Castle Hill Lake

Detective Anders Josephs received the call in the early hours of Friday morning, Elena Kali, the young author who had recently moved to Castle Hill Lake, was missing. In the dark he stumbled sleepily around his small city apartment to collect his rumpled clothes and gulp down a bitter, cold coffee made yesterday, before groggily heading off in his small, old blue sedan on the long journey to Castle Hill Lake.

By the time he arrived at the lake, the heavy rain had already begun to seep into the old, rusted spots and worn rubbers of his car. ‘Great,’ he thought, ‘now I’m cold to the bone, hungry, and wet, terrific way to start the day,’ he muttered to himself. At least he had almost arrived at the Lake’s only diner, he was dreaming of steaming hot, sweet waffles with maple syrup and strong hot coffee.

The bell above the door rang noisily as he entered the diner, alerting the servers there was a customer to be seen. Mike Swift, the owner, who appeared to be working as both the cook and the server today, ambled his bulky frame slowly over to the counter wiping his deep brow. ‘Help ya detective?’ As the detective placed his order, Mike started to explain that he was a bit short on staff with all the rain coming down and blocking half the roads.

Joe Caine, the new young sheriff in town, suddenly came bursting through the door, his short black curly hair and uniform both soaked, nodded his head in their direction. ‘Morning Mike, ah! Anders! you are here! We’ve found the author's body down by the lake, doesn’t look good big chief, we better get down there before the rain washes everything away.’ Anders sighed heavily, resigned to the fact there would be no hot waffles this morning. ‘Mike, I’ll get that coffee to go please, and one for Joe, it’s going to be a long day.’

As Joe pulled the police cruiser towards the lake, he began to tell Anders of the stories currently going around town about the lake and what was happening to the people in town. According to the stories, there was a legend of a supernaturally cursed mist appearing on Castle Hill Lake. Anyone caught in the mist, would either die very soon after being exposed to it, or disappear altogether.

Anders had never been a superstitious person, he laughed it off as folklore and nonsense. As he exited the cruiser, he walked into the mist surrounding the lake to investigate what happened to the author. He refused to believe in superstition and nonsense. As he approached the lifeless body of Elena, a collage of images flashed into his mind. Images of a woman’s terrified face appeared in the reflection of the water, an old newspaper headline flashed past his vision about a drowning accident, and an old woman ranting about something he couldn't make out.

He shook it off as he examined what looked like four finger shaped bruises on each of the victims ankles, it looked like she had been dragged by the ankles. After photographing the scene and the body removed by the coroner, Anders questioned a few locals living nearby. As he drove wearily back to the city, the clouds were clearing as the sun was already setting on the day. He slept the sleep of the dead as his head hit the pillow that night.

The next morning, he rose and showered for the day ahead of developing and searching through the photos from the previous day. As he was processing the photographs back at headquarters, he noticed something strange that he didn't see when he was there. In the mist around the lake, figures appeared to be gathered around the body of Elena, it looked like they were coming out of the water. One of the figures appeared to be very close to the camera. ‘Not possible,’ he thought.

In the evening, the detective met his sister Donna for dinner at their local Italian restaurant, Milan's, as they usually did every Saturday night since their parents passed away last fall. As they walked back to Anders’s apartment Donna noticed his hands were very cold, and he was an odd shade of grey. ‘Are you ok?’ she asked. ‘I’m fine, stop worrying,’ he chided her. Clearly he was more tired than he thought.

He decided to tell Donna about the investigation, and Joes stories about the mist on the Lake. As they drank their way through a bottle of red wine, he recounted the whole story. Donna became alarmed at the thought she could lose her brother too and offered to drive up to the lake with him. She suggested they could stay together at their parents cabin they had not visited since the accident. Feeling exhausted, Anders agreed the break could do them both some good. Quietly, Donna wondered to herself if they could uncover the meaning behind the strange photographs and stop the curse of the mist before it was too late? Unlike her brother, she did believe in superstition and folklore, and it terrified her.

The cabin was just as they remembered it, the dust had settled on the unused old furniture and the insects had made their homes in every nook and dark corner. As they opened the cabin up to freshen it up, they reminisced about their younger days and all the holidays spent in the cabin and the woods, it was strange and familiar at the same time returning as adults without their parents.

Donna cleared out all the cupboards in the cabin to make sure there were no hidden surprises lurking inside, she hated snakes and spiders, they gave her the creeps. When they stopped for lunch they heard a knock at the door, Anders got up from the kitchen table to see who it was. Finding nobody there, he noticed a large yellow envelope had been left on the mat sitting just outside the door. Curious, he opened it and found an old newspaper clipping inside. The clipping detailed the accident his parents were involved in last fall when the unseasonal heavy rain came. The car they were driving in left the slippery road at some point on the journey home, flipping over and landing in the lake. Nobody knew which part of the wide, deep lake the car had disappeared into, so both bodies remained in the car, trapped in their watery grave.

The following day, Donna walked arm in arm with Anders down to the Lake. She strolled further toward the water’s edge, leaving her brother at the tree line. The lake was dark and flat, the cricket songs had stopped, almost like someone was listening. She and Anders were discussing the details of the case of Elena, they did not notice the mist beginning to creep and pool around their legs. Donna felt uneasy, 'Ands, please let's go back to the cabin, I'm cold'. They spent the next few days in the cabin by the fire, researching what they could about their parents accident.

Towards the end of their stay at the cabin, Donna began to hear her mother’s voice calling her, compelling her to have the car removed from the lake. In her dreams she saw where the car went into the water. Anders had always quietly hoped they could give their parents a proper burial and headstones so they could visit them in the cemetery, so when Donna suggested they look for the car, he agreed.

The crane creaked and heaved a few days later, pulling the weight of the car and the water trapped inside out of the lake. The local news reporter gave a blow-by-blow account of the retrieval effort, as a few tourists gathered at the far edge of the Lake to gossip and speculate in the cold of the miserable day.

As the final edge of the car was lifted from the water, nobody noticed that the two out-of-towners were dragged into the water, unseen hands in the mist with a grip on their legs at first, then more invisible hands joined to cover their mouths and arms to keep them from drawing attention. The mist was heavy, nobody noticed that the lake lost two souls that morning and gained two lost souls at that very same moment.