Photo by Yann Allegre on Unsplash
Part I
The Boole Reservoir stretched across
a lush woodland that supported three villages on the outskirts of a snow-capped
mountain.
Hikers climbed to the summit to look over the vast vicinity
enclosed by a great forest and quenched their thirst with the ice-cold water flowing
down to the reservoir.
What the locals knew, but outsiders did not, was the legends
that circulated in this godforsaken place shrouded in mystery. This was why the
locals never set out into the woods after sunset and warned their children to
return home before dusk.
They believed that a lonely spirit roamed this reservoir
blanketed in crushing ice. She dwelled in the ominous body of water and lured
unfortunate souls to their ill-fated demise.
She preferred unsuspecting children it was believed, and she
took her sweet time to gobble them up alive, relishing in their tender flesh
and screams for their mother.
But this was only a made-up tale to scare miniature humans.
The truth was much more sinister and unsettling.
Like many similar legends passed down from generation to
generation, the myth about the lonely spirit haunting The Boole Reservoir was
based on a real story – a story long forgotten in the bygones.
And whatever the truth was back in those days, it had now
become a faint memory. Like everything else in this mundane life with no
purpose, the truth dispersed and only the made-up parts remained as a distant token
of its existence.
I first heard about the reservoir and the stories
surrounding it through a good friend of mine, Mark Ryder. He and his family
were from one of the nearby villages the reservoir provided clean water.
Mark and I both studied mechanical engineering in our early
twenties but didn’t become close until the last semester. He was somewhat of a
recluse back then and hardly spoke a word unless he was required to.
He said most of the villages in that area were now ghost
towns and that only a handful of people remained, most of which were too old to
move or too stubborn to leave everything behind and start anew somewhere else.
I asked him why and that was when he told me about the
rumours and myths surrounding that place. And to be honest, these rumours failed
to deter me from taking an interest in the reservoir – on the contrary, they piqued
my interest.
I was a city boy, all right, and grew up as an only child.
My parents were both workaholics, so I never set off to the countryside like
the majority of my peers.
Growing up, I always imagined myself leading a dull but
peaceful life in the country, taking in the pitch-black night sky and watching
the twinkling stars too shy to show their head in the city.
Besides, the only thing I was remotely afraid of was the
darkness. But not the one that came with the darkening welkin. I’m not sure how
to put this into words: like when the temperature plummets without warning
during a hike and distorts your thoughts, that kind of creeping darkness that comes
out of nowhere is what chills me to the bone.
I led a normal life up until that point in my life, but I
didn’t have anything to look forward to. It was the same routine day in and day
out. Like a robot without its own will, I slaved through each day without a
purpose and goal in life.
It wasn’t that I did not enjoy my life. That wasn’t
it! I met my partner, Ann, during work and loved every single moment I spent
with her. We had the same taste in music, enjoyed fishing during winter, and
even came from the same background.
But something was missing. I couldn’t put my finger on what
it was; I only knew that my breath became more and more laboured with each
passing day.
It’s silly, I know, but these are the reasons I did what I
did next. I shouldn’t have, I…
Why couldn’t I just be satisfied with my mundane life and
lead a normal life? The answer eludes me, perhaps you’ll figure out the reason
by the time this story ends.
Part II
Part I
The Boole Reservoir stretched across
a lush woodland that supported three villages on the outskirts of a snow-capped
mountain.
Hikers climbed to the summit to look over the vast vicinity
enclosed by a great forest and quenched their thirst with the ice-cold water flowing
down to the reservoir.
What the locals knew, but outsiders did not, was the legends
that circulated in this godforsaken place shrouded in mystery. This was why the
locals never set out into the woods after sunset and warned their children to
return home before dusk.
They believed that a lonely spirit roamed this reservoir
blanketed in crushing ice. She dwelled in the ominous body of water and lured
unfortunate souls to their ill-fated demise.
She preferred unsuspecting children it was believed, and she
took her sweet time to gobble them up alive, relishing in their tender flesh
and screams for their mother.
But this was only a made-up tale to scare miniature humans.
The truth was much more sinister and unsettling.
Like many similar legends passed down from generation to
generation, the myth about the lonely spirit haunting The Boole Reservoir was
based on a real story – a story long forgotten in the bygones.
And whatever the truth was back in those days, it had now
become a faint memory. Like everything else in this mundane life with no
purpose, the truth dispersed and only the made-up parts remained as a distant token
of its existence.
I first heard about the reservoir and the stories
surrounding it through a good friend of mine, Mark Ryder. He and his family
were from one of the nearby villages the reservoir provided clean water.
Mark and I both studied mechanical engineering in our early
twenties but didn’t become close until the last semester. He was somewhat of a
recluse back then and hardly spoke a word unless he was required to.
He said most of the villages in that area were now ghost
towns and that only a handful of people remained, most of which were too old to
move or too stubborn to leave everything behind and start anew somewhere else.
I asked him why and that was when he told me about the
rumours and myths surrounding that place. And to be honest, these rumours failed
to deter me from taking an interest in the reservoir – on the contrary, they piqued
my interest.
I was a city boy, all right, and grew up as an only child.
My parents were both workaholics, so I never set off to the countryside like
the majority of my peers.
Growing up, I always imagined myself leading a dull but
peaceful life in the country, taking in the pitch-black night sky and watching
the twinkling stars too shy to show their head in the city.
Besides, the only thing I was remotely afraid of was the
darkness. But not the one that came with the darkening welkin. I’m not sure how
to put this into words: like when the temperature plummets without warning
during a hike and distorts your thoughts, that kind of creeping darkness that comes
out of nowhere is what chills me to the bone.
I led a normal life up until that point in my life, but I
didn’t have anything to look forward to. It was the same routine day in and day
out. Like a robot without its own will, I slaved through each day without a
purpose and goal in life.
It wasn’t that I did not enjoy my life. That wasn’t
it! I met my partner, Ann, during work and loved every single moment I spent
with her. We had the same taste in music, enjoyed fishing during winter, and
even came from the same background.
But something was missing. I couldn’t put my finger on what
it was; I only knew that my breath became more and more laboured with each
passing day.
It’s silly, I know, but these are the reasons I did what I
did next. I shouldn’t have, I…
Why couldn’t I just be satisfied with my mundane life and
lead a normal life? The answer eludes me, perhaps you’ll figure out the reason
by the time this story ends.
Part II
One evening, as we were heading home
from the gym, sweaty and exhausted beyond words, I asked Mark something I now
regret deeply – I asked if he could show me it. The Boole Reservoir.
Mark didn’t want to at first and droned on about how
dangerous it was, but I insisted and he threw in the towel on one condition: he
was not coming with me.
I didn’t mind as long as he provided me with a solid
address, and he did. I told Ann that I was travelling for work and that it
would be hard to reach me. Mark promised, albeit reluctantly, he wouldn’t
breathe a word about my whereabouts to Ann should she ask.
Unlike me, she was superstitious and a real hippie gal.
I knew she would talk me out of going to the reservoir if I told her. So I
packed my stuff – two days’ worth of clothes and whatnot – and set off on my
journey in the dead of night.
I worked part-time as a deliveryman on the weekends so
driving in the dark was not enough to scare me. But as soon as I approached my
destination and turned left into a roadway obscured by trees on either side, I
slowed the car down a notch and decided to be safe rather than sorry.
It was pitch-black: no streetlamps, no nothing. I was
essentially on my way into the depths of a forested vicinity, and there were no
signs of life anywhere.
I hit the brakes and lurched forwards. The roadway came to a
sudden end and my car tipped over the edge of an embarkment.
My eyes shifted towards the dark and blank body of water in
front of me, and I quickly put the car into reverse and barely managed to move
it away from the edge.
I glanced at the GPS before turning off the engine and realised
belatedly that I had reached my destination. Visibly shocked by the near-death
experience, I hesitated for a few seconds before stepping out.
It was the seventh of August and the weather was chilly, but
not to the point where I needed to wear two layers of clothes or a beanie.
I let the doors stay unlocked and closed in on the
embarkment. Had I not slowed the pace earlier, I would’ve plunged right into the
reservoir and drowned to death.
The strangest part, however, was the fact that the GPS did
not say anything. Not a single peep, whatsoever. It usually did, mind, when I
neared my destination, but it didn’t breathe a single word this time.
It wasn’t on mute just a few minutes ago when I turned left
and continued down the shadow-shrouded roadway. Something did not add up at all,
but I didn’t know what to make of these strange occurrences.
I wasn’t superstitious like Ann or as easily frightened as Mark
to believe the rumours about this place. But now I wasn’t so sure… I just
escaped death by a margin and was still trying to recollect myself and think
straight.
I observed the babbling reservoir the entire time, perhaps
to make sure I was alone and the rumours were nothing but made-up fairytales.
It did the trick.
My heart calmed down a tad and I drew a deep breath when
nothing out of the ordinary happened for the next five minutes.
I fished up my Canon from my backpack in the trunk and
captured the serene reservoir to prove to Mark that the rumours about this
place were nothing but a hoax. “Look,” I wanted to say when I returned home, “nothing
happened to me.”
But the quality was off due to the ridiculous darkness that
only seemed to deepen the longer I stayed here. Since I had enough food for two
days, I decided to spend the night here and then capture the reservoir in the
morning hours instead.
It became colder than I anticipated as the night deepened though,
so I placed a chequered quilt over my shoulders, which I had forgotten in the
trunk from my and Ann’s last outing a few days ago.
I slept soundly for the most part. I did wake up a few
times, slightly confused as to where I was, but then fell right back into
dreamland.
But what woke me up? I’m not really sure, to be honest. I
thought I heard a faint din come through from the outside, right next to me and
on the other side of the window, but when I turned my head towards the din no
one was there.
At first, I brushed it off as part of my lively imagination
and the biting cold, but then it happened two, three, and all of a sudden six
or more times throughout the night. Ignoring it became increasingly difficult.
I spent the last two hours before sunset fully awake and did
not allow myself to fall asleep again. These things bothered me so much that I
decided to send a message to Mark. I told him to hit me up as soon as he saw my
message first thing in the morning.
What I expected would strengthen my disbelief in the supernatural
turned out to have the exact opposite effect on me. I just wanted it to be
morning and then get the heck out of this place for good.
That was when someone banged on the window. I turned my head
to the left, in a daze, and the phone slipped through my fingers.
An elderly man in his seventies stood outside my car and
kept banging on the window with his fist.
Purple and brown-grey spots covered his bald scalp where strands
of whitish hair hang loosely. He wore a patched-up shirt, a brown vest from the
fifties and berry-coloured, striped trousers from god-knows-when.
The stranger slouched forwards and seemed to have a
difficult time standing up straight. I rolled the window down, and as soon as I
did that, he seized my throat with both of his hands and held me in a
chokehold.
I fought him off and rolled the window back up. It was
harder than it looked from the outside. The man, despite his old age, was as
strong as someone in the height of his youth, and it took a great deal of
strength to push him away just enough to roll the window up.
He bared his rotten teeth and hissed like a snake from
beyond the window, then he calmed down within a heartbeat and looked around
himself before whispering something I couldn’t read from his chapped lips mixed
with thick saliva.
I followed him until he disappeared into the woodland and then
gasped for air, unaware that I held my breath up until that point. I wiped the
sweat off my forehead, ditched my plan to capture the reservoir and did a total
U-turn.
For good reasons, I was confused but not to the point where
I would hallucinate things. But the harder I hit the gas, the longer the
roadway became. It felt like I was going in circles and all roads led to the
starting point.
I hit the brakes halfway through the vicinity and reached
down for my phone, swearing under my breath repeatedly in the meantime.
Although I nudged something under the seat, it was too far
away for me to reach without having to physically step out and get hold of it
through the passenger seat.
I glanced at the rear-view mirror, made sure I was all alone
and then stepped out.
When I finally found my phone, I noticed it was dripping wet
and no longer functioning. I touched under the seat again but it was as dry as
could be, and I had not drunk anything inside the car so that could hardly
explain why my phone became drenched. Besides, it was dry just moments before
that old man started to act like a freak.
Still out in the dark, I tried in vain to revive my phone.
For a few minutes, I forgot about the old man and why I was in such a hurry to
get out of there.
This would end up being my biggest mistake.
As if by magic or with the help of the Devil Himself, the
driver’s door slammed shut and locked me out.
The car key was, of course, inside.
I tried to force the door open, but it did not budge. Several
minutes passed like this. When I realised there was nothing I could do, I
kicked the wheels and swore out loud. I had just fucked up really badly
and was frustrated as hell.
Now I stood there, in the middle of a godforsaken roadway
with a useless phone, and my only option was to advance down the lane and
hitchhike – if I were lucky.
I strode towards the end of the roadway, determined to get
the heck out of this place no matter the cost or consequence when I came to the
realisation that I indeed went in circles. I hadn’t hallucinated or lost my mind.
Not yet.
There was a logical explanation for this occurrence, and it
had less to do with the supernatural than the natural. I was so preoccupied with
trying to get the hell out of this place that I missed how close I was to the
reservoir at some point along the roadway since it ran almost parallel to it.
The blank body of water was still and the current
non-existent, so the roadway was reflected off the surface so clearly that I
was seeing a mirror image of the roadway this entire time.
Apparently, there was a two-way fork and the reflection I
saw made it look like there was only one path, perhaps due to the dim lightning.
This other pathway kept leading back to the embarkment.
I ventured to the left this time and, lo-and-behold, I was
back on the highway. It was still too early in the morning hours for cars to
pass by, but I knew which direction I had come from and figured it was best to carry
on than stay put this close to the reservoir.
I recalled passing by a guesthouse and decided to hit up Mark
when I arrived there instead of hitchhiking in some stranger’s car. Again,
better safe than sorry.
Time and again, tirelessly, I looked over my shoulder to
make sure no one was following me in the shadows.
Fifteen minutes later, I reached the guesthouse sign written
on a wooden plank on the highway and turned left. Another five minutes passed
in the dark like this and I finally reached the two-floor building.
A doorbell gave away my presence as I stepped into the
warmth and ambled to the reception in front of me.
This place looked much smaller than from the outside. There
was a single winding staircase to the right of the reception, while the entire
right side was riddled with old-fashioned settees, ottomans and whatnot. It was
as if I had slipped into a time slip and gone back to the seventies.
The atmosphere left a bitter taste in my throat and this
sinking feeling worsened as I approached the clerk, who showed up from a
cracked door beyond the counter.
The clerk, a middle-aged man from the look of it, sniffed as
I closed in and eyed me down. He didn’t look or act surprised despite how
dripping wet I was from the downpour outside.
I figured he had seen his fair share of peculiar guests
coming in, just like me, and seeking solace in the only place close enough to
the reservoir to reach on foot.
He pulled his cowboy hat down a tad and then rested his arms
on the counter.
“Your car brok’ down, ye?”
“No, I…” I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the
subject. “I’m sorry, can I use the phone? It won’t take long…”
The clerk squinted and leaned forwards. I could tell that he
didn’t buy my excuse but still pushed the analogue phone over and let me phone
Mark.
As if to make sure I wasn’t trying to pull his legs, the
clerk observed me intently as I dialled Mark’s phone number and eagerly waited
to hear his familiar voice in this unfamiliar place.
I kept my eyes fixated between the counter and the beat-down
floorboards, swearing under my breath as no one answered the phone. Unbeknownst
and as time ticked by, I clenched my jaw and grew impatient. Come on, Mark!
Answer the damn phone!
But the line was dead.
I excused myself again and was about to dial Ann when I
stopped midway and hesitated. She didn’t know about my little adventure and god
forbid she should ever know I lied to her! I raised my eyes without meaning to
and locked eyes with the clerk.
“You want me to tell you when?”
“I’m sorry?”
He pointed at the phone.
“Do you want me to tell you when your friend calls back? You
can stay here until he does. I got an empty room—”
“No… no, that won’t be necessary. Uhm, do you perhaps know
where I can get help, sir?”
“Oh, you wanna fix your car, ye?”
I nodded. The last thing I wanted was to return to the
reservoir on my own. Besides, I did not have enough cash on me to pay for my
stay here, either.
Moreover, Mark had a habit of not answering phone calls from
unknown callers, and even if he eventually figured I was the one who called him,
it would take far many hours for him to notice this than I wanted to stay here
– this close to the reservoir, that is.
“Where it at? That car of yours.”
I gestured in the general direction of the reservoir and he
knew way before I opened my mouth where I had been. I could tell right away.
Something in his eyes changed – something that made him shudder.
He grabbed his beard and fell into a solemn silence. He wasn’t
going to help me. I could almost hear his thoughts: “You brought this upon
yourself.”
The clerk was one of the locals and he knew something wicked
lay there, in the dark body of water surrounded by towering trees and dense
thickets.
I stepped back, dejected, then turned my back to the
reception and twisted the doorknob. The doorbell rang again. I barely stepped a
foot outside, when the clerk asked a question I did not know the answer to.
“What were you thinking goin’ there, son?”
I stepped out.
There was no point in responding to the man. I was doomed
either way. The door never slammed shut behind me, though. The clerk followed
me outside and grabbed my shoulder, demanding to hear what made me come here
and seal my own fate.
“Speak if you have a mouth! Why? Why did you come here!”
“Will you help me, sir, if I tell you the reason?” I briefly
looked away. “Do you… do you think you can help me in that case?” The clerk averted
my gaze and I broke into a bitter smirk. “See, you can’t answer—”
I never finished my sentence.
The clerk shoved something in my hand, tugged me closer and
whispered.
“Get away from here and never look back. Do you understand?
Never… look back.”
I knitted my brows and stared down. A car key? With my heart
in my mouth, I raised my eyes to ask the stranger why he was giving me this but
ended up watching him return to the guesthouse instead.
My eyes shifted to the only vehicle in the otherwise vacant
parking lot. Without wasting more time, I rushed forwards and unlocked the car.
The inside smelled just like I imagined it would, like rubbery
leather and people as old as the hills. I didn’t know why the clerk gave me his
car keys and helped me, but I was forever grateful to him.
I started the motor and hit the road.
My heart raced out of control. All of this felt like a dream.
A bad dream I was now waking up from.
I was going back home! I was safe from whatever lurked in
the shadows and lay in wait! Tears of joy welled up in my eyes and trickled
down my face.
I let out a cry, then another. Crying and laughing at the
same time, unable to contain the mixed emotions taking control over every fibre
of my being.
I was miserable.
But still alive…
A wide grin curled up on my dry, pallid lips as I drove
through the bustling city and drew a deep breath.
Everything slowed down – even my tears.
Then it all became blurry. The city lights faded away and
plunged everything into darkness.
I looked behind me through the rear-view mirror.
Before I knew it, I hit something and lurched forwards. My skull
broke in half as I smashed my head on the steering wheel and a gush of blood
washed over my face and obscured my view.
I blinked. Repeatedly.
Someone banged on the car window. I raised my half-open eyes
covered in crimson and rolled the window down. Slowly. It required all my
strength.
The old man did not attack me. He pointed to the left, across
the windshield, and to something right in front of me. I never managed to twist
my neck and take a look at whatever it was, although its presence was so strong
that I felt its icy gaze on me with every fibre of my body.
My Ford tipped over the embarkment and the reservoir swallowed
me into the depths.
This place, I never left it. That elderly man wasn't out to get me after all, he was trying to warn me…
