“Will you go with me to Dead Daughter Lake?”
My wife was just waking, so I thought she was dreaming when she asked me this question. She seemed to snap out of it and be OK the rest of the day but again the next morning she asked me.
“Will you go with me? I need to go to Dead Daughter Lake.”
I’d known about the lake since I was small. It was a story that everyone told to everyone in my little town, around campfires and at sleepovers, and as a cautionary tale. The story goes that a woman lived near the lake with her daughter, and she was too strict and unkind and one day, the daughter vanished into the lake. I know, typical lady in white stuff. But in our town the story was partially true, at least from what I could find out. The lake seemed to be a place of melancholy and even suicide for people who have lost loved ones. Not a picnic spot or a romantic getaway.
I had only been there once as a teenager on a dare. The water was cold, and a deep dark met your gaze as you stared in. The ruins of a small house stood crumbled nearby like a stack of sticks. The air seemed void of warmth. Maybe it was just superstition, but I had decided I never wanted to go back there. So when my wife said this, a chill ran along my neck and down both arms.
The next few days she was quiet but followed her usual routine and didn’t mention it again, so I thought maybe she was bouncing back from whatever dark ideas had met her in the morning.
A week passed, and I woke to cold emptiness on her side of the bed and a note pinned to her pillow.
“Will you go with me to dead daughter lake? It’s been two years and my heart hurts too much to wait anymore. They say that the wind whispers to you and if you listen closely, you can hear a message from the one you lost. They say if you put your hand in the water a hand will reach back to you. I just can’t live in this world anymore without her so I need to know, will you go with me to dead daughter lake? I need to hear her voice again and see her sweet face. I will miss this world, but I miss her more. I will be there waiting when you choose to join me.”
She signed it with the name that only I used for her.
We never found her, though not for lack of trying. All our friends and the police combed the woods. Their sad gazes met my eyes quickly then glanced away. I knew what they were thinking, that I wasn’t enough to keep her here. They brought in someone to comb the lake bottom and they didn’t find anything either. I overheard talk of the depth and the murkiness and the sediment, and the possibility that she was there but they just couldn’t find her. I also heard them say they found a broken skeleton, too old and decomposed to be my wife. I guess they were surprised to only find one.
It’s been two years since I got that note, and four since we lost our little one. It’s a little harder each day to stay here. I wake from dreams of them next to me, only to be disappointed yet again. I keep the note in a little box on my dresser and it seems I take it out more and more lately. I put on my new dress and think, will I go today?