Beneath the Chilling Waters

by Andrew Barber

This servitude, now so deeply averse to me, must end with my grandfather’s fading generation, at least for my family. Another mortal must take up the dreary mantle. My companion in boyhood and into manhood, the junior Tucker. Or perhaps our town’s young widow, Mrs. Jenkins. I know this as I step off the empty bus and begin the protracted march back to town along a road that thankfully few souls ever travel. 

The isolated township of Aldrich holds much in common with the lake of the same name. Our families know this. Our ancestors, bearing other prominent historical names that have shifted over the centuries, were also colonists. They landed at Plymouth to live their lives in a new world. My bloodline was nearly extinguished, and we were saved only by the charity of the native Patuxet Indians, who maintained the land for our arrival. 

We are now in the role of the Patuxet. The Lake knows this. Perhaps it is grateful. 

Our great-grandparents' great-grandparents discovered the Lake in the care of another tribe, which dwelled along its shore of listless waves, because of a banishment on the part of the Patuxet and the Wampanoag confederation. These indigenes were few, and just seven years later, they were no more. They suffered greatly four hundred years ago, as our village did a century ago during the Spanish flu outbreak, but much worse. By then, Aldrich was the Lake's name, and its few homes became our village.

The tribe had shown us the Chepi in the water, and it then fell upon us to feed them. We would refresh the waters annually with the river eels they preferred to consume. And we dropped in the dusting of gold they ingested and interlaced in strands through their gelatinous tendrils (for their preferred shape was a mass of tentacles that stemmed or budded out from each other seemingly randomly, and they were otherwise bodiless). And we provided them with the offerings of our own.

My grandfather, like Cain, took his brother to the Lake as an offering. And like Abraham would have done for his god, he took his son, my young father, barely a man, months before I was born. The Chepi opted to consume them both. All citizens of Aldrich are enveloped in a gelatin-like cocoon, considered, and usually returned to us on their sixteenth year. Or perhaps the Chepi are simply not as hungry at those times (is it improper for me to consider that?). I was taken, evaluated, and released. I remember the fear, the resignation, and the honor of that day. I still shudder recalling the tiny golden needles that pierced my spine at the base of my skull, having an inkling of their thoughts, and knowing they read all of mine. Most of my friends were ignorant of the judgment that was to come, only that their parents wrung their hands and fretted. That day, I survived and became my grandfather’s confidant after his friend, old Mr. Tucker, had passed on from a slow-wasting disease. Some people whispered that the closeness between my grandfather and myself was an unnatural one, but they did not comprehend all that I provided for him and was entrusted with at such a young age.

I've even swum in the deep and icy cold waters of Aldrich. Others will not. They claim they are averse as the perfectly round Lake is often mistakenly considered bottomless. This is foolishness since any water over a man's erect stature is just as deadly. Nearly a century ago, a geologist from Miskatonic, a poor soul who was later lost during the university’s ill-fated Antarctica expedition, visited our shore and theorized that it was a volcanic crater. But the Indians chanted an ancient elegy of when the Lake itself was born—what they called "the night the fire fell to Earth." Even I do not drink from it. Our village has a small waterworks that draws its supply from a well located miles away. 

And we do not fish there. Occasionally, others do. People who come to stay in the Jenkins boarding house and eat at the roadhouse. Young Mrs. Jenkins charms their life stories out of the fishermen. We quickly know which ones will be missed, at least sooner than later. Those who have wives and children are quickly driven away when the Lake emits its foul miasma. Those the Lake might take, it takes quickly. 

Few follow up on those fishermen, who have reversed their roles with the objects of their sport. Their phones are useless. The only cell tower, with the Lake well out of its range and near the water works, seldom functions properly, if at all. We see to that. The Chepi in the Lake complain that too many radio waves interfere with their speech and perceptions. Our citizens are essentially alone. Even our few landlines go through an antique switchboard that Mrs. Jenkins manages.

We also have callers who conceal their visits here completely. Grandfather, through cautious yet sedulous word of mouth in nearby cities, has apprised men with dark desires and darker sins that there are pleasures to be clandestinely had in Aldrich. Those sinister men come here. They seldom leave here and are rarely missed.

And Pastor Acheron, of a local church, takes in the broken or indolent from the city when winter becomes too hard to endure outdoors. Also, our asylum takes in charity cases as well, those broken souls with no family or abandoned forever just to be a melancholy memory because of their madness. These also feed the Lake.

So, for most of us, that the Lake once spared, who attend the waters, a quiet life goes on. Most citizens seldom deeply contemplate our duties. Yes, we must submit our children to be offered—but most come back. And annually, we attend our aquatic neighbors' celebratory night, as they float on the surface beneath a star in the Pisces constellation that we know they once called home. Otherwise, we generally go about our insignificant business.

Except my grandfather—and myself.

As I walk back to town, I reflect upon the last few days. First was the errand of the fisherman's car, which needed to disappear, and now it is deep in a watery quarry, a hundred miles from here. The second task was a stop at some pawn stores, where I purchased a few gold trinkets of no greater value than their weight, which will soon be filed into dust and feed the Chepi. 

I desire more. Is that wrong? Am I selfish? The world beyond Aldrich isn’t the same as the dark world beyond Plymouth for my ancestors. Their woods went on forever. Our murky woods eventually cease their obscuration and open again onto other communities. There is so much out there to do and to see. As my grandfather has aged, I've grown lonely for genuine companionship. Perhaps I could go out and return to our community with someone, but I'm uncertain I could lead a partner down to the Lake to be considered. 

Few leave the town. My mother, shamed by bearing me so young, departed. My grandfather and her parents permitted her to go shortly after I was born. She said goodbye to the town, and my grandfather drove her to our almost unused and empty train station and saw her on her way. He said she was both excited and sorrowful. She has never corresponded, even once. 

It’s decided in my mind. I must inform my grandfather today. I will tell him I am leaving. Aldrich has become a darker and darker place to me. I want to go beyond this oppressive dusk and step into the light. If the light will still forebear me.

I near the roadhouse. I deserve a well-cooked meal. Even before I reach it, Mrs. Jenkins and Tucker emerge. I see it in their faces. I know the black news they will share. 

And I realize, and must accede to the fact, that I am now the Chief Servant of the Lake.

I will help the Chepi. We help them. We are like the Patuxet were to our forebears.

Of course, the Pilgrims flourished after a time. They multiplied and filled a continent, all of their “New world.” 

The Patuxet are all gone.