The Last Canoe on Lark’s Pond

My grandmother’s brother, Uncle Theo, had a fishing shack on a narrow, weedy lake in northern Wisconsin, built in the late ’40s when the pines were still thick enough to block out the sun. By the time I was in sixth grade, the lake had become a quiet backwater. Most of the other shacks had been boarded up or had collapsed under the weight of snow and time. The closest neighbor was a retired schoolteacher named Mr. Hale, who lived nearly two miles down the dirt road, and he only came up for a month in August. That suited my parents fine. They wanted peace, a weekend away from the city, a chance to read and sleep and maybe catch a few bass. Uncle Theo was too old to make the trip anymore, so he let us use the place whenever we wanted, as long as we kept the stovepipe clear and didn’t let the mice take over.

I was allowed to bring my best friend, Mira. We were both eleven, and Mira had been up twice before. We knew the rituals: fishing off the rickety dock, swimming in the cold brown water, paddling the old aluminum canoe across to the far shore where the cattails grew tall enough to hide a person, and at night, roasting marshmallows in the fire pit while my dad told half-remembered ghost stories. The lake was L-shaped, with our shack at the top of the short stroke, and the long arm stretching south into a tangle of flooded timber and lily pads that no one ever explored. That was fine. We had our routines.

This particular weekend in late September was colder than the last time, and the leaves had already turned, dropping a golden carpet over the brown water. The air had that sharp, metallic smell that promises frost. My mom had said we might get snow, though that seemed impossible so early. We arrived on a Friday evening, unpacked the station wagon, and lit the kerosene lamps because the generator was acting up. Uncle Theo had a wood stove, and we fed it all night, listening to the wind banging the shutters.

On Saturday morning, the lake was perfectly still, like a sheet of dark glass, and a thin mist clung to the surface. My dad decided he wanted to try his luck at the south end, where he remembered catching a monster pike years ago. He asked if Mira and I wanted to come along, but we had planned to paddle to the little island near the middle, where we had once found a turtle shell that we thought was a million years old. So we said no, we’d be fine in the canoe, and he took the old rowboat with the outboard motor, promising to keep an eye on us. My mom stayed behind to read on the porch, bundled in a wool blanket.

Mira and I shoved off from the dock, the paddles dipping silently into the water, sending widening ripples that disturbed the mist. The island was only about a hundred yards out, but it took effort to get there because the canoe was heavy and the paddles were warped. We made it, beached the bow on the muddy shore, and jumped out. The island was a lump of rock and a few scraggly pines, and we searched for turtles, but found nothing but a broken beer bottle and a rusted tin can that might have been there since the ’50s. Disappointed, we decided to paddle further, past the island, toward the flooded timber at the southern end, where we had never gone.

The mist thickened as we entered the channel between the shore and a long sandbar that we didn’t remember from before. The water turned murky, almost black, and we could see the outlines of submerged logs like sleeping monsters beneath the surface. The canoe scraped against something once, and we both froze, thinking of snapping turtles, but it was just a sunken branch. We paddled on, the silence broken only by the drip of water from our blades and the occasional call of a loon from somewhere far away.

Then we saw it: a small dock, barely visible through the mist, sticking out from the shore of the sandbar. But that was impossible, because the sandbar had always been uninhabited and too marshy for a dock. Still, there it was, gray and weathered, with a single wooden post at the end, and tied to that post, a canoe that looked exactly like ours, same faded green paint, same dented side. But our canoe was right beneath us. I looked at Mira, and she was staring at the other canoe with the same confusion. ‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘Someone else has the same canoe.’ I shook my head. ‘Maybe they borrowed it from Uncle Theo,’ but that made no sense, because Uncle Theo’s shack was the only place we knew, and who else would have a boat way out here?

I paddled closer, and we saw that the other canoe was empty, but its hull was covered in a thick layer of algae, as if it had been sitting there for years. There was a rope tied to the post, and the post was driven deep into the mud, but the sandbar itself looked eerie, a mound of dark earth with no trees, just a few tufts of grass. I was about to suggest we turn back when Mira pointed a trembling finger. ‘There’s someone lying there.’ She whispered. I squinted, and through the mist, I saw a shape on the ground near the dock, a person, still as a corpse, wrapped in something brown, maybe a sleeping bag, but old and torn. My heart hammered. ‘Maybe it’s a raccoon,’ I said, but it was too big, too human.

I didn’t want to get any closer, but the current was pushing us in, and before I could paddle away, the canoe drifted right up to the dock, bumping against it gently. The shape didn’t move. It was lying on its back, arms at its sides, and it was covered in mud, but I could see a shock of white hair, and the face, if there was a face, was turned away, hidden in the shadow of a tree branch that had fallen across it. Mira grabbed my arm. ‘Is that a body?’ she squeaked. I couldn’t speak. The wind shifted, and a foul smell hit us, dead and sweet, like rotting leaves but worse. Then the shape moved. Just a twitch of a finger, but it moved.

I screamed, and we both grabbed our paddles and shoved off, but the canoe wouldn’t budge. It was stuck, as if the water had become thick as mud. I looked down, and the water around the canoe was swirling, but there was no current, no wind. The shape on the dock began to sit up, very slowly, like it was remembering how to move. Its head was misshapen, clad in what looked like a knitted cap, but darker, and when it turned to face us, I saw that it had no eyes, just two hollow sockets, black and empty. It opened its mouth, and inside was not a tongue, but a mass of writhing, hair-like things, like the roots of a swamp plant. And it spoke, not with a voice, but with a dry, rasping sound that crawled into our heads: ‘You came back.’

We both screamed, and I finally broke free, paddling with all my strength, not caring which direction. Mira was crying, and I was too, and we crashed through the lily pads, the canoe nearly capsizing. We made it back to the island, but we didn’t stop. We paddled on, and the mist began to thin, and we saw our dock ahead, and my dad’s boat was just pulling in, the motor sputtering. He saw our faces and hurried to help us, but we couldn’t explain, just pointed back toward the south, but when he looked, there was nothing there, just water and trees. He hugged us, thinking we had seen a bear, and we let him believe that. That night, we built a huge fire, and we didn’t talk about it.

But later, after my parents were asleep, I woke to find Mira sitting up in her sleeping bag, staring out the window. I whispered her name, and she turned to me, and her face was pale, and she said, ‘It knew you were coming. It called you back.’ I didn’t know what she meant, and I tried to dismiss it as a nightmare, but the next morning, my dad found that the canoe we had taken was not the one we had left on the dock. It was covered in green algae, and there was a muddy handprint on the stern, too large to be ours. My mom said it was probably from shifting it in the night, but I knew better. Uncle Theo’s canoe was gone, and we never found it.

We left early that day, and we never returned. Uncle Theo passed away a few years later, and the shack fell into ruin. But I still have nightmares about that empty canoe, and I never go near water, especially not dark, weedy lakes. And I think about what that thing said, ‘You came back,’ and I wonder if it meant me, or if it was waiting for someone else, and I just happened to be the one who answered. I still hear the sound of water lapping against a hull, and the rasp of a voice that has no throat, and I know that if I ever step into a canoe again, it will be waiting for me, with its hollow eyes and its hungry roots, calling me back to a place that should never have been found.

Years later, I told this story to a therapist, who suggested I was projecting my fear of my grandfather’s dementia, or some such nonsense. But I know what I saw. And I know that Mira moved away and changed her number, and I don’t blame her. Some things you can’t share, not even with the person who was there. But I’ll never forget the name of that lake, though it seems to have been erased from every map I check. It’s just a blank spot, a patch of white, and if you ask the locals, they’ll say there never was a lake there. But I’ve seen it. I’ve been there. And it’s waiting.