Community Service
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The local council had decided to clear up the Katherine Young Memorial Park as part of their centenary celebrations, or at least, they had decided to appoint others to clean it up for them. More specifically they had decided that those sentenced to community service would clean it up, which was why on a hot summer’s day, Kate, and twenty or so other young men and women, found themselves standing in the overgrown park almost up to their knees in stinking, half rotten vegetation.
“It’s the lake that really needs clearing,” Peter Matkin told her, puffing on a cigarette. “People have been fly-tipping there and it’s filled with garbage and general rubbish that people can’t be bothered to take to the tip. There’s even a bloody trolley!” He thrust several thick lined bags into Kate’s hands. “That’s for the crap.” He handed her a pair of gloves. “These are so you don’t touch anything with your bare hands.”
Peter just snorted before stomping away to go and help one of the other people also assigned community service.
Kate let out a heavy sigh and made her way in the opposite direction towards the lake.
She could smell it before she reached it, the stench of rotting vegetation and pollution, of rubbish. There were overgrown weeds and thorny bushes in her way, but she ripped through it all, mercilessly, and eventually she reached the lake, a dark, still and stagnant, putrid mire, filled with all manner of items that no one wanted anymore. Dead fish floated on the surface, next to tin cans and cigarette butts. Discarded clothes, needles, food wrappers and scraps of paper, even an old book, lay fallen around the edges. They nestled among the dead and dying vegetation that was slowly rotting away due to the lack of sunlight caused by the overgrown trees.
And, as Peter had said, there was a trolley, half stuck in, and half out, the lake’s black surface.
Kate sighed again, more a muttered oath this time, as she knelt down on the sodden ground, trying not to grimace as she felt dampness soaking her jeans, and set to work cleaning up other people’s mess.
At least she was getting some fresh air.
Kate worked alone for about an hour until she heard the sound of twigs breaking under foot and a boy came out of the overgrown shrubbery to join her, arms full of more of those thick lined rubbish bags. “Hi,” he said, with a smile. “I’m Stuart. I’ve been assigned to be your helper.”
Kate grinned as she introduced herself, squinting up at him. He had nice blue eyes, gentle, sparkling, and a ready smile, but most importantly, he was company. Kate hadn’t much liked the idea of doing this alone.
They both worked hard, moving quickly through the rubbish. Stuart was a good worker, set a fast pace, telling jokes and stories the whole time. Kate had to work quickly to try and keep up with him. He didn’t grimace or pull a face as he moved through the decaying food and soiled clothes, just handled it all with the same grim determination. Kate didn’t find it quite so easy. At first it was all she could do not to squeal when she bundled something mouldy, stinking and completely unrecognisable into her bag, but after a while it did get easier. As it neared lunch time she found that she was no longer even thinking about what she was doing and she certainly didn’t blink at the sight of hundreds of maggots swarming around inside a rotten apple as she tossed it into another garbage bag.
“My Nan was happy I was coming to work here,” Kate said, as she waded into the shallow edges of the lake to fish out flotsam and jetsam with a fishing net on a stick. “She said the park used to be so beautiful when she was a child.”
“Yeah, I can believe that,” Stuart replied. “But I doubt it will ever look that good again, even when we have cleaned up all the crap. The water is stagnant, the plants are dead, it will cost a fortune of taxpayers’ money to fix this mess and I’m not sure people will be too happy about that.”
“No,” Kate agreed. “But they’re happy to have us clean it in this state. Slave labour that’s what we are.” She twisted in the shallow water and hurled her, now full, bag of rubbish back into the bank and set to work filling the next one. It was her third bag of rubbish. Stuart had already filled four and he had been there less time. “You know, a woman drowned in this lake.”
“Really?”
Kate nodded, stooping over to wrestle a can of coke out from amongst a tangle of weeds. “The park is named after her, Katherine Young, she drowned here back in the ‘20s.”
“Oh.”
“They never found her body.” Kate snorted back a laugh. “They never do! But she was meant to have been pulled down by all the reeds at the bottom of the lake. She had been dared to go for a swim, had got caught up and that was that.”
“You seem well informed.”
“My Nan knew her,” Kate said. “Not very well, she was just a child when Katherine died, but she knew her. It was in all the papers and everything. They changed the name of the park to commemorate her. I’m not sure what it was called before. My Nan used to tell me stories about evil faeries and the like, that live in rivers and streams and like to lure people to their deaths, to keep me away from them. The one that I always remembered was the story of the fideal, a lonely faerie who was just looking for a mate, but everyone she lured to her just drowned in the waters. I always felt so sorry for her.” Kate shrugged. “Someone should have told those stories to Katherine, maybe that would have kept her back from the water! Her ghost is said to haunt this lake now.”
“I’m sure her spirit appreciates all our hard work and will leave us alone,” Stuart said.
“I hope so,” Kate replied, pushing a lock of dark hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“Do you believe in ghosts then?”
“Sometimes,” Kate admitted. “Usually when it’s dark!”
They stopped for lunch a little later and decided to eat it by the lake, rather than bothering to hike back up to eat with the others. They settled themselves down in the area they had spent all morning clearing and Kate unwrapped her sandwich, only to be put off by the stench coming from her own hands. She stank of decay and mould, a smell that wouldn’t easily be shifted in the shower either, she was sure. It made her lose her appetite completely so she shoved her food into a garbage bag. Stuart only took one bite of his sandwich before coming to the same conclusion and shoving his food into the same bag, with an irritated glare at it.
With a share sigh, they got back to work.
As the afternoon wore on it began to becoming increasingly humid. Stuart stripped off the shirt he had worn over his t-shirt, tying it around his waist to reveal a strong, youthful body, tanned by the sun. Kate tried not to look as though she was paying too much attention, as she swept back her hair from her face and tied it with the hair band she always wore around her wrist.
“I was wondering,” Stuart said suddenly, “If you would like to come out with me some time?”
Kate sank back on her haunches and gave him an unsteady smile. “You’re asking me out?” she asked incredulously, “when I stink, my hair is all sweaty and dirty and my jeans are stained with mud and-,” her nose wrinkled, “other things I rather not think about?”
“I’m not fussy,” Stuart replied, with a smile.
“I can see that.”
“Well?”
Kate thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. “I’m grounded,” she said, “for the next ten years or so.”
“How about then?” he asked. “In ten years?”
Kate laughed. “Ok,” she said. “It’s a date, for the year 2016!”
“Good,” Stuart said, and they shook hands on it. Stuart’s hand felt very warm in Kate’s much cooler grip.
“At least we have done a lot today, don’t you think?” Kate said, glancing around her. They had managed to clear a fairly wide circle of ground. There was still a lot to do but at least it was noticeable that they had done something.
“Well,” he said, “a bit. It could always be worse.”
Kate laughed. “It was worse!”
“That’s very true.” He stuffed the remains of something stinking and mouldy into a bag. “You never did tell me what you did to end up here.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kate muttered, under her breath. “It wasn’t my finest hour, that’s for sure. Besides, you never told me about why you ended up here.”
“If you won’t tell me your secret, I don’t see why I should tell you mine,” Stuart, replied, with a grin.
“Now that’s hardly fair!” Kate said, returning the smile. “Don’t you know that the proper thing to do is let us women have our mystery while telling us everything that we want to know?”
“I’ll remember that for next time,” Stuart promised. He rolled to his feet, stretching. “I’m going to take a little walk around the lake over there. I need a break from all this. Will you be ok here without me?”
“I’m sure I will cope,” Kate said.
“I’ll be back before you have a chance to miss me,” Stuart replied, flashing her another warm smile complete with dimples.
Kate listened to him stomping away through the nettles and overgrown prickly bushes while she got back to work. With him gone it was quiet, eerily so. As she worked on she realised that she hadn’t heard the sound of any birds down by the lake. In fact, the only sound that she had heard all day had been that of her and Stuart, laughing and talking! She strained her ears, trying to hear some birds, but all she could hear was the sound of a girl singing instead. It was a rather a sad song, lilting and soft, and then it was gone, as though it had never been. Kate shrugged mentally. It was probably just another hapless community service slave in another part of the park. With it being so silent, the sound was bound to travel.
She worked on for a little while longer, engrossed in her task, but soon became bored without Stuart there to keep her company. When another five minutes had passed, and he still hadn’t returned, she got to her feet, slid off her dirty gloves, and went off in search of him.
She had to force a path through the nasty plants that seemed intent on snaring her. They reached out with their sharp pointed spears, like tiny pinching fingers, hooking onto her jeans and scratching the skin on her bare arms, but Kate was ruthless. A sharp, hard pull and she had ripped free, tearing the bush as she did so. Vegetation was no match for her, she decided, with a grin. The damn midges were another matter! They fluttered up into her face as she strode through, getting everywhere and she was afraid of breathing the damn things in so she had to cover her mouth and push through as quickly as the bushes would allow her to.
A sudden cry sent a shiver down her spine and a moment later Stuart came crashing through the bushes and overgrown shrubs, his eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?” Kate asked, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at him. “You’ve gone so pale, what’s wrong?”
“I saw . . . I saw a damn face, in the water . . .”
“A face?” Kate shook her head. “No, Stu. There’s no face in the water! It was just a story about Katherine drowning and those faeries! I mean, the girl did drown here, but I can’t believe that she would float to the surface now, today of all days!”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes still very wide. “But I’m sure I saw something.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll come with you and take a look, ok?”
His mouth twisted but he nodded, reluctantly. “Ok.”
Stuart let her lead the way back towards where he had seen this ‘face’ in the water. He even lingered back, close to the bushes, while she walked forward, her heart racing, to investigate the dark, stagnant mire. She couldn’t see anything on the surface, so reached for a stick to stir it up. The stench that rose up from the water made her stomach twist, but there was definitely nothing there. “There’s no face, Stu,” she said finally.
“I’m sure I saw something.”
“It’s me and my stupid ghost stories,” Kate said. “I should have known better than to tell you them! Stuck out here, alone, I am not surprised that you thought you saw something, but really there is nothing there.”
Stuart drew level with her and peered into the dark lake. “Oh,” he said, a rush of colour staining his cheeks with embarrassment. “Oh well.”
“Idiot!” Kate laughed, and punched him lightly in the arm.
Stuart pushed her back, a little harder, and with a sudden cry, she slipped on a wet patch of rotten leaves and with a loud splash, she was in the water. “God!” she gasped. “Shit!” Her hair was wet and the dark putrid water around her was thick and smelt pungent. Something was caught around her legs, something had tangled around them. She tried to wrench free but she couldn’t, they had her tightly and with her legs caught up, she couldn’t swim back to shore, only tread water ineffectively where she was. “Stuart,” she gasped, almost laughing, almost crying. “Stu, my legs are tangled. Can you help me?” The boy didn’t say anything, just stood still and quiet, looking down at her. “Stuart!”
“You know,” Stuart said quietly, “it isn’t just fideals who get lonely and look for a mate. I had thought that Katherine would be good company for me. I was wrong. All she does is cry.”
“What?” Kate asked, a bubble of panic rising up suddenly in her chest. “What are you talking about?”
Stuart took a step closer to the end of the water, the dark liquid lapping around the bottom of his boots. “I think that you will be better company for me, Kate,” he said. “I think that you will save me from having to be alone anymore.” His face was dark, heavy in shadows, but a glint of something flat and empty in his eyes caused Kate’s heart to start racing in her chest. She started to struggle, but the hold on her legs grew tighter, tangling around her so firmly that her legs began to ache and she could no longer kick to keep herself afloat. She slid beneath the dark surface, only to rise up a moment later, coughing and spitting out dark, stinking water. “Don’t bother to fight it,” Stuart said calmly. “It will only hurt if you fight it.”
“Stuart-.”
“And it isn’t like you will be alone,” Stuart said. “You will have Katherine and me for company after all.” The grip on Kate’s legs tightened, pulling her under again, but this time she couldn’t kick herself free to rise towards the surface.
She felt herself starting to sink. The dark water closed above her, her head started to feel light and fuzzy and, as her vision began to fog, all she could clearly see was Stuart’s face. It wasn’t the face of the boy she had spent the day with, it was grey-green, cold and lifeless, and his blue eyes were empty, locked onto hers.
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