Read Online Eye Lake by Tristan Hughes - Free Book Online Page A

me now and me when I was Bobby’s age.
    Virgil told me once, when he was teaching me to fish, that they called it Eye Lake because down there, on its bed, lay all the people who’d ever drowned in it – the loggers and the fishermen and the unlucky ones who’d gone through the ice in the winters – staring up towards a surface they’d never reach again. He called them the watchers and said they never blinked and that if the water was clear and calm then you might see the whites of their eyes glistening like pearls below you.
    â€˜Do they ever sleep?’ I asked him.
    â€˜No,’ he said. ‘Never.’
    â€˜So what do they do?’
    â€˜They look up, Eli. They watch.’
    â€˜For what?’
    â€˜I don’t know, Eli. Maybe for us?’
    â€˜Forever?’
    â€˜I guess so,’ he said kind of sorrowfully. ‘I guess so.’
    What do they want from us? I always wish I’d asked Virgil that, only I never did. I never got the chance. And suddenly I wasn’t seeing the white of the bacon fat in the water; it was them, watching me, unblinking, the whites of their eyes asking me …
    â€˜What do you want?’ I shouted. ‘What do you want?’
    A streak of wet silver jumped out of the water, catching the sun and glittering. It landed on the planks of the dock and flopped up and down. Behind it was Bobby’s face, pale and scared.
    â€˜I got one,’ he whispered. ‘I got one, Eli.’
    Behind him I could see Sarah walking towards the dock.
    â€˜Is everything okay?’ she called over to us. ‘I thought I heard shouting.’
    Bobby looked at me. The scaredness had gone out of his face and his eyebrows were knotted together as if he were figuring something out. Then he picked his minnow off the dock and ran over to Sarah.
    â€˜Look,’ he said. ‘I got one! I got one!’
    â€˜That’s great, Bobby,’ she said, smiling. ‘What happened to your bug clothes?’
    â€˜See,’ Bobby said breathlessly, as if he’d not heard the question. ‘I got one!’
    He held out his hand to her and the minnow lay there in his palm, flopping from side to side, its little mouth opening and closing, gasping for breath.
    That evening I walked down Franklin’s Trail to the spot where I’d snagged Clarence’s castle. I sat on a piece of driftwood by the shoreline and stared out across the water. It was smooth and still and in the distance the dead trees stuck out of its surface. It looked like the remains of a forest fire so hot it had melted the soil to glass. And the setting sun was burning the lake and turning the far shore into a dark outline, sloping gently up and down in the shape of a sleeping giant, and then – for the time of a few breaths – turning the trees behind me a bright golden green, so bright and golden and green they were the colour of fevers.
    When I saw it, it was like I knew it’d be there. The tower of the castle, jutting out of the surface. The water seemed to be dropping almost as fast as the sun.
    Everything comes back in the end.
    Through the woods I could hear shouting and I ran towards it until I got to the Pine dorm. Billy’s truck was parked out front and Bobby was standing in the garden, wrapped up in his sheets. There were so many bugs you could hardly breathe, and the sound of them was everywhere, as if they’d flown into my ear and were buzzing around inside my head. Billy’s voice sounded like them too, starting slow and faint and then reaching up and up until it became a loud whining. I couldn’t tell what he was saying. It all sounded like mosquito to me.
    â€˜Mom doesn’t want Billy to visit anymore,’ Bobby whispered.
    I didn’t say nothing.
    â€˜I kept my minnow in a bucket,’ Bobby said. ‘And I put a rock in there too, for cover. Like you said they liked.’
    â€˜I don’t want you just turning up,