The Lantern Below the Lake

 The lake wasn’t always here.

Once, before the dam, there was a village called Elmbrook—a scattering of stone cottages, a crumbling chapel, and a road winding through wildflowers. Now, everything slept beneath sixty meters of green-black water, its secrets held in the silt and silence.

No one visited the reservoir at night. Locals whispered of lights flickering on the lakebed and songs rising through the fog. Sometimes, an old fisherman would mutter about the faces he’d seen—pale and distorted, pressed to the glassy surface, mouths moving in slow lament.

But stories were only stories, and money is money.

So when the message came—“Relic rumored in old Elmbrook. Easy money. Split four ways.”—they didn’t think twice. Four city friends, weekend thrill-seekers, and amateur explorers:

• Rory, sharp-tongued, the one who always led the way and cracked the first joke,
• Isla, history nerd, with old maps and nervous laughter,
• Kiran, restless, who craved danger like oxygen,
• Maeve, the observer, quiet, whose nightmares never quite left her at dawn.

They arrived at sunset, packs slung heavy, the surface of the lake burnished copper. The air smelled of algae, and something sour, faint and metallic, like old coins or blood. Their inflatable raft nudged the stony shore, and the motor whined, shattering the hush.

None of them asked why the water looked darker here, or why the birds had vanished.

 

Isla was the first to spot the sign:
A crude wooden board nailed to an oak by the launch, letters gouged deep and uneven.
“STAY AWAY. THE LAKE IS HUNGRY.”

Rory grinned, flashing his torch on it.
“Small towns and their drama. Let’s go find some treasure.”

Maeve lingered behind, tracing the scarred wood with her fingers. She almost spoke, but Kiran was already dragging her toward the raft.

They shoved off, paddling into the center where the sonar app on Isla’s phone marked the ghostly grid of old Elmbrook: a scatter of stones and shadows, geometry made monstrous by water and time.

Fog crept low as night came on, eating the world in swaths of gray. Their little lamp cast uncertain circles, but beyond it—nothing but black water and a silence so complete it pressed against their eardrums.

 

They dropped anchor by coordinates Isla read aloud, her voice thin:
“Chapel foundations. Thirty meters down.”

Rory grinned, pulled on his wetsuit, and thumbed a GoPro to his head.
“Let’s make history.”
Kiran, already half over the side, snorted. “Let’s make cash.”

Maeve hesitated, peering into the water. It looked oily, impossibly still. When the wind shifted, she thought she heard—no, felt—a vibration in her teeth, like the hum of distant singing.

She shook it off, focusing on the checklist: O₂, lights, tethers. Isla triple-checked the ropes, her fingers trembling.

One by one, they slid into the cold.

 

The lake swallowed them, thick and clinging. Visibility shrank to a clouded tunnel lit by their torches, each breath a drumbeat in their ears.

Silt billowed, turning the world to soup.
Below them, the village revealed itself in fragments:
—A low stone wall furred with algae,
—An archway with ironwork twisted by pressure,
—Gravestones canted at odd angles, names eroded into nothing.

Maeve drifted, letting the others lead. Shapes moved in her periphery—schools of blind fish, perhaps, or eels. Or fingers. She refused to look closely.

Something metallic flashed at the edge of her torchbeam.
She kicked toward it—an old lantern, half-buried in mud, glass intact, its handle twisted like a noose.

“Over here!” she called, her voice mangled by the comms mic.

Isla swam closer, eyes wide. “That matches the drawing from the archive. The lantern of Father Rowan.”

Kiran and Rory gathered around, and for a moment, the four hovered in a ring above the object, breathless.

Rory reached for it, fingers brushing glass.

For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then the lantern flickered—an impossible, sickly green light pulsing inside. The water trembled with the rhythm.

Maeve’s heart stuttered.
The singing grew louder, a wet, wordless chorus that pressed against her skull.

 

Isla shrieked, bubbles exploding from her mask.
Rory recoiled, shaking his hand as if burned.
Kiran, usually fearless, kicked back, tangled in the tether.

The lantern’s glow brightened, throwing shadows that twisted and danced on the silt. For a second, Maeve thought she saw faces—scores of them—mouths gaping, eyes rolling, trapped inside the glass.

Then the light winked out. Silence.
Only the scraping of their own rapid breaths.

“Surface!” Rory barked, already heading up.

They kicked, panic pounding in their veins.

 

They broke the surface together, gasping.
Fog pressed close, thicker than before. Their raft bobbed only a few meters away, its shape warped by mist.

They scrambled aboard, shivering, water running in rivulets from their suits.

“What the hell was that?” Isla demanded, hugging her knees.

“No one said anything about ghosts,” Kiran snapped.

Rory checked his hand. Red lines marred his palm, as if something had grabbed him from inside the glass. He wrapped it in a towel, scowling.
“I say we leave it. There’s other treasure.”

But Maeve stared at the water where the lantern had glowed. The afterimage throbbed in her mind, and the song—oh god, the song—echoed under her skin.

She didn’t tell the others that she’d heard her own voice, singing in a language she didn’t know.

 

They drifted toward the shore, planning to regroup and check Isla’s footage.
But the world was smaller now. The fog thickened, so dense the shore vanished. Their little lamp only made a golden bubble, shrinking as the dark pressed in.

Maeve tried to call out.
The sound died, muffled by vapor.

 

Rory swore. “Compass is spinning. GPS won’t lock.”

Isla checked her phone. “It’s just static. Nothing—no bars, no location, nothing.”

They drifted in slow, sick circles.

The song began again—so faint Maeve thought she was dreaming.
But then Isla straightened, eyes wide, and whispered, “Do you hear that?”

Kiran nodded. “Someone’s singing.”

They fell silent, listening.

From somewhere below, under meters of black water, a woman’s voice rose—soft, wordless, impossible, but growing clearer with every heartbeat.

Rory barked, “Shut up, it’s just your nerves!”

But even he went quiet when the voice called each of their names in turn, echoing up through the raft.

“Maeve. Isla. Rory. Kiran.”

Their breaths turned to frost.

 

Suddenly, a green glow shimmered under the raft.

Kiran lunged for the oars. “We’re leaving, now!”

But as he reached, a pale hand broke the surface—fingers webbed, skin shining with scales and silt. Another hand followed, and another.

Maeve screamed, grabbing Isla’s arm.
The lantern’s green light surfaced with the hands, rising in the water like a will-o’-the-wisp.

Faces emerged—white, boneless, eyeless. Not quite human, not quite fish, their mouths moving in silent chorus.

The raft rocked violently.
Rory slashed at the hands with the anchor pole, but the water soaked up every blow.

A webbed hand caught his wrist, cold as winter. Rory shrieked—
And was gone, dragged under, the water closing like a mouth.

The green light vanished. The singing stopped.

Only their own gasps and sobs remained.

 

They huddled together, staring at the black water.

Three left.

Kiran, shaking, whispered, “What do we do?”

Maeve stared into the depths. The song still pulsed in her veins, cold and hungry.

Isla fumbled for her phone, voice breaking, “We… we stay together. Don’t let the lantern out of your sight.”

Far below, the light glimmered again.
Not closer, but not gone. Waiting.

The lake was hungry.

And the song had only begun.

They waited for dawn, but dawn never came.

Time dissolved in the endless fog—no sun, no moon, just the same cold gray pressing against the raft. The air tasted metallic, every breath thinner than the last.
Maeve kept count by her pulse, but soon even that rhythm slipped away. She stared at her hands, unsure how long it had been since Rory vanished beneath the water. Minutes? Hours? Longer?

Kiran rowed in circles, arms aching. “Land should be there,” he muttered, pointing into the white wall. “It was just there. We never went far.”

No one answered. The water beneath them was flat and dark, the only sign of movement a slow, swirling current beneath the raft. It was as if the lake had its own pulse now, slow and deliberate, and their own hearts beat out of time with it.

 

Maeve stared into the water, refusing to blink. Her mind spun with half-formed thoughts: the green lantern, the singing, Rory’s scream, the cold hands.
But there was something else—an ache at the edge of memory, as though the lake had reached inside and torn away something precious, something she could almost name.

Isla huddled beside her, shivering, lips blue. She clutched her phone with both hands, watching the screen flicker static and shadows. Every now and then, her eyes darted to the surface of the lake, searching for shapes in the mist.

“We should leave,” she whispered, voice trembling. “We should swim for it.”

Kiran shook his head. “Not without knowing which way is out. The fog’s not right. It’s… moving.”
He was right: the fog rolled in silent, pulsing bands, each wave a little thicker, a little closer, the lake narrowing around them until the raft felt less like a vessel and more like a cage.

 

They sat in silence, listening to the world shrink.
Somewhere below, the song returned—fainter, fainter, then suddenly sharp. It wasn’t a tune now, but a memory:

Maeve felt her mother’s arms around her, warm and safe, the scent of lavender and old books. She tried to cling to it—
But it slipped away, replaced by the taste of brine and a darkness so deep it pressed on her eyes.

Kiran pressed his palms to his head. “Did you hear that?”
Maeve nodded, her voice small. “It was my mother.”
Isla sobbed quietly. “It was my brother. He died last year. He called my name.”

 

The green light flared again beneath the surface. This time, it flickered in time with their breathing, as if the lake itself exhaled and inhaled through the lantern’s glow.

Kiran cursed, panic rising. He grabbed the anchor pole and thrust it toward the light, hoping to disrupt whatever was there. The pole struck something solid—and was yanked from his hands.

He screamed, falling back onto the raft.
The green light circled them once, twice, like a shark beneath wounded prey.

Isla clung to Maeve. “It wants us. It knows our names.”

Maeve felt the truth in that.
Not just their names. Their memories.
Pieces of them flickered and vanished, replaced by fragments of a life she’d never lived: staring through a porthole at black water, singing in a voice that wasn’t hers, drowning but not dying.

 

The raft shuddered, buffeted by waves from nowhere.
The fog thinned, just for a heartbeat, revealing shapes in the water—faces pale and boneless, drifting just below the surface, their mouths moving in silent prayer.

Kiran gaped. “Are those—are those people?”

Isla whimpered, “Don’t look. Don’t answer if they call.”

But already the faces were singing, the sound rising through the wood of the raft, through their bodies.
Maeve felt herself slipping, memory unwinding.
She saw herself as a child, running through fields in Elmbrook—only she’d never been to Elmbrook. The memory wasn’t hers, but it felt more real than anything else.

She blinked, and the faces were gone.
But the ache remained.

 

Kiran pulled out his phone, fumbling with wet fingers. “SOS. Come on. Please.”

The screen blazed white, then showed a video he didn’t remember filming:
He saw himself, Isla, Maeve, and Rory on the raft—but their faces were blank, smudged with static, mouths moving in time with the green glow beneath the water.

The video flickered and reset, over and over, each loop shorter, each face more distorted.
He hurled the phone into the lake.

The song grew louder.

 

Isla tried to focus on the facts—anything to ground herself. “There’s always a rational explanation,” she muttered. “Cold water, low oxygen, panic. Hallucinations. It’s all in our heads.”

But as she spoke, the raft jerked.
A hand—long, webbed, slick with slime—clambered up the side.
Maeve screamed, grabbing a paddle, and slammed it down on the hand. It melted away, sliding back into the water with a sound like tearing silk.

But now the raft was moving—not drifting, but pulled.
The lake drew them inexorably toward the center, to where the sonar app had marked the old chapel ruins.

The fog parted, just a little, and for a second, they saw the top of a stone archway, moss-clad, just visible beneath the surface.
The lantern’s green light hovered above it, pulsing in time with their heartbeats.

 

Maeve felt compelled, helpless, as if the water itself beckoned.
Isla grabbed her wrist, shaking her. “Don’t listen! Don’t look!”

But Maeve couldn’t look away.
The song rose, louder and louder, resolving now into words—her own voice, calling to her from beneath the water.

She leaned over the raft, eyes wide, breath fogging the air.
A face looked back at her: not her reflection, but another Maeve, skin pallid, hair drifting like weeds, lips parting in song.

Maeve gasped, reeling back.
Kiran pulled her away, panic wild in his eyes. “Don’t! Don’t let it see you!”

Isla rocked, whispering prayers, fingers white around her necklace.
But the song cut through every barrier, promising peace, promising reunion, promising—
Oblivion.

 

The raft scraped stone.
They had reached the submerged chapel, though the water was still deep.
The green light hovered above the archway, and from below, hands began to rise—dozens, then hundreds, webbed and boneless, beckoning.

Kiran grabbed the remaining paddle, striking at the hands, but every blow passed through water, accomplishing nothing.

Isla sobbed, “We’re trapped.”

The singing rose higher, impossibly beautiful, impossibly sad.

Maeve covered her ears, but the music was inside her now, in her bones.
She remembered things that never happened: weddings by the lake, funerals at the chapel, endless singing under a blood-red sky.

She realized with a start—
These weren’t her memories, but the lake’s.
The Drowner, whatever it was, was filling her with its own history, erasing her piece by piece.

 

Kiran shouted, “We have to leave! Now!”

But the raft wouldn’t move. The water held it fast, ropes of weed and invisible hands binding it in place.

Isla began to rock, eyes closed, reciting a list: “My name is Isla. My mother’s name is Karen. My brother’s name is Leo. I was born in—”
She faltered.
“I was born in—”
She couldn’t remember.

Maeve joined her, “I’m Maeve. My father is—my father—”
The name slipped away. All she could recall was a lullaby, a green lantern swinging in the darkness.

Kiran roared, “Fight it! Fight!”
But even his voice was being unspooled, his words slow, syllables slurring as if he was underwater.

 

Suddenly, the green light flared, and the water erupted.
A shape surged upward: The Drowner, immense and eyeless, skin like stone, limbs webbed and endless. Its lantern was its heart, pulsing with impossible light.

It sang with all the voices of the drowned—Maeve’s, Isla’s, Rory’s, a thousand more—calling them to let go, to slip beneath, to become part of the chorus.

Maeve felt her grip slipping, the edges of herself blurring.

Kiran seized her, shaking her, but his eyes were empty, reflecting the lantern’s green fire. He let go, stumbling to the raft’s edge.

“No—Kiran!” Isla cried, but it was too late.

Kiran fell forward, arms wide, as if into a lover’s embrace.
Hands caught him, dozens of them, pulling him gently down. His face vanished, and the water closed, silent as ever.

The song grew louder, richer.

 

Two left.

Maeve curled into herself, shaking, Isla’s arms tight around her.
The raft spun in slow circles, pinned over the ruins.

The Drowner watched with its sightless face, lantern burning, its song winding through every wound.

Maeve fought to hold on to herself, but every memory grew softer, fainter, replaced by the endless dark and the lullaby beneath the lake.

She remembered only one thing:
The lake was hungry.

And it would never be full.

Fog sealed the world. There was no sky, no horizon, just that endless, featureless white, and beneath it, the silent lake, black as a pupil. Maeve didn’t know if minutes had passed or years. Her hands trembled, her skin numb with cold and fear, and the boundaries of her self felt thinner with every breath.

She gripped Isla’s hand as if it were a lifeline, as if her friend’s touch could anchor her to her own name. Isla was rocking, murmuring again, “My name is Isla. My name is Isla. My brother is Leo. My—” But her voice faltered, her eyes fixed on the lantern’s glow beneath the surface.

Their raft was no longer drifting. It had become an island, an oubliette. The weed-rope tendrils, slick and cold, wrapped around the sides, binding it in place above the submerged chapel. Each time Maeve looked into the water, she saw shapes swimming: pale faces, empty eyes, webbed hands. Each time, she remembered less of herself and more of them—of the lake, of what it wanted.

She tried to picture her father, her childhood home, even the city lights—but it all slipped away like water through fingers. All she could recall with any sharpness was the sound of singing, the color of the lantern, and the feeling of drowning.

 

“Isla,” she whispered, “we have to do something. Anything.”

Isla shook her head. “It won’t let us go. The fog… it’s not natural. And every time I try to think—” She winced, pressing her fists to her temples. “It takes something. My brother’s name, my mother’s face, our first day at uni. Gone. Like I never lived it.”

Maeve looked at the surface. The green glow was closer now, circling the raft in slow, hungry orbits. The song pulsed through the water and into her bones, as if the lake itself sang with a thousand voices—the drowned and the forgotten, all joined into one.

She remembered the stories: the lake is hungry.
But this was no simple hunger. This was obliteration. It was not content to kill the body—it needed the mind, the heart, the very memory of having ever existed.

 

The raft lurched suddenly. Something pulled beneath, harder than before. Maeve screamed, clutching Isla as the boards groaned.

A webbed hand, impossibly long, broke the surface, followed by another, and another. The Drowner rose in silence, neither water nor creature but something in between: a body made of mist and bones and memory, eyeless face turned to them, lantern-throat burning with spectral fire.

It sang—not in words, but in dreams and lost hours and names half-remembered. The melody filled the raft, the fog, the marrow of Maeve’s bones.

She wanted to fight. To scream. But her mouth wouldn’t work. Her thoughts were too slow, as if her mind was underwater too.

She thought, This is how it happens. This is how we vanish.

 

Isla squeezed her hand, tears cutting tracks in the grime on her face.

“Don’t let go, Maeve,” she whispered. “Please.”

The Drowner’s hands reached for the raft, claws like twisted willow roots, and the lantern’s green fire cast their shadows—enormous, monstrous—over the girls.

Maeve pulled Isla close. “We hold on. Together.”

But the song was inside them, now. It sang of peace, of sleep, of release. It offered warmth and the comfort of forgetting.

Isla’s grip weakened. Her head drooped. “I’m so tired, Maeve…”

“No!” Maeve said fiercely, shaking her. “Stay with me! Isla, listen, remember—remember who you are!”

Isla tried. She closed her eyes and squeezed Maeve’s hand until their knuckles whitened. For a heartbeat, her breathing steadied. She spoke:

“My name is Isla. My brother is Leo. I’m from—”

Her eyes snapped open, pupils blown wide. She stared into the lantern’s heart, and the song took her. Her hand slipped from Maeve’s grasp.

“No—Isla!” Maeve reached, but Isla was already gone, tumbling over the raft’s side into the water below. Her face broke the surface only for a moment—blank, empty-eyed, lips parted in silent song—before the lake took her forever.

 

Alone. Maeve screamed, but the sound barely left her throat.

Fog wrapped her, thick as wool. Shadows shifted at the edge of vision—faces she knew, and many she didn’t. She heard their stories: a thousand lives, a thousand drownings, each ending in song.

The Drowner rose before her, immense and featureless. The lantern glowed brighter, flooding the fog with sickly green.

Maeve crawled backward across the raft, away from the reaching hands, away from the song that promised rest.

But her memories—her weapons—were dull and blunted. She remembered Rory’s laugh, Kiran’s wild grin, Isla’s voice. But now they felt like dreams from another life. Their faces slipped away, replaced by the pale masks floating beneath the surface.

The Drowner’s hands reached out, gentle as a mother’s, and the lantern’s heart pulsed, casting flickering images across the water. She saw herself—a hundred versions—smiling, crying, shouting, dying. Each image flickered, dissolved, replaced by the next.

She tried to shout, to resist, to think of home—anything but the song.
But the song was all there was.

 

She collapsed to her knees, weeping. “Please. Don’t. I want to remember.”

The Drowner’s face—blank, eternal—hovered above her. Its lantern-throat opened, and the song poured forth, pure and bright and final.

Maeve felt the edges of herself blur, her mind unspooling. Memories of school, of friends, of holidays and heartache and her mother’s voice—all unraveling into nothing. She could no longer tell where she ended and the lake began.

The hands of the Drowner closed around her, lifting her, cradling her with infinite care. The fog pressed in, green and warm and endless.

She heard the voices of the drowned, singing her name, welcoming her.

Her last thought, before everything was song and water and peace:

The lake was hungry. And now, at last, it was full.

 

But nothing stays full for long.

 

When the fog cleared, there was nothing but calm water and a broken raft.
A fisherman, years later, would find it tangled in reeds at the shore. The boards were warped and stained green; the ropes were slimy with age.

No sign of the four friends remained. Only a faint glow, flickering deep beneath the surface at night—a green lantern, swinging slowly in the dark.

And if you came too close, sometimes you could hear singing.

A song you almost recognized.
A name you’d almost forgotten.

And the hunger, still waiting, just below the lake.