The other Side of the Lake

By Rich Cole

Can you ever truly know what happens in the wilderness?
Hilja and Albert are staying in a remote lakeside cabin in the Finnish countryside to try and put the spark back into their failing marriage. It's not going to be easy since Hilja suspects Albert of cheating and he isn't happy with her spending so many night's outs with her friends. Their interest is drawn to the couple in the cabin across the lake seem so much happier and stable than they do.
That is until they witness the other couple having an argument which turns violent. They try to find the cabin to help, but no matter how hard they try, they cannot find the cabin.
Things become even stranger when Albert wakes up the next morning to find his wife missing. Something is trying to claim the couple, and it won't let them leave the lake until it's done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201307585

Book preview

Chapter One

It’s the next left, Hilja said as she flipped through her phone.

Are you sure? her husband Albert asked in the driver’s seat. Back there it said to follow the signs to Alavus.

Well the instructions the company gave us say to take the next left, Hilja said, waving her phone at him.

Are you even reading the instructions? You look like you’re just scrolling through your phone.

I can do both.

Are you talking to someone at work? Or one of your friends? Is it Anna again?

I can talk to anybody I want to.

I know, it’s just that we said that this was supposed to be a completely work free trip. Not even e-mails.

I was looking at my sister’s posts, Hilja said, showing him the screen and a picture of her sister’s dog in various poses. So you don’t need to check my phone later.

I don’t... oh never mind, Albert said, falling silent to listen to the radio.

The reception so far out in the Finnish countryside was spotty at best and they had been losing the signal for over an hour now. But they still kept the radio on because they needed something, anything, to break through the silence. If they didn’t, they would only get into another fight again. Although it seemed they were close to that already. The fights followed them wherever they went, even to the middle of nowhere. This trip was supposed to be a getaway from all of those fights, or hopefully to give them some time alone together away from the daily grind of work to reconnect. But so far, they had just brought the fights along with them. They had fought at the gas station, the supermarket, and when they’d been loading the bags into the car. At least work provided some distraction to the imminent demise of their marriage.

That was the turn, Hilja said as the car rattled past the fork in the road, which became narrower and rockier the further they went. You missed it.

This is the right way.

No it isn’t. Why are men always like this? There aren’t any other cottages on the map. And now there’s nowhere else to turn around.

Relax, it’s not like a hotel that can give our room away if we arrive late.

But I don’t want to be stuck out here late at night, driving around and getting more lost. There’s not even anybody else to ask for directions.

And I’ll bet this will be all my fault for following instructions.

I have your instructions right here and you didn’t listen to them, Hilja said, waving her phone at him.

Albert bit his lip, pretending to concentrate on the road, what little of it remained. It was clear he was trying to avoid another argument. Neither of them wanted to start fighting before their vacation had even truly started. But it always inevitably happened that way.

Hilja subtly glanced at her husband as he tried to look for signs which weren’t there. At thirty seven years old and his job already receding his hairline and giving him a few hints of grey, he was hardly her Prince Charming anymore. Then again, he never really had been. They’d attended the same university nearly twenty years ago now, gone out for coffee a few times, and inevitably fallen into dating. Those dates had been nothing special, just going out to restaurants or for strolls in the park. The early gifts he’d bought for her had only been books she needed for her classes or the occasional sandwich during a long study session. She’d told herself it was fine because she wasn’t the type who needed to be showered in expensive gifts like jewellery anyway.

They’d moved in together when they got their post-university jobs and gotten engaged and then married. It had all seemed to happen so fast, one right after the other. She’d barely had time to think about it before she was choosing flowers and getting her picture taken and having her friends take her out on a bachelorette party. She’d barely been able to process it when she was standing on that alter in a flowy gown with all her friends and family staring at her and her mother crying.

She was starting to wonder if they’d done it all only because that’s what you were supposed to do in a relationship. It had felt like she’d wanted it at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe they’d only really gotten married because that’s what people were supposed to do, especially working professionals with important jobs like them. They had only had the wedding to make their mothers happy and so she could wear a pretty dress and have everybody look at her for a day. They were living the happy fairy tale life because it made them look better than they actually were.

When they’d first gotten married as a pair of twenty somethings, everyone had warned her that marriage wasn’t like in a fairy tale and had its ups and downs. She’d accepted that. She’d had a few relationships before Albert and knew it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. But nobody had told her it would be quite like this. They didn’t say it went beyond the usual fights over who did the dishes and who left the wet towels on the bed and it was more the increasing, ceaseless resentment which seeped into every inch of their marriage.

She’d always thought it would get better when their children came along and they became a real family. They would be so focused on raising children that they wouldn’t have time to even think about their own problems. They would build so many happy memories as a family. There would be family vacations and birthdays and Christmas days and school plays. It would be just as perfect as all the old movies and sitcoms showed it to be.

But that never happened. No teaching kids to tie their shoes or congratulating them for their school reports or showing off her new baby. The time had never seemed right. There was always something happening at work or some family tragedy or moving to a new place which put children on hold for a little while longer. Not that they’d ever really discussed it at length. Whenever Hilja had tried to bring it up, Albert had always claimed he was too busy or too tired and they would discuss it later. That ‘later’ had never come. Not even going off the pill had worked. After a while she had stopped trying. She always kept on saying ‘I’ll try again later’, but she never got around to it. Now at thirty seven, it was probably too late. They had waited too long and now they were going to be trapped as a miserable childless couple for the rest of their lives. They were going to be pottering around their retirement apartment on their walker frames still bickering with each other, the resentment growing worse and worse by the year. There would be no watching their own children graduating or getting married, no grandchildren to visit them in their old age, no walls of family photos to provide comfort.

And all because Albert was ‘too busy’ with work or didn’t want to change a few diapers. That’s what he claimed, anyway. The more he put this off, the more Hilja thought there was a larger reason why he wouldn’t have a baby with her. A family would mean he would be bound to her by something even stronger than their marriage certificate and their wedding rings. It would make it even more difficult if he did want to divorce her. He didn’t want children so he would be free to seek what he wanted elsewhere. And he probably thought she hadn’t realised. She wasn’t as stupid and unobservant