The Lure by Helen Laycock

NO SWIMMING. DEEP, COLD WATER.

The three boys cycling along the bank skidded to a grating halt and threw down their bikes in a cloud of gravel.

‘What’s in the bag?’

They crowded liked bluebottles on a carcass, grabbing what they could of what was left of the picnic, flat hands cramming crackers into greedy mouths, grubby fists clutching cheese, biting and discarding tart apples. They passed around the half-bottle of red grape juice, slurping and wiping bleeding mouths with the backs of hands, eyes skimming the abandoned garments, but thoughts doubling back at mischief.

The smallest picked up the woman’s shoes and lobbed them, one at a time, into the water as the others laughed over-loudly, no thoughts beyond the present. He threw the man’s in, leaning back even further for the launch and hoping for heightened applause, but the others weren’t even watching. They had moved on to the next hit.

His brother had picked up the T-shirt, and held it against himself before tossing it at the tallest boy, who tipped his head in approval and put it on over his own top. He pulled up the neck over his mouth for a moment, sniffing the faint scent of cologne, then wiped his hands on the front. A dark mark left an upturned smile in the mulberry fabric.

Between them, they rocked the obscured sign off the tree, bent corners digging into palms, rusty nails rasping against bark, and the big boy frisbeed it into the lake as his audience jeered.

It floated, face down.

The youngest dug out the rescue pole from the ferns, mud caking his nails with dark moons, and jabbed it at his brother before tossing it back to the ground and mounting his bike.

Satisfied, they cycled off noisily, unheard and unseen by Joe and Sal –

already submerged and waterlogged – having witnessed nothing.

*

Three minutes earlier…

NO SWIMMING. DEEP, COLD WATER.

They had picnicked where the bank jutted forward in a flat palm, as though proffering them like a gift to the lake. Birds were scattered like crumbs between little islands tufted with gold thread, and a plate of sky had settled on the surface.

Nature, the incomparable artist.

Joe suddenly leapt to his feet, pulling his T-shirt over his head, almost gagging on his muffled invitation: ‘Come on, Sal!’

As though crossing a synaptic nerve, his exuberance lit a fuse in her; she whooped as she kicked off her shoes, and stood beside him, barefoot, holding his right hand.

Six months in and their future was planned, generations reflecting in infinity mirrors, beginning with the tiny life that fluttered in her barely convex belly. Sal spread her fingers across her abdomen.

They ran together towards the endless sky, for a glorious moment rising like geese taking flight in search of golden light, freefalling unbound, splitting the skin of the lake as they plunged, and disappeared.

The birds erupted in a white explosion and the sky trembled.

Below the burnished surface, the cold spiked to life, punching out their body heat and gripping their limbs in tight, metallic fists as they plummeted, separating in the darkness, each with a lungful of breath.

Even to conjure the notion of swimming now evaded them as they began to drown like frozen scarecrows, stiff-fingered, splay-limbed, wedging in the twisted ribs of abandoned machinery, weeds binding them with the artistry of spiders wrapping flies.

Beneath the beautiful face of the quarry was a malevolent, hungry soul.

*

Evening spilled its silver across the water, the trees bowed their black branches and the flimsy bulrush sentries whispered twilight warnings:

Too deep.

Too cold.

Too dangerous.

Too deep.

Too cold.

Too dangerous.

Too late.

Like a pernicious mother, the quarry was already feeding its embryos, tipping its poison into their open mouths, swilling its rancid milk inside their bleached bodies.

Like a predator, as days turned into weeks and months, it circled them until their scant clothing washed away and their flesh flaked, and their bones eventually tumbled to the gravel.

Like an intestine, it absorbed the couple’s past and future memories, and diluted them so thinly that they became part of its film.

Within days, the boys on bikes would forget this insignificant event of their summer, but others would be lured to the quarry.

It was literally all-consuming.