The Family Lake House

For the purposes of this tale, my name is Edward and my brother is Tobias. Our mother and father have been called many things and given various names by the news articles and tabloids but to me, they will always be mom and dad.

Dad met mom when he was in college abroad in easter Europe. He told us they met on a day trip he took to the Czech Republic. They met at a cafe and it was love at first sight, he says. Especially since they didn’t speak the same language, their communication was all in the eyes

Our mom would only speak to us in single words but spoke at length with dad. Often in aggressively whispered sentences in the dark corners of the house. She was loving and nurturing to us as kids, always picking us up, cradling our heads to her chest, tickling us, and staring out the window together pointing at birds and clouds.

She could be terribly menacing though, much more than dad and not only because she stood a full foot taller than him. She had an air about her, like she could actually do something awful. Or was capable of awful things. She could curdle your blood with a stare as cold and pointed as a razor’s snap.

I remember when I had a dog at 10 years old and Tobias was two. Her name was Missy and she was a black lab. During the three months we had her, whenever mom would walk into the room, Missy would bark at her and we could not get her to stop. It was a bit odd but we thought Missy just didn’t like women.

Then, one day after we got home from school, dad told us that Missy had run away. We hung up lost posters and would drag our sneakers walking home calling her name but she never came back. A while later, about as long as it takes a child to grieve a pet, we began asking for a new dog, one we promised we would watch and not lose. Dad uncharacteristically stonewalled us on the topic and would not budge.

The last night we begged dad for the dog was during the end of dinner and he only shook his head silently across the dinner table. I remember looking over at mom and seeing those dark eyes staring at us with that look of hers. That was the end of that.

One year our dad took us to pick out a gift for mom on Mother’s Day. We picked out a necklace with a pendant that had an engraved image of a lion on it which was the national animal of the Czech Republic. Later that afternoon she tore it out of the long, black, gift wrapped box, looked at it, and nodded her approval. She put it on, stood up and towered over me and my brother, patting us each on the head and went into the bedroom for the rest of the night.

“She loves it,” dad told us multiple times through a mask smile. She wore it everyday from that day forward so I guess she did like it.

The lake house was a frequent punctuation in our families annual schedule that Tobias and I always looked forward to. We would go out to the lake house in summer, spring, and maybe in winter if there was a good snow. Eventually we stopped the seasonal trips and went once a month at less than a day’s notice. Just up and took off, packing bags in a rush and hurried to the car.

“Come on boys, we’re going! Gotta get there before sunset!” Dad called out below furrowed and sweat dotted brow while loading bags into the trunk of the car one autumn afternoon.

“But why?” Tobias would always plead with half a jacket on and shoes untied, “I want to watch cartoons! You said!”

“I know son,” dad said while looking over his shoulder, “I owe you one kiddo.”

We got there before sunset like we always did. Tobias fell asleep on the way there and I carried him in with our backpacks stuffed with batman underwear and superman comic books.

Before monthly trips like this one, we would barbeque, play games outside, and roast marshmallows at the lake house but those things stopped happening every trip and then stopped all together.Mom would vanish once we got to the lake house also. She would get out of the car, drop bags in the house, and whip out the back door.

“Your mother is off doing her nature thing, you know how she likes time alone out here Edward.” Dad said when we opened the doors of the car and you could hear the doors opening and slamming as mom scrambled through the house.

“Can’t we go with her? Go into nature with her?” I asked with my best puppy eyes.

“Your mother, she needs her alone time son.”

We wouldn’t see her for days following our arrival and I expected as much this time. Tobias would ask me while we were skipping rocks in the lake at dusk,

“Edward, where is mom?”

He would ask me that multiple times a day, usually after long quiet spells. I found myself echoing my father’s words.

“Mom needs her alone time.”

I didn’t know what that meant and I wondered if my dad said it because he didn’t know either.

About three days into this lake trip, on a warm and clear night, me and Tobias agreed to sneak out and sleep under the stars. Dad had a strict rule against camping outside when we were at the lake house.

“We only sleep inside the house, ok boys?”

We laid in bed with our eyes closed and I waited to hear Tobias’ breathing get heavy as he fell asleep. Then I’d hear dad walk around the house, close all the windows, and lock all the doors.I waited for the sounds of warped wooden windows sliding shut and misaligned locks jamming into place and dad sighing his way into bed. I shook my brother awake and we crawled out the small window in our bedroom, stuffing our sleeping bag out with us.

We picked a spot in a small clearing in the woods not far from the lake house. There was no wind and the moon was full, illuminating the forest like a spot light so stars were hard to find but we giggled and pretended to see constellations. That was until I heard a loud crunching sound a few feet away. I hushed Tobias who was still laughing and we sat still and quiet as an oil painting.

I could see the huge silhouette of a beast in the distance spotlit by a moon ray through the canopy of the tree cover. A clear shape of a wolf only as big as a bear and almost human looking. It was difficult to say exactly how far but close enough to see and hear the rip snap of meat tearing from the bones of some smaller creature it was holding. We sat, my hand over Tobias’ mouth as he whimpered and trembled in my arms. The dark creature gulped, paused, and sniffed the air. It shot it’s gaze right at us and I could see the pair of glowing eyes look directly at me.

In a moment, it huffed twin shots of steam from it’s snout, turned, and galloped into the shadows of the trees. Once I couldn’t hear the massive paws anymore, we snatched our sleeping bags and sprinted back to the house so quickly, the cold air dried the tears on our cheeks.

Laying in bed that night until sunrise, we stayed wide eyed and in the ringing silence. I felt Tobias wanting to ask me what that was but we both couldn’t form the words. No one knew what that was, so there was no point in asking.

We never spoke about what we saw that night to our father but he suspected something was off by how we acted the following days. Tight lipped, avoiding eye contact, scraping forks on plates to move around eggs we had no appetite for.

The last night we were at the lake house during that particular trip, I went to bed and listened for dad’s evening ritual. Close the windows, lock the doors. Only, on that night he only locked the front door and not the back. I heard his footsteps approach our bedroom door and I snapped my eyes closed. He opened a crack and checked on us then closed the door, walked to the back door, put on his boots, and walked outside.

I looked over at Edward and he was fast asleep so I sat up in bed and felt the pounding of my fear competing with the pull of my curiosity. I had to follow him.

Creeping out the back door and into the cold night, I stepped lightly and I could hear the faint grumbling voice of my father and strained sounds of lifting and shifting. Sounds like big rocks being tossed onto wet logs. I forced my body to take each step, I should have been freezing out there in just my pajamas but my body felt numb.

As I crested the hill I could see down to the lake’s edge where the dock ran out. My father was there, hefting a pile of rocks into a lumpy, black garbage bag. He then sealed it up and pulled another black garbage from a pile nearby, dragged it over and started filling that one with rocks as well. On the other side of the pile of half full garbage bags was a large mound. Some kind of grassy boulder of some kind that was hard to make out.

A lantern on the ground near him cast surreal light upon the scene and as I looked closer and my eyes adjusted. I could make out red and mud smeared on my father’s arms and clothes. He was cursing and speaking out loud saying,

“Why do you have to do this? Why can’t you stop?”

He lifted a large stone into the bag with both hands, closed it up, and dragged it over to a small rowboat tethered nearby.

“You have to, ugh,” he murmured through exasperated movements, “I mean, someone is going to catch you. Someone is going to catch us! You can’t keep doing this.”

He started filling up the last black garbage bag with the remainder of the pile of rocks.

“Think of the boys, hon. Think of what will happen to them if you get caught. Think of what will happen to our family!”

It was at that time I realized he was talking to the large mound next to him and that it in fact was not a mound at all. It was the massive wolf I saw in the woods the previous night. I did not notice it for the way it was sitting was almost akin to a child being scolded.

The wolf must have sensed my fear because the mass of it’s form turned to the side and I saw those shimmering, mirror eyes. That look of hers. Dad stopped and dropped the bag he was holding at the monster’s movement and looked over at the hill.That was when I saw that pale arm flop out of the black trash bag along with a couple stones that clacked out on the ground.

“Hello? Who’s there?” I heard my dad call out in the cold silence. The only sounds were the huffing of the giant wolf sniffing the air and the water lapping against the rocky coast of the lake’s edge.

I pressed my forehead against the wet, grassy hill and heard my heart pounding in my skull. ‘Don’t see me,’ I thought, ‘please don’t see me.’

“Son?” Dad called out again, “is that you Edward? It’s ok, don’t be afraid.”

Swallowing my fear, I forced my head up from the hill and looked out to the silhouettes of my father seeming dwarfed by the towering form of the wolf. Both backlit by the lantern light faced my direction. That is when I saw something catching the light on the chest of the wolf. A necklace around it’s thick neck. It was the necklace we gave to my mother.I was sure of it.

Blood ran cold in my veins and I felt like I had been dropped in cold water. Every hair on my skin stood on end and tingled with adrenaline and in one swift move, I pushed myself up and turned to sprint back to the house. My bare foot slipped on the wet grass with the first step and then I sprinted without looking back.

“Edward!!” My father screamed and I heard the wolf howl into the air.

“No! Stop!” My dad’s voice was drowned out by the pounding of my heart in my skull and gasping at the cold air with each breath.

‘Gotta get Tobias,’ I kept repeating to myself. I didn’t know if it was my imagination but I thought I felt the ground shake with the galloping of the monster giving chase.

I swung the back door open and heard it slam on the back wall of the house and my bare feet slapped the linoleum kitchen floor. I turned and slid the corner, down the hall, plowing into the bedroom. I closed the door and lay with my back to it as Tobias shot up to a sitting position in his bed and looked at me.

“We’re going,” I panted through strained breaths. “The window, jump out the window! We need to get help!”

“What’s going on Edward?” Tobias rubbed his eyes with his hands and slowly began to wake up and detect the urgency in my face.

“We just have to go. Jump out the window, like the other night, remember?”

I listened to the door with pressed ear for any movement. Nothing. Tobias got out of bed in his pajamas, paused, and started to walk towards me.

“No,” I hissed back at him, fearful that the monster could hear, “the window! Go out the window!”

Stepping cautiously, like walking around broken glass, I held his hand and walked him over to the window. I went to lift him up and he stopped me.

“Edward, I’m scared.”

“Me too, but we need to go.” I hoisted Tobias up by his hips, he grabbed the window sill and scrambled through, crunching the leaves on the ground as he landed on the other side. I went to climb up and out after him and then I heard it. In the distance, through the house, getting closer.

“Edward, wait son! Don’t be scared, it’s ok! Everything is going to be alright! Son? You in there?”

My dad’s voice was nearing the back door and I felt a pang in my chest, pulling me back for a moment, wanting to run back to him, back to safety and security. Then I realized safety and security were no longer where my father was and I hopped through the window. After landing on the other side, I took Tobias’ arm and we ran barefoot through the forest towards the main road. Our dad gave chase for a time but gave up and turned back after a while.

We shivered, walking along the road for about an hour until a car finally passed by and picked us up. They drove us to the ranger station. The ranger drove us to the police station. The police drove us to our dad’s sister’s house. Aunt Judy who stopped talking to our dad after he married our mom.

After the authorities searched the lake, they pulled twenty three bodies from it in total. All dismembered and wounded in similar ways. Long lacerations in sets of fours along their backs and chests. The internal organs ripped out, the eyes, nose, and tongues chewed off. Each body in an industrial garbage bag, filled with stones, and zip tied shut.

I am in my thirties now and I have given many interviews and written a book about my experience. My brother Tobias secluded himself and stopped talking to me and the rest of the family once he was old enough to live on his own. Last I heard he joined the army. I think he kind of resented me for taking him from our mom and dad how I did. Even though he came to the same conclusion as the rest of us.

There are nights I lay in bed waiting for the sleep to take me when the image flashes across the backs of my closed eyelids. The scene of my father standing at the edge of the black water lake with a pile of dismembered bodies illuminated by lantern light. The large beast hunched next to him. Walking in on your parents fighting.