Trigger Warning: This tale, like Chateaugay Lake’s misty depths, blurs reality with unsettling whispers of ancient memory. Time bends, truths unravel, and the Wendigo watches. Readers unacquainted with our spectral Shatagee Woods may find their sense of certainty… unsettled.
To the Editor,
I couldn’t help but chuckle when I heard folks down at the tavern discussing last week’s episode of Shatagee Woods Mystery Hour. They were going on about “Chronophage Rising” like it was gospel truth—talking about Nathaniel Collins as if he hadn’t been dead for nearly a century. Now, I won’t claim to know a thing about time-crystals or reverse-flowing lakes, but it sure got me thinking about the old stories my father used to tell around the fire.
It seems every generation gets its own version of the lake’s mysteries. When I was a boy, folks swore there was an “Indian lead mine” located somewhere west of Indian Point, and every so often, someone like Mr. Peabody would come along, thinking they were going to be the one to find it. My great-grandfather even had a run-in with a clever Abenaki who tried to sell him a lump of what turned out to be store-bought lead when he visited our house. But this “Chronophage”—well, that’s new. I’ve never heard a tale quite like it.
The idea that the lake itself might be unraveling time reminds me of how my father used to talk about those late summer nights when the mist would roll in so thick, you couldn’t tell where the lake ended and the sky began. He always said the mist carried something ancient with it, as if the past wasn’t just behind us but right there on the other side, waiting to break through. Maybe that’s what Chronophage Rising is tapping into—the notion that the lake holds more than we understand, and that time, like the mist, is never really as fixed as we think.
Now, I never had much use for the radio dramas myself, but I’ll admit, there’s something about this episode that sticks with you. Maybe it’s the way the lake is portrayed, not just as a backdrop but as a living thing—much like how the old-timers used to talk about the woods. My grandfather always said the trees had memory, and after a long enough time living by their side, you’d feel it too. It’s funny how these new-fangled stories still carry echoes of the old ways, even with all the talk of crystals and cosmic games.
And as for Nathaniel Collins, well, I knew a man by that name. He was a guide, sure, and by all accounts, he had a sense for things most of us couldn’t explain. But I doubt he ever stood on a dock trading riddles with a fellow like Quinn. He was more likely to be up on the mountain, tracking deer or fishing for trout in some quiet pond. Still, there’s something in the way Shatagee Woods Mystery Hour spins its yarns that makes you want to believe—for just a minute—that maybe the lake does hold more than we can see.
So, I suppose I’ll be tuning in next week to see what happens. Not that I expect to get any answers. My grandfather always said, “You can stare at the lake all your life, but it won’t tell you its secrets unless it feels like it.” Maybe that’s true for Shatagee Woods too. Either way, there’s a strange comfort in knowing that, even with all this talk of Chronophages and ancient crystals, the old stories still haven’t left us. They’ve just changed clothes.
Yours truly,
Johqu Bogart
Route 2
Chateaugay, N.Y. 12920
Shatagee Woods Mystery Hour: Chronophage Rising
Episode 5: “Echoes of the Ageless Lake”
The twilight over Upper Chateaugay Lake glimmered like the skin of a living thing, shimmering with hues that never sat still, as if time itself had started to unravel along its surface. The old boat house at Pine Lodge groaned, its beams warping subtly, as though it too remembered different eras converging into this moment.
Elwood Pratt, the stubborn descendant of the original settlers, stared at his reflection in the lake. But the face staring back at him wasn’t his own. His features, still rugged from years of felling trees, had smoothed out, his skin stretching backward into youth. His beard vanished, and for a fleeting second, he caught the eyes of a boy barely ten years old—his own face from a time forgotten. He shuddered and pulled his hat down lower, but the damage had been done.
Just down the shore, Mildred Wilder gazed out from her family’s aging cabin, watching as fish leapt impossibly out of the water and hovered midair. The lake had always been her family’s sanctuary, a place of still waters and steady rhythms, but now, the place felt like it was humming with a sinister energy. The Wilder family, long-time seasonal residents, held a deep love for the land, though lately, their devotion had begun to feel like an imprisonment. She squinted, unsure if what she was seeing was a hallucination or some deeper, forgotten reality, awoken by the crystal that now controlled the pulse of this place.
The Chronophage crystal had revealed itself weeks ago, its black-and-emerald gleam rising from beneath the lake’s surface after an unnatural storm. It had lain buried in the depths for generations—perhaps eons—only disturbed when the lake’s currents began flowing backward. At first, it had seemed like a minor oddity, a curious artifact pulled from the lake’s mysterious waters. But now, it pulsated with something far more terrifying: a sentience.
The strange occurrences started gradually, unnoticed by most. Animals began to speak in cryptic tones; birds croaked warnings in a language no one quite understood, but everyone felt. The lake’s tides reversed, and the air itself became heavy with the scent of time. The old Abenaki tales, once whispered around fires, began to manifest. And yet, these phenomena were not the lake’s only offering. The very woods bordering the shores—Shatagee Woods—shifted with each passing day. The trees groaned as if caught between dimensions, ancient and unrooted from reality itself.
Nathaniel Collins, the quiet and haunted guide, was among the first to hear the whispers. Deep in the woods, where the Abenaki once held their sacred ceremonies, he had heard the faint voices of their ancestors calling out to him from beyond time itself. They had spoken of the Chronophage long before any white settlers arrived, of a power too great for humans to control. Now, as the lake twisted and churned with its ageless secrets, he understood what they had meant. The Chronophage didn’t merely feed on time—it manipulated the very essence of existence.
“You’re out of place, Collins,” muttered Quinn, an enigmatic figure who had become increasingly entwined with the crystal’s allure. The man had a predatory aura, his eyes glinting with the knowledge of something far older than he let on. Nathaniel didn’t trust him, but his own curiosity—and the lake’s strangeness—kept pulling him deeper into Quinn’s orbit.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Quinn said, as the two stood on the dock. “You think you can stop this.” His grin was sharp as broken glass. “But the Chronophage has already decided. We’re not the ones in control here. The lake, the woods—they belong to it now.”
The words resonated deep within Nathaniel, though not with fear—more with recognition. As much as Quinn made his skin crawl, there was truth in his voice. This wasn’t just about Upper Chateaugay Lake anymore. It was about something older, a tale not written in history but etched into the bones of the earth itself.
Mildred, meanwhile, had begun seeing visions. In the still of night, when the lake’s surface reflected not the stars but unfamiliar constellations, she had glimpsed her ancestors. The Wilder family, stretching back through time, unrecognizable yet familiar, walked along the shore in reversed chronology, moving backward through life’s stages. Babies became elders, and elders returned to infancy before disappearing into the mist. She couldn’t look away, even as her own body felt the slow pull of the crystal’s influence. Her hands, weathered and worn, began to smooth into youthful softness.
The Chronophage was unraveling time itself.
In the heart of Shatagee Woods, the crystal pulsed, sending ripples through the fabric of reality. Collins, Mildred, Elwood, and the other lake denizens were slowly being drawn into a cosmic game, where they were mere pawns. And as the crystal’s power grew, so too did the stakes. The lake’s waters now defied gravity, flowing uphill toward the towering peaks that surrounded them. The wind carried the whispers of those long dead, while the sky above shifted into unfamiliar colors, as though the heavens themselves were bending to the will of something far older than the stars.
Nathaniel could feel it: time itself was unwinding. The Chronophage had revealed its sentience not through violence but through subtle, irresistible manipulation. It controlled not only time but the very laws of space and nature, and those who lived on the lake’s shores were caught in its web. There would be no escaping the pull of the ageless crystal.
The question that lingered now was why.
But deep down, Nathaniel knew the answer: this was not a random event. This was not chaos. The Chronophage had chosen them all for a reason, as it had chosen the lake itself long ago. Now, they were being tested. Not just as individuals but as part of something far grander—a cosmic balance between time, space, and existence itself.
As the waters rose and reality buckled, the residents of Upper Chateaugay Lake would soon realize the truth: they had not discovered the Chronophage. The Chronophage had discovered them. And its hunger was just beginning.
The wind howls outside as the radio host’s voice crackles in: “Join us next week for another chapter of Shatagee Woods Mystery Hour—where the past, present, and future collide in the shadows of Chateaugay Lake. Will Nathaniel and his unlikely band of lake-dwellers survive the Chronophage’s cosmic game? Or are they doomed to become echoes in the ageless current of time?”
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?