Contribution to Mankind and Other Stories of the Dark

From the Speculative Fiction collection, a complete story: ‘The Lake’.

Author’s Note: Despite our well-lit modern lives, the dark remains our greatest fear. The thing that might, that does, exist within it. The six stories in this speculative fiction collection explore some of the terrors that we might find lurking. Or worse, might find us. The Lake is the opening story.

The Lake

‘Not long now.’

‘Patrick, there is no lake shown up here.’

The car jumped on the ruts, throwing Anne against the door. The map ended in the foot-well, the carefully made creases springing open to leave it blanketing her sandaled feet. She tried hard to keep her rising temper in check as she braced herself, as best she could, against the bucking dashboard. She saw Pat’s head turn as he glanced towards her, but she kept her gaze firmly on the white rock track in front of the bonnet, on the dust cloud which seemed to be building ahead of them as well as behind.

‘Sorry about that,’ Pat offered. ‘The road’s a lot worse than when I was up here with the geology group. More traffic by the looks of it. God, I hope this place isn’t filled with people trying to get away from the crowds. All we need is to find a McDonalds at the top!’

He laughed, but Anne did not laugh with him. The feeling of queasiness was returning. She was hot, and the constant buffeting was giving her sunburn hell. It was hard to remember just why they had left the sardine-packed crowds on the beach for driving along this moonscape.

‘We came over this rise and it was just there, not shown on the map or anything,’ Pat had told her. ‘I wanted to explore then, but time was tight and I was out-voted. You’ll love it. It’s a really wild place, with a beauty all of its own. A serenity. Nature untouched. Not like this glitzy hell-hole. We could take the tent and a few provisions and have a couple of days alone.’ Pat had put his arm around her then, nuzzling below her ear. ‘Totally alone.’

The reality was that they were being slowly shaken apart on a track never meant for a car, peering through a glaring white dust-cloud kicked up by the mountain wind. Somewhere to their very near right, her very near right, was a sheer drop which did not bear contemplating. And at any moment she was going to be sick.

‘Not long now.’

Pat had been saying those same three words ever since they had left the junipers. It had been temperate there, the air filled with birdsong and the sweet scent of the trees. They had stopped by a crystal stream and bathed their feet. Anne had been happy to stay there, to find a spot amid the rocks and verdant grasses wide enough to pitch their tent, but Pat had been adamant about going on, about reaching the lake.

‘It had better be good,’ she muttered. ‘It had better be bloody brilliant.’

Drawing the car to a halt on the incline, Pat jerked on the handbrake with a determination that caused the mechanism to grind. Without saying anything he opened the door and stepped out. Anne winced at the cloud of white particles which invaded the confines of the car. They reached across the driving seat like tendrils of smoke, and she wafted them away from her in disgust.

The door closed with a snap. No longer buoyed by the stiff breeze, the dust settled, a coating of white, gossamer fine, over the steering wheel, the dashboard, over Patrick’s driving seat. She gazed at it, suspicious. It was oddly silver-bright for chalk dust. It looked minuscule, like talcum. She licked a finger and tentatively dabbed at Patrick’s headrest. Not talcum, not chalk dust, but coarse and granular.

The door opened and another swirl of dust-laden air poured through the gap. Pat sat in, slamming the door after him.

‘We’re here!’ he cried, turning to her. ‘It’s just ahead. I knew we were close. What’s the matter?’

Airborne dust particles were settling on him, drawn to the dust already clinging to his long curly hair, to the fine golden down on his forearms. His dark eyes gazed at her out of a face as white as the T-shirt covering his chest.

He laughed. ‘Do I look like a panda?’ He rubbed at his face and his arms, creating a smaller cloud which rose to settle on him afresh.

Not like a panda, no.

Anne shook her head. ‘Patrick, I’m not going out there. Turn this thing around and drive back down. I’m not going.’

‘Stop worrying! The lake is in a bowl. It’s not like this. There’s no wind, no dust. Believe me.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t like it. I want to go back.’

He engaged the gears, released the handbrake and gunned the engine. It protested for a moment, but the car moved forwards. He guided it across the ruts, to rise on a steeper incline to the right. What looked like a dune appeared and he drew the car to a halt in front of it.

‘Patrick…!’

‘Come on,’ he coaxed, opening the driver’s door. ‘At the top of the hill it’s another world.’

The car rocked as the door thudded home. Anne glared at him through the side windows but he ignored her, rummaging in the boot for the bags. She expected him to call her again, or tap on the window and beckon, but he shut the boot and started to climb the dune, disappearing from sight in the writhing dust.

Anne stared out through the windscreen, muttering under her breath. She would be damned if she would set foot in that stinging blizzard to follow him. Let him have his lake; she would wait him out. He would come back when he knew for certain that she wasn’t going to join him.

She turned to reach for a magazine from the rear seat only to remember that everything had been stowed away during their stop among the junipers. Pat had told her that it was a short haul from the parking area to the lake, but it would be easier if they were packed, ready.

He had known about the white dust, and he had not told her.

‘Patrick, you bastard!’

There was nowhere to look but through the windscreen, and there was nothing to see but the dune rising up in front of the car. Even that was veiled by the eye-blinding dust-cloud. It swirled over the bonnet and eddied towards the wings, creating little peaks where it caught in crevices. Mostly it was catching in the corners of the windscreen and against the wipers, clinging with the tenacity of an electromagnet.

Anne focused on one part of one wiper, homing in to one particular crevice, where the wiper was connected to its arm. The wind scoured. The dust particles laid. A single particle, smaller than a pin’s head, borne on the wind unnoticed. But there were thousands of them, millions of them, each trying to gain an individual grip on the car, trying to bury it.

Anne shuddered, dragging herself from the fascination which was entrancing her. It was a stupid place to park. Stupid. Patrick had to be mad.

Her throat was dry. She wanted to cough. It was psychosomatic, she knew it was. Her throat was dry, she wanted to cough, because there was no water. She gazed at the ventilation grilles on the dashboard, bringers of cool air in the heat of the day, silent now that the engine was dead. The keys, like the water, were in Patrick’s keeping. If she concentrated on something else, if she calmed herself, she knew that the need to cough would subside.

There was a speck on the ventilation grille opposite her seat. It shone like a beacon in the blackest of nights. Where had it come from? Dust particles lay on the dashboard, on the steering wheel, on Patrick’s seat, but she had not moved, had not disturbed them. The speck on the ventilation grille — where had it come from? Two specks. Three.

‘Patrick!’

Filling her lungs to aching capacity, she held her breath and opened the car door. The wind whipped it from her grasp and the white dust overwhelmed her, stinging the bare skin of her arms and legs as if a horde of angry insects. With slitted eyes she tried to make out the door handle to drag it closed, but the wind buffeted it like a flag on a pole, threatening to rip it from its hinges. The dust was spinning inside the car now, seeking crevices and cracks to root in, layering on her eyelashes, threatening to blind her. She had to get to Patrick. Get to Patrick, get the keys and get out of there.

She pulled her T-shirt above her nose to act as a breathing mask and dragged herself out of the car and around the flailing door. The gritty particles gnawed at her unprotected limbs and her flesh burned. One hand trying to protect her eyes, she leaned on the reassuring bulk of the bonnet to steady her shaking legs and try to take her bearings. Patrick had climbed the dune. It rose in front of her, the wind sifting and flurrying its granular surface. There wasn’t a grass blade sprouting from its sand. Its summit was a part of the blowing dust-cloud. She couldn’t climb it; it would engulf her.

There was a sound like a pistol shot and the car rocked as the passenger door slammed shut. Anne gave a cry of shock and turned to catch a glimpse of the unseen hand, willing it to be Patrick’s, knowing it was the wind’s. Had it locked? Was the driver’s door locked?

Through the windscreen she could see the white dust hanging in the air. It took on the shape of a face staring back at her, a mouth grinning at her. And then its life-current expired, and it drifted down, settling on to the seats and the dashboard, taking possession of the car.

Anne turned away and began to mount the dune. Her sandaled feet sank into the soft sand, the grains shifting beneath her weight, forcing themselves between her toes, between the soles of her feet and her leather sandals. It was like walking on crushed glass. She drove herself on; there was no turning back.

The wind shrieked and taunted, eddied and flowed, throwing the dust in her face, her hair across her eyes. Higher, she climbed, her feet sinking to her ankles with every step, the exertion of wrenching them free sapping her strength. And so cold, now. The sand beneath the surface was so cold. Her feet were numb, her raw limbs burning as if on fire. Tears streamed from her irritated eyes, each breath being sieved of dust through clamped teeth.

And then she toppled forwards, and there was sky, blue and clear, and the greenness of grass undulating down towards the mirror-like surface of Patrick’s lake.

Letting the T-shirt fall from her mouth, she staggered into the clean air free from the grit and the buffeting wind, to cough and catch her breath, to cough and dry her eyes, to beat the clinging dust from her clothing and her hair.

Where was Patrick?

Ahead, on its side spilling its contents in an arc, lay her woven shopping bag. She walked towards it, kicking out her feet to rid her sandals of the sharp and gritty sand. Her magazine lay beside it, not a corner of a page lifting. There was no wind. Just as Pat had said, there was no wind at all.

Where was he?

She pushed the contents back into the bag and carried it. The gentle slope gave way to a more defined incline. The whole area seemed to be circular, an eye in a storm. There were no trees, not even bushes that she could see. A swathe of pale green ringed the flat lake; above, the afternoon sun shone from a dome of rich azure. The only shadow was her own, eagerly stretching towards the lake.

Sight of the discarded backpack caused a frisson to dance down Anne’s spine. The bag she could understand; Patrick had just reached the top of the dune, escaped the cloying dust. But the backpack?

‘Patrick!’

She waited, but there was no reply. The only place for him to be hidden was beyond the rounded shoulder of the incline. She could see the lake, but not its shore. He’d be there; that’s where he’d be. Next to his beloved lake.

She grasped the strap of the backpack and tried to heave it, one-handed, up on to her shoulder. It skittered round, the edge of its frame catching her a blow on her thigh. She let it drop. It could stay where it was. Patrick could come back for it.

A few steps more and something red caught her eye in the grass to her left. She tried to ignore it, she wanted to find Patrick while her anger still flamed, but its colour seemed so incongruous against the leached green.

It was a comb, a bright red plastic comb as long as her forearm with teeth the length of her fingers; the sort of joke comb she remembered being given as a child, a tacky gift from a relative returning from a holiday on the British coast. She crouched to let her fingers slide along its spine. It seemed in perfect condition, yet it was embedded in the stone-hard ground, grass stalks interleaving its spiky teeth. She couldn’t think how it might have got there.

A little further on she came across a child’s shoe, red again, but darker, almost the tones of burgundy wine, not a scuff on the patent leather, the buckle free from signs of rust. She bent down to look, but couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

Beyond the shoulder of the incline the ground tipped steeply in a shallow cliff towards the lake and its narrow strip of white shore. Patrick was standing by the edge of the water with his back towards her. His T-shirt and Nikes were in a neat pile beside him and he was climbing out of his shorts.

‘Patrick!’

He turned, and grinned, and waved her to him. ‘Jump down! We can go for a dip together. Didn’t I tell you it was lovely here?’

‘Patrick, you bastard, you left me!’

He didn’t respond. His back was turned to her again and he was folding his shorts with a precision that made her stare. She cursed in irritation and looked for a path. There didn’t seem to be one. She flung the bag down the three-metre cliff and scrambled after it.

Her fall displaced the powdery surface of the beach and a small cloud lifted white around her legs. She felt her eyes widening as she watched it dance on the air before dropping back to settle on her sandals.

‘Patrick, this stuff’s like the dust that’s covering the — ’ Her intake of breath was sharp. How could she have forgotten? ‘The car. Patrick, we have to get back to the car. It’s being buried. We have to get out of here. Come on!’

She made a grab for the bag lying on its side, its contents spread in an arc. Beside its handle, half buried in the powdery dust, was a tube of suntan oil; a red tube of suntan oil, pointing like a bloated, burning finger at her magazine, its cover starkly red against the whiteness of the dust.

The red of the comb. The red of the shoe.

The short hairs on Anne’s neck rose like the hackles of a dog. The canvas of the backpack was red. Traffic light red.

She left the bag and started after Patrick at a run. He was paddling at the edge of the water, dipping in his hands to wash the dust from his shoulders and arms.

‘Patrick! No! Come on!’

He looked up and smiled at her as she neared him. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? Didn’t I tell you it was a marvellous place? So serene, don’t you think?’

‘It’s deadly! Get out of there!’

His smile broadened as if she had told him a joke, and he pulled the tie from his hair to let his corkscrew curls bush out freely behind him.

‘Patrick!’

Without a flicker in his expression he launched himself backwards like an Olympic swimmer, cracking the surface of the water as he made contact. Anne drew breath and held it, afraid to move, watching in horrified fascination as he lazily executed a back crawl.

‘Patrick… Come out, please.’

‘It’s lovely. You come in.’

‘No! Listen to me, Patrick, listen to me. There is something terribly wrong here. The whole place… Look at it. It’s… it’s sterile. There’s practically no vegetation. There are no birds. There’s no wind. It’s… it’s wrong.’

‘Of course it’s sterile. It’s a collapsed volcano. Has to be. Look at the shape. Can’t be anything else.’

Anne shook her head. The water was wrong. Its colour was odd, blue but not the reflected blue of the sky. And it wasn’t moving like water. It looked thicker, like syrup. The ripples flattened to nothing less than a metre from him. There was almost no wake being made by his chopping feet.

‘Patrick!’

He turned for the shore and eased his crawl into a float. He didn’t look as if he were lying in the water; he looked as if he were lying on it.

‘I’ve dreamed of coming back here for years, Anne, and you’re determined to ruin it for me, aren’t you?’

She dropped to her knees in the dust at the lake’s edge, her voice quaking with emotion. ‘Please, Patrick. It’ll be dark soon. Let’s go back. We can camp at the junipers. You can come up here tomorrow on your own.’

‘But I wanted you to share it with me.’

‘I don’t like it. Don’t you understand that?’

Letting out a snort of derision he smacked the water with the flat of one hand. ‘Okay, okay.’

He made to stand but the water wouldn’t let him and he rocked like a beetle caught on its back. Anne stood, afraid now, but all Pat did was laugh.

‘I don’t know why you’re so worried. This stuff is so buoyant it’s unbelievable.’

He twisted one shoulder, attempting to turn himself on his stomach. He revolved 360 degrees, settling on the water with his arms out wide and a startled expression on his face.

‘Wow! That was interesting.’

Anne stepped as close to the edge as she dared. ‘Propel yourself over here. Give me your hand and I’ll pull you out.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s only the buoyancy of the water. I can do this on my own.’

Dropping his shoulder, he turned in the water, and kept on turning, faster and faster, spinning like a top, the water wrapping itself around him, a translucent cocoon.

Anne screamed his name and stepped into the lake, her arms outstretched towards him, her eyes fixed on the sodden mat of hair fanning out from his head. Knee-deep, she made a grab for him, caught her fingers in his tight curls, held on as his spinning threatened to wrench her hand from her wrist, and dragged him back towards the shore.

Her footing slipped and she fell forwards, feeling the water rise up cold to touch her, to drench her shorts and her T-shirt and fling itself towards her eyes, but she did not loosen her grip on Patrick’s hair, and she strived, gasping, towards the whiteness of the shoreline. Patrick was coughing. He was going to be all right. She could hear great whooping coughs as he fought to clear his airways. Just a bit further. Just a bit further.

‘Let me help you. I can help you.’

Powerful suntanned arms passed in front of her eyes, reaching for Patrick.

‘I can help you. Let me help you.’

He was tall, muscular. Sun-bleached blonde hair and an open Hawaiian shirt the same turquoise pattern as his shorts. He was reaching for Patrick. Where had he come from?

‘Let me help you. I can help you.’

Anne fell into the powdery sand, so grateful, so very grateful, and loosened her grip on Patrick’s hair.

‘I have you. I have you.’

Her relief lurched as she heard the change in the man’s tone. She turned to see him gripping Patrick about the chest as tightly as a lover and carry him back into the water. Patrick’s arms hung limply, his eyes wide, his expression stunned.

Anne scrambled to her feet, but they had gone without a sound. A single languid ripple broke on the shore. The lake lay silent and serene, shaded oddly blue, not quite a reflection of the sky.

Anne screamed.

‘I can help you. Let me help you.’

She turned in time to see a dark-haired woman in a sundress bearing down on her, her arms reaching out. Anne side-stepped her embrace and backed a few paces, uncertain of what was happening.

‘Let me help you,’ the woman said. ‘I can help you.’

She was about thirty and wore dark red lipstick at odds to her pale complexion. Round pearl earrings glistened in the sunlight below her short, tight perm. The design of her sundress was a black and white polka dot, with white straps and cuffing along the breast, the sort of dress Anne remembered her grandmother poring over in the old magazines she hoarded. It was the style, a fifties style from her grandmother’s youth.

Anne backed away, her own arms ready to beat the woman aside. ‘Stay away from me!’ she warned. ‘Stay away.’

‘I can help you. Let me help you.’

Anne turned and ran along the shoreline. She had to clamber up on to the grass. She had to get away from the lake.

She checked over her shoulder. The woman was following relentlessly, her arms outstretched, but she wasn’t running.

‘Let me help you,’ piped a voice. ‘I can help you.’

Anne cried out as she almost ran into the arms of a boy half her size. He was wearing a blue and white sailor suit. One hand clasped a small wooden yacht.

‘Stay away from me!’ she screamed at him, but he kept on, speaking gently, obscenely, in his high-pitched, piping voice.

‘Let me help you. I can help you.’

Anne ran for the cliff. It was only three metres high. No matter how sheer it was, she could climb it.

She found a foothold, and a hand grip, and another foothold. She pushed herself up, her muscles trembling with the unaccustomed strain. One more lift and she could clutch the overhanging grass. One more lift…

She reached, her arms above her head, and he was there, coming out of the stark white rock, just a shape at first, then in translucent colour, then in the flesh, fully clothed, not a drop of water on him. Patrick.

‘Let me help you. I can help you.’

His arms locked around her chest, tighter than he had ever held her. She lost her footing on the white rock but didn’t fall.

‘I have you,’ he said. ‘I have you.’

And she couldn’t break the gaze of his wide, shining eyes, not even as the lake rose cold up the back of her thighs to wet her shorts.

And her T-shirt.

And her hair.

© Linda Acaster

Contribution to Mankind and other Stories of the Dark is available from Amazon (global link) and in Epub format from various retailers, links on my website: www.lindaacaster.com

My fiction titles cover a variety of genres. My stories for Medium are currently focusing on historical sites in the United Kingdom, mostly in England.