Detective Mallory looked out across Lake Muskoka, wondering how far away the opposite bank might be. The morning fog hadn’t lifted yet. It sat low over the water, making it hard for him to see the work the recovery team was doing, no more than fifty metres away.
Normally, he’d have a coffee in his hand at this hour, but nothing was open when he drove through the nearby cottage town. He’d somehow managed to find the only place in Canada that didn’t have a Tim Horton’s.
The detective jotted things down in his notepad as he watched divers from the Orillia Police Department attempt to lift the naked, waterlogged body of a man into the rescue boat. It was still half in the water as another officer, less than half his age, came up beside him.
“The name’s Reyes,” he said. “You the guy in from Toronto?”
“Detective Mallory,” he said, extending his hand.
“No offence, but what’s so special about this stiff that they made you come all this way?”
“James Wicks. He’s a writer with a couple of books under his belt and a Toronto guy. The press will be sniffing around,” Mallory said before adding, “No offence taken.”
“My sarge said a father and son called it in?”
“A couple of fishermen pulling walleye from the lake in the middle of the night saw him bobbing face down in the water. He’d sunk to the bottom by the time they got a cell signal strong enough to call 911.”
“What do you think, accidental drowning?”
“That’s his rental cabin over there. I checked it out. No sign of a struggle, no suicide note. And have a look at his clothes.” He gestured to the edge of the water. “Shoes side by side, with the socks tucked in. Shirt and pants neatly folded.”
“He took his time,” Reyes nodded. “Didn’t fall in.”
“No,” Mallory said. “No, he didn’t.”
“You mind if I share a theory, Detective?”
“I’m all ears, son.”
“I’ve seen something like this before, last summer. Not far from here. Folks come from the city and think the lake’s like a pool. They don’t know how cold it gets at night. They jump in, the cold hits them, and they panic. It takes their breath before they know what’s even happening.”
Mallory shook his head. “Huh.”
They watched as the body was carried in a tarp from one of the recovery boats and brought to shore. Mid-thirties, no obvious injuries. The face was pale, lips a little blue. His eyes were closed, and he had a calm expression on his face.
Reyes glanced at the body. “Looks like a drowning.”
“Indeed it does.” Mallory hesitated for a moment. “But you notice his face?”
Reyes nodded again. “Real peaceful-like.”
Mallory stared back out at the water. “That make sense to you? A drowning man, hit with panic, looking calm like that?”
The officer shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, the one last year looked like that too.”
“Yeah?”
“Just like that. Same.”
“Well then,” Mallory said, writing in his notepad. “Probable drowning it is.”
They turned toward the path leading up to the cottage, leaving the lake behind them. The water stayed perfectly still, like it was any other late summer morning.
I’d dealt with writer’s block before, just not like this. It’d been two years since my last book came out, and my editor was hounding me for chapters I’d already lied about writing. I gave her a call before I left.
“Listen,” I told her. “I booked a cottage up north. Two weeks. That’s all I need.”
Janice knew me well enough to know I was bullshitting her. I think she also knew I wasn’t going to write anything sitting in my apartment, staring at the same walls, so she went along with it.
“Two weeks, James,” she said. I could hear her flipping the pages of her planner. “That means September eighteenth. My inbox lights up with finished chapters for book number three.”
“Sure,” I said. “Yeah.”
This wasn’t one of the luxury Muskoka cottages you read about people like Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg owning. It didn’t even come with cable or internet. I was half relieved when I flicked the switch and the lights actually came on.
The cottage was more rustic than the pictures online made it look. I guess holiday rental sites are about as honest as dating profiles. It was fine, though. There was a bedroom with a water closet, and a main room with a kitchenette. A desk was pushed up against a large window that gave me a pretty good view of the lake. It felt like a decent place to park my laptop.
The first day was kind of a wash. I turned the computer on with good intentions, but ended up staring at the screen for a while before convincing myself I needed a day to adjust before the creative juices would start flowing. That night, I found a firepit down by the water and roasted marshmallows, mostly just sitting there and looking up, realizing how many more stars you could see when you weren’t surrounded by buildings.
I promised myself day two would be better. It wasn’t. I dragged my ass all morning, then went for a hike in the afternoon. That wiped me out, and I crashed when I got back to the cottage. It was dark when I woke up, so I ended up back down at the firepit again, realizing this was going to be a ritual and I’d need more wood to see me through until it was time to head home.
Day three was more productive. I didn’t write anything, but it felt like I’d accomplished a few things. I drove into town to do a little shopping. They had a general store. Like an actual general store. A place that sold everything from Q-tips to replacement parts for lawnmowers. They also had firewood, which I loaded in bundles into the back of the SUV I’d rented for the trip.
I was happy to see that the town had a cannabis shop too. No McDonald’s in sight, but they had a weed store right on the main drag. I picked up some gummies and a couple of different strains to smoke. I told the burned-out guy behind the counter that I was a writer, and he promised me they were both great for creativity.
By the time I got back to the cottage, it was too late to start writing. So, for the third night in a row, I was down by the lake. This time with a sharpened stick, a package of hot dogs, a pre-rolled joint, and a gummy already in my system. I couldn’t write, but I was at least going to think about my book. Start mentally plotting things out.
The weed hit me harder than I expected. I got lost staring at the fire as my brain started to see shapes and make patterns in the flames. That’s when I heard something. Not the owls or loons I’d been hearing for the last couple of nights. I’d gotten so used to those. This was something different.
It almost sounded like a woman’s voice whispering itself from across the lake. Between the pot and the soothing voice, I felt peaceful in a way I couldn’t ever remember feeling before. I decided to take my shoes and socks off, and for the first time, I dipped into the lake.
I was too fucked up to roll my pants up, so I just stood there, no more than ten feet from the shore, with my jeans soaking wet from the knees down.
The whisper got louder, and everything else started to fall away. I could tell the water was freezing, but I felt warm standing there. I thought about my book, and in my head, things were finally starting to click. I’d been holding on to ideas I thought were too clever to give up on, even though they weren’t working. The strangely warm, cold water, the whisper, the weed, it all just gave me permission to let go. And when I did, the book started to make sense. Stuff I’d been stuck on for months suddenly seemed obvious.
The next morning, I wrote more than I had in years. At first, I moved things around, cut sections, and rewrote others, confident I was pushing the book forward. At one point, I scrapped a bunch of pages and started over, and instead of panicking, I knew what I was about to write was going to be better. And it was. I felt the same way I did when I wrote my first book. So full of ideas, I didn’t feel like I had to cling to any one of them.
Right before nightfall, I drove the SUV down by the water and started unloading the firewood I’d picked up the day before. I stopped when I was halfway done and sparked up a joint while I caught my breath.
I didn’t get back to the rest of the wood that night. Instead, I realized how sweaty I’d gotten and hadn’t bathed in four days. It only made sense to strip down naked and jump in the lake.
I walked in until I was waist-deep, then plunged forward and started to swim. I hadn’t been swimming since high school gym class, but it was like riding a bike and came back to me right away. I went out about forty or fifty metres, then started treading water and took in the scenery.
That’s when I heard the voice again, echoing off the lake. It was a soft, playful giggle this time, and it caught me off guard. I darted my eyes around, making sure I was actually alone. I knew that I was, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like I was being watched. Vulnerable and exposed. Naked, and too far from the safety of the shore to feel comfortable. This strain of weed had a different edge to it than the other one and left me a little paranoid. I had to get back to land.
I didn’t remember lighting the fire or falling asleep. When I came to, I was still naked from my swim, slumped in the folding chair beside the firepit. It was mostly embers now, with only the occasional flame flaring up.
It took me a minute to realize it, but someone was standing across from me.
I jolted upright and my hands moved to cover my dick. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t tell if I was awake or still dreaming.
She stared at me in silence, smiling.
“Who… what are you doing here?”
I looked around for my clothes. They weren’t where I thought I’d left them.
“I’m Rosalie,” she said.
The sound of her voice slid into my mind in a way that felt both calm and tense at the same time. This was who I’d been hearing. I had no doubt.
My eyes adjusted slowly. It was too dark to get a clear sight of her, but the firelight gave me glimpses. She had long dark hair and green eyes that reflected the light back at me. What struck me most was how natural she looked standing there, like there was nothing unusual about finding a naked man crashed out in a cheap folding chair.
What I should have been thinking was how strange it was for a young woman in a bikini to show up at my campfire at God knows what hour. But the sight of a half-naked body with curves like hers steered my mind in other directions.
“You went for a swim earlier,” she said.
I let out a nervous laugh before I could stop myself. “That was you watching me, wasn’t it?”
Almost no reaction. Just a slight angle of her head, like she was thinking something through.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go again. Together this time.”
She turned toward the lake and started walking. Rosalie glanced back over her shoulder like she knew I hadn’t moved yet.
I was still sitting there, glued to the chair. I wanted to join her. I knew I was going to. I just had to overcome the suspicion that this might be some kind of setup.
When she reached the edge of the water, she stopped and reached back, tugging at one of the strings on her swimsuit. It loosened and fell. She took a few more steps, and the rest followed, left behind on the ground.
She waded in and then dove forward. The lake swallowed her with barely a sound. A moment later, she surfaced farther out and rolled onto her back, the water slipping away from her chest, her breasts exposed as she floated there, waiting.
I looked back at the cottage, still thinking that maybe someone was going to rob the place while I was distracted. This is the way city living trains you to think. When I realized the worst they could do was steal a rented car, I stopped caring.
“Don’t be shy,” she called. “The water’s nice and warm.”
It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. But my skin still remembered the way it felt earlier, that strange warmth spreading through me even as the cold crept in underneath it.
I stayed where I was for another second, naked by the firepit, aware now of how my body had already made up its mind. The exposure and the sight of her floating playfully in the water did things to me I didn’t want to deny anymore. I was hard and stopped trying to hide it.
Rosalie said nothing, only looked back at me with that calm smile on her face, inviting me closer with her eyes. She drifted on the surface of the water, still looking at me, knowing it was already settled.
I stood and stepped into the water before I could talk myself out of it. The cold hit fast. My feet numbed first, then my calves. The chill climbed higher with each step. It stole my breath for a moment, but I didn’t stop. The shock dulled as I moved deeper, my focus locked on the shape of Rosalie’s body as she rolled onto her side and swam toward me.
She stopped just within arm’s reach. The water lapped below her breasts. I could see everything now, the tight peaks of her nipples, the small ridges of goosebumps rising on her arms, the way droplets of water slowly streaked down her skin. All of it was real.
“You see?” she said softly. “It’s not so bad.”
Her hand came up and rested against my chest. Her fingers moved slowly down over the soft line of my stomach. I sucked in a breath as her hand slid lower. Her knuckles brushed my cock beneath the surface.
“You’re so tense,” she said. “You came here to relax, didn’t you?”
“Are you a… were you sent…” I fumbled my words. “Did Janice pay you?”
“No,” she said quietly, and smiled in a way that made me feel embarrassed for even asking.
She pressed her body closer to mine under the water. The heat from her made me forget how cold I was. My hands found her waist, and she let me pull her in.
Her breasts flattened against my chest as she leaned up to kiss me. I felt everything, and it was overwhelming. The softness of her mouth. The swell of her hips. Her hand slipped between us and wrapped gently around my length, stroking me just enough to make me groan.
Her arms went around my neck, and she pulled herself up, wrapping her legs around my waist. I felt her reach down and line me up as she eased herself down onto my cock. The heat of her body made everything else vanish. I locked my arms around her, holding her there, buried inside her.
“Deeper,” she said.
I pushed into her harder, thinking that’s what she wanted, but she leaned back and pulled us further away from the shore, deeper into the lake.
I felt the sensation in my legs starting to slip away. I couldn’t tell if I was standing or floating. The cold made me cling to her even tighter. I needed to feel more of her warmth.
If I had my senses, maybe I would have panicked, let her go, and rushed back to the fire. But I didn’t. I just locked eyes with her as she ground up and down on me, nodding her head, assuring me everything was okay.
“Dive under with me.”
I hesitated. I knew, suddenly and clearly, that I should say no. That this was my last chance to pull away. I didn’t. Instead, when she raised her arms and fell back, I went with her as we both went under.
At the last moment, I drew in a breath, right as the water closed over us. I felt warm now, warmer than it made any sense to. A calm feeling came over me, but I didn’t understand why.
It took me a moment to realize my arms were empty. Rosalie wasn’t with me anymore. I wasn’t sure when that had happened or where she was. All I could think about was how warm the water felt, how heavy my body suddenly was, how easy it would be to stop moving and let go.
I needed air. I knew I needed air. Every direction felt the same underwater, like the lake had erased up and down. I didn’t panic. My eyes caught the light of the moon, and I moved toward it as fast as I could, yet it still seemed too slow.
My face broke the surface of the lake, and my lungs exploded as I dragged in a breath. The air burned. I looked around for Rosalie. She was standing on the shore, folding my clothes into a neat pile.
Relief washed over me. She hadn’t left. She was right there. I couldn’t wait to feel her again. She’d come back to me. I knew she would.
The air was too cold to stay above the water. It hurt to breathe it in. My arms felt weak, and the distance to shore looked longer than it should have. I dipped under again. I had to get back to that warmth. That was where I wanted to be, where I felt safe. Where I’d wait for her.
She emerged from the darkness of the water in front of me. She smiled the same way she had when I first saw her.
I needed air again. I looked for the moonlight. It wasn’t there for me this time. I told myself I’d be okay.
Rosalie lifted her hand, gave me a small wave, and slipped back into the darkness.
She’d come back for me. I knew she would.
Detective Mallory woke up at the crack of dawn and reached for his phone. The day before had been a slow news day, so he figured there was a good chance a story about a dead writer would get a lot of coverage. He didn’t like to think it was ego, but after all these years, he still liked seeing his name quoted in the papers, even when the story was about a body pulled from a lake.
Thirty-One-Year-Old Author Leaves Behind a Legacy Cut Short by Tragedy.
Mallory scoffed at the headline. Thirty-one. He hadn’t looked that young on the stretcher.
He skimmed the rest of the article looking for his name. There was a paragraph about his books. Another about the dangers of cold water. A quote from the mayor about safety. Nothing about how cleanly his clothes were folded. Nothing about the eerie calm expression on his face when they pulled him out of the lake.
And not a word from him.
The Reyes kid got some press. There was a bit from him about comparing the Wicks drowning to the one from last year, before he got cut off by some asshole who went on about an old lake story about a young woman who drowned decades ago.
Who writes this crap, he thought.
“Lenny, it’s the weekend,” his wife said. “You’re allowed to sleep in. Put the phone down and come keep me warm.”
Mallory hesitated, then set the phone aside. The screen went dark.
“Alright,” he said, curling himself into her.
