Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or places in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All that stuff belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy. I do own the narrator, though he doesn't count for much, and a mighty large Blarog.
Ghosts of Sunnydale
By beenieweenie
I used to live on the outskirts of a large town; now it's a bay. It has been for a while; close to seven years. The town sank when I was nine. We weren't around at the time, but we came back when the police contacted us and to tell us our house was still standing. The bay actually formed in a massive sinkhole, the one that swallowed the town, when the ocean came pouring into it. The shore of the bay became a frequent hang out for me and the few friends who were still around.
Even before the entire populace of the town up and left it was a really creepy place. The death rate was incredibly high and there were all sorts of urban legends about monsters in the night; vampires and the like. More people believed these stories than you'd think too. For the longest time the number one rule at my house was "Be inside by sunset and stay indoors after dark." I was in my house from sunset to sunrise; not that I really cared at the time.
For my tenth birthday my parents got me a small rowboat and a fishing pole and some gear. I managed to become quite the fisherman after a while. But even when I wasn't fishing it was cool to paddle around the bay all day. Time, especially in the summer, was on my side. And it was that first summer that I had the rowboat that I witnessed one of the most amazing events of my life.
I talked my parents into letting me camp out overnight down by the bay. It took me half the summer to do it. Mom was really against the idea, but they finally consented. Dad came down to the shore and helped me set up the tent. He left after a bit, as I watched the sun set. The sun on the water seemed to blaze larger and brighter until it vanished from sight, leaving only an orange smear across the horizon.
A light fog developed over the water, staying low and only over the water for the most part, but it was dancing and moving as it wished. The stars were brilliant that night and they created a twinkling mosaic across the black sky. I decided to row out onto the bay for a better, unobstructed view of the night sky. The bay was too big to bother trying to get to the middle of it, but I was a good distance from shore before I stopped paddling and started to just drift. The stars seemed to just be packed into the sky and the night was clear enough that I could see stars that were red and orange and even a few blue ones.
I'd been admiring the stars for a while when a sudden movement caught my eye. It had been down along the surface of the water and off to my right. At first I thought it might have just been a jumping fish or even a dolphin, but there hadn't been any splashing in conjunction with the motion. Of course it could have been a bat too. Except I hadn't seen any others flying around and I'd been watching the sky. I spent a few minutes searching for the origin of the movement; to no avail. The light fog still seemed to writhe and twist of its own accord, but there was nothing in it.
The thing that I love most about the stars is that you can look for the actual constellations or you can make up your own. And with a night as starry as that one was I had plenty of constellations to create. My fun only ended when the fog began to get thicker and to rise a bit. So I decided that I might as well paddle back to shore before visibility became nonexistent.
I was getting ready to turn back towards shore when I saw another movement in the fog. This one was off to my left though. Once again there was no sound, but I knew I'd seen something. I strained to locate the origin of the movement. I was so eager to find it that I was hanging half off the side of the rowboat, searching for some unknown moving object.
Suddenly the movement was coming from right below me. I rocketed back, falling against the opposite side of the boat, as the thing rose. It looked like a human, but the face was messed up and the creature was the color of spider webs and looked intangible. The creature dove at me and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise because I had seen this thing's fangs! At the sight of them I panicked and screamed at the top of my lungs. Then I grabbed the oars and began to wildly paddle away from the creature. As I moved away the creature lunged one last time, its mouth open wide in a scream that rang silently through me, echoing in my memory.
The fog continued to thicken as I paddled and it wasn't until I was exhausted and thoroughly confused that I realized that I'd paddled myself towards the middle of the bay rather than towards the shore. I shivered and eyed the surrounding fog twitchily. The fog's movements seemed to portray the movements of people, or monsters, just beyond my line of sight and that scared me shitless.
From my left a monster with sharp-looking sticks poking out of its wrists waded towards me. That set me off paddling like a madman; driven only by fear and adrenaline. But even as I ran from one monster it seemed that I would come across another. Dog-like animals with fearsome teeth, more of the people with messed up faces, swarms of evil little fairies; the variety was frightening. I was beginning to become too exhausted to flee anymore when a giant snake-like creature shot up straight into the air. I froze and began to scream as the thing plummeted back down towards me, mouth first. That's when things got really bizarre.
Suddenly there were three women surrounding my boat. Nothing was obviously wrong with them, so I didn't know if they were monsters or not. One looked like she couldn't have been more that 22 or 23; maybe a little frumpy, but nice. Another one seemed to be emulating my mother; she looked older, with lots of smile and laugh lines among quite a few worry lines. And the third seemed to be sad but darkly beautiful; dark hair and eyes were the impression I got. They formed a sort of circle around me and the dark one turned towards the plummeting monster and made a gesture at it to leave. And it did! The monster seemed to just dissipate, noiselessly and easily.
None of the women said anything, but the motherly one seemed to be telling me, through gestures, to start heading back to shore. I looked around and the fog was dissipating as easily as the monster snake had. The two younger women lead the way back to shore, and the maternal one stayed more along side the boat, offering me silent comfort with her smile. The fog got lighter and lighter as we got closer to shore. By the time that we hit the shore it was almost entirely gone. I jumped out of my boat and moored it quickly, not wanting to miss seeing where the women went. When I looked back at them the young one offered a shy smile and the dark one bowed her head as though in acknowledgement. I looked back at the oldest of the three spectral women and she waved me off, telling me to go home. And I did; running the entire mile and a half, scared and awed at the same time.
The last thing I saw of the bay that night was when I looked over my shoulder as I started off at a sprint towards home. I saw the three women share a look and then dissipate into the light fog that had covered the bay to begin with. That wasn't the last I saw of those ladies. I took to calling them the ladies of the lake after I read the Arthurian legends in junior high. The ghosts of Sunnydale still roam the foggy bay and the three ladies still keep them in check. I have no idea who those three women were in life, but I'm sure that they played an integral part in the story of the town of Sunnydale.
Fini