"Watching, Waiting" (Image & Text Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)
“The lake does not return what it takes.” ~White Harbor proverb
The bells tolled at noon the next day, slow and hollow. A different kind of quiet had settled into White Harbor — not the peace of a calm morning, but a silence that invaded its streets and seeped beneath its doors. It was an uncertain quiet, heavy with what had happened and heavier still with what might come. Down at the shoreline, the waves whispered against the rocks, carrying garbled and jumbled secrets from the deep. Everything looked the same — the cottages, the pines, the docks — but beneath that sameness, nothing was quite the same. The lake had seen to that.
They called it a funeral, though all it truly was, was an acknowledgment of loss. Jonas Miller had been beloved — brash, broad-shouldered, quick with laughter. His boots had stood at the tavern door more times than anyone could count, his voice had rung out in the streets, his hands had helped mend nets, chop wood, haul sledges. Now those boots stood empty by his mother’s hearth. She sat beside them, staring at the cold leather, her face ashen. All morning she had kept vigil at the window, her eyes fixed on the docks where the lake had swallowed her son, as though sheer will might return him.
The children whispered as they huddled in twos and threes. “The lake wanted him,” one said. “Because he was strong.” Another shook his head, insisting, “No — it wanted him because he laughed at it.” Some repeated the superstition they had overheard the night before: once for warning, twice for naming, thrice for claiming. They repeated it like a skipping rhyme, their voices thin and uneasy, half-play, half-prayer. They understood enough to be afraid, but not enough to know of what.
The old men sat close in the tavern, the air thick with pipe smoke and the sharp bite of whiskey. Henrik’s hands shook as he lifted his glass, amber spilling over his knuckles. Paulsen stared into his drink as if it might hold an answer. Lars hunched low, his voice breaking the silence:
“We keep thinking it’ll stop. That it’ll take one and be done. But the lake don’t make promises. It feeds when it wants. And who’s to say it won’t want again tomorrow?”
Henrik muttered, “Every generation, it takes one. My father told me the same, and his father before him. Annie in the ’40s. Caleb in the ’60s. Now Jonas. The lake remembers.”
Paulsen’s voice was low, heavy: “Jonas’s bloodline was already marked. Isaac. Ruth. Now him. But what if bloodlines don’t matter? What if it just wants the living — any of us?”
The men drank deeply, but the whiskey gave no warmth. The tavern was full that night, every chair taken, but it seemed to all of them that something sat empty. Not of wood and nail, but of laughter, of youth, of hope.
The gouges on the dock remained, dark stains in the boards. No one dared scrub them clean. The rope lay where it had fallen, sodden and stiff. The lake had fed.
And yet, when darkness fell and the white pines hissed overhead, not one soul in White Harbor believed the hunger was truly satisfied.
~Wylddane
The bells tolled at noon the next day, slow and hollow. A different kind of quiet had settled into White Harbor — not the peace of a calm morning, but a silence that invaded its streets and seeped beneath its doors. It was an uncertain quiet, heavy with what had happened and heavier still with what might come. Down at the shoreline, the waves whispered against the rocks, carrying garbled and jumbled secrets from the deep. Everything looked the same — the cottages, the pines, the docks — but beneath that sameness, nothing was quite the same. The lake had seen to that.
They called it a funeral, though all it truly was, was an acknowledgment of loss. Jonas Miller had been beloved — brash, broad-shouldered, quick with laughter. His boots had stood at the tavern door more times than anyone could count, his voice had rung out in the streets, his hands had helped mend nets, chop wood, haul sledges. Now those boots stood empty by his mother’s hearth. She sat beside them, staring at the cold leather, her face ashen. All morning she had kept vigil at the window, her eyes fixed on the docks where the lake had swallowed her son, as though sheer will might return him.
The children whispered as they huddled in twos and threes. “The lake wanted him,” one said. “Because he was strong.” Another shook his head, insisting, “No — it wanted him because he laughed at it.” Some repeated the superstition they had overheard the night before: once for warning, twice for naming, thrice for claiming. They repeated it like a skipping rhyme, their voices thin and uneasy, half-play, half-prayer. They understood enough to be afraid, but not enough to know of what.
The old men sat close in the tavern, the air thick with pipe smoke and the sharp bite of whiskey. Henrik’s hands shook as he lifted his glass, amber spilling over his knuckles. Paulsen stared into his drink as if it might hold an answer. Lars hunched low, his voice breaking the silence:
“We keep thinking it’ll stop. That it’ll take one and be done. But the lake don’t make promises. It feeds when it wants. And who’s to say it won’t want again tomorrow?”
Henrik muttered, “Every generation, it takes one. My father told me the same, and his father before him. Annie in the ’40s. Caleb in the ’60s. Now Jonas. The lake remembers.”
Paulsen’s voice was low, heavy: “Jonas’s bloodline was already marked. Isaac. Ruth. Now him. But what if bloodlines don’t matter? What if it just wants the living — any of us?”
The men drank deeply, but the whiskey gave no warmth. The tavern was full that night, every chair taken, but it seemed to all of them that something sat empty. Not of wood and nail, but of laughter, of youth, of hope.
The gouges on the dock remained, dark stains in the boards. No one dared scrub them clean. The rope lay where it had fallen, sodden and stiff. The lake had fed.
And yet, when darkness fell and the white pines hissed overhead, not one soul in White Harbor believed the hunger was truly satisfied.
~Wylddane
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