The Lake

The Lake is a 1983 horror novel by Ruby Jean Jensen, writing under the name R. J. Jensen, published by Tor, a noted publisher of commercial science fiction and horror. The book is set in the uplands of Arkansas and centers upon a lake that consumes people.

The novel’s prologue has a young couple skinny-dipping at Loch Dawngere, a small lake on private land that was created by the damming of a spring-fed creek. While they are swimming, there appears something “like a scab on the surface of the lake,” and first the man and then the woman are pulled into the depths. In the first chapter, Dirk Inglesol of Dallas, Texas, is arranging for the purchase of the old Loch Dawngere resort. The resort was built in the 1920s, failed during the Great Depression, and was bought by someone after World War II, with the manmade lake created at that time. Dirk is suspicious about the low price for the property, located near the town of Juneth, but he buys it with the hope that his children—Kelly (age fourteen), Brad (age sixteen), and Jonesy (age nine)—will enjoy being there, and that his estranged wife, Patricia, might come back to him.

During Dirk’s first night on the property, in a sleeping bag pitched by the lakeshore, the lake suddenly rises and nearly drowns him. Undeterred, he begins hiring workers to carry out renovations. He later discovers that it has no fish whatsoever, although the water downstream of the dam is filled with life, and he has the pond stocked from a local hatchery. One of the workers, Davie Ocherman, stays late to swim in the pond and encounters something slimy and larger than any of the fish just added before he is dragged under. Davie’s father, Bill, shows up the following day to report his son missing. That same day, Patricia drops off the three kids and leaves without a word. Bill stays until night, roaming the shore of the lake, when he sees a creature emerge and drag a deer into the water.

The next day, men from the local sheriff’s department and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) arrive to drag the lake, but the only thing of significance they discover is a set of antlers. The fish that Dirk had stocked the pond with are all gone. One of the AGFC officers sends a certified diver friend, Rodney Karlin, to investigate the lake. Dirk also hires his first employee for the resort, Mildred Baker, to do some cleaning and cooking and to help watch the children. He also has the lake restocked with fish (which soon disappear), and his first customers show up. Meanwhile, Patricia learns, while on a date with a professor, that “Loch Dawngere” translates to “Lake Danger.”

One night, Kelly is at the shoreline when she is grabbed by something that starts to drag her away. Bill has been patrolling the lake with an axe in hand and manages to cut into the creature, which he later described as a snake, but the wound it leaves on her leg is like that of a leech. The creature soon claims another victim, a boy named Troy, who had run away from his family in the night. His family believes that he has simply run off, but Dirk is worried and asks Rodney to recruit another diver, Eddie Eggert, who can help him explore the cave known to be at the bottom of the lake. Brad, who is an amateur scuba diver, helps them some but desperately wants to explore the cave. Meanwhile, Kelly calls her mother to beg her to come to Loch Dawngere after seeing her father kissing a customer named June Riggs, who is newly pregnant and hopes to lure someone into serving as the father.

Rodney and Eddie dive and discover, beyond the cave entrance, a vast underground lake in a limestone cavern. After Eddie leaves, flying out of Drake Field near Fayetteville (Washington County) with the intention of returning later, Patricia shows up at the resort. Rodney instantly falls in love with Patricia and hopes that the fact that Dirk spent the previous night with June might mean the couple may actually divorce. However, Dirk tells June that, despite their sexual escapade, he has no plans to marry her, and in frustration she goes for a swim and is immediately dragged down by the creature. Rodney follows with a speargun and catches “a glimpse of waving black and pale grey tentacles” and sees June “disappear into that body, as though it had been absorbed through the skin.”

Dirk evacuates the resort, though Brad stays behind to help lock up, and calls a zoologist acquaintance of his, one Dr. Edwards, to help investigate. Rodney dives to the cave alone, hoping to catch the creature unaware, and Brad soon follows on his own, but the creature takes them both. Eddie soon arrives and leads a dive, but all he finds are the empty tanks and a broken lifeline.

Dr. Edwards and staff from the AGFC arrive, and conceives the idea of restocking the pond with fish to lure the creature out and then plugging the cave entrance with concrete in order to trap it in the lake. After the creature is trapped, they start bulldozing the dam in order to drain the lake slowly. By morning, the lake is drained, and they can see the creature in the shallow remnants, but before Dr. Edwards can analyze it, the sunlight destroys it.

The book ends with Dirk and Patricia consoling each other over the loss of their son before driving together back to Dallas.

For additional information:
Jensen, R. J. The Lake. New York: Tor, 1983.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas