Wren Lake is a major landmark around which the town of Lakewood is built. The landlocked body of fresh water has been key to the physical, economic, and cultural development of the town, and has factored in much of the local history.
By the time of the 2015 – 2016 Lakewood murders, Wren Lake has become prime real estate, and was home to some of the community’s wealthiest families, such as the Maddoxes and Smiths. Despite this chintzy facade, the lake has a dark history, and had for 20 years featured in the local “true crime” ghost story of the 1994 Brandon James murders.
In a deliberate attempt at invoking the past, the 2015 Lakewood Slashings likewise culminated on the jetty at Wren Lake, where Brandon’s daughter Piper Shaw attempted to kill her mother, Maggie Duval, and half-sister Emma, before being killed by Audrey Jensen.
| LOCATION | Wren Lake |
| Region | Lakewood |
| First Published Appearance | The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 6 |
Layout
Wren Lake is located due south of Lakewood. It is a sizable body of water, and is landlocked: there are no rivers nor streams that feed it. The exact depth of the lake has never been measured, and rumor has persisted from prehistory that the lake has no true bottom, an ominous natural quirk that has played into no shortage of ghost stories over the generations.
Lakewood proper is entirely located north of the water, with the north shore of the lake being comprised of lake houses belonging to the town’s wealthiest families. This row culminates in the Overlook, the highest elevation in the area: a promontory which juts out over the water from a hook-like protrusion of earth at the lake’s northeast extreme. The infamous jetty on which Brandon James made his last stand on Halloween 1994 is located a few steps from these fine houses.1
Until its destruction by fire in May 2016, the Smith’s Sweeties plant loomed over the water at the lake’s west end. As of November 2016, the land was still owned by the Smith family, and plans were in effect to rebuild on the same plot.
The south end of the lake is mostly undeveloped backwoods. Legally, this area is part of Lakewood, but little has been done with it in the 200 years since the town’s incorporation. At various times since the mid-20th century, efforts have been made to convert parts of this region into a national park, but none of these schemes ever came to fruition.
History
Lakewood grew up on the shores of Wren Lake. The town was originally a small settlement erected in 1816, to support the sugar planters who’d begun plying their trade on the north shore. The most significant of these planters were the Maddoxes, who built the biggest plantation in the area and dominated the trade for the first 30 years of Lakewood’s existence.
The Brandon James Murders
Wren Lake was the staging ground for the climatic events of the 1994 Brandon James killings. On Halloween night, Brandon James, a student at George Washington High School, went on a violent rampage, targeting the bullies who’d picked him for, among other reasons, his severe facial deformities caused by Proteus Syndrome.
The violence ended when Brandon was drawn to the lake, responding to a message left him by Daisy, a girl he had a crush on. Brandon went to the jetty to meet her and was ambushed by police, who shot him. His body fell into the water and wasn’t discovered, sparking a persistent urban legend.2
The Kissing Video
The infamous video of Audrey Jensen and Rachel Murray making out in Audrey’s car was recorded at the Wren Lake Overlook on October 17th, 2015, by Nina Patterson, in view of her friends: Lakewood’s in-crowd.3 The in-crowd had been hanging out on the Overlook to celebrate Will Belmont and Jake Fitzgerald clinching the Lakewood Lancer basketball playoffs.
Emma Duval, who had been Audrey’s closest friend as a girl before their falling out the previous year, recognized Audrey and drew everyone’s attention to her before she realized just what was happening. The vindictive Nina saw an opportunity to make a mess and whipped out her phone, filming the scene over Emma’s objections. Emma plead with Nina to delete the video and Nina claimed she would “get it off [her] phone”, honoring these exact words by uploading it to YouTube the following day, where it quickly went locally viral.4
After a heated confrontation with Emma over the video, Audrey retreated to the jetty for some quiet, but was followed by her friend, Amanda Steele, with whom she had a heart to heart, venting her anger over what Nina was getting with and her fear that she didn’t know how her father would handle the truth about her sexuality.5
Trivia
Despite its prominence in the first season of Scream: The TV Series, Wren Lake never appeared in the original 2015 Season 1 AU that inspired the SRU. Likewise, the lake doesn’t appear in either of the 2016 games. The SRU’s first game, Scream: The Final Retreat, takes place at a separate location, so the lake doesn’t factor much in that game either. It’s the Big Trouble in Little Lakewood spin-off that developed Wren Lake’s role in the SRU’s mythology.
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