Mirror Pond

Some people say bodies of water, such as lakes, or ponds, reflect what is inside of us. Maybe that’s why I went near that pond, of all places.

The thing is I really needed to take some time off, away from everything. I needed a mental health week; some time to get over what happened. And I had to do it alone because, who was I going to tell?

Nobody, that’s who. I had to keep it to myself.

I found this little town, a two-hour drive away. It was supposed to be nice, quiet, surrounded by trees and a nice lake… and best of all, no one knew who I was. I rented a little cabin a few minutes away from town, for a surprisingly low price.

I stopped at a small store on the way to the cabin to get groceries. The clerk made a comment about not having seen me before, and we started talking. When I told him I had rented the cabin, he asked me if I was there to see the pond, while giving me a cautious look. Turns out the cabin was near a small, natural pond, located on a small clearing in the woods; a nice, little wonder, just waiting for a tourist like me to visit. Or at least that was the story during daylight hours.

The reason the clerk had given looked at me like that was that he thought I was interested on the other side of the story. Apparently, over the last few decades, about a dozen people had been found dead at the pond. Nobody knew exactly what had happened to them; all the police knew was they had drowned.

How do you even drown in a pond?

Well, the locals did have some theories. Some people thought the first victim had become a vengeful ghost that drowned anyone who went to the pond. Others thought it was some kind of monster. Another customer smirked and said his cousin was convinced that aliens were kidnapping people at night, experimenting with them, and dumping the corpses on the lake before sunrise.

Whatever the cause was, the townspeople learned to avoid the pond altogether, just in case there really was something going on, and they advised me to do the same. The smart thing to do was to stay out of the water, especially at night.

The ride to the cabin was nice; a smooth country road bordering the lake, surrounded by trees. Nice, quiet, peaceful. It’s too bad my own thoughts kept distracting me from it. For some reason, I kept thinking about that pond. As hard as I tried to believe that those crazy, paranormal stories had barely amused me, deep inside I knew they had stirred my curiosity.

The cabin may not have been luxurious, but it was very appealing in its own way; the wooden planks on the walls and the ceiling gave it a rustic style that made it feel warm and cozy. For a moment I imagined what it would have been like to stay there a few weeks later, after the first snowfall. Then, once again, my mind went back the accident, and I remembered I never really had the chance to choose when I wanted to stay in that quaint little cabin.

I sat down on the bed, once again feeling scared, depressed, even angry, all at the same time.

Why did I have to deal with something like this? And for how long? There I was, in that beautiful cabin, overlooking am even more beautiful lake, and all I could think of was how unfair life had become.

After drowning in my own sorrows for a while, I decided I needed to go for a walk, to clear my head. I started by going down to the lake, and then walking along the edge. As I did it, I tried to force myself to focus on the reflection of the trees on the surface of the lake, the blue sky, the mountains in the distance. I even tried to look directly at the sun, just to distract myself.

Eventually, I found myself walking towards the forest, and I remembered the stories about the pond. I also remembered the warnings, but since the sun was still up, I figured I could go take a quick look before it was too late.

I admit I felt a little nervous when I walked into the woods - I was born and raised in the big city after all – but in the moment I tried to be rational about it, and told myself I there was nothing to be afraid of in the area. I wasn’t going to miss the alien abduction site just because I was afraid of a few trees, right? Now I wonder if I was afraid of the woods, or the pond and its legends.

I was really excited to see it for some reason. Maybe I just wanted to see for myself that there was nothing paranormal about it, so I could brag about being smarter than the townies? Maybe, being the most rational guy ever, I just wanted to experience something I couldn’t explain? I don’t know what it was, but it was almost like something was calling me, luring me to go there.

The whole scene was much more beautiful than I had expected: the trees suddenly opened into a small clearing, with the pond right at the center, its edges marked by gray stones of different sizes, some of which were partially covered by moss, and everything was lit by the late-afternoon sun. But the most interesting element was the pond itself. I couldn’t figure out why, but the water was so dark I couldn’t see anything under it; instead, it reflected everything around it like a perfectly polished mirror. I finally understood why all those people went to see it. For a moment I remembered those classic stories about people getting lost in the woods and arriving at the land of the fairies. I could almost see the fairies fluttering all over the place.

All that beauty finally calmed me down – it didn’t make me forget my sorrows, but it did calm me down – so I decided I could probably sit down and enjoy that peace, just a little longer. The peaceful feeling lasted a little longer before it slowly turned into nostalgia. Why couldn’t the whole world look like that? Why couldn’t it feel like that? If the whole world was like that little Eden, maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with that fear, that regret.

I was so distracted by my own feelings that I forgot to pay attention to the sun, and by the time I realized it, it had just set. I got scared for a second, but then I forced myself to be rational again, and told myself that ghosts, monsters, and aliens didn’t exist, so there was nothing to fear. Still, it was probably better to go back home, just in case any animals decided I had overstayed my welcome. It wasn’t superstitious fear, it was just common sense.

I slowly got up, closed my eyes, stretched my arms, and when I opened my eyes again, I noticed something in the middle of the pond. I couldn’t tell what it was in that poor light, but I could see the contrast between the shiny surface of the water and this opaque mass right at the center of it. I wondered if it was a clump of branches and leaves that fell from the trees, or a dead animal. For a split second, I thought it looked a little like long, messy hair, and thought maybe someone had tossed an old wig into the water, but there was no way I hadn’t noticed something like that before.

Then I noticed there was something under it. Again, I couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked a little shiny, or reflective, like maybe a piece of metal partially covered by the “hair”. The more I looked at it, the more the object, with its mid-section obscured by the dark mass looked like two identical objects instead of one, and the more they looked like glowing eyes. But that had to be my imagination, right? The darkness had to be playing tricks on me, making that thing look like hair and eyes. I was just a big city coward, afraid of the big outdoors.

But it was not my imagination. After staring straight at me for a while, the thing suddenly emerged from the water, standing up on its hind legs, its back hunched over, its long, skinny arms partially flexed in front of its torso, almost defensively, while those seemingly dead eyes stared blankly at mine. It was not my imagination; it was a gaunt humanoid creature, covered in shiny wet skin, with a head full of long, shaggy hair, and eyes that looked just like the surface of the pond itself. And it was standing there, in the middle of the pond, quietly staring at me.

My body froze in fear, while my mind raced trying to comprehend what I was seeing. What was that thing? What did it want? Was it going to attack me? What was I supposed to do? WHAT WAS THAT THING?!

The more I looked at it, the more I felt it looked familiar somehow. Could it be I had seen that monster before?

That is when the memories of what I had done, what I had been running away from, came back to me.

About a week ago, I had gone out with my coworkers, and I had left the party really drunk, driving my own car, too focused on my own fun to think about the consequences. At some point of the ride, I hit something, and I hit it hard. I got off the car to see what it was, and I panicked when I realized it was an old, homeless woman. When I realized what I had done, the only thing I could think of was to save myself by getting out of there as fast as possible, and that is what I did. I didn’t even check to see if she was still alive.

And now, she was standing right there, in the middle of the pond, quietly staring at me.

The first thing I felt was relief, thinking I hadn’t killed her after all. Then, I realized it made no sense for her to be there, completely naked, and to have surfaced from the bottom of the pond like a crocodile.

Was she a ghost? Was she getting back at me for having killed her?

No, that was impossible. She must have followed me, and now she was stalking me naked, because she was a crazy homeless person. But how did she manage to follow me?

Maybe she was trying to blackmail me. But was she naked? Why wasn’t she talking? And how had she slipped into the pond without me noticing?

And why did her eyes look like actual mirrors?!

As scared as I was, I decided I needed to make her talk. I couldn’t stand that unnerving silence anymore.

First, I demanded that she tell me what she was doing there, and how she got there. No response. No movements.

Nothing.

Then, in a softer voice, I tried to convince her that it had been an accident. I almost begged her to understand.

Nothing.

Next, I got angry and told her she had no right to look at me like that, because it had been her fault for jumping in front of my car like that.

Nothing.

After that, I broke down, started crying, and begged her to forgive me.

Nothing at all.

Finally, I lost control at myself, and went right into the pond, demanding that she say something. I was going to make her talk. I had to. I needed to.

To my surprise, I sank all the way into the pond. I was so deep I just kept sinking into it. The water was so cold it squeezed the air out of my lungs; it was so cold I couldn’t move at all. It was so dark I couldn’t see anything around me, except for those damned mirrors coldly staring down at me.

The world ceased to exist. In the end, there was nothing but the cold, the darkness, and the twin mirrors, always staring at me.

The police found me a few days later. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they looked disappointed. I could also see the typical, curious onlookers, whispering to each other, looking scared and confused. I think one of them took a picture with his phone.

They were probably exchanging theories: Alien abduction, vengeful ghosts, cryptids… the same stuff they told me when I came here. They probably tried to see strange marks or signs on my body that would tell them who had solved the mystery, but once the coroner pulled that white sheet over it, they had to accept they would never know the truth.

I guess I’ll never know it either, but as I saw them taking my body away, never really seeing me under the surface of the pond, I went over the whole story yet again, and a thought crossed my mind:

Some people say bodies of water, such as lakes, or ponds, reflect what is inside of us.

Maybe that’s what happened to me, and all those people that came before me: we looked at our own reflection on the surface of the pond, and it looked right back at us with cold, mirror eyes.

I came to the pond to find myself, and in a way, that’s exactly what I found.