Welcome to a world of plot holes and spelling errors. Next up in our tour of Point Horror’s 13 Tales of Horror is Lucinda by Lael Littke, lucky us huh?
We open with Kate recounting her last memory of Lucinda, you can tell it’s a memory as its all in italics. Kate saw Lucinda standing at the edge of a lake having an argument with Kate’s older brother Brandon while their graduation party is taking place. Lucinda threatens Brandon saying that if he doesn’t come back with her she will swim down to her secret place and stay there, sounds sexy. Lucinda then accuses Brandon of getting it on with a girl named Holly and he retaliates by accusing her of getting down and dirty with some dude called Kevin. Wow we are only on the first page and already we’ve got a full on soap opera style scenario! Lucinda defends herself by saying she only turned to Kevin’s big strong arms because Brandon dumped her.
Lucinda then flounces out into the lake ‘wading out where its deep, her red robe floating out in the water around her’ oh okay like a sh*t version of The Lady of Shalott. Brandon watches her do this and then turns around and walks off. Lucinda appears to change her mind about swimming to her secret sexy place and tries to come back to shore but ‘suddenly there is something in the water with her’ … and that’s all Kate can recall, what ever happened next was so traumatic she has repressed the memory. Real helpful Kate.
Lucinda was never seen again and Brandon told everyone she’d drowned but Kate thinks someone made her drown. Despite admitting to thinking that Lucinda was murdered Kate never told anybody that she’d been spying in the bushes, she qualifies this by saying ‘That other person could have been any of the seniors at the party. But then again, it could have been my brother Brandon.’ So Kate has with held crucial evidence from the police in an as yet unsolved murder case, wow Kate you’re a real peach. Kate and Brandon moved away after Lucinda’s mysterious disappearance but now six years later they have returned.
We join Kate and Brandon standing on the same spot on the lake shore that they last saw Lucinda. The lake is no longer there after several years of drought it has apparently shrunk to a muddy puddle somewhere off in the distance. Apparently Kate and Brandon’s mother moved them away so Brandon could get therapy to relieve his guilt that kept him from sleeping and made him babble terrible things in the dark. Okay, well now I’m a little concerned about Brandon but also about the lack of mental health services in Lake Isadora if they had to move away just to get a therapist! Yikes.
With their mother now dead (RIP Ma we hardly knew ya) Brandon has moved them back so he can search for Lucinda, my Brandon worry meter just climbed up a notch. ‘But if he became obsessed with Lucinda again, if he totally flipped out, what would become of me?’ agonizes Kate before adding ‘He seemed rational enough as he gazed out over the valley where the lake had been’. I don’t think Kate understands what rational means.
Brandon proceeds to then take Kate on a ghoulish Lucinda tour of their old stomping grounds down in the lake bed. There had been an old town in the valley before the river had been dammed and the area flooded as a conservation measure. The buildings had all been moved to a new town site when Brandon was a baby but the old foundations still remained. They’d been there under the lake, until the waters receded. Brandon, Lucinda and Holly (she of the cheating accusation) used to dive down into the lake and explore the old streets. Kate becomes alarmed at Brandon’s misty eyed reminiscing as it was apparently the diving that caused the split between Lucinda and Brandon. ‘Lucinda had lost interest in exploring the underwater remains of the town, but Brandon kept going down there with Holly.’ In Point Horror books boys and girls can’t have a platonic friendship unless one of them is described as being fat or similar in appearance to Joseph Merrick.
Kate tries to get Brandon to go home but he insists on going down to the valley of the lake bed to show her where their house used to be before it was moved. Kate is not happy about this but doesn’t want Brandon to be alone in this eerie place. Oh also there are a f*ck ton of willow trees that have grown up all over the place except where there had been pavement apparently. As they walk Kate remembers a painting that Holly had done after her, Brandon and Lucinda had been on one of their dives.
She’d painted willows, tall, pallid sticks with long, twisted leaves floating in the water. Behind them were the spectral shapes of buildings that were no longer there, but worse were the faces caught in the willows, face with huge, vacant eyes and open mouths.
She’d called the painting Drowned Town
Kate
I think we are supposed to think this is super profound but I just think Holly sounds like a pretentious arse. Kate wonders what if they found Lucinda caught in the willows with her red robe, flesh gone and blond hair tangled with leaves, that’s some imagination you’ve got there Kate. Brandon then begins speaking in ‘a soft, feathery voice’ that’s the ‘worried about Brandon’s mental health meter’ gone up another couple of notches then. Brandon tells Kate the willows grew up after the town was dead, they grow in the water. ‘We’d dive down here and we’d see them growing, waving and swaying in the currents.’ I thought this was supposed to be a Point Horror not a book on dendrology? Brandon uses this willow talk to segue into asking Kate if she believes what they say about how hair still grows on a dead body.
Kate has had enough and tries to get Brandon to go home, promising to come back tomorrow in the full light of day but Brandon pulls away and trots off insisting that Lucinda is there somewhere. We then get some exposition about an article sent from Keith, who was Lucinda’s brother, to Kate about the lakes water levels dropping and yielding all its dark secrets, such as a small airplane that had been missing for ten years. When the waters dropped it was found with two skeletons in the cockpit. It was this article that gave Brandon the idea to return. I’m getting the feeling that Lake Isadora was a bad place to go missing, because if you did people would have a half arsed look for you and then just assume you were in the lake somewhere and wait until it dried up (how ever long that took) to find you.
They find themselves standing where Lucinda’s house used to be, there is a basement that resembles an open grave and is full of debris and snakes. Brandon starts talking in a wispy dry voice ‘like the rattle of the willow leaves’ ugh we get it, you’re obsessed with willow trees. Brandon apparently used to babble on and on about Lucinda’s secret place (sexy) but she never showed it to him (maybe she was waiting for marriage?). Kate thinks that if she could find this secret place and if Lucinda was really there it would prove Brandon hadn’t put her there as he has no idea where it is – this seems very convoluted to me.
Kate starts stomping around the old foundation and finds a suspicious damp spot that is accompanied by the sweet scent of flowers. Meanwhile Brandon is knocking on an imaginary door and whispering ‘Lucinda, it’s Brandon, Come out!’ I’m fairly sure at this point Brandon is at the start of a psychotic break. Brandon starts swaying and they both hear a spooky voice wailing Brandon’s name! Brandon collapses to the floor and a puff of wind blows the sound away and somehow restores Brandon to normal, psychotic break temporarily averted then I guess.
Keith is waiting for them when they get home and he is a hottie ‘He was tall now, and looked as if he lifted weights or something every day’ nice. Brandon starts not so subtly questioning Keith about things that been discovered in the lake while Kate thinks there is no way that muscly Keith could have had any malicious intent in sending the article about the lake because if he had she would have surely seen it in his face. Kate clearly doesn’t know anything about sociopaths. Keith discloses that a week ago someone found a red graduation robe at the edge of the lake *gasp*. Right at that moment Holly of the pretentious willowy art piece shows up, she very sensibly points out that the robe could belong to anyone from the local high school. Brandon considers this and then asks if it looked as though it had been underwater for ten years, surely if it did it would be in such poor condition that they wouldn’t even be able to tell it was a red graduation robe?
Holly suggests they visit the police station tomorrow to check the robe out, what? Seriously? You can just waltz into the station and ask to inspect possible evidence in a crime? Well I guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow then! Anyhow this plan is nixed as apparently it’s gone missing. Holly then floats her theory that Lucinda isn’t really dead she just did a runner, Keith objects to this saying there is no way she wouldn’t have contacted her family.
That night it takes Kate a long time to fall asleep because she can hear Brandon thrashing in his room, Jesus Kate give the poor guy some privacy and listen to your walkman or something. She finally manages to fall asleep but wakes up to a puddle on the floor, oh Kate its alright we all have accidents from time to time, I mean not normally when you are sixteen … She follows puddles of water from her room all the way to the foundations of Lucinda’s old house in the valley of the lake bed. The damp spot she noticed earlier is bigger now and is still accompanied by the light, sweet smell of flowers. She peers into the basement and sees another damp spot and the glittering of rats eyes.
Kate turns and runs but she gets lost among the willow lined streets as she is panicking she notices a flash of red coming towards her, could it be long dead Lucinda in her graduation robe? No obviously not, instead it’s Holly in a red tracksuit out for her early morning jog. Holly offers to walk Kate home on the way Holly suddenly stops insisting she can hear someone calling Brandon’s name but this time Kate can’t hear it. On returning home Kate realizes that she had to unlock the door on her way out meaning that whoever or whatever had left the water drops must have gone straight through it!
Kate runs to Brandon’s room to talk to him but he is missing, she starts yelling his name and finds him all weak and wobbly huddled on the back steps clutching something red. Brandon insists that Lucinda had been at the house, he ran after her and she got away but not before he got her red graduation robe which he holds up to Kate, it’s dripping wet. Kate convinces him to come into the house and lie down, he eventually falls asleep mumbling and groaning – psychotic break take 2. Kate wracks her (some what limited) brain and realizes that when she was stomping around the foundations of Lucinda’s house on the damp spot yesterday it had sounded hollow, could there be an empty spot near the old foundation? God I hope so, I’m getting bored – time for wine.
Kate heads over to Keith’s house where he takes her on a stroll down memory lane by bringing out a photo album and reminding her of how they used to look at the pictures and imagine the old town was still there under the lake. This sparks a memory in Kate, on one of the photos there had been a funny-looking pipe coming up through the ground near the house and they used to speculate what it was. They’d asked Keith and Lucinda’s mother once who said it was a ventilation shaft for the old root cellar. Kate examines the photos and see’s the pipe was right next to the foundation, exactly where she had seen the damp spot!
Back at home Brandon has been sleeping on and off, he keeps getting up to go and touch or smell the graduation robe which is drip-drying outside – definitely mid psychotic break now folks. He keeps insisting it smells like flowers, like Lucinda’s perfume. Kate remembers the floral smell by the damp spot in the lake bed and takes a good ole sniff of the robe but it just smells like mildew, gross. That evening under the light of the moon Kate goes back to the old foundation of Lucinda’s house in the lake bed. She scrambles down the crumbling stairs hoping the rats and snakes are tucked up in bed asleep, sadly for her rats are largely nocturnal and snakes are active both day and night.
At the bottom of the steps Kate’s feet sink in the silt and she begins searching for the root cellar at the wall closest to the damp spot. She manages to clear away some brush and suddenly finds a warped wooden door accompanied again by the mysterious floral smell. She manages to open the door and see’s some green slime, ‘now the scent of flowers was overpowered by the foul scent of decay’. But then she hears a noise on the old porch steps, she looks up and see’s ‘Lucinda!’.
She stood there in her graduation robe, her long, blond hair falling over her shoulders. Her face gleamed like ivory in the light. She was smiling.
Kate
Kate thinks Holly was right, Lucinda is alive. But she isn’t replying to Kate’s calls, she is silent just continuing to smile. Kate then flips to assuming Lucinda isn’t alive and is in fact a ghost. Make your mind up Kate. Lucinda jumps down into the basement and grabs Kate, twisting her hands behind her back and tying them together with a piece of cord. At this point Kate realizes that this is no ghost ‘Strong human hands were doing this to me’. Kate starts screaming and asking Lucinda why she is doing this but she is silently pushing Kate towards the door of the slimy root cellar. Kate tries bargaining, promising that if Lucinda lets her go she won’t tell anyone but still pushing her forwards Lucinda kicks open the door to the root cellar. Inside is a sad brown skeleton covered in putrid filth and the partial remains of some threads that must have once been a red graduation robe. Just to further compound the horror we should be feeling, a snake pokes itself through one of the skulls eye sockets and flicks it tongue out – overkill much?
Kate realizes that whoever is trying to force her to join Lucinda in the root cellar is wearing a very cleverly designed mask, lame. Playing for time Kate pleads with her captor to tell her why they are doing this and when that doesn’t work she pulls out the old chestnut ‘you’ll never get away with this!’. Her captor is pretty confident they will, after all they explain nobody ever found Lucinda. Kate immediately recognizes the voice, it’s Holly! *gasp* Holly admits that Brandon never replying to any of her love letters she sent after they left town drove her crazy, so she thought she’d repay the favor by driving him crazy. Kate’s memories of the night Lucinda went missing come flooding back to her, she remembers Holly hitting Lucinda with an axe while she was in the water and blood being everywhere.
Somebody bought the axe to chop firewood. I saw my chance and I took it. Brandon would have gone back to her eventually, you see. She could wheedle him into anything, if she kept on long enough. So when I heard her threaten to go to her secret place I just made sure she did.
Crazy axe murderer Holly
Kate is now one mere shove away from the inside of the root cellar, she gives Holly a panicked push and runs for the stairs, but Holly is too quick and catches her. Suddenly Keith is there shining a flashlight into the basement, between him and Kate they subdue Holly and bind her hands together with the cord removed from Kate. Keith explains he’d spent all day wondering why Kate had looked so closely at the photos in the album, he remembered the root cellar and guessed that’s what Kate had been looking at. WTF – its taken him 10 years to remember the root cellar and that his sister may have been dead in there?!
The story ends with Kate saying she received a message from Lucinda after she was finally laid to rest. She awakened to another puddle of water at the end of her bed (really Kate, shame on you), accompanied by the faint sweet scent of flowers and a small bouquet of rosemary for remembrance.
Okay, I know it was a Point Horror but dear God that was formulaic and lame. Right next time continuing with 13 Tales of Horror we have The Guiccioli Minature by Jay Bennett.
Until then, Goodnight out there, whatever you are.
Helena Does Blogging 