The Lake: A Short Story

By Tananarive Due

A free short story taken straight from the pages of THE MONSTER'S CORNER, an all original anthology from some of today's hottest supernatural writers, featuring stories from the monster's point of view.

In THE LAKE, Abbie LeFleur, a lifetime Bostonian, who hides her scales, webbed feet, and an incredible hunger for people, has relocated to Graceville to start her life anew when she sets her eyes on a young student in her English class.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781429962438

Tananarive Due

Tananarive Due is an American Book Award and NAACP Image Award­–winning author, who was an executive producer on Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror for Shudder and teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA. She and her husband, science fiction author Steven Barnes, cowrote the graphic novel The Keeper and an episode for Season 2 of The Twilight Zone for Paramount Plus and Monkeypaw Productions. Due is the author of several novels and two short story collections, Ghost Summer: Stories and The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. She is also coauthor of a civil rights memoir, Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (with her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due). Learn more at TananariveDue.com. 

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THE LAKE

by Tananarive Due

The new English instructor at Graceville Prep was chosen with the greatest care, highly recommended by the board of directors at Blake Academy in Boston, where she had an exemplary career for twelve years. There was no history of irregular behavior to presage the summer’s unthinkable events.

—Excerpt from an internal memo Graceville

Preparatory School Graceville, Florida

ABBIE LAFLEUR WAS AN OUTSIDER, a third-generation Bostonian, so no one warned her about summers in Graceville. She noticed a few significant glances, a hitched eyebrow or two, when she first mentioned to locals that she planned to relocate in June to work a summer term before the start of the school year, but she’d assumed it was because they thought no one in her right mind would move to Florida, even northern Florida, in the wet heat of summer.

In fairness, Abbie LaFleur would have scoffed at their stories as hysteria. Delusion. This was Graceville’s typical experience with newcomers and outsiders, so Graceville had learned to keep its stories to itself.

Abbie thought she had found her dream job in Graceville. A fresh start. Her glasses had fogged up with steam from the rain-drenched tarmac as soon as she stepped off the plane at Tallahassee Airport; her confirmation that she’d embarked on a true adventure, an exploration worthy of Ponce de León’s storied landing at St. Augustine.

Her parents and her best friend, Mary Kay, had warned her not to jump into a real estate purchase until she’d worked in Graceville for at least a year—The whole thing’s so hasty, what if the school’s not a good fit? Who wants

Reviews for The Lake

[datrappert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Terrifying story of a teacher who makes the mistake of swimming in a Florida lake during the summer--and the awful consequences of doing so. Due is a superb writer I first discovered while reading the excellent Atlanta Noir collection.

[altheaann · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Gracetown is a rural Florida location, just over the Georgia border; a hot and sticky, sleepy town - with a chilling dark undercurrent of supernatural influences - which boil to the surface in the summer.
In 'The Lake' we meet a schoolteacher who's decided to take a job in Gracetown, sight unseen. We're not told exactly why she left her last position, but it's hinted right from the beginning that she might have some rather unprofessional plans concerning some of the teenage boys in her class. But things don't culminate in the way the reader might expect. The teacher is strongly drawn to the lake in back of her new house, and although she's always been a bit timid of the water, finds herself spending more and more time swimming in the murk...
A very strong horror story - it would've been a full 5 stars from me if not for the off-stage 'appearance' of Mary Kay Letourneau, which I felt weakened the effect considerably. I also felt that I had quite a bit more sympathy for the main character than the author did.

[charrlygirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked up this short story because a friend recommended I check out this author.

The Lake is a good short story, but a bit predictable. As others have already described the plot, I will leave it be. Though not very scary this short story would've made an excellent Twilight Zone episode. The changes which the main character undergoes throughout the story would have been even more powerful in a visual medium. Overall, I thought this was a good, well written story. As it is currently free, you really can't go wrong.

[imaginationzombie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting Concept

This story definitely had some cool elements including a predator fish-like woman with a taste for young flesh. However, I felt uncomfortable with the nature of the story (older female teacher sexually enticing and preying on young teen boys.) I also felt confused by the language and imagery on a few pages. Interesting concepts, but read at your own risk and comfortability level.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Short story. Outsider moves to sleepy town, goes swimming in a lake where she shouldn’t have. The twist: as she becomes a (sexual?) predator, the suggestion is that she always had at least inclinations towards preying on young men.