Happy Mother’s Day!
By John Reizer
The town of Stillwater was a small mountain village that sat alongside a large, polluted lake.
People who lived in this community said the town’s lake was deeper and dirtier than most outsiders could ever imagine.
Stillwater was once the home of the now-defunct Kellerman-Barton Pharmaceutical company, which once mass-produced psychotropic drugs.
A strange phenomenon had been occurring in Stillwater for several decades. At the beginning of each new calendar year, one or more young people disappeared from everyone’s collective memory.
They didn’t necessarily die or go missing; they were systematically forgotten. It was the strangest damn thing. Pictures faded away, phone records were edited, and school yearbooks became permanently altered. Parents looked at suddenly empty bedrooms and never questioned anything.
The townspeople never spoke about the strange occurrences, mostly because the vast majority of the community suffered from the same peculiar amnesia. But a few people in Stillwater remembered the forgotten ones, and they wanted an explanation for why this strangeness was happening.
Maria Cantrell hadn’t given too much thought about the phenomenon until her sister mysteriously disappeared from everyone’s memory.
One New Year’s morning, Maria walked downstairs and found her mother making breakfast. “Where’s Tara?” Maria asked.
Her mother, Nancy, looked confused. “Who?”
Maria laughed at first. “Very funny.”
But her mother continued to stare at her with blank eyes.
Her father, Edward, set his Android phone on the coffee table. “Maria, are you feeling okay?” he asked.
Maria’s stomach grew uneasy. She immediately ran upstairs and found Tara’s room was empty.
The bed, the posters, and all the rest of the furniture had disappeared.
Maria grabbed her cell phone and immediately saw that every photo of her sister was missing, and every text message had been deleted.
Only one thing remained: a small leather bracelet hanging from Maria’s wrist. Tara had made it for her when they were younger.
Maria sat on the floor crying. She reflected on the rumors and stories that had circulated in her school about the forgotten ones, how certain individuals just vanished from people’s memories. It was as if these folks never existed in the first place.
Why was this happening? Maria wanted and needed to know the answer to that vitally important question.
At school, nobody remembered Tara either. Maria tried to convince people of the truth, but they only looked at her like she was crazy.
After a few days, she stopped talking about Tara, but she hadn’t forgotten about her sister altogether.
One night, not too long after that, Maria heard something outside her house. The strange noise was actually coming from the lake.
With a flashlight in hand, Maria followed the strange sounds through the woods. At the lake, Maria found old man Johnson standing by the water’s edge.
Mr. Johnson was the oldest man in town.
“You remember her?” he asked quietly.
Maria looked at the older man. “Yes,” she replied.
He nodded once. “Not many of us can remember the forgotten ones.”
“Why is this happening?” Maria asked.
Old man Johnson looked out at the lake, raising his arm and pointing. “Because she’s sick and psychotic. Long ago,” he explained, “Stillwater was a nice place to live before that damn drug plant set up shop here. They began making dangerous pills that treated crazy people. Truth be told, their drugs made crazy people crazier. Then, they began dumping their toxic chemicals and drug byproducts into the lake until it became so filthy that people could no longer see the bottom. Eventually, something beneath the polluted water spoke out.”
Maria scratched her head. “The lake spoke?” She asked.
Old man Johnson nodded. “It offered the town a deal. It promised all citizens lifelong protection from mental and other dangerous illnesses.” He paused momentarily before continuing. “But every year, it demanded in return for that protection one thing: A young person’s identity, as they approached adulthood. It didn’t want their body. It simply wanted their memory.”
“Their memory? Maria asked.
“Yes,” Old Man Johnson replied. “If nobody remembers you, it is almost like you never existed. That is what feeds the lake monster.”
Maria felt sick to her stomach. “So, is Tara still alive?”
“I don’t know,” Old Man Johnson said. “Nobody ever seems to find the forgotten.”
“Then I’ll be the first,” Maria assured him.
Old man, Johnson grabbed her arm forcefully. “No one ever goes into the lake, young lady.”
But Maria didn’t pay attention to the man’s warning. The very next night, she found an old rowboat near the shoreline and crossed the freezing water alone, carrying only a kerosene-lit lantern.
The lake was eerily silent.
Halfway across, the water began to take on a much different appearance beneath her. Then came the strange sound of voices from below the water’s surface.
There was a plethora of whispers coming from forgotten names and lives.
Maria saw shapes moving below the water. She saw her sister, Tara, trapped among the other forgotten ones.
“Maria!” her sister screamed from beneath the water.
Maria reached down and offered her hand. As she did so, something enormous opened its eyes in the deep dark water.
The water rippled around the perimeter of the boat. Then Maria heard a creepy voice inside her head.
“YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER THEM!”
Maria couldn’t breathe. Her heart raced, and her vision blurred momentarily. She fought hard to maintain her composure.
“Give her back, dammt,” she yelled.
The lake below spoke once again. “YOU HAVE BROKEN THE CONTRACT!”
The water began to move around the small boat more violently. “MORE MUST BE TAKEN NOW,” the lake demanded.
Suddenly, Maria understood. The lake was no longer content to erase just one person each year. It was becoming increasingly demanding. Soon, it would need to take more people, maybe even everyone in the entire town.
Tara reached up from below and made her way toward the water’s surface. “Maria, listen to me!” she cried. “There’s only one way to stop it!”
“How?” Maria asked.
“You have to make the town people remember us!”
“But they can’t!”
“They can if the lake dies.”
The giant eyes below the water’s surface opened even wider.
Maria saw many people trapped in the dark water beneath her. She grabbed the old lantern from the boat and tossed it into the lake.
Fire instantly erupted across the lake’s chemically tainted black surface.
The creature below screamed, and the surrounding mountains shook as if an earthquake had been unleashed.
Water shot upward into the sky, then everything went dark, and quiet finally prevailed.
Maria woke in the hospital three days later. Her mother sat beside her, crying. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered. “You saved your sister.”
Maria’s eyes blinked. “Tara, she’s back?” Maria asked.
The hospital door opened, and Tara rushed inside the room and hugged her forcefully.
Maria started crying.
People finally remembered the forgotten ones. The curse was over, and the town was free again.
A week later, life felt very normal in Stillwater.
One evening, not too long after that, Maria walked past a mirror in the upstairs hallway and noticed that there was only a single reflection behind her, Tara’s.
“Excuse me,” Tara said softly. Her eyes looked confused.
Fear worked its way onto Maria’s face. “Tara?” she said to her sister.
“I’m sorry,” Tara whispered back. “But who are you?”
Downstairs, their mother called out: “Tara? Whom are you talking to?”
Maria stared back at the mirror again. There was still no reflection of her.
Far away in the distance, Maria heard the faint sound of the lake laughing.
THE END
It took me all day to write this one. I was going for the idea that so many of these psychotropic drugs steal away our identity and make the users disappear from everyday life. It’s as if these people are snatched away and tossed into the bottom of a dark, deep lake, never to be heard from again. They become the forgotten ones.
John Reizer
About Our Book
Have the controlling powers intentionally modified the timeline of modern civilization? Did a massive cataclysm and population reset occur several hundred years ago that destroyed the Old World and launched a new one — an event never discussed in our historical records? Have the architectural constructs and technology of the Old World been repurposed and sold to society as the architectural and technological creations of the New World?
We encourage you to join us in investigating what we have termed the Old World. We believe a much different realm existed before a parasitic, usurping entity that now holds sway over us obfuscated our truthful past.
-The Authors
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