Deep and Dark and Dangerous

“Mom snatched the photograph, her face suddenly flushed. ‘Where did you get this?’ She acted as if I’d been rummaging through her purse, her bureau drawers, the medicine cabinet, looking for secrets.”

This moment of shock, even outrage, captures Claire’s sense of violation at Ali discovering a crack in her veneer of secrecy. Her overreaction is a key flag to Ali, and to readers, that this is not an ordinary photograph. If anything, it only encourages Ali’s curiosity and leads her to conclude that the photo is a mystery like the kind she reads about in books.

“I’m walking along the shore of Sycamore Lake in a thick fog. I see a girl coming toward me. I can’t make out her face, but somehow I know it’s ‘T.’ She seems to know me, too. She says, ‘You’d better do something about this.’ She points at three girls in a canoe, paddling out onto the lake. One is my mother, one is Dulcie, and I think the third girl is ‘T.’ But how can that be? Isn’t she standing a few feet away? No, she’s gone. The canoe vanishes into the fog.”

The details of Ali’s dream here can almost be substituted for the description of her, Sissy, and Emma’s trip in the canoe in Chapter 17. The supernatural elements of the story allow Hahn to use this moment of clairvoyance to foreshadow a key scene to come.

“While I read, I kept one ear tuned to the kitchen, but I couldn’t hear what Mom and Dulcie were saying. If Emma hadn’t been sitting on my lap, I would have tiptoed to the door and listened.”

No scene better characterizes Ali’s curiosity than this one. Her is inquisitiveness is obsessive and at times sneaky, and she is even willing to disregard her mother’s boundaries to satisfy her intrigue.

“Dulcie looked at me over Emma’s head. ‘Everything scares Claire,’ she said. ‘Deep water. High places, low places. Inside, outside. Upside, downside.’”

This is callous of Dulcie, particularly because she knows the trauma the sisters endured together. It is not the only time she displays such a cruel and unsympathetic approach to her sister’s mental health issues. Her repeated disparagement of her sister is part of a pattern of problematic behavior that was initially masked by her “cool aunt” persona.

“We washed the marshmallows down with hot chocolate, then lay still and watched the flames devour the logs. Our faces felt warm, but our feet were cold.”

The novel’s events take place over one summer in Maine, but the heavy rain and fog often create an atmosphere that feels more like fall or early winter. This is part of Hahn’s strategy of defamiliarizing readers’ perceptions of this being a story about an idyllic summer vacation.

“Outside the rain started falling again and the wind blew. I began to worry Mom had been right about the weather.”

When Ali realizes her mother was right about the weather, it raises the question of what else Claire was right about. This is not the first time Ali hears her mother’s words ring in her mind. At this point, readers wonder whether there truly is something deep, dark, and dangerous about the lake.

“For a moment, I had a scary feeling that someone else was in the cottage—unseen, watching, waiting. I looked behind me, into the shadowy corners of my room. No one was there, but I couldn’t get rid of the feeling or the goose bumps on my arms.”

Hahn uses Ali’s fear of the unknown to add to the sense of dread in the story. In the novel’s later stages, Sissy visits Ali in her room at night and admits she is accustomed to the dark. There is the possibility that Sissy has been that figure watching and waiting the entire time.

“Ignoring me, Sissy busied herself pushing Cheerios around her bowl with her spoon, sinking them into the milk and watching them pop up again. As far as I could see, she hadn’t eaten any of them.”

Sissy playing with her Cheerios is another hint of her being inhuman. She is likely playing with her food because she is unable to eat it. Sissy cannot perform this necessary function of life because she no longer relies on food survive. Despite being able to physically interact with items, consuming a part of the living world is impossible because she is no longer a part of that world.

“I have friends who remember every detail of their childhoods, their teachers’ names, what they wore to someone’s birthday party when they were eight years old, what they got for Christmas when they were ten. Me—I can’t remember a thing before my teen years.”

Erin Donaldson and her mother, Jeanine, do not find Dulcie’s amnesia credible and instead consider it a ploy to hide what she knows about Teresa’s disappearance. While they are correct in assuming Dulcie is hiding something, her trouble recalling memories from that time makes sense when considering that survivors of a traumatic event often struggle with disrupted memory. The timeline matches up with the time during and immediately following the drowning, and Dulcie therefore has difficulties recalling these memories.

“‘Teresa died?’ Shocked, I gripped the soda can and stared at Jeanine. I’d never imagined Teresa dead. All this time, I’d pictured her living around here somewhere, stopping by for a visit, forcing Dulcie to remember her. ‘How did she die?’”

Ali grips the can with shock but also with intrigue and fascination at this twist. She seems excited by this development, treating this mystery like an episode of the police procedurals she enjoys watching.

“Take Emma to the cottage, read to her, play games, do what I hired you to do.” Dulcie gripped the broom so tightly her knuckles whitened. The veins in her neck stood out like knotted cords, and she was shaking. “I’ll take care of this.”

Dulcie’s physical response to the vandalism of her artwork with bones and the threatening message is an indication of how loosely tethered her composure has become. In this passage, her every sinew is engaged to keep it together as if her body has engaged a fight or flight response to her fear.

“‘Teresa could be anywhere,’ Sissy went on. ‘She could be in this room right this minute, hiding in the shadows, just waiting to drown you like your mom drowned her. She could come through the window and get you in the middle of the night, she could—’”

This passage shows how much Sissy is enjoying the thrill of her hidden identity. There are shades of the “the call is coming from inside the house” trope, as Ali and Emma, ironically thinking they are safe, have had their refuge invaded.

“Dulcie leapt to her feet and drew back her hand. I cringed, sure that she was going to slap Emma. Emma must have thought the same thing because she raised her arm to protect her face. ‘Don’t hit me,’ she cried. ‘Don’t hit me!’”

Dulcie threw herself back down in the chair and began to sob. Emma looked at me, clearly frightened by her mother’s behavior. Scared myself, I took Emma’s hand. I was used to my mother behaving like this, but not Dulcie.”

Dulcie has the same reflex to slap that Ali had in an earlier scene when she was frustrated with Sissy’s antics. That Ali is accustomed to this behavior coming from her mother hints at there being abusive tendencies in their family, or at the very least a troubling trend of harsh discipline.

“‘You broke Sissy’s doll,’ Emma screamed. ‘She’ll be mad!’”

When Dulcie comes upon Ali, Emma, and Sissy on the cliff fighting over the doll, Sissy somehow vanishes quickly. Emma speaking for Sissy implies she is speaking in the absence of her friend, but there is no description of Sissy exiting the area. This is one of the more obvious clues of Sissy possessing ghostly qualities that Ali and Emma failed to notice.

“I’d forgotten those dolls until now. Dulcie had taken them apart and put them back together, creating monsters like Frankenstein—a leg from one, a head from another, mismatched arms. Some were bald, others eyeless. She often replaced their bodies with boxes filled with strange objects—hard little tinfoil hearts, pebbles, shells, beads, tiny scissors from charm bracelets, sheets of paper with cryptic words written on them, bits of broken china, pennies, knives, nails. Many of them had holes in their heads with springs, feathers, twigs, or dead flowers poking out of them. The scariest had no heads at all. As a finishing touch, she often spray-painted them with a thin coat of green paint, giving them the appearance of things exhumed from graves or the depths of the sea.”

Some of the descriptions of the macabre dolls Dulcie uses in her artwork, particularly the green coat of paint, could comfortably fit as descriptions of the doll Edith that Sissy carried with her. Dulcie’s repeated recreation of the doll as she imagines it in its resting place at the bottom of the lake is a sign that the events of that day are still present in her mind.

“Ms. Trent peered into my eyes. ‘What happened to Teresa was very sad. But this is the real world, Ali. You exist, I exist, millions of people exist. Ghosts do not exist—there’s no room for them.’”

Ms. Trent, like Pete, refutes the existence of ghosts. Her approach is less dismissive and churlish than Ali’s father’s was because she is seeking to comfort the terrified teenager. In this moment she tries to be a kind and reassuring presence when Ali is spiraling.

“‘Claire started crying again. So did I. Teresa was dead—we knew she was. And it was my fault. I’d thrown the doll in the lake. I thought I’d be charged with murder, arrested, sent to jail. I was just a child—what did I know about the law, or what could happen to me?’ Her voice rose. She was breathing hard, talking fast, as if the police might arrive at any moment, sirens howling, lights flashing.”

In this passage, Dulcie recounts the story of what happened after Teresa disappeared on the lake, and it causes her to relive the emotions she felt that day. It is like she is transported through time and is again standing in the same terror of the 11-year-old Dulcie who feared she would be arrested for her mistake.

“‘You’re just a little girl,’ I said.

‘Not an ordinary one.’

‘No, not ordinary. Not ordinary at all.’” 

Both Jeanine Donaldson and Ms. Trent describe Sissy as an “ordinary girl,” and this is a characterization with which Sissy takes issue. Her sister Linda was popular and beautiful in her youth, at one point enjoying the spotlight when she won a beauty contest at 15. Sissy envied her sister and always tried to tag along with her and her friends as if proximity to Linda would bring something special to her life as well.

“She leaned over me, and I smelled the lake on her breath. Not exactly fresh, a bit musty, a little earthy.”

After Ali determines that Sissy is Teresa’s ghost, she describes her skin as extremely cold and her body as emitting pungent odors. Once the veil has been lifted and she is able to see Sissy as who—or what—she is, she is able to perceive her in her entirety—especially the unhuman characteristics. The descriptions of her take on characteristics of the lake, like the dampness she leaves on Ali’s pillow, the persistent wetness of her hair, and the odor of her breath.

“She broke in. ‘Maybe if we’d tried harder, we could have saved her. If we’d told someone right away. If we’d—’ She started crying. ‘I go over it again and again. I can’t stop thinking about Teresa, about leaving her there—it’s haunted me my whole life.’”

In this passage, Claire finally talks to Ali about Teresa’s death. This moment feels like a dam breaking as the truth starts spilling out of Claire the instant she knows confessing her truth will not violate the promise of secrecy she made to her sister. It highlights how tenuous Claire’s silence was, and how desperate she was to be free of the burden.

“‘How about a glass of warm milk with honey?’ Dad asked. ‘That always helps you relax.’

‘Can we keep the light on all night?’ Mom asked.

Dulcie laughed. ‘You sound just like Emma.’”

In this exchange, Claire’s husband is speaking to her like one would speak to a restless child. For Claire, a return to the cottage means a return to the memories of the most traumatic event of her life. Claire's reliance on childish comforts also hints at her having an arrested emotional development because of her experiences.

“Sissy pulled away, suddenly angry. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me! Just make sure all the things I said should happen do happen.’”

Sissy simultaneously wants affection and lashes out at Ali because she abhors anything that resembles pity. These are the characteristics that made her a difficult person to befriend when she was alive. Becoming a vengeful ghost only worsens these characteristics, making her even more unlikeable.

“‘Sissy was just a kid, too!’ Linda looked at me. ‘Younger than her! Why didn’t you tell the truth? Do you know how much grief you’ve caused us? Rich summer people coming here, acting like you’re above the law. Well, you should be arrested. You should pay for what you did to my sister!’”

In this passage, Linda, who has moved away from Webster’s Cove, returns to confront the sisters. It is the only instance where Linda’s direct speech is included, and Hahn uses it for maximum effect. Linda’s words are filled with the anguish and accusations that Sissy was never able to utter herself.