The Island on the Lake

Summer 2003

My father first took me to the lake when I was seven years old. It was a long weekend in late June when the summer felt young, and the days stretched on like taffy. The first two days we spent swimming and hiking on the old nameless trails around the cabin. On the third day, he took me on the boat, toward the Island.

The sun shimmered off the water’s surface, and in the shallows, light streamed down to the lake bottom in golden rays. The wind was constant and deceptive, hiding the sting from the ever-present sun. My neck was so burned that I had hardly slept the night before. I learned to dread the smell of aloe.

“Keep rowing,” my father said, nodding toward the child-sized oar he’d brought along for me. “Carry your weight now.”

We were out on an old, gray, wooden rowboat that was stored under the deck of the cabin. There had been a snake living beneath the paint-chipped bench that my dad gently pushed out with a broom. Every itch I felt on my skin made me jump, and I’d turn frantically, sure that I’d see the snake wrapping its long brown body around me.

“What’s on the Island?” I asked, while I tried to row with him.

He paused. “Well, it’s sort of a secret. A secret place that lets you see things.”

“See things like what?”

He smiled. “It depends when you go. Today, we’ll visit the pool, and you’ll see …” My father tilted his head. “Well, anyone you want. If you’re curious how Grandma’s doing … you can say her name, and the pool will show you.”

I nodded and forced myself not to ask any more questions, even though I didn’t understand. I remained silent and waited for him to explain, though he never did.

My father looked up and squinted at the blinding afternoon sky. He shook his head and snorted as if he’d heard the punch line of an old joke. But his eyes didn’t smile. He sat facing toward me and the creaky dock that jutted out onto the lake from our cabin. Behind his shoulder, growing ever closer, was the Island. It looked small from the dock, but up close, it seemed to loom much larger.

We pulled the rowboat up onto the pebbly shore and my father took a rope out from the front, carefully tying it to a sturdy tree. Out on the lake, a loon call echoed over the water. But here on the Island, everything was muted. Since ours was the only cabin on the lake, silence was to be expected. But I remember only then realizing just how alone we really were out there. The nearest highway was ten miles south, and hardly anyone else lived in between. We were far enough from civilization that we couldn’t hear or see anyone else. And nobody could hear or see us.

“Hey.” My father grabbed my shoulder and smiled at me reassuringly. “It’s all right. Come on.”

Pine and smoke scents drifted on the air, and the land sloped gently upward as we hiked on an old trail. I remember having the distinct feeling that the Island’s woods felt different from the mainland. The ground was harder, with sharper edges. The shadows were deeper and crept toward the trail like stretched arms. The branches and low plants all seemed to sway with a rhythm. Expanding and contracting.

“You know, your grandpa used to take me here,” Father said.

“Really?”

“Really.” He nodded. “When I was about your age, he showed me the pool in the summer. And his dad brought him here when he was a boy too.” My father looked up again, through the dense needles on the upper pines that surrounded us. “I think fathers have brought their sons here for a long, long time.”

I looked around, suddenly unsure of which direction led back to our boat. “All for this pool?”

“It’s like I said. A secret. It’s … a responsibility too.” A forced smile stretched on his face, and he ruffled my hair. “But don’t worry about any of that. Today will be a fun day. I promise. OK?”

When we cleared the next rise, the path flattened onto a wide platform where the trees thinned and the ground turned to a soft mossy bed. Twenty feet ahead, smiling on the open trail, was a Woman.

I gasped when I saw her, but my father looked as though he wasn’t surprised. She was tall, with smooth brown skin, and thick curly hair that fell around her shoulders. She smiled as we approached, with cloud-white teeth, square and perfect.

“Hello,” she said, when we reached her. Her voice was resonant and comforting, like a warm wind.

“Hello,” my father said coolly.

“Welcome back, Jim.” The Woman turned and held out her hand. “And you must be Pete.”

I turned to my father, and he nodded, though his eyes looked strained. I grabbed her hand, which felt warm and soft. She walked forward in slow, graceful steps. Up ahead, behind an overhanging green branch, I finally saw the pool.

The ground opened in an unnaturally perfect bowl of stone, filled with clear water, still like a mirror. The Woman smiled, and let go of my hand before walking back down the path. My father didn’t watch her. His eyes focused ahead.

“Who was she?” I asked.

“She’s a friend of the owner,” my father said. “She helps tend the Island during the summer.”

“Why isn’t she staying?”

“This isn’t for her, bud,” my father said. “It’s for us.”

Illustration by Majid Saberinejad

My father crouched by the pool’s edge and cupped some water into his hand, letting it drip back to the pool between his fingers. “Who do you want to see?”

I looked to the pool, then back at him, still not understanding what he wanted.

“All right, let’s start with your grandma,” he said. He cleared his throat, and looked right at the center of the water, and in a firm voice said, “Wilma Edelman.”

The water shimmered and folded like a fresh sheet. The reflection distorted, mixing and separating the blue and green colors. Then, the image cleared and revealed a yard with a small, tan path leading up to a familiar red door. I leaned forward, reaching my hand out, convinced that I would touch the familiar brass knob on my grandmother’s door. But my fingers connected with water and created small ripples.

The pool’s view went through the door, and showed a half-lit kitchen, where my Grandma Edelman stood by her old TV. She held a corded phone in one hand and laughed into the receiver. A moment later, she turned, staring right at us.

My father waved at her. “Say hi, Pete.” I raised my hand tentatively. My grandmother watched for a moment before turning back to her call.

“She can’t see us?” I asked. My father shook his head. But she looked right at us? I thought.

“Who else do you want to see? Any friends you’ve missed since the start of summer?”

“Billy Hoeffler,” I said softly. The water churned again, then the pool displayed a view over a dry, yellow fielded golf course. Billy was wearing overly long shorts and a stiff-looking checkered shirt. He marched solemnly behind an older man in a similar outfit.

My eyes widened as I realized just how … limitless the pool was. I could drop in on anyone. My friends. My teachers. The President. I remember thinking of the life-sized poster of Allen Iverson that hung in my room back home. Then, a better thought came to my mind.

“Can I ask it to see Mom?”

My father’s face darkened. “When you come to the pool in the summer, you can only see what’s happening now, in the present. Your mom … she’s not here anymore, OK? So, there’s nothing to see.”

I nodded, fixated on something that he kept hinting at. “What happens if we come to the pool when it’s not summer?”

My father gave me a half smile. “You’re a quick one, huh?”

Spring 2010

My father and I went to the lake every summer after that first one. Usually, we would go for only a few days. We’d grill out, hike, fish, and watch horror movies late into the evening. And always, on our final day, we’d visit the Island.

Over the years, the unbelievable became normal. I grew accustomed to the Island’s strange physical proportions, the Woman, and the pool. We would drop in on family members, and celebrities, or sports matches, and famous museums. Occasionally, my father would ask after people I’d never heard of and take notes in his brown leather journal.

Whenever I asked questions about the journal, or how our family had found this place, or how any of it worked, he would go quiet. So, I stopped asking. And when we got back to land, I felt my curiosity lessen. By the time we’d leave the woods and return home, it was as if everything that happened on the Island was an ill-remembered dream.

When I was fifteen, during my high school spring break, my father announced suddenly that we’d be heading up to the cabin. I’d learned through half answers over the years that every season at the Island was different, though I’d only been allowed up with my father during the summer. But every year, I spent a weekend at my grandma’s house in early October. We never spoke about it, but I knew that my father went alone to the lake to see something.

We never talked much on the drive upstate. I learned young that there were things I could and couldn’t talk to him about. I stayed busy with friends, and sports, and girls when I had the courage, while he worked long weeks and late nights. We could always find something to talk about. Other places, people, and problems weren’t off limits. But when I tried to talk about myself, or him, our conversations grew stilted and awkward. If I tried to bring up the lake, or my mother, the conversation would end completely.

But, during our first night at the cabin that spring, he cleared his throat, and spoke.

“It’s beautiful in April, isn’t it?” he asked.

I nodded. “It really is.” The weather was colder, and all the trees were bare save for the evergreens. But small lilies and wildflowers on the lakeshore had begun to blossom, and the air smelled like fresh dirt and rain. The bugs were viciously hungry in the woods, though they were more tolerable on the water.

But behind all that, I felt as if there was an undercurrent of tension that I’d never felt in the summer. It was as if a thousand tightly pulled strings were taut just beneath the water’s surface, beneath the land itself, all leading toward the Island. I’d find my eyes drifting toward it when we sat for breakfast at our uneven wooden table.

“You’re a young man now,” my father said. “And it’s time you saw what you’re meant to be shown.” He clenched his jaw, folding and unfolding his hands before him. “In the spring, the pool shows what hasn’t happened yet.”

“The future?” I asked excitedly. The prospect brought a million more questions to mind, all of which I silenced. I knew showing too much emotion wouldn’t play well with him. Cold, logical, rational thinking. That was the only way to approach a problem to him.

My father waited, studying my expression, before going on. “It can’t be changed. Whatever you see, for whoever you say … it will happen just the way you’ve seen it.”

A bluebird fluttered by our window and landed on a long bare birch branch, its ashen bark curling back. “Then … is it safe to go? Is it worth it?”

The question seemed to surprise my father. “You don’t have to go if you don’t feel ready. We’re all free to make our own decisions.”

Left unsaid was a truth I had gathered from all the years coming here. Every male in our family for as far back as my father knew had chosen to come. They’d all chosen to see the future from the Island.

Fathers have brought their sons here for a long, long time. It was a tradition. A secret. A responsibility. Regardless of what he said, I knew the decision wasn’t free.

We awoke early next morning, when the sun was still low in the sky and the water’s surface shone with light pink and grape coloring. To the east, tall, dark clouds threatened rain. I stepped into the boat alone, while my father stood on the dock.

“Summer is something we can do together,” my father told me. “But looking ahead is something a man has to do on his own.”

“Just like when you come in autumn?” I asked.

He recoiled. “Don’t talk about that.”

“Why haven’t you brought me to see her?” I pushed on, feeling emboldened. “If spring is the future, autumn’s the past, isn’t it? You come to see Mom, don’t you?”

He flinched and looked behind me toward the Island.

“I have a right to know,” I said.

“You don’t have a right to shit,” he said in a low, cold voice. “And you have no idea how any of this works.”

Without looking me in the eye, he handed me the oars and walked back up toward the cabin, leaving me alone in the cold, wet air. I rowed slowly toward the Island, listening to the wind, and the singing of a distant frog in the brush. Up in the cabin window I thought I saw my father watching me, but then dark clouds engulfed the sun and sent shadows over the house.

The Island’s dimensions weren’t as distorted now as they were in summer, and after a short time, I was back on the familiar rocky shore. When I went to tie the boat to our regular tree, I noticed that the foliage was different, too. Everything seemed younger, like a new forest after a fire. The undergrowth was teeming and lively, and the trees were thin with willowy strength. Patches of strange purple flowers I’d never seen on the mainland grew in tiny crevasses between the rocks. Budding leaves dripped with moisture and the ground was covered in silver dew.

I noticed immediately that the path was shorter. Even from the shore, I could see the top of the ridge, where I knew the path would flatten near to the pool. I crossed over the ridge, expecting to see the Woman, but instead came face-to-face with a young man with a boyish smile. He was pale with short, slicked-back black hair, and wore brown pants with a dark-green tweed jacket. In comparison, my outfit of torn blue jeans and clunky brown hiking boots felt lacking.

“Hello,” the Boy said.

“I … hello?”

He smiled at me again. “You’re Jim’s son, aren’t you?”

My father had never given me strict guidance on how to treat the caretakers we met on the Island, but I’d noticed he always said as few words as possible, if any at all. I nodded at the Boy and kept my lips shut.

The Boy laughed, a light sound that seemed effortless and invigorating. “You two are so stoic.” The Boy nodded behind him. “So, training wheels are off. Pops finally agreed to let you come in my season?”

I hesitated, then nodded.

“Don’t be too nervous, all right? I remember Jim’s first time when he was around your age. Practically lost his nerve and ran home.” The Boy put his arm around my shoulder and walked us forward while he spoke. Up close, he smelled like freshly split wood.

“Do you … do you know what he looks at when he comes up here in the autumn?” I asked. My curiosity outweighed my rapidly fading apprehension.

“I’ve no idea,” the Boy shrugged. “But I’m only here in spring. You’d have to ask the Old Man about that one.” The Boy turned to me, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “But you’d be amazed who he asks for when he comes up in the spring.”

I frowned. “Does my father visit the Island in the spring?”

The Boy smirked. “All the time.”

“Well, what does he ask to see?”

The Boy shrugged. “Everyone. You, himself, and anyone the Island asks him to check on.”

“The … that who asks him to check in on?”

“Pete, this is all part of the responsibility, right? Jim’s given you that pep talk?” The Boy seemed to revel in my confusion, before laughing and slapping my back. “Don’t worry about any of that yet. Come on, let’s get you to the pool.”

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised that my father would sneak up here. And I’d always guessed there was far more to the Island than I knew. But hearing the evidence of it made my stomach feel hollow and dark. I remember some immovable stone settling in my mind, finalizing something I’d always thought. There are some things a person lives with, and no matter how close you get to someone, those secrets will be yours alone, forever.

The Boy stopped at the edge of the pool and clapped me on the shoulder. “Have a good time, Pete,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’m never coming back here,” I said to him, willing my voice to sound firm. I felt angry, and betrayed, and at the time I honestly believed what I’d said.

The Boy gave another one of his carefree smiles. “If that’s what you decide,” he said and waved as he walked back down the path.

The pool was narrower now than it had been in summer. Rushing water ran down from the rock wall behind and caused the pool to gurgle and bulge like a brook after a storm. My reflection was blurry and elongated on the water’s surface.

I knew I could have turned around. My father wouldn’t have asked what I’d seen in the pool. I could lie and say I’d used it and never have to see anything. But standing over the pool, knowing that the information was right there before me, it wasn’t really a choice at all. And if my father used the pool so often, maybe he already knew that I would use it. Maybe he’d waited to bring me here until he was sure I would.

“Stacey Duvorik,” I said. I’d start with a future that was less personal than my own. Stacey had been my girlfriend for over a year at that point. She was a girl I’d known since the eighth grade, and though we hadn’t said it to one another, I thought that I loved her. It was only years later that I realized that if I had really loved her, I would have hesitated before looking into her future.

The water rushing into the pool churned and created a stable image at its center. I saw Stacey walking in our high school’s hallway. She leaned back against a locker, an unreadable expression on her face. Then she peered up and smiled when someone approached her. I didn’t know the boy by name, though he looked familiar. She leaned forward, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and they walked hand in hand toward the exits.

I turned away from the image, not sure whether to feel embarrassment, anger, or confusion. Behind that, a deeper feeling grew in my chest. Inevitability. My father told me there was no changing what I’d seen. No matter what I did, the future would play out this way.

I cleared my throat. “Jim Edelman,” I said in a loud voice, not turning back to the pool until I saw from the corner of my eye that the image of Stacey had vanished.

I saw my father inside the cabin, though he looked years older. His hair had grown thin and gray, and there were new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was writing frantically in his journal, the one that he always kept with him when we were up on the lake. His jaw quivered as if he were about to burst into tears. Then he walked into the closet next to the cabin’s bathroom and lifted a loose wooden floor panel, tucking the journal beneath.

I kept watching, but slowly, the image faded. It was only many, many years later that I wondered how the pool chose which visions to show me. I only gave it a name, after all. It chose everything else. Unlike in the summer, where I felt as if I were using some grand machine, here in the spring, something else was pulling the strings.

All the tension I had felt that whole weekend, all those strings that I could feel pulling toward the Island seemed to tighten and close around me. I could feel something just beneath my feet. Something giant and dense. Expanding and contracting. And It wanted. I could feel a million urges and desires, futures and paths. But above all, I knew It was waiting for one last name.

“Peter Edelman,” I said, my voice sounding distant and foreign.

The pool pulsed frantically, and the sound of rushing water filled the air. Then the water froze and cleared. I saw myself, dressed in thick winter clothing, standing on the dock. The lake was frozen and snow-covered. I marched onto the lake like some Antarctic explorer, right toward the Island. My future self paused and turned upward, seeming to notice me.

I kicked dirt into the pool, disrupting the vision, and backed away, stumbling on armlike roots that circled out of the wet ground. I sprinted without care back to the boat, nearly running headfirst into the Boy, who was leaning against a tree near the shore.

“See what you were looking for?” the Boy asked.

I glanced back toward the pool, breathing heavily. The Boy pushed off the tree and brushed pine needles from my shoulder. “Intense, huh?”

I shook my head, unable to speak or think. I wasn’t sure why the vision caused such terror in me. Maybe it was just the certainty of it. The realization that no matter what I did, or what anybody did, I’d be back here on some cold winter day marching toward this Island. Maybe it was that pulsing beneath my feet, that certainty that something was in the Island, and It wanted me here. I felt my throat close, and suddenly the open water of the lake felt like a slowly tightening noose.

I wanted to reject all of it. I wanted to do anything that would ensure what I’d seen wouldn’t happen, just to prove I was in control. But I knew it wasn’t a possibility. It wasn’t a path. It was stone.

I untied the boat, slowly lowering myself onto the wet bench. The Boy stood on shore, hands in pockets, and watched as I pushed off back into the lake.

“Was that the future either way?” I called out as I drifted away. “If I had never looked, would that have still been what happened?”

The Boy shrugged. “I suppose now you’ll never know.”

Later that evening, when the world around our cabin had grown black and chirping insects pulsed outside the windows, my father and I ate in dim light. He hadn’t asked about what I’d seen and didn’t seem as if he intended to. We talked briefly about hockey and school and then the conversation stalled.

“What does the Island show in the winter?” I asked, finally.

My father cut the meat on his plate, not looking up or registering that he’d heard.

“I know there must be something,” I continued. “If autumn is really—”

“Don’t come here in the winter,” he said, eyes fixed on his food. “It’s not safe.”

“Why?”

“Nothing,” he said, cutting his food into smaller, and smaller slices. “But you can’t ever come here, you understand me? Cabin’s not winterized for it and … just don’t.”

I looked out the window that showed me nothing but my own reflection. I knew the Island was out there, lurking in the dark water.

“What does the Island have you write in that journal?” I asked.

My father reached forward and took a long swig from the green beer bottle before him, but said nothing.

“Why don’t we tell anybody about this place, Dad?”

My father looked up sharply. “It’s our burden to bear. Ours. You hear me? It’s a weight that we can shoulder.”

“But why do we have to?”

He slammed his fist on the table, rattling our plates and sending my silverware to the floor. “Because who the hell else is going to?”

Autumn 2020

The funeral service was brief and without flourish. My grandma and I decided to hold it at St. Christopher’s, though I don’t think my father had attended mass there since my baptism. At some point, he had decided to serve a different god.

Two people told me after the ceremony that it was very tasteful, which they seemed to think was about the nicest thing someone could say. The cards called the event a celebration of life, which seemed like another charming euphemism of these affairs.

I stayed the night at my grandma’s after the funeral, back in Mapleview. My fiancée, Sarah, had been at the church, but she had to return to our apartment in Syracuse right after.

“Will you be all right?” Sarah asked me.

“Yeah. I just don’t want to leave her alone.”

I shouldn’t have worried. Eight different neighbors, with loaded SUVs of food and company, swung by my grandma’s house before the sun went down. Late into the night, I was tasked with sorting and re-sorting her refrigerator to make room.

When all the guests had finally left, we sat together in the living room that looked and smelled the same as it had since I’d been a boy.

“Sarah seems wonderful,” my grandma told me. “Real, real sweet, salt of the earth.”

“I think so, too,” I replied.

On the mantel was a faded picture of my grandfather, smiling with closed lips. Beside it sat a new picture of my father.

“It’s an unfair world,” my grandma said. She hadn’t cried during the wake, the ceremony, the burial, or even at the little slideshow one of my father’s cousins had put together. But now I saw her cheeks glisten.

“It is,” I replied.

“I’ve lived a good life,” she said, “real good one. But it’s getting hard losing people.”

I put my hand on hers and squeezed it. “I’m not going anywhere, OK?”

She looked at me warily. “I wasn’t surprised when I heard what happened,” she said. “I wasn’t surprised at all. I saw his father walk down that same path, and I knew where it ended. I tried to tell him, but the men in this family are … stubborn.” She squeezed my hand back. “Whatever they thought they had to carry … you don’t have to.”

The death was ruled an accidental drowning. It had been a windy, fierce day on the lake, and my father had been drinking. He texted me, hours before it happened, and I knew something was wrong. It had been almost a year since we’d said more than a few words to each other. It was a brief message, and when I called him repeatedly after, I got no response.

It’s a poor inheritance I pass to you.

I called the nonemergency for the county shortly after, and they promised they’d send someone up. They found him floating facedown near the edge of the dock.

The day after the funeral, I left Mapleview with a promise to my grandma that Sarah and I would return for Thanksgiving. I went back to Syracuse, and for a few days, settled back into normal life. Soon enough, though, I felt a familiar pull. Northward, the cabin on the lake sat unattended. The Island called to me.

The next weekend, I responded.

A dense mist hung over the lake like a cloud. Fallen leaves floated lazily on the water’s surface. The fall colors on the trees were muted. Oranges like fading fire, and reds like dark apples. All I could hear as I rowed to the Island was the splash of my oar hitting the water, and the cries of lonely birds left behind.

It took me thirty minutes to reach the Island, well over twice the time it took in the summer. The Island was massive now, longer than I’d ever seen it. Depleted trees stood proudly on the shoreline like a bulwark. Sitting on a thick fallen tree was an older man with gray and red hair, in an old corduroy jacket and dark-blue jeans.

He watched me while I hopped out from the boat and tied the rope to a maple tree with pumpkin-orange leaves. When I finished, he pushed off his knees and groaned. He stopped two paces from me, and we waited while a thin wind blew over the lake. The Old Man held his hand out, and I shook it.

“It’s a pleasure,” the Old Man said.

“Sure,” I said.

I let go of his cold, calloused palm, and studied the long trail leading inward.

“Why did you come here?” the Old Man asked. “What’s the purpose of remembering, reliving things we can’t change?”

I frowned at him, waiting for him to say something more. The other caretakers had never started a conversation in this way. “We look back at good memories all the time,” I started. “It’s why we take pictures, make home movies.”

“Fair enough,” the Old Man said. “But you didn’t come all this way for happy memories.”

“I don’t know … we look back so we can learn from the past, avoid the same mistakes.”

The Old Man laughed and wagged his finger at me. “I knew you’d say that. I knew it. I’ve heard that before, believe it or not.” He turned and began shuffling up the path, and I kept stride beside him.

“I presume you’ve been visiting in the spring?” the Old Man asked.

“You presume?”

The Old Man shrugged. “I have better things to do than spy on my siblings.”

I eyed the Old Man. “Yes, I have,” I said eventually. “Every spring since the first.”

The Old Man nodded. “I expected as much. There’s nothing as tempting as what’s behind the next door, eh?”

“I haven’t asked it about everything,” I said, picturing Sarah’s face smiling in my head. It helped that I met her in early June, when spring was already past. We fell together so naturally and easily that it felt like reconnecting with an old friend. I’d followed the Island’s guidance about where I would go to school, which friends I would keep, which planes to take. Ever since my first visit, I had become obsessed with its visions. Obsessed, resentful, and obedient. I asked it about everyone. Everyone except Sarah. Something told me the moment I said her name, I would erase some wonderful, closed door that held a universe behind it, and replace it with something settled.

In keeping the Island from Sarah, I also promised myself that I’d keep Sarah from the Island. I knew that she’d believe me if I told her, maybe even without having to see it for herself. I told myself I was sparing her from harm. There’s nothing she could do to help me, anyway. And while I was hurt, and angry at all the secrets my father had kept from me, I agreed with him on one thing: this was our burden. It isn’t meant to be shared.

It took us an hour to reach the pool. Like the other caretakers, the Old Man walked back down the path to leave me alone in the late afternoon light. The water was black, and unrevealing, like an impossibly deep well.

I had a million things I wanted to see. Before me, I presumably had all of human history. But the names I ended up speaking were familiar ones. Jim Edelman, my father. Ellie Edelman, born Ellie Miller, my mother. I watched them dancing when they were young and then carrying around a baby I knew must’ve been me. I watched my mother working in an office with coworkers and friends I’d never met and then watched my father cry at her grave.

Hours later, when the sun began to set, I felt a nudge on my shoulder.

“You should be getting back,” the Old Man said.

I flinched, then turned to him angrily. “And why is that?”

The Old Man looked down at the ground warily. I followed his gaze and listened. I had been so absorbed with the pool that I hadn’t noticed the rising, steady noise from the Island. It was like a low wind blowing, or the hum of some ancient machine. The longer I listened, I could make out long cycles to the sound. Expanding and contracting. Like the slow breaths of something massive.

The Old Man and I half jogged back to the boat, and by the time I reached it, the sky had turned black. When I undid the rope, the Old Man grabbed my arm.

“Don’t come back in the winter,” he said. “With your father dead … Its eye will turn to you.”

I nodded, though I knew it was a promise I couldn’t keep, and pushed the boat into the black water.

Winter 2020

Sarah and I were watching some old science fiction movie when the fight started. It was something she said that had set me off, something so innocent and meaningless in hindsight that it’s laughable. But it reminded me of the Island, and my father. Before I knew it, we were fighting about half a dozen unrelated things, boiling beneath the surface. And though I knew it was my fault, I felt too stubborn, too pulled apart to apologize.

“What the hell is going on with you?” she demanded at one point.

I was standing across the room from her, my hand pulling hard at my hair. I felt a pressure in my throat that made it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. And I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her so badly everything I had seen, everything that had happened. But I didn’t. Because I was afraid. Afraid of what she’d think. Afraid that it meant I wasn’t strong enough to carry this thing on my own. And I was afraid that even if she could have accepted it once before, I had waited too long, and revealing it now would be revealing that I’d withheld part of myself the entire time I’d known her.

So, I said nothing. I walked out of our apartment and sat in the snow-covered car. On the way out, I grabbed a jacket that her brother had left at our place the weekend before. I looked down at the gray and red sleeves and started laughing, since no other reaction made any sense.

I recognized the coat, because I’d seen myself wearing it once before, a long time ago, on a snowy morning at a frozen lake. I came back in that night and slept on the couch. In the morning, I left before Sarah woke up. In the early Saturday snow, I drove north.

I reached the cabin before noon, but the sun looked like it had already given up for the day. The sky was gray and white, with drifting flakes of snow twirling sideways to the ground. I could see my breath inside, though I didn’t bother to set the fire. I wouldn’t be in here for very long.

I walked toward the closet and stared down at the loose floorboards. I had checked the spot years before, wondering if my father’s journal was there, but had found nothing. I was too preoccupied to even remember when I had come up in autumn.

The panel was cold and heavy, but it slid out from the floor with ease. And right beneath it, as if someone had placed it there only moments before I arrived, was my father’s journal. Oil marks lined the spine where some other hand had once held it for many hours.

Written on the pages in neat, orderly pen was my father’s handwriting. There were fifty or more pages filled, front and back, in his small, precise hand. Names, dates, descriptions of people I’d never heard of. Some pages bore instructions.

Tell Anderson Sewell that nine years isn’t enough.

Send letter to Anna Carter with a picture of Bill Carter.

Bump into Morgan Cooper at grocery on 11.16.11 and offer to pay for her cart.

The instructions continued line after line, some random, while others bordered on the unsettling. I flipped to the last entry, hoping for something, anything that would explain it all. Part of me expected a note from my father, left specifically for me. But there was nothing. The second half of the journal was left white and blank.

I slid the journal into the wide zipper pocket of the coat that belonged to someone else and put the floorboard back. I sat alone in the cabin for a while, straining to see the Island through the frost-tinted windowpane. Later, I’d question how much of that day was predetermined. Did I choose this for myself, or did the Island lock me into this road when it showed me my future? Maybe the cycle had started long before I’d ever come along. Maybe I was the last car on a train that had been coming here for generations. With all that baggage and conditioning, perhaps it didn’t matter whether I chose the path if I was being prepared to walk down it all along.

I walked for hours on the frozen lake. The snow had picked up, lowering my visibility to ten feet or less. At one point, I felt something watching me. I stared up into the blank clouds and remembered. Eleven years ago, I’d watched this happen.

Ahead, behind swirling snow and ice, shadows of hunched dead trees formed. I nearly tripped when my boot hit a snow-covered rock raised above the flat lake surface. I blinked in surprise and looked around at the land buried beneath the snow, rising from the ice like some sleeping giant. I had reached the Island.

Up ahead, standing atop a drift of snow, was a little girl in white. She had shoulder-length pale hair that looked translucent white at some angles, and pale blonde at others. Her face was oval shaped and childlike, though as I grew closer it looked aged and wrinkled as well. Her eyes shimmered between youthful, infant-like curiosity, and aged resignation. She could have been my height, or much, much smaller. The more I stared at her, the more discordant her features grew.

“Welcome back,” the Girl said. Her voice was layered, one tone light and ringing, one deep and cracked. Both cold and emotionless.

I stuck a gloved hand into my coat pocket and fumbled inside before holding up the journal. “What is this? What does it mean?” My voice was hoarse and dry. Cold air invaded my throat.

The Girl’s eyes flicked to the book, then back to me.

“Why did you have him do all of this?” I pressed on.

Her face was blank and unchanging.

“Well,” I yelled, “if you expect me to keep doing this, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

The Girl cocked her head. “This is the burden, Peter. Your burden. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it.”

I threw the journal toward her feet. It spiraled in the air before implanting into the snow. The Girl’s eyes remained fixed on mine, my little act of rebellion meaningless to her.

“Come,” the Girl said, and turned away. I only hesitated for a moment.

I walked beside the Girl, who sometimes looked like an old woman, for a long time. So long that the distant sun passed its zenith and began a quick retreat into the horizon. When my fingers had gone so numb it hurt, we reached the pool.

The pool was frozen over, without a flake of snow accumulated on its glassy surface. I walked up to the edge and gazed down to see a hazy reflection of myself and the Girl.

“What does it do?” I asked.

The Girl turned to me. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”

I took a hesitant step onto the ice. I had put hours of thought into what the winter months would show me. Though I wouldn’t admit it to myself, I had suspected for years what I would find. It was part of the reason I had decided to come, despite all the reasons not to. I walked toward the center of the pool and took a deep breath.

“Jim Edelman,” I said. For a moment, nothing happened. No break in the pool’s surface, no sound or motion. Then I heard a faint shift behind me.

“Hey Pete,” my father said.

I turned to find him standing on the ice. He looked younger than I remembered him.

“You … it’s …” I started.

“It’s good to see you too,” he said with a sad smile.

“Why’d you do it?” I asked.

My father’s face tightened, and he looked past me, toward the cabin, where they’d found his body. He wore an outfit I’d seen him in a million times. A red and black flannel, with worn khakis. It looked surreally out of place next to the half-dozen layers I had on.

“I was so tired,” he finally said. “I just wanted … I needed it to be over. And I wanted to see her again.”

“Have you? Seen her?” I asked.

He shook his head and turned away. I looked down at his reflection in the pool’s surface, and suddenly saw a line of men stretching out from behind him. I saw my grandfather, and behind him, my great-grandfather. Down the line it went, father and son.

“You’re stuck here,” I said. “When you died, you didn’t … go wherever she’s gone to.”

My father turned to me and gently grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t call for her,” he pled. “If you say her name, It can see her. It gains influence. Even now.”

I pulled away and took a step back. “Why did you get involved in this … why would you bring me into this?”

“It told me It would kill you, if I didn’t,” he said. He spoke with the conviction of a soldier defending his actions.

“It? What the hell is It? And how could you listen? You let this place ruin your life, let it ruin mine too,” I yelled.

My father frowned. “It’s the only way, Pete,” he said. He grabbed my shoulder again, and despite everything else, I felt some base part of me comforted at the intimate contact. It was the most I could remember us touching since that spring afternoon that felt like a lifetime ago.

“It’s the only way,” he repeated. Then he was gone, along with the row of reflections behind him. The Girl stood by the pool’s edge, staring at me. She had the journal in her hand.

“This season, you may rest,” she said. “But in the spring, it must begin. You will have a list of names to check in on, and my younger brother will give you instructions on what to do with them. The same will follow for the summer and autumn. You won’t need to visit again in the winter unless It requests you.”

I looked at the journal and grimaced before pushing by the Girl. I marched ahead quickly, not glancing back at her or the pool. Over the next ridge on the trail, the Girl stood in the center of the path, her statuesque face slightly pulled in annoyance.

“Don’t force Its hand, Peter,” the Girl said. “My siblings will ease you in, it isn’t—”

I pushed past her again and put my head down. I saw the sun drop and send weak white and yellow rays to mimic a sunset in the west. I had hours of travel to get back to the cabin, but if I could just—

The Girl was in front of me again and grabbed my arm with a strong, bony hand.

“This is your last warning. If you don’t agree, It will confront you,” the Girl said, a hint of fear creeping into her voice.

“It? What is It?” I demanded. The Girl said nothing. I ripped my arm from her grip. “I don’t want anything to do with this, OK?”

“It’s too late for that,” the Girl said. “You’ve looked in the pool in summer and used Its arms. You’ve looked through the pool in autumn and used Its memory. You’ve looked through in spring and used Its eyes. Did you think there was no price for that? Did you think your debt wouldn’t be called upon?”

The Girl’s strange, flickering, ageless face looked at me in confusion, as if I were the one not making sense. But there was no more time to argue. We’d reached the Island’s shore, and without another word, I marched out onto the ice, back toward the cabin.

I made it ten minutes before I heard It. Under the ice, something moved, and the whole world seemed to distort around me as if the very air was recoiling. Beneath my feet, the ice buckled in a rhythmic expansion and contraction like slow breaths inhaled and exhaled. The wind picked up, cutting snow and ice into my face. When I opened my eyes, the gust had cleared the snow from the ice in a fifty-foot circle around me.

Then, in the fading light, I saw It beneath the ice. A shadow stretched out, formless and in motion. Larger than the cabin or my apartment complex back in Syracuse. It rose from the depths of the lake and pressed Its dark body against the ice, while I stood there frozen. The ice cracked and shattered in a thousand places, and I started screaming. I took one step and felt my boot fill with cold water. With my next step, I went straight through the ice, into the bitter water, and fell toward the thing stretched out beneath.

Spring 2021

Lightning cut through the sky behind my window. One. Two. Three seconds later, thunder rolled forward like a heavy door bouncing shut. It was a warm night, one of the first in months, so Sarah and I had gone to bed with the window partially open.

She had been sleeping before the last loud boom of thunder made her inhale loudly, and I felt her shift in the darkness on her side of the bed.

“You awake?” she whispered.

I nodded, then realizing she couldn’t see me, said, “Yeah.”

“Bad dreams?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I repeated.

The nightmares all started the same. I was back out on the lake. Sometimes alone, or with my father, or even Sarah. In the dream tonight, I was drifting on the old rowboat. I looked around, panicked, cursing myself for coming out here alone. I rowed as fast as I could, straining to get back to the dock, which seemed to pull back from me as I moved toward it. Then, I felt It beneath the water. And before I could scream, or move, It pulled me under.

Then, the visions start.

It always showed me variations of the same thing I saw when It had pulled me beneath the ice in the winter. I see my own dead eyes staring back at me. I see Sarah, and my grandmother, and my neighbors, and friends. I see my coworkers and the mailman. I see every living soul that I know. And I see all of them dead.

After It pulled me under the ice, I woke up back in the cabin, the leather journal sitting squarely on my chest. I’d half convinced myself I’d hallucinated my entire experience out on the Island.

But then, back in Syracuse the next evening, the first nightmare came. I awoke on our couch screaming, flailing as I fell to the floor. Sarah was at my side immediately, and like that, our cold war ended.

Since then, the nightmares and sleepless nights had become part of our routine.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. Lightning flashed our room dark blue and purple.

“No, I’m OK,” I replied, as the hammer of thunder fell.

Sarah reached out and touched the side of my face. “You know that thing we talked about … earlier this week? How I asked you to think if that’s something you’d want, and you said you needed time to think about it?”

I nodded. Of course I knew what she was talking about. It was all I could think about since she’d mentioned it.

“Well … have you thought about it?”

“I have,” I said. “It’s something you want, right?”

She sat up on her elbow. “It’s something I want with you, if you want it too. Stop avoiding the question. Do you want it?”

I pushed myself up to be level with her. I had prepared a thousand different ways to say no, ever since she’d mentioned the possibility of us having a child. I’d rehearsed it in my mind. I could use rational excuses like money or youth. I could lie and say I never wanted children. I could argue for why our lives would be easier without them. But looking into her eyes then, I knew there was really only one reason why I was petrified by the idea. And I didn’t want it to have any sway over me any longer.

“Maybe I do,” I said.

“Maybe?” she repeated, and I nodded. She snorted and gave me an annoyed smile. “Maybe, he says. Wonderful.”

“It’s a strong maybe,” I replied.

“Uh-huh,” Sarah said, and rolled back over. A moment later, she reached back and touched my arm. “I can work with a maybe.”

It was somewhere between midnight and sunrise, when I finally gave up on sleeping, and went to sit at our kitchen table. The storm continued outside, whipping rain against our screen door, swirling up chunks of cold dirt. In my right hand, I held the leather-bound journal, half its pages empty, waiting to be filled. In my left, I held a lighter.

I still hadn’t told Sarah about anything that had happened. Maybe one day. When I was braver. When I felt like I had gotten a handle on this on my own. Maybe. But tonight, I’d finally grown the courage to do something else. I wasn’t sure what the Island could or would do to me if I failed to visit before the end of spring like It demanded. Perhaps all Its threats would come true, and whatever power lurked under the water’s surface would unleash hell on everyone I loved. Perhaps I had already damned myself to linger in the frozen pool with my father, and all those before us, when I died. But that was an inheritance I refused to pass on any further.

I had the foresight to disable the fire alarm before I started ripping pages from the book and lighting them one by one. Eventually, the journal was just a leather husk that I walked outside and threw into the dumpster beside our garage.

I sat at the kitchen table and listened to the storm. I thought of my father, and of Sarah, and of the unknown future we had ahead. And I waited for the morning to arrive.