Lake Emma

* Arches
* Echo
* The Smoke Room

— Chase, during TJ's route in Echo

**Lake Emma** is a body of water located in Echo, notable for its long history of drownings. It is central to the story of Echo and is significant to the plots of The Smoke Room and Arches.

## Description

In 2015, Lake Emma is twelve miles long and five miles wide, and fed by the Yeeyah River from the north. Chase remembers the lake as being 'generally ugly' throughout his childhood, with a terrible smell and dead fish on the banks. As explained by Leo, during Chase's absence from Echo the town built docks and grilling areas along the lakeshore in an attempt to make it into a recreational destination. There are also ruins beside the lake left over from older settlements.

In 1915, during The Smoke Room, Lake Emma is much larger and seems to be much cleaner, and is a popular relaxation spot for locals. It also features inlets with caves and extensive tunnels lining its shore, which are not referenced in Echo or Arches.

Lake Emma Road splits from nearby Route 93 and runs adjacent to the lake before merging onto Echo's Main Street, making the lake a major landmark for those arriving in Echo.

## Story

### History

Unlike most other lakes in the region, Lake Emma is naturally occurring, even ancient, although it is also repeatedly described as a reservoir. It used to be twice the size it is in 2015, but at some point after 1915 water was gradually siphoned away for agricultural use and Lake Emma shrank, causing the area around Echo to become less verdant. This was possibly exacerbated by the construction of the nearby Daughter's Dam upstream from the lake.

The lake was likely named in honor of Emma Hendricks, the wife of the founder of Echo James Hendricks I. Emma County, where Echo is located, also bears her name, and may have been named for the lake.

## Echo

Because of its importance to Echo's narrative, Lake Emma features prominently on the game's title screen. Clicking on the lake takes the player to the CG and side story gallery.

### Prior to Echo

Lake Emma was a frequent childhood hangout spot for the main cast of Echo, but their relationship with the lake changed forever when one of their friends, Sydney Bronson, drowned there in 2003. Sydney's death turned the lake into a nearly taboo subject among Chase and his friends, and for years afterward none of the group has felt comfortable returning to it.

### Prologue

As Chase, TJ, and Jenna drive back into Echo for a reunion with their old friends Leo, Carl, and Flynn, passing by the lake causes a sudden silence to fall over their conversation, seemingly indicating an unspoken awareness that Sydney's death still weighs on each of them to some degree.

Once the group is all together, Chase nearly loses his appetite when Leo brings up the lake, but tells himself that he needs to 'get over things.' Chase then explains to Leo that he hopes to film Lake Emma for his college project about Echo's history, but Leo is hesitant to discuss the lake with the others. Instead, Leo recommends that the group meet up at the Yeeyaw River, not far from its outflow into the lake.

That night, Chase dreams that there is an anchor in the lake connected to his ankle by a chain, linking him to the depths even as he tries to walk away from the water. On Sunday night, Chase sneaks out of the motel room he is sharing with Jenna and TJ and goes to an unknown location, although immediately after departing he has an apparent flashback to the day Sydney drowned in Lake Emma.

On Monday, the main cast meets up on the banks of Yeeyaw River, and Chase returns from filming Lake Emma to find his friends arguing about the circumstances of Sydney's death. Flynn insists that TJ knows more about the events of that day than he lets on, and the conflict escalates until the group splits apart.

### TJ's Route

TJ's route focuses on reexamining how Sydney drowned in Lake Emma, and so the lake features prominently.

On Tuesday, Chase dreams he is sitting on the banks of Lake Emma and watching his friends ride atop his car as it moves through the water. The dream then takes a dark turn and Chase sees six bodies floating in the lake, one of which looks 'really familiar.' In the distance, he sees a tool shed with its door open, which he knows does not exist on the banks of the lake in the real world. The dream ends as 'something' steps out of the shed.

Near the end of the route, Chase, TJ, Jenna, and Carl find and follow a treasure hunt that initially appears to be left over from the ones Sydney used to design for them as children, although its increasingly uncanny clues call that into question. The final clue of the hunt directs the group to Lake Emma, and instructs them to look beneath a boulder on the shore that Carl carved a superhero onto when he was a child. When the lake is revealed as the hunt's ultimate destination, Carl vomits into a bush.

That night, Chase goes to Lake Emma by himself and digs up the last clue so he can replace it with a forgery that makes the hunt seem like it was a setup organized by Flynn and Carl. While he is approaching the lake, Chase thinks of it as a 'giant, all-knowing, living thing.' During his excavation of the note he briefly glimpses a tarantula staring at him and screams, only for it to vanish.

Back at the lake the next morning, Chase uses his forged final clue to insinuate that the whole hunt was a pretense for Carl and Flynn to continue questioning TJ about his possible role in Sydney's death. Seemingly convinced by this, TJ lunges at Carl. Carl stumbles backwards and breaks his ankle, and he and Jenna leave for the hospital.

Later at Echo's motel, Chase recalls more details about the events of Sydney's drowning. In a flashback, Chase leaves his other friends and swims back to a spot on the lakeshore where TJ has been left alone. He finds Sydney pinning TJ facedown in the shallows and seemingly relishing his suffering. Chase assumes that Sydney intends to kill TJ and tackles him off. After an unspecified conversation between them, Chase gets angry and accidentally punches Sydney in the throat, then holds his head under the water. When Chase lets him go, Sydney threatens to tell Leo that Chase tried to kill him, so Chase grabs him again, and the memory ends.

That evening, Flynn brings TJ back to the lakeside in a last attempt to get the truth out of him. Chase arrives and, 'as if of its own accord' feels compelled to reveal the treasure hunt's real final clue: a crude childlike drawing of Chase drowning Sydney with TJ watching from the beach. Flynn is enraged by this revelation and begins beating Chase, until TJ distracts him by claiming to actually be the one responsible for Sydney's death. This allows Chase to hit Flynn from behind with a rock, then drag him underwater and hold him there until he dies. While kneeling in the shallows afterward, Chase sees a 'gashed mouth' in his face's reflection in the water. Chase then hugs TJ on the shore while urging him to forget what has happened.

In an epilogue set five years later, Cameron and Devon stop to explore Lake Emma's shore as part of their investigation into Echo's paranormal happenings, and Cam sees an apparition of Flynn's decomposing body floating in the water.

### Flynn's Route

Flynn spends much of the route still deeply suspicious about TJ's account of the day Sydney drowned in Lake Emma, and finally questions him directly on Saturday. TJ recounts running away from the rest of the group to be alone on the beach and seeing a tall, burned figure wading into the lake, then being tackled into the water and held down until his vision became hazy. Finally, he admits to witnessing 'two brown-furred bodies' undulating together in the lake.

Early on Sunday morning, the main cast and Daxton attempt to escape Echo in Leo's van, only to be hurled into the lake by the Socket Man. The van begins flooding and Flynn urges Carl to use his horns to smash a window so everyone can escape. Daxton fails to surface with the rest of the group, so depending on the prior events of the route either Flynn or Leo dives back down to rescue him. Daxton explains that he swam down deeper into the lake because he was following something drifting further into the depths that looked like Flynn.

After Flynn merges with Sam to ultimately become the Socket Man, he begins teleporting to tragic scenes throughout Echo's history and eventually ends up on the shore of Lake Emma on the day Sydney died. In the same sequence of events as previously described by TJ, the Socket Man wades into Lake Emma in order to witness Sydney's death firsthand. Flynn's body is deteriorating from the fire that transformed him, however, and his vision fails before he can gain a definitive insight into the fate of his childhood friend. Afterward, whatever is left of Flynn perceives Daxton floating above him in the water.

### Carl's Route

In order to attain some closure over Sydney's death, Leo insists everyone meet up at Lake Emma on Saturday to discuss how to move on from their collective trauma. An argument quickly arises once the group is back together, and so Chase silently wades into the lake to try and snap his friends out of it. It works initially, and the others stop fighting to join him into the water, but after Chase nearly drowns and has to be rescued, old grudges resurface. Chase and Carl depart the lakeside as their friends turn on each other again.

Near the end of the route, Chase has several visions of what appears to be Echo's past, and he observes that in places alongside Lake Emma where only ruins exist in the present, dozens of old-fashioned log homes are still standing.

### Jenna's Route

At one point, Micha describes Lake Emma as a hotspot for the 'Hum,' Keith's term for the supernatural events plaguing Echo.

Throughout the route, distant rain falls steadily, filling up the dam upstream from Lake Emma's watershed. Heather intends to open the dam and flood Echo, which would lead to Lake Emma surging its banks, but is talked down or killed before she can carry out her plan.

In the route's 'bad ending,' however, Jenna herself succeeds in opening the dam, and the last thing Chase and his friends see as they drive away from Echo is the water level of Lake Emma rising to submerge the town.

### Leo's Route

If Chase stays with Leo, they agree to work on their relationship while talking on the banks of Lake Emma, which Flynn later criticizes as disrespectful to Sydney.

On Saturday, Chase, Leo, TJ, and Kudzu try to escape Echo in Leo's van, but they are attacked by a charred monster that intercepts the vehicle and sends it into Lake Emma. TJ's seatbelt traps him in the van as it fills with water, but Chase is able to save him and everyone makes it safely to shore.

After the group reunites with Jenna, she recounts that when the mass hysteria began to descend on Echo, TJ left the motel and ran to Lake Emma in a trancelike state, then looked out over the water and called Chase's name as if searching for him. When Jenna tried to snap him out of it, TJ attacked and then chased her. While Jenna narrates what happened, the voice in Chase's head says that the 'water changed that day,' and describes Chase learning for the first time what 'water felt like to everyone else.'

## The Smoke Room

Samuel can see Lake Emma from the balcony of his room at Saguaro's Hip, and as such the lake appears on the title screen of the game.

### Murdoch's Route

Murdoch grew up fishing and playing in Lake Emma with his younger brother Seamus and his childhood friend Ralph. During a Fourth of July celebration ten years prior to the events of The Smoke Room, Seamus snuck aboard a steamboat in order to launch fireworks from the center of the lake, and at some point fell overboard into the boat's paddlewheel and ultimately drowned. His remains were never recovered, aside from a severed paw.

Murdoch is still haunted by his brother's death, and sometimes sees ghostly images from the fair held at Lake Emma on the day Seamus died when he looks at unrelated photographs. Murdoch and Ralph frequently visit a cavern on a secluded shore of the lake near where they used to play with Seamus as children in order to process their grief, and during Murdoch's route they bring Sam there as well. According to Ralph, several other children have drowned in the area of the lake near the cave, and local rumor says there is a current that sucks them under.

While inside the cave, Sam, Murdoch, and Ralph overhear a squeaking sound like the wheels of a cart, and witness a figure with its face wrapped in cloth struggling with something in a sack. The figure uses a rock to bludgeon whatever is writhing inside the sack, producing a horrible wet noise, and then fills the sack with stones before dumping it into Lake Emma. Sam, Murdoch, and Ralph flee, and as they do Sam glimpses two girls dressed in white sitting on a rock by the lake. They also run into Blithe, who is looking for her missing friend.

Murdoch reports the apparent crime to Sheriff William, and his deputy Todd searches Lake Emma but finds no sign of any remains. Murdoch considers that this may mean the lake's current is carrying the bodies away somehow.

Later in the route, Blithe brings Sam to the network of disused mining tunnels that exists beneath Echo and mentions that some of them lead toward the lake.

### William's Route

As in his own route, Murdoch overhears a body being dumped into the lake and reports it to the sheriff. Murdoch then leads Will, Nik, and Sam to the spot on the shore where he witnessed the possible crime, and Will finds a concealed cave near the lake containing a minecart that could have been used to haul bodies to the waterline.

Afterward, the main cast has a picnic on the shore of Lake Emma. Sam finds Will gazing out at the water and joins him, and wonders how many people have died in the lake throughout its history.

Later, Sam notices that he can see a glimpse of Lake Emma from Marcy Greene's property.

### Nikolai's Route

Beckett, a foreman for the CSCG mining operation in Danicka Mine, mentions at one point that drilling diagonally upward from the shaft he and his employees are working in would cause Lake Emma to flood the mine's tunnels.

Later in the route, Nik and Yao go for a swim in the lake; Sam accompanies them but insists on waiting on the beach. After Yao leaves, Nik and Sam are still on the shore when they are approached by Murdoch, who is dirty and disheveled and seems to be coming out of a daze after a possibly supernatural encounter in Echo's mine.

## Arches

Lake Emma is one of the first things that announces to Dev and Cam that they will soon be arriving in Echo, and the two pull over alongside the lake to decide their next steps before proceeding.

After a distressing supernatural encounter convinces them to leave the town, Dev and Cam are driving past the lake when Cam suddenly sees the figure of a young otter appear in the road in front of them. He wrecks their car in an attempt to avoid it, and Dev, who could not perceive the child, explains afterward that a young otter, likely a reference to Sydney, drowned in Lake Emma in the early 2000s.

Sometime later, Cam has a vision on the road beside the lake in which he experiences the final moments of a student from Echo High who drowned after being pushed into the water by her ex-boyfriend. Devon accidentally startles Cam out of his trancelike state, sending him tumbling from the road into the lake, but the water is shallow and Cam is mostly unharmed.

Later, as Brian chokes Cam and his perception begins to extend beyond himself, a 'desert lake' is one of the things Cam feels himself becoming, likely referring to Emma.

## Known Deaths

In Arches, Devon mentions that according to his research 'a few dozen' people have drowned in Lake Emma since around 1950. The following are those whose deaths are explicitly mentioned across the various games:

* Seamus Byrnes, aged 8, presumed to have drowned on July 4, 1905, after falling off a steamboat. His body was never found, and only a severed paw was recovered.

* An unknown person in a burlap sack full of stones, who is bludgeoned on the shore of the lake and then dumped into the water by a figure whose head is wrapped in cloth. This takes place on July 7, 1915 in Murdoch's route and is witnessed Sam, Murdoch, and Ralph. It also seemingly also occurs in William's route and is again witnessed by Murdoch, and based on later discoveries made by the sheriff the incident may indicate that Lake Emma is systematically being relied upon for the disposal of bodies.

* Unnamed bobcat girl, aged 19, drowned in June of 1954 after being pushed from the nearby roadway into the lake by a vengeful ex-boyfriend.

* Sydney Bronson, aged 9, drowned around August or autumn of 2003 during an altercation with Chase Hunter. Notably, Sydney did not actually die in the lake, but in a hospital outside of Echo some time later.

* At the end of TJ's route, Flynn Moore is drowned in the lake by Chase.

* During a possible ending of Jenna's route, the water level of the lake rises to engulf the town of Echo, presumably drowning an unknown number of people.

## Trivia

* Lake Emma is based on the real-life Echo Lake located in Echo, Utah, the town that the partly inspired the fictional Echo.