Darkness Crouches Beneath the Lake
In Hollowmere, when the sun slides behind the pines, the lake's surface smooths to obsidian and the town goes quiet as if the water had pressed a hand over every mouth. Here, the water is not merely water. It is memory, it is hunger, it is a patient thing that breathes without lungs, waiting for the moment someone looks too long at what lies just under the glass.
Mira, who grew up catching tadpoles on the old jetty, returns after years away, drawn by a dare that smells of rain and salt. The descendants of the first settlers say the lake devours promises made on its shore; Mira suspects they mean promises whispered to a lover or a debt paid at dusk. At night, the water sighs and paws, and the reeds bow like churchgoers at a hymn no one sings.
She finds the grandmother's notebook tucked in the attic, its pages damp with years of rain and secrets. Scrawled margins sketch a map of currents and coves, and near the back, a single line: "If you listen long enough, the darkness beneath will answer with a name." The handwriting trembles, as if the ink itself feared what it was about to confess.
To Mira: The lake does not drown you; it invites you to drown your fear. Stand still, and listen for the breath that returns your own.
That breath comes, not with sound but with weight. The surface of the lake seems to tilt, a slow wink of blackness that rides along the horizon. Mira steps onto the old boathouse ladder and descends, each rung a chord in a hymn her grandmother never taught aloud. Underwater, the world becomes a cathedral of stillness, save for the soft crawling of unseen life and the lullaby of currents brushing past her ears.
- The sense of being watched by eyes that do not need to blink.
- A chill that travels from spine to fingertips, freezing time itself.
- Faint voices tugging at the corners of her memory, promising safe return if she simply listens.
- A tunnel of stone and darkness where the air grows heavier, like velvet pressed against throats.
At the bottom, a darkness crouches, not a monster but a patient thing that has waited for the village to forget how to listen. Mira does not run, not this time. She listens until the lake's shadow becomes a name she can bear, a new debt she is willing to acknowledge. And when she climbs back to the moonlit shore, the lake settles behind her, patient and hungry no longer—for now.