Whispers Beneath the Lake's Black Depths
On nights when the lake wears a glassy, silent surface, the town’s lamps pull back and let the horizon bleed into ink. I learned the lake’s memory not from stories but from silence: the old dock sighs in the cold, and a name once spoken there returns as a cold echo you cannot trust. The water holds more than fish and fog; it keeps secrets like teeth keep a memory of every bite.
When I was a child, the elders warned about going past the rope that marks the deepest part. They spoke of voices that learned to imitate the living, of shadows that moved with the current even when the wind did not. Years later, standing at the pier with a breath that fogged in front of my face, I understood: darkness beneath the lake is not a lack of light but a language you must learn to ignore or fear.
The Descent
One night, drawn by a whisper that sounded like someone’s name called too softly to be believed, I let the boat drift beyond the marked line. The surface fell away, and with it fell my courage, replaced by a strange gravity that pressed at my bones. The water tasted of iron and rain, and the world above reduced to a pinprick of light that vanished as soon as I thought to reach for it. The deeper I went, the more the lake spoke in sentences made of silt and breath.
Something stirred beneath the mud—an intelligence that counted the beats of my heart and named each tremor in my limbs. The dark did not swallow me; it invited me to listen until I could not tell where I ended and the abyss began.
Signs that the Dark Is Waking
- A ripple that travels against every breath you draw.
- Patterns of debris circling in the center of your vision, never the edge.
- A handprint cooling on your sleeve, belonging to no one you know.
- Whispers that mimic your thoughts, offering comfort only to twist them into fear.
Each sign is a doorway, a probability you can walk through or turn away from. I chose to listen, to mark what the lake wanted me to hear.
We learned your fear before you learned your way home. We waited in the cold for a heartbeat to forget you existed above us.
When dawn finally thinned the fog, I surfaced with a new answer and a new loneliness: the lake does not forget, it remembers you in a language that sounds like your own voice but ends in a different truth. I carry that truth now, a weight pressed against my chest, a whisper that will not quiet: stay, listen, and never pretend that the surface is ever safe.