Simon Says and Simon Sees

We hope you all enjoy our season finale Thanksgiving Spooktacular!!! We're thankful to all of our listeners and fans, but most of all to all of our friends who listen out of obligation!!!

Transcript

Your mother always told you that a proper Thanksgiving Dinner started three days before. That’s when you needed to do all your shopping so the veggies would still be fresh, but your turkey would have time to thaw if you got a frozen one. Then the night before you had to do all the hard work. You trimmed the green beans, prepped the pies, and did all the chopping so everything would be ready the next day. This made it look effortless, everything already in its place. You found the preparation more soothing than the actual cooking sometimes; no kids running around, no aunts and uncles hovering, telling you what to do. Just you, laying the foundation for the next day and organizing your fridge. And the organization was important, you had to leave enough room for the turkey to brine. You always saved that for last so you could shower right after and get the weird raw turkey smell off your hands properly. You were tired but content when you started prepping the turkey. When you peel back the neck flaps you find the neck first and set it aside for stock. Next is the organ bag, which you tossed. You know that’s supposed to be good for stock too but it grosses you out. You go back in to find any last chunks of ice, and your hand scrapes something solid. It feels like metal, but it’s stuck into the flesh between the turkey's ribs. You pull harder and when you finally get your prize free you recognize it right away, it’s the class ring you lost two years ago. You go back in for more and find your old wallet, complete with all the cards that you had to replace. Next up is your garage door opener, then your favorite pen. It’s only when you pull out the bloodstained blouse that you start to worry. Then it’s the note that says “I know what you did” that really spoils your mood. But what really ruins your night is when you reach back in, at the very back of the turkey hole, and find; The Podcast Inside Your House. 

Part 1

The drive back to Coral Lake was a journey back in time. I made the trip every Thanksgiving with the city that I now call home already firmly in the clutches of winter. As I got farther south and closer to my old home, I watched the snow vanish and I watched the leaves climb back on the trees. Bare icy branches giving way to the last surviving patches of fall in full bloom. 

The drive took me through a few cities and time seemed to move in peaks and valleys as I got closer to and then left each one. The city that I now call home has new apartments, new cars, and new faces almost every month. The other cities that I passed through followed suit, firmly in the present. But the suburbs moved slower, with older cars, older trees, and houses with more personality, that clung to the past in bits. Driving through the country I saw cars from decades prior and lawns decorated with hand-me-down toys that could have been older than I was. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule of course, but as the sights traveled back in time, so did my thoughts. 

I’d mostly managed to leave Coral Lake behind, but it was the kind of place that you could never fully escape. It stuck to you like the oily sludge you could never fully rinse off if you decided to take a dip in the lake that the town was named for. Coral Lake was the kind of place where every horror movie south of the Mason-Dixon line took place. Coral Lake was west of Appalachia, but without the tourist money, and smack dab in the heart of opioid America. Hell, even the name was ripe for some schlocky B-movie because the lake had gotten its name from sulfur and iron deposits that had supposedly turned the lake a red-orange coral color back in the day. I’d heard conflicting reports about that from the generation before us. Some said that it reminded them of a lake perpetually at sunset. Others said that it looked like a lake of blood. The deposits had been too diluted when I’d grown up to ever see the coral color, but I could picture it vividly. Dotting the shores of the lake were rusted-out metal shacks and houses with broken windows and falling-off walls, houses you wished were abandoned but weren’t. Those houses would look perfectly natural on the shores of a blood-red lake. 

Though I’d moved to the city and become as far removed as I could, Coral Lake never really left me alone. I tried to compartmentalize all of my deep-rooted anger and sadness, and let it all out on my yearly pilgrimage. This helped me to keep Coral Lake from my thoughts during the rest of the year. As I watched the country pass by outside I would go through my greatest hits. They stung a bit less every year, but I suspected they’d never completely stop hurting. 

I reflected on my father’s hunting accident when I was nine, shot in the chest by a friend who was almost as drunk as he was. I had my own first drink at his funeral. Next up was my mother's heroin addiction which only got worse up until she overdosed on my twentieth birthday, but by then we hadn’t spoken in years so it didn’t really bother me. And of course, at the center of it all, there was my friend Simon, the memories of what happened to him were perhaps the most painful of all, but don’t worry, we’ll get to that later. 

I didn’t need any coffee or tea to keep me awake on the drive, I ran on pure adrenaline as I let the past wash over me. 

There were good memories too though, and present in almost all of them was my best friend Keiran, the only person I’d ever considered family. 

Somewhere off mile marker seventy-three, there was the same rusty car that hadn’t moved in all the years I’d been away. I looked for it every year, just to see if they’d ever haul it away; they still hadn’t. As I passed the Coral Lake sign, I felt better. I’d let the bad memories flow through me as they needed to, and I focused on seeing Keiran. On the short drive from the town sign to his house I was actually smiling. When I pulled into the driveway Keiran’s daughter, Lisa, scrambled out of the way, then started jumping up and down when she recognized me. The chalk mural that I’d ruined was immediately forgotten and she leaped into my arms. At six years old she only had a few years left before that would do some serious damage to my back. 

“Travis is here!” Lisa yelled. Keiran opened the door and his youngest, Connor, came running out, bolting over to clutch my leg. Connor was just barely past the toddler phase and probably didn’t remember me, but he wanted in on the excitement. Kerian came over and pulled Connor off my leg so I could set down Lisa. 

Keiran’s wife Debbie yelled out a greeting from the open kitchen window. She sounded distracted, probably in the middle of some delicate culinary operation, one which I was not about to disturb. 

Keiran walked over to me. His sandy hair was in dire need of a haircut and he was shirtless and sweaty. I often thought that Keiran looked like some Hollywood celebrity playing a homeless man in a movie. He was handsome but always under a layer of engine oil or grime from some project, and he always wore his clothes until they fell off. Keiran wrapped me up in a sweaty hug and then lifted me off the ground. Connar started yelling, feeling left out, and Keiran let me go to scoop him up. 

“Come on in,” he said. “Just stay out of the kitchen, Debbie’s on the warpath.”

We spent the next several hours catching up, with Debbie yelling every once in a while about needing extra hands to stir or chop something before banishing us from the kitchen again. Lisa was busy with a school project, putting together some diorama with the same obsessive perfection that her mother was using to craft Thanksgiving dinner. Connor wandered between all of us. He told me those rambling incoherent little kid stories that didn’t make much sense, and I nodded along, agreeing with everything he said, as one does. 

I could tell Keiran had something on his mind as we talked. I’d ask a simple question about what he’d been up to and he’d only half explain, sometimes stopping himself in the middle of a thought. Finally, I asked him what was wrong and he told me “Let’s just enjoy the holiday, I’ll tell you later.” 

And enjoy the holiday we did. With no other family to speak of, the holidays I spent borrowing Keiran’s were really the only ones where I felt like I got the true experience. I always tried to soak it in. The kids were rowdy, the food was good, and their house was warm, just like it always was. 

Thanksgiving was important to us. It was how we’d met. Keiran and I had been in a kindergarten class of just thirteen, and I’d been too shy to really talk to anyone. The teacher had gone around and made us all talk about what we’d done for Thanksgiving, and I had to tell her I didn’t know what that was. Free-range parenting was an understatement to the way I’d been raised, even before my father died. Keiran dragged me to his house that day for leftovers, and I remember that for the first time in my life, I realized that other kids liked being home. That they had things there to look forward to. From then on Keiran always made sure I could come to his house for anything I needed. 

I found my thoughts drifting back to the past and I stopped myself, I wasn’t there anymore. I tried to spend as little time there as I could.  

It was after the kids had gone to bed that Keiran and I finally talked about what had been bothering him. We built a bonfire in the backyard. It was unseasonably warm and hot enough that we really didn’t need it, but tradition demanded it. Over roasted marshmallows and a few beers, Keiran told me a strange story. 

“I don’t really know where to start. But you remember Sally Allen? Sharp as a tack, and she still is. I know you judge her for not leaving - don’t pretend you don’t. But anyway, Sally, the most rational person I know, swears up and down that when she was sunning on Coral Beach, she saw a shark swimming through the lake.” 

“Go on,” I said, raising an eyebrow. I had no idea where this was headed, but I thought maybe he was messing with me. 

“And just look at how hot it is today, the temperature hasn’t dipped below 80, not once this fall. And I know you think that everyone who stayed here is just some dumb redneck, but we have scientists and shit here Travis, it’s not like when we grew up. This is a proper place now, a place I’d want to raise my kids.” Keiran paused “I’m sorry, I just - I don’t know how to get you to believe me about what’s going on. Just listen okay?”

“I’m listening Keiran. Whatever you have to say.”

“There’s something weird going on here. The frogs are all crawling out of the water and dying, and Coral Lake has been full of salt for some reason, damn near as salty as the ocean. And you know how it used to be orange from the sulfur or whatever, but when we were growing up it was just brown from the pollution? Well it’s not orange or brown anymore, it’s crystal clear. People have been swimming in it again, and I worry that that’s dangerous.”

“I hate to spring this on you, but I need your help. Paul is in town too for Thanksgiving, and he does all that ecology, forestry whatever stuff. Hell, I can never remember what his job is. But I want to figure out what’s going on with the Lake, cause it’s messing up the whole town. And I figured maybe together we could do our own little expedition. Paul says if he can find something concrete he can have a whole team of scientists out here to try and help fix it up.”

The sun was nearly set now, and cold or not I was grateful for the fire. Campfire stories had always been my weakness. I didn’t believe in anything supernatural, I prided myself on being rational. That was, unless I was out in the woods at night, then I’d believe in anything until I got back inside. And maybe that’s why Keiran insisted on telling me outside. He wanted me to believe him just a bit, as much as I could.

“But more than that” He continued “I want to get to the bottom of this, for me. I want to know that there’s a rational explanation for what’s going on. I want to know that it’s just algae or the lake connecting with a salt mine or something normal. Something that makes sense. Because you know what this all reminds me of?”

Don’t say it. I thought. I’m thinking it too, but don’t say it.

“All this weird shit. You know the kids found a fucking coconut washed up on the beach? The shark? The water, it looks like Florida or something. It’s all making me think of Simon, and I don’t even know how that would work, what that would mean. But Hell, It all makes me feel like he’s coming back from the dead to haunt us, to haunt the whole town. And I just need to know that’s not what’s happening okay?”

We didn’t discuss our old friend Simon often, we tried not to, but I’d never been as sure as Keiran was that he was actually dead. But it wasn’t the time to have that argument again. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you need, I’m in. Let’s do this.” 

That night I was tired enough from the drive that I slept deeply, but I had strange dreams. I dreamt of palm trees sprouting on the rocky shores of Coral Lake. I dreamt of dolphins and bright fish playing in the murky waters. And I dreamt of the lake filling with blood, turning from brown to its original orange all the way to a deep crimson as the blood overtook the water, making the lake as salty as the ocean. 

Part 2

The next day we wasted no time. Keiran and Paul had already planned everything out, I was just along for the ride. I hadn’t seen Paul in three years, but when we greeted each other on the shores of Coral Lake, all he asked me was “Are you ready?”

I thought the boat Paul had brought was a bit overkill, but I guess it had to be that fancy for everything we were going to do. It had a windshield and a small roof that covered a radio and some other equipment. With the fuel tank it had we could have circled the lake a dozen times that day. Coral Lake wasn’t big, but it wound through the woods, with lots of starts and stops and inlets. It used to be smaller, back when the town was founded, but they’d damned up the river that fed it and doubled it in size. That had destroyed the original beach and diluted the sulfur and iron enough to get rid of the orange water. 

Today the lake was neither sunset orange, blood red, or the toxic greyish brown I remembered it as. It was a vibrant blue and clear several feet down. I much preferred the sickly gray I knew because that at least had made the lake's intentions known. This blue, despite the added clarity, felt far more sinister, like it was pretending to be something it wasn’t. 

Paul showed Keiran and I how to operate the boat. We’d both had a bit of experience with smaller vessels, but Keiran much more than I. Given how expensive this boat looked I was more than happy to let him take the wheel. 

I didn’t like being out on the water with Keiran and Paul. It reminded me too much of our youth, and days spent fishing, playing on the beach, or just wandering in the woods by the lake. Of course, it hadn’t been Paul with us then, it had been Simon. Simon who we’d essentially replaced with Paul as our third amigo, Simon who we’d abandoned. Simon who was probably dead, but I didn’t want to think about that. 

Just like we’d replaced Simon with a better, less troubled model of a friend, the lake had replaced its old inhabitants. The rusted metal shacks and decayed mobile homes that used to dot the shoreline were gone, replaced with cabins and cute little houses. As we raced along the water I looked hard for any traces of the way it used to be. I watched for rotted docks or grimy Confederate flags, but there was nothing. If I hadn't grown up here, and known how it used to look, I might have mistaken it for a nice place. 

We drove out to the southern middle of the lake, to about where the borders of the original lake had been. That was supposed to be the deepest part. Paul double-checked all his equipment. He had on a bright orange wetsuit, and I thought for a second that had he made this dive 60-odd years ago, he would have blended right into the lake. He had two tanks, and a bunch of small, expensive-looking accessories and gadgets. It all looked very complicated and easy to mess up, but Paul seemed sure of himself. 

It was only when he was already climbing down the ladder that I realized we hadn’t spoken about anything other than the lake and the boat. I didn’t even know what his job was right now, or if he was seeing anyone. Watching him climb towards the water I was worried for him. I had the sudden thought that if anything happened to him down there, that I’d been a shitty friend. I vowed to be better when he came back up not if. He was going to be fine. 

Paul fell beneath the waves, and Keiran and I took our positions at the helm. Paul had rigged up a radio and some kind of underwater go-pro type camera to give us audio and visual while he was down there. Apparently the lake was shallow enough that Paul thought the video should be able to get through the whole time as a live feed. But he emphasized that he wasn’t sure, and that made me nervous. It felt like the kind of thing you shouldn’t say aloud because it would manifest a malfunction. 

I don’t know if I even believed that there was anything strange happening with Coral Lake, but there were enough uncertainties that my heart was racing a mile a minute. I started planning for the worst-case scenario because that’s just how I am. Anytime something maybe could go wrong, I had to prepare for it to go wrong as if it were a certainty. That way it was easier when it did. I started planning Paul’s funeral then in my head. Keiran tried to make small talk with me and shoot the shit as Paul began his initial descent but I wasn’t in the mood. I was too busy planning how I was going to explain to Paul’s family that we’d gotten him killed.  

“The visibility is insane down here guys. It’s like the ocean.” Paul's voice came through surprisingly clear on the radio. The video feed was alright too, but for us, it was just a whole lot of blue. 

The blue went from the color of the sky to a dark navy within minutes as Paul descended. “The lake is only about 50 feet deep. Well if the old data is accurate anyway, and who knows when that’s from. But it still might get pretty dark on the feed so I’m gonna turn on the lights now.” The lake was so clear though that there was still plenty of sunlight coming in from above.

The first sign that something was wrong was a wide blue and yellow fish that darted in front of Paul. It moved too fast for us to realize it didn’t belong though. Next was a shimmery aqua and purple fish that, based on colors alone, could have been a pumpkin fish. But it was shaped all wrong. Then Paul broke through what must have been a pocket of silt in the water, and things were crystal clear once again. The sight was beautiful, but the implications were strange enough to set all of our hearts racing. Paul let out a “what the fuck,” over the radio. Not a question, but a statement, the only way to describe what we were all seeing. 

At the bottom of the lake in front of him, there was a coral reef.  

“You guys are seeing this too right? Am I going crazy?” 

Keiran radioed back “We’re seeing it too Paul.” I was confused, scared, awestruck. Keiran was not. He was focused. “You need to get out of there. Right now.” His voice was deadly serious.

“Keiran I know you have your theories about this, but I have to check this out. I’ll be careful, I promise.” 

“Paul. Get the fuck out. NOW.” Keiran wasn’t yelling, not quite, but he was close. In all the decades I’d known him I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I’d heard him yell.

“I’m sorry bud, but I need to see this. This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. I’ll be careful, but you’re not going to talk me out of this.” 

I was full of dread at whatever was happening, and I was trying to piece together what was going on. Some kind of marvel of nature was the only rational explanation I figured. Maybe this reef had always been here, some strange phenomenon that dated back to the founding of the city, maybe it was the real reason they’d named it Coral Lake. I pictured settlers and explorers free-diving down and being awestruck. 

But when I thought about that explanation for more than a few minutes, it didn’t make any sense at all. 

As Paul swam closer we got a better look at what was in front of him. It was just like a nature documentary. Schools of brightly colored fish swam at different speeds, some darting around, others floating leisurely, relaxing in their home. I spotted the silhouette of a turtle in the distance, and further out, what looked to be a shark. 

“This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Paul marveled “How did it get here?” All traces of fear were gone from his voice. I was somewhere between Keiran and Paul, afraid but cautiously awed.

The irrational explanation I guess was what Keiran had said; that we were being haunted. I guess that meant that Simon was dead. I’d always hoped he’d run away, started a new life somewhere and gotten out of this place. The idea that he couldn’t escape, even in death made me incredibly sad. 

Onscreen we watched Paul get closer and closer to the reef. Keiran was furious. I didn’t know what to be. It felt like a wonderful but strange dream. 

I thought, briefly, that maybe the explanation didn’t have to be bad. Maybe it was Simon’s ghost, but he didn’t want to haunt us. Maybe he just wanted to bring us what he’d so desperately wanted; an escape from this wretched place. 

Paul was close enough to examine the individual coral now. I knew some of the basic ones from various vacations. There was brain coral, though these looked grey rather than green in the lakewater. There was the yellow-ivory staghorn coral. This variety looked less bumpy and more curved than the kind I’d seen before, sort of smooth and angular. There were flowing red sea fans, that looked like tiny flat red trees without their leaves. There was mushroom coral, which looked like tiny grooved mouths glued to the rocks. The softer coral, the anemones and the bubble coral and the wispy leafy ones I didn’t have names for all had little fish darting between them. It was beautiful. 

Keiran took charge of the radio once again. “Paul, listen to me. You’ve got enough video footage to get a bunch of scientists or whatever out here. Please come back up. I have a bad feeling about this.” 

When Paul’s voice came through, it was clearer and more cautious, like he’d snapped out of the trance he was in. “Yeah, okay, you’re right, I’m coming back up. I’m just gonna grab a quick sample.” 

I thought of Persephone and the pomegranate. I thought of Reddit threads about alternate dimensions. I thought of legends and stories on the Fey, and what not to do when you’d slipped into their realm. But most of all I thought of every horror movie I’d ever seen. When you journey into something you don’t understand, you don’t try to take it back with you. 

“Paul just get the fuck back here!” Keiran said it before I could but we were too late. Paul had a test tube and he was reaching for one of the delicate pink fan corals. 

My palms were sweating. In my head, I went back to planning Paul’s funeral, to hauling his bloated corpse out of the lake, and I worked myself up into such a state that when all hell broke loose I was ready. I suppose that’s why I do that. 

Paul ripped off a small piece, but it looked like it took more effort than he thought it would, and the branches of the fan coral sort of snapped back like a rubber band. Something red seeped from the wound, quickly dissolving in the water. 

We could only see a small section of the reef, and the camera quality wasn’t great, but the little square we could see transformed rapidly. The other fan corals, all red, pink, and gray, started spasming. The bit we could see of a brain coral went from gray to purple and started pulsing. The thick ridges of lettuce coral changed from a lovely golden hue to the color of flesh, and they wilted in the current. Paul backed away, giving us a larger view, and was now fully out of his trance. He said simply “Holy shit” as the reef started moving closer to him. 

We watched the thick white branches of staghorn snap and twist closer to Paul, like a Venus flytrap or a sundew reacting to a fly’s touch. I realized then what the unnaturally smooth texture of the staghorns reminded me of; bone. The rocks under the coral shifted and a mass of the reef itself sloughed off into the water. It reminded me of an octopus, jumping out to ambush its prey, but this figure didn’t change out of its tropical camouflage. It was like the reef was all one entity and part of it had just broken off. The worst part though was that even through the water, we could hear a low tortured moan escape from the creature. Then the coral on the mass turned from blue and pink and green to red and white and gray, denaturing into something else. It solidified itself into a vaguely humanoid shape, and then it started swimming.

Paul turned around then, and we saw only blue and heard only his breathing. I thought for sure he was dead. Even when the blue lightened to the color of the sky, even when we saw him surface nearby, I waited for bloody coral fingers to rip him from our grasp. Even when we hauled him up the ladder, even as we sped for shore, I was certain that we were all dead. Only when we were back in the car did I start to think that maybe we would be okay. 

I didn’t get out of fight or flight mode in the shower, or as we forced ourselves to eat something. I had to be ready, for whatever was coming. 

It was only after we’d all sat down, and Paul backed up the footage that we decided to talk about what had happened. 

We sat around Paul’s hotel room, him and Keiran on the bed, and me on the floor. And in that warm beige room, we told Paul the story of our friend Simon, the friend that he’d replaced. The friend that Keiran and I were worried might be the cause of whatever awful curse had taken over the town. 

Part 3

The name Coral Lake did not evoke sulfur deposits and childhood illiteracy. It evoked something tranquil and maybe a bit exotic. It was a name that did not match the place that had grown up around it, and no one mourned this more than our friend Simon. We’d met Simon when his family moved to town in second grade. That meant I’d had Keiran all to myself for two years by the time Simon came into our lives. This made me possessive of him, worried that this new friend might try and take him from me.

But as the weeks turned to months turned to years, I let Simon into my life more and more. We learned about Simon in a non-linear way, the way you learn to know and love someone that you grew up with. We would learn something upsetting, witness something disturbing, and only fully understand it years later. We all shared our deepest secrets as casually as our favorite colors, there were no barriers at that age. You’d know someone’s best and worst memories, their hopes and dreams for the future before you even knew their middle name.  

The best way to sum up my friendship with Simon, in the most honest, selfish, harsh way is that he made me feel better about myself. While my parents were either dead or largely indifferent they left me alone during their own short lives. I raised myself, and while I wouldn’t say I did a good job, I did okay enough that I’ve got a good life now. Simon’s parents were both alive and both destructive to him in their own ways.  

There’s that old saying that “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” This is not what happened with Simon, it's important that I remind myself of that, that we tried everything we could. Well, everything we thought to try as kids anyway. Everything that wouldn’t ruin our own lives. So you know what, we tried everything that was convenient I guess, but fuck, we tried hard. 

Keiran’s parents tried their best too to help Simon. They called all of the people you’re supposed to call, I know at least one teacher did too but that only helps in the movies. I remember trying to make that call once myself when I was older, to try and get Simon away from his family, and you know what they told me? That unless a parent ends up in jail, or the child ends up in the hospital, there’s nothing they can do. Do you know how much damage you can do to someone before they end up in the hospital? I was lucky enough never to find out, but Simon did. 

After a certain point Keiran’s parents realized that short of kidnapping or murder, and ruining their own lives in the process, there was nothing they could do. They gave up because they had to. That left Keiran and me to do all we could, which was to be the best friends to Simon that we could be. Simon couldn’t come over, but we could go hang out with him elsewhere. We didn’t go to his house, of course, but the woods and Coral Lake became our oasis. 

When I think of the good memories of Simon, I think of summers on the shore of Coral Lake. We didn’t swim in it, nobody did back then. But the beach, rocky as it was, was warm. Even if you couldn't dip your toes in, hearing the water and watching the waves was escape enough. 

Sometimes we’d walk the perimeter, following inlets and catching minnows and crawfish. Sometimes we’d lay around in the sun and do nothing at all. Sometimes we’d follow the creek for hours. And sometimes we’d lay on the beach and talk about what we’d do when we got out of this place. On days when it was too hot to explore, that was our favorite pastime. We turned it into a game as if we could manifest the future. It was Simon Says or Keiran Says or Travis Says depending on who was talking. One of us would come in with our plan for the future, and the others would quiz us on the details, throwing up roadblocks and silly hypotheticals. 

I didn’t play as often as them. I’d decided at age eleven that I wanted to be “one of those fancy Wall Street guys” and I’d stuck with it, in a way. But they’d occasionally quiz me about the perils of living in New York. We’d sit on the beach and they’d ask me to draw the fancy loft I would have in the sand, or describe all of the different extravagant rooms that would be in it. Then they’d interject with some nonsense. They'd tell me my house fell into a sinkhole and the subway goes through my living room now, what do I do? Or they’d say Spiderman broke my window again, what do I do? And I’d respond with “Well, I say..” and I’d make Spiderman apologize, or I’d become king of the mole people, embracing my new subterranean home. And for just a little while it felt like we were off in the city, somewhere far away from here. 

Keiran always had a different future planned when we were playing Kerian Says. We’d grill him on the perils of space travel, or sailing the ocean, or touring as a famous rock star. I don’t think he really wanted to do any of those things, but we all had the most fun when he was playing. 

Simon stayed more grounded but not boring like me. He wanted to be an explorer of some kind. He was going to go and map the jungles of South America, or he was going to pilot a submarine and look for mermaids. His ambitions became less fantastical as we grew up though, and he settled firmly on marine biology. He was going to go somewhere tropical, somewhere that was the opposite of here. With real sandy beaches and no winter. Somewhere he could actually swim in the water. We’d quiz him on what he’d do if a giant squid tried to fight him, or how he’d fend off a shark attack, and as the years wore on his answers became less silly. “You can’t even dive deep enough to run into a giant squid” or “Sharks don’t even like people, we’re too bony.” He’d tell us animal facts that we didn’t always care about, but we’d listen. And all of us would pretend, at least for a bit that we were sitting on a soft sandy beach somewhere where the water wouldn’t make you sick. We’d pretend for just a little while that we’d gotten out. 

There had only been a brief overlap between Simon and Paul in our lives. Paul moved to Coral Lake in the summer of junior year. That was when I got my first job too, and I could afford to chip in enough that I moved into Keiran’s house full time. Not that his folks wouldn't have let me sooner, but I was old enough to see that they were struggling and I’d wanted to wait until I could make sure that I wouldn't make it worse.  

We always saw Simon less during the school year. He wasn’t supposed to be at Keiran’s house, and his parents would even sometimes drive past Keiran’s place just to make sure Simon’s bike wasn’t in the driveway. Plus we were just busier, and when it got too cold to want to meet up in the woods, we didn’t see him as much. We would always make time on the weekends though. At least we did before we met Paul. Having a shiny new friend disrupted that. Paul could come over for sleepovers. He could go on weekend camping trips. We could see him after school if we wanted and we didn’t have to worry about his dad following us into the woods and dragging him back home. It was just easier to be his friend than it was to be Simon’s. We didn’t mean to forget about Simon, but by the time we realized how much we had, it was too late. 

It was two in the morning on a Tuesday when we saw Simon for the last time. He knocked on Keiran’s bedroom window. I’d been living there for about six months at that point but I never really thought of it as my room too, even though I know he wanted me to. 

Anyway, we opened up the window to see what Simon wanted, and he asked us to run away with him. He had it all planned out. “We’ll follow Big Frog Creek up from the lake. I’ve looked at the maps, and it goes to the city eventually. We can camp in the woods, and then we can all start over once we get there. Let’s get out of here.” He was manic as he talked. 

I remember telling him “Simon we can all move out together when we graduate, it’s only a year and a half. But we can’t just leave and live in the woods or whatever.” 

“I’m not staying here one more night,” he said. He was shaking, I thought it was just from the cold. 

“Come live with us!” Keiran said, “My parents will let you.”

“No, they won’t.” Then Simon revealed something neither of us had known “They said I’m dangerous. You don’t think I’ve asked them by now Keiran?” 

Simon was not dressed for the weather, and he only had a small backpack with him. I didn’t want him to go. 

“Just please come with me guys. We need to leave tonight.” He looked so sad, so tired. 

But we were inside in our warm beds. We had school in the morning, and a ride to get there. We had futures. We didn’t outright tell him no but we told him we’d figure something out tomorrow. 

We didn’t get the chance. We never saw him again after that. 

Back in the present, in the real world, in the future that had gone so right for us and so wrong for him, Simon’s replacement gave us a moment of silence after we finished our story. Maybe Paul was hoping there was more, maybe he wanted to hear that we tore up the town looking for him. But there wasn’t, and we hadn’t. 

Keiran broke the silence first. “We need to go find Simon,” he said. “We abandoned him, so we need to go make this right, whatever fucked up black magic bullshit is going on.” 

Black magic bullshit. That was a good way to describe it. 

“I’ll go with you guys,” Paul said. But he really didn’t want to and it showed in his voice. 

“No you won’t,” I said. “Because if we don’t come back, someone else needs to try and fix this. We’re the only ones that actually know something fucked up is going on here.” What I didn’t say was that he hadn’t known Simon like we had. This was our problem to fix. 

Paul nodded, relieved. We all tried to sleep as best as we could, but I don’t think any of us slept well. That night I dreamt of Big Frog Creek. I dreamt of Keiran and I playing in it with Simon. We caught crawdads, camped on the shore, and followed the creek all the way to the edge of the world. 

Part 4

The next morning Paul stayed behind to try and brainstorm some kind of a plan for how to handle things if we couldn’t find Simon. Or worse, if we did find him and we didn’t come back. 

We told Debbie we were going hiking, and made sure she didn’t see us pack Keiran’s pistol. Then we drove to Coral Beach and walked along the shore until we got to Big Frog Creek, It was time to see how far Simon had gone. 

About an hour in we spotted an abandoned house along the creekbed. I guess in all our years exploring we’d never gone that far down this particular creek. 

The house was just barely that. Some shitty pre-fab that had been left to rot. The sight reminded me of my own childhood home, now abandoned. For a few years there, whenever I came back to Coral Lake, I would spend one night in the ruins of my family home, sleeping on the filthy floor in an old sleeping bag. I felt like it was an important reminder of where I’d come from, and that in some weird way, I didn’t deserve to ever fully get away. I did that three years in a row, sneaking away from Keiran’s for the night under the guise of meeting with an old flame. Until one year he caught on that something wasn’t right. Keiran followed me and gave me a lecture. Something about “fetishizing my own sadness” and “wallowing just for the fun of it.” He was right of course, but he didn’t try to take me back to his house. Instead, he simply said that if I was going to insist on sleeping there, he wasn’t going to leave me alone. It was hours of him shivering on the floor before I realized that my own stubbornness was no match for his and we went back. After that I stopped visiting the place altogether, I guess that gave me permission to finally leave it behind. 

This house was also a place full of bad memories, and we could tell even before we crossed the creek. It smelled like death and there was a plethora of “keep out” and “trespassers will be shot on sight” signs nailed to the outside. Those weren’t that uncommon in this part of the country, but they looked to be all handmade which was unusual. What was more strange though, and what made us certain that we had to go inside was the unsettling familiarity of the handwriting. 

Keiran held his pistol low. I’d brought a baseball bat as my weapon of choice, and together we started walking up to the front door. All of the windows were boarded up, but there were enough cracks between the boards that I worried Simon could be watching us from within. I was ready for anything, a dramatic showdown, an emotional apology, an exorcism, a ghost hunt. Whatever was waiting for us, I was prepared to pay my dues for leaving Simon behind. 

We didn’t even get to kick the door down. 

Steps away from the entrance, I felt something bite me, but when I looked down to slap whatever bug it was away, I saw a bright purple spine lodged in my chest. It was jagged and bloody at the end like it had been freshly ripped off of some giant insect or creature. Keiran and I had only time to look at each other in confusion before our world went black. 

For the first time since I’d been back, I didn’t have any nightmares. I dreamt of playing together with Keiran and Simon on the beach, only it wasn’t Coral Lake. It was somewhere warm, somewhere tropical, somewhere beautiful. We’d made it, and we’d gotten him out too.  

I woke up to walls covered in bloodstains. Some were new, some old, but god there was so much of it. Underneath all the blood there was some kind of writing in a language I didn’t recognize. I tried to sit up, but metal cuffs pulled me back. I was tied to something behind me. 

I was groggy, but I woke up enough to take in my surroundings a bit more. As my eyes trailed lower down the walls, and I remembered which way was up, I only saw more and more blood near the floor. My eyes felt like they were moving on a lag as if I was incredibly drunk, but finally, they made their way over to Keiran, who was sitting next to me. Then they started making their way across the room. My ears woke up too and I followed the sound of Keiran’s voice to the person he was talking to. Then as my ears, eyes, and thoughts all caught up to the present, I took in the man before us. 

The years had not been kind to him, to Simon. His reddish brown hair was now more gray than anything else. He had a beard now, scraggly and unkempt. His eyes were sad and tired, but to be honest, he didn’t look that much more tired than he’d looked as a kid. He was wearing only jeans and a ratty black t-shirt, which left his arms exposed. The skin on them was covered in some kind of mottled scarring, like a bad burn. 

I focused in on Keiran then, feeling almost fully awake and sober, and realized he was apologizing.

“I’m so sorry Simon, you have to believe me. We were going to get you the next day, I was going to make my parents let you in. You have to believe me.”

He kept repeating different versions of this, while Simon just stared at us. He stared at us the way a hostile dog or someone drugged out on the street would. Cautious and angry and feral. Keiran kept talking though, and kept trying to get through to him. What Keiran didn’t do was ask to be let out, not once. He didn’t plead for our lives, and he seemed almost indifferent to our peril. All he cared about was a chance to apologize to his friend. 

I was looking for a way out. I yanked my arms as hard as they would go, testing the metal. This caught Simon’s attention. When he realized I was fully awake he finally spoke.

He pointed to both of us and said simply “Choose.”

“Choose what Simon?” I asked. 

He flinched at his name and then said “Choose who’s going first.” His voice sounded scratchy and strange like he wasn’t used to talking. 

I didn't even think about answering his question, I was looking around the room, planning an escape. But Keiran answered without hesitation. 

“Me. I’ll go first. Whatever it is. Just let him go.” 

Then Simon pulled out a pistol, Keiran’s, and said “Follow me.” 

I realized then that Keiran wasn’t handcuffed. Simon knew who would volunteer first. Or he simply knew Keiran well enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to hurt him. 

Keiran got up, and looked back at me only for a second. “Get out of here, okay? For me.”

Then they both walked to the corner of the room, into the bathroom. The door was only open for a second, but I could see the bathtub filled with a reddish-orange liquid. On the walls were even more symbols. Then Simon closed the door. 

That was a small mercy I suppose. Instead of seeing what happened next, I merely heard it. 

At first, it was more apologizing. Then it was apologizing punctuated by screams. I never heard Simon say anything and I never heard Keiran start to lash out at him. Then I heard the awful wet sounds of flesh being sliced up, hacked away. And when I started to see blood pooling under the door, Keiran stopped using coherent words. 

I closed my eyes at first but that helped less than looking around the room so I focused on that, all the while yanking my arms as hard as I could. I tried looking for anything I could use as a weapon, and I started to notice something strange. I’d assumed Simon had been living here the whole time, and that had broken my heart that he’d been so close to us, even despite what he’d become. But the room was dusty, all of the loose clothes and toys scattered about were completely covered. The dust was disturbed only near the walls, where Simon had painted all the runes or satanic symbols or whatever they were. The bed in the corner was mossy and undisturbed, and it had a metal bar built into the wall close by, one of those stability bars old people put into their homes. By feel I’d worked out that that was what I was chained to as well, and seeing the total decay of the house gave me hope that maybe I could rip the bar out of the wall. I tried to focus on that, and only that. 

Finally, long after the screams had stopped, and shortly after the snapping and cutting and hacking stopped, Simon opened the door. He was hauling out an armful of Keiran. I closed my eyes then, but not soon enough. The image seared into my mind was both haunting and strange. I was sure that it was a pile of viscera, but the colors were so bright. Red of course, but also green and blue and pink and bright yellow. 

After I heard Simon walk down the hallway, and out the front door I opened my eyes. The bathroom door was all the way open now, and inside, on the sink was Keiran’s gun. 

I pulled with all my might, my life depended on it, and I felt just the smallest give in the wall. When I heard Simon walk back in I stopped. I waited until he went back outside with another armful and I yanked again. Two more trips and I broke free, I was going to get out of there. But Simon was coming back down the hallway. I decided to wait, to take the chance that he still had more trips to make. If I was wrong I could still take him by surprise, I’d still have a chance. But I was right, Simon grabbed up another gory armful and left me alone. 

I was up as soon as I heard him at the end of the hallway. The bar was only slightly curved and I slipped out. My hands were still cuffed behind me, but that was okay, at least I could get the gun away from him. 

I stumbled to the bathroom and scooped up the pistol, trying to maneuver so I could shoot it if I needed to. I looked in the tub, I couldn’t help it, but Simon must have been on his last trip outside because it was just blood and bits of gore. 

I ran outside and found Simon kneeling at the edge of the creek. He was putting the last of Keiran into the water. 

I didn’t try to say anything, I was in survival mode. It was kill or be killed. Shooting the gun was tricky but not impossible with my hands behind me. I aimed for center mass and I squeezed off a bullet right into Simon’s stomach. 

He had the audacity to look surprised. “I just wanted us all to be together.” He said, blood dripping from his mouth. Then he snarled “Well fine then, we’ll go play without you.” Then he threw himself into the creek. 

The water wasn’t even that deep, but I lost Simon, and whatever was left of Keiran right way, like they’d been dissolved. 

I had no choice but to walk back along Big Frog Creek. It was the only way I knew to get out of the woods. It was just before sunset when I started my journey back, and as I made my way to the beach I kept a close eye on the water, looking for any sign of Keiran or Simon. I watched the water turn from blue to a bright orange-pink; coral I suppose. Then as the sun set lower, I watched the water turn blood red for just a few minutes. Finally, the last ten minutes or so of my walk it was greyish brown as night chased away the day. 

When I got back I told Debbie the real story, and I told the police the rational version. Debbie may not have believed me exactly but she believed that there was enough of Keiran’s blood on the scene that he was no longer with us. What an interesting phrase that is; ‘no longer with us.’ I’d never thought about it before, but it seemed to imply that he was with someone else. Maybe that was true. 

The sample Paul had taken from the reef came back as human lung tissue. It belonged to someone who’d vanished hitchhiking nearby. That prompted police to think that Simon might have been a serial killer. I thought about how big the reef at the bottom of the lake had been, and I wondered if they were right. 

They drained the lake to look for Simon and Keiran and whoever else might be down there. And you know what’s funny? All those rusted-out metal shacks and old houses were just underwater. When they built up that fancy new neighborhood they didn’t bother to tear down the old one, they just flooded it out. Coral Lake didn’t give up any of it’s bodies though. All police found was a sinkhole where the water had connected with a nearby mineshaft. They couldn’t search far enough in there but they said the bodies might have been sucked into the current. They said that we might never find them. 

The police did find other bodies though, and along with them, they found answers. And I had to admit I had been wondering. I’d been wondering why Simon never tried to reach out to us if things had been so bad. I’d been wondering why he waited until now to exact his revenge, or whatever it was. And most of all I’d been wondering what happened to him to destroy him so completely. And just days after Keiran’s funeral, we got our answers for all of the above. 

When police failed to get ahold of Simon’s parents to notify them of their son’s passing, they had to go in person. When his parents didn’t answer the door, the police broke it down. Both the month's worth of mail falling out of the mailbox and the unmistakable stench of decay gave them all the probable cause they needed. 

Inside they found answers to all of our questions. Inside they found Simon’s parents, dead for about a month, but not long enough to hide the damage done to them, his mother dismembered, and his father burned. The basement was the key to it all though. The basement was soundproof and lined with iron bars. The basement was full of things that I didn’t want to think about. And leading out of the basement was a reinforced steel door. One that had only recently been pried open from the inside. 

I dodged calls from Paul and Debbie after that. I’d given Coral Lake my yearly penance and my best friend and my sanity and I didn’t want to give it any more of myself. Not until next year anyway.

Tradition is tradition after all, and I’ve got my next Thanksgiving all planned out. I’ll bring my wetsuit and a speargun and maybe a few beers and I’ll go for a swim. I’ve seen Keiran every Thanksgiving since I was five and I don’t plan on stopping now. I’ll pay my dues or fight my demons, whatever fate has in store for me, I’ll meet it. I’ll do whatever it takes to see if I can have one last visit with my best friend, whatever version of him lies at the bottom of Coral Lake.  

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Facebook and X. Until next time; make sure to enjoy the holidays, however you choose to celebrate them. There are no wrong answers.