Hattersbee Lake

There was something about Hattersbee Lake, how you couldn't see the other side, and they say at least fifteen bodies had been lost in its depths. But I thought Hattersbee Lake was beautiful and serene. The water was gray and murky, the Lilli pads decorating the surface like freckles. The ripples from jumping fish and ducks swimming. The light of the fall sun, dark orange, red and pink, was perfectly reflected in the lake's smooth sheen. At night the lake began to speak, with buzzing mosquitoes and bull frogs, their voices carried through the night. Hattersbee Lake is my home, and anyone who says different can just go ahead and die.

"Sara, are you sure you want to go swimming today? It's already dark out and that lake is creepy." Kathy shivered, her bare feet refusing to pass the yard's edge, her arms wrapped around her bare arms, her bikini doing little to warm her against the wind.

"Kathy seriously, it's just a bit of water." I opened my mouth in a wide grin, whipping my towel into the dune grass as I danced in the breeze. Burying my toes into the wet sand, I pulled my leg up hard and fast.

"Sara! What the HELL!" Kathy screamed, running further up the lawn toward the cabin as she smacked at her face, pulling chunks of sand out of her hair. I laughed, kicking more sand in her direction as she screeched.

"Oh don't be such a baby Kathy. It's spring break, don't you want to do something a little crazy?"

"You know," Kathy said, shaking her hair, "when you said to spend a crazy week at your family's cabin on Hattersbee Lake, I thought you meant drinking and movies and maybe a little naked swimming but this is not fun-crazy, this is crazy-crazy."

"Well," I said, beginning to untie my top, "we could still swim naked." I smirked at her, arching my brow as my top slipped off my shoulders, my fingers sliding along the waistline of my bottoms.

"Yeeeaaaah no. I'm going inside. I'll have some hot chocolate waiting for your freezing ass." Kathy spun on her toes before marching back to the house.

"Oh well, more lake for me." Continuing to pull of the rest of my bathing suit, I turned back to the house, seeing Kathy watching from the window, I swiveled my hips as I sauntered down the sandy slope before wading into the water, letting out a gasp as the cold water cradled my hips. Pulling my arms out in front of me, floating on the water before pushing my feet against the muddy bottom. Small pebbles get stuck between my toes as they curl, returning to the lake as my toes flex and I began to paddle out past the beach. The Lilli pads blooming in the moonlight, the water skippers jumping onto my skin and back into the water, my ears deafened by the water filling them.

The cabin faded into the distance, the dock and all it's boats but small toys, miniatures in a toy model and the water continued to have no end in sight. There was an orange buoy, small but straight ahead, another just a few feet to the left. Then another and another, a line of orange plastic balls dividing the beach from the rest of the lake. A coldness wrapped around my heart, but not from the chill of the night air, a sadness for Hattersbee Lake. How unfair it was for such a beautiful body of water to be divided in two. I ceased my paddling, my chest pushed against the ropes attaching all the buoys, my arms hold myself still, almost levitating in the water as my legs kicked beneath me, agitating the water on the other side.

A slimy tickle along my leg jolted me out of my daze. I stared at the water as though I would be able to see underneath me. The blackness almost inviting in its obsidian depths. Another tickle, along my back, my butt cheek, my knee. I didn't know the seaweed could reach so high. I tore my gaze away from the void and returned it to the inky blue skyline. Hattersbee Lake never had any waves, the surface of the water smooth and reflective, glasslike in its stillness. If only I could see the other side.

Sucking in a breath I dive beneath the surface, kicking my legs until my need for air puts my arms in action, pushing me up and breaking the glass. I gulped in the freezing night air, my lungs seizing from the icy oxygen, forcing me to cough. I could not regain my breath, my throat had begun to sore, my legs struggling to support me as my hands reached for my chest, trying to breathe.

My lungs froze again as water filled them, my head returned to the inky abyss and my arms scrabbling at nothing. My legs, no longer moving, but I couldn't see them. There was nothing but water and cold and the tightness in my limbs. There was no air, nothing to breathe, and the tickles began to travel up my body. Grabbing at my feet, my calves, my ribs and breasts, my shoulders, arms, neck. I squinted into the dark, coughing again only to be filled with more water. My nose burned, excruciating and blinding, but then again, can anything be blinding when there is nothing to see?

I swore I could hear Kathy screaming for me. But there was something else. A rumbling from beneath the lake. The tickles turned to hands, grabbing and pinching me, cutting me. Kathy screamed and screamed and all I could do was not breathe. The hands pulled me down, or maybe it was up, there was nothing but the empty blackness of the sea. Something graced my foot, something soft and comforting. One finger, two, tracing my toes as I laid in the mud next to them. They sang the songs of the fish, told tale of the dances of algae and twirling of the Lillis. Spoke of boaters and creatures humans had never seen. Of the seaweed who knew what was best for the sea, stationary among the depths of the deep, searching for another one to join their army. The fifteen bodies of Hattersbee Lake shared their stories with me as each one wilted and greyed, joining the undead sentinel seaweed.

I had no such fate, my body yanked from the abyss. It was Kathy, she screamed, shrieking as I clawed at her face. Air was foreign, I needed the water, my freshwater friends. Coughing and coughing there was nothing but blood, red wasn't the right color, there should be no colors at all. Scratching at eyes, at noses and lips, I was thrown off the boat, my legs kicking through water once again. But it was not Hattersbee Lake, it was much to bright. To warm, to easy, everything visible in the blinding orange light.

I wanted to be dead again. Where had all the seaweed gone. I wish I was laying in Hattersbee's mud. Kathy had done it, sent a zombie to hell, I would sell her soul to return to the lake, to my home away from home.