Horror Story: One Foot Under Water (Patreon)

One Foot Underwater

by joey comeau.

Melanie should have been watching her brother. The pond had long grass that tangled Simon's small arms and legs. It had dark wet life that brushed against his feet while he tried to calm down.

Later, when Melanie poured herself a glass of lemonade in the quiet of the kitchen, her father asked "Where’s Simon?" and Melanie said "Where do you think? Playing with the ducks again."

From her bedroom window Melanie watched their father sit beside the pond. His clothes were soaked up to the chest. He took his pocket knife and cut the long yellow grass off Simon’s body. He moved slowly, until a duck came close, curious, and without warning he kicked at it. Melanie leaned her face on the glass of the window. She should have been watching. The duck kept its distance while Melanie’s father sat with Simon and waited for the ambulance.

Before leaving them, their mother used to tease their father about how dark Simon’s skin was. Both parents had lighter skin, and so when she was feeling playful she used to say "Oh, I wish Simon’s real father was here. He’d be dark enough to handle this." It was her oldest joke, like Melanie's father’s answer whenever a waitress in a coffee shop offered sugar. "No thanks, I’m sweet enough."

The sun had come out again, and Simon was pale and quiet now. Looking at him, there was no doubt he was their father’s son.

All of the ducks in the pond had gone quiet. They floated near the shore, where her father was crying. They were confused by the sound. Melanie put her fingers under the window and pulled it open with a scrape. Her father didn’t look up. The ducks did.

He went with the body and the ambulance. Melanie stayed. She sat in front of the television and then she stared at the first page of her book. Eventually, she found herself in Simon’s room. His bed was still unmade, and there was a movie on pause. She trailed her fingers over his magazines and they were just magazines. His dirty clothes were just dirty clothes. The posters were only posters. Melanie pulled the curtain opened and looked down at the pond.

The long grass around the edge was beautiful. The pond was part of the reason they moved here. It was exactly what you expected from a small country pond, long grass and reeds all around the edge, springtime crowded with ducks. Melanie pulled the curtain open the rest of the way, and looked closer. Normally there were a few ducks in the body of the pond, but there were none now. They must have all retreated to the banks. She watched quietly for a long time, but not one of them moved or gave any sign of life. Melanie pictured the ducks kicking their webbed feet against the snaking yellow fingers of the long grass.

She fell asleep in Simon’s bed. She woke up in the middle of the night, in her father’s arms, crying. After that she couldn’t stop. She cried when she was awake. She cried in her sleep.

The morning sun woke her. She shifted her feet and kicked something strange and wet. When she pulled the blanket back, there was a duck sleeping in the bed with her. There were beads of water on the feathers, and when Melanie scrambled away from it, to the top of the bed, the duck slowly opened its eyes.

It made no sound, but raised its head and looked at her. A shiver ran from its neck down its back to the tail feathers, shaking off some of the water. The whole room smelled of the pond. Decayed fall leaves that the winter ice had buried. Rot. Melanie wanted to scream, but couldn’t. The duck stood, unbalanced on the soft mattress, and took a step toward her. Its feathers were dark brown. Its eyes were black and intelligent, but there was no emotion in them. They were like hard, thinking beads. Melanie grabbed the blanket and threw it over the creature. She jumped to the floor and ran.

In the hallway she turned and looked again. The duck was gone. There was no lump under the blanket. The phone was ringing downstairs, and her father answered. She could hear the quiet murmur of his voice, and then he appeared at the foot of the steps. His eyes were still red from crying.

"Your mother’s coming," he said. "Go get dressed."

Melanie opened the door to her own room slowly, looking for the dark feathers of the duck, looking for an oval lump in the bed sheets. When the door was fully open, she knelt down in the hallway and looked under the bed. Then she stood and walked into the room, pulled open the drawer and grabbed a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. She out underwear. She grabbed a towel from the closet without looking down. She felt sure that if she looked down into the hamper she would find those dark wet eyes looking up at her.

In the shower she tried to remember the names of Simon’s friends from school. She should call them and tell them. She would talk to their parents first, maybe they would want to tell their children themselves. In a way it was like your child’s first step. You wanted to be there for their first dead friend, you wanted to be a part of that.

She made the water hotter. Her body was used to the heat now. She turned it hotter until she was right at the threshold of what she could take. She would call Simon’s favorite teacher. The science teacher. Melanie turned around so that the scalding water would numb her back, too. The duck at her feet looked up at her and opened its long dark bill. A duck quack does not sound the way you expect, especially in the shower. When the duck opened its beak, Melanie heard the sound of the dog being crushed by their mother’s car, half like a tired bark and half the sound of flesh ripping. She screamed.

She pulled at the shower curtain and fell out into the bathroom. Her foot caught on the slippery plastic sheet and she smashed her head against the wall, leaving a small red point of blood. Nothing made sense. She couldn’t open her eyes. She wouldn’t.

When her father came, the duck was gone.

"I fell," Melanie said, and he held her tightly and would not let go for a long time. He kissed her hair. Her father had a hunting knife in his bedroom. Melanie had seen it. When he went back downstairs to wait for their mother, she snuck to his room and found the knife. She had never held it before, and it was heavier than she expected. Time and time again Simon had held it out to her, daring her to hold it, but she hadn’t.

Her father’s window looked down on the pond. Melanie pulled back the curtain and looked down. The grass was dark with ducks. They were packed tightly, climbing over one another and shaking their wings. Her brother Simon stood at the edge of the pond. He was still pale, and his face was serious in a way it had never been in life. He stood in the water just at the edge of the pond, staring up at Melanie while the ducks around him floated silently.

Melanie let the knife in her hand drop and she put her hand to her mouth. She should have been watching him, and he knew it. She opened her mouth. She tried to say "I’m sorry," but nothing came out. She could only shake and watch Simon standing with the ducks. He watched her with eyes that were black like the duck’s eyes, like the bottom of the pond.

A sound behind her made her turn, and there was a duck in the doorway. She knelt down, her hand scrambling to find the knife. She couldn’t.

"I’m sorry," Melanie said. She closed her eyes. "I’m sorry, Simon. I’m sorry." Tears overtook her again and when she opened her eyes the duck was closer. It had a bit of paper in its bill. Melanie stared at it in silence, and the duck dropped the paper on the floor in front of her. It was Simon’s childish handwriting. "These are my friends," it said. "Don’t be lonely without me."

He wasn’t angry. Melanie touched the words with her fingers and the tears came again. She looked down at the duck.

"Hello," she whispered.

Downstairs the doorbell rang, and then she heard her mother’s voice calling her name. Melanie reached out a finger and touched the duck’s bill. Her mother yelled her name louder from downstairs.

They ate hot dogs and potato chips at the table. The whole time, her mother kept hold of her hand. She looked different. Her clothes were nicer than ever, expensive looking. She had new hair and sparkling jewelry.

"How long are you planning on staying?" her father asked, and her mother didn’t answer. It was like they could each only speak to Melanie, not to each other. Eventually Melanie’s father went upstairs to lie down. Melanie went back upstairs too.

Her mother was too friendly. She had come from nowhere and wanted to know everything that Melanie was feeling. She kept saying "Let it all out. Your mother’s here," as though she hadn’t been gone for years.

There was a duck in her bedroom when she opened the door. It stood on the window sill with a small scrap of paper in its beak. The note said "Do you love me?"

She tore a corner out of her notebook and wrote back. "Yes," she wrote. "I love you Simon." She offered it to the duck, and it snatched the note in its bill. Melanie let it out and watched as the bird flew down to the pond, settling into the water with a flurry of wings. It dunked its head under and disappeared. She watched and waited for it to resurface, but twenty minutes passed and the water stayed calm.

All of her grief had gone somewhere else. She could still tell him she loved him. When she woke it was evening, and her mother was sitting on the edge of the bed.

"We need some mother daughter time," her mother said. Melanie sat up.

"Okay," she said.

"I want to take you to dinner tonight. Just us."

"What about dad?"

"At a time like this, a girl needs her mother."

Melanie shook her head, and in the end it was all three of them who went to dinner. Her father drove, and her mother sat in the back seat, smoking with the window open. They parked in the small gravel parking lot of the Italian restaurant.

Melanie ate in silence while her parents argued about money. Something pushed against her ankle, and she looked down to see a duck under the table. She took the note it offered.

"I have more friends, too," it read. "I want you to meet all my friends. I love you."

In the bathroom Melanie used one of her mother’s makeup pencils to write a response. She wrote on the back of the receipt. "Mom is acting like she never left. I wish you were here," and she folded it for the duck who sat waiting on the toilet seat. She leaned down and whispered "give him this, too," and she kissed the duck’s head once, softly. The feathers were cold against her lips.

The door to the bathroom opened and Melanie closed the stall, hiding the duck from her mother, who had come into the bathroom. Her mother looked like she was about to cry.

"I can’t believe the things that man says to me sometimes," she said. "I know you’re mad at me for leaving, Melanie, but I want to make it up to you. I want to talk to you, to tell you what my life has been like. I want to sit down, just the two of us, and talk. Can we do that?"

"Yes,"

"Promise me," her mother said. "Promise me we’ll talk."

"I promise."

In the car, her mother rode in the back seat again, and smoked. Melanie pretended to sleep, listening to their voices go back and forth. When Melanie’s father mentioned the upcoming school year, her mother said "Well. Melanie and I are going to have a little talk about that."

"What?" her father said.

"Melanie wants to talk about coming to live with me, Carl. I’m not surprised she didn’t mention it to you. What did you think we were talking about in the bathroom? Makeup tips?"

When they got home there was a new note on Melanie’s pillow. "Will you meet my friends? If you love me you will."

Melanie wrote back, "More ducks? I don’t want ducks. I want you. Come home." She opened the window for the duck, and watched it fly down through the dark to the silver pond. It came back almost immediately.

"Will you meet my friends? Come now."

Friends. Was it more ducks? Frogs? A muskrat? Or was it something else down in that pond with him? She shook her head. It made her feel cold in her stomach to think about the dark water. What sort of friends did dead children have?

Melanie wrote back.

"Not tonight. I am too tired. I love you." She let the duck out again.

It was two minutes, this time. Then the duck was back, giving the window one sharp rap, almost an order. The note was almost an order, too. "If you love me you will come." it said. Melanie crumpled it up and put it in the garbage. She felt sick.

She opened the window for the duck who just stood on her dresser, waiting.

"No more notes tonight," She said. The duck just stared at her. "Go," she said, and she pushed it toward the window. Another duck appeared, ducking into her bedroom with a note in its bill. Melanie took the note. "Come," it said. Another duck appeared. "Come." and then another and another. The ducks stood in her room, on the dresser, on the floor, on the window sill, black eyes everywhere. Another duck fluttered to a waddling stop on the ledge, a note in its mouth.

It was cool outside, and the light from the house didn’t reach the pond. Melanie stood on the edge, listening to the long grass and reeds blow in the night wind, and she said "Simon," quietly. There was no answer. She stepped closer to the pond, but not too close. She stayed out of reach of the water.

"Simon," she said again, and again there was no answer. But the water began to roll in the middle of the pond. It rolled gently on the surface, circles moving away from a shape that was rising from the water, Simon’s pale face, and then his shoulders. He came closer and closer to shore, though it didn’t look like he was swimming. He simply moved through the water.

Simon looked the same as he had that day beside the pond. Pale and cold and far away. He came right to the edge of the water, and stepped one foot on land.

"You came," he said. "Will you bring mom? Tonight?"

"Mom?"

"My friends wanted to meet you, but I convinced them to meet mom instead. Can you bring her?" Simon spoke slowly, and his expression didn’t change. Melanie stepped closer to him and he raised his hand for her to stop. "No," he said. "Don’t come near the water. My friends are here."

"Your friends?" Melanie shook her head. The cold in her stomach was spreading through her whole body now. "The ducks?"

"No," Simon said.

"Simon," Melanie said. "I want to touch you." Simon looked down at the foot that was still submerged in the water.

"Can you bring mom?" he said. "They want to meet her. Please, Melanie? If you bring her, they’ll let me out. They’re lonely. They don’t like to be alone. If you bring mom I will be able to come inside the house," he said. His face softened and for a brief moment Melanie saw how scared her little brother was.

"Alright," she said. "Simon, I’ll bring her."

In the house her mother was sitting in front of the television. When Melanie came into the room her mother stood up and smiled

"I thought you’d gone to bed," she said. Melanie shook her head.

"I want to talk," Melanie said. "Mother and daughter."

Outside her mother held her hand, and Melanie pretended that was alright. They walked down by the pond in the moonlight. Her mother stared at the long grass uneasily.

"Why don’t we walk out in the field instead?" she said.

"No," Melanie said. "This is where Simon is." The water in the center of the pond was rolling, and Melanie pointed. Her mother turned to watch her son surface. His body slid through the water toward them, and he stopped a few feet from shore.

"Simon," his mother whispered. She took a step toward the water and Melanie pulled her hand free. Simon’s face was blank again, and the water around him was moving like there were schools of fish just beneath the surface. Still, Melanie wanted to follow her mother into the water, into her brother’s arms. Instead, she closed her eyes and turned away.

There was a small splash, and then the night was quiet. After a moment Melanie opened her eyes, and Simon was standing alone at the edge of the pond, one foot still in the water.

"Help me," he said. He stretched his hand out toward her. Melanie stared at the water around his one submerged foot. Simon shook his head. "Help me," he said.

"You said they would let you go,"

"They did," Simon said. "I just need your hand. Help me out of the water and we can climb up on the barn where the stars are." Melanie took a step toward him, and then another. The water under his foot was calm now. Nothing moved.

"Where are your friends?"

"Eating," he said.

THE END