Content Advisory: This story explores graphic metamorphosis, intense psychological unease, and cosmic dread. Includes speculative alien themes, webbed limbs, glowing meteorites, and haunting reflections on humanity and belonging.
I first saw it that sweltering July afternoon, when the sun slanted low enough to gild the pines in burnished gold, and the lake lay like a polished mirror, utterly still. I was poking among the boulders at the far end of our family’s cabin—an aging frame shack my parents claimed had been built by some eccentric trapper in the ‘80s—when the thing caught the light, glimmering like a drop of fallen star. It was half-buried in moss and grit, black as obsidian, yet streaked with veins of pale blue that pulsed with an inner glow as though it breathed. My heart hammered with a mixture of wonder and dread.
With trembling fingers, I pried it free. It was warm, a gentle throb against my palm, and when I wiped away the dirt, I discovered its surface was smooth as glass, impossibly unscarred. Tiny fractures branched across it, revealing a luminous core that shifted colors—from aquamarine to violet and back again—like a restless sea. The thing hummed, soft as a lullaby, and I felt that lullaby slipping into my thoughts, drawing me closer, urging me to take it home.
My cabin room smelled of pine resin and old paperbacks—Zane Grey and Doyle stacked on the windowsill—when I laid the rock on my dresser. I spent the early evening watching the light play across its crevices, tracing patterns no human eye should perceive. At dinner, I feigned a stomachache to avoid my mother’s prattle about supper menus and the church picnic. Later, I told myself, I’d hide the meteorite in my trunk. But the moment I blew out the kerosene lamp and ducked beneath the quilt, the thing pulled light from the darkness.
I saw the glow erupt in ripples, like water disturbed by a falling star. There was no fear—only an irresistible fascination—as I rose and stretched out my hand. The instant my skin brushed its surface, there was a flash like sunrise behind my eyes—a cascade of impossible images: towers of glass and steel that dwarfed mountains, cities of floating spires, machines that sang with silent hums, and creatures whose shapes defied terrestrial logic. Their eyes—so many eyes—looked upon me, conveying greetings older than the oldest tree. The world spun; I barely registered stumbling back into bed.
I woke hours later, convinced it had all been a dream. Dawn’s pink fingers crept through the window, and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. But then—a shock. My fingers, once supple and pink, now fanned into webbed spatulas, etched with the same pale-blue veins I’d seen in the meteorite. My arms… my arms were dusted in lustrous scales, cool and damp to the touch. I gasped, peered down at my chest—where fine gill slits quivered along my ribcage like tiny portcullises. Panic seized me.
Moments later, I heard my mother’s voice calling, “Edna! Edna, where are you?” She and Papa pounded the front door, their worry echoing across the lake. Dread bloomed in my chest: they would think I’d wandered into the water. They’d call the sheriff. They’d drag the shallows and find nothing but the lake’s cold embrace. I dared not show myself.
So I crept beneath the bed, the fibrous boards pressing into my scaled back. My breath caught as they called my name again, voices laced with fear. I flinched at every creak of the floorboards, every scrape of their shoes. The meteorite’s lullaby still pulsed in my mind, soothing my terror even as I heard my mother pray aloud for my safety.
When I dared to crawl free, the house was silent. I ventured into the living room. The meteorite was gone. My heart thundered—I knew I didn’t move it. It had vanished, as if drawn by some secret tether. I scrambled to the door, bolted it behind me, and fled for the woods.
I followed the narrow deer trail to the lakeshore, wind whispering through the birches. The morning haze clung to the water’s edge. And there—half-submerged in the shallows—lay the meteorite. It had weathered only slightly: cracks spidering across its surface, as though it had split itself open. Through a jagged fissure shone a hypnotic glow, more vivid than before, as if the heart of the world pulsed within.
My pulse quickened. Each step toward it felt both inevitable and impossible. My altered limbs flexed strangely beneath damp breeches. I could feel the slime of the lake on my skin—wet, cool, but no longer alien. The meteorite’s hum summoned me, spoke to me in whispers I no longer fought to suppress.
I reached out, scales sliding over my transformed hands, and pressed my palm to the crack. Light spilled into my veins. The images returned, brighter, deeper: vast ships carved from living crystal, sailing silent rivers of starlight; legions of alien beings—tall, slender, shimmering—lifting their delicate arms in greeting. They showed me the map of my destiny: to stand as envoy between Earth and their jeweled empire, a single bridge of flesh and mind. I saw worlds with rings of platinum moored around lavender suns, fields of orchids that sang under sapphire skies, beings who remembered me from dreams that spanned eons.
Then came their message, not in words but in resonance: You are chosen. The thought reverberated through my bones, tingling along the ridges of my newly formed spine. They needed someone rooted in soil and water, someone who could speak of fish and forest as deftly as starfall and nebulae. They needed me.
I staggered back, chest heaving, tears of awe—and perhaps something akin to relief—wetting my shimmering cheeks. The loneliness, the horror of waking to scales and gills, ebbed beneath a tide of purpose. I was no longer just Edna, cabin girl and daughter; I was of something greater, borne on currents of cosmic ambition.
I sank to the lakeshore, letting the water lap around my ankles—water that no longer threatened to drown me, but welcomed me like kin. I closed my eyes and listened: the meteorite’s song, the forest’s hush, and a low thunder far above, pulsing through the sky. It was the approach of their vessels, calling me home.
Night was falling when I returned to the cabin. My parents, frantic and tear-stained, sat on the porch steps. “Edna, darling,” Mama whispered when she saw me, rising unsteadily. “Where have you been? We thought—” Her voice broke.
I held up my hand, webbed and luminous in the porch light. “I’m here,” I said, my voice a tremulous echo of itself, carrying a new resonance. “And I’m all right.”
Papa stared as though he’d glimpsed a ghost. But I took Mama’s trembling hand, guiding her inside. I did not hide under the bed. I did not flee into the woods again. Instead, I sat at the kitchen table, fluids of alien hue pooling at my fingertips, and spoke with my parents as best I could: told them I was unafraid, that everything would be revealed soon, that there was a destiny beyond their imagining waiting for me.
They listened with wide eyes and quivering lips. I saw their love shine through fear. I saw their acceptance. And in that moment, I felt a warmth no earthly sun had ever given me.
Later, I slipped back to the shore, the meteorite nestled in my arms. I raised it to the sky, and its glow carved patterns across my face, illuminating blue scales and gill slits as though they were filigree in silver light. For a long moment, I just stood there, a solitary figure between two worlds. Then I lay the meteorite carefully on the sand and knelt beside it.
“Show me everything,” I whispered.
It answered with a pulse, a radiance that spread like water, enveloping me. My vision blurred with constellations and swirling nebulae. I felt myself drawn upward, upward, as if buoyed on a cosmic tide. And I knew: they had come for me.
In that luminous tide, I saw at last the shape of their ships: ovoid hulls carved from living crystal, thrumming with quiet power, descending toward the lake like inverted raindrops. They would land on the sodden earth, displacing reeds and water with threads of silver light. They would come for their chosen emissary.
I rose slowly, my new limbs flexing of their own accord, breath rasping through delicate gills that no longer startled me. I took a step forward, into the shallows, feeling the current swirl around me like the arms of an old friend.
Behind me, the cabin lights blinked on. My parents stood at the window, watching, as they always had watched over me. I lifted a scaled hand in farewell.
Then I turned away, toward the night, toward the hum that grew louder with every heartbeat. The lake opened before me, a gateway to infinity. And I walked in, leaving ripples of starlight in my wake.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?