’s, her hair drifting lazily through the air around them.

“We both emptied the bottle. Jack and Me. Let us take turns. We’ll split our time beneath the lake,” his wide eyes fell on Jack, tears welling beneath them. “Just give me time to get started.”

The ivy closed around Jack’s face, an agonizing chill sweeping through him as the water rushed back over his feet and through his nostrils. He watched his brother fall away, safe from the freezing current, his mouth forming two words again and again: “I’m sorry.”

And then it was quiet. The kind of quiet that assaults the ears, rending them in two. There was nothing but the piercing cold. No breath to catch or heart to beat. Just the creeping flow of time, as seen from deep below the ice. The sun rose and set, too far to be felt and too near to be ignored. It seared itself into Jack’s mind, the only means of marking the years as they marched away from him. Too many passed for him to track, the numbers losing meaning as the pain intensified, but he could see the world leaving him behind.

It started with smoke. The wisps of a single chimney, floating along with the clouds. But over time, the column darkened as Roger built his town. Then came the machines. Big hulking things that shook the earth but never moved the ice. Skeletal towers that belched fire and spat tar, but eventually yielded to glass and steel that reached out toward the stars; glittered just like them, bathing the frozen lake in light long after the sun had beat its path across the sky.

Umelatt was merciless and clever, shifting the pain around so that he could never grow numb to it. Varying it by degrees from day to day. But after half a century beneath the ice, Jack learned to fend off the biting cold with his own searing rage. The hatred scarred his very soul until it no longer nourished the goddess, and she grew weary of his torment. In the summer of 1929, she came to him with an offer.

“ѕєяνє мє,” she chanted, drifting up from the depths. “уσυя ƒяєє∂σм ƒσя 100 ѕσυℓѕ.”

Jack didn’t speak. Didn’t nod. The surge of anger in him was enough. The image of his brother swam through his mind as he washed ashore, the lake slapping playfully against the sand beside him. It was dark, but even in the starlight he could see that his flesh had turned a ghoulish blue; pale as the ice that he smuggled from the lake in his veins.

He left a trail of frozen footprints from the shore to the center of a bustling town full of objects and inventions he couldn’t comprehend. Chief among them, a towering bronze statue labeled:

ROGER FOWLER

FOUNDER, PARADISE FALLS

The plaque at the statue’s feet listed Jack as the first and only casualty of the town's first winter in 1874.

He clenched a fist, icicles sprouting from his knuckles and still-soaking sleeves. Roger hadn't just abandoned him. He had been erased. Covered over. Sacrificed without recognition so that his brother could claim the spoils. This whole thriving city was a monument to Jack’s pain, but his brother had passed in peace, bequeathing it all to a generation of people who never had to bear the burden of knowing why they prospered.

Jack yearned to wrap his icy fingers around the traitor’s neck; to drag him to the depths for his fair share of the deal. But time had stolen vengeance from him, and the nearest option now would be to substitute Roger’s descendants. Generations of men and women, inheritors of their father’s guilt, punished for choices they never truly made. Umelatt demanded them and more in exchange for his freedom. For the preservation of his brother’s crooked deal.

But Jack was not his brother. He knew the cost of this prosperity and found himself without the will to trade it even for a single soul, much less a hundred. No one should endure what he had felt and seen beneath the lake. He couldn't guess how many might perish when the goddess rescinded her blessing, but he knew they’d have the chance to fight for their own success.

He smashed the plaque and, leaving it in frigid chunks behind him, climbed the nearest peak to await the rising sun.