The sounds of Water

The Sound of Water

To Violet, the sound started off as pleasant as a whisper could, and in a way, a calming one. It would drift in and out of her ears and mind effortlessly. When she first started to hear it, Violet didn’t know that the soft sound only came at her loneliest times.

Violet had a loving, and good life. Her father and mother were separated, but both loved each other in different ways. They never found the right string to use for their tin-cup phone lines, stretching from her world to theirs. That was what ended their relationship, and luckily or not, it had all happened while Violet was in her mother’s belly.

But that never stopped them from loving Violet and providing in every way she needed. She grew up in her house happy, sometimes sad, but mostly always happy. They had lived in a small city in the north-eastern part of the United States. It was a place like many around it that once had business and charm, a spirit and strong middle class. Now, it lacked all those things, and had haunting reminders of when life was better, in it’s abandoned factories and closed shops.

Many towns that lost their spirit when the business outgrew them found soul in other things. For Violets city, that was their high school football, or football in general. Violet never really cared about football, or many sports that most people seemed to be interested in around her. Yet she loved watching football, and baseball. To her it was the celebration of it all that made it worthwhile, especially if their team won. Times like those, when the people around her were focused on one thing, their breath heal in unison, those lasted infinitely to her. Reflected effortlessly in her mind, those times made family feel more like family. She didn’t know why that was, maybe it was the constant barrage of the perfect social woman, displayed bright on seemingly every screen. What mattered was that it felt good and made her feel a part of something bigger than herself. In the end, that may be what everyone truly wants.

Violet loved that small city, and she purchased a house back in the boundaries of it when she could. She loved it because it held a secret for her, one that she held dearer than all other memories the town held for her. The secret was a tiny lake, hidden in the old steel factories grounds. The factory had been abandoned since the early 1990’s when the company found cheaper employment in other countries.

It was on a night when she had just been fired from her latest job. As soon as she pressed open the restaurants glass doors, her manager had called her back into the kitchen. When Violet followed her through, she was greeted by the owner, who was “sad” to inform her that she had to let her go. It did not matter how hard she worked, if she wasn’t reliable to be here every day when expected, she could not work here. Violet wanted desperately to explain that she called off yesterday because she was trying one last attempt to save her failing relationship. Her boss wouldn’t understand, Violet wasn’t exactly sure her boss understood love, let alone held in above her job.

Even Violet had been able to explain her side of the situation, would she even have had the courage too? She knew herself well enough to know she was more of a wallflower than a person-flower. She was a violet, after all. There were times when being a young, quiet, hard-working girl was pleasant, and rewarding. Violet was lucky enough to have had that experience when she was young, working for the local library. Those situations are rare for women, especially in a town like hers, in a state like hers.

Violet had what she liked to call off-talent. She was a gifted creator, and the creations often took form in music, and art. But in an old steel-town, the things that prospered were not creative. They were cold, dangerous machines. They were Owners of business who had lost their soul. They were hastily built shells, stuffed with overpriced generic items. No, the small city that Violet had moved back to did not nurture a creative spirit. Violet knew she could beat that, break that stigma. That may have been a reason she decided to move back, aside from the odd yearning to be close to that lake.

That night she expected to work a full 8-hour shift, so being cut about 7 hours and forty-five minutes short was quite jarring. With all that time left in the night, Violet decided to go for a ride, and find somewhere nice to relax and have a smoke. It was nothing but a whim that she saw the rusted gates of the steel factory hanging limply open.

Violet turned into the gravel road and made her way to the buildings, seeing a road branch off into the dark. It was the only road that didn’t lead to one of other building on the compound, and one light glimmered weakly in the middle of it. The road looked a little ominous at night, Violet thought. The thought was not urgent enough to keep her from driving down the road though, making sure her car was locked.

At the end of the road was another weak light post, splashing over a lonely dock at the edge of a small lake. Violet gasped when she saw it at first, it’s silent beauty. What secrets could this old lake tell, what stories it held. Violet was overcome with the possibilities of it all. It was staring at that lake, looking out at the sorrowful Cattails, and mournful Buttonbushes, that she first heard the whispers.

When Violet first heard that sound, it was beautiful and wondrous. It was the sound of freedom, of the wild beauty of nature. It was the sound of water. That first time the sound filled her mind it sounded angelic. It washed away her anxiety and stress of the night and calmed her. Soft, melodic notes danced in her mind; soft voices accompanied them in perfect harmony.

It was the lake speaking to her, she knew. The lake wasn’t telling her it’s tales yet, it was just reaching out. Like Violet, the lake was lonely. Hidden among the world with only memories for its companions. A thought came cutting through her mind, this wasn’t the first time she had been here!

Memories of her childhood broke through the sounds in her head, Violet used to spend her summer days here, fishing with her father. She remembered all those times he tried to teach her how to bait a hook, or how to gut a fish. After about the third time, Violet remembered with a giggle, she knew perfectly what he was explaining. Her father was a kind man, and an excellent teacher, but he was rather excessive at re-explaining things to her. That was probably just the father in him, she guessed.

She reminded herself that she needed to go visit them soon, her parents. It was true she had moved back to her childhood town but finding time to visit her family was harder than she thought it would be. Even being this close to him.

Violet slowly began to understand that she heard these sounds even when not at the lake, at times when she was always sad. Whether it was coincidence or not, she had never got back to that lake, after she had rediscovered it.

That thought brought her immediately back to the present, as she stepped over a fallen branch in the dirt road. There was a storm raging all around her, or the remnants of what had been one. Storms like what had just happened don’t really occur here, thought Violet. How could they when the towns at the foot of the mountains?

The storm started as suddenly as any she had ever witnessed. Winds began to howl, and rain came pelting down in brutal sheets. Lighting popped in and out of the night, momentarily freezing life. Earlier that night it was a bolt of lightning that split the huge old tree in her front yard in almost half. The giant piece that shattered off landed on Violet’s living room roof, crushing the front window.

Violet had been in the bathroom when the sound of the lightning snapped into her mind. The sound that followed was a sound so wretched it would have struck fear into anyone. Anxiety and adrenaline surged through her body, and she ran out into the destruction.

The sounds of water hadn’t seeped into her mind since her father’s funeral, two months ago. On the day of his funeral, looking at his peaceful, life-less face, she had thought she beat it once and for all. She knew it was coming in crushing waves, and she prepared herself for it. So, when the time came, and those whispering sounds came crashing around her skull, she stood bravely. Outside that day she looked calm, and sorrowful. But inside she was slowly winning the battle against those sad, lonely noises.

They had not taken her by surprise this time, and she was ready with the safeguarding questions of her own. The kind that kept her grounded, and in this moment. Those sounds eventually faded out of existence, as did that lurking knowledge of the lake. They came back with the storm, matching its intensity.

When the huge piece of oak crushed part of her house, Violet heard the water’s slithering sounds clear as day. The image of that forlorn lake struck clean in her mind, but it was different that she remembered it. It might have been the d storm that was ripping through the town, but this memory felt shallow. Something urged Violet to go see the lake, one last time. There was a detail in that memory that didn’t seem right, so hauntingly simple.

A tree she had never noticed before, in the middle of the lake. It had earth around it barely big enough to contain the boulder of roots. Something like that would have been the centerpiece of a memory about a lake. So why did Violet not remember ever seeing it before?

The pull of the voices, the need to ferret out the memories lies was so strong to Violet that she at once left for the old lake. She ran outside and started up her beat up, old, Chevrolet Spark. She swerved over fallen branches and trashcans as she reversed out of her driveway and headed for the steel factory.

She wasn’t consciously concerned for her wellbeing, not right now anyways the voices and sounds of the water were so strong, she knew they were trying to tell her something. As she drove into the night, her silent drive was stopped short by the now-locked rusted gate.

It hung limply to its side, putting more pressure on the padlock than it deserved. Violet grabbed the gate and threw her legs over, spotting the dark road ahead of her. The two light poles that guarded the road from the blackness were flickering with power. She started into an easy jog, focused only on making it to the lake.

Minutes went by, and all she could hear was her rhythmic breathing and the luring mumbles of the voices. The sounds morphed into a babbling brook, then a raging waterfall. It would crash into the sound of a breaking wave and recede almost to silence, like the wake. As Violet came upon the lake, slightly out of breath, she gasped.

The storm had died down to an eerie breeze, and a fog hung like a thick jacket across the lake’s shoulders. Where it’s solemn head should have been was the lone tree, surrounded by the black water.

It was a sad sight, the sad tree encircled by something it needed so vitally, and yet the water was the reason it was alone. Violet felt the tree's isolation, she understood it's pain. Slowly she began to walk into the water, un-phased by its frigid temperature.

The voices and sounds in her head were so loud now, as if she laid her head on the tracks of a train and listened to it scream closer. The sight of the tree stark against the bright, stormy sky pounded in her head. Violet wanted to badly to reach out and touch its bark, to smell it leaves.

This tree was the tales and stories of the lake; she knew that now. It was all there, on that tiny island with its solitary tree. So, Violet strode into the water, willingly, and excitedly.

The lake’s monstrous jaws happily greeted her, as Violet wade into its depths. The cold, clear water rose to her stomach. Her clothes clung tightly to her cold, soaked body. The icy water hit her shoulder blades, sending a chilling current through spine up to her head. The last thing that flowed into Violet’s mind was a bright, clean light. It was so vibrant there was nothing she could do but smile as her eyes clasped painfully shut.

The bubbles that popped on the still lake’s surface later that night broke its weary tension. The subtle waves that traveled across its surface moved freely to the banks. Oddly, none of those tiny waves hit the small island. In the middle of the lake sat nothing, only black, cold water. The bubbles did not last forever.

Violet was never heard from again. And so the lake remained calm and tranquil, pushing its current back and forth, waiting. She was not the only girl who saw the tree in the lake, and she would not be the last.