A lake in the middle of a forest

I remember Anna, she told me about the lake in the middle of a forest which was in the middle of our busy town. 

The Forest

Lush green and scary

It was Pete, Anna’s brother, a little boy of ten, with a fancy hat and chirpy smile, who walked out of his home, when their parents started to yell for the fourth time that day. Anna told me that she stayed back at the school library for a history class project.

Pete walked ten minutes then paused and looked around in an attempt to remember the way. He wanted to trace the steps, retrace them and draw them on his palm with the stain of rotten fruit. 

Anna said he did exactly that. She would always sense his movements, that’s how she found the forest. 

Anna sat on the floor with a book on bird watching in one hand and half-smoked cigarette on the other. She said the forest was haunted. 

‘Why do you smoke’ my brother asked. He was not concerned about Pete or Anna or the forest and the Ghosts that inhibits. He always wanted to smoke but mother won’t allow and I won’t let him smoke in secret, there are always ways to catch his lies, for him smoking is cool but for Anna, I don’t know. 

‘Oh, I like to piss mom and dad, they scared Pete and they don’t give a shit about us’ Anna smiled, a wicked smile, the kind I see on the face of vamps of the daily soaps.

‘That’s not true’ my brother started

‘Ah, well, the forest’

It’s always about the forest and it should always be about it.

Pete walked for an hour, Anna could sense the time. He jogged and hopped as he neared towards the forest. 

He threw his hat down and sucked on the rotten fruit because he started to get thirsty. The fruit stung but his thirst was soothed. 

The forest Anna said was home to nine different species of reptiles. There were other animals and birds too but Pete only saw a snake, so only reptiles mattered. There was a big banyan tree in the centre, Pete lay there and slept like a baby, not a metaphor, literally like a baby. When he woke up there three heads staring at him from the ground. 

‘Were they crawling’ my brother sat up straight, eyes wide and eagerness in his voice. 

‘No, no, it was Pete’s imagination’ 

Pete lay there, he wanted to cry but tears didn’t come. He knew Anna would come for him but the darkness and greenness of the still forest scared him. He felt alone in the world with no one but the trees.

Anna stretched her hand and let out a puff, my brother was so close to her that I felt he was breathing in the smoke she puffs out. 

‘I was reading about Stalin and the Russian Revolution when I heard him’

Her eyes were watery possibly due to lack of sleep. 

She said she ran out from the library without even closing the book, the librarian’s voice echoed through the corridors. She didn’t stop, she kept on running as if following an odd sensation that would lead her to Pete. It was their telepathic connection that guided her. She took the same route, the same turns. She jumped and hopped the way he did. It was like watching the same clip on repeat. 

She ran and ran and ran and ran and then she saw him. He was lying there under the banyan tree, curled up and small as a newborn baby. He was a baby, soft and fragile. She picked him up and held him close to her chest and walked steadier and faster. She didn’t see the lake then but heard the voice, at first it felt like an acoustic illusion, a wicked trick played by her mind. But the further the walked, louder and clearer and almost smothering was the voice. It was the voice of the undead, drowned in the holy river.

The Town

Filthy Crowd and Noisy

Everyone here was sick, they always felt sick. The doctors from the city once told their patients that our town was the haven for the parasites with their dirty pathways and stinky side roads. It was a small town but the magnitude of filth and noise matched that of the Industrial Period’s London like an image from Dickens’ work. 

Bow-wow-wowie was my brother’s stray dog. He picked her up from an old tea vendor’s shop. Bow-wow-wowie was white coloured dog with large pointed ears that droop at the tip. 

The day my brother fell sick like most others in our town, Bow-wow-wowie ran towards the forest. I thought of following her but Anna chided, she then said that my brother would be able to sense and because Bow-wow-wowie is a dog, she would not lose track and can return on her own. 

I thought of Pete, poor kid, he is now a baby, ten-month-old baby. Anna’s parents don’t care, strangely, they don’t even remember that they had a ten-year-old son. They still fight, still, yell and Anna still smokes but when with Pete she wouldn’t let even a tint of tobacco enter his baby lungs. 

I watched my brother toss and turn in bed and making whimpering noises. Our mother doesn’t bother about him and she stopped making us dinner. I go out and pluck some fruits, mangoes or sweet limes, most of them would be rotten. I would squeeze them with hand and make a floopy juice, so light and uncertain. With some rock salt and pepper, I serve them to my brother. 

It’s Bow-wow-wowie. He came back not as a dog but a pup, small fragile, bony pup. 

My brother cried. He wailed and wailed and wailed, ear-splitting and vulgar that Anna stared at him with disgust.

‘I lost my little brother, you just lost a stray dog, stop being a whiny bitch’ she said and walked out.

Something is definitely wrong with the forest, I am sure of that by now. I can’t walk in, no one will come looking for me and most importantly I don’t have any telepathic connection with a brother or a pet.

Anna sighed and sat next to me. My brother was unstoppable so I made him chamomile tea and lulled him to sleep, taking care of him is worse than taking care of a little baby. 

Anna and I took a walk around the town. We stopped in front of a tea shop. An old man was sitting on a bench outside and was dunking his biscuit into the tea. He lost his brother last month, Anna said. She knows a lot of people, her mother has a dry cleaner shop and after school, Anna used to sit there with Pete watching and observing people.

Kids from school loitered around the corners of the street munching chips or chocolates. Sweet wrappers and leftover food were scattered around them. 

Anna nudged and said, ‘why no one ever leaves this place?’

No one has ever left this town, people come and then they never leave. Once a man decided to move to the city but his car broke down and the road got drowned in an unexplained flood. Some call it a bit of bad luck and move on, others never bothered. 

‘What should we do?’ I asked Anna, ‘there sure must be a way’

‘Maybe’

Anna and I continued to walk aimlessly throughout the town. There were people we knew and some strangers, most of them were battling one or more issues. Some had a bad day at a job while others had a broken limb. Kids screamed and babies wailed, pets started to go missing and parents seem to forget their own kids.

It was the lake. 

The Lake

Dead and Alive

 Anna said men threw the dead in the lake and the dead never died. I have heard stories of the ultimate salvation and the blessing by the River Goddess. It was all nothing but a mere story for me. 

‘It’s not a story, it is true’ Anna said, her face flinched at the thought. 

We walked and walked for hours and we still haven’t reached the forest. There was an old saying that, ‘only when God wishes, you see the God’. Probably the forest doesn’t want us. 

There were trees on the outskirts of what Anna said was the forest. Long large oak trees acting as a shield. There was a sound of water from somewhere close, closer than I have been near water. 

‘It should be the lake’ Anna said. 

‘Why can’t we enter’ I asked.

We never thought of what to do when we enter the forest. Anna took another cigarette, a habit she refuses to let go.

I thought of my brother, curled up in his bed, crying or sleeping, fear-stricken and sad. Then I thought of Anna’s brother. Anna smiled, a sad sorrowful smile at me, her eyes were thick with grief so deep that I cannot possibly understand. 

‘We are in the middle of the forest’ Anna said, half relieved and half worried.

‘What to do?’

‘We don’t know, wait, maybe’

It was the most ridiculous plan ever. To wait has never done anyone anything. I looked around. It was not a forest but some big trees sheltering us, comforting and making us almost fall asleep.

There stood the banyan tree, the one where everyone slept and changed. I nudged Anna, she nodded and we walked towards the tree.

The lake that Anna mentioned ran right behind the tree. It was silvery and magical. The possibility of wandered spirits on the lake sounded bizarre. Anna must have dreamt but then Pete no longer was a ten-year-old boy.

I looked at Anna, her face soft and tired. She looked so old, that I felt she aged a decade being in the forest. I wondered how I looked, as old as Anna or older. 

The lake shined brighter, I could see my reflection, a confused face staring back at me in utter bewilderment. 

She picked some fruits and nuts from the ground, gently rubbing the soil off, she took a bite. They always advise us to wash the fruits before eating and Anna of all the people I know would never ever break that rule.  

‘It’s the lake’ she whispered, ‘but I am hungry’

She forwarded towards me a half-eaten berry.

‘No, let me look around’.

I walked away, leaving a perplexed Anna with the Banyan tree and the lake.

The forest-like they said was indeed haunted for I could hear voices of people, strange and familiar, dead and forgotten. Some cries of help while other howls of vengeance. They are sad and angry and they hate us. They hate the town, they hate the people, they hate anyone and everyone who are not them. 

I lay down crying, the sadness was engulfing me. I don’t know how long I slept. When I woke up, Anna was beside me, smiling, a calm, tender smile. 

‘Come’ she said, ‘Let’s go’.

As we stepped outside the forest and was far away from there, I asked her, ‘how old was Pete?’

‘Why? He is babe’

‘Just asking’

‘Ten months’ she said. 

***

I will always remember Anna and the story about the lake in the middle of a forest which was in the middle of our busy town

The End.