The Lake Event
Roaming Lake once stood majestically by the winding highway, just outside the village leading north, to the canyon path that filled in the void somewhere happier than here. It had gigantic boulders sunk to its depths, rising from the center, which was considerable. Three tips stuck out like pointed islands in the center of the lake.
In the distance, the lake stretched out in all directions, disappeared at times by fog or night but now it is gone. There was a time when you could see blue for miles looking west and all of it was lake, as big as life and just as great. On clear days it would touch the sky and stay with it for hours in perfect quiet on the horizons bend.
Rocks and a sandy shore line were peppered with deciduous and evergreens as far as the eye could see and farther than that if you calculated or took into consideration the powers of persuasive imagination, that is, if you were so inclined to imagine that. You could see it, a solid body of water, fluid through and through, all anchored down by nature pointing to a pastel sky on drier days. Cumulus nimbus clouds of gray and white held up by gravity, lumbered past, slower than molasses, as hefty shadows being towed into tomorrow.
Something happened over night around 2:00 am or was it three on the night before? No one is sure of the precise time but the location is for certain. Locals say it was an asteroid event. We are now left with a crater, a hole, a nightmare, a hand full of flattened trees and plenty of questions without an explanation and a mystery to deal with of monumental proportions, that crept into our skins unsettling. Lakes don't just pick up and disappear in the middle of the night. That just isn't right.
Old Ann lived right on the waters edge, on the west shore in a run down wooden bungalow, practically in the lake if you must know. She woke up to awful sounds, irritating to say the least, strange in their origins. It was around 1:45 am on one night or another still in question at this hour. Her memory was sketchy. The racket was nothing like thunder, nothing like rain or a train or even wind. It was a hollow vacuous noise coming from all directions at one time.
When she stepped outside her door she could see what was missing under the blanket of stars cast down with steady lights on the strange new landscape, that frightened her and the others. It was a solemn crowd of witnesses who had gathered by the hundreds just as perplexed and scared as the poor oldgirl. They stood there almost prayer like in silence looking out at the great void that once was a lake.
It turned into a circus, a crime scene, a mystery, with a web of detectives running here and there in all directions in the newly formed expansive hole. Buttons clicked. Electronic devices whirred. Flashes of cameras snapped lights, memorized the gathering of inhabitants.
What happened to the lake? Where are the trees? The dear old woman Ann was met by an enormous vacancy of trees and water; a landscape as barren as the moon, a land as far out of reality as a land could be. She took a step where a lake once was and screamed.
She discovered a note posted to her door. It read, “Sorry to have run off with your lake and vegetation.” “We are borrowing them for a short time and will return them after some additional considerations.” “Thanks neighbor for your continued cooperation and understanding.”
This did not sit well with the elderly woman. She had a reasonable fear of the unknown. There was some greater power at work here. Normal neighbors borrow a cup of sugar. This is something different... way different. This was clearly something out of the ordinary.
On the morning of the fifth day of the missing lake and vanished trees, the local residents and a handful of curiosity seekers looked up at a crystal clear sky. They witnessed the missing lake floating, as real as real could be, drifting up above, meandering off to the east as a large body in the form of a staggering misshaped mass, like a giant clump of solid water held in suspended animation but held invisibly, moving effortlessly cloud like through the atmosphere up there. Peculiar comes to mind. What else could you call it? Strange is a word that comes to mind. If you question the citizens and even the strangers they would all agree. There must be a reason. There always is. Nature is magnificent no matter how you look at it.
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