s02e20 - houseonthelake
today, as with many other days, you drove past the house on the lake.
the house stands alone. it is tucked into a valley between the hills. it compensates for the uneven terrain with stilts that hold it aloft— you couldn't estimate how high. you've only seen it from very far away. just over the leftmost hill, dozens of sheep graze under the setting evening sun. instead of a driveway, a huge green lake sprawls out beneath the front of the house. it looks like the subject of a famous album cover. or the setting of a b-horror movie. the house is old, but not shabby, such that you cannot tell whether it has known the satisfaction of its purpose in the last twenty years.
you desperately want to stay there. then you consider the practicalities:
- inaccessible by road/cut off from the world
- hot water/electricity/gas ?
- heating/cooling ? what a hassle.
instead you look at it and you try to imagine the day it was built. it must've sprung up during summer sometime in the 1970's, that sepia-toned decade. you decide it belonged to a young couple. their first home together, an opportunity which arose from the inheritance of his family's farmland. the lake had been his favourite spot as a child, he used to swim there with his older sister and younger brother,— his cousins too, sometimes. his love for the lake was so strong that he wanted it to be at the centre of his new life. by the time the middle boy was married, his baby brother had become a carpenter, which made his dream home far more realistically achieved. together the man, his brother, his wife, and a few men they could afford to pay, built the house from nothing.
you are convinced of something that likely never crossed his mind. you are convinced that the lake, quaint and innocent as it seems, is a very patient killer. over decades you imagine the lives it has claimed, the bones that lay at its surprising depths. you think about how easily it would be to die there. you think about the panic that would set in, realising you're on your own. in the valley, nobody would hear your thrashing, your cries for help. nobody would know where you went. nobody would know where to look. your screams would roll over the hills like thunder. and then there would be quiet. impossible quiet and stillness. no sound but the wind whistling through the plains. no movement but the slight ripples in the water.
the house on the lake scares you to death.
but you are drawn to it all the same.