The Silence in the Pool

It was Saturday,

and the pool had gone silent.

No music.

No laughter.

No splashing water against tile.

Only the low hum of vents

breathing through the building

like sleeping lungs.

Cheryl had gone home hours ago,

dragging her mop bucket behind her

like she couldn’t leave fast enough.

Now it was only me

beneath the front desk,

phone flashlight glowing pale against wires

knotted like veins in the dark.

Grey wire.

Unplugged.

Blue wire.

Leading nowhere.

Then—

goosebumps.

Sudden. Sharp. Violent.

As though unseen fingers

had traced the back of my neck.

I froze.

Someone was here.

My voice fell flat into the emptiness,

swallowed whole

by tile and water and fluorescent light.

Nothing answered.

Just imagination,

I told myself.

Just midnight nerves.

But then a cold breeze drifted past me,

slow and deliberate,

like a door opening quietly

for someone unseen.

I looked up.

The entrance remained shut.

No movement.

No footsteps.

Still—

the air had changed.

I crawled back beneath the desk,

heart beating louder now,

faster now,

while the blue wire slipped through my fingers

like something alive.

It led nowhere.

Nowhere.

I whispered,

though my voice sounded wrong

inside the building.

Small.

Afraid.

Then the hairs on my arms rose again,

one by one,

like my body knew something

my mind refused to believe.

There’s nobody here.

There’s nobody here.

Clunk.

I stopped breathing.

The sound echoed softly

down the dark hallway

toward the changerooms.

Real.

That was real.

Slowly,

I stepped from behind the desk

and stared into the corridor

where shadows pooled thickest.

And there—

for only a second—

a reflection moved

across the glass doors to the pool.

Tall.

Still.

Watching.

I blinked.

Gone.

“Hello?”

Even the darkness seemed to listen.

Then again—

Closer now.

My stomach turned enough to hurt.

Okay.

Someone was here.

Someone had been standing beside me

this entire time.

“Can you stop?”

I asked the dark.

No answer came.

Only silence.

And the pool beyond the doors,

glowing blue beneath the night

like something waiting underwater.

I stepped onto the deck.

The air felt colder immediately.

The lights beneath the surface

rippled across the ceiling

like ghost hands reaching upward.

Every shadow moved strangely.

Every reflection seemed alive.

And then that feeling returned—

not fear,

something deeper.

The certainty

that I was no longer alone.

I turned slowly toward the deep end.

The water trembled gently.

And at the bottom of the pool,

beneath the wavering blue light,

someone stood perfectly still.

Watching me

from the deep.