The Lonesome Dead

By Ambrose Ibsen

Beware the spirits of Lake Manuxet...

"Don't look out towards Knob Island at night." That was the warning Douglas' grandfather gave him as a boy. Returning to the shores of Lake Manuxet as a grown man, with his twin sister and their ailing grandmother in tow for a final, nostalgic visit, Douglas begins to experience frightful things in his cherished childhood vacation spot.

Just what is it that claws its way out of the lake each night, only to approach their cabin? What mysteries does the remote lake hold? Are the horrors Douglas experiences genuine, or is he simply inheriting the madness that seems to run in his family? What is the true nature of the cryptic warning his grandfather gave him so many years ago about the small island at the center of Lake Manuxet?

What begins as a sentimental pilgrimage to a once-enjoyable vacation spot rapidly deteriorates into a fight for survival and sanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ambrose Ibsen
• Release date: Oct 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386619222

Book preview

One

I remembered it like it was yesterday.

That's a cliché, I suppose, but as I left the van, stretching my sore legs and making my way towards the lip of the lake, I really did feel like the memory was fresh in my mind. Lately that memory had been sneaking into my thoughts, resurfacing in those quiet moments when I least expected its arrival. I couldn't say why that was, though it was the recurrence of this memory, at least in part, that had inspired me to organize a trip back to the lake.

I closed my eyes and imagined that scene, so many years ago. Then, narrowing my gaze upon the scenery, I rewound the memory of that night and watched it play out against my surroundings like a projection.

The sun was shining and the weather was fair now, but for a short while I was transported back in time to the night, more than two decades ago, when my grandfather and I had had a chat outside the lake during a vacation in late Summer.

My grandfather stirred up the fire with a long stick, sending small embers flying in the cool breeze. He pointed over at the lake, whose ebb and flow sounded ceaselessly in the otherwise still night, and cracked a nervous, toothy grin. He'd been acting strangely all night, had been very easily spooked. It wasn't like him to react so viscerally to the sounds coming out of the woods around us, but I thought little of it at the time. Cradling himself by the fire, he cocked his head to the side and began. There are things in that lake. Things that never emerge to see the light of day, except for when the time is right. Things that prefer to stay hidden, lad. Things that like it better that way, down in the murk. It's a good place to keep one's secrets, isn't it? Out here, in the middle of the wilderness, where the water is dark and no one can see? I could remember clearly the way he rubbed a few fingers against his stubbly chin before sitting back down on the large tree stump he used as a throne back then, during our nightly bonfires.

Looking at the fire pit now, so many years later, I could identify all of the same features. I could place the figures of my eight-year old self and of my deceased grandfather as though I were arranging a tableaux. The fire pit was still intact, though it hadn't been used since the last time we'd been to Lake Manuxet, and it sat threaded with masses of overgrown grass. The stump was still there, too, but had been pounded and eroded by one too many Midwestern winters. Running my fingers through the grooves in the wood, I almost fancied I could hear the old man's voice in the wind, calling out to me across the ages. I thought, too, that I caught a whiff of burnt marshmallows, of the little sausages he was so fond of and in the habit of charring over the bonfire.

The lake, too, was just as I remembered it. Its silty waters churned just the same as they'd always done.

But somehow, the scene was unfamiliar. I could pick out all of the familiar fixtures, trace them almost point-for-point in my memories, and yet I couldn't help but harbor doubt that this was, in fact, the very spot where that conversation had taken place more than twenty years ago.

I still remembered the way my grandfather added a warning, with a good deal more graveness than he'd hitherto used. I'd turned curiously to the dark, yawning expanse of water and looked out across it as if expecting to see these vague, furtive secrets he'd hinted at.

Don't do that, Douglas, he'd warned. No good will come of looking out towards Knob Island at night. The moon, it does strange things sometimes when it hits the water just-so. His bony frame squirmed beneath the outlines of his navy jacket, and I thought I glimpsed something of real fear in his expression.

Standing in that very spot, watching the waves roll in by day, I thought back to that chat of ours, realizing that I'd never known just what he'd meant. The island sat in the distance, a single tree protruding from its grassy bulk. A mere thimble's worth of land in the small lake.

There certainly wasn't anything too special about it, at least not at first glance. A heavy rain would probably be enough to put the whole thing underwater.

Sighing and giving my lower back a stretch, I started onto the shore and walked to the edge of the old dock. The thing still held together, even after all these years. It rocked slightly in the waves as I paused upon the edge to get a better look at Knob Island. Shading my eyes with my hand, I peered across the lake at the little knot of land sticking out of the water. Lake Manuxet wasn't very big; just over a mile in circumference, and the island sat smack-dab in the middle.

No matter how long I stared, though, I couldn't make out much of anything on Knob Island.

Two

When I'd finally finished unloading the van, my sister and I took to unpacking while grandma Kathryn generally got in the way. My sister, Cecily, had been drained by the drive, and whenever she got like this I knew better than to try and reason with her. We were twins, the two of us, but couldn't have been any more different from one another. I'd always been the laid back one, while my sister was an aggressive type-A personality through and through.

I couldn't entirely blame her for feeling irritable. The drive had been long and grandma's strange questions had been a little unnerving. And, of course, there was the fact that Cecily had just finished her last round of chemo. The treatment had ended a couple of weeks ago and her Oncologist had proclaimed the cancer in remission. Her hair was starting to grow back and her appetite was returning, but things were still rough. Frankly, it was a miracle she'd agreed to join me on this trip at all, under the circumstances.

The cabin was like a time capsule, with everything inside caked in a thick layer of dust. The first thing I did upon entering was crack all of the windows to let a little fresh air in. Then, running through our fair share of washrags, Cecily and I started clearing away the dust and debris that'd come to dwell upon the cabin's interior over the course of fifteen years.

Fifteen years. It was hard to believe just how long we'd been away from the cabin. When last we'd vacationed at Lake Manuxet, Cecily and I had been in high school. Our sophomore year, if memory served.

Only after we'd cleared up most of the dust in the kitchen and living room did we dare begin to unpack our bags. Grandma tried to help despite our constant requests that she sit back and relax. The woman meant well, but every time we told her not to bother, she'd give us a vacant sort of look, as if she couldn't understand why we didn't want her help. She'd been looking at us in that eerie, empty way quite a lot recently. I didn't know what to make of it; truthfully, I wasn't used to her in such a state of seeming confusion. The questions she'd asked us in the car-- whether Reagan was still President, whether Grandpa would be joining us on our trip-- had alarmed us both.

I'd planned this trip as one last hurrah, one final family vacation before my grandmother became too ill to travel long distances, however we weren't long into our drive when we realized that her dementia was far worse than we'd known.

Unpacking her bag of pills and setting out the thick, orange bottles in one of the kitchen cabinets, I scanned the labels, uttering the names of each medication under my breath. It occurred to me then, on the tenth or eleventh med, that just maybe this trip hadn't been a good idea. Grandma Kathryn was ill, very ill, and a trip to some place this remote had probably been unwise. She had all of her pills, but whether she'd be able to cope with the jarring change of setting remained to be seen. As things stood, she bumbled about the kitchen, playing with the squeaky tap on the kitchen sink and watching as brackish water began to flow from the tap with a grinding sound.

Cecily stacked the coolers full of food on the kitchen table and then loosed a great yawn. Stretching her neck till it cracked slightly, she shot me a foul look and straightened her headscarf. I wish we could've flown in, she said. Driving all this way is brutal. I'm already dreading the drive back.

I agreed with her, though the two of us knew that flying to Lake Manuxet was impossible. The spot where the cabin was situated was ludicrously remote; it was for this reason that the place had been undisturbed in the fifteen years since our last visit. Surrounded by a vast wilderness, Lake Manuxet was virtually unknown to people in the region. It was a very small body of water, and could only be reached by way of two small, dirt roads that branched off of certain highway exits. The nearest town, a tiny settlement called Islip, was more than thirty miles out. Traditionally, it was this isolation that made Lake Manuxet a prime vacation spot for my family. Generations of our line had vacationed here, declaring the lake our secret family spot. A cabin had been erected by my grandfather's father at the turn of the last century, and my family had been vacationing there ever since.

You couldn't find Lake Manuxet on most maps. A very small lake created by a retreating glacier, it was fed by a small underground river that supposedly linked it to the Great Lakes. The lake itself, along with the land for miles around, was completely unincorporated, meaning that there was no governing body to be found there, nor any police. In modern America you can't get much deeper into the boonies than the shore of Lake Manuxet.

Grandma took a rag off of the counter and started clearing dust from the windows. I can't believe we let this place get so filthy, she said, shaking her head. Her thinning bun of grey hair quivered as she did so, and her hazy eyes narrowed. Caleb will be very upset.

Caleb was my grandfather, and he'd been dead fifteen years now.

More than once on the drive I'd had to remind my grandmother that Grandpa Caleb was gone. Having to do so left a bad taste in my mouth. Once upon a time my grandmother had been a fiercely intelligent woman. In my youth,