The Song in the Darkness

            No one understands me when I tell them that there’s something missing in my life.  I’ve felt that way since I started at the university.  I just felt this emptiness come upon me, as if something that was supposed to be there wasn’t anymore.  I’ve never been able to shake the feeling since. 

            My parents just think I need to find a girlfriend, but I know that’s not what I need.  For one, although I haven’t had the heart to break the news to them, I’m not attracted to women.  But I also know that I’m missing something much bigger than a girlfriend—or boyfriend—and I feel this loss deep within me.  It’s almost as if, something that should have happened to me, sometime around the time I started university, didn’t and my soul has felt the absence and has been wandering aimlessly since. 

            Sungmin, my college roommate, urged me to come to the little waterfront town that he lived in.  He was convinced that I just needed to get out of the city and that I’d feel better.  Things moved so fast in Seoul and he’d been so happy since moving to his wife’s hometown. 

            I couldn’t think of a reason not to visit.  As a website designer, I could do my job from any location and often preferred to work from home.  I felt happier alone.  So, I headed to the small town and stayed over at my friend’s house.  He lived on the lake’s edge.  It wasn’t the beachy area with crystal clear water and sunshine that you’re probably picturing.  This lake was a little spookier looking.  It was surrounded by old trees with roots hanging out over the water, cattails creeping up to the edge of the water line, rocks in the water instead of sand, and murky, dark water that always felt cold to the touch. 

            I picked up a rock from the water and looked it over.  It was black with grey swirls that shined in the light.  Then I glanced around the lake.  It looked like I felt, kind of secluded and haunting.  “I love it,” I confessed.

            Sungmin smiled smugly at me.  “I thought you might.”

            “Perhaps I should move here.”

            “You could.  The house right next door to us is for sale, but all the townsfolk tell me that it’s haunted.  Sometimes, late at night, when I wander outside, I see lights inside the house.  I guess I have to admit that it’s a possibility.”

            I shook my head.  “Probably just local teenagers sneaking in and looking around.  They probably hear a mouse scampering past and they’re convinced there’s a ghost haunting it.”

            “One of the cops in town saw the ghost once.  He said it looked identical to the teenager who drowned in the lake, about seven years ago,” Sungmin explained.  “My wife went to school with him, back in the day.  I guess he would have been about your age or a little older.  He was about to move to Seoul in a few weeks when they found his body in the lake.  Some of the residents thought that he killed himself, but his friends swore that he was looking forward to heading to school at Kyunghee University.”

            I gave him a shocked look.  “He was supposed to go to the same university that we did?  What are the odds of that?”

            Sungmin shrugged his shoulders.  “He would have gone to the school the same time we did, had he lived.  You would have met him.  I’m told he had a scholarship for musical composition.  I think you took a large amount of music classes as electives.”

            I nodded.  “I did.”

            “At any rate, the parents couldn’t stand the thought of living there after losing their only child and moved across country.  No one around here wanted the place because of the drowning.  The house is still for sale and is rather cheap, but it would cost quite a bit to fix it back up.  No one’s lived in it for nearly seven years.”

            I looked up the hill towards the house.  You could barely see it through the trees and thick brush covering the property, which added to it’s haunted look.  “I want to see it.”

            Sungmin bit down on his lip, glancing over at the house in the shadows.

            “It’s the middle of the day!  What are you afraid of?” I asked, heading back through the cattails surrounding the lake and starting up the hill towards the house.

            Sungmin quickly caught up to me.  “Don’t you think we should tell Saeun where we’re headed, just in case she worries?”

            “We aren’t going to be gone that long!  Are you afraid we’re never coming back?”

            “Well, no…” Sungmin said, rushing to catch up with me and nearly tripping over a root.

            Getting up the hill was harder than I thought it would be.  There were fallen branches and overgrown grass to get through.  The whole thing would need to be landscaped, which would cost a small fortune.  But once we made it to the top of the hill and I got my first look at the house, I was already taken in by it.  It was large—probably four or five bedrooms on three levels—with large windows looking out over the lake.  There was a deck that wrapped around two sides of it.  On it sat a broken bench with peeling purple paint, facing the water.  I could just imagine the former owners sitting on it and watching the sunrise. 

            Sungmin was already up the stairs and checking to see if the door was unlocked by the time I snapped out of my thoughts. 

            “It’s locked!  Guess that means we can’t get in,” he said, pretending to sound brokenhearted when I knew he was relieved at the idea of not going in.  But I had no intention of leaving so soon.  I rushed up the stairs and began checking to see if any of the windows would open along the deck.

            “The kids get inside somehow,” I told him, turning the corner and trying the last two windows when one of them easily slid open.  “Ah-ha!”

            Sungmin followed me, almost as pale as a ghost, watching nervously as