The Lake by Tananarive Due

The Lake is a part of the The Monster's Corner: Stories through Inhuman Eyes anthology, due out September 27th. When I found it available for online for free, I jumped at the chance to read it as it goes with the RIP Challenge, falling under Peril of the Short Story.

“The Lake” by Tananarive Due, tells the story of Abbie LeFleur, a lifetime Bostonian who hides her scales, webbed feet, and an incredible hunger for people. She’s relocated to Graceville to start her life anew when she sets her eyes on a young student in her English class.

Abbie Lafleur is a teacher who has relocated from Boston to Graceville, Florida for a fresh start. She left behind her parents and best friend Mary Kay, all of whom can't quite understand why Abbie wanted to go to rural Florida to teach. Abbie buys an old fixer-upper because it is on the lake and for the privacy it grants. She spends hot summer nights dipping into her own little piece of the lake. Soon strange things start happening to Abbie. Her body slowly changes, and her dreams are becoming vividly consumed by the lake. Abbie seems to enjoy the newness of her body, for aids her late night swims which she's enjoying more and more.

Abbie undertakes the help of one of her summer school students and his cousin. She pays the two to work on her house, meanwhile, her appetite for something more than every day food becomes overwhelming. The raw meat and fish she's been eating is no longer cutting it and she wants to move on to something bigger, something better...

The Lake was interesting. It wasn't creepy or haunting, something I was expecting from a story coming from this anthology, and Abbie was a left pretty much a mystery, which is strange since this is her story, through her eyes. In a way the story raises the issue of teacher/student relationships. There was no explicit relationship, but Abbie had a predatory nature about here where her male students were concerned. I'm not sure if that was entirely a side effect of the changes she was experiencing through the lake or if that was just Abbie. It didn't help that her best friend's name was Mary Kay (Letourneau, anyone?) and Abbie mused that a teacher/student relationship Mary Kay once had with a student ended up working out.

The fact that Abbie was not startled by the changes to her body also troubled me. If I one day woke up with webbed toes and gills, I'd be very concerned. I reason that her lack of care and easy acceptance could have been due in part to the seduction of the lake, but I still wish there had been a little more explanation.

In the end, I was left with more questions than answers, and that doesn't make for a very satisfying read.

If you're interested, you can read The Lake here.

Movie Review: The Forgotten

The Forgotten is my first movie for the RIP VI Peril on the Screen challenge. Since I normally watch movies that fit into the Peril on the Screen category this time of year, I figured tying them in with the challenge would be a good idea.

The Forgotten is the story of Telly, a grieving mother who lost her only son, Sam, in a plane crash fourteen months prior to the start of the movie. She is having a difficult time dealing with the loss and is seeing a psychotherapist to help her come to terms. Telly has shut herself off from the outside world and even her husband. She spends her days looking in old photo albums at pictures of Sam and watching family videos where he is front and center.

When all evidence of Sam's life begins to disappear from the albums and home videos, she is told by her therapist and husband that the son she believed she had never existed. Sam was made up by Telly as a way to cope with mental break. Telly is disbelieving and sets out to get answers. She seeks out Ash, the father of a girl who was killed in the same crash as her son, only to find out that he has no recollection of the crash or his daughter. After lots of convincing, she gets Ash to remember and together they set out to find out why the memories of their children are being stripped away.

I would classify The Forgotten as a mystery/thriller with very sketchy sci-fi elements. As a mystery, the movie works well. The initial set up is interesting and I was invested, trying to piece together the mystery from the beginning. It also works as a thriller as there was enough action, escaping and near misses to keep me on the edge of my seat.

Unfortunately, the science fiction aspect is where the movie starts to lose steam and essentially fall apart. There is little explanation of the whys and hows when it comes to the sci-fi elements. That element seems to have been added as a device to make The Forgotten more than just a mystery. The first hint of something otherworldly comes in halfway through the movie and it is then forefront with no real rhyme or reason. If I was a presumptuous person, I would say that the writers wrote themselves into a corner and used the sci-fi element as a way out. It comes off as a manipulation and not authentic in any way.

Because of my problems with the science fiction, this is not a movie I would watch again, nor would I recommend it to a true science fiction lover, for fear of being cursed. For me, The Forgotten was a nice rainy-day movie, full of atmosphere and suspense. Not horrible in the least, just not my cup of tea.

RIP VI Challenge

My favorite time of year is fast approaching! Too bad I will not be able to see the leaves turn and feel the first bite of crisp Autumn air this year since I moved back to Hawaii in July. I can, however, read a couple of good, haunting books and light a pumpkin scented candle to put me in the Fall spirit. Carl from Stainless Steel Droppings has just the challenge for someone like me, who loves a little spookieness this time of year, his great RIP Challenge. This is the 6th year he's hosted the challenge and my second time participating. It runs from Sept 1st to October 31st.

Carl was nice enough to give levels or participation or perils, as he calls them, to the challenge for those who may not have the time to read a certain amount or aren't as into the horror, mystery, dark fantasy, etc. as others. This year I've taken on the Peril the Second, which challenges the reader to read two books of any length that they believe fit within the challenge categories.

Easy peasy.

The two books I'll be reading for the challenge this year are The Good House by Tananarive Due and one other scary tale I have lying around in my TBR pile that will be determined at a later date. For the fun of it, I'm also going to do a flashback read with my 7 year old to a book I first read in third grade: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hawn and maybe a few short's from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alan Schwartz, also a throwback for me.