Buttermere
written by: Emma Wells
I booked a writing retreat. One nestled as tightly away from humanity that I could find. Char Cottage was hidden, surrounded by woodland and wildflower fields but the gleaming gem in its crown was its position. Skirting the fringe of Buttermere Lake, the one near the dairy pastures, in the Lake District, it had immediately attracted writers from near and far for centuries. On the website, it said that William Wordsworth had once stayed here with his wife, Dorothy. As I browsed the images of both outside and inside the cottage, trying to imagine which room he may have penned his great lines in, full of inspiration from lakeside walks and the gigantic beauty that the Lakes had to offer any writer, or indeed any person.
So, I booked two weeks. A summer retreat. Having just parted ways from my boyfriend, I was free, or at least as free as I had been in some time. Charcoal, my trusted black spaniel, would sit by my side, as I pen lines in a sketchbook and type poems on my laptop – that’s how I envisaged the stay, especially the evenings when the sun had slunk away its rays for the day, and the two of us could cosy up in front of a log fire.
On arrival, after a gruelling, nearly six-hour drive, with two brief stops, I set to unpack. Only the one suitcase and a bag of dog beds and treats for Charcoal. We had travelled lightish. As I made my way around the small cottage, I found the rooms to be small and quaint but perfectly positioned to look out over the lake. Pleasingly, I felt a wave of contentment. I had done something for myself for a change. Booked two weeks off work, cancelled summertime plans with friends and family, and driven myself here. A bolthole. A place I hoped to find myself and to rekindle my love of writing. The edges of me had grown wavy, near to ghostly at times, during the past few years, stuck as I was in a relationship that brought me no real joy, not really. He had not always supported my writing, calling me too bookish, too introverted for the likes of him. It was a blessing when we did break apart, allowing my lungs to fill properly again, instead of stuffed, papery half-breaths. A fish replaced into water, finding its gills still work – that is me. My hopeful plan of rebuilding myself from the ashes.
As the sun began its inky descent towards the lake, I decided to make a quick egg on toast for supper, having been provided with a small pantry of local produce from the owner. Charcoal quickly curled himself around my tucked-up feet, readying to settle in front of the blazing log fire I had set to work. Tired now, after eating, which is what I put it down to afterwards, I note discordant, alarming black veins growing from within the marmalade flames, appearing to strangle the life around each flame tip, snuffling flame by flame, dead like toppled dominoes. Yet, my need to rest quickly dispels such strange thoughts, and I resettle, putting the odd flames down to my overworked imagination and long journey.
I’m safe. This is home for a few weeks, I told myself, repeating it as a mantra.
Finally, I resettle myself.
Satiated, warm and peaceful, we both, Charcoal and I, fall into a pleasant slumber as the lake’s glossy surface slowly dims and darkens.
My dreams are fitful, jagged at times, causing me to jump out of sleep, and regain my senses in the living room. Chilled and more barren now without the earthly glow of the hearth’s flames, I shudder. The logs now lay deadened, charred to no return. The antique windowpanes rattle in the gathering breeze as wisps of wind filter their way into small cracks of the panes, like a whispering voice calling me from the lake. Overtired and confused by the new setting, I shake off any nonsensical thoughts my brain whirls to, summoning Charcoal to join me upstairs in a proper double bed before the sun comes up.
My dreams here deepen and duplicate, taking strong anchorage in my subconscious. I dream of the lake, Buttermere, mere yards from my actual sleeping place, a place I had always yearned to visit, but its mirror-glass surface by day, turns to thickened black ink, a slick tar, in my nocturnal visions. The watery bands mutate to gelatinous sludge, growing onyx spidery tendrils, like long reaching arms, pulling at my feet as I swim upon the lake’s surface. Roots of darkened evil rise up swiftly from the underbelly of the lake, a forgotten underbelly, a central force that expunges roots like newborns, releasing vine-like chains that grab at my thrashing feet and legs. In this nightmare, I do not last long, my legs rapidly become ensnared by the lake’s wicker arms, twisting, turning, overwhelming me as a bendable puppet. Water, fiercely hot and polluted, pummels into my screaming lungs, and Charcoal watches impotently, in wide-eyed fright, from the shoreline, yapping wildly as the lake’s hellish arms drag me completely under, never to appear again.
In a hot sweat, with hair laced across my face, I shoot awake, panting rapidly, my heart reaching staccato, high-pitched sounds within my birdcage chest.
Charcoal. Where is he?
Flinging myself from the bed, I spot him, curled in a perfect ‘O’ in his tartan dog bed at the end of my own. He sleeps peacefully, completely oblivious to my turbulent visions of the night. I have not had nightmares this vivid since I was a teenager. The strength and detailing of my nocturnal thoughts consume me, as I try to flick my mind back to this holiday, my perfect bolthole break, but instead I stare transfixed, hypnotised by the rippling waves of the lake, unfurling themselves only a few yards from the cottage, past the open curtained window, like a wide mouth summoning my full attention.
Peace. Restoration. Recharge, I advise myself. That is why you are here.
“It was just a bad dream,” I half-whisper, trying to reassure myself of the validity of this statement. “No harm done.”
Unable to sleep, I dress, donning hiking gear on top of my swimming costume, still planning to go ahead with my first day plan: to wild swim in the lake, despite the nightmare, before settling to write on my Mac later. Nearly readied, I summon Charcoal to his breakfast and devour a piece of hot toast with local salted butter, made by a nearby farm, I note, from the label, as I think ahead to the beauty of the lake as the sun surfaces on an early August day. Local news flickers past me on the TV as I pack a rucksack with lakeside essentials: a towel, swimming shoes, energy bars, two canteens of water, a change of clothes, and a packed lunch for me, alongside obligatory treats for Charcoal too.
“Come on, boy,” I request once he’s finished his breakfast meat. “It’s time for us to explore.”
He yaps contentedly as I reach for his faithful red lead, a sign to him that he is due for a walk. “I know. I know,” I advise, as I fasten on a rain jacket and my well-prepared rucksack for a day of exploration in the northern, lesser-known lake.
On leaving the cottage, we climb, discovering beautiful waterfalls cut into channels along the mountainsides with sublime views towards Fleetwith Pike and Haystacks. Babbling small streams quieten my mind, bringing back the serenity I seek, dispelling the ugly reflections of my nightmare, smothering them back to hiding places. I paddle in nooks of water, swimming in some wider pools that we find as I traverse around the lake’s perimeter, finding it so very peaceful, being very early in the morning. Water lobelias sprout proudly from the surface of more established rock pools, balanced on long stems, that seem to survey me from the surface, yet my mind is becalmed, anchored here.
“I’m so glad we came, Charcoal,” I soothe, as Charcoal settles close to me on a sheep’s wool blanket, eager for his lunch and to dry his wet fur in the midday heat from his swim.
As I begin to unpack the lunch items, a strange wispy band of black tendrils laces across his eyes like a woven tapestry.
“Charcoal, what is it? What’s wrong?” I panic, but as quickly as the darkened roots flashed across his eyes, they are gone again. I dispel the thought as mere lunacy – nothing more.
After a pack-up of cheese, crackers, and some local dried meats from the nearby farm, I doze, stretched out in my navy swimsuit. The sun is high now, warming my skin, bathing it in streaks of gold, as light shifts across the flattened plains of the mountains. I dip in and out of sleep, as the heat of the day reassures me, purging thoughts of my ex-boyfriend from my mind – the difficult breakup feels so far away here. It is almost as if it never happened. A shadowy mirage.
Tracking the full circumference of the lake after lunch, I spot unique plant life: shoreweed and quillwort quilt the gravelly shoreline, majestic in their defence of the lake. A lonely Arctic char bobs its open mouth, making a hollow circle at the surface, deeper out, another species that is prodigious only in the lakes. I had done my research before travelling here, keen to learn the quirks and eccentricities of Buttermere. I marvel at its metallic glow, mirroring the remains of the sunlight as the afternoon nears to unfold, in tapered glints of its svelte, yet muscular body. A prince of the deep, I contemplate.
Slowly, by degrees, the afternoon warmth comes to its conclusion, so we make our return to the cottage. Relief and peace surge through my energised veins, buoyed by the healing, beautiful splendour of the lake and the way in which light plays on the hills, shifting in bands, skittish yet dreamlike.
As we near closer to the cottage, a voice, a mere whisper, calls me back. Soft, barely audible, akin to the hushed tones through the antique windowpanes on my arrival last night, I think. Charcoal hears it too. His ears prick. He turns to reface the lake, barking defensively at it.
“Don’t be silly, boy,” I soothe, redirecting his steps towards the awaiting cottage with its lit lantern light from the porch and its stocked pantry of local goods that I now hunger for after so much distance travelled in the sun.
A breeze picks up and carries a whistling breath through the nearby rowan trees. Continuing to make haste, through the dimming twilight, Charcoal bounds from me, very out of character, off into the distance, returning to the lake’s shore.
“Not now, Charcoal,” I beg. “We’ll come back for a swim tomorrow.”
Unfettered, he scampers away, until I lose sight of him altogether in the undergrowth. The lake is still now. Calm. Today’s visitors are long gone, and its waters have resettled, forming a glossy lid. Quick on Charcoal’s path, I sprint to retrieve him, knowing how much he loves to swim, but I hear him before I see it: the sound of his body plunging into the awaiting waters.
“Bad boy,” I shout pointlessly, as I near ever closer to retrieve him.
Darkness gathers so quickly now, coating the lake in a nocturnal shroud. I gaze around, but there is no person to be seen. It is if this is my own private retreat. The whole lake is mine, and Charcoal’s.
As I reach the shoreline, my eyes try to spot him, yet all I can decipher is the flattened still of the lake’s glass-like surface. Stripping quickly to my swimsuit, I leave my rucksack and belongings on the shore, plunging into the chilled waters of the lake. I call sporadically for Charcoal, begging him to return to me, to be a good boy, but too soon, all hope is lost.
A black spindly vine courses around my hand, whilst a force, a determined pulling, makes a secure grab for me from beneath.
“Charcoal,” I scream. “Charcoal!”
As I writhe hopelessly, I feel the evil vines from my nightmare tether to my flesh, coursing shackles up and down my limbs, until they form a tightening noose around my neck.
My last sight is the idyllic cottage that is smudged out of sight, as the black wicker arms claim me from the depths of the lake. The cottage’s celestial light goes out like a blinkered eye as I’m pulled beneath the lake’s waters, never to return.
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