The Girl in the Lake

There are stories I've been told since I was a little girl. Tales passed down from generation to generation of a ghost that haunts the lake. I used to think that my Grandma lied. In the days when she would have me trail her around her garden. Cutting down the willow to make me a broomstick or helping me hop skip and jump over the stream. I can still remember the soft gingham caress of her skirts and the cough that would always catch in her throat.

"Stay away from the water," she would warn me, "when the nights stretch longer than the days, stay away from the water."

I didn't listen, of course! I wonder now if she knew. I was one of those children that would gravitate immediately towards whatever they were forbidden to do. I was that child. The one that kicks the tower of blocks, puts pebbles up their noses and climbs the tallest trees, just because they can. An experimenter. An impulsive wildling of the forest.

So, the lake called to me. It pulled me towards it like we were two halves of a broken magnet. I waded in its shallow edges and tossed leaves to the birds. Towards the end of autumn, it became a bare barren place. The tree-lined perimeter made up of empty sticks. One of my favourite things to do being to break off their limbs and test them in the water. Soon, I discovered that there was a mystery to the lake. One that even then I feared to test. Although the first few metres of the shore were shallow, there was a sudden drop, where clumpy masses of pond-weed clung to my sticks and swallowed them up.

For a long time them, my trips were limited to rebellious forages. I would come home carrying mushrooms. My Grandma called them interesting names like Deadman's fingers and Beefsteak fungus. Her stern eyes would spotlight me behind the thick frames of her spectacles and she would mutter stark warnings about never underestimating nature, all the while cradling the specimens tenderly. The next year I took baskets with me and filled them to the brim.

I'd passed thirteen summers before I ventured a step too far. I had filled my baskets early and my head was filled with idle dreams and angry thoughts. There was something in my blood that year that fizzed. A feeling that wouldn't be contained by chairs and classrooms or by dry and dreary books. The curiosity of that child, that I had thought long left behind returned in force. I thought back to those tales of the lake and wondered if there really was a ghost, haunting the depths.

Behind half closed doors I had heard whispered arguments. Some called me stubborn, others a scientist. All I knew, was that there was a curiosity within me that had to be tested.

I broke off a branch from a dying tree, surprised by the snap of the sturdy wood. Carefully and methodically I tested the water, until I was teasing the weeds with the sharp stick. This time, when they snagged and strangled, I planted my own feet, feeling them sink slowly into the oozing mud. It was a still night with a clear sky. The stars clear above an evening mist. I could see the full moon, reflected in the water. I pulled, as hard as I could. With all my might I fought the weeds that sucked me further into sludge.

I poured all of my anger and bubbling frustration into the endeavour, until suddenly, with a backlash that sent me backwards and landed me in the water, wet up to my knees and fingers dripping with mud, the weeds came unstuck. Triumphantly, I hauled my dirty stick into the air. The mass of weeds wound around it like a sea-slug. I threw it, javelin like, across the pond. It landed flat, with a smack, and slowly sank back into the water.

Crawling forwards, the ends of my hair now dipped and damp, I approached the window in the weeds that I had created. A few remnant strands of the stuff remained silhouetted, but the moonlight broke through gladly, revealing more shafts of light that dwelled further in. A figure dwelled there. Pale and still. She stood before a circle of stacked white stones, a circle half broken. Whoever had crafted her had done so with love. The elegant tilt of her hand, the slight gap between her lips. Even her hair seemed as though it were frozen alive. Caught in a swirl behind her, as though she had been running and captured in a photograph.

I did something then, that still now I struggle to explain. Instead of retreating, satisfied with my discovery, I pulled a deep breath into my lungs and dove into the water. Did I want to find proof that she wasn't real? Did I want to test it for myself. I swam deeper and deeper into those depths.

Soon, I realised that the water wasn't just cold, it was freezing. Literally so. My extremities quickly grew numb and frost formed on my eyebrows and skin. Could this girl have fallen into the lake and been frozen? I reached out and grasped my fingers around her shoulder. Instantly, they grew colder still. Thick ice formed, locking us together. I would have panicked - I'm sure - but my mind was too occupied with the sudden stream of images that flowed into it. I saw this girl at school, at home, in the arms of her father. I heard her gurgling laugh and high pitched squeals as she played with her friends. I knew that she loved gingerbread and the smell lemons and fresh cut grass.

For a while, we were as one. I felt my breathing slow. My eyes began to drift close. Then suddenly there was another figure in the water. Old and bronzed, with strange scales upon its skin - yet oddly familiar. I felt their arms surround me and warmth spread through my body. We rose together to the surface in a stream of bubbles, leaving the statue of the girl behind.

I never found her again.