Inklings: October Edition

When I read that the scene for the October Inklings Link-up (Which you can find here!), was a scene with a lake, I immediately thought of the book Gone Away Lake by Elisabeth Enright. 

 

It's a book about two cousins, Portia and Julian, who find a mysterious 'gone away' lake in the woods near Julian's home.

The scene below is when they first find the old lake.

~

"What hit me?" he said.

"You hit it," Portia said. "And look, it's a rowboat! An old upside-down rowboat buried in weeds!"

"What is it doing here? You can't go rowing on a swamp! But maybe if I stand up on the thing, I can see where we are, at least."

They both climbed up on the little hulk and looked out over the tops of the reeds, a sea of reeds, beyond which, and all around, grew the dark woods. But that was not all. Portia and Julian drew in a breath of surprise at exactly the same instant, because at the northeast end of the swamp, between the reeds and the woods, and quite near to them, they saw a row of wrecked old houses. There were perhaps a dozen of them; all large and shabby, though once they must have been quite elaborate, adorned as they were with balconies, turrets, widows' walks, and lacy wooden trimming. But now the balconies were sagging and the turrets tipsy; the shutters were crooked or gone, and large sections of wooden trimming had broken off. There was a tree sticking out of one of the windows, not into it but out of it. And everything was as still as death.

"Now who would go and build a lot of houses on the edge of a mosquitoey old swamp like that?" inquired Julian. But the next time he spoke it was in a whisper. "Porsh! Those houses are empty! They're all deserted, Porsh! It's a ghost town."

"Oh, let's go, let's go!" Portia whispered back, pulling at his sleeve. "I don't like it here!"

But Julian frowned and jerked his sleeve away. "Just a minute, now. Ju-u-ust a minute. We'd better examine the situation. Case the joint, in other words."

"Oh, please come, please!" begged Portia. Her voice quavered with fear, almost with tears, but she was beyond pride.

"Sh-h. In a second," whispered Julian.

And just at that moment, in the last house on the right-hand side they heard a curious crackling sound; and then an enormous voice began to speak.

They were so startled that they fell through the boat. The wood was damp and rotten, and then perhaps the panic of surprise had added a sudden weight to them. In any case they fell through with a crash; and it was as they were hastily picking themselves out and wondering if they were hurt anywhere that they heard the words the mighty voice was addressing to the summer air. They stared at each other in amazement.

"Yes, friends-" roared the great suave tones. "Why suffer any longer from acid indigestion? Go to your local drugstore, now, today, and ask for a box of Pepso-Tabs, the wonder mint, only forty-nine cents the box. Yes, friends, in exchange for only for-ty-nine cents-your troubles are over!"

Julian was the first one to laugh.

"Whoever heard of a ghost having acid indigestion?" he said.

Portia was laughing, too. "And whoever heard of ghosts listening to radios?" she said. "It must be a radio, Jule, because I didn't see any television-tree on the roof, did you?"

"Wait a minute." Julian climbed precariously up on an edge of the boat, as Portia held onto him.

"No," he reported. "And now that I look at it, I can see that that house isn't quite as raggedy and bashed-in looking as the others. They've got a screen door, and there's a rosebush and some bean rows, and now I see some chickens and a duck. Come on, Porsh, let's go see who lives there and ask them where we are."

"Oh, I don't know, do you think we'd better?"

"Sure! It'll be all right. Would bad people keep a duck? Would they have a rosebush?"

Portia was not entirely happy about the logic of this assurance, but she had no choice except to follow her cousin, who had started forward with a determined step. In the house someone had turned down the huge radio voice; all they could hear now was a low steady babble and some little chicken-noises.

The children pressed their way among the cool leathery reeds; a few obstinate mosquitoes accompanied them, and every now and then there was the sound of a slap or an exclamation.

Julian, who paid certain penalties for persistently taking the lead, now banged his knee smartly against the corner post of a little overgrown landing dock.

"You know what I think," he said, when the pain stopped ringing. "/ think this swamp must have been a pond or a lake once upon a time. That would account for the rowboat and this dock and all-"

"And for those houses being built where they are."

"Check. But I never heard of any lake around here."

"You haven't lived here very long, remember."

They climbed up on the dock and walked it gingerly, on the lookout for loose or missing planks. The reeds that waved above their heads had been replaced by a growth of plumed pampas grass, still taller, but now as they broke through the last of this, they found themselves on raised land, close to one of the wrecked houses.

~