Story Spotlight: “By Still Waters” by P. D. Cacek
In P. D. Cacek’s “By Still Waters,” a son drives his aging father to a funeral—and straight into the dark heart of a secret that’s been drowning them both for decades. What begins as a quiet act of duty becomes something far more unsettling, as rain falls, memory shifts, and still water reveals what was never meant to surface.
Boyd has spent years caring for his father, a Vietnam veteran whose mind is slowly unraveling. A funeral brings them to a rain-soaked afternoon where the old man’s war stories take on a terrible new weight—not the ramblings of dementia, but confessions. As the boundary between past and present dissolves, Boyd begins to see what his father has always seen: the faces in still water, waiting.
“We just stood there staring at the puddle and then this M.P. ran up and asked what happened and we looked up…just for a second, but when we looked down again the M.P. was kneeling next to Link’s body. The M.P. asked us what happened, but we just stood there looking at Link. He was lying face down in the puddle, like he’d just tripped and fell…” His father’s hand tightened on Boyd’s leg. “We saw them pull him down, Jessup and I saw it, but his clothes were dry except for where they touched the puddle. His clothes were dry. The M.P. turned him over and tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late. He kept asking what happened but by then there were so many other guys around he forgot about us. Don’t know what they said on his death certificate, maybe that he was drunk or high, and Link was both a lot of the time, and passed out into a puddle and drowned.”
About the Author
P. D. is the author of over 200 short stories, and has won both a World Fantasy Award and a Bram Stoker Award for her short fiction. She’s written six novels: Night Prayers, Canyons, Night Players, The Wind Caller, The Selkie, Second Lives and the follow-up novel, Second Chances.
“Horror is an emotion, something that reaches past all the barriers and finds the one dark corner of our self-image that has not grown up. Horror doesn’t have to include dismemberments or gushing wounds or ancient demons dredged up by a new housing development. Anything, even a simple evening’s walk, can be horrific if you look at it the right way…and I do.”
Cacek’s latest novel is Sebastian, from Flame Tress Publishing.
Find P. D. at her page on Wikipedia
Read the Story
You can find “Story” in the Haunted Waters anthology.
Buy the book from your favorite store
If you liked…
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien—for its unflinching look at war’s long shadow
- Jacob’s Ladder (1990 film)—for its blurred line between trauma and the supernatural
- Pet Sematary by Stephen King—for its exploration of grief, guilt, and what refuses to stay buried
…then you’ll enjoy “By Still Waters,” a story about what war does to the people who survive it—and the people who love them. Some hauntings aren’t curses. They’re consequences.