Last Night at Lake Black
“You don’t know about the Raggedy Man?”
“Shut up!”
“No, seriously Suz, nobody ever told you?”
The speaker ducks away from an incoming told-you-to-shut-the-hell-up arm punch then tackles his girlfriend with a playful growl. “He comes out of the lake looking for blooood...”
“Or beer. Maybe he just wants some beer?” another beach bro voice says, then calls out, “Hey Mr. Raggedy, you wanna brewskie?”
The rest of the campers, eight of them all totaled, cheers to the urban legend of Lake Black and break out in laughter that echoes across the still, dark water.
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Slowly and steadily, I slide my oar through the water, careful not to make a sound. The moon is new and the sky dark but for the thousands of pinpoint stars hanging above me, reflected also in the shimmering water of the lake surrounding my canoe. It is like rowing through the cosmos itself, rowing through space and time to a place unimaginably distant and unknown to any living man.
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An acoustic guitar strikes up, playing some unidentifiable sloppy riffs. Two pinpoints of glowing red embers dance about the campfire as blunts are passed around the circle. Somebody coughs loudly, another jokes about not being able to handle a backwoods in the backwoods. A beer can crunches flat, followed by a raucous belch.
“I’m pissin.”
A shirtless form saunters down to the lake’s edge and unzips. He gazes out across the expanse with a drunken sway as he lets loose. After a moment, he cranes his neck to the side as if he spots something out on the water.
He shakes off with a shrug. “Must be a duck.”
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Far out now, and farther still, I row on into empty silence, the void now encompassing my entire reality. A covered incense censer lays at my feet, billowing wisps of frankincense scented smoke that drifts out over the water, coalescing around the mirrored starlight like morning mist on the lake.
But the sun will never rise again on this lone oarsman. I am done with these planetary bounds.
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“Hey look at that!” a female voice says. The speaker dashes forward toward the lake’s edge, pointing up at the sky with sudden excitement.
A new light is shining in space, like a fat yellow star. Only, it’s moving. It zips across the heavens far too quickly to be a plane and disappears over the horizon in an amber streak.
“Maybe a satellite? Or the ISS?”
A collective shrug is interrupted by speculations about aliens and UFOs. Then someone mentions the Raggedy Man again, which elicits another peal of nervous laughter.
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I reach the center of the void, the stars now infinitely spaced out all around me. Below my boat, once a reflection of the entire galaxy, is naught but cold, dark water, blacker than the deepest chthonic chambers of the forgotten city submerged far beneath the waves.
I lean over the edge of the canoe and draw the ritual knife. Saluting the stars above, I speak the proper incantations. My voice carries far and wide, loud and clear, intoning in a language not spoken on Earth in millennia.
I give the offering of blood and gaze into the water.
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“You hear that? Dude’s voice is spooky as hell.”
“Somebody’s fucking with us.”
One of the guys storms over to the water’s edge, flicks on a maglight and waves it slowly across the lake. “Who the fuck is that? You’re fucking dead when we find you!”
“Wait, there. Point it there.” A female form stands near him, guiding the hand holding the torch until its extra-bright beam shines down the direct middle of the lake.
The light doesn’t reach the other shore. It illuminates a stripe of water stretching to near the center of the lake, then goes black. Like something big and dark is lurking out there, just sucking up the light.
“What the fuck?”
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A demonic face forms in the still water, a murky gray visage that is neither a reflection nor anything under the water, but an existence slipping across the lake’s surface itself. It glares at me with malice.
I speak my demand. “Transport me, oh ineffable one, to the city of dreams across the vast heavens, to the place where time no longer exists and black stars are traversed with mere thought alone. Take me home to Carcosa, from whence I have been away for far too long.”
An ashen hand rises from out of the water, gnarled claw-tipped fingers unfurling, its palm outstretched to accept my payment for services rendered.
I stab the ceremonial blade in the direction of the campers across the lake, toward the echoing screams of hollow threats. “My offering awaits on yonder beach,” I say.
That terrible face breaks in a grin.
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Suzie sees it first, like a shimmering on the water. “Is that a duck?” she asks.
“I thought I saw a duck,” says another.
The shimmer flickers closer, rippling across the surface of the otherwise calm lake. As it nears, they realize it is no reflection, but a faint wispy glow outlining a darker form taking shape in the murky depths.
“What the … duck?”
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I sit back and watch the campfire, the monstrous shadow silhouetted against the flickering orange light as it rises from the lake, its form impossibly tall and gaunt, ancient robes flapping about its lanky limbs in tatters. It leaps into the air like a wildcat and pounces on the campers with the ferocity of hell unleashed. The screams ring out with pure terror now, but are short-lived.
Finally. The task is done. Soon, I will be taken home.
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