Deep Water:

For a few moments after waking, I kept my eyes closed. I tried to continue my drunken doze in the comfort of the warmth and hum. Then I remembered where I was, and my head shot up.

The windows were fogged up, and the starkly lit bus was now empty except for me. I rubbed the pane with my sleeve and saw nothing but blackness outside. Cupping my hands to block out any reflection of light, I pressed my face against the glass and peered out again. My eyes adjusted a little, and I saw that we were driving through a landscape of huge hills. After a few seconds they began to seem to me more like small mountains, steep and peaked with jagged rock formations. There were no lights in the hills.

I’d definitely missed my stop. The whole route between Darren’s, and my place in the village was dotted with pubs, farms, shops, and cottages, and certainly didn’t look anything like this. I pulled my face away and jammed the STOP button in a slight panic. The bus jerked to a halt almost immediately. Pulling my jacket tight, I stepped out of the vehicle with a mumbled “cheers,” over my shoulder.

My skin tightened in the cold the second I stepped into the night, and, as the last of my sleepy comfort left me, I suddenly realised that jumping off the bus as soon as I had might not have been the best idea. Before I could consider this any further, I heard the doors swing shut, and the bus began to rumble away down the road. The light of the rear window became smaller and smaller, before abruptly collapsing sideways and vanishing completely, as the bus turned a corner and was gone. It was absolutely quiet. I shivered.

I took my phone out, and realised it had no signal. Of course.

I put my phone away, and tried to blink the afterimage of the bright screen from my eyes. After standing in darkness for a few moments, a cloud bank must have moved, and I looked up to see the pale glow of the moon illuminating my surroundings. I had been left at an old, wooden bus shelter. A few feet behind it was a sheer face of grey, rocky earth, stretching almost thirty metres high, and hugging my side of the undulating road for as far as I could see in either direction. I turned.

On the other side of the road, I saw another bus stop, behind which was a gentle slope, leading to a vast, calm lake, in whose softly rippling surface a reflection of the moon was fluttering. I saw no edge to the lake, either to the right or left, and it stretched out ahead of me, flat and unbroken by bird, island or buoy. Its opposite shore must have been miles away. The only thing which told me that it had an opposite shore at all was the hulking shape of more mountain ridges far in the distance, which blotted out the horizon, and squatted, lizardlike, beneath the stars.

I hurried across the road to see if the bus shelter had route information, or a schedule of any kind to let me know how long I might have to wait, but there was nothing. I had sobered up and my heart was beginning to pound a little. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep, or how far the bus had taken me from home.

To calm myself and pass the time, I sat down, pulled out my half-broken earbuds, and began to listen to some old songs which I had downloaded onto my phone. It was an odd mix of music, some things I still liked, but mostly songs I hadn’t listened to for years, or songs my parents enjoyed when we’d gone driving. I skipped those the moment they came on. The audio kept rasping every time the headphone wires shifted, and would occasionally cut out altogether.

I didn’t like sitting with my back to the lake.

I was listening to something poppy, a pre-drinks song about someone getting over their ex and being ready to go out and have fun, when I thought I heard water splashing. I strained my ears to listen. I wondered if it was just a part of the song, that the headphones were mangling some part of the backing, but it sounded too out of sync with the song for that. It lasted almost ten seconds, and as the song began to fade out, I could still hear it. It was coming from somewhere behind me, out on the lake. I paused the music and waited. After another twenty seconds, the splashing stopped. After another few seconds of silence, I relaxed, and I put my headphones in to begin listening again.

As the next song reached the first chorus, the sound of water splashing began to mingle with the music again. I paused the music instantly, wrapped my headphones around my phone and put them in my pocket. The splashing wasn’t close, from the sound of it. I slowly turned my head to look out onto the water. The lake seemed unchanged at first, although I noticed more ripples, with white shards of moonlight playing upon them. After looking for another moment, I saw a black shape, floating out on the lake. The moon was hanging high, directly over the centre of the lake, and the shape was gently bobbing beneath it, caught in the moonglade. It was too large to be a bird.

I stared for almost a minute, trying to make it out, when suddenly it began to thrash and churn the water around it – silhouetted on the lake I saw something whip out from the shape, erupting from the lake, reaching up, into the sky before plunging down beneath the surface again. Arms. It was a person, and they were drowning.

I was paralysed by this for a moment, and two things occurred to me. First, if this was the same splashing I’d heard a few moments before, and they’d been in the water this whole time, it wouldn’t be long before their exhaustion and the cold stopped them from moving at all. Second, no one else was there. The road was long and empty, and the lake was still and quiet, apart from the splashing. No shouts. If I did nothing, I’d watch this person die.

The paralysis broke, and I began tearing off my clothes, frantic, hoping that I wasn’t moving too late. Naked except for my underwear, I half-walked, half-ran down the muddy gravel slope into the lake, before wading in. I cried out at the cold of the dark water, and the sharp pebbles and rocks which poked and sliced at my soft feet. The water was extremely shallow, and I went almost ten metres before it even came up to my knees. It was pitch black and opaque, swallowing my feet and legs completely.

I continued to wade forwards, when suddenly, my foot found nothing, and I toppled forwards. My other foot slipped, and I tumbled fully into the black water, my face smashing into the surface, shocking me. When I surfaced a few seconds later, the inside of my nose was burning, my hair was in my eyes, and I was floating completely free. Not even a hint of the lakebed brushed my toes. I reoriented myself towards the person – they were still more than thirty metres off, and they were splashing far less strongly now. I struck out and swam as hard as I could towards them. In the darkness, the spray, and the frothing water, I couldn’t make out any details about the weakly thrashing figure, except that they had thick arms, and dark hair which flew and whipped as they struggled. Just as I was only a few metres away, they stopped moving altogether, and sank beneath the surface. Shit.

With one more burst of speed, I plunged forward and down, blindly grasping with both hands, and something brushed the fingers of my right hand. I snatched at it and grasped nothing but water. I tried again with my left hand, and I caught a fistful of what felt like waterlogged jacket. I kicked as hard as I could, my muscles beginning to burn, and broke the surface, hauling the jacket with me. From the weight and the way the sodden fabric stretched, I could tell the person was still inside it, although they were much lighter than I’d expected for their size. I began desperately swimming towards the shore. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the back of their head. It was staying just above the water, the hair fluttering oddly, their skull jerking from side to side as I paddled frantically.

I was almost dead with exhaustion as I reached the sudden shallows where I had tripped only a minute earlier. With a final heave, I grabbed the ground and dragged myself and the drowning person the last few feet, cutting my hand as I did, until we both rested in the shallow water. I panted for a while, keeping my head above the water with my trembling forearms and knees, almost vomiting from the effort I had just made. I turned my head to look at the person I had rescued. Then I did vomit.

Huge eyes stared into mine, pale and blank, bulging and pouring from their sockets. The pupils were grey and faded. Behind lips which had shrunk or burst in the water were revealed two rows of stained teeth, in soft, grey gums. Dark, mottled green skin was tightly stretched over the gas-swollen flesh - gases which had made them look so large, and yet feel so strangely light. The hair was tangled with mud, rotted leaves, and limp plant stems, which floated and swayed softly on the surface of the water.

I threw myself away from the corpse and fell on my side, still half-lying in the water. There was no sound, except my heavy breathing, and the water lapping against me. The body glistened wetly in the moonlight. I noticed my teeth were chattering.

And then there was a gentle feeling of suction around my body, and a quiet clattering. I looked down to see the water around my hands begin to flow, slowly at first, away from the shore and towards the centre of the lake. The clattering rose into a roar as the suction became stronger, and stronger, and began to pull more and more pebbles and mud along with it. I felt myself losing my grip on the lake floor, and suddenly I was being carried backwards. As I tried frantically to scramble against the current towards the shore, my freezing arms and legs were pelted with sharp stones.

The corpse was now in front of me, twisting and rolling in the current, and as it was sucked past me, back out into the lake, one of its arms shot out and grasped mine. My arms jerked and I tried to free myself from the huge, pudgy hand that clasped my wrist. I fell onto my shoulder as my hand was tugged out from under me. The corpse’s other hand swung towards me, and I felt a pressure tighten on my forearm, as if it was being enveloped in cold dough. Just before I lost my grip on the lakebed entirely, and my head plunged underwater, I saw it staring at me with pale, dull eyes.

Blood seeped into the cold water from dozens of small cuts on my hands and knees as I was dragged out to the lip of the shallows. I reached ahead blindly and tried to pry the fingers from my arm, but my muscles were still shaking and weak from my earlier swim, and the corpse clung to me as if I were a part of it. As it cleared the lip of the lake there was a sudden tug as the current pulled it over and downwards, and I followed.

My chest was beginning to spasm.

As I no longer resisted the current, the water stopped battering me, and I was simply swept, powerless, down, down, down, by the overwhelming pull of the lake. Within seconds the corpse ahead of me had vanished into the darkness. The last I saw of it was two white spots, still staring up at me. I was about to lose consciousness. My lungs were bursting. My arms thrashed in the blackness. I felt my fingers brush against something soft, and I grabbed it, pulling it to me, or me to it. I felt a cold, slimy body collide with mine. Swollen arms encircled me, stroked me, held me still. I felt my mouth open, desperately trying to take a breath. I felt more soft, cold, bloated things brush against my legs, my chest, my face. The water pressed on me from every direction. It pushed into my nose, my mouth. It was thick and brackish. It tasted like blood. My lungs filled and for a single moment, I felt the presence of something else besides the corpses, something that surrounded and embraced them and flowed through them and was now flowing into me and was -

And I -

I feel nothing.

The water is still and we float still within it. Our feet are tethered by the mud of the lakebed. No currents sway our bodies. Hair floats in my eyes. Nothing moves. There are no fish this deep. There is no light. There is no day and night. I do not know how much time has passed. I feel my body softening, rotting, bloating, but I know it will never disintegrate. The water will keep us all. The water will never give us back.

Please God help me.