The Lake

Trigger Warning: The following [Supposedly] Spooky Story includes a suicide attempt. If you are uncomfortable with or triggered by suicide or self-harm please skip this story.

 

POV: Jace Birky (alias: Jace Nygaard)

Timeline: Pink

 

It was a dark and lonely night. The cold winter air was bitter cold, nipping at Jace’s exposed flesh. He stood in his boxers at the edge of a despairing moat that was once a stunning lake. Winter promised depths, but as the years wore on, the legend of what Falkhus had been had faded into the past.

Jace flopped on the rocks, a half drained bottle of akvavit in hand.

Above him the moon shone brightly, casting a brilliant reflection of himself in the water. Jace studied his face as best he could in the ever shifting mirror. He drank more, wondering what it would feel like to fall into the water, to never be able to reach the bottom.

It’s how his life felt.

He stepped into the water, ignoring the cold, and made his way deeper until he was chest deep and ice coated the rest of the water. He drank again and dove under.

—

Jace surfaced in a white space. He pulled himself from the water into the endless room. “Hello?”

The liquor was gone. Falkhus was gone. The moon, even, had left him.

“Hello?” Jace repeated. “Where the fuck am I?”

“Hey.” A man walked toward Jace, his hands tucked in his baggy jeans. He was tall, broad shouldered, with soft, coppery brown eyes and dark hair.

“Hej,” Jace said. He realized then his heart had been thundering in his chest. It calmed, knowing someone else was in this strange space. “I…m not sure how I got lost,” he said. “But something happened.”

The guy nodded, his lips pursed tight. “So, I guess my question is, do you want me to leave you alone or interfere?”

Jace looked around. The space was empty, the water had vanished.

He closed his eyes and counted back from ten, his fingers pinching his skin tightly. When he opened them he was still in the endless white space, the one man in front of him. His left hand rose to his chest, splayed out. He grabbed at his bare chest. “Is.” He swallowed. “Am I dead?” His eyes filled with tears.

“Yeah. That was the idea, right? People who don’t want to die go to Death, people who want to die come here.”

Jace’s chest heaved as he began to sob, a pitched sound coming from his voice. This wasn’t what he’d meant, not how he’d wanted his anguish executed. His hands shook as they fell to the ground, supporting him. When he looked up from his pathetic place on the floor, the man stood there still.

“Stay,” Jace murmured. “Please don’t leave me here.”

The man nodded. “I can for a little, but you won’t.” Beside him, a large brown couch appeared. The man sat on it, encompassing an entire corner.

“I didn’t mean to die,” Jace begged. “I did, but I didn’t mean it.” He pulled himself to standing. This was it, this was real. “Shit.”

“Overdose?” The man asked.

“I got drunk. I went swimming under some ice.” It was stupid, now that he didn’t have most of a bottle coursing through his veins.

“I would have to be way more than drunk to go swimming under ice,” the man said. He shook his head, almost like a shiver. “Too cold.”

“It wasn’t for fun,” Jace argued. “I wanted to die. But it was like I wanted to die, not that I wanted to die. If you get the difference.”

“Not really.”

How could he explain it? What was the point?

“You wanted to stop dealing with whatever your problem was, but you didn’t want to be dead?” the guy asked.

“Ja. That.” Jace went and sat on the couch. “I’ve gone swimming drunk before. It’s like time stops, your body slows down. You’re there, just you and the water and the world. Everything else is on shore, but you can’t think about it because you’re overwhelmed by how cold it is, how slippery the rocks feel, how bright the moon is or how heavy the rain falling feelings. You get out of your head.”

“Well, you did a good job. It’s all very stopped.”

Jace buried his head in his hands. “It’s too stopped. I didn’t want this.”

“What were you stopping?”
Jace swallowed and looked back at the guy, the perfectly calm man in this giant empty space. Jace bet he didn’t have real problems, not ones like Jace did.

Jace turned. “My mom is dying. She’d been dying for a long time and nothing fixes it. I can’t fix it. My dad can’t fix it. I have so many little brothers and sisters and they’re going to lose their mom. You can feel it.”

“Do you think this helped? You stopped everything, right?”

Jace shook his head. He’d made everything worse. His dad would have less help, more problems. “No.”

“Then what?”

“You don’t get it,” Jace complained. Except all of his problems were so small here. He’d beg for them back if he could. He’d rather eternity facing jerks at school than never getting another day alive.

“What?” the guy asked.

“It’s not just her. It’s the kids at school. It’s this.” He held the bottle up. “It’s feeling out of control.”

“What you wanted to do was stop feeling,” the guy said, like an asshole genius. “But feeling things is what makes us alive. Pain, grief, happiness, fear, love…” He looked at Jace more closely. “Attraction. Excitement.”

“But it’s too much.”

“Why?”

“My best friend. His dad died from a sexually transmitted disease, and his mom is sick. He got it from a guy, so he cheated. And we live on their estate. At school… with my mom sick… they say things about her.”

“I hope you punched them.”

“No. Have you ever noticed bullies never get in trouble, but the people who stand up to them do? What would I get from it? My mom wouldn’t be better.”

“Yeah.” The guy leaned back. “That’s actually why my family is in hiding. We live by our own rules, but we’d be in serious trouble if anyone ever found us.”

“Ja? Well, that’s not an option, and I have to go back there. See them, their judgment. I can’t run away.”

“You could be homeschooled,” he suggested.

“Oh, so my dad can take care of the estate, my siblings, my dying mom, and me?”

“Or quit. Shift your focus.”

Jace shook his head. He needed to help his dad, not be a bigger problem.

It didn’t matter, he reminded himself. He was here, and his dad was alive.

Tears fell down Jace’s cheeks. “Maybe. My dad is stressed, too.”

The guy shook his head in disapproval. “But he’s not too stressed out to bury his son?”

Jace fell back toward his hands, massaging his head. “Hopefully he has a big hole pre dug for a tree,” he joked.

He wanted to go back, to erase this.

But he couldn’t erase it, just like he couldn’t erase watching his mom flatline for just a minute. Like he couldn’t erase cleaning her, her bed, the floor…

Like he couldn’t erase the blood she’d coughed all over him, the blood that was still on his clothes somewhere between their apartment and his body.

“What’s your name?” the guy asked.

“Jace. Jace Birky.”

“You’re an asshole, Jace Birky.”

Jace closed his eyes. “I know.”

They were silent, the two of them. It was the worst kind of silence because there was no sound in that place, nothing at all to break the tension.

“I need a drink,” Jace announced. He stood. “Do you have anything around here?”

“No. You’ll fade eventually, and you won’t need a drink anymore.”

 Jace didn’t want to fade. His body was tighter, his mind racing. “I didn’t mean to die. Not really. I want to be me, to have a normal life. I want the pain to stop.” His eyes burst with tears. “I want my mom to stop hurting. My dad. My brothers and sisters. I want it over with. I want to go home. I want to be myself, have a life.”

“Okay. Be you, at home. You think your dying mom wants fake Jace? No. She wants every second she can get with real Jace.”

“I can’t.” Jace spun in a circle, arms wide. “I’m dead.”

The guy was standing, the couch gone. He walked over to Jace. “What would you do if you weren’t dead?”

Jace looked at him, his lip quivering.

The guy’s arms wrapped around him, held him. Jace cried against his chest. “I don’t know. Learn to not cry,” he joked. “I don’t have anything to live for. I don’t want to leave them, though. I want to quit school, be with my mom. I want to have good moments with her, give my brothers and sisters good memories.”

“Your friend is Eddie Lund, right?”

Jace stepped away. If this guy was God, it made sense he knew about Eddie, but it felt wrong too.

“Ja? How do you know that? Are you God?”

“I’m just a guy who can come to a magical place no one knows about. I’m Rhyss.” he offered his hand.

Jace shook it, as surreal as it was. At least he wasn’t crying. “Hej, Rhyss.”

“If I bring you back, which I can do because I have magic, you have to find something to live for. It’s not cheap.”

There was a chance?

Jace met Rhyss’ eyes and swallowed. “I will. I’ll live for my brothers and sisters… and…” he needed something for himself.

His shoulders fell. “I don’t know what to live for.”

“Then find a boyfriend.”

Jace looked at him, confused. “Ja? And die when he leaves me?”

Rhyss shrugged. “Or don’t kill yourself.”

“I’ll find something,” Jace promised. “I’ll find something to live for. Something for me. Magic maybe.” He liked that idea. “Ja. I’ll live to find magic, to learn magic.”

“Okay.”

“Can I find you?” Jace asked. “Are you real?”

Was this all a dream to get him to stop feeling hopeless? His subconscious working to make him stop being a reckless idiot with his life?

“I’m going to have to bring you back,” Rhyss said. “Birky… he’ll know what I’m doing. Where is your body?”

“A moat. It’s like a lake, but it’s not. It’s at an estate called Falkhus.”

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Rhyss said. “But first, we have to move you somewhere you can be brought back from.”

Jace looked at him, confused, but he was doing this. He was fighting for his life. There was a chance he could have a life. “How do you do that?”

“Like this.” Rhyss shifted, and then Jace was in darkness.

The darkness lifted, revealing a cathedral like building.

Before he could go inside, he heard his name being called softly. “Jace.”

He turned toward it, let it pull him. His heart raced faster and faster until it felt like it had exploded. Oxygen flooded his lungs as he gasped into the night sky.

There, on the edge of the water, was his dad and the man from the place, Rhyss.

It wasn’t a dream.

This chapter is bonus content to the upcoming novel

Hover & Sound

Releasing Nov. 4th, 2022