Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 19 - Lake Hazelton

Photo by Matthew McBrayer on Unsplash

The fishing bobber was invisible, hidden beneath the filmy top epilimnion layer of the lake, hazel green and murky.  Summer water.

In Jeremy’s hands was a fiberglass rod, slightly heavier than the graphite rods he typically preferred. In truth, he didn’t even realize he was holding a fishing rod, that a line was in the water, or that he was sitting in a boat at all. At that moment, Jeremy was unaware of everything.

After several seconds, perhaps longer, the red and white bobber popped up, breaking the water’s glass-like surface with a gentle ripple. It was then that Jeremy blinked and looked down at the rod in his hands. He struggled to focus his eyes. 

He blinked again as muscle memory and instinct took control and Jeremy jerked the line and attached to the hook was a striped bass. It lay limp and still with wide gaping eyes as Jeremy gently reeled it in. Bringing it out of the water, the fish’s mouth opened and shut and its gills twitched. It was a decent catch, maybe as big as eight pounds. At the moment, Jeremy didn’t think it strange at all that the fish hadn’t put up a bit of a fight as he pulled it into the boat.  

Next to him was an open red cooler filled two-thirds with ice. Jeremy mechanically dug the hook out of the fish’s mouth and plopped the creature into the cooler.  The bass still didn’t move or flop around, though its black eyes seemed to stare directly at Jeremy’s with panic and alarm.  There was a vague familiarity to it all, dreamlike and surreal.

It was then that Jeremy realized he wasn’t alone in the boat.

“Mark?” Jeremy said. He was surprised how his own voice cracked, somehow sounding both high-pitched and an octave lower all in one syllable.  

In the boat across from him was a teenager who looked almost identical to his nephew Mark, while at the same time not exactly the same, like a warped image. Mark was preparing to graduate from high school with his sister, Rosie. This teen was perhaps a couple of years younger than his nephew. But he was similar in frame and stature, with the same brown hair and eyes and roughly the same shaped face.

The teen lurched sideways then, hunched over, leaning towards the edge of the boat. He, too, held a fishing rod as he gazed into the water. 

“Mark?” Jeremy asked again. His tongue felt swollen and dry in his mouth.

The teen sat up suddenly and peered around, startled, as if he’d just been woken up by an unexpected sound. His eyes were wide. The rod nearly slipped from his hands and he clambered out, clutching maniacally until he finally grabbed hold of the rod with both hands again.  He turned toward Jeremy and blinked several times, saying nothing.

“Who…” Jeremy started, then stopped, blinking back at the young man.  “Who are you?”

“Jeremy?” the young man asked in return.

“Yeah, I’m Jeremy,” Jeremy said.  “You look like my nephew.”

“Mark?” the teen asked. He lowered the rod and reel, placing it clumsily on the deck of the boat with a rattling clank.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said.  “Mark.”

“Why do you look different?” the teen asked.

“What?”

“You don’t look like you, Jeremy,” the teen said. He pressed his palms against his eyes and rubbed them as if trying to wake from a dream.  He looked back up at Jeremy through his now red-rimmed eyes and blinked.  

“Jeremy?”

“Yeah?”

“You look…like, eighteen.”  

Jeremy set down his own rod now and stared at the young man across from him. The boat drifted slowly. 

Jeremy looked around them. The air was sticky and warm, early morning perhaps. The world was surprisingly silent. No birds in the air, no buzzing of speed boats. He faced north and pointed at the faint row of homes in the distance, lining the lakeside like tiny matchboxes.

“Is this Lake Hazelton?” Jeremy asked in a whisper.

The teen turned then in the direction of Jeremy’s gaze.

“That’s our lake house.”

“This is Lake Hazelton?” Jeremy asked again.

“I think so,” the teen said. “Is Olivia at the house?”

“Olivia?”

“Yeah,” the young man said.  “Is she back at the lake house?”

“You mean your mom?” Jeremy asked.

“My mom?” the teen answered. “What are you talking about? Olivia. My wife.”

“Aren’t you Mark?” Jeremy asked. Even as the words left his mouth they didn’t make sense. He was beginning to realize nothing was making sense at the moment. Jeremy pressed a hand over his lips as if to keep from saying anything else.

“Where is Mark?” the teen asked.  “Is he at the house?”

Jeremy looked at the water, still and unmoving, a faint splash from beneath the boat, rocking gently.  The sounds of wildlife finally returned as a loon called out somewhere distant, followed by a chorus of crickets tuning up and playing their song that seemed to echo across the stillness of the early dusk water. 

As Jeremy stared at the water’s surface, a memory of crashing rapids pounded into his mind.  White water and rocks.  There was a branch followed by his brother falling bloody and limp into the water as Jeremy dove in after him.  Then losing him with a rushing wave as he was pulled from his arms and his lungs filled with water and choked the life out of David until there was no life left.

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

Like that fish he’d just pulled from the water, Jeremy gasped and then gasped again.

“David?” Jeremy said.

“Yeah. What?” the teen answered. 

“Do you know how you got here?”

The teen - David - looked around, lingering on the swath of orange and pink clouds pulled like stretched cotton across the deep blue sky above.  

“Didn’t we go on a kayak trip?” David asked.

“Yes,” Jeremy answered. “We did.”

“In Minnesota.” 

“Yes.”

“Then I have no idea how we got here,” David said.  “And now that I think about it, we haven’t been on Lake Hazelton in like, what, five years? And that was just to pack up the house.”

“And this boat,” Jeremy said. He clutched the steering wheel in his hands. “Dad sold this thing while I was in Iraq.”

“Oh yeah,” David said. “I forgot about your time in Iraq.”

“David,” Jeremy said, shaking his head.  “You look, like, sixteen.”

“What do you mean?” 

“You look younger than Mark.”

In the distance, a new sound emerged with the familiar chortling buzz of an engine revved full notch, preceding the sight of a motorboat on the horizon. It veered quickly around the corner of a nearby island that they’d often explored in their youth.

Seeing David and Jeremy’s vessel, the motorboat redirected again, aiming straight in their direction at full speed before coming to a sputtering halt about twenty feet from their craft. Killing the engine, the motorboat’s captain steered the boat as it coasted to a near stop next to them.  In the motorboat, a woman in her thirties sat in the passenger seat, hugging two small children in a tight embrace.  All three of them were covered in towels, shivering.  

“Hey there,” the man behind the wheel greeted them.  “You boys see anything strange the last few minutes?”

“You could say that,” Jeremy responded.

“What did you see?”

Jeremy looked at David, then back at the man. 

“We have no idea how we got here,” Jeremy said.

The man looked simultaneously relieved and panic-stricken.  His shoulders slumped and tears welled in his eyes.

“This is Lake Hazelton, right?” the man asked.

“We’re pretty sure,” David said.  

“We haven’t been here in years,” the man said.  “We live in Oklahoma now and we’re suddenly on a lake in North Carolina, and, and…”  The man pointed at the woman and two children in the boat with him and couldn’t find the words that he wanted to say next. 

“We haven’t been here in years, either,” Jeremy said.  “Haven’t really been out on the water probably since we were teenagers.”

“Teenagers?” the man asked.  “You look like teenagers now.”

“He does, at least,” Jeremy answered. He looked at David, or whoever this boy was who looked just like his brother.

“Both of you,” the man said.  “And let me tell you something.”

He looked at the children in the boat, huddled next to the woman who had her face buried into her towel.

“Last week my wife was scheduled for a hip replacement, and now she looks like this, like she did when our kids were babies,” the man said.  “And right there. Those are my kids? How are those my kids? They look like my kids did when they were little, but my kids are married and have kids of their own. So how did they get like that again?”

“I don’t know,” David said.

“So I can assure you,” the man continued. “I’ve never been so confused in my entire life.”

Looking directly at David and Jeremy, the man suddenly slapped himself across the face — hard — one, two, three times. David and Jeremy sat limply in their boat, staring back at the man.

“And I felt every single bit of that,” the man said, and he began to cry.  “I don’t have any idea of what is going on, but I can tell you one thing, and that is that I’m sure as hell not dreaming right now. And neither are you.”

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