Let’s close this one out! Grab a blanket, because it’s chilly!

“Okay, slow down, Ritche,” Jules said. “What do you mean he’s here?”

I was pacing the restaurant. “He was in the bathroom! Behind me, looking at me in the mirror… then, gone. Then the lights went out and this wave of cold water hit me…” I realized I was babbling, but my adrenaline was really flowing.

Dale had broken away from the hockey game now. “Whoa, Ritchie, wave of water?”

“It was lake water!” I said.

“Ritche… you’re dry,” Dale pointed out.

“That’s because it was… I don’t know… ghost water!”

Dale and Jules exchanged looks. “Ghost water?” Dale said incredulously.

“Let’s get you back to the house, Ritchie,” Jules said soothingly.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I do, Ritchie. I really do! But what can we do about it now? With the whole lake water thing it sounds like he’s telling you you’re on the right track going to the lake. We’ll go back out there tomorrow, okay?”

She made sense. I said my goodbyes to Dale as well as Alan and Terry and Jules drove us down the dark icy roads to her house. The drive served to remind me how tired I was, and my head barely hit the pillow in the guest room before I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

So, I was plenty rested when my eyes snapped open at dawn. I dressed – as warmly as I could – and quietly made my way out the front door and into my rental car without waking Jules. Twenty minutes later I was parked on the side of the road and starting out onto the ice.

The morning was cold, and the chill winter fog clung to the ground obscuring my view even to other side of the lake. The occasional car on the road behind me was the only sound in the wan morning light as I stepped onto the ice.

When I visited the day before with Dale and Jules the circumstances just didn’t feel right – I fell through the ice in the morning. This felt more right. As I took steps further onto the ice, I looked down at the frost covered ice. Though intellectually I knew the ice was thick and secure, the similarity of the time and weather made my feet feel instinctually unsure about their footing. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

The ground fog seemed to circle around me and cut off even the occasional passing car behind me. I stared ahead into the whiteness of the fog when it seemed to coalesce into a figure. He stepped forward. He wore the same snow pants and jacket I wore that day, though I could see the frost and ice on the fabric. He stared silently at me with those same black, dead eyes.

Finally I spoke. “I’m here,” I said. “You wanted me here, and now I’m here. How do I get rid of you?”

My ghost stared at me.

My fear was replaced with anger. “You haunt me, ruin my dates…” I was yelling now. “I’m here! That’s what you wanted wasn’t it? I’m here!”

My ghost stared at me.

“What do you want?! Leave! Me! Alone!”

My ghost stared at me. I panted a little from yelling, my breathing the only sound.

Without warning a crack like a rifle report echoed across the ice. I barely had time to look at my feet to see the crack widen beneath my feet when the ice below me gave way and I fell through into the freezing water.

When you fall into freezing water, the first thing that happens is the shock drives your breath out in an involuntary gasp. I stared up at the hole in the ice I fell through and marveled for a moment how thick the ice was, realizing this shouldn’t have just happened – this wasn’t the fragile ice I broke through as a kid. No, this is the standard mid-winter thickness.

And yet, here I was, sinking into the darkness.

Looking ahead of me, I could see Him in the water with me, just above me. His black eyes staring at me, his dead blue lips curling into what looked like a semblance of a smile. He reached his arm out towards me.

This is how I was going to die for good – the same way I was supposed to die twenty-five years ago. Surprisingly, I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t angry or afraid. This felt like how it was supposed to end. I reached out my arm towards his. I strained to touch him, to reunite and die in peace with my ghost.

Then a hand shot down and gripped mine. This was not the lifeless fingers of my ghost, this hand held mine and pulled hard, yanking me towards the surface. I stared as my ghost drifted down, down, down into the icy darkness while I sped back up to the surface. The last thing I saw before I broke the surface was my ghost stretching his arms out in submission, one hand curled into a wave goodbye.

My head broke the surface and I gasped for breath.

“Pull me back, Dale!” I heard Jules yell. She lay on her stomach on the ice, her torso bent over the hole in the ice. Looking past her I could see Dale laying on the ice, holding her feet and starting to pull her back and, in turn, pull me out.

I struggled against the splintering ice but managed to get some purchase with my free hand and between that and Jules and Dale, I wriggled my way onto the solid ice.

We all three lay there on the ice panting for a few moments. Then Jules reached out and started slapping my head, “You asshole! What the hell were you thinking coming out here alone? Goddamn it, Ritchie!”

“I’m sorry,” I managed through uncontrollably chattering teeth.

“Beat him up later, Jules,” Dale said. “We need to get you both off the ice and warm!”

With the temperature in single digits, he was absolutely right.

—

Dale managed to get a fire going quickly in a nearby fire pit with driftwood left over from the summer season. I sat on a stump under a moving blanket Dale had in the trunk of his car.

As we started to warm, Jules asked again more quietly and calmly, “What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” I started.

Jules shook her head, “No. No, try again.”

“I… I thought I needed to be here by myself or he wouldn’t show.”

“There we go!” Jules said. “You idiot,” she said, but there was a slight smile behind her scowl.

“How did you guys…” I started. “How are you here?”

“I heard you leave, you idiot. I didn’t think you were going for donuts!”

“Thank you,” I said.

I thought back to seeing Him under the icy water and the waving as he disappeared again into the deep. “I think he’s gone,” I said.

“Yeah?” Jules asked.

“Yeah,” I said nodding.

Dale came back to the fire and threw another piece of driftwood on and handed me a bottle. I looked at the label – OPW Rye Whiskey from the Honorable Distillery in Marquette. I gave him a look that said, “it’s 9am.” He nodded to the bottle. I pulled out the cork stopper and took a big swig that burned my mouth and throat on the way down.

I looked at the label as the warmth of the whiskey started to spread through me. “Here’s to this being the only spirit I take back home with me!”