The Lady in the Lake

We used to call her Uncle Pam. She smelled like cigarettes and looked capable of being a one-woman biker gang. My cousin Audrey described her as "road hard". It was her rough party days that made her look so much older than her 50 years.

We'd go every Summer to Rancho Seco with our big, loud, hillbilly family. The place was my favorite as a kid, but in hindsight it's not somewhere I'd choose out of all the other campgrounds. It's a recreational area located by an old nuclear power plant.

At night, seeing the outline of the power plant's two large, hyperboloid structures added a certain macabre quality to the skyline; even though I was told the plant hadn't been operational for at least 60 years, it seemed to me like those two massive forms could still erupt at any moment. And I used to imagine what would happen if they did. I’d wonder if we would have time to escape, or if we'd all be dead before we ever realized what had happened. In my mind, they were like man-made volcanoes, lying dormant for now but still capable of mass destruction. That thought alone left me feeling a sense of thrilling apprehension as I'd drift off to sleep at night during our trips.

There were thirteen of us kids, and at least ten adults. We had gotten two large spots right up next to the lake. It was prime Rancho Seco real estate. As the sun was setting, Uncle Pam was already a few Keystone Lites deep, and she started telling us this story. It was the start to a perfect Summer.

Now, I myself and the other older cousins had heard plenty of Uncle Pam's camping stories throughout the years. There was one she'd told us the year before about a woman who had died here and now haunted the lake.

Uncle Pam had said that at night, she'd claw her way out of the lake with her long, sharp fingernails and look for a little boy to drag back into the water with her. I relaxed into my seat then. I knew I'd be safe; I was twelve, and a girl for that matter. She told us that the lady in the lake would show no mercy, that she’d come covered in mud, with dark black eyes. She said, once you were in her grasp, it was impossible to get free. Once you looked into those eyes, you’d be so scared, the fear alone could kill you. She told us that’d be preferable to being dragged into the lake still alive.

As we were all leaning forward in our seats listening to her intently, she subtly scraped her fingernails on the fabric of her camping chair. So subtly, it was nearly imperceptible. A chill ran down my spine. Had she actually scraped her nails across the fabric? I wasn't entirely sure. I looked behind me, and all around the edges of the trees. 

As a peculiarly specific detail, she added that the woman really liked little boys wearing striped shirts.

That tidbit sent my younger cousin Joe into a panic. He began to cry, and his little face turned red as tears streamed down his cheeks. He was petrified. He was wearing a striped shirt that night.

The older cousins and I all laughed. We told him Uncle Pam was yanking his chain! She had only said that because he was wearing a striped shirt. We told him he didn't need to worry.

That night, as we all lay down in our tents to sleep, Joe nestled in between our grandparents so the lady of the lake wouldn't be able to get him. I don't know how he slept so close to our grandpa, who snores like he's actively trying to give out his location. 

But, the next morning, Joe was safe and sound. No one had dragged him out to the water.

I didn't think about the lady in the lake for years. Until one night, I was camping in the woods with my husband and our friends. I relayed the story of the lady to them as we all sat around our large bonfire eating homemade chili and S'mores.

I smiled thinking of the way Uncle Pam used to tell it. How I’d never be as good a storyteller as her. Even when I tried subtly scraping my nails across the polyester of my chair like she used to do, I'd been caught by my husband. He smiled and squinted across the campfire at me.

As I was falling asleep that night, I heard a gentle scraping of fingernails across the nylon of our tent.

My eyes flicked open, and I lay very still, focusing all of my attention on the sounds around me. That's when I saw the outline of a hand pressing into the tent from outside. It wasn't a shadow, but the actual outline of a palm and fingers. It was pressing perfectly into the fabric. I watched it with curiosity. At first, it began gently pressing into the tent near my ankle. I thought, who is this?

I watched as it pushed its way up the side of my body, all the way to my shoulder. The pushing was getting more aggressive as it went, and soon the entire 12-person tent was shaking, waking everyone else. I quickly surveyed the other six people who were with us to see if everyone was accounted for - and when I saw that they were, I leapt out of my cot and into the middle of the tent.

I relayed to them what I'd seen. The outline of the hand, pushing into the tent. I told them about how it had first scraped its fingernails across the fabric. I told them about how I'd thought it must've been one of them playing a prank. How scary it was to realize that they were all inside the tent.

And then, the shaking suddenly stopped. There were no other sounds to be heard, no crunching of leaves as somebody walked away, nothing explicable. It was as if this being had beamed into and out of existence, with its only intention being to scare me.

My friends grumbled about it having been a deer or some other animal. None of them could explain how it had made no sound when whatever it was had left. None of them saw what I'd seen. I tried to reason with them: if a deer had fingers, then sure. I'd buy into it having been a deer.

"It must've been a bear then. Be quiet and go to sleep." My friend Chase had insisted. I wanted to scream. I know the difference between a paw, a hoof, and a hand.

I laid there frozen for the rest of the night telling myself it must've been a bear. I tried to reshape the memory for my own sake. So that I could rest.

But in the early morning hours, once I had finally fallen asleep, she visited me in my dream. I felt her pain, and I felt her anger. Her disdain for how my family had turned her tragedy into folklore. She showed me how she had drowned in the lake while looking for her son. I saw the large, gray shapes of the power plant looming in the distance behind her, puffing steady streams of white smoke into the sky. I saw her son, who reminded me of my sweet, rosy-cheeked baby cousin Joe. I saw the kids who had brought him into the water as a joke, knowing he couldn't swim. How they had left him there, and how she'd never found him. I saw her take her last breath.

I awoke with a deep inhalation and tears in my eyes, feeling as if I myself was drowning. I shook my husband awake and we packed up so quickly, there wasn’t even time for the breakfast we'd planned.

I don’t visit lakes anymore, because ever since that night, whenever I peer into the water, it isn’t my own face that I see. And I wonder if that same face is the one Uncle Pam had seen the night that she drowned.