Little Lake

Little Lake was a thing of legend in my town. Growing up in Indiana, it didn’t take much for our imagination to run wild, but everyone grew up knowing a few simple facts: you don’t talk to Dan Hagen outside of the liquor store, you don’t leave your porchlight on in November, and you don’t visit Little Lake after dark – all the details of these stories fading into obscurity over time, but the superstitions keeping us abiding to the rules nonetheless.

The thing about Little Lake is that it wasn’t really “little” at all. It was a vast expanse of water with no access ramp leaving the surface flat as glass and, curiously, never reflected anything around it. The flowing trees, the puffy clouds, even the bright full moon – nothing shown in the surface of the lake and it remained black as tar from midday to midnight. From the skies, we were sure it looked like the Earth’s eye, staring up at plane passengers as they neared the runway for landing. None of us had ever been in a plane to say for sure. But from our vantage point on the ground, it looked like the pit to hell.

The summer of 2021, there were four of us: LeLe, Natty, Fuzz and I. We’d spent the day eyeing Dan swaying on the liquor store porch and goading Natty into handing him a sweaty $20 I’d swiped off my mom. Dan took a swig from a brown bag and spied us huddled in the parking lot whisper arguing with each other. He spewed out a string of unintelligible garbage and we rolled our eyes and jogged off before Dan could come after us. No need to get the law involved. We didn’t need beer that badly.

Needing an escape from the heat and decidedly beer-less for the foreseeable future, we headed through the woods toward where we knew Little Lake rested. Seeing the sun sitting still quite high in the sky, we rationalized we’d be there and back with plenty of time to go until sunset when our respective parents would all be waiting for us to sit down at the table to have dinner.

“Man, screw Dan. Why’s he always gotta be there? It’s WEDNESDAY,” Fuzz said. A skinny kid, Fuzz got his nickname in sixth grade when he insisted that he could grow a beard and we watched his chin for weeks, never seeing more than the peach fuzz he still sported to this day, four years later.

“Dan is ALWAYS there. It don’t matter what day of the week it is,” Natty said, taking off his Cubs baseball cap to wipe his brow and place it back on his head.

“I’m so thirsty,” LeLe said breathlessly. “I could really go for some beer.” She stepped harshly through the woods in her black converse the way a pouty toddler might tramp around the house after being denied candy.

“Don’t think about it,” I said, ever the optimist. “It will just make you thirstier.”

I got an eye roll from LeLe for that comment.

“Plus,” I added, “There’s going to be like no one at the lake today.”

“Oh yeah! Skinn-y dipp-in,” Natty said mischievously.

My skin prickled at the prospect of Natty and Fuzz seeing me without clothes on. I knew my blush was visible even as we charged through the woods.

It was at that moment that we heard a crashing noise like a deer running at top speed and we froze, looking in all directions to see which direction it was moving. But when we stopped, the noise stopped, and we looked at each other with wide eyes. We didn’t say anything, waiting for the noise to start again.

A gasping then, right into my right ear.

I whipped my head around, expecting to see LeLe caught red-handed, but instead saw her whipping around as well, looking wildly in all directions. I looked to the boys and saw them stagger around in exactly the same way.

“What the hell was that!” Not a question from Natty, an exclamation. Fear needing to come out before his chest exploded.

My heart pounded as I listened again, my hands caging in my earlobes so nothing could get close.

A moment passed. Birds and squirrels ran around like nothing had happened. A normal day.

Then, a ragged breath again in my right ear. Even as I whipped my hand back and forth and clawed at the space where the voice appeared to come from, I heard it say: Don’t let it take me.

The blood drained from my face and feet, collecting in my stomach as if I were about to be attacked. This was an attack. Just from an unseen enemy. I looked at my friends with wild eyes as LeLe yelled, “Run! Now!”

We took off, trying to stay together but haphazardly cutting through the woods as thorns and downed logs diverted our paths. Did the crashing we’d heard before come back? Were we being chased? We weren’t sure. We couldn’t hear anything over our own thundering feet and the gasps of air we raked into our lungs as we ran.

Suddenly, we were at the edge of Little Lake, the surface pristine and gaping open like a mouth. We kneeled over, hands on our knees, gasping for air, trying to ignore how similar it sounded to the phantom gasps in the woods.

As we regained our composure, we saw it was much later in the day than we’d anticipated, and the sun was beginning to kiss the tops of the tree line.

No. I thought. That’s impossible. We were only in the woods for 30 minutes, tops.

That’s when I focused my eyes at the ground between gasps and saw it. Off to my right, long, deep gouges in the soft sand bank of the lake. Fingernail scrapes. Leading into the water’s edge. And in that glance, I saw something else that caused sweat to erupt on my upper lip and temples. There were only six pairs of shoes facing those fingernail marks instead of eight.

The wind picked up, skimming the water and delivering the message to me again: Don’t let it take me. The last words of Fuzz, presumably. The owner of the missing pair of shoes that now were sinking into the bottomless eye of Little Lake.