I’ve reached the antipenultimate word on my list of random words which I created to use as a trigger to write. What I mean is the word before penultimate, #18 in my list of 20 and that word is ‘Lake’. A couple of years ago in the writing group, our challenge was to write about a lake, and I imagined a sinister body of water called Crime Lake, somewhere in the Peak District. There is an actual lake named that in Daisy Nook Country Park in Oldham, but my body of water was completely imaginary. In fact a crime did take place in my lake, a nineteenth century vicar murdered his adulterous wife.
Back to my challenge, Lake. I confess I was stumped and this delayed me starting #18 for a while until I gave myself a talking to, and just started.
Here’s the beginning – and as I mentioned yesterday, settings seem to have changed here on WordPress so I can’t present it as I would like
There’s something creepy about the lake, I don’t like it. Maybe I have seen too many films where strange things happen by, on, or in lakes. I had a friend who had a strange terror of enclosed water – like between two lock gates on a canal, or even the canal itself as it was enclosed between the two banks – and ultimately between lock gates. She had a mortal fear of it, but a strange fascination at the same time. She often wrote about it, especially poems, and I believe, although I don’t know for a fact, that she dreamt of it. I sometimes feared she might one day drown herself in a lock, but no, no she didn’t – however she did, years later, take her own life in a small room in a locked house.
I’ve been to other lakes, been on other lakes in motor boats, little and bigger motor cruisers, I’ve paddled a canoe, been taken in a rowing boat on lakes, I’ve paddled and swum in lakes, but not this lake. We had turned off the forest road and driven down a sandy track which wound its way through the dark coniferous trees, down to a little inlet where a stream trickled its way into the larger body of water.
I guess I’d been happy and excited when the trip was planned, water is my element, by it and on it and in it, as Ratty said to Mole. But as we bumped round the last corner of the track and I saw the oily black expanse stretching out half a mile or so across to the opposite shore, I felt a lurch of horror and my throat clenched as if I was going to vomit. It felt like the vehicle had bucked and jumped as if it too was recoiling. The others called out – not in alarm but because we were jerked and lurched, and I may have screamed and the others laughed.
We skidded to a bumpy stop and there was the usual kerfuffle of gathering bags and jackets and checking we had everything. As I stretched to grab my backpack I noticed my hand was shaking – idiot!
“Are you ok?” one of the guides asked me.
“Yeah, sure, I just get a little travel sick sometimes, I’m fine now we’ve stopped!”
She didn’t look convinced so I added that I didn’t ever get seasick, which is true and all the time I was trying to keep my back to the lake, but I could feel it behind me, dark and sinister and menacing.
Lois Elsden 