HAUNTING ON LAKE ERIE

PART I

Karana stood at the edge of the shore, Lake Erie stretching out before her, a grey expanse that mirrored the emptiness within her. The sand was cold beneath her worn boots, and the remains of driftwood lay scattered like forgotten bones. She’d stopped counting the days weeks ago. At first, the waiting had been a tangible thing, a knot in her stomach she could almost grasp. She’d spent hours on this very spot, her eyes glued to the horizon, searching for the familiar silhouette that never appeared. She would build fires at dusk, the flames leaping and spitting against the encroaching darkness, a beacon against the lonely shore. But the fires had dwindled, and the knot in her stomach had dissolved into a hollow ache. Now, only a profound weariness remained, a weight that pulled at her limbs and muffled her thoughts. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. They were supposed to be together, here, by the lake. They’d dreamed of building a small cabin, a sanctuary against the world’s harshness. They’d spoken of long walks under twilight skies, of shared laughter echoing across the water. Billy had promised. He’d held her hand, his gaze as blue and deep as the lake itself, and said he’d never leave her.

But he had.

Karana ran a trembling hand through her tangled hair, the wind tugging at the strands as if trying to pull her away. She turned, looking back at the path leading away from the shore, the narrow trail through the scraggly trees. Perhaps Billy will be there, standing in the shadows, a sheepish grin on his face, ready to explain his absence. She’d entertained that thought so many times in the days and months that had passed, only to be met with the same crushing disappointment. This time felt different. There was a finality to her thoughts, a resignation that had begun to bloom within her, like a dark flower pushing its way through the cracks in her heart. The words from the last letter she sent to Billy whispered in her mind:

“Am I even in your thoughts this cold night, as the cold seeps into my lonely bones? Do you still think of me, or have you found warmth in someone else’s embrace?”

Darkness. That was all that echoed back and greeted her. The darkness was vast and indifferent, a mirror of the emptiness inside her. Her gaze returned to the lake. The waves crashed against the shore with a rhythmic violence, each one a mournful sigh, each one a piece of her crumbling resolve. She could feel the cold reaching out to her, offering a strange kind of comfort. She takes one last look at the letter and softly whispers her ending words:

“I’m waiting for you, still hoping, holding on to a hopeless prayer, that I might hold you again. Are you ok? Are you safe? Had I done something? I await your reply. Love Karana.”

She took a step closer to the edge of the shore and then another, until the icy water lapped at the tips of her boots. It was colder than she remembered. It seeped through the leather and chilled her already numb feet. Fear pricked at her, a fleeting whisper of survival. But it was a weak voice, easily drowned out by the louder, more persistent summons of the lake. She kept walking. The water rose, first to her ankles, then her shins, and finally to her knees. Each step was heavy, each one a conscious surrender. She pulled her soaked shawl tighter around her, the damp fabric doing little to ward off the encroaching cold. It was a vast, unforgiving cold, the kind that burrowed deep into bone. But she didn’t pull back. She kept on going. She thought of Billy’s face, the way his eyes would crinkle when he laughed, the way his hands felt warm when he held hers. She remembered the promises they made, the whispered dreams shared under the starry sky. She tried to conjure the memory of his voice, the sound she had longed to hear for so long. But even his voice seemed to echo faintly in the distance, like an indistinct whisper carried away by the wind.

The water was up to her waist now, the waves tugging at her with increasing force. She stumbled, the icy water shocking her skin. She gasped, a strangled sound lost against the roar of the lake. It was getting harder to breathe, each breath a painful struggle. She swayed, her vision blurring. The sky had become a hazy grey above her, and the dark shoreline was now a distant, hazy strip.

“Billy,” she whispered, the sound barely audible. It was the last fragment of hope, a desperate plea to the empty air. But there was no reply, only the relentless pounding of waves and the vast, indifferent silence.

She closed her eyes. The cold embraced her, a numbing, complete surrender. The last coherent thought that flickered through her mind was that of a heart discarded, abandoned on a shore, with no explanation. Like a small, fragile boat being swallowed by the sea, she let go and welcomed the icy embrace.

As she slid beneath the surface, the lake claimed her, her last breath a muffled whisper carrying her beloved’s name. And then there was only the cold, the silence, and the endless darkness beneath Lake Erie’s frigid waves. Karana was gone.

But even in her passing, she lingered. The lake had taken her body, but her presence remained, a sorrowful echo on the shore. Sometimes, when the wind howled and the waves crashed with particular ferocity, a faint whisper could be heard, a mournful repetition of a single word: Billy. And though no one was there to hear it, the lake seemed to carry the chilling lament, an unbearable reminder of a love lost and a promise broken. Perhaps that was the true horror of it all, not the cold or the darkness, but the enduring emptiness of an unfulfilled love. One year later, Billy would return to this very spot on Lake Erie.

PART II

The wind off Lake Erie was a razor tonight, each gust a cruel whisper that seemed to claw at the exposed skin of Billy’s face. He huddled deeper into his worn coat, the collar pulled high, and stared out at the churning black water. The small, desolate stretch of beach near Kingsville was his sanctuary, his torment, and tonight, it was an icy mausoleum. The skeletal branches of the bare trees lining the shoreline scratched against the sky like the fingers of the damned.

Billy was a poet, or at least, he used to be. He’d once filled notebooks with lyrical musings for the love of Karana. The promises he made her, and the vow that he would always be at her side. But the hand of fate is always tossing the dice and rearranging the order of this world. Billy would wake up one morning and have a change of heart. The spark was no longer there, and Billy’s heart would drift towards other muses. To approach Karana and break it off, he felt too weak, besides, he wouldn’t know what to say after all the promises. So, he simply vanished from her existence; in other words, he cowered it.

Now, his pen remained dry, his soul a parched wasteland where only bitter, hollow echoes reverberated. He was haunted not by ghosts of the past, but by the ghost of a love that had died too young. A love named Karana. He kicked at a loose piece of driftwood, sending it skittering across the frozen sand. His breath plumed out in white clouds, dissipating into the frigid air. He’d come here tonight seeking solace, but the question that had been gnawing at him for days now, like a persistent rat in the walls of his mind, surfaced with renewed urgency. The last letter from Karana in his hand:

“Am I even in your thoughts this cold night, as the cold seeps into my lonely bones? Do you still think of me, or have you found warmth in someone else’s embrace?”

The last words of a letter from Karana still echoed in his mind.

It was a question born of desperate longing, a plea hurled into the vast emptiness of the night, a question he very well knew the answer to. Karana had passed one year ago this night, and oddly, at the same hour.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. It was a lone figure, walking along the beach. Billy frowned, surprised to see anyone brave enough, or fool enough, to be out on a night like this. The figure drew closer, and he could now make out a woman, her bright red scarf a jarring splash of color against the monochrome landscape. She walked with a brisk, determined stride, her head held high despite the gale.

He watched her approach, his usual aversion to human contact warring with a strange curiosity. When she was about ten feet away, she stopped. Her clear blue eyes met his, their gaze unwavering, almost unnervingly so.

“Hello,” she said, her voice carrying a melodic lilt that spoke of a foreign land. “I apologize for disturbing the tranquility. I’m Sarah, from London.”

Billy simply nodded, his tongue temporarily paralyzed by her unexpected presence. He didn’t normally interact with strangers, and certainly not ones who looked as out of place as this woman.

“I’m Billy,” he finally managed, his voice raspy from disuse.

Sarah smiled, a genuine, open smile that somehow managed to feel both warm and unsettling in the bone-chilling cold. “Pleasure to meet you, Billy. I’m visiting Kingsville for a few weeks. I heard this beach was quite beautiful, even in the winter. And the cold lake looks inviting.”

Billy scoffed, a humorless sound. “Beautiful? Inviting? It’s a graveyard. For broken things, and quite cold to be inviting.”

Sarah’s smile faltered slightly. “I see. I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or perhaps… the state of their heart.” She moved closer, her movements fluid and graceful despite the harsh wind. “I’m a bit of a morbid tourist, so it doesn’t bother me.”

She looked out at the lake, her gaze fixed on something beyond the visible horizon. “It’s a very… potent day and place. I can feel it. Something dark and unholy.”

Billy’s heart skipped a beat. How could she know, this stranger from a distant land, the weight of grief that clung to this place like a shroud? How could she feel the raw, desolate energy that pulsed beneath the surface of the sand? He shivered, not entirely from the cold.

“It’s… more than potent,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. He wanted to tell her about Karana, about how she had loved the lake, how she had drowned in its cold embrace a year ago. But the words wouldn’t come.

He looked away, unable to meet her intense gaze, and felt a strange tug, like an invisible pull, towards the dark waters.

The wind seemed to pick up, swirling around them like unseen currents. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore became a frantic whisper, a chorus of mournful voices. Suddenly, a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature seeped into Billy’s bones. Sarah’s presence, her uncanny understanding of the place, her unwavering stare, began to feel less comforting and more… predatory.

Sarah turned her head slowly, her eyes gleaming in the dim light. “You feel it too, don’t you?” she murmured, her voice a low, almost hypnotic drone. “The longing… the yearning… the waiting.” She stepped closer, her hand reaching out towards his, her touch cold as ice.

“The lake remembers,” she whispered, her breath forming little clouds in the frigid air. “It remembers those who have given themselves to it. It remembers them very well.”

Billy recoiled, a primal fear gripping him. He could now see something in Sarah’s eyes, something that wasn’t quite human. Something dark, something old and hungry. And then he noticed it, the faint shimmer around the edges of her figure, as if she were not quite entirely present.

“What… what are you?” he stammered, his voice trembling.

Sarah didn’t answer directly. Instead, her gaze shifted past him, out towards the lake.

“Do you think she feels your longing?” she murmured, her voice laced with an eerie sweetness. “Do you think Karana hears you when you whisper her name to the waves? A year ago this night, you didn’t hear.”

Billy’s blood ran cold. How did she know? How did she know about Karana? He had never spoken her name to anyone since that fateful day. And the way she spoke it—like she knew her, like she was… connected to her.

“She doesn’t hear you,” the figure said, and this voice was unlike Sarah’s; it was deep, guttural, and resonated with the mournful sound of the waves. “She doesn’t hear you now. She only feels the cold. Like us. The yearning. The waiting.”

She gazed out at the lake in an eerie silence and continued with a whisper,

“Do you ever think of that cloudy and dreadful day when the rains fell, and you left her standing there? Her heart shattered that day and left her all damp in sadness; a heart that once bloomed like a garden tended by you. It’s withered now, like a grave of buried hopes; no light, no birdsongs, no scents, nothing. All dead inside. Have you ever felt this cold and alone?”

He stumbled backwards, his eyes fixed on Sarah. Something shifted in her face, a subtle change, like a mask slipping away to reveal something terrifying beneath. The beautiful, foreign woman was gone, replaced by a creature of the night, an entity born of the lake’s eternal depths.

The icy fingers closed around Billy’s wrist, tight and impossibly strong. He tried to pull away, but the grip was relentless, dragging him towards the water’s edge. The churning black waves seemed to beckon, their frigid depths promising a chilling embrace.

He tried to scream, but no sound escaped his lips. He was just a broken thing, a lonely poet, a creature consumed by grief and now offered to the lake as a sacrifice. He could see it now, the truth staring back at him from the monstrous form of Sarah. She was not a visitor but a part of this haunted landscape, a manifestation, perhaps, of the lake’s insatiable hunger.

The last thing Billy saw before the icy water engulfed him was the creature’s face, twisted into a grotesque parody of a smile, and heard, echoing on the wind, “He came. He finally came.”