Mike's Pond by A J Peters

I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose, gave Danny a nod, and started down the fence. My stomach told me not to go, but there’s no turning back when you’ve been triple-dared by your older brother, especially when there’s witnesses.

It was after the block party, and Shawn was hanging out on the lawn of our house with Dave Kimball and their high school friends. They’d called off their street hockey game ’cause it was too dark. Danny and I were sitting on the driveway just in case a game of freeze tag broke out and they needed extra players. Shawn kept looking at me with a crooked grin, and I had a good idea what was coming. He could’ve dared me to moon one of our neighbors or peg someone’s car with a rock like he’d done a bunch of times before. But having to hang out at the boring block party all day must’ve made Shawn even more sadistic than usual that night. He dared me to go to Mike’s Pond, and I told him I’d do it. Never mind he’d never done any of the things I’d dared him. But I was twelve and Shawn was fifteen, and I’d given up on justice a while ago.

Luckily, Danny agreed to come along, tight-lipped as he was while we traveled to the corner of the chain-link border. We’d been best friends since second grade and shared a paper route, so it wasn’t like Danny had much choice in the matter anyway.

“You know why they call it Mike’s Pond?” Shawn had asked us earlier that summer. “A couple years before you two were born, a kid named Mike went swimming there and drowned. It doesn’t look deep, but it’s ninety feet to the bottom and lined with quicksand. Plus there’s snapping turtles and ten-foot water snakes. They say Mike still haunts the place. If he catches you there, he’ll strike you dead. Never mind the wood’s filled with vampire bats that’ll rip out your throat.”

Around the corner, there was a gash in the fence wide enough to slip through if you did it sideways. Inside, I made out the bough of a stalky tree that had been bent and pushed aside and a few feet of trampled weeds before the trail went pitch black. Someone had put up a cardboard sign and spray-painted it with big letters: GO BACK.

“I wouldn’t be hanging out at Mike’s Pond,” Troy McGovern had told me and Danny one day while we were walking home from Little League practice. “A while back, a bunch of teenage kids broke in there after dark to go drinking. But something about those woods makes you crazy, and one of ’em took a machete and hacked everybody up. He killed like eighty people and tossed their bodies in the pond. The police could never find the kid, but I heard he’s still hiding in the woods. Machete Mike. They never found all of the bodies of the kids he killed either. They must’ve sunk down to the bottom of the pond. Y’know, it’s all quicksand down there.”

I slipped off the straps of my knapsack and maneuvered myself through the opening. Danny followed. There were insects buzzing loud, and it made me think of the very worst story we heard from Gary Wozniak, a seventh grader, when we ran into him smoking cigarettes behind the backboard at the playground.

“Don’t believe any of that bullshit about Mike’s Pond. There aren’t no ghosts or serial killers down there, but I’ll tell you this: Before any of them built houses around here, the place was a dump for the chemical factories in Niagara Falls. Whatever they buried in there burned a great big hole in the ground and turned it into quicksand. They tried to fill it in to make it look like a pond and cover it up with lots of trees. But that toxic shit does crazy, mutant stuff. There’s fish swimming in that pond with heads like muskrats and teeth as sharp as a barracuda's. Some of them crawl out of the water at night and hunt for dogs and cats. There’s earthworms there the size of your leg that’ll wind around you and swallow you whole like a boa constrictor. The water in that pond’s so polluted, it glows at night, and it burns your skin like acid. If you ever hear a strange chirping noise around the place, it’s probably from the lizards. They’ve got two sets of fangs and can run real fast, on two legs, just like people. Better haul ass real good if you hear that sound. ”

“Mike’s Pond,” Gary scoffed. “Never was any Mike. Just a story they told to cover up what the chemical companies did. A load of B.S. Ever notice how stupid people ’round this town are?”

We made it through to the other side of the fence, a victory in itself, and didn't wander from the spot for a while. I swear things felt different the moment we entered the place. The air was warm and thick. There was a mucky, rotten egg smell so strong, I could feel it seeping into my clothes and deeper into my skin and knew it would take a good long shower to get rid of. There was something else that was harder to put my finger on. Like someone took a needle with a fishing line, pulled it through my heart and strung me up to hang. We were a good thirty yards from the nearest street lamp, and after standing there for just a minute, I couldn’t make out the opening in the fence.

I rooted through my knapsack to get the flashlight. Danny and I had packed anything useful we could think of. Bug repellent. Bottle rockets. A pair of walkie-talkies. Baking soda. Duct tape. Assorted bandages from my parents’ medicine cabinet, and a crucifix hanging in Danny’s den.

“Maybe we could just tell Shawn we went to the pond,” Danny said. “How’s he gonna know anyway?”

It wasn’t a bad idea. If we turned back, we could make it back home in time to catch the second half of a double-episode of Happy Days. But Shawn had never been to Mike’s Pond. He’d be the lame one when I came back home and told him and all his friends about it. I found the flashlight, clicked it on, and pointed it down the trail.

“C’mon. We’ll take a quick look and get outta here.”

There was a narrow line where some of the three-foot reeds were pressed down and you could duck your head beneath the trees sprouting out in all directions. The ground got wetter further in. My socks were soaked through my sneakers. I tried to step on just my toes in case there were any giant earthworms lurking around, but I kept sinking into the mud. Danny was right behind me. I could hear him shifting around every time there was a rattle or crack or warble coming from the woods. I kept telling myself it was the trees moving around in the breeze. I’d spent the night in a tent in the backyard, so I knew you could drive yourself crazy imagining things in the dark. Danny wasn’t holding up so well.

“You sure this is a good idea?”

I didn’t answer, but I kept moving. I knew if I saw a fish with a muskrat head, we were heading back pronto. But besides having wet feet, we weren’t doing too bad so far.

The path led up a slope where the ground was drier and the trees were bigger. The trail broadened, and we found ourselves at an intersection of dirt trails sheltered by tall maple trees.

I passed my flashlight around the space. There was a rotten log in one corner that you could sit on, and someone had tied up an old tire with a rope and hung it from a tree limb to make a swing. There were empty beer cans and cigarette butts scattered around. I loosened up. Other people had come this way. Then I remembered Troy McGovern’s story about the teenagers partying in the woods. The fishing line through my heart started tugging again. We might have stumbled onto the scene of Machete Mike’s massacre.

Danny sat down in the tire and spun himself around. I wandered over to a tree trunk that was all carved up. It was the usual, dopey teenage graffiti. “John + Wendy,” written inside a heart, with a T, L and F overlapping into one letter. I pivoted around the other side of the tree, and my flashlight passed over other things slashed into the bark:

“Welcome to Hell.”

Then, “Kids died here.”

Then, “Mike Lives.”

I scooted back over to Danny. “I think we’ve come far enough.”

Danny looked at me funny. “What about finding the pond?”

A few spins on that old tire swing, and he was suddenly ready to settle into the place for the night. Meanwhile, I had hornets swarming inside my chest. Something evil happened in the place. I could just feel it. I was about to explain it to Danny. Then we heard the sound.

It was a moan that started real low then got louder. No trick of the wind unless rubbing two branches together could make a noise like a grown man who’d had an arrow shot through his head. I swung around, shining the flashlight in all directions. I couldn’t see anything but swamp grass and trees. The sounds closed in on us. Danny climbed down from the swing, and we stood shoulder to shoulder, eyes following the flashlight’s beam. The moans came more like growls. Whatever was coming our way was hungry. I thought about making a break for it back to the street, but I couldn’t move my legs.

I spotted something rustling through the brush. My hand was trembling something wicked, but I managed to point my flashlight at it. From twenty yards away, it looked like a bear coming out of the woods. From ten yards, I could see two arms reaching out like a zombie. At ten feet, it lifted up its head, pale as milk, and it didn’t have a face. I bolted in the other direction. Danny screamed. The thing must’ve got him.

I stopped, mind working at light speed to sort out the pros and cons of trying to rescue my best friend from a psychopathic killer. Before I could decide, something came at me and tackled me to the ground. I lost hold of the flashlight, wrestled my way out from under the thing, and slid back on my elbows and feet. I wasn’t about to fight whatever creature-brought-back-from-the-dead had got me, but sidestepping a bigger competitor was a skill I’d honed over the years living with Shawn. There was also the option of screaming my brains out for help. I could hear my invisible attacker shuffling toward me. I dragged myself away from it, and backed up against a tree—a dead end. I scrunched up with my knees against my chest. I was a second away from begging for my life. The phantom towered over me, and then it hunched down and started laughing. The flashlight blared into my eyes.

“What a bunch of pussies!”

It was Shawn. I took a moment to register what had happened, and then I uncurled from my pitiful position on the ground. Shawn passed the flashlight over his face, and I could see he had pulled back his hockey goalie’s mask up on his head and had a firm grip on Danny’s shirt collar. Danny and I exchanged a quick glance to confirm how bad it was. In the diffuse light, I saw that my attacker was Shawn’s friend Dave Kimball in a black t-shirt and camouflage pants.

Dave smiled at me, mouth full of braces, and reached out his hand to help me get up on my feet. Sixteen years old, he was built like an Olympic swimmer, could play the guitar solo to “Freebird,” and was pretty much everything I ever wanted to be in life. I tried not to look like an idiot.

“What’s wrong, dweeb? Did you wet your pants?” Shawn said.

I dusted some of the dirt off the back of my knapsack and the seat of my shorts. “Fuck you, Shawn. That wasn’t funny.”

Shawn shot the light over me and Danny. “The look on your faces was pretty goddamn funny.”

Part of me wanted to charge at him with all my strength. The other part, the one that usually won out, was telling me to cut my losses, turn back home, and stay up late plotting unfulfilled designs of revenge. Either option would’ve been fine if it’d been just me and Shawn. But Dave Kimball was there.

“Leave us alone. We’re going down to the pond.”

Shawn made sarcastic “ooh” and “ahh” sounds. “You dorks should go home. It’s past your bedtime.”

I pulled Danny by the shoulder and started us down a trail.

“Look out for Mike!” Shawn shouted. Then he did an imitation of the soundtrack to the movie Friday the 13^th – the breathy part when Jason is creeping up on some guy and girl making out in a shed.

I had no clue where we were going, but I took the trail at full charge, determined to have something to show for an otherwise humiliating night. Danny stumbled after me, no doubt wondering what the hell the big deal was, but I kept pressing on, reborn serial killers or older brothers be damned.

In my rush, I’d never gotten the flashlight back from Shawn. When you hear someone say “it was so dark, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face,” that’s what it was like. But there was a new kind of adrenaline pumping through me. Not the one that makes you want to run back home, triple-bolt the doors and hide under your bed. This adrenaline was getting me revved up to beat the shit out of any man-sized lizard or blood-sucking bat that decided to cross my path. I ripped out branches in front of me and stomped over the frickin’ reeds sprouting out all over the place. The ground got muddier, but I didn’t care. Danny fell behind and yelled out that he’d lost his shoe. I told him to stop bitchin’ and keep the hell up. My sneakers were soaked through, and I was having my own troubles pulling them out of the stinking mud. It was getting looser and deeper, up to my ankles. Then I took a step and splashed down on cool water.

I stepped a little further, and the way ahead cleared up. I could see the full moon low in the sky and a glistening field of marsh weeds. A few more steps in, and there were minnows nibbling at my shins. If you ever go down to Mike’s Pond, you’ll understand. You don’t find Mike’s Pond. Mike’s Pond finds you.

Danny caught up, looking all flipped out. I pointed him around the place, like one of those European explorers they taught us about in social studies class. I was Ponce de Leon stumbling on the Fountain of Youth. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Beyond the reed bed, I could see the water, sparkly in the moonlight. When a breeze came by, it was like the whole place breathed in and out, viny trees swaying around the border, and reeds bowing down and springing back. There was a little island in the middle, no more than twelve feet wide, and I could imagine swimming out there and feeling totally removed from everything in the world. A few yards off, I saw the bank of the forest where we could take it in without standing in water up to our knees. It was on the opposite side of the way we’d come. We trudged toward it and climbed up to higher ground.

I sat down with Danny, and we took off our muddy sneakers. We looked at each other and laughed and gazed out at the pond. We didn’t talk, but I figured Danny was thinking the same thing as me. A whole big world we’d never imagined, practically in our backyards.

Across the pond, I heard a group of teenagers gathering. There was laughter and screeches, and I could see little flashes of orange light from their cigarettes. Someone set off a string of firecrackers. Girls screamed. Boys howled. I studied every sound. I tried to imagine being part of the scene, but every picture in my head had me sitting off by myself, praying like hell that no one would look at me and fall out in hysterics.

Danny was looking over there too, and his eyes were lit up with dreamy expectation. I felt my heart gagging up in my throat worse than when we had first set foot in the place. My failed future was splayed out in front of me sharply. I’d gotten through Little League with snarky observations and an ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude to cover up the fact that I was the worst player on the team. When Danny talked about the possibility of dating girls, I changed the subject, acting like I was above such boring things. But next year was junior high. There’d be junior varsity baseball tryouts and school dances, and I had a good idea that my quick wit and bravado wouldn’t parlay into popularity. I’d listened to my brother talking to his friends about make-out parties and girls that all the guys were hoping to bag. Meanwhile, the only thing that interested me was watching Dave Kimball playing his guitar with his vintage wide-collared shirt unbuttoned all the way down his torso. I wasn’t normal. I wore the camouflage of normalcy but the clothes were getting threadbare, nearly see-through. And the eyes of other kids were sharpening with wisdom gleaned from older brothers, TV shows, and phys ed teachers. They knew the mark of a homo – the timid play in football, the blush and the darting glance when they caught you looking. I didn’t belong at Mike’s Pond just like I didn’t belong anywhere in the world. I felt like bawling, but I kept it together sitting there with Danny. Danny was good for talking about TV shows and sci-fi movies, but he’d think I was a freak if I told him what was going on inside my head.

Danny nudged me and pulled up a handful of swamp grass. Sometimes, sitting in the outfield, waiting for someone to actually hit a ball our way, we’d put blades of grass between our thumbs, hold them up to our mouths and make a sound like a kazoo. We did that for a little while then we followed a trail out to the thruway, hopped the fence and took the long way back home.