PHILLIP PSUTKA
Thank you for joining me in this strange small town in northern Ontario. My name is Phillip Psutka. If this is your first time visiting, I’ll be your guide; if you’re a familiar face, it’s good to have you back. The town embraces newcomers and old friends alike, but be warned: it doesn’t easily let you go. And stay close, for you never know what might be waiting for you around the bend.

So dim the lamps, settle in; welcome to Dark River.

“Hsssssssst!” John was awake in an instant. 

It was still dark, almost too dark to distinguish features around him; the planks that made up the walls of his small house, the old iron stove in the corner of the room. But the smells were there: wood, wool, and something else … the iron scent of fear in his nostrils. 

Had he dreamt? Had it been a nightmare? He didn’t think so. The fear was still present, like a dark companion in the room that had been waiting for him; now that he was awake, it pulled him, as if by the arm, out of bed. He rolled over, trying to resist, but the fear lay with him and would not let him return to sleep. There was nothing for it: he arose and dressed. Perhaps the early morning air would help him clear his head.

The warm July breeze dried his face, removing night’s clammy sweat. It felt good and he stood there, breathing it in for a moment. The trees around him loomed like dark thin pale men trying to shield him from the wind. Or from something else. But the breeze beckoned and so he followed. As he did so, the wind picked up as if in response; a tree groaned as if, too, in response. 

John had lived in Dark River all his life. A logger by trade, he also had an artistic side that he shared with few others. He lived alone – an “eligible bachelor” as some in the Township referred to him – but finding another to share his bed with was not high on his list of priorities. He was content to live alone with simple means, surrounded by his landscapes: the ones outside his small house, and the ones he created on canvas adorning the walls of his single room.

Seeing where the wind was taking him, he gathered his canoe stored beside the house, hoisting it onto his shoulders with one fluid motion. His paddle was already by the lake, hidden in some brambles that lined the shore. 

A faint glow reflected off the water: the first signs of dawn; he hadn’t realized how it early it was. The water was like glass and it seemed a shame to disturb it. 

He set the canoe down and stepped to the water’s edge. Small fish wove their way through the shallows, gliding through the darkness, almost indistinguishable. It was still too dark to make out much of anything in the water, except … What he saw sucked the breath from him, as if the wind demanded reciprocity for leading him here; what he saw clamped an icy hand around his heart, stopping it from beating despite the summer heat: what he saw was the reflection of someone else’s face.

It was pale, with a pointy nose, sharp dark eyes, black straight meticulously-parted hair, and skin as white and creamy as liquid ivory, and it stared back at him, taking him in. For a moment that seemed an eternity, the two faces stared at one another, unwavering. John slowly began to shake his head as if to refute the figure away and what he saw frightened him even more: the figure didn’t move with him. It was no trick of the light: it remained, unblinking; taking him in as if to see what he would do next. John found himself leaning in towards it, as if beyond his control. A small smile began to creep up one of its cheeks and it gazed back at him, pulling him in with its bottomless eyes. As much as John tried to fight back, the water was getting closer, and closer, and closer until … 

Its face exploded as a fish snatched a mosquito from the surface and John jumped back. The small ripples resonated out over the lake, expanding as if to spread the specter across the entire body of water. But when John cautiously returned to the water’s edge, the ripples revealed his own reflection, nothing more.

“A trick of the light,” he thought. After all, he wasn’t used to being up this early and, as familiar as this place was, the low light transformed it into another world entirely. A darker one.

He took a deep breath, the warm sweet air filling his lungs and felt better almost immediately. For a brief moment he debated returning to this house and forgetting the early morning paddle entirely, but he had already gone through the trouble of bringing the canoe here. It would be a shame not to use it.

He retrieved his paddle from its hiding place and lifted the canoe up onto his knees. Shuffling to the water’s edge, he noticed that the wind had picked up again, but there was something else, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, something … unusual about it. Nevertheless it felt good and the ripples from the fish’s breakfast beckoned him onto Dark Trout Lake.

He pushed off and paddled slowly and rhythmically, each stroke taking him farther from the shore. A faint glow had appeared on the horizon; dawn was approaching and he was glad of it. The darkness had played enough games with him and the light bleeding over the trees was a welcoming sight.  The sound of the paddle in the water slowed his heartbeat with its soothing song. Shhhhhh … shhhhhh … shhhhhh. His breath returned to normal and he almost, for a moment, forgot about the face.

What was that ahead? It was strange, but he could swear … yes, it was another canoe with a lone paddler. How could he have missed it? It wasn’t that far off. The canoe was a beautiful shade of blue, so it must have blended in with the water, but the figure silhouetted in the glow was unmissable. It wasn’t paddling, but sitting there bent forward and appeared to be writing on a thin block of wood. After his earlier fright, John was glad not to be the only one out and began paddling towards the figure, perhaps to strike up a conversation. It was a small town and the odds were it was someone that he knew.

But no matter how much distance he covered, not matter how hard he paddled towards it, the canoe and the figure didn’t seem to be getting any closer. He looked back at his wake and saw that the shore behind him was a good distance away and fading still, so how could this other solo canoeist be evading him without so much as dipping a paddle into the water? He turned back to face the canoe and nearly capsized in shock.

The dark figure was right there, perhaps only twenty yards away. It was sitting perfectly still, holding what John now saw was a wooden panel and a paint brush. It looking at him. Though John couldn’t see the face, he felt the eyes like hot coals on him, and fear joined him once again. Both of them sat there frozen for what felt like an eternity. And then, the figure stood up in its canoe and stepped out into the water towards John.

It’s the little details in these moments that you don’t forget, the seemingly insignificant pieces of the puzzle that bring everything into sharp focus. Although John’s gaze was locked on the black face moving slowly towards him, there were two other things that burned themselves into his memory. 

John noticed that his left leg was bound by thin line, as if it had been stitched to its ankle to hold the foot on. One thin strand waved aimlessly in the wind from where a secure knot had been tied.

Which only heightened John’s awareness of the second thing that he would remember ‘till his dying day. The wind had picked up just as the strange man began to rise and it was now howling audibly, the trees on the shore whispering dark secrets to one another.

The figure stepped into the water and – slowly, much too slowly -- it began to sink, but as it did so it continued to glide towards John as if the wind was helping to keep it afloat and simultaneously pushing it forwards.

All of John’s faculties screamed at him to get away and it was finally enough to snap him out of his terrified trance. He arms sprang into action as if by themselves and drove his paddle into the water in a mighty reverse stroke, followed by a C-stroke that caused the water around him to churn and bubble. As he glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed the figure still approaching him, the wind picked up even more and all of a sudden he realized what had been off about it. Despite the fact that the lake faced west, which normally brought a steady lap of water against the shore, the wind was now coming from the east, carrying waves away from land and directly towards John. 

No matter how hard he paddled, it seemed like he was getting nowhere against the strong current forcing him back towards the figure, but he didn’t dare stop or turn to see if it was still approaching.

“God help me, move!” he heard himself say and the canoe seemed to respond. He paddled harder and harder as whitecaps appeared and the glow around him brightened, tossing dark shadows of the trees ahead along the water towards him, as if to stretch out a hand and pull him back to safety.

He leaned into his strokes, rotating from the hips with each movement to power his momentum. The wind pushed him back, he regained ground; back and forth, an invisible tug-of-war. All of a sudden he felt hot breath on the back of his neck and he screamed. And then …

He was lying on the shore gasping for air, the canoe beached off to his right. He couldn’t remember making it back in – everything was a blank after the ghostly exhale on his neck. The sun was beginning to peek over the trees, the wind had disappeared completely, and the lake was a glass – not a ripple to be found. 

The dark figure and the canoe had vanished. 

John pulled himself up, slowly regaining his breath and headed for home, leaving his canoe lying by the water like a body. It wasn’t until the following day that he would return to retrieve it.

Thank you for listening thus far. In a moment, I’ll tell you the end of the story, and what John discovered upon returning to his canoe. But first, I’d like to let you know that we have new original spooky stories coming every 2 weeks, so if you want to hear more about this rural town and the strange happenings around it, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your shows. And if you know someone else – say, friends or family – who would like to visit, tell them about Dark River and where they can find it. It’s always welcoming new travelers. But now, let’s rejoin John by the banks of Dark Trout Lake.

It wasn’t until the following day that he would return to retrieve it, until after he’d heard the news of a man who had drowned further south down in Algonquin Park. His blue canoe had been discovered a week before, but his body hadn’t surface until now due to the fact that it had been tied to a heavy rock used to weight it down – tied by the ankle with fishing line. The line had snapped in a strong current caused by unusually fierce winds, they had said. The man was a painter and used small boards to prepare sketches to take back to his studio for completion – they had found one in his vacant canoe: a sketch of a man that they didn’t recognize. Perhaps the killer, they thought. They described what he had looked like and that was when John abruptly turned and left, heading straight for the water’s edge. Fear had joined him once again.

The water was calm, no ghostly figures to be found. With a small exhale of relief, he went to collect his canoe. As he bent over to hoist it up on his legs, his eyes fell upon what was in it and his breath stopped. 

Lying on the stern seat was a small board; on it, a sketch of a face. He recognized it instantly, for it was the face he saw when he had peered into the lake the day before: the face of the dead man, exactly as they had described him. 

This has been a tale from Dark River, with stories and music written and performed by me, Phillip Psutka. Podcast artwork by Chris Psutka. Thank you for stopping by, and see you soon.

Copyright © 2020 Phillip Psutka