The first time the fog rolled over Blackwater Lake,
it came in thick, suffocating, almost alive. That night, three teenagers
vanished. By morning, only two returned.
The police filed the case under “unfortunate
drowning.” Elias Thorn, eighteen, was gone. Deep water. Sudden undercurrents.
Tragic—but statistically plausible.
Yet the two
survivors—Mara Caldwell and her younger brother Owen—disagreed entirely on what
had happened. Mara insisted Elias had slipped. Owen swore the lake reached up
and took him.
I didn’t
believe either version.
Fifteen years
later, I returned to Blackwater. I wasn’t chasing nostalgia. My editor had
pitched it as a “human-interest feature.” A town haunted, a lake legendary. But
the instant I stepped off the bus, I felt the tension: cold, metallic air, fog
pressing against the streets like a living thing. Blackwater wasn’t waiting for
visitors. It was waiting for witnesses.
The town’s
architecture seemed to bend inward, leaning like it was listening. The narrow
roads were hemmed by tightly packed trees. And at the center of it all,
Blackwater Lake rested like a dark, unblinking eye, reflecting nothing but gray
sky.
I rented a
room above the old general store, facing the pier where Elias disappeared. The
pier had been rebuilt twice since, but the wood groaned with the same uneasy
rhythm when the wind stirred.
On my first
evening, I met Mara Caldwell. She ran Caldwell & Son, the bookstore, though
there had been no son for years. She recognized my name immediately.
“You’re the
journalist,” she said flatly. “The one digging up bones.”
“I prefer
‘seeking clarity,’” I replied.
Her lips
twitched—almost a smirk, but not quite. “There’s no clarity here. Just mud.”
Mara had aged,
yes, but her eyes were unchanged: sharp, guarded, weighing every word before
release.
“I want to
understand what happened,” I said.
She studied
me. “People who say that rarely do.”
And then she
turned away.
It was Owen
who found me first. The next morning, notebook in hand, fog crawling low across
the lake. He stood at the edge of the dock, silent, tense.
“You shouldn’t
be here alone,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it
listens.”
Something in
his voice stopped me from laughing. Owen’s movements were jagged, his gaze
darting to the water as though expecting it to respond.
“You were
there that night,” I said softly.
He nodded.
“What
happened?”
He stepped
closer to the edge. “Elias said he heard someone calling him… from the middle
of the lake. We told him it was the wind.”
“And?”
“And it said
his name.”
The fog curled
and twisted like smoke.
“What did it
sound like?”
“Like me,” he
whispered.
A chill
crawled up my spine. He left abruptly, muttering, “Not enough time.”
That night, I
poured over old newspaper clippings. Most accounts blamed teens sneaking out,
alcohol, or reckless swimming. One detail struck me: Elias had insisted on
returning to the lake after his friends tried to leave. He claimed he’d dropped
something. It was never recovered.
The following
day, I visited Sheriff Dalton, nearing retirement, the officer who’d overseen
the original case.
“We searched
every inch,” he said. “Divers, sonar. Nothing unusual.”
“Except a
body,” I countered.
He didn’t
smile. “Except that.”
“Did Elias
have enemies?”
“Small town,”
Dalton said, shrugging. “Everyone’s everyone’s enemy eventually.”
“Not helpful.”
“It’s the only
answer you’ll get.”
As I left, he added
quietly, “Ask Mara about the argument.”
I froze.
“Argument?”
He was already
back at paperwork, dismissing me with a glance.
That evening,
I confronted Mara in the bookstore.
“You and Elias
fought that night,” I said.
Her body
stiffened. “Who told you?”
“It doesn’t
matter.”
Her jaw
tightened. “We were seventeen. We fought about everything. That night… it was
different.”
“He wanted to
leave,” she said. “Said Blackwater was rotting us from the inside. I told him
he was dramatic.”
“And?”
“He said he’d
prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That
something in this town isn’t right.”
She hesitated,
and for a brief moment, vulnerability flickered across her eyes.
“He’d been
recording. Strange noises, patterns in the fog… He thought the lake… shifted.”
“Shifted how?”
“Like it
wasn’t just water.”
That night,
sleep abandoned me. At 2:17 a.m., three slow raps knocked at my window. I
froze. Two stories above the street. Another rap. Then a whisper: my name.
I pulled back
the curtain. The street was empty. Yet the fog glowed under the streetlights.
For a fleeting second, I saw a figure at the pier. Waiting.
At dawn, I
confronted Owen.
“Outside my
window?”
“No,” he said.
“Did anyone
know I was here?”
“Everyone
knows.”
“Did you—”
“I heard it
too,” he interrupted.
“Heard what?”
“Your name.”
My pulse
spiked. He handed me something small and metallic—a voice recorder.
“It washed up
last week,” he said. “I didn’t want Mara to see.”
I pressed play
that night. Static. Wind. Laughter. Three voices. Then Elias:
“If anyone
finds this—”
Splash.
Muffled shouting. And then a fourth voice: calm, close, familiar… mine.
I drove to the
lake before dawn. The fog swallowed the trees, the water unnaturally still.
“You don’t
belong here,” Mara called.
“It’s not just
Elias,” she said, pale. “There were others. Before him. Every fifteen years.”
A pattern.
Every fifteen years, the lake claimed, reshaped, and returned someone. Elias
hadn’t drowned—he’d replaced someone. Someone like… me?
A ripple
spread across the surface. A hand broke through the water. Pale, familiar.
Seventeen. Unchanged. Elias Thorn.
He smiled
slowly. “You came back.”
I stammered.
“I was never here.”
“Not yet,” he
replied. The fog pressed closer, bending the air, wrapping around my mind,
memories flashing I didn’t recognize: standing on the pier, laughing, arguing,
dropping something into the lake.
“You always
forget,” he said.
“Forget what?”
“That you
started this.”
Water surged
around my ankles. Mara screamed. Owen’s voice echoed faintly.
I pressed the
recorder again. Static. Wind. My voice:
“If anyone
finds this—”
The lake
roared. Elias’s fear mirrored mine.
The dock
splintered. Cold water swallowed me. Silence.
Sunlight.
Clear skies. Mara above me, crying.
“Owen?”
“Who?”
“There were
three of you,” she whispered.
Across the
lake, a teenage boy stood on the dock, identical to me. Seventeen. He raised a
hand. Smiled. Behind him, fog rolled in again.
The cycle had begun anew.
Post a Comment