THIN ICE

10:00

 

There was a loud snap. Mikey looked up so fast that he nearly lost his balance.

The ice ahead had fractured. He was skating right towards a long, jagged crack.

No time to stop. If he tried, he would fall over, probably breaking his wrists and maybe his skull. He couldn’t swerve around the crack, either. It stretched from one side of the frozen lake to the other.

He would have to jump over it.

Mikey had never done a jump on his skates before. But the fissure was only a couple of centimetres wide. How hard could it be?

As he hurtled towards the crack, he leaned forward and bent his knees, like he had seen older kids do. Then, at the last second, he launched himself into the air. For a moment he was flying like a bird. His blue coat billowed around him. He had time to think, Hey, jumping is easy!

Then he hit the ice on the other side and found himself running on the spot for a minute. Both skates kept sliding out from under him. Soon he couldn’t keep up, and came crashing down. Jumping might be easy, but landing was hard, and so was the ice. His beanie cushioned his skull, but not much. His hands stung.

He looked around, checking if anyone had seen him stack it. No-one had. In fact, the frozen lake was deserted. He’d been having so much fun that he hadn’t noticed everyone else leaving. It was getting dark.

Mikey was wondering if he should leave too, when he saw that the fracture he had jumped over wasn’t alone. The whole lake was spider-webbed with cracks, as though a giant had punched it.

In the centre of the fractured lake, there was a metal box about the size of a suitcase. It had what looked like camera lenses on each side. The words TEST PROBE C71 were stamped on one corner, next to a small red logo. Mikey was sure the box hadn’t been there earlier. Had it fallen out of the sky?

09:05

He waved to it cautiously, in case someone was watching through the cameras. The box didn’t make any noise. But a faint creaking sound came from the ice beneath Mikey’s feet.

Yeah, he should definitely leave.

Mikey started skating towards the closest edge of the lake. There was a handrail there, with someone’s forgotten coat draped over it. Going to the rail would be safer than skating towards the main exit, which was further away—

Snap.

This time Mikey felt the crack as well as hearing it. A section of the ice lurched beneath him, and suddenly it felt less like skating and more like downhill skiing. He screamed as he hurtled down the slope towards another fissure, this one wide enough for him to see the dark water of the lake beneath.

Mikey lowered his body into a crouch as he gained speed, then jumped again. He soared over the gap, cold wind blasting his face, and landed on the other side.

This time he didn’t slip over—which was lucky. He had to keep his speed up. The cracks were widening. If he slowed down, he wouldn’t make the next jump.

08:24

Mikey kept skating towards the edge, leaping over the gaps. He was getting the hang of it, but the ice was breaking up into smaller chunks, forcing him to jump longer and longer distances. It was only a matter of time before—

Even as he had this thought, he landed on the edge of a piece of ice that wasn’t big enough to hold his weight. The chunk flipped, plunging Mikey into the lake.

It was so cold. Like getting an electric shock. The water hit his face first and then soaked through his clothes and froze the rest of his body. He tried to swim for the surface, but his limbs were stiffening in the deep chill and his skates were heavy. He was slipping down into the darkness.

07:40

His flailing hands hit something. The chunk of ice that had thrown him off was flipping back—it must be heavier on one side than the other. Mikey grabbed the jagged edge as it swept past and clung to it. The ice bobbed in the water, buoyant enough to stop Mikey from sinking.

He tried to scramble back up onto it, but it was too slippery and it kept tilting towards him. He could get his head above the surface, but no more than that. He looked around frantically, water spraying from his mouth and nose with every breath. His whole body was in agony. The cold was killing him, probably literally.

There was a larger chunk of ice nearby. Mikey let go of the smaller piece with one gloved hand and reached over to grab the bigger one. When he had a good grip, he did the same thing with his other hand. Then he tried to pull his body up out of the water. His elbows and knees were too frozen to bend properly. But the fear and the pain gave him extra strength. He hauled himself up onto the larger chunk of ice and lay there for a moment, panting.

He felt sleepy. Mikey had lived up here in the mountains for long enough to know that was a bad sign. Parts of his brain must be shutting down. There was a saying in town: If you sleep on the snow, you wake up on a cloud.

06:13

Mikey tried to lift his head off the ice, but his cheek was stuck to it. He moaned in horror. He couldn’t get up. Not without tearing a strip off his face.

‘Help!’ he wheezed. But his lungs were too cold to make much sound. And while he couldn’t look around to check, he was pretty sure no-one was coming. Why would they show up now when it was getting dark? There were no electric lights around the lake, and tonight even the moon was hidden by thick clouds.

05:41

Mikey stretched one arm out towards the edge. He could just reach the icy water. He didn’t want to put his hand back in, but it was the only way. He dipped his hand in and thrashed around, splashing water onto the ice.

Eventually the cold puddle reached his face. The water made the ice slippery enough for him to pull his cheek free. He sat up, gasping.

Looking around, he saw that he wasn’t out of trouble yet. His chunk of ice was roughly hexagonal and only two metres across. It was surrounded by black water, four or five metres wide in every direction. There was no way he could jump to safety now.

How long would he last in wet clothes, on a chunk of ice, at night, before he froze to death? Not long. Minutes, probably.

He pushed a stiff hand into his coat pocket and took out his phone. ‘Come on,’ he muttered, tapping the screen. It wouldn’t light up. He tugged off a damp glove with his teeth, exposing his hand to the freezing air. He prodded the screen with his bare fingertip. Nothing. He held down the power button, hoping to hear the cheery chime noise it made when booting up. Still nothing. The water had killed the phone.

04:11

Crack! A corner of his floating platform broke off and drifted away. The terror was like an animal trapped inside Mikey’s chest, clawing at his ribs. If the platform got much smaller, it would flip, like the last one. He didn’t think he could pull himself out of the water a second time.

He was so close. The edge of the lake was right there, with the handrail and the abandoned coat. But he had no way of getting to it. If he tried to swim across the five metre gap, he would surely freeze to death. If he didn’t, the ice might disintegrate beneath him. And even if it held, he would soon die of hypothermia.

Mikey didn’t feel so cold anymore. Another bad sign. This meant his core temperature had dropped. People who got hypothermia were often found without their clothes, because they felt hot and took them off ...

His clothes. Hi’s clothes!

03:14

Mikey quickly pulled off his wet coat, then got to work on the jacket underneath, his frozen fingers fumbling with the zip. He had to hurry. Any second now, the ice could—

Crack! Another chunk broke off and glided away. Mikey scrambled away from the edge. His platform was shrinking.

Once his jacket and his long-sleeved shirt were off, he sat down and unlaced his skates with stiff, trembling hands. He wrenched them off his feet and pulled off his pants.

Standing on the ice in just a singlet, undies, and wet socks, he felt like a popsicle in the freezer. It would be so embarrassing if he died and the police found him like this.

02:02

I’ll just have to not die, he thought.

He tied one sleeve of his coat to a sleeve of his jacket. Then he tied the jacket to his shirt, the shirt to his pants, and his pants to the laces of one of his skates. Now he had a rope made of wet clothes, roughly six metres long, with the skate attached to the end.

‘Okay,’ he muttered through numb lips. ‘Let’s do this.’

He tossed the ice skate towards the edge of the lake. It didn’t quite make it, splashing into the dark water.

He reeled the clothes back in, like he was fishing. ‘Come on.’

Crack! Another piece of ice split off and the rest wobbled under Mikey. He tried to stand in the centre for balance. The cold was pure agony.

01:35

This time he swung the ice skate like a lasso before he flung it. It sailed through the air, trailing his clothes, before landing on the edge of the lake. The skate’s blade wedged itself into the ice and stayed there.

Mikey pulled the rope gently. The skate held, and his chunk of ice started drifting towards the shore.

‘Yes!’ Mikey kept reeling himself in. But the ice was creaking beneath him. He looked down in time to see a fracture appear between his feet.

He pulled harder. Too hard. The ice glided faster across the water, but the skate slipped out of its mooring. Mikey cried out—

And the ice split in two—

But Mikey was already leaping forward, flying over the last metre of water, then crashing down onto the bank. Snow here, not ice.

He clambered to his feet, shakily but quickly. He wasn’t going to wake up on a cloud today. He stumbled over to the handrail, grabbed the forgotten coat, and wrapped it around himself. It was cold, but dry. Then he climbed over the rail. The road was close—he could already see headlights through the trees.

00:00

He glanced back at the mysterious box in the centre of the lake. But it was gone.