The Lake

My sister lost her life at The Lake. A tranquil spot on the North East American coastline, close to Nova Scotia but not quite there, hidden and guarded by a thick wall of trees, crags impossible to navigate on foot and the occasional brown bear. Our town has one way in and one way out, built as a trading post between Canada and the US in the 1800s. It grew, then declined and what’s left is a small village with The Lake in the center. Too small for motor craft but kayaks and canoes are a-plenty throughout the year. At some point in time, people stopped calling The Lake by its proper name. It was, like most other bodies of water around these parts, named by the French fur traders who came to this part of America in search of Something Greater. Or to simply get away from a divided Europe. Le Lac Généreux soon became known as The Genie Lake in the 60s, 70s and 80s, developed into Lake G during the transition to the new Millennium, and simply became The Lake once the progressives started coming here for recreation. 

The town council had the foresight to understand that once this place was discovered and out in the real world, most anyone with more dollars than sense was going to buy up lake front property and build. After the first ten houses popped up seemingly overnight, the council voted unanimously to set building zones 100 yards from the edge of the lake around the circumference of the body of water. Aside from the ten houses that were built before the decision, the place looks and feels serene. Almost untouched by man or machine. All other structures are precisely 100 yards off shore and behind trees so thick, not even the lights from all the motion sensor security devices shine through. At night, The Lake is as dark and silent as a shadow.

In the summer, The Lake is a hot bed of activity. There are countless number of kayaks and canoes, inflatable floats that look like giant swans or pizza slices or donuts, ropes swings hung from branches on tress close to shore which catapult screaming children and some adults into the water day after day, until the sun goes down. At the center of The Lake is a small 10 foot by 10 foot floating platform, anchored to the floor of The Lake. It stays in the center and the summer right of passage is to swim to the platform on your own, without the use of a floatation device of any kind. The youngest to ever complete this challenge was 6 years old. And it was me. I still hold that honor and reflect on it with great gladness even though I’m 37 now. The previous owner of this distinguished title was my sister.

She was found on that same platform. Though I did not see her there, I imagined every detail. Her hair in the water, her flesh gone pale and oh so cold to the touch. And the blood. So much blood. Her death was ruled suicide by local authorities. Both wrists cut open from the crook of her elbow to the palm of her hand. 

Up the highway. 

Not across the street. 

She had tied her ankles to the platform as well with a length of cord that was common in the area. People used the same cord to tie up kayaks and canoes. She used a complicated knot. And in the dark of the night, she died in the center of The Lake.

It was cold when she died.

November.

I had just turned 15. 

It hadn’t snowed yet, which was odd but not unnatural. Most of the townies blamed Global Warming and any number of political reasons why we did not have snow in November and left it at that. It was as if thinking about the reason would send them down a dark path. One that would reveal the truth about why there was no snow in November but the cost of knowing the truth was madness. So they threw the blanket of Global Warming over everything that didn’t make sense to them and let it lie, comfortable in the knowledge that each person in the conversation understood just what was being said, and yet knew nothing of the topic. A mutual understanding the shared ignorance would remain and all would be right with the world. Besides, they wanted to find something else to talk about. Who could blame them? A young dead girl in the middle of The Lake was not a topic for the dinner table. And yet, that’s where most of the conjecture and speculation was born.

No matter how much one tries to remove ones self from the gossip of a small town, it always seems to find you in the end. Like an acquaintance you’d rather not entertain but shows up to the party anyway. I wasn’t able to enter the corner diner without the whole place going quiet at the sight of me. There was a bell on the door frame, anchored to a large spring that announced a new customer had entered the diner. It had never been louder than that first day I braved the outside world and went for a burger. All eyes on me in the doorframe, and the bell clamoring. I might as well had a neon sign floating above my head:

SAD SACK

And then, the small, hushed whispers they thought I wouldn’t hear would start.

“… poor girl. Really lost her way.” 

“… terrible thing, that is. Poor boy… he doted on his sister.”

It became harder and harder to simply get a burger and soda. Harder and harder to ignore the whispers and the talk. Harder and harder to hold my head up and smile to the cashier as we exchanged simple greetings. Sometimes, even when someone smiles at you, you can still see the sadness and discomfort hidden behind their well constructed walls. That discomfort became greater and thicker, growing to encompass the whole town. And in my small, well-meaning but ignorant town, I felt completely alone and isolated. The day I graduated high school, I entered military service to earn money for college and perhaps make a change for the better. I left the town of my childhood and The Lake behind. And all the ghosts as well.

Or so I thought.

The military did exactly what it promised. I was trained as a soldier, yes, but I was also given an education that would benefit me later in life when my military career was over. So long as I remained in the service, I was granted an education. Human behavior and condition fascinated me as I traveled around the globe discovering new cultures, new ideas and new ways of life. 

And death. 

I became more and more interested in cultures that celebrated the passing of their loved ones with amazing reverence, finding peace in their beliefs that they would once again be reunited with the departed. What was once a fear of the unknown and a fear of what my sister had encountered, endured and ultimately relinquished her life for, became an obsession. More so, it was finely honed to a point that I knew what I wanted when I was out of my service to my country. 

Prevention. 

Suicide prevention. 

I knew with every ounce of my being that I could honor my sister and her death by helping those that felt her despair, her pain and her suffering… to show them other solutions. To let them know I cared for them. I wanted them alive. I worked my days as a county paid licensed clinical social worker. I dealt in couples therapy, individuals seeking help and talk therapy to a survivors group. I alternated my nights volunteering at the suicide prevention hotline.

And that’s when the first ghost showed up.

I had not moved back to my hometown with The Lake in the center but I was close. Close enough to feel the pull of nostalgia, hinted with a soupçon of guilt for leaving the town behind, for getting on and for surviving. I had, and currently have, a subtle case of insomnia that works in my favor for working late night shifts at the prevention call center. Most of the time, those that call in just want someone to listen to them. They are a tangled mess of fear and anxiety and emotional trauma and their support system either never existed or had abandoned them. Through tears and sobs and sometimes wailing, I can get to them and talk them off the ledge, so to say. I seem to have a gift of reaching these desperate souls and bring them back down to the ground where we can start to talk calmly and evenly. I listen, they talk and by the end of the call, I can hear a smile through the phone line. (Yeah, I can tell.) That is the main body of this type of work. Stressful, yes… but I can feel results that are positive.

Tonight was different. A very distraught man called in. He kept telling me the guilt was eating him up and it would not let him sleep. It was not allowing peace of any kind through to him and he felt his only way to fight it, to win over the guilt, was to die. Once he was dead, there would be no more pain, no more suffering and most of all and most welcoming, no more guilt. He kept referring to the guilt as if it were a living, breathing entity, bent on his destruction. And to a man in his state, I suppose it was. Manifested into a form that was hideous and large and would devour him if he let his guard down, or turned his back on it. The state of constant vigilance must of been exhausting. The fear in his voice was amazing, almost contagious.

I could feel myself beginning to grow uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in way that was like being on a airplane that is going down. You’re trapped on the ride the whole way down and have time to think about what comes next. The familiarity in which he spoke began to register on a level that was deeply rooted in the past. Extreme Deja Vu. It wasn’t his accent. It wasn’t his obvious familiarity with the area and local customs. It was much closer than that. We had a connection that was as tight as a drum but as distant and unknown as relatives across oceans of time. 

I tried to get him to talk to me. When he did, it was between huge gulps of air and sobs and even then, all I would get from him was how guilty he felt followed by more weeping and the familiar “slosh” sound of a bottle of something. This man on the other end of the line was preparing to die.

“Have you done something? Something to warrant such guilty feelings?” I asked.

The line went quiet. I knew he was still there. I could hear him breathing. I then heard what sounded like a door opening and children’s laughter. The line went dead.

I swore under my breath. We have no way of contacting a caller back. We have a way of connecting them directly to 9-1-1 if they are in crisis and need medical attention immediately. But we don’t have so much as Caller ID, otherwise, I would have called him back. He’s hiding and doesn’t want to hide anymore. He wants what ever it is that is killing him slowly to be seen and be fought. He was crying so loud for help it was deafening, but I could not do anything to get to a point where he could be talked down or I had to make the 9-1-1 call for him. All I could do at this point was hope that he called back. I left a note at the mangers desk about the caller. As much as I could, at least.

Tremendous guilt.

Low, husky voice.

Not a drinker but drinking now.

Maybe a father? An uncle?

I distinctly heard children just before he hung up. The unmistakable sing-song voices, almost shrill and ear piercing. A father in crisis. Never a good thing. Some how the most vulnerable member of that family is the one who finds them after the deed is done.

I just described almost every male caller in the region.

This was gonna be tough.

I went 5 days and nights without hearing from the caller. I spoke to many other callers who seemed to be at their breaking point but not MY caller. It was the sixth night and I was listening to a young woman tell me how her mother no longer loved her. (I was reassuring her that her mother did, indeed still love her. But could I be sure?) I could see a fella (Gary? Jerry?) in the cubicle a few stops down trying to get my attention. I glanced at him but was focused on my caller and really paid no mind to him. He kept flapping his hands at me across the distance. Its hard for us to speak to each other on the floor of the call center as we all tend to have callers on the line and professional courtesy dictates we remain as quiet as possible. He was cupping the lower half of the phone with his hand to obscure any unwanted noise. I intentioned that I saw him and went back to my caller. 

An ink pen flew across my field of vision mere inches from my face. I turned and looked at the thrower, glaring as best as I could for the interruption.

“It’s him. Your caller.” he mouthed, over enunciating all of the vowels and distorting his face so that I could understand what was being said from across the room.

I held up one hand and made a tight fist.

Hold on to him!

Wrapping up a call on a good day is never easy. Wanting this call to end was anxiety. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help, it was just… something about the other caller. The connection. That familiar feeling. Almost brotherly. I was haunted.

At length, my call ended with a smiling, (remember, I can tell) grateful client that promised me “she would talk to her mother about her needs”. I told her that was a step in the right direction and cut the line. I put my phone on the DO NOT CALL setting and went to the cubicle down the row.

“He won’t talk to me. Says he will only talk to you but didn’t know who you were. I took a shot. It’s him. I know it is.” Gary / Jerry said.

I took the phone and said, “hello?”

“I wasn’t going to call back.” 

The voice on the other end was the same voice but oh so much more calm. Very collected.

“I’m glad you did. I was worried.” He huffed on the other end. “Yeah, right.”

“No no no… I was!” I exclaimed. “I heard the children in the backgro-”

“DO NOT TALK ABOUT MY KIDS!” he bellowed down the line. I had to pull the ear-piece away from my head.

“I’m sorry. Really I am. I won’t mention them again.”

There was an unbelievably long pause. I thought the line had gone dead and I was feeling like a school boy having just been scolded when he spoke up.

“I have to tell you something. I have to tell someone. I am guilty and I hate myself for it. I’ve lived with it for so many years and each day, the guilt and the memory intensified until I am where I am now. I can’t handle this any more so I have to tell someone.” I actually leaned into the phone, feeling like I was getting closer to a whispering playmate that was about to tell me The World’s Greatest Secret.

“I’m listening.” I said.

“Do you know where The Lake is?”

“I do.”

“I used to vacation around that area with my folks. I loved it there. Always seemed nice and clean. People were nice.”

I heard the “slosh” of bottle of something. It’s almost crystal, that sound. It sings a very different song.

“About twenty years ago, I killed a girl at The Lake.”

My throat went dry and the room became very, very small. 

I needed air.

“Cut her wrists to make it look self inflicted and I left the next day with my parents.”

I swallowed and there was an audible “click” in my throat. Or was that on the other end of the line?

“Thanks for letting me tell you this. I feel so much better now.” he said.

The gun went off on the other end of the line.