The Thing From the Lake
Copyright© 2025 by Eleanor M. Ingram
Chapter 21
“Fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.”
—Cowper.
The uproar of rushing waters was still in my ears. But I was in my chair before the hearth in the living room of the farmhouse, and the noise was the din of a tempest outside.
Opposite me, Phillida and Desire were clinging together, watching me with such looks of gladness and anxiety that I felt myself abashed before them. Bagheera, the cat, sat on the table beside the lamp, yellow eyes blinking at each flash and rattle of lightning and thunder, while he sleeked his recently wetted fur. Wondering where that wet had come from, I discovered presently that the fire was out, and the hearth drenched with soot-stained water. I looked toward the windows, from which the curtains had been drawn aside. Rain poured glistening down the panes, but the clean storm was empty of horror.
“Drink some of this, Mr. Locke,” urged Vere, whose arm was about me. “Sit quiet, and I guess you’ll be all right in a few moments.”
I took the advice. Strength was flowing into me, as inexplicably as it had flowed away from me a while past. How can I describe the certainty of life that possessed me? The assurance was established, singularly enough, for all of us. None of my companions asked, and I myself never doubted whether the danger might return. The experience was complete, and closed. Moreover, already the Thing that had been our enemy, the horror that had been Its atmosphere, the mystery that haunted Desire—all were fading into the past. The phantoms were exorcised, and the house purified of fear.
But there was something different from ordinary storm in this tempest. The tumult of rain and wind linked another, deeper roar with theirs. The house quivered with a steady trembling like a bridge over which a train is passing. Pulling myself together I turned to Vere.
“What is happening outdoors?” I asked.
“The cloudburst was too much for the dam,” he answered regretfully. “It went off with a noise like a big gun, a while back. I expect the lake is flooding the whole place and messing up everything from our cellar to the chickenhouse. Daylight is due pretty soon, now, and the storm is dying down. We’ll be able to add up the damage, after a bit.”
“The water came down the chimney and drowned Bagheera,” Phillida bravely tried to summon nonchalance. “Isn’t it lucky you and Desire could not get started in the car, after all? Fancy being out in that!”
Desire Michell steadied her soft lips and gave her quota to the shelter of commonplace speech we raised between ourselves and emotions too recently felt.
“It was like the tropical storms in Papua, where I lived until this year,” she said. “Once, one blew down the mission house.”
Vere’s weather prediction proved quite right. In an hour the storm had exhausted itself, or passed away to other places. Sunrise came with a veritable glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air washed limpidly pure by the rain. The east held a troop of small clouds red as flamingoes flying against a shining sky; last traces of our tempest.
We stood on the porch together to survey an unfamiliar scene in the rosy light. Water overlay lawns and paths, so the house stood in a wide, shallow lake whose ripples lapped around the white cement steps and the pillars of the porte-cochère. Phillida’s Pekin ducks floated and fed on this new waterway as contentedly as upon their accustomed pastures. Small objects sailed on the flood here and there; Bagheera’s milk-pan from the rear veranda bobbed amidst a fleet of apples shaken down in the orchard, while some wooden garden tools nudged a silk canoe-cushion.
In contrast to all this aquatic prospect, where the real lake had been there now lay some acres of ugly, oozing marsh; its expanse dotted with the bodies of dead water-creatures and such of Vere’s young trout as had not been swept away by the outpouring flood. The dam was a mere pile of débris through which trickled a stream bearing no resemblance to the sparkling waterfall of yesterday. Already the sun’s rays were drawing a rank, unwholesome vapor from the long-submerged surface.
We contemplated the ruin for a while, without words.
“Poor Drawls!” Phillida sighed at length. “All your work just rubbed out!”
“Never mind, Vere,” I exclaimed impulsively. “We will put it all back in the same shape as it was.”
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