The Town Beneath the Lake

The cold is so sharp I can feel it outlining my sinuses when I breathe in. It’s an exceptionally clear night, and the dark mountains on the horizon provide a welcome boundary between the blackness of the immense expanse of ice and the blackness of the star-interrupted sky. Before I slide onto the ice, I test my laces one last time. I’m too old to take a hard fall without risking a broken bone, and I have no intention of being found frozen like a popsicle on Christmas morning. This is the first time I will be making this trip alone. For sixty years, Etta and I met on Christmas Eve to make this journey.

We were only 12 for that initial midnight skate. Back then, we were still smarting from the loss of our town in the valley. When the final petition for the big dam went through, our families lost. The year the lake was filled and froze, we arranged to sneak out the night before Christmas to lie on the ice above our old homes and talk about the beautiful Christmas light competitions our community used to have. Our old neighbors had scattered when the town was condemned. Some found homes along the sides of the lake, but many simply moved far away from the little town in the valley.

My mother kept saying it wasn’t so bad, but Etta and I were heartbroken. All the secret hiding places and play areas of our childhood rested beneath fifty feet of water. That first midnight skate, we were mournful. We silently slid over the ice using the radio tower and the new wharf as markers to help us find the part of the lake that covered our old homes. Once there, we stretched out with our cheeks against the ice, peering down and trying to believe we could make out the shapes of the buildings we knew had to be down there.

We weren’t really expecting to see anything. We were just two maudlin girls creating ritual to deal with the first big loss of our lives. We probably squinted at the lights shining from the depths for several minutes before Etta whispered, “Do you see that, Jane?” “The lights?” I whispered. “Are they ghosts?” Etta quavered. We stared for a long time before I answered. “I think…I think it’s the Walden house,” I said. “Look, see how it makes a square of green with a square of red and then a star in white? That’s just how the Waldens always did their lights.” We were quiet then, half frozen fear and wonder, acutely aware that we were two small bodies out on a great field of ice above a tiny drowned town that appeared to still be living.  We finally summoned up the courage to stand up, and then we skated furiously and frantically for the shore. I fell a few times, but Etta did not stop until she was back on solid ground.

We had a whole year to think about what had happened that night before Christmas came around again. In that year, my mother received news that Grandfather Walden had died a few weeks before our first skate. We had been a close knit community, so it grieved her that she did not learn of his death until after his funeral. When another elderly member of our old town died that year, she made sure we went to pay our respects. We were afraid to go, but our parents reminded us that Mr. Stark had been a kind librarian who had always given the children gifts on Christmas and take special care to decorate the library for the holidays.

Etta and I argued long and hard about whether we were going back out the next Christmas Eve. A year older, we had decided that we had imagined the lights. It became a rite of passage to prove we were not babies and we could bravely go out above the ice and look down again. It was harder to go the second time. I was so scared I thought I was going to be sick. Etta clutched my hand as we glided out to the center of the lake. We didn’t lie down this time. We both stared down, poised to flee if any ghostly faces floated up to greet us. I almost bolted when I saw the familiar pattern of the Walden Christmas lights, but Etta grabbed my arm. “Look,” she said, and when I peered I saw another set of lights a goodly distance from the Walden house. “It’s where the library would be,” I said. She nodded. We didn’t run this time. We watched peacefully, and suddenly our love for our lost home didn’t seem so childish. We were not the only ones who thought it had been heaven on Earth.

The skate was less scary after that. Some years there weren’t any new homes lit up; some years there were three or four. This year I skate out alone, but Etta promised she would put up a blue star for me on her house. If she keeps her promise, it won’t feel so bad to be the last person alive who once lived in Ruhetal.

Author: Beth Avery @violetgrendel
Word Count: 874 words
Genre: Speculative Fiction
E-book: Yes