I Don't Swim Any More.

I grew up in Oregon, right on the cold, dismal edge of the Pacific Ocean. Fifteen minutes in any direction would take you to a beach, an open expanse of sand dunes, a National or State park, or one of about a dozen permanent lakes. For years, every summer we'd go to a family friend's house to use their lakefront property and their dock. Looking back it doesn't seem like much, but I can remember spending countless hours there swimming, kayaking, paddle-boarding and snorkeling.

When I was twelve years old, I refused to go again. I hated the lake, I hated that house. I had nightmares for years and never explained to anyone why it happened.

I still don't like to talk about it. Whenever I do, I feel like I can smell that lake again. People don't realize, but lakes are dirty places. Animals piss and shit and die in them, all kinds of plants rot on the surface, people dump their garbage. There's so much water that stays clear that people think that it's clean. It's not. All the lakes I've been to have a certain *smell* like they're not totally pure.

This lake - my lake - slowly developed a smell like death.

That sounds dramatic. It's not like you could just sniff the air and think "That's death." No one would have gone to the lake if it had been like that. It was just a subtle thing that you caught a whiff of once and then it was gone. Maybe you looked around you for a dead fish or squirrel or something and then you forgot about it. I probably only noticed it was getting worse because on most days I was there from sun-up to sun-down.

The dock our friends owned was a simple hand-built thing that involved Styrofoam and treated two-by-fours. A few times it had come loose from the rope that held it and had drifted across the lake. It sat sandwiched between two bigger and more impressive boathouses. As you faced the lake from the shore, the boathouse on the right was freshly painted bright red and housed a small white fishing boat. A simple pulley system allowed the boat to be lifted out of the water while it was stored in the majority of the year when it wasn't being used.

We never saw inside the boathouse on the left, and we also never saw anyone use it. It was made of plywood that had once been painted dark green, though years of weather had warped the edges of the wood and it had shed about half its paint. That summer when I was twelve, it disappeared and we all assumed that it had just been torn down so that it wouldn't be such an eyesore.

That summer was the first one that I got really into snorkeling. I had explored the surface of the lake many times before in a boat, but that summer, I got to see a whole other world hidden below the surface. My friends and I caught salamanders, built things out of cinder blocks on the sandy bottom  and found everything from fishing lures and golf balls to pieces of old boats and docks from the past.

As you might have guessed, the lake was pretty small but it was frighteningly deep. Huge trees would fall into it on occasion, become waterlogged and would turn vertically with only their roots or broken bases poking above the surface. A swimmer drowned there once and even though they used scuba equipment to try to find the body, it was never recovered. At a depth of about ten feet, the water was already as cold as it was in the winter.  At about fifteen feet, it was dark enough that a thick forest of weeds were able to grow on the bottom. Beyond was just cold and darkness.

My friend and I devised a plan to use an upside-down plastic barrel full of air and a boat anchor to allow us to dive much further than we could while only holding our breaths from the surface. We'd go out to the dive spot using a surfboard, then, with the barrel covering our heads and masks, we clutched the anchor and jumped off, quickly sinking to the bottom of the lake. You basically dove blind, since you had the bucket over your head. We could go far enough that the pressure would compress the air in the barrel to half its original size. All we had to do in order to surface was to release the anchor, and the barrel full of air would propel us quickly to the surface. Then we'd reel up the anchor with a rope and start again.

This was fun for us to see how far we could go, and we got pretty good at it. The only bad times were when we would land in the deep weeds, which instantly tangled around our legs and ankles. We never got seriously stuck, but it would freak you out when you were expecting to land with both feet on the sand and instead landed in the weeds.

On a successful dive, you could see about five to ten feet in any direction, and looking up, you could see the outline of the sun, and the long shadow of the surfboard.

The last time I ever dove into the lake - the last time I ever swam in open water - was when I found the remains of the neighbor's boathouse. It was the first dive of the day, and we had paddled the surfboard straight out from the dock, a bit further than we normally did. It was about 10:30 am, and the water was still slightly cold from the night before. I put on my mask and snorkel, put the bucket over my head and curled my legs around the anchor like normal. This day, my friend had brought his father's underwater flashlight, so I readied that as well as the bucket above my head and took the plunge. I remember falling a long time. Too long, because the pressure was pressing my mask against my face uncomfortably, and the air in the barrel was compressed to smaller than I'd ever seen it. The rope, holding the anchor pulled taut, and I almost lost my grip.

I don't believe in the little voice inside of a person that tells them the difference between right and wrong. I did, however, experience a very loud message from inside myself telling me that this was not a place I should be. It was too cold, too dark, and the pressure crushed in from all sides. It wasn't the first time I'd realized the absurdity of our little diving system, but it was the first time that it had struck me as being truly stupid. My body gave me the message loud and clear that I was an idiot, but my curiosity ultimately won out. Just a quick peek.

I lifted the barrel above my head, and got my first sight of how deep I'd come. I was suspended on the rope between a gradient of gray/green above me to only blackness below. If I could have looked at myself from the outside, I'm sure I'd have resembled a worm on a hook.

I had to let go of the barrel with one hand in order to grab the flashlight tucked into my swim trunks. The air in the bucket strained to float up, and the container tipped at a dangerous angle, but the bubble of air, being so compressed, stayed intact. I clicked on the flashlight, shining it down right in front of me.

The thin beam of harsh white light sprung into existence like a camera flash, and what I saw there...

People.

Pale faces through thick, motionless black hair staring up at me from inside the remains of that old green boathouse, flipped upside down or fallen apart. They were there, right below me.

I screamed, and dropped the flashlight at the same time as I kicked off from the anchor. The barrel started pulling me up to the surface, faster and faster. In a complete panic, I thrashed my remaining arm and legs in order to try to go faster. I had expelled all my air and I felt like this was the moment I was going to die.

I felt sure that they were right behind me, their pale hands inches from my ankles. From one moment to the next felt like an eternity. The end of the rope fell past me. Ten more feet.

Nine.

Eight.

Fire in my empty lungs.

I don't remember breaking the surface. I do, however remember being on top of the surfboard, alternately breathing so hard that I couldn't cry and crying so hard that I couldn't take a breath as my friend pushed my to shore. Once I reached dry land, I left without looking back.

I felt then that it was so crazy, that I couldn't tell him, or my parents or anyone. There were people down there, not living people, but dead ones, with empty eyes, staring up at the gray, faraway surface. They must have been weighted down, or restrained. I don't remember.

What I do remember is that as the flashlight fell into the weeds, it shone on the most horrible part of all. The legs of one of these... things had been roughly sewn together to create the image of a grotesque mermaid, including a large and elegantly shaped black tail.

For a long time after that incident, I tried to pretend that it hadn't happened - that I hadn't seen what I thought. Trees, or logs, not twin female bodies. A patch of sand through the weeds... Anything to not have to accept a reality that that scene could exist in.

As an adult, I've had to accept it. I still see it in the dark. I can't escape it. I've realized that whoever owned the boathouse, must have been experimenting. The swimmer who disappeared was probably one of those victims. I don't know who the other woman might have been. Somehow, the bodies would have to have been preserved. The only evidence of decay being from the eyes, which still stare at me in my nightmares.

I'm still torn between wishing I'd investigated and learned more about it, and wishing to hell that I'd never, ever seen it.