Scary Stories

Chapter 4 - Voices Beneath Waters

Like most things coming into your life, the voicemails started out very small. Barely memorable against the backdrop of my busy college life. I'm not sure when they first started, but I do know that they slowly permeated their way into my daily routine until they became starkly noticeable. The first one that made me suspicious, and also the one I consciously remember came three days ago on Thursday, in the late evening. I had just finished my dinner and was listening to the rhythmic drum of the heavy rain outside as I studied. My phone pinged and there was a message in my inbox telling me that I had received a voicemail just then.

That's the strange part. The fact that my phone hadn't rung or anything or that I didn't have any missed calls, yet a voicemail was left. Still, I wasn't really worried yet, and didn't even consciously notice this detail. I went ahead to quickly dial the voicemail number and listened for the message, the phone pressed against my ear. When the voicemail started playing, the first thing I noticed was the thickness of the voice. It was phlegmy and full like the person was speaking while eating jelly.

"Please come here, I'm cold"

I did what any rational person would do and brushed it off as a prank. Not to say that it wasn't unnerving though as I couldn't help but fixate on it for the rest of the evening despite trying my best to focus on my work. I had a strange nightmare that night I was standing outside, in the middle of the woods in front of some lake. It was raining heavily and I was drenched. The feeling of cold biting at my body felt too real as my body walked to the edge of the lake. I screamed internally as blue rotting hands emerged from the water and dragged me in. I woke up with the sensation of drowning and noticed that I had somehow nearly suffocated myself with my blanket. Needless to say I couldn't sleep the rest of the night. The whole ordeal was followed by another voicemail in the morning just as I was about to leave to go to college. At this point, I still hadn't drawn out the connection between the voicemails and the dreams and once again went to voicemail to play it.

"You will come"

Same muffled voice. I don't know if it was my nightmare but I suddenly got the sense that the voice sounded like someone was speaking underwater. The mere suggestion of association sent chills up my spine and brought back the same panic that I had felt in the middle of the night when I woke up tangled in my sheets. However, daylight provides a sort of false security. It makes us feel untouchable. And so with nothing better to do, I decided to ignore the two voicemails, to shrug off the weird coincidence of my nightmare and continue with my day.

The voicemails continued to play in my head throughout the day. I caught myself slipping into a daydream sort of state where the Professors voice would merge with the background and I would replay those voicemails over and over again in my head. There was some sort of link that I couldn't place. These voicemails hadn't started recently, they had just grown more common now. I could vaguely remember others that were much shorter. Some that sounded like water splashing, others like someone gurgling. They were never this long because none of them had anyone speaking. On Saturday, I decided to go to my parent's house. I needed to put my mind off things and nothing could have done that better than spending the weekend at my childhood home with my parents.

After catching up for a bit, my dad invited me to take the trail with him into the woods. He was looking to hunt something, so we could bring it home to eat. My parent's home is in a somewhat rural area and is close to a little forest that used to be a big tourist destination. The sun was beginning to set when we set out onto the trail. My dad had picked up his hunting rifle and insisted I take his spare one but I never had a thing for guns and was kind of averse to them. I walked with him as he told me stories from my childhood when suddenly I started to get an overpowering sense of deja vu.

The pale white trees looked familiar and so did the high canopy as I looked up. My dad noticed me looking disoriented and he stopped for a bit asking if I was okay. I felt a strong urge to step off the trail and walk into the woods to my right. I lied to him saying I spotted something and wanted to check it out. He seemed to get a bit worried, hugging his rifle closer to his body as he followed me off the trail. I wasn't really in control of my legs. They moved me deeper into the woods until I finally realized why the woods seemed so hauntingly familiar. I had entered a clearing with a small lake. The same one that I had seen in my nightmare. Here, in the fading light of the day, it seemed even more sinister. Like a place where great evil had taken place. The water was still, almost black looking more like slick oil.

For some reason, my dad started to get anxious too. He pulled me away telling me it was never a good idea to go off trail and he seemed to abandon the whole idea of hunting together as well leading me back home instead. He tried to break up the tension by talking about something, but I don't remember what it was. My mind was still trying to process what I had just seen. Somehow the lake from my dream had materialised in the real world and was a perfect replica down to the trees that surrounded it.

When we got home, I finally decided to open up to my parents about the voicemails and the dream. I was starting to feel claustrophobically anxious, like the walls of the house were about to cave in on me. As I described the voicemails and the lake, I could see some sort of recognition in my parents eyes. I could tell they were trying to remain composed but they could barely contain their own emotions inside. My mum was the first to speak and she decided to open up as well. I had always thought I was an only child, despite having vague memories of having a brother but I drew it down to having an overactive imagination as a kid. My mum told me otherwise. I used to have an older brother but he died in an accident.

The lake that I had seen in my dream and was drawn to during the walk used to be a place where my brother and I played a lot. We always stayed on the shores of the lake, not wading in too far to avoid the deeper waters. But on one particular day, I had waded in too far and before I knew it, I was unable to stay afloat and was beginning to drown. My brother had swam after me. But he didn't really know how to swim. When he came over to me, I latched on to him. When a person is drowning, their mind is panicking and focusing on survival. I was starting to make him drown alongside me. My mum doesn't know how I made it back to shore myself. Perhaps my brother had helped me. But what she does know is when I came running back home alone, drenched muddy and coughing, she knew her world was never going to be the same again. The body was never recovered back from the bottom of the lake because my dad didn't call anyone. This incident took place when I was four and I grew up to forget about this traumatic event.

By the end of it my whole family was crying, myself included but deep down I was also scared. My nightmare and the content of the voicemails suddenly seemed to link in to the story too well and as I tossed and turned in bed that night, I couldn't help but think of the helpless seven year old boy who drowned alone in a lake as his brother abandoned him to run home. When I finally did fall asleep, I woke up in mud. My whole body was cold and when I looked around, all sleep and tiredness quickly left my system. I was back at the lake, except this time the pitiful light of the moon felt too real. So did the rich damp smell of the lake and the pale white color of the trees.

The forest was completely silent and I stood frozen in front of the lake as I noticed the dark figure under the surface of the water. The figure was rapidly squirming, like it was struggling against something and without further thought I jumped into the lake. The icy cold water felt like it was burning my skin. I opened my eyes against the stinging pain and let out a silent scream under the water as I finally saw what the dark figure was. It was a seven year old boy or at least used to be one. It's skin was bloated and pale like the trees outside. It's eyes were in the process of rotting away and dissolving into the water. Chunks of skin were peeling off, exposing wet bone and muscle underneath. There was no blood, like the body had been drained of it entirely.

It watched me, reached out for me and touched my hand. It's touch was impossibly cold. Somehow colder than the water. It tried to smile, exposing rotting teeth before letting go and floating down to the bottom of the lake. With my lungs burning, I swam upwards and dragged myself out of the lake. Shivering from the cold and drenched, just like in my dream. I didn't tell my parents any of this, because frankly, they'd think I was going insane. Sometimes I struggle to believe it myself and I would've chalked it off as a surreal nightmare a long time ago if it weren't for the black marks. The black marks around my wrist from where it had touched me. The voicemails have now stopped