The Girl in the Lake

“It must be a biiigg fish,” Maddie giggled in my direction. We sat, our feet dangling over the edge of the dock, warm sun on our skin, and watched with great anticipation as John attempted to reel in his catch.

And like him, my daughter, Maddie, had never been fishing before. I couldn’t even remember a time she’d eaten fish. She was more of a PB&J kid.

Still, we watched anxiously as John grunted and tugged on the fishing pole. His smile so proud. Naturally a suit and tie kind of guy, John was much like a fish out of water himself. We’d only been dating a short time, but he’d told me all about growing up in the big city. I assumed our cabin on the lake was a bit out of his comfort zone.

Maddie hadn’t spent much time with him in the months prior. This was our get-to-know-you weekend. Our VRBO, at Lake Sinclair, seemed like a great opportunity for all of us to spend some time together.

The rustic little cabin, tucked away from the neighbors, had its own charm. We’d scanned several choices before deciding on this one. John called it quaint. I called it ‘woman’s intuition.’ At any rate, the dock was perfect for swimming and fishing.

“This guy must be huge,” John bellowed over his shoulder, his eyes wide, feet planted.

I glanced down at Maddie.

She was dressed for fun in the sun, but still had on her thick rubber dishwashing gloves. The pink pair that she wore every day. The same gloves that seemed to fascinate other people. ‘Oh, she must have quite an imagination,’ they would say before asking me why my daughter wore oversized gloves. It seemed I never had the right answer to that question. Those pink, rubber gloves kept other children at bay too.

“You can take those off out here, if you want,” I mentioned nonchalantly. Maddie never looked up.

I had hoped she would feel secure enough to remove them, but at the same time, I understood. The cabin was old. It had a past just like us. She was afraid, and her fears warranted. Instead of pressing the subject, I lightly kissed the top of her blonde head.

“Look, Mama,” Maddie pointed back toward John.

All of his efforts had paid off. His find had surfaced. Would it be a ten pounder? A trout, maybe? Perhaps a catfish?

Oh, how I wished. I wanted John to have a big catch like the kind people exaggerated stories about. I wanted it for him, but in that moment; I really wanted it for me. I couldn’t enjoy the excitement because I knew what had brought us to the cabin. I knew why, out of a dozen listings, we had focused on this particular spot.

As I turned slowly to look back in John’s direction, knowing what I knew, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. John dropped the pole onto the deck, fell backward over his own feet, pointed down, and then covered his mouth.

I knew it. It wasn’t a fish at all. It was… her.

My head fell back, eyes to the sky. Why this vacation? Why this lake? It wasn’t a surprise, really. Nothing in my life had ever gone as planned, but this definitely was not the way I wanted John to find out about me.

I jumped to my feet with Maddie right behind me, and ran down the dock toward him. He had managed to get back on his feet, but had not stepped any closer to the edge. I moved up from behind, lightly touching his shoulder.

He was deathly afraid. I could feel fear radiating from his body.

I told myself not to, but leaned over the side just enough to lay eyes on what or who had frightened him so. I could feel Maddie’s gloved hand around my leg as she clung to me.

My eyes fell onto the mound of waterlogged grey material that seemed to be swamped by a spray of widespread, glossy, human hair. It was her. She was floating, face down in the tea-colored water.

I gasped.

I should have been prepared for it, but a premonition is not the same as seeing it with your own eyes. It was more like Deja vu. I had already seen her that way. She’d been calling to me for two weeks. Not in a human voice, of course. It wasn’t like that at all. It was more subtle. A vibration. A nagging chill. The flutter of insides. It was her way of communicating with me. When I saw the cabin on the VRBO website, I knew.

She’d been face down in that mirky water too long. I bent down.

“No! Stop,” John’s voice cracked. “We have to call the police.” I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor guy. He was clearly upset by the whole situation. “My phone is inside,” he added, almost apologetically.

I kept my focus on the dead girl in the lake.

A boat pulling a tube tried to grab my attention as it whizzed by the edge of the cove. It was hard to believe that, for most people, summer on the lake continued uninterrupted. Boats. Jet skis. I watched as the rippled water worked its way down to us.

“We have to help her,” Maddie’s tiny voice broke through the light breeze and distant noise.

I bent down again, reaching for the girl as carefully as I could.

For most people, a corpse would be a horrifying sight. But I’d had many years to get used to seeing, sensing, and knowing the dead. And, just like us, all they want is to communicate. To be heard. They just want someone to know the truth.

If satisfaction is possible in death, it can only be achieved through understanding. I had accepted my lot in life a long time ago.

Maddie slowly pulled her pink rubber gloves off. First the left, then the right. She dropped them flat on the dock beside her. Her tiny hands reaching out.

I’d managed to get my right hand around the girl’s thin, stone-colored arm. Though the child was young and small, her lifeless body seemed a lot heavier than the roughly fifty pounds she had been only days before.

My heart hurt. I tried to fight the scenes that had already begun popping, uncontrollably, into my head. Images flickering. Visions of her once healthy, normal body. Full of life.

Giving a strong heave, I managed to tow the girl onto the warm deck. Her body plopped down hard on the boards, grey from years of sunburn. She was a sopping mass with a mess of matted wet hair thankfully covered her face.

I tried to fight the pictures that continued to flash inside my mind. Like an old-timey camera. Flash. Picture. Flash. Picture. But it was no use. All of my senses had been invaded.

I couldn’t see Maddie’s tiny hands reaching out. I would have stopped her. Told her to get back. But, like me, she too was drawn to her purpose, and powerless to the lure of it.

In the distance, as if from inside a cave, I heard John shouting at us. An unintelligible echo really.

But it was already too late.

Flash. Picture. The girl, with long wavy chestnut colored hair. Brown eyes. Pedaling her bicycle. Embracing the warmth of the sun. Wide smile on her pretty face. Flash. Picture. She saw flowers growing around mailboxes. She pedaled without fear. Without fatigue. She was free and happy as a child should be.

What used to be hurt even more. I couldn’t take it.

I yanked myself out of her fellowship and held my trembling hands up in front of me, staring through them. It was too sad. I had used my gifts many times over the years, but it never failed to astound me.

“What are you doing? Don’t touch that thing,” John howled, grabbing me by the shoulders. Slowly coming to, as if waking from a dream, I realized he was shaking me. I’d seen that look before. The look on John’s face took my breath away.

It was as if he was seeing me completely for the first time. The thick humid air caught in his throat as he swallowed hard. I already knew, but I had to see it for myself. I reached my hand around his forearm. Flash. Picture. There it was. What I did not want to see. Feelings of regret. Disappointment. The desire for me to be something else. His true feelings revealed themselves like flipping cards in a deck. There was disapproval then abhorrence.

I had to look away from him. John shifted his eyes, completely defeated, toward Maddie. He saw her slight stature, slumped over the corpse. Her little body shaking as her eyes glazed over. I recognized the signs of divination. I knew them well.

John began shouting again, “What is happening? What is she doing?”

Panicked, he backed away from us, running his hand through his hair.

His tone, like every other tone of voice I’d heard my entire life, sounded like callous rejection. The kind of disapproval that tears you apart inside. The look in his eyes…

‘What are you?’

‘How are you doing that?’

‘That’s evil.’

John joined the ranks of all judgmental cynics. He couldn’t believe. He was like lots of other people I knew. Programmed to doubt people like me. From that moment on, I would either be a complete phony or an abomination.

Avoiding his glare, I slowly reached out to grab my daughter’s arm and protectively drew her back to me. I could be a phony. A liar. A nutcase. Whatever John wanted. But, Maddie would never be any of those things. This wasn’t what I wanted for my child. Like every mother, I wanted better for her. I wanted normalcy for her.

The girl in the lake was not Maddie’s first reading, I knew that. That was why she wore the pink gloves; because of her psychometry gift or so the experts called it when they had diagnosed me. I preferred token object reading.

Maddie and I both possessed the ability to connect with the most tangible records left behind. Whether they be a person’s hand, a book, a chair, an article of clothing…whatever. If a connection could be made, we tried.

I looked down at Maddie’s angelic baby face and asked, “What did you see?”

She smiled, the cutest most innocent snaggle tooth of smiles, “Mama, I saw her. Alive. She was okay.”

I nodded as I too saw that image, “What else?”

Maddie pulled her head away from my chest and straitened her back, “A man with a long beard.” She touched her chin with her fingers and added, “A mean man.” Maddie’s eyes narrowed, “He hit her. That mean man hurt her.”

I nodded again, “Yes. Yes, he did.”

Sometimes, the gift didn’t feel like a gift at all. Sometimes it hurt like hell. I’d had many years to deal with it, and most importantly, to control it.

Poor, Maddie.

I pulled her into my chest again and waved John away from us. I could no longer stand his wide-eyed gaze. Instead, I rocked my daughter until her panting stopped.

“There, there, it’s going to be alright,” I whispered patting her lightly on the back. And, it would be alright.

Eventually.

As I slowly allowed the pictures of what had once been drain from my mind’s eye, Maddie pulled away, suddenly jarred by a detail, “He broke her tooth too.” She slid her finger into her mouth as she spoke, “I saw it. The mean man put her broken tooth in his pocket.”

I was sure my sweet child did not understand why a person would do something like that, and I did not want her to.

I glanced back at the at the body still dripping water. It was such a sad loss of life. She was too young, and it was all so horrible.

But, my talented Maddie had more to tell me. Her deep set, hazel eyes focused on mine. Her high voice tackling each word, “He had a tattoo right here.” She pointed to her own shoulder, “It looked like a knife thing with blood on it.”

Yes, that bloody dagger belonged to a sick man with a very sick mind.

Maddie’s abilities were still a bit of a mystery to me. It was hard to know how much she had honed in her 8 young years, but I hoped that she was unable to see into the killer’s mind. Because from the glimpse I had gotten, that proved most ghastly. I prayed the good Lord would spare her that indignity.

Maddie’s dreams should be filled with sugar, spice, and everything nice. Not corpses, broken teeth, and bloody tattoos.

John approached us again from behind. Still unable to look upon her, he turned his head away from the body while his words hit short and sharp.

“The police are on their way.”

I didn’t have to look back at him to know that our relationship was over. It was one thing when he thought he was dating a single mother with a quirky daughter. It was quite another to realize that the mother was even more so.

We waited for the police to show up that day. They discovered Maddie and I holding one another and sitting on the dock, right next to the girl’s body. That’s where I’d promised her I would be. Perhaps they wouldn’t believe the story I was about to tell. That didn’t matter. I was used to it. What did matter was that the girl in the lake was no longer lost. She was no longer disposed of or forgotten.

She would forever live in our minds. Her innocence intact. Free and happy, as a child should be.