Mirror Lake

My friend Georgie and I were bestfriends we moved in almost at the same time 4 years ago, our houses were built close to Mirror Lake, and our families were very close. We would get together with the neighborhood folks on the first Sunday of every month and all the adults would bring out their kitchen tables, string them together to make one very long table, and all the folks would bring all of the chairs they could find to seat all 78 of our friends and neighbors residing in the area. All the women would get together and plan a feast for an army, while all the men sat around the lake fishing, drinking beer, and telling wild tales about the month before. We had roast chicken, barbequed ribs, brisket, grilled fish and all the fixins like mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, baked beans, corn on the cob, salad with tomatoes from momma's garden, and the best home made biscuits anywhere, with sweet cream butter! I looked forward to that Sunday every month. Us kids were told to get out from under foot and go play, Georgie and I were the same age and our birthdays were exactly one month apart to the day. I was turning 11 years old on the 7th of the next month and he the month after, and we were very excited because I would get my favorite cake (which is German Chocolate) for mine, and he would get his favorite pie (which is Cherry). We didn't care that I was a whole month older, we were bestfriends and did everything together, including our birthdays, we celebrated each one with the other, just like it was ours...even if it wasn't.

We were running down by the lake laughing and having a great time, when Georgie ran through the bushes toward the lake, I was about 15 feet behind him when all of a sudden I heard Georgie yell "NOOOO!" so I ran through the bushes and thought he had gone into the water, but I knew that Georgie didn't really know how to swim, so I figured he was just messin' and he must be hiding someplace in the bush, and the water was moving around in the lake so I figured he threw a rock in, to make me think he went in, so I started calling out "Georgie!, come out, quit messin' with me!" and I ran all around, in and through them bushes, for a good 10 minutes looking for him, but he wasn't there, so I figured he must have ran back home. I ran through the bushes and a short distance to where the tables were and started looking around for Georgie, but I didn't see him there so I went to his house and asked his mom if he was in his room and she told me to go check, that she hadn't seen him. He wasn't there either, so I ran back outside and started asking others if they saw him around, and everyone had the same answer, nobody knew where he was. I decided to look down by the lake once more, so I went back to where I last saw him, went down by the water and standing at the edge, looked into the lake, and as I looked into the water at my own reflection, I saw Georgie looking back at me! I started screaming "Georgie! Georgie!" as I reached into the water to try and pull him out...and I felt his hands reach up, grab me and pull me under...the look on his face was strangely morbid, like it wasn't him, and he didn't look human...he pulled me closer and as he did his eyes turned completely black, I screamed under the water, and suddenly I woke up on the shore. I was pulled from the water by my dad and I was quite frantically flailing and screaming from what my mother told me. They never found Georgie, and when I tried to tell them what happened they thought I went crazy and drown him. His parents were convinced I was the devil and the judge committed me to this sanitarium 4 hours outside of town and I have been here every since, I am now 15. I have never gotten over what I saw that day and I still have vivid nightmares almost every night. Two years ago I learned from a past resident who was now a staff member that 22 years ago an 11 year old girl named Shirley Downey drown in the lake under suspicious circumstances, and they never found her body, since then 11 kids have disappeared in that very spot at the lake, and every time there was a common theme, the Childs friend was also pulled from the water after seeing their friend at the bottom of the lake...they were all within weeks of turning 11...and none of them lived longer than 11 days. The authorities blamed it on a whirlpool creating a vacuum effect in that area and cordoned off the lake from that day forward, nobody ever believed me...except for Jane. She worked at the sanitarium, she was Shirley's bestfriend and the only other one to survive.