We went up the same weekend every summer in June.
Petey’s dad owned a cottage along the Lakeview peninsula, and it was all ours for 3 days a year.
Our group of friends had remained close through high school, college, and now, two years out and into the somewhat real world. Some had come, others had gone, but the core group of Petey, Davis, Marie, Stilts, Amy, and me, Jay, had somehow stuck together through it all.
I was in the back of Davis’ SUV, on our way up to the cottage for the long weekend. Marie was shotgun and Stilts was spread out across the middle row, his wheelchair folded up in the foot path. He really only used the wheelchair in the cabin and on the dock, we all had to carry him everywhere else.
Including the outhouse.
In the middle of the Goddamn night. Fuck. I was always the single one, so that bullshit would be landing on my lap again. I should be grateful it’s not me in his chair, but there’s nothing like carrying someone who’s almost a foot taller than you, through the woods in the middle of the night.
Stilts had been a promising basketball star, and stood well over six and a half feet tall. When he was standing. Sadly, he hadn’t stood in seven years. He’d been in a car accident as a junior and lost all functioning from his waist down and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Everything he’d planned for his future was gone in an instant. But somehow, he kept his head on and continued forward. I admired that about him. When I wasn’t cursing about carrying his giant ass out to shit at three in the morning.
I didn’t have to think about that for awhile though. I had my rolling tray out and was in the process of twisting my seventh L paper for the weekend. They were massive joints. I’d also prepared one last night. It was the fattest four paper spliff I’d ever rolled, using XL Elements and six months of saved up kief sprinkled into it. I let it sit in honey for a half hour and tonight… it was ready to spin some noggins. I had a mix of my favourite strain of sativa, Jean Guy, and indica, Harlem Coffee. It was a busy week of working and smoking a bunch of weed so I was gonna take a break this weekend by not working and smoking a bunch of weed. C’est la fuckin’ vie.
I tuned back into the conversation, which was being driven by Marie, as usual, who was yammering on to Davis about some guy at work that kept smelling her hair or some shit, I dunno. I was pretty high already, and had just downed some real potent edibles, so it all seemed like her normal jibber jabber. Stilts appeared to feel the same way, and was starting to eye my weed. Not that he’d ever touch the stuff.
Then Davis said something that caught Marie off guard. I didn’t hear it, but leaned forward. I watched, and saw Marie mouth the name “Lisa.”
Oh shit. Lisa Warren. Did Davis say she was coming this weekend? He did. Wow…
Lisa had been one of our main group through high school and into the second year of university. Then she fell off. Wrong guy, wrong drugs, miscarriage, mom and dad died, which all pulled her apart and she disappeared. I hadn’t heard anyone mention her in two, maybe three years. There was gossip, and Marie was pulling it all out now. How Lisa had gone to rehab. Become a nun. A scientologist. Then probably prison. More drugs. Crime. Murdered families and raped some farm animals. The dark arts. Satan. Who knew. Marie always had an issue with Lisa, so I knew she was trying to manipulate all of our impressions of her prior to her arrival. If she was to arrive.
Which, I was hoping to see her. Lisa and I always smoked joints in high school at lunch time in the baseball diamond and had some good laughs. Always got along well with her. I hoped she would come, if only for Marie to squirm a little.
We stopped for gas and I blew through one of the two papes. That’d last me until dinner and I zoned out the last hour of the drive. We got to the cottage and Petey was there with his brother Wes, and their girlfriends Sophie and Mal. Amy arrived just after us. That appeared to be all who was coming this year. Unless Lisa showed. Petey said he was pretty sure she wasn’t, but had given a ‘maybe.’ I watched Marie entertain a slow-motion aneurysm again.
We tapped the keg and started the barbecue. Burgers, dogs, steaks, zucchini and other bullshit veggies with a salad. I ate like five of everything else. Then I got so high after dinner that I passed the joint to the dog. And he smoked it. Then I realized there wasn’t a dog here, and I was talking to a pillow shaped like a Christmas tree. And it now had a burn mark in the centre of it, from me. Ah shit. Can’t take me anywhere.
Anyways. I flipped the pillow over.
Drinking games started, and I got teamed up with Stilts. He carried our team to the finals despite not really seeing the top of the table. Music played, we danced, reminisced, laughed, drank, smoked.
Then headlights came through the kitchen window. The music drowned out and we all thought the same thing. We peeked outside like the Scooby gang.
A small sedan was parking. Its headlights shut off. The driver side door opened, and a short, hooded girl got out. A cigarette amber burned from inside the hood. She grabbed a bag from the back seat and walked towards us. As she got closer, the amber lit her face.
It was Lisa. Oh thank God, this is gonna send Marie into hysterics. I wanted to be the first to hug and welcome her in, but she had a strange, unapproachable vibe about her. She had dark circles under her eyes, her face was thin, malnourished.
Her eyes lifted, matching ours. And for a moment, I thought she was gonna flick her cig at us, but instead a smile crooked across her lips. She said, “What’s up motherfuckers?” And with that, the tension eased, and it was like we were back in high school. We got absolutely, fucking obliterated over the next hour on tequila and keg beer. I lit the baseball bat sized joint I’d rolled and we passed it around until it was the size of a normal sized joint. By that time, everyone else had pulled their shoots on it, so it was just me free-falling. All the way to the end.
The night was starting to wind down, when Marie, seeing everyone’s acceptance of Lisa, tried to finally iceberg her. She asked where Lisa had been for the last few years.
Lisa was honest, said she’d spent some time in rehab, came out, got back into drugs, but managed to get clean for awhile. Now she uses sparingly. But with a newfound purpose.
In rehab, she’d met a man. Not romantically, just a deep, platonic friendship. He was older, in his fifties. A veteran who’d lost his family to a drunk driver while he was overseas in Syria. His name was Frank Wilkins, and he introduced Lisa to cliff jumping. Now, she wasn’t referring to the physical act of jumping off cliffs into lakes while cottaging.
‘Cliff Jumping’ was the street name for the act of flatlining yourself by intentionally overdosing on fentanyl, and then having someone shoot you full of Naloxone to bring you back from the dead. The knife’s edge, was how long you stayed under. More than a few seconds, and the Narcan taking the opioid off the receptor won’t do a damn thing, and you won’t wake up.
So why do it? According to Frank, it was beautiful to be dead. The man had done it so many times… he could contact the other side. Time lasts forever there. Only being gone for 3 seconds felt like two lifetimes. He was able to hold his family again. He reminisced about it in the open sessions at the clinic.
When the two finished rehab, they were close friends, and Lisa wanted to try cliff jumping. Lisa described death in detail and said it was beautiful. Is beautiful. Then she said something that made us all go dead sober. Even me. And I had two joints lit and was sharing one with the dog again.
Lisa said she’d been contacting Leah in the afterlife.
Leah was Lisa’s twin sister who’d died freshmen year in high school. I had the biggest crush on her and even asked her to the winter formal. She’d refused in spectacular fashion, which ruined my self-esteem and confidence for years.
Sad thing was, only a few weeks later, she’d committed suicide by drinking a bottle of bleach and walking into a lake in the middle of January. The family was rocked by the news and the school made wristbands with her name on it out of her favourite colours. It presented a horrible foreshadowing of the tragedy the Warren family would become in the following years.
Lisa was the only one left. And it didn’t seem like she was trying to keep it that way.
I felt bad for her. I’d never known anyone who had their own, personal storm cloud that followed them around their entire lives, charging up and firing down on them methodically. But still, she always had a little smirk on her face. And it let you know she was up for some fun, in whichever form that came.
I realized I was hoping her and I would smoke a joint down on the dock at the end of the night, just like the baseball diamond. Even if we didn’t talk, it felt like keeping that minor tradition going, at least for another year, was somehow important now.
I then realized I zoned the fuck out of the conversation, and saw that Lisa had pulled out a small toiletries bag. Oh shit… two plastic baggies. Both with white powder in them. A ready-made Naloxone shot.
She wanted to cliff jump. Here. Now.
Petey and Wes stood up quick. They weren’t having this. But Lisa didn’t back down. She started talking about Leah. About the things she’d been told. The truth about what happened to her sister. Why she walked into the lake.
Then Lisa dropped a bomb… she said that because she’d built up such a strong connection with Leah’s spirit in the afterlife, that Leah could use Lisa’s body to talk, even move around, while she was flatlined. This was what she wanted to show us.
Okay… how fucking high am I? I know I’ve had a lit spliff in my lips for the last six consecutive years, but was I hearing this all correctly?
Marie wasn’t happy, and said Lisa should leave. It didn’t feel safe with her here. Lisa said that was ironic, based off what Leah’s soul had told her about the suicide.
Everyone went quiet. Lisa said it was Marie that started the rumour.
The rumour. Shit, that’s right. The rumour that sent Leah over the edge. I felt sick to my stomach thinking about it. A rumour had started that Leah was responsible for a string of gonorrhoea cases that shot through the basketball team. It had mostly happened over Christmas break, and this was back in the MSN days, so lines of communication weren’t as broad. The rumour spread and by the time school started in January, it might as well have been carved in stone as truth.
Leah lasted one week before skipping out on school, sick, and another week at home before giving up entirely. No one ever knew who started the rumour.
Marie denied it, of course, saying she was Leah’s best friend and loved her and yada yada. It all sounded so phoney. But Lisa was worked up and getting aggressive. Petey and Wes held her back and told her to go for a walk to cool down. They eventually got her out of the cottage, and we all decided to call it a night. I told them I’d wait up for her to get back from her walk.
This was my chance. I had three L papers left, so I figured I’d toast one and watch some shit on my phone while I waited for her. Then we could hit the dock.
A half hour passed. The spliff burned down, my cell died, and I fell asleep.
I was out cold, sleeping the sleep of the undead pothead, but was woken up by that annoying, generic iphone alarm. Then I remembered my cell had died. Whose phone was ringing?
I rolled over on the couch, and saw a body laying on the floor beside me. It was laying still, arms and legs at the sides.
It was Lisa. The cell phone on her chest, alarm still ringing, having been set for three minutes. I could hear movement in the bedrooms. People waking up at the sound of the chiming.
Then I noticed what was beside the phone on her chest. The ready-made shot of Naloxone.
Oh shit. She cliff jumped and set the alarm for me to wake up.
Stilts rolled into the room, Petey, Wes, Sophie and Mel behind him. Lights flicked on and they all saw what I was staring at.
Lisa was dead. Stilts was the first to see the Naloxone and her drug bag beside her, and realized what she’d done. He threw himself onto the floor, grabbing the shot and jabbing her with it.
Lisa shot back to life, coming face to face with Stilts. His eyes went wide. His mouth opened. It was like he received an electric shock. He fell back, Petey and Davis helping him back up to this wheelchair.
Lisa laid on the ground, shaking and covered in sweat. She was terrified, and mumbling something. Something like “That wasn’t Leah… that wasn’t her…”
Sophie yelled that they needed to get Lisa to the hospital, she might go back into opiate overdose depending on the size of dose she took. Petey and Davis wrapped her in a blanket and helped her up. Sophie joined them as they left on the forty five minute drive to the hospital.
The rest of us - me, Wes, Amy, Marie, Mal - were like statues in the living room. No one really knew what to do. Do we stay up? Wait for them to get back? The general consensus was to go back to bed. Which Stilts had already done. In fact, he’d been quiet and strange since he’d brought Lisa back from the dead.
Once again, I was alone in the living room. I was far too awake now, so I decided to go for a walk and smoke the second last L paper.
What a fucking night. I played through it all as I walked the property. I wished my cell hadn’t died, so I could listen to music. But the gentle breeze gave the woods their own, natural symphony that played over the images I was replaying.
Waking up to see Lisa beside me, dead, was something that would haunt me. And deep down I knew, maybe it should.
As I was smoking, I realized this was the sativa, not the indica. Shit. I was gonna be wide-eyed for the next two hours at least. Even if I smoked the final spliff I had, which was the indica, I was gonna be tossing and turning for the next few hours. Ah well. Maybe I’ll just sleep all day tomorrow. They can go out on the water and shit. I’ll just stay in bed for the morning.
I started to make my way back to the cottage, now wide awake. I was thinking about the food from last night I could still tear into. There were plenty of leftovers in portable enough containers to bring to my room. Alright, that’s it. I’m gonna make a feast and bring it to bed and share some with the dog.
The cottage was coming into view, and I could see the dock and boathouse from where I was. But… someone walked out, carrying what looked like a jerry can. He was tall and slim and… whoa, it was Stilts. He was walking up the path towards the cottage. Wait… how was he walking? How high am I? He was crippled, right? He was in a wheelchair earlier. And like, years earlier too. But… he was taking the stairs easily. His strides were huge, three steps up at a time.
I didn’t call out. There was something so foreign about his movements. So smooth, unnatural. But I did move forward, just watched, ducking into the trees and stepping lightly to avoid detection.
What was he doing? Why the jerry can? What would he need gas for up at the cottage? My heart started racing and my high turned bad. Real bad. I played worst case scenario in my head, and that jolted my pace.
Stilts disappeared inside the cottage just as I was getting to the driveway. I ducked down, moving between the cars, up to the siding. I peeked in the kitchen window. It was dark and quiet. Everything seemed to be peaceful and well.
Then a bedroom light turned on. And another.
Stilts walked through the living room, dousing it with the contents of the jerry can. He moved into the kitchen, covering the walls and pulling out a lighter.
Wes and Mal rushed into the kitchen, covered in whatever Stilts had been dumping around the house.
Stilts sparked the lighter. I yelled the word “Don’t!”
They all looked out at me from the kitchen. Then Stilts lit the floor. Within seconds, the kitchen and all three of them were completely engulfed. Stilts’ legs gave out quickly, and he started to scream.
I felt the heat melt my eyelashes and I fell back onto the grass. I watched as the cottage was overtaken with a roaring blaze in seconds. The distant screams of Amy and Sophie in their rooms were overtaken by the engine like furnace that was incinerating the cottage. Stilts had done an incredible job, I hate to say. He must have covered every room. There was no stopping this inferno.
The smoke and heat were getting to me, and I stumbled down to the dock to dunk my face. I had no keys, no wallet, no cell phone, no nothing. All I had was another L paper, and a naked lady zippo. I wish the dog was here. Hopefully it got out before the fire started.
The water felt good. I dunked my whole head and rubbed my face in it. I sat on the edge of the dock, numb, in a haze of reefer, and sparked the last L paper. What else was I supposed to do? The nearest neighbour was about six miles away. All there was to do, was wait. I smoked and watched the gradient of the sky change from dark blue to orange as the sun began to peek. This would have been so nice to share with Lisa. Though, I didn’t want to turn around to see how high the flames were going.
I started thinking about the fire department and police eventually arriving, and the questions I’d have to answer. I didn’t even know where to start. Well Officer, our friend was killing herself to contact the soul of her dead sister, who revealed a horrible truth that’d long been silenced, and then turned out it wasn’t actually the soul of her sister but was something tricking her that was far more evil, which used our friend to explode into our reality in an act of random, savage violence. Yes, you’re right, I do reek of weed, Officer.
However it would all land, who knew… I was gonna finish this last spliff and see where the morning went.
The one thing I knew for sure, even before Lisa had mentioned it, was that wasn’t her sister’s soul she’d contacted and been communicating with. Whoever she was talking to, had said it was Marie who was responsible for the rumour about Leah, and thus, her suicide. And that’s not true.
I started the rumour.
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