Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin,
Chaconne in D Minor (BWV 1004),
plays faintly in the background.
During the summer of 2008, Lauren had lived through an intense period of loss that would mark her for the rest of her life. She often thought about that summer and how profoundly it had shaped her, not only as a human being but also in the development of a deep-seated sense of humanity, humility, and kindness, grounded in a more clearly defined sense of right and wrong. First, her dog Peanut had died, then her school friend, and, toward the end of the summer, her grandparents. Yet this was not the end of that intense period of loss, for these were only the external factors in her life that had ceased to exist in her day-to-day world. There were other, more personal losses, too. School had ended, and she was no longer a high school student. Most of her school friends were moving on to college, embarking on a new stage of their lives. She thought she would join them on this journey, because she had always wanted to attend university and become an architect, designing buildings for those in need, for people without a stable home or a place they could truly call their own.
Yet, when she received letter after letter of rejection from the universities to which she had applied, she began to feel overwhelmed by the fear that her life would never become what she had always imagined it would be. She still remembered opening the letter from the local community college, a safety school she had applied to as a fallback, only to find a rejection notice inside. She simply remained there in her room, staring past the letter with a thousand-yard stare, overcome by a strange sense of disorientation she had never experienced before or would experience again. It was as though she had lost all sense of reference to herself. She had lost much of who she was, but she had also lost much of what she had imagined she would become. The person she had been and the person she had hoped to be seemed to have vanished at once, leaving her suspended in a strange, unfamiliar space between the two.
“How could you deal with this unexpected sense of disorientation and loss, and the mystery of the unknown?” she would later ask herself rhetorically when reflecting on that period of her life.
The memory still carried pain, a genuine emotional wound that had never entirely healed. Yet she also regarded that summer as a pivotal period in her life, one that had helped develop the personal qualities she would come to cherish and that would become essential to her identity, her personality, and her role in society. The resilience, humility, and kindness she had developed through those experiences eventually led her to reorient her life toward social work and psychotherapy. Over time, she became a respected pillar of her community. Although she had not fulfilled her original dreams, life had, in its own mysterious and roundabout way, brought her closer to some of the desires and aspirations that had inspired those dreams in the first place. She often pondered this strange turn of events and laughed at its peculiar irony, marveling at how a period in which she had felt that she had lost nearly everything could have set her on a path toward a life that, in its own unexpected way, had become meaningful.
However, there were two things that Lauren had still not been able to rationalize away or find meaning in. Whenever she thought about these two experiences from that period of her life, she would often try to put them out of her mind rather than confront them, for they reopened the wound left by that summer. They would often bring bouts of depression and existential doubt into her life, feelings she preferred to push away by saying, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” It was an emotional pressure-release joke she had adopted from a cultural meme, a way of coping with the impossibility of these experiences and the questions they raised. She would also rationalize her avoidance by reminding herself of her role in the community and the “importance” of her work, which, she insisted, took precedence over these childhood wounds and unresolved questions of identity. There were people who depended on her, after all, and responsibilities that demanded her attention. Whatever remained unsettled within her could wait.
“Besides, everything happens for a reason, right?” she would often interject when remembering that period of her life, particularly when she felt overwhelmed by the residual emotions and unanswered questions it had left behind. The phrase offered a convenient explanation, one that allowed her to move on without having to examine too closely what she was moving away from. If everything happened for a reason, then perhaps there was nothing more to understand, nothing left to resolve. She could accept the past as something that had happened, something that had made her who she was, without having to revisit the pain that accompanied it.
In moments of clarity, when speaking with another psychologist, a friend, or a family member, she would sometimes realize that, although she thought she had dealt with most of the grief from that period, loss was still a bottomless well of emotional turbulence and anguish, one she preferred not to stare into for too long. She had learned to live with the knowledge that it was there, but living with something was not necessarily the same as understanding it, much less coming to terms with it. And so, she would practice a mental exercise in which she imagined the emotional residue of that period as the water inside a bottomless well. She would then picture herself placing a wooden lid over its mouth, sealing away the feelings and the dangerous waters that lay beneath. The lid would keep everything contained, or so she hoped, allowing her to go about her life without having to confront what remained hidden below.
Every now and then, however, when something stirred the memories of that period and they began creeping into her consciousness and her day-to-day life, she would repeat the exercise. She would picture herself replacing the wooden lid with a new one, sometimes made of metal or plastic, anything that seemed more durable than the last. Yet no matter what material she chose, the lid would eventually rot, crack, or break, and she would have to replace it to keep the well airtight and sealed. It was a repetitive, almost ritualistic practice, one that gave her a sense of control over something she could neither fully understand nor entirely escape. As long as she kept replacing the lid, she could pretend that the problem had been contained, even if it had never truly gone away.
For some time, this had worked. In fact, it had been years since she had fallen into a deep depression or experienced a bout of existential doubt, often accompanied by episodes of panic. She felt she had finally found a practice that worked, that she had gained a handle on her life and could keep its more troubling aspects under control. By most accounts, it appeared that way on the surface and from the outside. She was dependable, composed, and capable of carrying the responsibilities that came with her work and her place in the community. She had built a life that seemed to confirm her belief that she had overcome the worst of what had happened to her.
Deep down, however, she knew there was more to the story. Her dreams of random car accidents involving her family and of drowning would often remind her, at least during the first few minutes of the day, of the complicated period of her life she had spent so much time trying to put behind her. Sometimes she would wake with a lingering sense of dread, unable to shake the feeling that something terrible had happened or was about to happen. The feeling would gradually dissipate as she went about her morning routine, but its brief presence was enough to remind her that the well remained there, somewhere beneath the surface of her consciousness, its waters undisturbed only so long as she kept the lid in place.
Yet she kept all of this to herself, even from her husband, Philip, her psychotherapist, Clara, and her friends. She feared that admitting to these lingering struggles would call into question the tough, austere façade she had cultivated over the years. It might contradict the image others had of her, undermine the confidence they placed in her, and erode the trust she had worked so hard to establish within her community. She had become someone others could turn to in moments of uncertainty and distress; the thought of revealing that she, too, remained vulnerable to such feelings seemed to threaten the very identity she had built. And so, she preferred to maintain her composed exterior and rationalize that these were simply ordinary nightmares brought about by stress, the kind that all mature, responsible people experienced and learned to manage as a normal part of life. There was no reason to make more of them than they were, she told herself. Everyone had their burdens, and hers was no different.
However, eighteen years later, Lauren would encounter two experiences that, although seemingly subtle at first, would feel like devastatingly effective cosmic jokes aimed at challenging the life she had built around an image of toughness, self-control, and dutiful structure. She thought of them as jokes because they could be interpreted either as sarcastic or as extremely cruel, and she preferred to find meaning in the latter interpretation as a way of dealing with the reality of their parallels with the original experiences from the summer of 2008. There was something deeply unsettling about the way the past seemed to echo in the present, as though life had found a way to return her to the very questions she had spent years trying to put behind her.
The first experience came in June 2026.
It was another Wednesday in Lauren's life in the town of St. Lucia. She had woken up earlier than usual for no apparent reason and had gone running, as she typically did on weekdays, although this time she had set out earlier than normal. She noticed that her daughter's car was not in the driveway, which she found somewhat odd, but she did not make much of it. Her daughter, Alice, would sometimes stay with friends in the city when she went to university. Alice was studying architecture, and Lauren was immensely proud of her. In some ways, she felt that her daughter was fulfilling a part of her own life that had never come to fruition. This was one of the ways Lauren understood her childhood dreams and aspirations as having been realized, albeit through the roundabout course of life rather than through her own efforts.
Lauren went for her usual run, although she ended up running longer than normal. She had come to regard running as a good way to let off steam and deal with any residual anger or frustration that had been building up lately. Since she had woken up earlier that morning, she decided to take advantage of the extra time and extend her run, hoping to work through whatever lingering emotions she had diagnosed in herself as concerning. Running had become a way for Lauren to anesthetize herself against overwhelming feelings, to exhaust the body so that the mind might remain undisturbed. Over the years, she had grown accustomed to feeling comfortably numb, and she had even come to rationalize this state of being as something to be proud of, a sign of discipline and emotional maturity.
“Mind over matter. Mind over the muddy waters of emotions. We are what we think, and equanimity is the reward.”
She would often repeat this Buddhist-inspired, but personally developed, mantra to herself as a way of calming her mind and regaining what she called “self-control.” To Lauren, the ability to maintain an even disposition in the face of life's uncertainties was not merely a practical skill but a personal achievement, something that distinguished her from the people who allowed their emotions to overwhelm them. She had spent years cultivating this attitude, and it had served her well enough that she rarely questioned the price she paid for it.
When Lauren returned from her run, she noticed that her daughter's car was still not in the driveway.
“That is weird . . . What is Alice up to now? That daughter of mine . . .” she thought to herself, half-jokingly and half in an attempt to reassure herself that everything was fine. There was no reason to be concerned, she told herself. Alice was a university student, after all, and young people had their own lives, schedules, and habits. Her absence was unusual, perhaps, but hardly cause for alarm.
When she went inside, she mentioned it to Philip, who was making breakfast and preparing to leave for his own psychotherapy practice. They exchanged their usual morning goodbyes, and Lauren went to take a shower so that she could get ready for work. It was an ordinary morning, with its familiar sequence of small domestic rituals, and there was nothing in the scene itself to suggest that anything was about to change.
However, before Lauren could step into the shower, she heard the faint ringtone of her phone coming from the bedroom, barely audible beneath the voice of the television she had left on to catch the daily news. She noticed it almost by chance, because she was already standing at the bathroom door, and between the television playing in the bedroom and the sound of the shower running in the bathroom, the ringtone should have been nearly impossible to hear. Yet she heard it, and heard it distinctly, as though she had been instinctively and acutely attuned to the phone, much as one might be when expecting important news and waiting for a call.
Lauren hurried back toward the bedroom, but she did not reach the phone in time. Looking at the screen, she saw a local number she did not recognize. She thought little of it, but a strange sensation of dread came over her for no apparent reason. She put the phone down again and turned toward the bathroom.
Then it rang a second time.
The same number appeared on the screen.
Lauren picked up. A stranger's formal voice asked whether she was Lauren Bishop. She paused for a moment, and the voice repeated the question.
“Ma'am, are you Lauren Bishop, of 1937 Amelia Lane?”
“Yes, I am Lauren Bishop,” she finally replied, hesitantly. Her response betrayed a defensive instinct, an unconscious attempt to avoid acknowledging the reality of what might be coming, as though the catastrophe waiting at the other end of the conversation could somehow be prevented by saying as little as possible. In that moment, she felt that if she did not answer, or if she answered only reluctantly, there might still be a chance that the call was not really meant for her, that she could somehow escape whatever terrible news awaited her.
Paralyzed by the anticipation of what would come next, she listened with the phone held about four inches away from her ear, as though even that small distance might offer some protection from the words she was about to hear.
The call was from Richard, an officer with the St. Lucia Police Department whom Lauren knew personally. She had treated him a few years earlier, after he lost his daughter in a fire. She remembered the grief he had carried then, the helplessness and anguish that had accompanied it. Now, hearing his voice, she could sense that something was terribly wrong.
“Lauren, this is Richard, with the St. Lucia PD . . . Lauren, I am so sorry for your loss . . .”
Richard's voice faltered. He choked up for a moment before continuing.
“Lauren, we found your daughter two counties over, near a creek. It seems she was traveling from Jackson County early this morning when she hit a curve at high speed. The car overturned and ended up in the creek. It was hours before she was found. Based on the forensic evidence and what we've been able to determine about the accident, it appears she may have been upset and not paying much attention to the road. She was also driving extremely fast . . .”
Lauren fell to the floor like a skyscraper collapsing under its own weight, as though the very foundations of her existence had suddenly given way.
“Lauren! Lauren, can you hear me? Oh God, please tell me you're okay, Lauren! Lauren? Please know that you can count on Michelle and me for anything. You were there for us when we needed you, so please let us help. Please, Lauren, don't do anything stupid.”
Richard's voice could be heard coming through the phone, which lay on the floor, but Lauren could no longer hear him. The sheer volume of her cries, her screams, and her anguished expressions of pain drowned out everything else. She writhed on the floor, striking herself and occasionally punching nearby objects in movements that seemed almost involuntary, as though her body had become the instrument of a pain she could neither understand nor contain. The composure she had spent years cultivating had vanished. There was no room for equanimity, no reassuring mantra, no rational explanation that could make what had happened any less real. There was only the unbearable fact of her daughter's death.
Richard could hear the commotion through the phone. Concerned that Lauren might seriously hurt herself, he immediately asked one of his deputies to go to Lauren and Philip's home and make sure she was safe. Richard, like most people in St. Lucia, knew something of Lauren's past and understood that this news might reopen wounds she had spent years trying to contain. He was particularly worried because he knew how much she had struggled with grief before, even if she rarely spoke about it.
He was also deeply grateful to Lauren for having guided him through the most difficult period of his own life. When he had lost his daughter in the fire, Lauren had been there for him, offering her presence and professional guidance when he could barely make sense of his own suffering. Now, in some deep and complicated sense, he wanted to return that kindness. He was not glad that Lauren was going through this -- how could he be? -- but there was a part of him that felt compelled to repay what she had given him, to be present for her in the same way she had once been present for him. It was not a matter of settling a debt so much as honoring the bond that had emerged from their shared experience of loss.
“Not in a million years would I have guessed that this would happen to Lauren and Philip, that they would find themselves in our position,” he thought. “But then again, accidents, death, and loss happen every day. They're part of living, as terrible as that sounds. So why does it feel so strange that this would happen to them? Why does it feel so impossible that it would be their daughter? It makes no sense.”
One of his deputies touched him on the shoulder, pulling him away from this train of thought. Richard was grateful for the interruption. He needed to return his attention to the demands of duty and service, to the practical responsibilities that still required his presence. His thoughts had begun to take him somewhere he did not want to go, back to the memory of his own daughter screaming in the second room of his house while he stood helplessly by, unable to rescue her from the fire that had started because of a faulty breaker. For a moment, he had been there again, listening to the same desperate sounds, confronted once more by the unbearable knowledge that sometimes love and the desire to protect someone were not enough to save them.
Meanwhile, after nearly an hour of incessant screaming, crying, and striking herself and the objects around her, Lauren began to feel defeated by life itself, but also by her own body. She was physically exhausted and emotionally drained, so depleted that she could barely move or feel anything at all. Her body seemed to have reached a limit beyond which it could no longer sustain the intensity of her grief. The pain had not diminished, but it had left her with little strength to express it. She lay there, feeling emptied out, as though everything that had once animated her had been stripped away.
And then, amid the exhaustion and the terrible stillness that followed, a question came to her with startling clarity: What had Alice been doing in Jackson County?
Had she gone there to see her biological father?
Lauren had explicitly told her not to go there. She had always considered him an asshole and believed that keeping her distance from him was in Alice's best interest. Now, with the news of Alice's death still barely comprehensible, Lauren began to wonder whether he had played some part in what had happened. She wanted to call him, to demand an explanation, to find out why Alice had gone there and what might have led her to make that journey. But she was too weak to speak, too exhausted even to reach for the phone and make the call. The questions remained trapped inside her, accumulating in silence.
This line of thought also brought her back to the first of the losses from the summer of 2008, the death of her school friend, an experience she had spent years trying not to revisit. Her friend had been found alongside Lauren's ex-boyfriend, Oscar, in his car after they had collided with a light post on one of the backcountry roads. Both had been drinking and partying, and the circumstances suggested that they might have spent the entire night together. Yet Lauren had never known for certain what had happened between them.
She and Oscar had broken up only a week earlier. Her best friend, meanwhile, had a boyfriend of her own, Matthew, whom she was still seeing at the time. The circumstances had left Lauren caught between suspicion and uncertainty, between the possibility of betrayal and the possibility that she had misunderstood everything. At times, she would become angry and convince herself that Oscar and her friend had been together behind her back. At other times, she would consider that perhaps they had met to talk about Lauren, perhaps to find a way to reconcile the two of them after the breakup. There were explanations that wounded her and explanations that offered some comfort, but none that she could verify. The truth had remained inaccessible, suspended somewhere between what might have happened and what she feared had happened.
Lauren could never know for certain, and so she had learned to hate thinking about it. The uncertainty itself had become a source of pain, a wound that could not close because it had never acquired a definite shape. She could neither prove her suspicions nor entirely dismiss them. Over time, she had tried to put the matter away, along with the other experiences from that summer, convincing herself that she had moved beyond the need to know.
But now, with Alice gone, the memory has returned with renewed force. The old questions, which had once seemed secondary to the more immediate grief of that summer, had come back into focus. And although the death of her daughter eclipsed everything else, the parallel between the two experiences gave the earlier loss a new and painful significance. Once again, Lauren found herself confronting a death surrounded by unanswered questions, a life cut short under circumstances she could not fully understand, and the terrible possibility that the truth she wanted most might forever remain beyond her reach.
Now fully anhedonic, Lauren lay sprawled across the floor of her bedroom, as if she had been thrown or flung there like a rag doll. The water continued to run and had, by now, begun overflowing onto the bathroom floor, spreading slowly into the bedroom. It was then that she thought of the second experience she had been avoiding since the summer of 2008.
Toward the end of that summer, shortly after she had endured all those losses, she had gone down to the small lake in St. Lucia early one morning. For the past month, she had felt weighed down by the uncertainty of her life and by everything that was no longer available to her. She could no longer find comfort in the happiness of her past, nor could she envision a promising future. She had fallen into a kind of numbing depression that robbed her of nearly every pleasure and joy.
One of the few comforts she had discovered was escaping, in the early hours of the morning, to sit on the banks of the lake and throw rocks into the water at irregular intervals. Curiously, it was not the pleasure of sitting by the lake or listening to the sound of the water that drew her there. Rather, she found comfort in being alone with her overwhelming thoughts and in throwing the rocks, without much force, into the lake. She could not explain why this simple act gave her some modest measure of pleasure, but it did. Any reprieve from the drowning emotions of her grief over everything she had lost was welcome.
And so, for the eighth time that summer, she had gone down to the lake to repeat this newfound pastime.
When she arrived, she tried to sit on the bench nearest the water, but someone had already taken it. Lauren continued a little farther along the shore, toward a more secluded part of the lake, and settled beneath a willow tree. Almost as soon as she sat down near its base, she picked up a rock and tossed it toward the water with little intention or force. She simply loved the bloop the rock made when it struck the surface. Why she found the sound so satisfying, she could not say. It was enough that it worked, and that was all that mattered to her at the time.
She remained there for some time, continuing to throw rocks of various sizes, some small, others medium-sized, into the lake. Then, at some point, one of the rocks failed to make a bloop.
This made her stop. She was intrigued but not sufficiently interested in getting up and investigating. She reasoned that the rock must have struck the far edge of the bank near the water rather than entering the lake, which would explain the absence of sound.
After an indefinite stretch of time, she threw another rock. Again, there was no sound.
This time, her curiosity grew. But before she could make sense of what had happened, she noticed that the water around her was rising and rising so rapidly that its movement was visible to the naked eye. What frightened her most was that the water did not appear to be coming from the lake. The lake was not overflowing its banks. Instead, the water seemed to be seeping upward from the ground itself, rising beneath her feet.
It was very dark, almost black, and its surface was strangely reflective, as though coated in some kind of slime or chemical film. It reminded her of the way petroleum spreads across water, forming a visible layer that sits apart from the water beneath it.
The water rose with such astonishing speed that, before Lauren could react, it had already reached her hamstrings.
Lauren stood up and tried to walk away, but she felt trapped in the water, as though it was weighing her down or holding her in place. She struggled to escape, growing increasingly frightened, but her frantic movements and desperate attempts to free herself made no difference. The water continued to hold her fast. She could move a little, but even advancing a few inches required so much effort that it hardly seemed worth trying.
That was when Lauren saw it.
A massive figure began to rise from the water. It stood about seven feet tall, although she could not see its feet, and was roughly three feet wide. Its body appeared to be made of old, rotten ropes, the kind once used in traps for catching things, tightly woven together. Its face was concealed by a metal mask resembling a fencing mask, though it seemed more likely to have been fashioned from the steel mesh of fishing traps. The figure made sounds as if it were trying to speak, but it had no tongue. Instead, it seemed to follow the movements Lauren made in her desperation to escape, using the ripples and disturbances in the water to find its way toward her.
It would rise from the water in one place, then sink and reappear somewhere else, each time a little closer. Lauren watched helplessly as it approached until, at last, it emerged behind her.
The figure dressed her in garments made of tightly interwoven ropes, leaving only the narrowest spaces between them, and placed the metal mask over her face. Almost immediately, Lauren felt suffocated. She could barely breathe through the mask, and the wet garments weighed her down more heavily than anything she had ever experienced. Every movement became more difficult, every attempt to free herself more futile. Eventually, she accepted the garments and the position in which they had trapped her. She simply gave up.
Hours later, her father, Noah, found her. He had been searching for her with the police after she failed to return home overnight, and they had been unable to reach her. Lauren was almost catatonic. She was taken to the hospital with early signs of hypothermia and later transferred to a psychiatric hospital, where she remained for some time. It was only after treatment that she began to emerge from the oppressive weight and suffocating sensation that had overtaken her.
Now, with her daughter gone, those memories have returned.
As Lauren lay on her bedroom floor, she found herself experiencing the same dreadful sensations all over again. Water had flooded much of the room, covering the floor and rising to a depth of about three inches. Her face rested against the wet surface, her cheek and mouth partially submerged. She tried to stand, but once again she felt as though she had been glued to the floor, unable to lift herself from it.
That was when she saw it rising from the bathtub, visible through the bathroom mirror.
She could hardly believe what she was seeing. For a moment, she thought she must have finally lost her mind. She tried desperately to get up, but, just as before, her struggle seemed only to hasten the creature's approach.
This time, however, she did not fight. She let go, surrendering to the weight of the garments and the suffocating pressure of the mask. She could not bear to go through this again. Whatever the creature wanted, she no longer had the strength to resist it.
But when she tried to give up, the figure refused to let her.
Instead, it lightened the burden. The garments became less oppressive, and through the holes in the mask and the narrow spaces between the ropes, Lauren caught glimpses of light and felt the first traces of air.
She gasped, then began to cry again. Still overwhelmed by the heavy burden pressing against her and the suffocating shortness of breath, she gathered what little strength she had left and reached for her cellphone. With trembling hands, she called Philip to tell him what had happened.