"Once upon a time there was a lake called Mud Lake and people drowned in it mysteriously for years. The reason it's called Mud Lake is because the bottom is completely mud and there are spots where that's all the water is. This one time a kid was walking on the dock, he was about to dive into the water when his mom called him in for dinner. He turned around to tell her that he would only be out for five minutes, but before a word came out, huge muddy arms wrapped around the boy's body and dragged him to the bottom!"
"Did...did he die?" Asked the terrified five year old girl.
"Yes, Lyn. But did his spirit ever leave?" said her seven year old brother, Jacob.
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10 years later.
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"Come on, Mom! I wanna get to the cabin as soon as we can. I can't wait to roast marshmallows and hot dogs and burgers...."
The girl was in the care with her mom, dad, and brother on the way to their new cabin by a large lake.
They were only driving for about twenty minutes when Jacob said,
"Hey, Lyn, look at the sign. It says that the Mud Lake is only three miles away. Hey, mom, how far away are we from the cabin?"
"About three miles." She said, not knowing of the horrors her daughter was thinking.
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"Let's go take a swim in the lake, Lyn!" Jacob looked at his sister's expression. "Don't worry, there's nothing here anymore!"
Lyn thought of the dream she had after her brother had first told her the Mud Lake story. There was a dog, a lab, jumping through a shallow part of the lake, enjoying the feeling of the mud splashing up in his face. He was thinking, I wonder where he is.
"Macaulay!" He barked out.
"I am right here, there's a good boy." said a voice that the dog could not see.
The dog dug at a spot of mud, in an attempt to get to Macaulay. He looked down and.... Lyn woke up.
Lyn thought of how ridiculous that dream was now and jumped into the water with her big brother.
They swam a very far way from the cabin and saw a narrow body of water that looked like a water park slide. Of course, being the curious teenagers they were, they swam to it and went very fast down the slide looking strip of water.
Lyn closed her eyes, because of the water splashing up at her face, and when she opened them she was standing in a small book and music store. Lyn was wearing a jacket with huge cups protruding from each of her pockets. Michael Jackson was singing on the cups and Lyn looked down at him with a look of interest.
A woman was trying to move through the magazine stands, to the cash register.
"Come on, son, we have to buy this before the sale ends!" She was holding a large vinyl record labeled 'Essential Michael Jackson Part Two'. Last time Lyn checked, there was only one part, no wonder this woman looked so excited.
"That is awesome, are their any left?" Lyn asked eagerly.
The woman looked at her blankly, then she looked at the cups in her pockets and said,
"Woah! Where'd you get those?"
"I don't remember. I'm sorry."
"Hmm, well, there are no more of these" She said pointing at the record, "I have the last one. But come with me and I'll show you some other stuff."
She led Lyn around to a table of crates with records in them, but picked up a book hidden by the wall, behind a crate that read, 'Is Macaulay Culkin still in Mud Lake?'
Lyn vaguely realized what that meant, before she felt rushing water. She turned around and was still sliding down narrow strip of water, but there was an opening coming up and she went into it. Jacob was about ten feet away from her, eating a Hershey bar.
"I'm going to go through this tunnel, I'll see you on the other side, okay?"
"Jacob, you won't be able to eat that in that tunnel. The water is too far up, it would get soaked."
"Good point." He said and he swam ahead of me, racing me to a dock, just ahead of us.
He, of course, got there first, but Lyn wasn't far behind.
"LYN, JACOB! It's about time you two got back!" Their mom screamed at them. "I was just meeting with the ranger and police and they said that this lake is cursed and that a boy's body was lost here fifteen years ago! I don't want to stay here, we're going home."
"NO!" Lyn and Jacob said in unison. "We've probably swam every inch of this lake, there's nothing here."
"We're only staying tonight, then we're going home." Said their dad in a voice that meant the argument was over.
At midnight, the siblings snuck out of the house and to the dock.
Jacob whispered to Lyn, "If their really is a boy here, we're going to find him."
They jumped in and swam as far as they had last time. They saw the narrow slide of water, but went off the opposite way. Suddenly their feet kicked mud and they were in shallow water. They stood up and started walking until they saw dog tracks in the mud.
"Should we follow those? Do you reckon they'd lead us right to him?"
Lyn said nothing back to her brother. She knew that this was the right way, but was scared rather than excited. Despite her feeling, she nodded and followed beside her brother.
They stopped walking when the tracks stopped.
"But... what? Where would the dog have gone? There's not enough water around this to jump into and stop the tracks..." Jacob said, extremely confused.
Lyn knew exactly what to do. She knelt down and started to dig, like the dog in her dream had done ten years ago. She dug and dug with her eyes closed until she felt it appropriate to stop. Slowly, she stood up, eyes still closed. Lyn turned her head and opened her eyes to see her brother's horrified face. She looked down and saw a boy, no older than thirteen, lying as though he was sleeping and curled around a lab. Lyn couldn't believe her eyes, if they were dead, then after all this time wouldn't they have decayed?
They looked a minute more, then the boys head slowly turned upwards and his eyes opened, they were a nasty color of blood red.
Nobody heard them scream.
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And this is where I woke up....
- Corey C.
