First Line…Saturday: The water looked deep and inviting
Bwahaha, back again. Been a bit of a lull as I was busy doing other stuff, like having a good friend visit and then turning into a slightly older fart than I was before.
The idea for this story has been sitting in my head for a few years now, I just needed a spark for it (thank you First Line Generator thingy). I'm afraid its a bit fanboyish and probably wont make much sense to people who havent watched a certain series of movies, because it drops in a few references and such. I'll state for the record that I also took some liberties with the character of the boy, because I didn't feel particulary comfortable portraying him as he is/was in the movies.
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The water looked deep and inviting. It was a brilliant blue-green, sparking in the sunlight and disturbed only by placid ripples in the breeze. It looked warm and pleasant, and Amy wanted to reach out and play her fingers through it. But something was wrong.
She realised she was standing on a wooden platform, a long jetty that stretched out into the lake. The surface was firm and smooth under her bare feet, not rough or splintered. Her white dress fluttered as she turned to look out across the lake. It was beautiful and quiet, ringed with dappled trees and somewhere birds were singing. Amy wanted to smile, to throw her arms out and bask in the sun by the water’s edge, but something didn’t feel right.
“Who are you?”
Amy jumped, surprised by the voice. A little boy was sitting right down at the edge of the jetty, dangling his legs over the edge and splashing his feet in the water. He was wearing baggy swimming shorts that seemed oddly dated, like something out of the old Government Information broadcasts.
“Uh, hello.” She started walking towards him, but he flinched as if afraid somehow and she stopped after only a few steps, “My names Amy. What’s yours?”
He looked at her sidelong, not fully turning his face. It gave Amy the impression that he didn’t want her to see him. He’d seemed to shrink away from her.
“Why are you here?” He spoke oddly, oddly sing-song and all in a rush. Amy sat on the jetty a few feet from him, dipping her toes into the shimmering water. It seemed to calm the boy a little.
“I don’t know, really.” Amy struggled to remember, “This is all strange. I was here before, I think, but it was cold, winter, there was snow everywhere. Not like this. I…I don’t remember how I got here.”
The boy was quiet for a long time, and Amy eyed him carefully. His earlier discomfort seemed to have faded, but now he seemed almost sad. He still hadn’t turned towards her but his head was bowed and he reached to brush back his straggly blond hair. He let out a sigh, briefly old and careworn for a child so young.
“I know why you are here but it is better if you remember yourself because then it will be easier for you to accept it.” That lilting rushed speech again. Amy closed her eyes, trying to focus.
“I was…I came to Forest Green County to see where my mother grew up. She’d said she’d lived near a lake here. I wanted to see it.”
“Your mother’s name was Tina she made me sleep once.”
Amy opened her eyes and stared at him, shocked. There was no way the boy could have known that. She didn’t take much after her mother, dark haired where she was blonde and a thin face compared to her mother’s wide, open smile. This boy couldn’t be more than six or seven, yet Amy’s mother Tina had passed on when Tina had been a child herself. It made no sense.
The boy turned his head to her, staring straight at her. It was strangely unsettling, for his face was perfectly symmetrical, making him seem almost doll-like, and his eyes…his eyes were so old compared to the rest.
“You are special just like your mother. Your mind is not fixed in your head.” He nodded, smiling at Amy, “That is part of why you are here but you must remember the rest.”
Amy nodded, knowing it was true. She’d been by a lakeside in winter, wrapped up warm against the cold, so why was she here now in the summer sun, with this strange little boy on the jetty? She looked out across the lake again, watching the trees on the other side as their branches swayed. She thought she could see some of those branches brushing the tops of a few, dilapidated cabins tucked away in the woods, rustic and almost hidden among the trees.
“I found the lake…and I came to look at it. I wanted to see if the old house was still there. I heard voices, shouting. There were people there, they’d come on motorbikes, I think…”
“Bad people come to the lake sometimes.” He interrupted, sounding sad again, but Amy barely heard him. She was struggling so hard to remember what had happened.
“They saw me I think. They thought I was watching them.” She gasped, “They chased me…and…one of them had a knife…” She felt sudden pain, sharp insistent agony in her chest and back and she clutched the sore places, looking down and seeing nothing but the white dress. “What…what happened to me?” She felt tears on her face, and huddled in on herself in the pain.
Small fingers reached into her own, comforting and warm, the little boy sitting down beside her, though she hadn’t seen him approach. With a careful, gentle touch, he lifted her chin and turned her face to look at the shore. Amy wailed in shock. She saw the body. Her body, lying in a patch of red-stained snow, so out of place in the summer setting.
“Bad people come here sometimes.” He whispered again as Amy wept. She felt his arms reaching out to encircle her, holding her close, so gentle and kind. The little boy just held her for a long, long time as she cried.
“Why?...I didn’t do anything…why did they do it?” Amy forced out the words between sobs, wanting to scream, the terrible truth hitting her even as she did it. Because they could.
“They will not get away with it.” Said the boy. His voice was firm and hard, older now than before, the sing-song quality fading with each word, “They do not know where they are. The name was changed. Bad people come to my lake, but I do not let them leave.”
He stroked her hair as he spoke. The birdsong became distant and unsettling, out of tune and discordant, the breeze across the water colder and stronger. Amy shuddered as the sun darkened on the lake, the shimmering going the colour of the snow patch she couldn’t bear to look at again.
“They changed the name so they could forget. They wanted to pretend this was somewhere else and that I never existed. But I am always here. This place wasn’t always called Forest Green,” His tone was oddly muffled, and dark and hard. Amy looked up at him and gasped. His face was gone, covered. His old, old eyes glaring out in hate at what had been done to her, from the eyeholes of a white hockey mask.
“They used to call it Crystal Lake.” Said Jason.