trixie listened without any expression as daniel told his tale.
when he finished, he half expected her to laugh in his face or make some kind of smartypants remark,
but she just said -
if you have lost all hope, you have come to the right place.
you mean here at the lake? daniel asked, slightly bewildered.
no, on the the other side of the lake. but first, are you sure you have lost all hope? that you never want to go back to where you came from?
i never want to go back, and i want to go as far away as i can.
good. then the doctor will fix you right up.
the doctor? what doctor?
just follow me, and everything will be explained.
trixie moved past daniel and began walking walking along the shore of the lake.
it occurred to daniel that the way trixie was speaking was a little odd, more like a recorded message than a real live high school girl, but he followed her.
about thirty yards down the shore they came to a little canoe. it was painted black, and not very visible in the darkness.
trixie got in, and daniel followed her without being told.
there was a single oar in the canoe, and trixie pushed them off with it, and then had them skimming swiftly across the lake.
it seemed to get cloudier and darker overhead as they reached the center of the lake, and the temperature fell a few degrees and daniel wished he had brought the sweater trixie had mockingly referred to, but he did not say anything.
have you been to the other side of the lake? trixie asked.
yes, when i was a little kid, daniel answered.
“the lake” had been a source of wonder and mystery to generations of children, of which daniel and his friends had been the last, and they had swum and fished in it and wandered around and “explored” it in the last years before the new age of snowflakism had descended on civilization’s children.
now of course it was considered unsafe. the police and the sheriff’s department had patrolled it for a few years, but now they hardly bothered, as the newest cohort of children were so unaccustomed to going anywhere by themselves, that they would no more go near it than they would enter a burning nuclear waste, or try to walk and swim to antarctica.
the lake was in fact pretty deep in its center, and a few children and other unfortunates had drowned in it over the course of hundreds of years.
do you remember the old dawkins place? trixie asked.
oh yes, sure, daniel replied. the old dawkins place … the old henderson place… what were the others?
the far shore of the lake, on the other side from the highway, had held a number of old “mansions” that had been abandoned for decades, for reasons not precisely known, and which had provided fun for children and fodder for tall tales and legends.
what is there now? daniel wondered. how many are still standing? does anybody live in them? bears? bums? junkies?
aloud he asked trixie, the dawkins house? is that where this doctor lives?
sort of, she replied. you will see when we get there.
daniel did not want to pester her with questions, and he said no more.
they continued to glide silently across the lake.
the tall dark trees on the other side came into view.
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