By Lael Littke
Thirteen (1991)
Edited by T. Pines
Tagline: 13 Tales of Horror by 13 Masters of Horror
Ten year old Kate secretly watches her older brother Brandon fight with his girlfriend, Lucinda. She says he cheated on her with some chick named Holly. Lucinda is standing knee deep in a lake wearing her red commencement robe. She threatens to swim down to her secret place and stay there to punish him. Brandon and Kate walk away from the drama and Lucinda is never seen again.
Turns out this lake is a drowned town. Six years later Brandon blames himself for
Lucinda’s disappearance. He is now Kate’s sole guardian and he drags her back
to his nightmare because the lake bed has dried out and he hopes to finds
Lucinda’s body. Instead he believes he’s
being haunted and Kate wakes up to puddles on her bedroom floor.
Favorite Line
“I remembered a painting Holly had done after she and
Lucinda and Brandon had dived down to the old town. She’d painted willows, tall, pallid sticks
with long twisted leaves floating in the water.
Behind them were spectral shapes of buildings that were no longer there,
but worst of all were the faces caught in the willows, faces with huge, vacant
eyes and open mouths.”
The Spoiler Bits
Lucinda was killed by Holly and her ghost reaches out to
Kate for help. Actually she only haunts
Kate by leaving puddles on her floor at night and Kate puts it together that
Lucinda wants her killer identified. This
ghost could be a Level One and we aren’t so sure if Kate is really imagining
Lucinda but I choose to believe Lucinda is sending messages to Kate.
Official Ghosts on My Shelf Classification
Level 4 Communicating Poltergeist
We never see this ghost but we know she’s sending Kate a
message. Lucinda understands that Kate will clearly understand her by leaving
puddles of water on the floor. Maybe this is a stretch for Kate to guess what
this message means but Kate is already placed in a situation where everyone
involved it thinking about Lucinda and what happened to her. The dots are
connected and Lucinda can move on.
Scared Beyond the Book? Yes!
I live near a lake that I used to swim in before I saw the
damn, ugly fish that lived in it! Then I heard stories about all the people
that have drowned in that lake.
Thinking Outside the Books
Drowned towns are really fascinating.
http://beforeitsnews.com/paranormal/2015/05/drowned-towns-underwater-2488582.html
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