The Ghost of the Lake

Sitting out on the end of the dock, the first stars appearing, PP shivers as she stares at the lake's blackness. Hell, it's creepy. Looks like black glass with nary a stirring except for the tiny bug rings that wisp the top of its surface.


What a perfect place for Lizzie Eustace to get her Revenge, PP thinks to herself, so involved she is with this new writing project. What would Lizzie do? Take Frank Greystock out on a friendly little canoe ride at dusk, tempt him with her wiles and seduce him with her helplessness and then....whack! Brain him with a canoe paddle and away he'd fall, into the inky creepy blackness never to be seen again.....

Oh yeah, that's already been done--A Place in the Sun? Monty Clift brains Shelley Winters in brutal cold-bloodedness and tosses her into the deserted creepy lake! Shelley was a pain, but did she really deserve to get murdered? Sure, Monty was motivated; Liz Taylor will do that to a guy, but the consequences.....Don't ya just love Tennessee Williams?





So PP decides that maybe Lizzie needs to find another scheme to gain her Revenge upon Frank, and as the last light disappears over the dark line of trees, PP wanders back up the hill to her room at the Loftus House (She's changed to Christina's Lake View room--now she can obsess about the lake even more!)

But as she makes her way back up the hill, she glances back down at the dock where she's just been and sees.....

Okay call her crazy, but it's true! She sees a shadowy white figure lingering on the dock right where she'd been sitting. PP quickens her step up the hill. It can't really be a ghost, can it? Glancing over her shoulder, she double-checks. Maybe she just imagined it? But no, it's still there. Floating in ghostly brazenness, hovering there on the dock.





Damn!
Not only does the lake have snakes, but it also has a Ghost!

Of course, what creepy viper infested lake wouldn't have a Ghost? It's a given. PP just wishes that she hadn't seen it, or it hadn't been right where she'd been, or....
Could it be Shelly? PP isn't sure which Lake she was brained in--it could be this one, couldn't it?

Oh, yeah, that was a movie! Fiction! Not fact! But see what happens? PP starts to confuse the two.

Damn, she's writing way too much. Imagination follows her everywhere, which can be a good thing, but also, exhausting. (Or is she just exhausted tonight after the 'event' where the fabulous George Ella Lyons read her 'Tree' and 'Meadow' and 'I came from here' poetry, and the strangely smarmy board members of the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts invaded HER house and smoked cigarettes and drank wine and told boring stories of their power going out?)

Could be.

Maybe she'll just have to ask Anthony Trollope in the morning. He's sure to have a ghost story or two up his sleeve! And Lizzie? How will she get her revenge? Maybe she can conspire with the Ghost of the Lake to haunt Frank Greystock when he arrives on his mercy mission to find the lost Eustace Diamonds?

Or not.
In any case, PP is not swimming in the Lake tonight. Not without a Friar and NOT with a Ghost!