The Sunken Lure

To beat his dead brother’s record, Eddie uses a strange lure. Now, something monstrous has him hooked, dragging him into the dark.

The auger was jammed. Again. The cheap steel screamed against the ice, a high, thin noise that set my teeth on edge. I kicked the powerhead, my boot connecting with a dull thud that did nothing but send a jolt of pain up my shin. Useless.

Leo never had this problem. His gear was always perfect, oiled and sharp. He’d have punched three holes in the time it took me to curse this one. I could almost hear his laugh, that easy, condescending chuckle that said *you’re trying too hard, little brother*. It was the same laugh he’d used when he pulled the thirty-pound laker through the ice in this very spot, the fish that got his picture in the Kenora newspaper and his name on the plaque at the bait shop. The record. My obsession.

I gave up on the auger and grabbed the ice chisel. Hacking at the half-drilled hole sent shards of ice skittering across the surface like broken glass. My breath plumed in the frigid air. Sweat trickled down my back, cold and clammy under my layers. The sun was already kissing the tops of the black spruce on the far shore, bleeding orange and pink across the snow. I was running out of time.

That’s when I heard it. Not the whisper of the wind or the groan of the lake, but a sharp *tink*. The chisel had struck something other than ice or rock. Metal. I knelt, my knees cracking in the cold, and scraped away the slush. There, embedded an inch deep in the clear, black ice, was a lure. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Not a Rapala or a Blue Fox. It was long and slender, maybe six inches, jointed in at least a dozen places like the fossilized spine of some deep-water eel. The metal had a dull, oily sheen, somewhere between pewter and lead, and it was covered in intricate, swirling carvings that seemed to shift in the low light. At its head, a single eye of polished jet was fixed in an unblinking stare.

A sick feeling coiled in my gut. It felt old. Wrong. Like something that should have stayed lost. I told myself to leave it. To finish my hole, use the Five of Diamonds that had always worked for me, and try to forget it. But the image of Leo, holding that monster fish, grinning for the camera… it was burned into my mind. This lure felt like a key. A secret. Maybe it was the kind of secret that landed a record.

My fingers, clumsy and numb in their thin gloves, worked the chisel around the lure’s edges. The ice was stubborn, clinging to it, but finally it came free with a sucking sound. It was heavy in my palm, colder than the ice it came from. The joints moved with a silent, fluid grace. I shouldn't. The thought was a clear bell in my head. *I shouldn't.*

I tied it to my line.

The thirty-pound test felt laughably thin connected to the strange artifact. I dropped it into the freshly cleared hole. It didn't flutter or spiral as it sank. It just went down. Straight down, a silver needle disappearing into the black. I watched the line unspool from the reel, faster and faster, until it finally stopped. A hundred and fifty feet. Deep. Leo’s record was from sixty.

I settled onto the overturned bucket in my portable hut, the plastic groaning under my weight. I jigged the line once, twice. The lure didn't feel like it was moving. It felt like I was pulling against a sunken log. A dead weight. I sighed, frustration souring my mouth. Probably snagged on the bottom already. My one chance, my secret weapon, and it was gone in thirty seconds.

I set the rod down and went to grab the hand-crank winch to try and pull it free. That’s when the rod tip bent. Not a nibble, not a frantic strike. It just… bent. A slow, steady curve until the tip was kissing the ice. The drag on the reel screamed, a single, sustained shriek as line began peeling out. I lunged for it, my hands wrapping around the cork handle, and was nearly pulled off my feet. The sheer force was impossible. This wasn't a fish. A fish fights, it thrashes, it runs. This was just weight. A dead, inexorable pull, like I'd hooked the continental plate.

The hut shuddered. A low scraping sound vibrated up through the floor, through the soles of my boots. My thermos slid off the cooler and clattered to the floor. The hut was moving. It was sliding across the ice, dragged by my fishing line. I looked wildly out the clear plastic window. The shoreline, the dark wall of trees, was slowly, undeniably, shrinking.

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my chest. I cranked the reel handle, my knuckles white, my muscles screaming. Nothing. It was like trying to reel in a freight train. The line was humming with tension, a single, vibrating note of doom. The hut picked up speed, its metal runners screeching on the ice. We were heading for the narrows, toward the dark, open water where the current kept the lake from ever fully freezing.

*Cut the line, you idiot. Cut the line.*

But my hands wouldn't obey. My knife was on my belt, but letting go of this—whatever this was—felt like letting go of Leo. Like admitting he'd won forever. The plaque at the bait shop would always bear his name. Not mine.

A crack echoed across the lake, loud as a rifle shot. It wasn't the sound of the hut. It was the ice. A jagged black line appeared on the floor of my shelter, racing from the fishing hole to the door. Another crack, and the whole world tilted. Water, black and shockingly cold, surged up through the floorboards, soaking my boots, my shins.

I scrambled out of the collapsing hut, falling onto the heaving ice. The shelter, my gear, my only link to warmth and safety, hung for a moment on the edge of the fracture before sliding with a great sigh into the water. It was gone. And I was on a floating island of ice, no bigger than a car. A fifty-foot channel of black water now separated me from the solid ice leading to shore. The line was still taut, leading from my submerged rod into the depths, pulling my little raft of ice and death steadily out into the open lake.

The spell was broken. Leo was dead. I was about to be. I fumbled for my knife, the blade catching the last of the twilight. With a sawing, frantic motion, I severed the line. The tension vanished with a snap that vibrated through my whole body. The drifting floe slowed. The silence returned, deeper and more profound than before.

I was alive. Shivering, stranded, but alive. I watched the spot where my line had disappeared. It was just a hole in the ice again. But then, a light began to flicker in the depths. A soft, pale, phosphorescent green. It pulsed, a slow, sickly heartbeat growing in intensity until the water in the hole was glowing with a malevolent light. It illuminated the underside of my icy raft, showing me every fracture, every bubble trapped within. It was beautiful and terrifying.

The water swirled. Something broke the surface, but it wasn't a fish. It was pale and long. A hand, maybe? An arm? It slid back under. The light in the hole dimmed, but the water beside my floe began to glow instead. A shape was rising. It was humanoid, but too thin, its limbs too long. It surfaced with an oily silence, its skin the color of a drowned corpse. It had no face, just a smooth expanse of flesh, but I felt it watching me. Its head tilted, a slow, curious gesture. Then, with a predator's deliberate grace, it began to swim a slow, patient circle around my island of ice.