There’s an urban legend in my town of a lake where people drown. It’s a hotly debated topic whether folks go there to drown by their own volition, or if the lake itself somehow drowns them. The unassuming body of water has a real name, which I nor anyone else can remember, but people have taken to calling it Dead Lake.
“The Dead Lake draws people in like moths to a flame,” is what the spiffy post office clerk I met at a bar once told me.
“It’s like that Japanese suicide forest. Some people drowned there, and then it sorta created a Streisand-effect where other suicidal people would go there to die,” said some wispy university-type at a cafe.
“It’s The Devil. It’s always The Devil,” said my aunt Shirley, who seems to think that everything outside the church is The Devil (Trademark of Satan Incorporated).
I knew they were all full of shit. I’m not bragging, but… I kinda sorta swim in Dead Lake all the time. It’s actually a really cute spot, and I’m grateful for its tarnished reputation - thanks to the legend, I got to swim in it all by myself.
I like to go there on those summer days that begin with sweat and end with even more sweat. It’s a place to cool off from the heat, and to an extent, from the frightful idiots of our town. I’m the Queen of Dead Lake, fuckers! I swim in the blood of the perished, I used to think when the topic came up. Rabies-ridden buncha hoo-haas!
But I guess there’s only so much to talk about in a town where there’s nothing to talk about. It gives people here some sense of permanence: there’s the factory on Grover Street, where everyone works, Duck’s, the bar owned by a man who is called Duck (but never calls himself that, giving the name of the establishment an aura of small town peer-pressure), and of course, Dead Lake, where all those unnamed, unknown people go and (or to) drown.
So – as Halloween was soon approaching, the legend picked up steam once again. Everyone seemed to mention Dead Lake in every little conversation they had - about how you should not go there at night, or at day, or ever, actually. How the spirits of the dead walk on the water, which my aunt vehemently insisted was The Devil’s blasphemy of Jesus and God herself. How it’s cursed, and then double-cursed, and then the witches and the satanists would triple-curse it once more and sacrifice babies under the blood moon.
All this spookiness gave me an idea: what if I went for a midnight swim on Hallow’s Eve?
Surely if the lake was Dead Lake and not just a lake, this was the time to experience it. And who knows, maybe there was some part of me that did want to drown; some sick, upside-down theory that I could escape the horrors of boredom in my silly little town via death by drowning.
Incidentally, nothing more important came up, so I decided to do just that.
When that spoo-oOoky October day came, I told my parents I’d be trick-or-treating with friends until late at night. There was so little to do that it wasn’t uncommon for even high schoolers to dress up and moan for candy - an easy and obvious alibi.
I put on regular, not-spooky clothes, and on my head a pair of glittery horns. I told my parents I was The Devil as I stretched my tongue out of my mouth and made horn symbols with my hands. They chuckled, but told me to avoid aunt Shirley. “She’ll think we’re the parents of the devil,” mom said with a smirk, “and that would take at least six months of church going to fix.”
To be fair, my alibi wasn’t a complete lie. I went out around 7 PM, met up with a couple of friends, Sarah and Jake (dressed as red riding hood and the big bad wolf, respectively), and we tricked and treated for a few hours until we amassed hefty bags of candy. Jake had brought a half-bottle of whiskey he’d stolen from his dad, and we drank it in swigs, eating candy after gulp to hide the disgusting taste. Solidly buzzed, I said bye to S & J around 11 PM. I told them I was going home, but once they were out of sight, I turned towards the lake. Even they were a bit superstitious about it, and I didn’t want them ruining my plan.
I arrived a bit before midnight. The cool, mirrored silver moon flickered in the tiny ripples of the water. Obviously, I was alone – and sweaty, ready for a little cooling off. The whiskey still burned at the bottom of my stomach, and with nothing but candy to hold it off, the buzz still held on strong. I sat down to look at my watch, its digital letters spelling out 1 1 : 5 8 pm. I quickly undressed and eagerly plummeted into the water.
It felt like any other time. There was no added spookiness, albeit there was the ambiance of Halloween stirring in my mind, but that mostly conjured up thoughts of Walmart-witches and moth-chomped sheets with holes cut out where the eyes would be. The lake was quite small, so I decided to swim to the center and back. Maybe being in the middle of the water, surrounded by pure darkness would grant me some sliver of the dark legend that was Dead Lake.
As I swam, I felt something strange in the water. Like a current or something, pulling me ever so slightly inwards, towards the bottom. I chalked it up to the whiskey and kept going. Currents are the whims of the sea; not of small town lakes.
Once I reached the center, I let my legs fall downwards, kicking the black water in slow movements to hold my head above water. I twirled to look around for Jesus reincarnate, but was not granted any such blessings. Even though I expected nothing, I was still a bit disappointed. I decided to swim back and head home, remembering to eat candy along the way to mask the stench of whiskey-breath.
After a few strokes something stirred in the water again. The current, if that’s what it was, pulled me downwards. And not just by my legs, either, but now my torso, like it wanted me to go under. I’m not gonna lie, I got a bit scared. Had I actually been way drunker than I thought? Was this the solemn, dark reality of Dead Lake - just a bunch of drunk people losing their standings in the water, drowning by stupidity? But I was a strong swimmer, and I wasn’t going to prove Fucker Lake right, so I steadied my breath and kept going.
Not even fifty feet from the edge, I was pulledunderwater. I couldn’t feel anything grab me; it was more like a force of the water itself. I found myself at least five feet deep in a matter of seconds, and for a panicked moment I couldn’t discern which way was up. And not just because of the disorientation; because all around me the water glowed.
A dark red hue pulsated through the water, giving it a texture like swirls of blood. I tried to pull myself upwards, hoping that it really was upwards, but that force, like a silent whisper, beckoned me to look down. As I pulled with my arms, I - or something - craned my neck downwards, and I saw what lay in the depths of the lake.
The bottom of the lake was barren of rocks, plants, and fish. It’s like everything that makes a lake, you know, a lake, was ripped out and tossed away. Instead, the bottom was filled with faces. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, crammed next to each other so tightly that their wide black eyes seemed on the verge of bursting open. The red hue made the faces look purple, like they were still at the brink of being alive, desperately trying to gasp for air with their mouths wide open.
As I stared at them, the involuntary signal to breathe pushed its way through the subconscious. But I couldn’t look away. They all stared at me, a thousand black eyes. I was running out of oxygen, but then the two thoughts battled and mixed and I needed to breathe so I did but I was still underwater and the sweet red water filled my lungs.
Panic set in. I could feel my lungs becoming heavier. I wasn’t going to die, was I? Something in me wanted to, but my arms and legs disagreed and fought the current, pulling me upwards.
When I came back up the lake was black and silent again. I coughed up water as I struggled to breathe, swimming towards shore. With my muscles at their very end, I managed to pull myself to dry land. I laid on my stomach, coughing up splatters of water and mucus, trying desperately to regain myself. After my lungs were dry, I puked up whiskey and bile. Not my proudest moment.
Once my legs were strong enough to hold me up, I walked home. I slept for like twelve hours. When I woke up, it all felt like a bad dream, like, I’d done something stupid while drunk and only half remembered it. And maybe that was it. Some momentary psychosis, or something. I tried to forget all about it.
After that night, every time I went to sleep, I dreamed of water… red water that swirls and pulls me and won’t let go. Water like an ocean, mindless, stretching infinitely in all directions. I’ve begun to sleepwalk, and sometimes I’ve woken up in the middle of the street… around the exact halfway point from my house to the lake.
I’m scared that someday soon I’ll wake up from a dream, and I’ll find myself back in the lake, surrounded by the red water, those black eyes staring at me, and I’d breathe in the water and sink to the bottom, and the faces would make way and pull my body into the bottom, burying me up to my neck. And I’d scream and try to breathe but all I could do was watch.
Nobody would know where I’d gone, and the cartoonish legend of Dead Lake would live on amongst the idiots in this town. And maybe some other bored teenager would have the same idea as me, and rebel against the small-minded hubbub. And if the lake is to become my grave, I don’t know what else to do but warn people of it.
Don’t go to Dead Lake. Not just because the wishful townspeople say so, with colorful exaggerations of its nature. Don’t go there, because the reality is much, much worse. It’s not worth it to find out.