The Lake

Prologue

1952

As the children swam, the lake was still. It bore an excitement so extreme it was not only palpable, but tangible. You could reach out and touch it. Yet it was still. The children, they were wading through it. They could not recognise it, but it was there. With every paddle, with every stroke, all serving to increase the excitement of the lake. It pulsated. Only a little bit, a very silent, subtle pulse, but it was there.

The children felt themselves grow tired, which wasn't unusual. They were children, they had been playing all day, and the sun was burning especially hot. It was summer, and they had come to expect the hot weather. This was hot even for summer, and as the children jumped in all their sweat eased off into the water. All it did was increase the lake's excitement.

So as the kids grew tired and weary, believing themselves to have been playing and swimming for hours, the truth was, it hadn't been more than fifteen minutes. Without the benefit of a watch between the lot of them there was no way for them to know. And as they swam, and swam, and as their legs and arms continued to grow weary, they each succumbed to the lake, sinking like stones, dead as the dried leaves on the bank. The children never went home that night. Hard to go home when you're dead. They had a new home, at the bottom of that lake. They left behind families that would never know what happened to their young ones. Homes that would be missing the laughter they brought in every night.

But even so, the lake hadn't yet had its fill. In fact, It had barely begun.