This text was written as a catalogue essay for Fiona Harman’s Beside Still Waters, exhibited at Pig Melon in 2020.
By the lake, as a child.
Father, explaining to me how the lake is so dark.
‘The tea trees stain it, and because it’s so still it just gets darker and darker’
But where does all the water come from?
‘Caves, underground. There are great underground rivers that people will never see’
I am imagining these rivers under my feet.
‘The water we use on the veggie garden comes from an underground river like this’
Is it the same one that feeds the lake?
‘Who knows? Maybe. Probably. Or maybe the water comes from the lake.’
Me and the lake, staring at each other.
My sister, shrieking as she splashes water on father and I.
Is that safe?
‘What?’
Taking the water from the lake.
‘We don't take it from the lake, and anyway, we don’t drink it. We just use it to water the garden.’
But I eat the stuff from the garden.
‘It’s safe son, don’t worry.’
Me and the lake, staring at each other.
I am unable to tell where the slippery, gripping mud ends and the water begins.
Dark as it is, stained by the weeping trees.
I am ankle-deep in the mud.
Knee deep in the water.
I can feel it tugging at me.
A soft suggestion.
Jump in…
Vertigo.
A terrible spiraling feeling.
I am suddenly precarious, slipping over an edge.
A great pit, endless, opening up beneath me.
I am falling.
Wet, cool and dark.
No time passes where there is no light.
Float.
Cold and senseless.
Forever.
‘Time to go kids’
Mother, calling me back.
My sister taking my hand as we go.
Weaving up the track away from the lake.
And its hungry depths.
That night.
At home in my bed.
Weatherboard stuttering against the wind.
It is raining, feeding the lake.
In my minds eye, it swells.
Its center bulging, distended, far above the water line.
It convulses in ecstasy, feasting.
It bursts forth, up the hill.
Consuming the threaded track.
Erasing our footprints.
Sniffing us out.
A great rumbling in the distance.
It comes.
Trees, branches, stones, swept before it in a cascade.
I stare out my bedroom window, up the hill.
The sound increases, it is deafening now.
The shrieking, screaming orchestra of shattered wood and stone fills my ears.
It bursts over the ridge like a bird taking flight.
Me and the lake, staring at each other.
I scream.
And wake.
By the lake again.
Mother said I must have imagined it.
The lake, coming for me.
She says that going back to confirm it might quell my fears.
And yes, it is true that there is no physical evidence of last night’s terror.
But nonetheless I am suspicious of it.
This supposably bottomless body of water.
How can something be bottomless?
Is it just that no one has reached the bottom yet?
Or that no one is willing to try.
My father says that there are bones in the lake.
Of ancient animals and humans.
And that scientists have found the bottom.
But they haven’t released the results.
I think that they are afraid to.
After all, I can’t see any evidence of the scientists here now.
They’ve all packed up and left.
Vowing never to return, I’m sure.
In bed again, dreaming.
Or finally seeing.
The lake revealed for what it is.
A terror; a screaming, yawning pit of unknown.
It’s dark surface rejecting any insight into what lies beneath.
If there’s really anything there at all.
Me and the lake, staring at each other.
I think it's just a skin, the surface.
And underneath is a body.
A real, living thing.
Incalculably old.
And huge.
And hungry.
Another night, the same dream again.
The surface swelling.
The lake bursting forth.
Inquisitive, it swells upwards.
Up the track, pushing in front of it that great mess of destruction.
The sound. I cannot describe it.
Fingernails on chalkboards.
Metal against metal.
Ice sheets cracking.
Styrofoam shrieking.
And a mess of percussion instruments thrown down a staircase.
It bursts over the crest of the hill.
This time I do not scream.
It is a dream, I tell myself, let’s see what happens.
It rushes down the hill, elated at my defiance.
Our back fence exploding inward.
The vegetable garden, erased in a mess of mud.
It closes the gap across the yard and slams into my bedroom window.
The glass groans.
It shudders.
But it holds, and the water rapidly calms.
And the dirt, stone, back fence and vegetable garden all settle to the bottom.
I get out of bed and approach the window.
My room is shrouded in darkness, all moonlight blotted out by the lake.
I press my face against the glass.
Me and the lake, staring at each other.
It is cold, colder than the middle of winter.
A kind of cold that has never known sunlight.
I stare into the flat, black nothingness of the lake.
And for a moment I see.
Crystals of light dancing across its surface.
Or are they running?
Fleeing from the lake.
Unrecognisable beasts dragged down forever.
Countless generations of humanity drawn to its indeterminate shoreline.
Sparks and fire and wind and coldness.
Overwhelmingly coldness, and indifference, and hunger.
It has been here long before men.
And it will be here after.
And it wants me to know that I can be there with it.
Inside of it it.
Cold and dark forever.
My face, numb against the glass.
My eyes, wide and staring.
Me and the lake, staring at each other.
Something stirs within that silty depth.
A kind of density.
A sense of despair.
Me, knowing this is not a dream.
It rushes towards me.
A sound like a submarine imploding.
The glass of my window cracks.
The water rushes in.
I try to scream, but the water fills my mouth
And my nose
And it forces its way in through the edges of my eyes
And my ears are bursting and I am being pushed down, down…
It’s bottomless.
I am being pushed down forever.