Prologue Summary
A lake that looks harmless on the surface hides a suffocating darkness just a foot below. As summer brightness fades to autumn gloom, five houses on the shore dim with it—especially the modern glass one across the water. The narrator ends with a confession that reframes everything: she watches.
What Happens
Prologue: The Lake is Darker Than a Coffin
The narrator grows up on Lake Greene and fixates on its central contradiction: the glassy, clear surface and the inky blackness beneath. As a kid, she listens when her friend Marnie declares the lake “darker than a coffin with the lid shut,” a macabre image that sticks. Marnie dares her to dive to the bottom; every attempt ends the same way—panic in cold, blind water and a desperate burst back to air, rattled by how quickly sunlight gives way to a midnight void.
She pans across the shoreline to the five lake houses. In summer, they glitter with people, noise, and laughter. By mid-October, that energy drains away. Curtains close. Paths empty. The mood turns solemn, as if the lake’s blackness seeps onto the shore and into the houses themselves.
Her attention narrows to the house directly across the water—a sleek structure of glass, steel, and stone that mirrors the gray sky and the chill of the lake. Even when its lights glow, reflections fog what lies inside. Like the lake, it reveals only a surface. The narrator closes with a chilling line that sets the story’s engine: “I should know. I’ve been watching.”
Character Development
The prologue centers the narrator—unnamed here but tied to the lake’s history and its darkness. Her voice blends memory with menace, and her last line marks her as a watcher whose gaze may distort as much as it reveals.
- The Narrator (Casey Fletcher): Deep attachment to Lake Greene; thinks in graveyard images; admits to sustained surveillance across the water. The tone hints at unreliability and obsession.
- Marnie: A childhood daredevil who romanticizes danger and death; her language (“coffin,” “grave”) imprints on the narrator, shaping the prologue’s ominous register.
Themes & Symbols
The prologue installs Deception and Misleading Appearances as the book’s organizing principle. The lake’s clear surface masks a black void; the glass house reflects instead of revealing; summer’s brightness conceals a coming rot. Everything looks readable until you try to see past the glare.
Lake Greene functions as the novel’s master symbol—an externalization of buried truths and subconscious dread. Descending into it means courting confusion and losing one’s bearings, foreshadowing an investigation that disorients rather than clarifies. The house across the lake mirrors that symbolism: polished, modern, impenetrable. It’s a façade built to be looked at, not through.
The prologue also frames Voyeurism and Obsession. Watching promises knowledge, but reflection and distance distort it. The narrator’s gaze becomes both the tool of discovery and a potential source of error.
Key Quotes
“The lake is darker than a coffin with the lid shut.”
This morbid image anchors the prologue’s tone and establishes death as a persistent metaphor. It recasts a familiar setting as a claustrophobic trap, prefiguring how safety and comfort will curdle into menace once the narrator looks beneath surfaces.
“I should know. I’ve been watching.”
The twist that reframes the scene: we aren’t just in memory—we’re in surveillance. It declares the narrator’s method and raises doubts about her reliability. Watching confers power, but from across a reflective lake, it also invites misreading.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
The prologue builds the book’s architecture: a radiant surface that hides a fathomless underside. It sets a gothic, off-season mood, introduces the lake and the glass house as twin symbols, and positions the narrator as a devoted observer whose perceptions drive the plot. By linking setting to secrecy and vision to distortion, it primes the reader for a story where truth is submerged, and every reflection misleads.