A Crack in the Ice

The low, resonant groan, a sound like a leviathan stirring beneath forgotten depths, vibrated through the floorboards, through the soles of my boots, right into the marrow of my bones. It was the lake. Always the lake. A restless sleeper, even beneath two feet of solid, unforgiving ice. I had convinced myself, for weeks, that it was merely the winter’s breath, the natural contraction and expansion of something so vast, so ancient. But this… this felt different. Sharper. More deliberate.

I stood by the window, the glass a sheet of opaque ice around the edges, a small, clear pane carved out by my constant vigil. My fingers, still raw from chopping firewood, pressed against the frigid surface, the cold a familiar ache. My breath bloomed, then faded, a transient ghost against the frosted pane. Outside, the world was a watercolour of grey and white, the pines a stoic, unyielding army against the encroaching dusk. The sky, a bruised purple-grey, promised more snow, a deeper burial.

“Another one?” I murmured, the words feeling too loud in the cabin’s oppressive quiet. My voice, rough and unused, scraped in my throat. I hadn’t spoken aloud in days, not proper sentences anyway. Just mutters, curses, sometimes Marie’s name, a hollow echo in the empty air. I squinted, trying to pierce the gloom that had begun to bleed from the tree line. The lake, a vast, flat expanse, shimmered faintly, reflecting the dying light. Nothing. No movement. No visible sign of what had caused that profound, unsettling sound.

But the feeling lingered. A knot, coiled tight and cold in my gut. It was the same unease that had settled in the pit of my stomach a year ago, right before… before she vanished. Not a storm brewing, but something far more intimate, more insidious. A premonition, perhaps. Or merely the cruel trick of a mind unravelling under the weight of too much silence, too much memory.

I turned from the window, my gaze sweeping the familiar confines of the cabin. Pine walls, rough-hewn and dark, bore the scars of generations. The air smelled of burnt wood, damp earth, and something metallic, like static electricity clinging to my skin. Every object held a story, a touch, a memory. The worn armchair where Marie would curl up, reading, her bright hair a stark contrast against the dark fabric. The chipped ceramic mug, still on the shelf, from which she always drank her horrible, overly sweet tea. Each item was a silent accusation, a question I couldn’t answer.

A Persistent Chill

The silence stretched, taut and thin, threatening to snap. I paced, the floorboards groaning in response to my weight, a chorus of old wood. Three steps to the fireplace, turn. Four steps to the window, pause. Three steps back. The routine was a comfort, a form of control in a world that had become irrevocably chaotic. It tethered me to a semblance of sanity.

My eyes landed on the old photograph on the mantelpiece. Marie, bundled in a bright scarlet toque, her smile a burst of sunshine against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains. We had been hiking, that day. Laughing. Invincible. The picture had been taken just weeks before the incident. Just weeks before the lake had swallowed her, or whatever it was that had happened out there on its frozen surface.

I picked up the frame, my thumb tracing the outline of her face. Her eyes, so full of life, seemed to hold a secret, a challenge. "What was it, Marie?" I whispered, the sound barely audible. "What happened?"

A shiver, not from the cold, snaked down my spine. The cabin had grown darker, the grey light outside deepening to an almost inky blue. It was too early for such darkness. The days were short in winter, but this felt… precipitous. I crossed to the old lamp, its brass base tarnished, and fumbled with the switch. The weak glow cast long, dancing shadows, making the familiar space feel alien, menacing.

My mind replayed fragments, as it always did. The sharp, unexpected crack. The sudden, gut-wrenching lurch. The scream – was it mine? Hers? The blinding white of the snow, then the crushing black of the water. The searing cold, a thousand needles piercing skin. And then… nothing. Just me, scrambling, clawing, dragging myself onto solid ice, Marie's hand slipping from mine like a dream. Every time, the same nightmare. Every time, her face just out of reach.

I had been cleared, of course. The RCMP had investigated. No foul play, they’d concluded. A tragic accident. The ice, they said, had been thinner than anyone could have predicted. My testimony, fractured and unreliable, had spoken of a sudden fissure, a struggle. But the ice had sealed over quickly, erasing all evidence save for my frostbitten fingers and a mind fractured by guilt. No body. No trace. Just a phantom limb of grief, constantly aching.

The Unseen Hand

The next groan came, louder this time, longer. It wasn’t a natural sound. Not the deep, geological murmur I’d learned to recognise. This was a sharp, splitting sound, like a giant sheet of glass being rent apart. My heart hammered against my ribs, a trapped bird. This was not normal. This was not the lake simply settling.

I grabbed my thickest jacket, its wool coarse against my chin, and pulled on my thermal boots. My hunting rifle, an old bolt-action, felt heavy and cold in my grasp as I checked the chamber. It was more for reassurance than actual defence, I knew. Against what? A rogue wolf? A bear, roused early from hibernation? Or against the creeping dread that had become my constant companion?

Stepping outside, the cold hit me like a physical blow, stealing my breath. The air smelled of pine and biting frost. Snow crunched under my boots, a crisp, sharp sound that echoed in the profound quiet. The world was a vast, unforgiving canvas of white, stars beginning to prick through the thinning cloud cover, each one a distant, indifferent eye.

I moved towards the lake, my steps slow, deliberate. Each footfall seemed to sink too far, the snow deeper than I’d anticipated. It pulled at my legs, a silent, insistent drag. The wind, which had been still inside the cabin’s shelter, now whipped around me, carrying flakes of ice that stung my exposed skin. I pulled my hood tighter, burying my face against the onslaught.

The lake was closer now, a vast, flat mirror under the nascent starlight. And there it was. A fresh crack. Not one of the old, milky veins that criss-crossed the surface from previous thaws and freezes. This was a jagged, angry wound, cutting a clean, dark line almost a quarter of the way across the lake’s expanse. It was wider at one end, as if something immense had pushed through from below, or had tried to. The air around it seemed to shimmer, a subtle distortion that my mind struggled to reconcile.

My breath caught, freezing in my throat. I lowered the rifle, my hands trembling. What could do this? A natural shift of ice, so violent, so precise? It felt wrong. Violently, irrevocably wrong. I took a hesitant step closer, then another. The crack pulsed faintly, almost imperceptibly, as if still alive.

The Unspoken Question

I walked the length of the new fissure, my eyes scanning the surface, the snow, the distant tree line. There were no tracks. Nothing visible to suggest anything had been on the ice, or come off it, recently. Just the pristine, unbroken blanket of white, save for my own hesitant footprints now marring the perfection. My boots made a strange, sucking sound as I pulled them from the deep snow near the shore, a small, insignificant detail that unnerved me more than the colossal crack itself.

Returning to the cabin, the oppressive silence outside felt even heavier than inside. The cold seemed to seep into my bones, a permanent ache. As I reached the front door, my hand going for the latch, my gaze fell upon the wood itself. There, just above the handle, almost obscured by a drift of snow, were faint scratches. Not animal scratches – too clean, too regular. They looked like… marks. Almost like symbols, crudely etched into the old pine. Four vertical lines, followed by two horizontal. Then another four vertical.

My mind raced, trying to parse the meaning, trying to dismiss it as nothing. Just weather, or a branch scraping in the wind. But the snow drift had been too low. And the marks too deliberate. They weren’t random. They weren’t from a struggling animal. They were… placed. They looked like the tally marks Marie and I used to make on road trips, counting the miles, the hours. A childish game. But why here? Why now?

I reached out, my fingers tracing the grooves in the wood. They were fresh, surprisingly sharp. Someone had been here. Or something. The thought sent a jolt of terror through me, a raw, primal fear that clawed at my throat. Was it a prank? A twisted joke by someone who knew my history, my isolation? Or was it something else entirely? A warning? A message?

My heart pounded, a frantic rhythm against the quiet. The memories of Marie, always close, now felt intertwined with this new, tangible threat. Her laughter, the way her hand felt in mine, the vibrant colour of her hair against the snow – it all clashed with the grim reality of the present. I felt a surge of irrational anger. How dare this new fear intrude upon my grief? How dare it make me question not only what happened to her, but what was happening now?

I pushed open the heavy wooden door, the familiar creak a comfort now, a shield against the vast, dark unknown outside. My eyes scanned the interior, searching for any sign of disturbance, any hint that someone had been inside. Nothing. The cabin was as I had left it, steeped in the smell of pine and burnt wood. The old armchair stood empty, the chipped mug sat on its shelf. Everything in its place, except for the certainty that had begun to fray at the edges of my perception.

I looked back out at the lake, its surface now almost entirely swallowed by the deepening night. The new crack was a thin, dark line, barely visible against the encroaching blackness. My breath plumed, then vanished, a fleeting thought in the freezing air. What did it mean? The groans, the crack, the marks on the door. Were they connected? Were they a prelude? Or was it all just… the cold? The profound, unrelenting cold of this place, and of my own shattered mind?

The silence pressed in, no wind, no distant animal, just that cold, heavy quiet. And then, from somewhere out on the lake, a faint, rhythmic scratching began. Not the settling of ice. Something else. Something deliberate, calling out from the deep, vast, frozen expanse.