Buried

This lake was the sort that you brought to live out their childhoods, because didn’t your father do the same? And his father? It was an old lake, with old people and old stories, new coats of paint flaking off to show the colours beneath. Everyone from the nearby town also had a house on the lake. Folks checked in on each other, welcomed their neighbours, passive-aggressively drove out rowdy newcomers. Signs painted with the family name at the foot of gravel driveways, a thriving general store, community-wide events. But under the glassy waters of the carefree elderly, there are always secrets, drifting and tumbling like sand. Undisturbed, it might lie flat on the bottom, but if you look too deeply, you might find out some things that you find downright distasteful.

Some few miles from my family’s cabin was an old trapper’s hut that every kid had stumbled upon at one time or another, thinking themselves to be prodigious explorers. It was a universally observed pilgrimage, and it was always unbidden. However, it was no tourist attraction: no one ever spent more than five minutes in there before running out. They'd be fleeing the creeping fingers that would begin to tickle the nape of your neck when you had turned your back too long. There was a stainless steel camping cup on a long oakwood table that I’m sure as anything had never been touched, and there was a large brown chest in the corner closest to the door. Nobody had ever looked in the chest—the lock was rusted on. I’ve heard a hundred theories about where the trapper had gone: most of them end with his death in the woods. Why else had he left all his belongings behind? The chair at the oak table was set out at an angle that caused every kid to speculate about the trapper’s rushed departure

“He was kidnapped by lake pirates.”

“His wife found him with his mistress.”

“He got lost in the woods and never found his way out.”

“The IRS was out to get him, like Al Capone.” But everyone agreed that he was likely long dead. After all, there was no way that the enormous, rusting bear trap in the corner of the room—and its owner—had any business in the 20th century. The most provocative clue, however, was the three scoring gashes in the middle of the floor. Those who were observant enough to notice would claim that you’d always feel those spectral fingertips begin to brush your neck the moment you stood on those jagged tears. I had once asked my father what he thought the claw marks were, and he, in his adult reframing of uncomfortable possibilities, had only shrugged and said “probably a stray cat, looking for something to eat.” He had been there when he was a kid, too, and I knew that even he didn’t believe himself. But there was too much distance between him and the event that the excitement of ghost stories had been buried under a stack of bills.

My father thought often about selling the cabin, which—whenever it occurred to me—breathed a big old air pocket into my chest and stuck there like a nostalgic tumour. The aforementioned bills were for the operating costs of the cottage: electrical, maintenance, the unavoidable pressures of perennial renovations. All my father’s siblings were dead, so he was bearing the brunt of the cabin’s cost while we spent most of the year in the city. There was always some form of pressure to sell. But he kept it for us. 

It was not a fancy place. It was a family heirloom, but it was more constant in my life than any house I’d ever lived in. I’m not sure I had ever gotten an answer when I had asked how it had come into our possession—that had passed out of living memory. It had been built by fur traders, perhaps the same sort as the long-dead owner of the inexplicable cabin. However, unlike that cabin, and like every other, almost nothing past the original frame had remained. A long-kept cabin is like the human body, replacing cells constantly by way of weekend maintenance trips until everything is completely new, while keeping the same appearance—just with better plumbing. That was the reality of being surrounded by nosy old folks who had the time and the money from their landscaping empires to maintain the relentless beautification of places that were only seasonally tenable for four months out of the year. This just served to push my father closer to selling, but he knew how attached we were to the place, and maybe he was holding out for the day when me and my sisters could do what he couldn’t.

My uncle Randy had died out in these woods, six years ago. In classic murder mystery fashion, the only thing left from him had been an assortment of torn clothes leading into the woods. At a certain point, the trail stopped. No one ever found his red wool sweater, the only piece of clothing he had worn that wasn’t strewn on the ground. He didn’t really get along with the rest of the family, but everyone was devastated. This was the first time my family considered selling the cabin. However, the outsize history of the place seemed to supersede the trauma of losing a brother and a son, and the question was put to bed for the time being. The cabin was, in some sense, a part of the family—would you jettison a second family member so soon after losing the first? After tormented years, the family began to move past the event, and began, in top form, to refer to Randy’s passing by affectionately saying that he was “out on the hunt,” like the storied trapper. His death had taught us the value of life, and that things like the cabin were not definable by one tragic event. It seemed that my father would hold out, and that we would be able to keep the cabin until all of us could equally bear the financial burden. That is, until four summers ago.

I was fifteen. One morning—crisp, blue, mist-rolling-off-the-lake idyll—only four people sat at the kitchen table. My father, my mother, and my two sisters, Jackie and Blaire. The cozy silence enjoyed by folks who couldn’t function properly before coffee was only punctuated by the scraping sound of toast being consumed

“Where’s Merv?” My third sister was, criminally, named Minerva. We called her Merv because, to us, it conjured up the ghost of the crotchety old Hollywood producer inhabiting her body.

“Uh, I don’t know,” said my dad, straightening and wiping crumbs and freshly-licked fingers off on his painting jeans. “Maybe she’s still asleep?”

“She’s on a run,” said Jackie, the oldest, not looking up from a book about Scotland.

“Shouldn’t she be back by now?” asked my mother, clearing the dishes before I had sat down, prompting me to get back up and fix a bowl of cereal.

“I guess,” said Blaire, the youngest, not looking up from a book about mythology. Very bookish family, ours, and yet no practical knowledge to show for it. Ergo, my father would spend much of our time at the cabin trying hopelessly to educate us in carpentry, boat maintenance, survival skills, etc. The only thing that was ever impressed upon me was that if I were lost in the woods surrounding the cabin, I would regret not listening to the lesson I was receiving at that very moment. Not enough, however, to inspire me retroactively to pay more attention. 

“Would someone go out and look for her?” my father asked, hope in his eyes that I’d utilize what little I had inherited from him and take some initiative. I felt a little pinch of guilt in my sternum. Obviously it would be easier not to go, but not easier than disappointing this (as I saw more and more) very tired old man. I tipped my bowl back and poured all the milk down my throat, then scooped up the rest of the sodden cornflakes with a spoon and stuffed my cheeks. 

My father sighed. “Should I go?” he asked. I shook my head. Mouth full, I pointed at myself and grunted, tossing my head at the door. He rolled his eyes. “Alright, just come back to get us if you don’t find her soon.” I was stung somewhat, but I marched to the door, struggled on one leg to get my sneakers on, and made my way out. 

I knew that Merv always liked to end her run at the cliffs, so she could look out on the lake and pretend that she didn’t have a family. So I went there first. The cliffs were accessible from the end of the long gravel road, at the end of which was a tumble of lichen-coloured rocks and thickening trees. It was a well-worn path, initials carved into trees marking the long-dead love of long-dead lovers, and young trees that had taken over old ones that had blown over in storms.

I understood my family’s worries. After uncle Randy’s death, everyone held each other tightly together. We developed birdcalls for hikes, and wore life jackets religiously. It was just common sense—the amount of missing people around the lake was an curiously bloated statistic. And we had a bear problem. Mostly because they kept figuring out ways to get into the trash, but no one was too proud to take any chances on how similar their body was to a dumpster. 

Clambering over slippery mosses on the bigger rocks that led up to the crest of the hill, I struck through a copse of birch trees, and came to the clearing on the cliff. It offered quite a panorama of the lake—if you were tuned out enough to the industrial minutiae of cottage country, you could find peace in the swishing of water on the muddy grass banks and the hum of early-morning boat engines. I took it in for a moment. Pretended I was there of my own volition, without the hovering presence of a family holed up in a cabin two miles behind me—that I was exploring the world and seeing the picturesque in order to appreciate the joys of life. Like Victor Frankenstein on that mountain. But looking around, I saw that Merv was obviously no longer there. There were footprints in the mud, human and otherwise. I picked out my father’s boots—probably from the walk he had taken yesterday to cool his head after I had professed not to care about hockey. There were some fox prints too—we had a book of animal tracks on our coffee table—and there, leading away from the cliff, were Merv’s Converses. The prints near the edge were deeper. She had been staring out across the water for a while: she was clearly more dissatisfied than usual.

And there, right next to her footprints, just as fresh, were a set of bear tracks.

I crept to the edge of the cliff, looked down into the underbrush. No body. I cartoonishly wiped worried sweat from my forehead, disconfirming a suspicion I didn’t (if only for the ensuing existential terror’s sake) actually hold. Besides, her prints were leading away from the edge. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking. But I followed her tracks, off to the left, away from the path back to the main road. They went down to a sloping, familiar trail that led down the side of the cliff and into the thick of the brush. Right towards the trapper’s cabin. 

Clearly, she was dissatisfied with sanity as well. I thought about going back for my father, but I had only been gone for ten minutes, not the certifiably masculine half hour that one might expect to be attempted for a missing sister. So I slid down the muddying trail slope, almost careening into the foliage. I ventured through the thickening brush, receiving manly nicks and gashes on my knees and forearms. As I went, pinpricks of sweat started to pop up on my back, itching like there were eyes boring into my skin. 

Her footprints took the trail that diverged away from the trapper’s cabin, to my relief, and turned from the coast to go further inland. I went on a while, seized with occasional shivers that slid up my spine like a wet cloth. Of course, to add to my mounting terror, the thick patch of trees I approached was the spot that they found my dead uncle’s ravaged clothing. I disliked myself for using the word “ravaged” at a time like this. The tips and buds of twigs along the narrow path progressively began to blossom a violent red. I wondered at the season of the flowers, but when I got a better look, I saw that the tree branches, the further I went, were increasingly slicked with blood. The world tilted all the way to the left, and I found my self hunched in a family of shrubs. I was, understandably, vomiting. 

I staggered back to my feet. The blood’s multi-layered canvas of branches, leaves, and grass culminated in a large bush smeared red as though a third grader had taken slathered himself up and hugged it. The red was dotted with fur, deep black and lively, as though it had been recently plucked. 

At this point, my sister was obviously dead. Either she had been hounded by a bear all the way down the trail, or she had been dragged over to this bush to finish the job. I turned, because clearly this was getting out of hand pretty quickly, and my father wouldn’t roll his eyes at me for choosing not to die. Right? I started trying to retrace my steps, but found that I had lost sight of the path. I tried to find the late Merv’s footprints, but now the mud trail was all squished up with animal tracks. I couldn’t help but notice that some of the prints had refused, despite all my mental requests, to stop being bear tracks. I began to retrace the tracks back to the water, which, unnervingly, I could no longer hear. What I could hear, however, was a vague snuffling sound directly behind me. I thought about running and not looking back. However, my biggest flaw has always been to evaluate the statistical likelihood of death with all the available information. So I turned.

A mass of black and red greeted me, rising endlessly like a dark wave—and I looked up at it for ages. When the raw fear had cleared from my eyes, I began to register the features of the mass, which was, inevitably, a bear. A bear face, obviously. Obviously, bear claws. Obviously, adorable little round ears. Not-so-obviously, ragged red cloth wrapped around its body, held together by a beleaguered few stitches. The cloth was wool, and had the word “Dartmouth” emblazoned across the front. 

I whispered under my breath, “Oh, come on…” as I looked up at my uncle Randy. Like most adults, and unlike most kids, I was quick to employ Occam’s Razor and assumed the fantastical last—it was obviously much more likely that a bear had killed Randy and clumsily assumed his identity, but I couldn’t shake my first instinct. The good-natured sparkle in his eye did the absolute minimum to mitigate his immediate ferocity, but it was clearly Randy. He came down from his hind legs, as lightly as a bear can, and wrapped me in a hug that put human embraces to shame. So I was out of immediate danger, unless I was killed by the force of his affection, which could not be ruled out.

He sniffed around at my feet, and he looked me up and down exaggeratedly, as if to illustrate how much taller I had gotten. I nodded, somewhat terrified, but also hoping he wouldn’t figure out a way to ask me about girls. He took my sleeve in between his teeth, and turned his massive body all the way around on the narrow path, jostling me so that I almost fell into the undergrowth. He was clearly too big for the trail, and he inevitably brushed up against the blood-soaked bush. He led me further down the trail for a little while—until we took a right I had never seen before, and came to a clearing. A clearing that was, laughably, brimming with other clothed bears. And, at the back, a smaller bear, wearing a blue sweater and blown-out Converses.

Her clothes were streaked with blood from a gash in her side that seemed to have been patched up somehow. All around her were other bears, dressed, miraculously, like all the people that had gone missing over the years. Like Jake McTavish, whose wife had been having an affair. Like Darla Duffy, whose kids had stopped calling. Like every description from every missing poster. Merv loped over, and gave me a bear hug, much like the one I had gotten from Uncle Randy. She eyed me, the way an older sister does when she doesn’t know the full extent of your discretion. I looked around, and I suppose I understood the appeal of running away to join a bear colony—but I can’t say I understood all the steps and motivations. I shrugged. But I knew that it was unlikely that we’d have a long conversation about it. So, once I had hugged her goodbye, and turned to let Uncle Randy lead me back to the cliffs, all I could do was think about what I would tell my father.