I was sitting in the boat with my grandfather, gripping my fishing rod lazily, when I saw something move in the darkened water.

“Herman, are you listening to me?”

I snapped to look at him, startled by the sharpness of his voice. “I think there’s something in there,” I told him. “It could be a fish.”

“You wouldn’t know a fish if it jumped out of the water and slapped you in the face,” my grandfather said, and sounded as if he were joking; but he didn’t laugh.

“But I saw something,” I said again, leaning over the side to look closer. “There was something in the—”

“Enough, Herman. Don’t lean over the side.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, sitting back.

“As I was saying,” my grandfather went on, “I spoke to your parents over the phone earlier. They said they’re going to be sending you up here more often; they think it’ll be good for you.” He let out a heavy sigh. “In all truth, I couldn’t really tell you what they mean. But if that’s what they want, then that is what they’ll get.”

I sighed too, nodding.

In all truth, I didn’t like coming up to my grandfather’s cabin all that much. It sat out in what seemed like the middle of the woods, out in the middle of nowhere, far away from any signs of life. The nearest town was Briarwood, the town where I lived, but it had to be at least a fifty miles away or so, much farther than I’d like to be from home. My grandfather liked this cabin because it was near this secluded lake out near the mountains. I wasn’t even sure there were any other cabins in these woods; for all I knew, my grandfather built this one specifically to be alone near this lake. He practically lived out here now. He never went far from the lake.

I looked back down into the water. It seemed to just be endless miles of darkness that spanned for an eternity, and it reflected the cosmos of stars above. It almost looked like I was looking upwards instead of down, and almost got a little dizzy.

But truthfully, I was looking for whatever I’d seen in the water before. I hadn’t gotten a decent look at it, but it had been pale, for certain. Maybe it’d been a king of cod, or halibut—though I wasn’t certain either of those were in lakes like these.

“Herman,” my grandfather snapped. “Do not lean over the goddamn side.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember how deep this lake goes?”

“‘Deeper than Hell,’” I quoted him.

“That’s right,” my grandfather said. “You fall in and there’s no telling how far down you’ll go. No telling what’s in this wretched hole. Not to mention it’ll be colder than the arctic; you’ll freeze up and drown before you meet the fishes at the bottom.”

“You think there are fish all the way down there?”

He glared at me. “Don’t get snappy with me, boy,” he said. “I don’t wanna know what’s all the way down there.”

I nodded and said, “Yes, sir,” and sat back in the boat. The waters brushed gently against the wooden hull of our little rowboat, though we sat unmoving on the lake. We had to be near the middle now, because in nearly every direction I looked, it seemed to be nearly a mile of black water. Motionless, waveless, still darkness. The lake and the sky seemed to merge into one, which almost made us look as if we were sailing across the stars.

“What’re you smiling at?” my grandfather asked.

I opened my mouth to answer, but said, “Nothing.”

“Tell me this, Herman,” said my grandfather. “Do you see any fish in our boat as of this very moment?”

By the way he seemed to be waiting patiently for my answer, I figured he wanted a genuine one. I observed our boat, filled with our fishing rods, boxes of lures and tackle, bottles of water, and snacks.

But no fish.

“No, sir,” I said at last.

He leaned forward, his eyes reflecting the moonlight, shining like stars. “Then pick up your damn rod and fish.”

My throat swelled. I nodded, my eyes welling with tears, and said nothing more than, “Yes, sir.”

He went back to fishing, as if nothing had transpired.

I stared out into the open lake, the sea of void. I found it quite odd how still the water was, as if it were lifeless. Of course, I knew water had no true life to it, but it always had a gentle ripple to it, a flow of waves that reminded me of breathing.

Yet as I looked out tonight, there was nothing. Not even the reflection of the moon. Only the stars appeared in the water before me, shining like the universe above.

I cast out my line. It flew across the lake, soaring through the brisk autumn air, landing in the water about a dozen feet from our boat. I didn’t see many ripples as the hook and lure sank into the darkness. It had simply just disappeared, swallowed by the void.

All seemed to go still and silent then. I waited there for a while, sitting in the gentle rocking of the boat, if it were truly rocking at all, and not just my imagination, while nothing happened. My grandfather sat in silence, looking out over the waters with an intense, stone-like gaze. There was something unbreaking about the way he looked out at the waters, as if he were studying them. Or, perhaps, searching for something in the inky darkness. He seemed to flinch at every minuscule sighting of false movement, and seemed to twitch at every sound of water rippling that wasn’t there.

I was so focused on him that I hadn’t even noticed the gentle tugging at my line.

“I’ve got something,” I muttered, then cried out in triumph: “I’ve got something!”

“No, you don’t,” my grandfather said back, staring out at the waters with beady eyes. “You don’t know what you’re doing—you couldn’t have caught something.”

“But grandfather—”

“You couldn’t catch something if it just happened upon your hook, boy.” This time he laughed, hearty and loud.

“But look!”

My grandfather craned his neck, looking almost lazily at me, gripping my fishing rod for control—and his eyes burst with shock. Something was latched onto my hook, yanking at the line, while I kept a firm grip on it, battling to keep it steady.

“Heavens to Betsy,” he whispered.

“What should I do?”

He sat open mouthed, then roared: “Reel it in, damnit!”

I grasped the fishing reel with tight fingers and began to wind, as if I were winding the most difficult music box in the world. The line sputtered on the rod, the reel halting in its place. The fish fought back hard, resisting my strength.

“Put some muscle into it, boy!” my grandfather urged.

“I’m trying!” I cried.

But the fish wasn’t giving in so easily. I felt the line pull deeper into the water, regardless of how much muscle I put into reeling the stubborn thing in. I felt myself inching closer to the edge of the boat. Perhaps I had caught something much bigger than a fish—but what, I had no clue. Whatever it was, I was shocked to realize it was even stronger than me.

“I need help!” I cried, shuffling towards the edge.

“Don’t be a goddamn wussy!” my grandfather ordered, like a drill sergeant. “Put your back into it!”

“I am!”

My feet were planted against the side of the boat. I was able to anchor myself to it, pushing against the walls of the boat to give myself more leverage—but it wasn’t nearly enough. Whatever I had caught, it wasn’t giving up. It pulled back with incomprehensible strength for a sea creature within a lake. My knees began to bend as I approached the edge of the boat. My arms burned with the strength I had left, but none of it was enough. The thing in the water I had caught was relentless, unbreaking in its strength. My arms gave out and I was thrust forward, head first towards the water.

My face stopped an inch before the endless blackness of the lake. I couldn’t see the bottom, even if I had tried. But even if it were broad daylight, my gaze still would have been obscured, not by the infinite dark of the lake, nor by the reflection of the stars above.

But by the face in the water.

It was stark in the blackness, a pale and pallid face, looking malnourished, the marble-like eyes a glassy gray. I screamed, releasing my grip on the fishing rod. It flung from my hands, diving into the water, where the face sank into the darkness.

I felt my grandfather’s hands pull me back onto the boat, and I was thrown against the other side. My breaths came in heavy takes. None of them seemed to be enough. My lungs felt empty, insatiable, gasping for any amount of air.

Then my grandfather’s hands seized me.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he snapped. His hands gripped my flesh through my shirt. “Are you mentally broken? You had a perfectly good catch, and you blew it! You blew it!”

His voice boomed throughout the valley, traveling across the waters. It echoed back at us once, then disappeared into the night. Silence fell over the lake.

My grandfather must have seen how viciously he was grabbing me, as if holding onto my arms for dear life. There was a madness in his eyes, a desperation, but whatever the source of it was, I didn’t know. He released his grip on me and wiped his sweating brow from beneath his withering, tearing cap.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

I didn’t fight him on it. He grabbed the oars, beginning to row back to the shore, where I could see the dim lights of our small cabin through the thick trees. The water whispered softly below as the boat lurched forward, drifting through the water.

“Goddamn wussy,” my grandfather mumbled.

I shrank in my seat, unable to pull my thoughts from what I had seen disappear into the inky, unending blackness.

My grandfather had gone to sleep soon after we returned to the cabin. He didn’t talk to me much after what had happened.

I sat on the couch in the dark, only a low lit lamp on the table beside me, watching the television. I didn’t know what channel it was, though I truly didn’t care what was happening. I couldn’t pry my thoughts from what I had seen in the water. It had been a face. I was absolutely sure of it, but how could there have been a face in the water? And how had it sunk down into the darkness so seamlessly?

I grew tired eventually, the voices on the television following me into the dull sleep I found.

And when I dreamt, I was back on the boat.

The skies were black above me. The sea of darkness was vast, never-ending. It reflected the stars above, sprinkles of gleaming light. The boat was rocking gently, though I heard no waves pat against the hull; the water was unmoving, as if it were dead.

My grandfather wasn’t here with me now, not like he had been before—I was all alone on the boat.

Then I heard something ripple on the water.

I leaned over the side, gazing into the darkness.

The face appeared again, white as milk. The eyes were gray and glassy. And this time it spoke. The voice that came out was gurgling, as though the throat was filled with lake water.

“Help me,” it said.

I felt a shock through my body and I was struck by the urge to pull away from it—but before I could, a pair of hands surfaced from the lake. They latched onto my shoulders with incredible strength. They pulled me over the side.

I sank into the freezing darkness.

Then I woke up.

A chill passed over my body, though it wasn’t one as though I was frightened—it was a breeze that passed over me. I sat up on the couch. The TV was still playing, a chilling sound that felt wrong in the silence of the night, though I wasn’t listening to it anymore. The sound was far away, unimportant. I studied the room.

The front door was wide open.

I stared at it, knowing that I had absolutely closed it when we came back from the lake. My grandfather had told me to, in fact, as though he thought I wouldn’t remember. I always remembered to close it; he always told me to anyway.

I stood from the couch and crossed the room. The TV sounds followed me, slowly drowned out by the chirps of crickets filtering in through the wide-open front door. The breeze came in a frigid gust. It flooded the cabin like a broken dam, clinging to my body. My skin prickled into gooseflesh. A chill ran its way up my spine. If I didn’t close it now, my grandfather would be upset. He didn’t like the cold, not when he was trying to sleep.

I put a hand on the door. Then I stopped.

I peered through the doorway, through the line of trees. They led to the shore of the lake.

I remembered my dream then. I could see the face so clearly in my mind—I could nearly see it behind my eyes when they shut. But what had it told me? It had told me something, I knew that much, but what it was that it’d said, I just couldn’t recall. It was so fuzzy, it almost felt as though it were on the tip of my brain’s tongue, right on the brink of figuring it ou—

Help me.

It struck me then. Like when you remember something you’ve been struggling all day to recall; something so incredibly important. Why had it told me that in my dream?

I stared out at the lake. The sheet of blackness that stretched on for a mile in every direction, a void of darkness with no bottom to be known. For all I knew, the lake really did lead down to Hell. If there was no way to get down to the bottom, no way to see it from the top, then there was no way for me, or anyone, to be certain of what lies within the deep. But there was one thing I did know.

The face. The pale face—the glassy marble eyes.

And the cry for help.

I stared out at the lake, at its unmoving stillness. It looked so pretty, reflecting the stars. It almost looked like a layer of obsidian, a beautiful glass-like surface. It looked like I could walk on it.

I released my grip on the door. Then I stepped through.

My feet carried me through the woods, approaching the shore slowly. I didn’t feel rushed even slightly. I heard crickets around me. Somewhere there was the call of a raven, or a crow. I could never tell the difference, but I was comforted to know I wasn’t entirely alone, that these creatures kept me company.

The boat sat gently in the water, docked at the jetty. It swayed gently in the subtle motion, as if the lake were breathing.

I climbed in carefully. There was a small amount of water in the boat that I wasn’t sure how it got there—most likely from my struggle earlier—but it wouldn’t stop me. I untied the boat from the dock, grabbed the oars, and began to row.

The cabin grew idly smaller as I drifted towards the center of the lake, the light dimming with every second. The breeze blew past me in a cool, refreshing wave, but it would soon grow colder.

When I reached the center, I stopped. The boat sat there still, unmoving even with the breeze, like a piece of driftwood. Distantly I could hear the calls of the birds who had accompanied me, but they were too far away now to offer any form of comfort.

I gazed over the blackness of the lake.

Staring into the darkness, I almost seemed to lose myself in it. I grew dizzy, because it looked as though I were looking at the skies below me instead of above, and for a moment I couldn’t tell where I was anymore. I saw the stars, twinkling in the black, staring back up at me like a thousand little eyes.

Something appeared in the water. It was pale, almost white in the blackness—and then I saw a pair of silver dots gleaming up at me. It was the drowned face I had seen before, I realized, its glassy eyes reflecting the moonlight above us. It was deep in the water, as if it didn’t want to come any closer than that.

I stared at it, feeling compelled to draw closer.

My body moved as though by itself, and I stepped towards the edge of the boat. The blackness expanded, encompassing my entire view as I leaned over the side, until it was all that I could see. I stared at the face as its gleaming, glassy eyes stared back.

I leaned further over the side.

The face disappeared, descending into the black.

Then a cold pair of hands shoved me—and I fell face-first into the black lake. Darkness swallowed me. Icy coldness hugged me all over, biting into my bones, and they ached so terribly I wanted to cry. The blood in my veins felt frozen as I sank and sank deeper into the black, and no matter how hard I paddled, I couldn’t rise.

My grandfather’s words came back to me, grating and vicious: Don’t lean over the side.

I was sinking. Sinking deeper.

And deeper.

Light fading from above.

Darkness, as far as I could see.

Everywhere I looked was infinite blackness. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold my breath. My lungs swelled and burned to be emptied. The air forced itself out in little bursts of bubbles I desperately struggled to keep in, because I wouldn’t be able to snatch anymore. At least in space I would have frozen to death by now. Here, I would soon; I knew that. I could no longer feel my fingers. It looked like I was floating in space, and felt just as freezing. The only problem was that there were no stars, nowhere I looked.

At least not at first.

Blinking into existence, a dozen silver, gleaming dots appeared around me. I looked around. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, but by now I couldn’t feel my toes, and the numbness was spreading up my arms and legs. I could barely see in the dark now, and I saw these little lights appear in sets of two, like pairs of stars as they were being born in the universe.

But as my freezing eyes acclimated to the darkness, I saw what they really were. A bubble of breath escaped me.

There were faces in the water around me, where the gleaming dots—the eyes—glassy, marble eyes, reflected the light of the moon. Their white, pale, pallid faces slowly came into view as the darkness became natural to my eyes, their mouths drawn open lazily as they inhaled water. The bodies floated below, bloated and decomposed beyond recognition, and I saw beneath them their feet, swollen and purple, were held by something latched on tight.

As I sank deeper, a hundred more appeared around me. Their eyes gleamed like silver coins. Like stars in the sky.

Then a thousand.

I felt another bubble of air escape my lungs, floating upwards towards the surface of the lake. I felt a cry grow in my chest as I tore my arms through the water, forcing myself to rise. I began to slowly ascend in the darkness, rising to the surface.

Then I felt something wrap around my ankle.

I looked down at something tightening around my ankle—a tendril of flesh. It descended into the deep, infinite darkness below me, until I couldn’t see where it began. I felt the rest of my breath escape me, bubbles rising to the surface.

Then it pulled.

Water filled my lungs.

I sank into the deep.