The Lake House

Prologue

One year earlier.

The view from the last floor of that twenty-five-store building placed was somewhat magnificent. With broad green areas surrounding it, with parks and localized commercial areas, it provided a magnificent quality of life to its residents. Its location was perfect, in between the suburbs and its quietness, and the city center and its agitated life. Calmness and restlessness. An intermediary state between more of one, and less of the other, without knowing exactly which of them. He knew what he wanted, although he had no courage to go after it.

But maybe now.

Christian stood from the gray leather sofa that took a great part of the balcony. Fighting his way through the several plants and flowers that his wife loved to the culture there, he reached the metal and glass rail that separated him from the world under. He took a look from up his floor, glancing towards the street that cut the view down from there. A few trees down there that were recently trimmed, some cars that occasionally passed from one side to the other, crossing its extension without wondering what was happening up there.

For the past year or so he had been stuck at home, most of the time, while life continued its normal course outside. His life, on the other hand, changed drastically when, after so many years of excessive efforts to build a good life for him, together with his wife, resulted in a sudden appearance of acute stress disorder symptoms. Although he couldn’t perceive it, his wife was the first one to start dragging him to an extensive list of different doctors. A thing that he would never do, he was always excessively busy for it.

It turned out that she was right. During one of those nights where he was working until late in one of their restaurants, Christian simply snapped, falling from the stairs that would lead to the basement where the restaurant used to keep their production inputs. He was found by one of the employees, over a pool of blood that was coming from a cut on his head.

Now, months later after his wife obligated him to step down from his daily activities, fearing for his own life, he was there, waiting for the news he thought he would never hear. They will sell everything and move somewhere away, a place that is calm and where they can find the balance they always needed in their lives.

He inclined a bit further over the rails, taking a look at the floors beneath. Some of them with glass windows, others with nets, and many with leaves from eventual plants sticking outside.

Nothing that could stop me from a fast and painless fall.

A short breeze against his face made his hair move in a similar movement to the surrounding plants. It felt comforting, almost so inviting as if bringing the news of a better solution for all of that. And he indeed could only see one solution for his strange feelings. To end what was growing inside him.

Christian placed one foot over the vase close to the rails, standing and projecting most of his torso out of it. He looked down while his heart continued to beat normally, not even a second thought about what he was about to do, nor his own body trying to save him from committing that mistake. Once closing his eyes, and taking a deep breath, he took the courage of doing what he was desiring for such a long time.

I want to get rid of this emptiness. This feeling of being nothing, of feeling nothing.

“Christian?” a voice called from far away, close to where he was, coming from under him, “what are you doing there? Are you losing your mind?”

With one eye open, he looked down, to the neighbor’s terrace, where a head was piping out of it. The neighbor just under their apartment – if he was not mistaken, her name was Angela. Not that he could remember much from the recent building gathering —, asked with a warning tone while he placed his hands back over the rail and snorted with displeasure.

“Ah, I didn’t see you there. No… nothing. I mean, I was watering the plants and tried to enjoy a bit of the fresh air. Why do you ask?”

Her reply took a moment to come, but it was just as he expected.

“I suggest you keep watering the plants away from the rail, or you will fall.”

I wish, he thought.

“And make me a favor, please try to keep the volume down. I find it very disturbing to hear the movies with gunfire every single afternoon. I can barely hear my TV shows.”

Christian stepped down from the vase and placed his head over the rail, delicately bumping it against the cold metal piece that tried to protect him from his thoughts. That idea, that desire, it was something that was chasing him for so long, such a long time.

“Sure, I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry.”

The old lady left the balcony, with a grump after his reply, and almost immediately after he could hear the thud after her door was closed.

“Hey, how are you feeling today?”

A more familiar voice called him, this time from behind his back. He straightened up quickly while recognizing the voice of his wife.

“Sure. I was only trying to enjoy a little here. What good news you bring?”

“It worked, it’s done.”

Those words hit him strongly on his stomach, feeling like a punch given by her without any sort of warning. After everything that was happening to him, his wife decided that it was a good idea to end that chapter in their lives and start a new one somewhere else. They had put so much effort into building their assets, and their chain of restaurants, and because of a small speed bump, we are selling everything. He couldn’t believe that all his effort was being wasted, thrown away, at such a quick pace.

But he couldn’t say much, it was an ultimatum on her part, and he had succumbed to the unending appeals.

“So… you sold our chain to Regis?” he said, in such an unenthusiastically way that her wife lifted her eyebrows in disbelief, “He must be cheering right now.”

Regis was one of those fierce competitors, one which placed every single of his restaurants on the exact opposite side of the street where he and his wife build theirs. Not only that, for the past twelve years he had been trying to copy their strategy on pricing and sauces almost without having second thoughts. And in the end, he got what he wanted. That annoyed Christian, much more than working days or even weeks without a break, much more than having a mental breakdown, more than being found without consciousness and all wet from his urine.

Clara looked serious at her husband, not even trying to hide her satisfaction with the lack of will to take care of himself. “I think this isn’t exactly the topic for us to discuss, right? We have been through this so many times, it is done. Now…” she paused for a while.

“Now… what?”

“I got a proposal from that university close to the lake region that we’ve been discussing. Do you remember? Anyway, we can move there and start fresh in a place where we have no strings attached, and with a calmer lifestyle. Just like your therapist recommended to us.”

“Awesome news!” He cheered together with her, but on his mind, he had only one thought: Hey, great… now I will kill myself of boredom…

“In any case, we still have a couple of months to organize our things before moving. We have to put the apartment to rent, organize things with our accountant, and so on.”

The city, their lives, and whatever he could find to do there, would be everything new. All their memories, good or bad, would be left behind, and they would need to rediscover how to rebuild whatever they wished to have. Christian could only nod affirmatively while his wife, as excited as she was, continued to talk uninterruptedly during the next few minutes.

Chapter X

The impact against the bushes was harder than anticipated. His mind tried to recompose after the short – although intense – fall from the second-floor window of that godforsaken house. Luckily, the bushes appeared strategically positioned under it for that special occasion, waiting patiently during all its existence for him to fall over it. Easing his descent as well as they could, enabling him to land safely over his back.

He quickly glanced over the crown of the bush he landed over. Using his right hand to grope around, genuinely desiring to find the stock of his rifle, with his mind almost in sheer panic when he couldn’t sense it at first tries. Christian immediately lifted his torso while searching for the best way to escape that entangling condition. He had no time to waste, not a single second, and that would be his single chance to flee alive from there. Gladly, he had a pleasant surprise, spotting one small part of the gray stock, which projected itself distinctively in contrast with the green and white mixture that covered the bus, and surrounded it.

With vigor, he grabbed it. His life depended on it – and it wasn't a euphemism to affirm it, given the latest events. Christian rolled to the side, falling on his fours and, immediately after standing, running until reaching the shore of the small island, where the house had been erected. He had to continue running, hoping to find his freedom out of there.

From his left, a short path through the lake, one with its frozen surface, led him straight to the woods. From his standing point, it would lead to the backyard of his house. Where previously had fallen into the water – not solely during that strange dream from days earlier – leaving a massive crack in the ice. The last thing he remembers from it was being seized and dragged back inside that house. Towards his right side, a shorter path through the frozen surface. Equally dangerous as the former, with a long way through the woods, leading to an adjacent neighborhood closer to the city center than to his house.

He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, turning towards his right side without considering a second time the dangers of sprinting over that frozen lake, cracking loud as a thunderclap after each inattentive and desperate step of his. After crossing no more than three hundred meters, Christian glanced back. Although he tried to be cautious enough, he slipped from time to time over the ice, wishing not to break the ice and get dragged underwater once more. His face became serious as he witnessed right there, at the shore from where he just fled, the terrible vision that was hunting him all that time.

Her haunted eyes fixed over him. With her hands closed tight, and her appearance even more menacing than ever.

He felt exhausted, weak, and soaked. His extremities hurt, caused by the cold wind and the water. Even more, he was scared – frightened by dying, fearful of not returning home, of lacking the strength to fight for his survival.

Yes, he felt horrified by everything he had lived until he arrived in that city, from what that person became to him, and for what she could do if had the chance of getting anywhere near him again. That cold touch, so soft but at the same time empty, only a corpse could be. He had never imagined sensing something like it. Also with it came the feeling of desolation, one of his life and will to keep living being ripped out of his own body by sheer force, leaving him with nothing to chase, to fight, making nothing left of him.

With heavy breathing, panting incessantly, and with pain commencing to show its marks, pinching, scratching, twisting his lower back muscles, it was inevitably impeding him to advance even further at any sort of pace. He knew that he would have to make that decision. Now it wasn’t just a matter of keeping up to his values at that point, it was for the sake of his survival, his, and his family, as far as he knew. While bringing the rifle to his chest height during the run, he formulated all the steps we had been practicing after he first bought that weapon during those short months living there. And so he perfectly executed it. Getting down on my knees, rifle up, firm to my shoulder, take a deep breath and hold it, point and… he hesitated, shortly, while aiming with the red dots marking over her head, and… and… fire!

The loud bang followed, strong, and sharp, as he was already gotten used to after so many times practicing. The recoil pushes his shoulder backward with strength, almost making him lose the balance over his knee in contact with the ice beneath. He lowered the gun for a millimeter or two, taking a better vision of his target, waiting patiently for her destiny to be sealed. One, two, and three seconds later she continued there, standing still, looking at him. With a pale face, Christian knew he would have hit her, that was an easy target, he trained to hit cans and deers at that distance so many times before.

“This… this cannot be,” he gasped while taking a standing position.

He wasn’t sure if his heart was pounding faster and stronger of the fear of dying, or of the fear that she was still alive. He pushed the lever forward, ejecting the empty cartridge case that fell over the ice, kicking once or twice before the heat of its metal enclosure finally melted a bit the thin ice layer beneath it. It submerged into its extension and, who knows, towards the darkness that lived at the bottom of that lake, hiding things he wished to have never seen during his lifetime.

Nervous, he loaded the next bullet into the barrel by bringing the lever back to its firing position. Rifle up once more, hold the breath, point, and… fire! Even though knowing his mind could be tricking him, he swore to see the bullet passing through her and hitting the now – strangely – not-so-white wall from the house behind. While lowering the muzzle towards the ground his countenance became serious, with his mouth ajar, his eyebrows frowned while he took notice of the scene developing in front of him.

That house was now almost entirely in ruins, the walls, roof, and its surroundings were no longer of the same vigor and liveliness as from previous days when he first saw it. Also, from previous hours during which he was held captive in its interior – no, it appeared deserted, abandoned, left to its faith for much longer than would be possible if anyone was living there.

It couldn’t be real.

Christian could only now witness that she was moving fast toward his direction, each step bringing that creature closer to his standing point, closer to what she desired and would inevitably get. Tears began to roll from his eyes once realizing his faith, but it wouldn’t impede him from compulsively reloading his rifle, pointing towards her head and firing, repeating the movement once, a second, third, and finally a fourth time.

That last movement of reloading ejected the cartridge case right in front of his feet, which, by his quick calculations, would be the last one. He kept the rifle aimed at her head, shaking uncontrollably in fear, while the tears coming from his eyes blurred his vision.

They slightly froze during its race downwards from over his cheek, quickly blinking, trying to get rid of it and gaining back the sight over her. Applying pressure over his fingertip against the trigger while it resisted being brought to the end. When it happened, he was only gifted with the hollow sound of the hammer hitting the end of his course. That hollow click hit him hard, like a ringing bell over a church’s tower signaling that his end was near, inevitable.

He wasn’t sure if it was by the pure despair, or deep in his mind he only sought reassurance, but he pressed it again, and again and again while she approached. This time her long and dark fingers were visible, clearly stretching from under the sleeves of her white and delicate dress, long, sharp, and bloody nails projected out of it.

Although not wanting to believe it was the end, as closer, as she got, he noticed the change in her eyes. The once green like the woods around, when not covered by layers of snow that fell almost daily. Now dark like the darkest nights he ever saw during his life, or like the depths of the lake beneath his feet.

There, standing against her, against all odds of continuing to be alive, he felt like the end was sealed for him. He could only think about his family, about what he had done. About how sorry he was for all of that.