As Below, So Above

Jake ponders how he got to this point as he drives through the town he has lived in for the last seven years. He barely recognizes it. The once safe and sunny, summer community on the ocean has become riddled with shopping cart cities. Poor souls with hollow eyes and their lives in garbage bags slung over their shoulders wander the streets looking for anything to take their pain away.

How did it get here? How did I get here? Jake's thoughts transition to his own somber circumstances. Two months prior, his wife of eleven years left him. Can’t say he blamed her; it was a miracle their marriage lasted as long as it did. He was a distant shell of a human being and even after her many pleas for him to connect with her, to make an effort, to look her in the eyes, he was still not able to. Besides, that’s what women did, they left. His mother left when he was four never to return. His parents’ relationship was rocky and after their final fight she tore off in the family’s 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Rumours circulated, in the small town he was brought up in, that his father had murdered his missing mother. Although his father was an angry and withdrawn man, Jake never believed he was capable of doing such a thing. After his mother’s disappearance he was sent to live with her parents who spoke little English and were unaffectionate and rigid. He learned he was alone in the world at an early age.

His thoughts are disrupted with sirens quickly approaching from behind him. He pulls to the side and lets the ambulance pass. “Another OD,” he mutters to himself.

Jake pulls into the water fill station. He lugs his two empty jugs in and directs them under the fill spouts. As he waits for the five gallons of filtered water to drain into their containers, he notices a newspaper sitting on the railing next to the water fill station. It’s open to the classifieds section. A small box surrounds a rental ad for a “fixer upper” on Arrow Lake, about four hours east of his current residence. Underneath the add is a phone number. No photos, more than a fixer upper I bet. He takes the paper and his water jugs and heads back to his old navy blue F150. He sits in the driver’s seat, grabs his phone on impulse, and dials the number from the ad. As the phone rings it dawns on him that it is strange a paper with an ad for a house four hours away would make it to his local water fill station. He takes it as a sign and after the fifth ring an old lady’s voice answers.

“Hello, Edna here.”

“Hi there, I’d like to inquire about your rental ad for the house on Arrow Lake.”

There is an uneasy pause. “Oh yes,” Edna replies.

“Is it still available?”

“Well, yes, yes it is. How soon can you move in?”

After a surprisingly quick and simple conversation Jake hangs up the phone as he realizes that he has just made the decision to move into this “fixer upper” hours away without even seeing the house and without the slightest idea of what he is getting himself into. The rent is incredibly cheap, especially for a lake front property, and even though he will be required to maintain and fix the house up it can’t be worse than living in his leaky camper from the eighties for the winter. Can it? Plus, a change will be good.

Three days later Jake finds himself driving on the edge of the steep banks above Arrow Lake through the small community of Copperton. The house is a thirty-minute drive past the town and down the banks—if you could even call it a town. This is going to be a pain in the ass to drive in the snow.

It is indeed a “fixer upper.” A moss-covered roof drips over the web filled frame of the small cottage. A feeling of regret overcomes him. He parks his truck and camper and approaches the railing free stairs leading up to the crooked doorway. A gust of wind blows past him rattling the shingles.

“Jaaaaake”

Jake whirls around. A woman’s voice? No, just my head playing tricks on me, he reasons.

He decides to head down to the lake first as he has a hunch this will be the only good thing about the property. Overgrown birch and aspen line an almost completely overgrown path. Fall colours have made their appearance and the inconsistent gusts of wind blow the leaves from the trees onto the mossy floor. He finally comes to a clearing. The lake is stunning. Greenish-blue coloured waves roll toward the rock covered shore as the late afternoon sun casts sparkling rays onto the surface of Arrow Lake, one of the deepest lakes in the province. He breathes in. Yes, he thinks as a feeling of contentment comes over him, this is the reason I’m here.

Back at the house he makes his way in and explores the small two room cottage. Mouse excrement and foliage debris litter the floors. He sighs as he realizes how much work this is going to be. A single bed sits in the corner of the smaller room and a small camp stove with a tiny tank of propane sits on a small wooden table surrounded by two shaky wooden chairs in the larger of the two. Some upgrade from camping. There is nothing but an old wood stove to keep the place warm as the fall days turn into winter. He remembers the feeling of contentment he had while standing by the lake and with that small push of inspiration he builds a fire with some old logs piled beside the stove and settles in for the night.

The next day Jake travels the thirty minutes up the bank of Arrow Lake to Copperton. There’s a small shop with limited amenities including food, booze, and gas. The door chimes as he enters alerting the cashier, a lady with a long white ponytail in her mid-fifties and a scruffy, dark, bearded younger man who leans on the counter talking to her. They immediately go silent and he ignores their stares as he shuffles down the three unimpressive aisles collecting instant noodles and various other easy cook items. Lastly, he pulls a six pack of the cheapest lager he can find out of the fridge at the back and heads to the till. The cashier gives him a half smile as she starts to ring through his sad bunch of items.

“Yur the new fella living down at ol Edna’s place ay?”

“Yes mam,” Jake replies.

“How’s it been?” She looks at him with an unsettling curious stare.

“It’s… cozy.” He glances away from her prying eyes.

“Nothing strange?” She inquires.

“Um… nope.” He can hear the uncertainty in his voice as he remembers the voice he heard on his arrival.

“Alright, well you keep your wits about ya,” she stares at his beer. “That place has got a curse on it. No ones lived thur in years. Not even ol Edna will go back thur. Sad really, er ole family use ta spend summers up thur. Hell, the whole town use ta spend summers up thur. We use ta get inta all kinds of trouble…” She trails off, then as if being slammed back into the present she abruptly stops and looks into his eyes. “You be careful ya hear?!”

Jake nods and leaves the store with his supplies.

As he drives back to his new home, he replays the conversation with the cashier in his head. It never crossed his mind before, but he thinks about how “ol Edna” left the key for the cottage with directions at the local post office rather than meeting him at the property and asked for the rent to be dropped there as well. He had just assumed it was easier for the old lady and that maybe she did not drive. The Copperton town folk seem to stop and stare as he drives by. I’m just new; it’s a small boring town and they’ve got nothing else going on. He reassures himself.

It’s getting dark as he arrives back home. Jake builds a fire, slurps some instant noodles, chugs a couple of brewskis, and crawls into his sleeping bag in front of the wood stove where he falls into a buzz induced sleep.

“Jaaaake… Jaaaaaaake.”

Jake sits up abruptly in his sleeping bag. All that’s left of his fire are a few glowing embers. It must be at least two in the morning. He gets up and opens the cottage door to the darkness. A sliver of moon casts eerie shadows across the trees as a gust of wind whisks past his sleepy face. Nothing there. He turns back inside and begins to shut the door.

“Jaaake.”

He whirls around and looks into the nothingness. He pauses for a moment then grabs his jacket and an old green lantern and hesitantly walks out into the night. Nothing! No voice, just wind.

“This is stupid,” he mutters. “Stupid, stupid.” Yet he keeps walking towards the overgrown path that will take him to the lake.

The path opens onto the stone covered beach to reveal the moon’s reflection in the glimmering lake. He sighs. “Beautiful. At least this is worth getting up for.” He is about to turn back when he hears the woman’s voice again, closer than before. Maybe it’s just the sound of the wind? It seems to be coming from a group of boulders on the far side of the beach jutting out over the lake.

He walks towards them determined to prove to himself that there is nothing there. Jake lifts himself onto the smallest rock and climbs towards the edge of the largest boulder overlooking the water. He nervously peers into the lake below about two feet down from where he stands. Gentle waves lap up against the bottom of the rock. He admires the beauty of the lake once more as it ripples in the moon light below him.

What is that?! Beneath him in the deep blue a clump of dark hair slithers towards the surface. Without thinking he bends down to grab it from the water. A forceful gust hits an unexpecting Jake from behind knocking him off balance and headfirst into the lake below. Surprised by the fall his open mouth absorbs gulps full of water before his brain instructs him to close it. He scrambles to get right side up and frantically reaches for the moonlight. Just as he is about to surface, he feels cold icy fingers wrap around his ankle. Jagged nails dig into his flesh as the hand yanks him down. He waves his arms frantically struggling to be released, but it’s too late the death grasp is too powerful. It drags him down into the darkness. Deeper… deeper. His struggle begins to weaken as he loses air and his lungs fill with water. Down he goes. As his mind begins to calm, he notices a deep dark hole almost like a cave underneath the rocks. What a strange place, he thinks to himself as everything begins to slow down… down… down. A beam of light, perhaps from the moon, lights up the cave. Would the moons light reach this far down? Then he sees it. The outline of a car roof, tucked away under the rock like a watery parking garage. He sinks slowly towards the remnants until his feet touch the silty ground and his head is level with the glassless car window. The calm is replaced with terror. Sitting inside the driver’s seat of the car is the shell of what was once a person. Patches of dark hair float from the skull and empty eye sockets gape out at him. Its mouth is propped open as if in an eternal scream. He catches a glimmer of light from something hanging from the skeleton’s neck. He opens his mouth to scream.

Jake wakes up to the sound of gentle waves brushing over the smooth beach stones. The sky is pink as the sun begins to make its way up and over the mountains. Am I alive? His lungs burn too badly not to be. His eyes are blurry, but he makes out a pile of vomit beside him and becomes aware that he is laying on his stomach on the rocky beach soaked to the bone and freezing cold. Emotion overcomes him as he realizes he somehow dodged deaths grip.

Three days later Jake watches from the rocky shore as a tow truck struggles to pull the car he discovered from its watery grave. Two wet suited divers surface as the top of the car emerges. It is so caked with silt he can’t even make out the colour of the vehicle. The cables are attached to the back and he turns away before he can look into the driver’s side window even though he knows the remains have already been removed respectively by the crew of divers and first responders.

Hopefully she found some peace, he thinks and shutters at the thought of what happened three nights prior. He has no memory of how he got to the surface, but he is sure he did not imagine the cold hand grasping his ankle and pulling him down. Jake grew up by the ocean and was an exceptionally strong swimmer; there’s not a chance he would have just sunk like that. Yet his mind continues to try to find some justification for what happened. He certainly couldn’t tell anyone about it, they would think he was crazy. He had simply told the small-town sheriff the morning after the incident that he had went on an early morning swim where he discovered the accident scene while diving down to explore the lakes bottom.

Jake stopped hearing the woman’s voice after that night and he began to move on from the traumatic event. About a week later, as he finishes up some work on the front stairs of the cottage, his phone rings.

“Sheriff Dan here. Any chance you can come down to the station today? I got some news I think you should hear in person.”

At the station Jake sits in the sheriff’s office waiting for him to deliver the mysterious news. His hands are clammy and he picks at a nail nervously. Sheriff Dan enters and sits down across from him. He seems just as uneasy as Jake feels.

“Jake… we ID’d the woman in the vehicle you found.” He clears his throat. “Her name was Maddison Sutcliffe.”

Jake’s eyes widen.

“It appears she matches the missing person report from forty years ago of… your mother.” The sheriff looks down.

“Um…” Jake stammers.

“She may have swerved to miss something on the road or looked down at the radio? The night she was reported missing was recorded as a stormy one. There isn't much of a baracade off the highway in that spot and it looks like she may have only rolled a couple of times before the car—There wasn’t much left after being in the water for so long, but I thought you might like to have this.” He hands over a silver locket to Jake.

Jake opens it up. The picture is no longer in the locket, but there are initials engraved on the inside. “J.S.” They are his initials. A foggy memory passes through his mind of his mother kissing him on the top of his head. Her long, dark hair falls around his face and the silver locket glimmers as it sways past his gaze. He realizes this was the last time he saw her before she left.

As Jake drives home, he fiddles with the locket in his pocket. The late fall sun has already set and the dark brings with it an ever-increasing down pour of rain. He turns up the speed on his wipers. He is relieved the day is over and he can return to his sanctuary. For the first time, maybe ever, he feels he is not alone in the world. He never was one for religion, but now he couldn’t deny that his mother reached him from… well, wherever and guided him to find her and finally lay her to rest. She had always been with him; she had never left him that day when he was four, when she walked out the door. She was always going to come back for him. A little smile comes over his face and he lets out a sigh as he feels the weight of his world lift from his shoulders. Maybe I do have a future aft—

Screeeeeech! Jake slams on his breaks as a woman with long, dark hair appears through the thick rain, standing in the middle of the road. He can’t stop as the wheels hydroplane over the water filled ruts. I can’t stop… I’m going to hit her… He swerves—and then he hears it—the sound of metal twisting, of glass shattering, of his heartbeat in his ears as he rolls over and over again, and finally as he drops off the edge: the voice. Her voice. “Jaaaake. Jake come home.”