‘Lake Oblivion’ – By Mark T. Bates (The Curious Dark #4)

‘Lake Oblivion’

A short story …

By Mark T. Bates

(2025)

***

I stand at the entrance of the summer camp which sits on the north bank of Lake Oblivion, watching as my grandparents’ car drives away. And as it turns out of sight from the dusty track onto the highway, the words of my grandma ring in my ear;

“Enjoy yourself sweetheart, make some friends, and try to take your mind off of what’s happened as best you can.”

It had been two weeks since the car crash had ended my parents’ lives. Their souls taken from their bodies in a mangled mess of twisted metal, as the front of the car we had been travelling in collided with the side of a lorry after it blindly pulled out in front of us.

The front of my father’s vehicle had folded like a concertina, pulverising both him and my mother, but remarkably leaving the rear seats where I had been sitting with Madonna’s Like a Prayer playing through my Walkman, relatively unscathed. The seatbelt I had been wearing did its job well, holding me tight as the force of the crash tried to claim my body as it had done so my parents.

When the vehicles collided, I had been looking out of the side window watching as a flock of birds flew upwards from the cornfield we were passing. I had no time to react or even really consider what was happening. My head was suddenly pulled forwards, then jerked backwards, instantly knocking me unconscious as it was forced violently against the back of the seat, jolting my neck unnaturally as it did so.

After this, I remember nothing of being in the car or of what happened next. Fortunately, this meant I had not seen with my own eyes what the wreckage had done to my beautiful parents. I have only been told since that they would have died an instant and painless death.

And so it was that I had come to live with my grandparents in the summer of 1989, an orphaned girl of just thirteen-years-old. They lived in a rural detached house in upper New York state, a home I had visited each summer of my life with my mother and father as we would make the long but enjoyable annual drive up from our home in Philadelphia. How I longed to be able to spend that time with them again. Any time with them again.

It had been on one such drive that our misadventure had occurred, and how strange it had felt when my grandparents picked me up from the hospital, and I completed the journey to their home without my mum and dad. My world was truly broken. My grandparents were in as much shock as I was, for they were also grieving having lost their only daughter and son-in-law. But I couldn’t really appreciate how they were feeling. At only thirteen I couldn’t really comprehend anything that was happening outside of my own head.

I don’t think that they were at all well equipped in taking on a teenage girl at their age, and those first few days were spent in relative silence. I couldn’t bring myself to leave the bedroom I was now told was mine. But eventually one day, grandma sat next to me on my bed. A steaming bowl of homemade vegetable soup in her hand, and she told me her great idea;

“We’re going to take you up to Lake Oblivion so you can spend a week with people your own age. You’ll be able to swim in the crystal waters and make lots of new friends. Your mother went every year when she was a girl, and always had such a wonderful time.”

***

And so here I was, dropped off with a bag full of clothes, a few books and a couple of swimming costumes. Pretty much everything I had packed for the visit to my grandparents in the first place. And while I was to be left here alone, they were going to drive down to my home in Philadelphia and make a start on sorting out the affairs of my now deceased family.

They promised the next time they would take me with them, but insisted this first time would be too tough. They explained they also had a number of legalities to work through before we could arrange a funeral, which was going to be incredibly tedious and time consuming. I understood now why I had been sent away for the week.

I so desperately wanted to go back to my home, but I guess they believed it would too painful for me this soon after the accident. I had made a list of everything I wanted my grandma to collect and bring back up to me from my bedroom, and she promised me she wouldn’t forget a thing.  

After their car had pulled away out of sight, I turned from the road and looked out across the lake. The water was just as impressive as my grandma had described. It was vast, and the sun was shimmering on the surface, creating a beautiful kaleidoscopic effect. I had been left in the company of a camp councillor named Marsha, and she seemed to have been forewarned about the recent tragedy which had now changed my life forever.

She was pleasant enough, probably no older than her early twenties, and she regularly asked if I was ok, if there was anything I needed. She held my hand as we walked, whilst reassuring me that I could take all the time I needed to integrate with the rest of the girls at the camp.

It was already quite late in the afternoon when I had been dropped off, and I was soon ushered into a dormitory and taken over to a bed in the corner of the room. There were around twenty beds in all, most with bags and suitcases surrounding them. A handful already with girls around my age laying down reading books and magazines, some chatting together.

Each girl within the room had looked up when I walked in, and they had all smiled at me. I started unpacking the few belongings I had brought when a bell started ringing, and the girls all jumped up with excitement. I followed as they made their way outside, and we walked across a lawned courtyard full of picnic benches, with an adventure playground sitting to one side.

I continued following as we walked across to a large dining hall where Marsha and around half a dozen other councillors were waiting to greet us, all smiling together to make us feel as if we were somewhat at home. Inside the hall were dozens of other children sitting on rows of long tables. I was overwhelmed and had very little to say to anyone.

I found that no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother and father, and not for the first time I found myself resenting my grandparents for leaving me by myself so early into my grief. For bringing me here and leaving me in a situation which was going to force me to be sociable, when all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep.

We were served a meal of cheeseburgers and fries with lemonade. I managed to make a little small talk with the girls sat on my table, all of which would be sleeping in the same dorm as me. But I just couldn’t give myself completely to the experience. I spent the rest of the evening laying on my bed reading, as the other girls came and went, playing inside and out while laughing together.

At 10pm I was ushered to a bathroom where we all washed and brushed our teeth. We then returned to our dorm where I learned lights out would be in 30 minutes. Until then, the room was a hive of activity as the girls around me chatted and giggled, buzzing like bees. While I merely melted into my bed sheets, and tried to pretend I was invisible.

***

Sleep came easily to me that evening, despite the continuing sounds of laughter after dark. And as I had every night for the last fortnight, I dreamt of my parents, of driving in their car … of the accident. Always stopping and often waking at the moment of impact. This time was no different, and I woke sharply, sweating and scared.

I sat up and realised it must be close to morning, as the first light of the sun was shining through the cracks of the door and bending around the corners of the curtains which hung over the windows. But something strange hit me almost instantly. And in my confusion, I realised that I must have been left to sleep in, and that it was later in the morning than I first thought. For I was completely alone in the room.

Frantically I looked around. But not only was there no-one else with me, the beds which had been freshly made with crisp white sheets the night before were bare. Some with dirty looking mattresses, others with exposed rusty coiled springs. The room looked as if it were abandoned, the beds not slept in for years. I started to panic, trying to make sense of the situation I found myself in.

Wallpaper which had looked clean and new the night before, was peeling from the walls. The smell in the air was different, it was musky and dank. Old and decrepit. The floor was covered in brown puddles of water, with dozens of little flies buzzing around and skipping over their murky surfaces. I was truly panicking now.

I looked up, and there were holes in the ceiling where water had clearly dripped down from the rainy night I had just slept through. I sprung out of my bed and ran frightened to the door, throwing it open and expecting see a courtyard full of the other children I had met playing. But this is not the view that greeted me. Instead, I saw long unkempt grass that had not been cut in years. Rotten picnic benches that were overturned on their sides. The play-area covered with nettles three-feet high, and the metal frames of the swings and slides now a dull, rusted copper colour.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth. I ran across the now barren wasteland that the evening before had sprouted flowers and the laughter of children. Heading to the dining hall, hoping it to be full of my peers and the adult councillors. Marsha would surely make everything better? But to my despair this room was also empty. Just a torn and thread-bare carpet sitting in the centre which had been thick and plump when I had eaten my dinner in front of it the night before.

I was truly alone. It seemed as if no-one had been here for years, decades even. But how could that be? This had been my mother’s favourite place to holiday as a child, and I had been dropped here by my grandparents in order to socialise and try to forget the morbid turn my life had taken for a short while. But now I was here all by myself, with a lake surrounded by miles of woodland sitting between me and the nearest neighbours.

I ran back outside, frantically looking this way and that, not knowing where to turn next. And before me the lake still sat shimmering. It looked alive, the only thing here left alive. And I made my way towards it, slower now, no longer running as it drew me closer. As I approached the waters-edge, I started to see ripples on the surface. I stopped to focus clearly, and watched as two figures began to emerge, breaking through the tension.

They seemed to be walking from the middle of the lake towards the bank, towards me. Their arms held out as if they wanted to embrace my body when they got close enough. The figures were badly deformed, blood splattered faces, a mess of exposed flesh and plant matter from what I could only imagine came from the bottom of the lake. And I knew almost instantly that they were my parents, and that they had come for me.

I slumped down to my knees, my screams now echoing around the landscape. I was surrounded by nettles and the buzzing of insects, and as my parents approached almost close enough to touch, I began sinking into the floor. The dirt engulfing my body like quicksand, as it pulled me down, deep into the earth.

***

In a hospital room sits an elderly woman keeping vigil over the bedside of her only grandchild, as she lays comatose in a vegetative state. A cold and senseless state, just as she had done so since her parents’ car had collided with a lorry a fortnight before. Her mother and father had been killed instantly, and following the accident Ava who was just thirteen, had been kept alive only by a synthetic machine.

Her grandma had wept endlessly ever since the tragedy. Weeping for her lost daughter, and the grandchild she was now desperate to save. But reluctantly, she now signs the paperwork that is handed to her after being told all hope is lost. Sobbing uncontrollably, she clasps tight the pen in one hand, while her other strokes the arm of her granddaughter.

She looks up, noticing as water begins to drip from the ceiling of the hospital room onto the floor beside her. She breathes in deeply, and is surprised as the scent of the room causes a vivid memory to flash through her mind. A memory of a holiday camp next to a lake that her daughter would beg to be taken to each year as a child.

She closes her eyes as Marsha, the Intensive Care nurse, tenderly puts a hand on her shoulder, and informs her that the time is now. She remains that way as a doctor sits between her and her grandchild, and she feels an excruciating internal pain as she senses him switching off the life-support.

*** End ***

Copyright 2025 Mark T. Bates

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Mark T. Bates – Writer Bio

As a teenager Mark immersed himself in reading a cocktail of Stephen King, Clive Barker and James Herbert stories, while also diving deep into the movies of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg and Guillermo Del Toro. Gaining a life-long love of Horror, Fantasy and Sci-Fi which has transcended into a passion for telling his own tales.

Particularly drawn to the craft of short-story writing, Mark is inspired by the Night Shift and Skeleton Crew collections from King, Barker’s seminal Books of Blood, and stories from a diverse pool of authors including Chuck Palahniuk, Philip K. Dick and Joe Hill. 

Mark has had a number of short stories appear online as part of Crystal Lake Publishing’s Shallow Waters series, and his sinister period-tale – ‘A Burnt Offering’ – appeared on The Dark Corner blog.

His creepy supernatural novella – ‘The Curse Of Six’ – has been signed by RDG Books Press for release later in 2025, while his mystery thriller novella – ‘A Slow Decay of Flowers’ – has been signed by Baynam Books Press … arriving in 2026.

Mark can be found online via Instagram / Facebook / Bluesky / X.

‘The Curious Dark (Vol.1)’ – by Mark T. Bates