Where the Ice Breathes

To disprove a local legend, he skated to the lake's dark heart. Now he's adrift on broken ice, completely alone.

The damn door was frozen shut again. I yanked on the handle, my glove slipping on the frosted metal. A sharp crack, not of the ice but of the plastic housing, and I cursed under my breath. Dave just laughed from the driver’s side, already lacing up his skates on the hood of his rusted-out truck.

“Fight the good fight, Ed,” he called out, his breath pluming in the frigid air.

I gave the door one last, furious pull and it screeched open. The sound was thin against the sheer, oppressive silence of the lake. We were the only ones here. No other cars, no distant snowmobiles, just the wind keening over miles of white. Carrie was already out on the edge, a small, tight knot of anxiety in a bright red coat. She had her skates on but wasn't moving, just staring out at the sheet of ice like it was a living thing.

“You sure about this?” she asked as I crunched over the frozen gravel, skates slung over my shoulder. “It’s been making the noises all week.”

“That’s why we’re here,” I said, sitting on the tailgate to wrench my boots off. My fingers were already numb. “To hear the famous ghost of Lachrymose Lake.”

“It’s not a ghost.” Her voice was quiet. “It’s… a pressure thing. Tectonics. Gases.” She was reciting something she’d read, a shield of flimsy science against a fear she couldn’t shake.

Dave clapped me on the back, his skates now laced. “Whatever it is, let’s get moving before we freeze to the shore.”

He glided out first, a natural, carving easy arcs into the pristine surface. I followed, the scrape of my blades a satisfying violence against the quiet. The ice was good here, thick and clear. You could see the dark green of the water below, the occasional weed frozen mid-sway. But further out, the lake turned a deep, bruised purple. The Black Vein, they called it. The place where the ice was always thinnest, right over the deepest part of the trench.

We skated for maybe twenty minutes, the shore shrinking behind us. Then we heard it. It wasn't a crack. It was a low, resonant groan that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It vibrated up through my skates, into the bones of my legs. A sound like a whale dying in slow motion, miles beneath us.

Carrie stopped dead, her arms rigid at her sides. “There. You hear it?”

“Pressure ridges forming,” I said, making a show of looking bored. “Ice expanding and contracting. Basic physics, Car.”

“No,” she whispered. “My grandmother said… she said that’s the sound of the lake wanting something back. It takes things. Trappers, sled dogs, a whole logging truck once. They say it doesn’t give them up. It just… adds them to its collection.”

Dave did a slow circle around her. He was trying to keep it light, but even his smile looked a little strained. “Spooky. So we just stay away from the dark part, right?”

“The legend says there’s a spirit,” Carrie went on, ignoring him, her eyes fixed on that dark stain in the distance. “It guards the Vein. It pulls you down if you get too close. It doesn’t like people who don’t believe.”

And that was it. That little challenge, that personal jab woven into a stupid campfire story. I laughed, a sharp, barking sound that felt too loud out here. “A spirit? Seriously? One that can tell if I’m a skeptic? Come on.”

“Ed, don’t,” Carrie said, her voice tight with genuine fear.

“What? It’s ridiculous. It’s a deep lake, the current keeps the ice thin in the middle. It’s not a monster, it’s hydrology.” I pushed off, gliding towards the Black Vein. The ice felt different under my blades here. Smoother, faster.

“What are you doing?” Dave called after me.

“Proving a point!” I shouted back, not looking at them. The wind was at my back, pushing me on. “Hey, spirit! You in there? I don’t believe in you! Come and get me!”

“ED, STOP! PLEASE!” Carrie’s voice was a raw scream now, thin and desperate against the wind. It just spurred me on. Her fear was like fuel.

I reached the edge of the darker ice. It was like stepping from pavement onto glass. The color wasn't just on the surface; it was a profound, bottomless black that seemed to swallow the light. I did a tight turn, spraying a curtain of ice shavings back towards them, a final, arrogant flourish.

And then the groan came again. But not from all around. This time, it was directly beneath me. It wasn't a moan; it was a gut-wrenching *pop*, a sound of colossal failure. My stomach dropped. I looked down.

A black line, thin as a hair, shot out from the heel of my right skate. It raced across the ice in front of me, silent and perfect. Then another branched off from it, and another, a spiderweb of fracture blooming in an instant.

I froze. Every instinct screamed at me to bolt, but I couldn't tell which way was safe. The web of cracks spread, connecting, creating a mosaic of impending collapse all around me.

Then the world-ending CRACK. It wasn’t a pop this time, it was a thunderclap that slammed through the ice and up my spine. The fissure that had been a hairline a second ago exploded into a foot-wide gap of churning black water. It ran straight between me and the shore. Between me and them.

“ED!” Dave’s shout was distant, panicked.

The slab of ice I was on shifted, a sickening lurch that almost put me on my face. The gap widened. Two feet. Five. Ten. A river of ink opening up, cutting me off. The groaning was constant now, a symphony of destruction as the massive piece of ice I was marooned on broke away entirely.

I was on an island. A floating, grinding, utterly unstable island of dark ice. The current had me, pulling me slowly, inexorably, towards the center of the lake. Carrie and Dave were just figures now, their shouts snatched away by the wind. They were getting smaller.

The sun, which had been a weak smudge in the sky, was finally giving up. The gray world bled into a deep, bruised purple that matched the ice under my feet. The cold, which had been a nuisance, was now a predator. It sank its teeth into my bones.

The groans from the deep changed. They weren't the random, geologic sounds of before. They were sharper now. More localized. A deep thud from below, to my left. A long, scraping sound from the right, like something immense dragging along the underside of my floe.

I stood there, a statue of my own stupidity, my heart hammering a frantic, useless rhythm against my ribs. The last sliver of orange vanished from the horizon, and the true, starless dark of the wilderness descended. I was alone. Utterly, completely alone with my mistake, adrift in the heart of the legend I’d mocked.

Then, from the water just beside me, a single, deliberate bubble broke the surface.