This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/rimmy789 on 2024-11-24 09:39:25+00:00.
I sat at the edge of my father’s bed, the heart monitor beeping faintly in the background. Dad stared at the ceiling, his lips moving soundlessly. His body was still, except for his hands—always his hands. Even in his final days, they twitched, scratching at the blankets or gripping an invisible pen.
I hated seeing him like this. It was hard to reconcile this frail, hollow man with the father who had once carried me on his shoulders, who had taught me how to ride a bike. Those memories felt like they belonged to someone else.
Rachel wasn’t here. She hadn’t been for months.
“I can’t do this anymore, Marcus,” she’d said that night, standing at the doorway with her suitcase in one hand and our son Samuel in the other. “You’re not here. Not for me, not for him. It’s just you and your father, and it’s always going to be that way. I can’t live like this.”
I told her I was trying, that I could do better, that I would be better, but the truth was, I didn’t know how. She left the next morning.
The sticky notes started not long after that. At first, I thought that Rachel had left them:
Don’t forget milk. Trash goes out Thursday.
Simple reminders. But then I found one on my nightstand that made my stomach drop.
Ask him about the lake.
I turned it over in my hands, trying to make sense of it. Rachel didn’t write this. The handwriting was off—not hers, not mine. That’s when I started noticing Dad’s hands. He was writing, feverishly, even when he didn’t seem to know who I was anymore.
By the time he died, the house was littered with his scrawled notes. They were everywhere: stuck to the mirror, jammed between the pages of books, taped to the fridge. Most of them didn’t make sense.
They will take everything. The lake never forgets. Don’t let it take him.
It wasn’t until I found the letter that I began to understand.
I discovered it in an old cigar box while cleaning out the attic. Layers of sticky notes papered the floor like some long dead forest leaves.
I had been sorting through them in the weeks since Dad’s death. Even now their messages haunted me. The constant reminders served as mile markers of how fast dad’s dementia had progressed. I can’t remember how I started this clean up, but I knew I’d have to finish it. I could hear Samual’s deep breathing on the baby monitor that was hooked on one of the attics cross beams. How long had he been asleep? I’ve got to wake him up for a bottle soon.
It was in one of the last boxes I needed to go through before I moved on to… to whatever I was going to do next.
I opened the cigar box to find what looked to be a letter. The paper was yellowed and fragile, the ink faded but legible. I don’t know what I was expecting—maybe something sentimental from my grandfather or great-grandfather. But this letter was nothing like that.
To whomever bears this burden,
Our bloodline is cursed, and there is no salvation. My mistake—my sin—has doomed us all. I sought what was forbidden, and the price was this: to live, a father must sacrifice his memories to the lake. The memories grant his child years of life, but at the end, the lake takes everything. And the curse passes to his son.
There is no escape, no redemption. Only the choice: your life, or theirs. We all think we can beat it, but in the end, we all give in. The lake waits.
I didn’t believe it at first until my own sticky notes started.
The first memory I gave up was the night Samuel was born. I sat at the kitchen table with a blank piece of paper in front of me, trying to capture every detail: the way Rachel’s hand gripped mine, the way Samuel’s cry filled the delivery room, the warmth of holding him for the first time. I wrote it all down, knowing I’d never remember it again.
It wasn’t enough.
I gave up more: Dad teaching me to ride a bike, the summers we spent at the lake, Rachel’s smile when she said yes to my proposal. With every memory I surrendered, I felt less like myself. The house filled with my own sticky notes, written in handwriting I barely recognized. You were happy once. Samuel’s first word was “Dada.” Don’t forget your name is Marcus.
The worst part was knowing there was no end to it. The curse demanded everything.
That’s why I decided to write this letter. I think it started as some attempt to remember what I was losing- no, what I was giving up. As the years went by, I began to see my father in my mirror’s reflection. The gaunt look in my eyes had a hint of a misplaced light in them.
I was 46 years old when my doctor diagnosed me with early onset dementia. Rachel came back into my life, not for me, but because of the phone call. I had left my son in a hot car during the summer. I always checked my backseat but that day, I didn’t even remember that I had brought him. A passerby broke the window and saved his life. The investigation determined that while I was at fault for the incident, I was not competent enough to stand trial for child endangerment. I was also not stable enough to continue to be a dad. As Rachel packed his things, I remember trying to drink in every last detail. Every identifying moment. Everything that I could trade because even though I was losing Samual, I knew I would trade anything to save and prolong his life.
One night during a supervised visit, I found myself in Samuel’s nursery, staring at his crib. He was asleep, his tiny chest rising and falling in rhythm. I stood there, frozen, trying to remember why I’d come.
But I couldn’t.
I looked at him, and for a moment, I didn’t know who he was.
The sticky notes were all that was left of me. One was taped to the wall beside the crib, written in my father’s handwriting, shaky but unmistakable: When the memories are gone, the lake will take you.
I don’t know how long I have left, but I can feel it—the emptiness growing inside me, the pull of something cold and dark.
Somewhere far away, the lake ripples.