Everyone in town agreed the lake was haunted, but only I knew what was actually buried beneath it.

I live in a small town nestled between green mountains and surrounded by seven lakes. Unexceptionally, the name of my town is Seven Lakes. We are a vacation destination during the summer. People come from all over to hike our mountains, camp in our forests and swim in our lakes.

Five summers ago, people started disappearing around Lake Number 7 - we are not an original bunch - and the local flock of mocking birds started echoing what sounded distinctly like women screaming.

I should say that it was women who started disappearing. Young, beautiful women, with their whole lives ahead of them. Snuffed out in an instant.

Well, perhaps a wee bit longer than an instant.

They never had a chance to scream. I mean, I'm no amateur - I've had quite a few years of practice. I don't give them an opportunity to do anything but die. No, those last moments are for me alone. The sudden fear when they know they have been betrayed as they realize I am their worst nightmare come to life. The terror-stricken eyes as they discover they cannot yell, or move, or fight. The silent screams as the blood seeps from the thin slice around their necks.

It is a rather slow process, actually. The dying, that is.

Then I swim with them down to the cave I discovered while swimming in the lake as a child. A perfect graveyard for my many treasures.

The townspeople keep away. The disappearances along with the inexplicable screams of the birds has convinced the town the lake is haunted with evil spirits whisking away the unsuspecting living. Many vacationers, however, think we're a superstitious lot or just like the idea of scaring themselves in their own real life horror film. They think they'll just walk away as they do at the end of their favorite flick.

I know better.

Everyone in town agreed the lake was haunted, but only I knew what was actually buried beneath it.

They tell stories, as small towns do, about fog that rolls in too fast, fishermen who vanish without a trace, and strange lights that ripple beneath the surface as day settles into dusk. Some say it's the dead, restless and waterlogged, trying to find their way back. Others whisper about an ancient curse, woven through the forest and steeped into the water.

But I know better.

The rumors began in the summer of 2006. People started disappearing. Hikers, campers, boaters. All were last seen near the lake. The park service blamed the usual. Steep cliffs, frigid waters, wild animals. The other rangers believed the explanations we gave to the families, or at least they wanted to believe them.

But they didn’t know what I buried fifty feet down beneath the layers of glacial silt in that dark lake.

I’ve worked this park longer than any of them. No one asks where I'm from, why I have no family or why I prefer solitude. They also don’t question why I haven’t aged a day since I first took the job. I think it’s easier for them not to ask.

They just think of me as the quiet one. Watchful. And they’re right. I watch everything. Families laughing while enjoying their picnics, teenagers giggling over cheap beer they not so subtly try to hide, retired couples soaking in the calm of nature. I’ve grown to love those sights.

I’ve grown to love you.

When I first arrived, I didn’t know what love was. I was a scout, the first of many. My vessel tore open the night sky and crashed into the lake like a comet. I was meant to be the beginning of something sinister.

But I got stranded. The ship sank. The signal failed. And in the stillness that followed, I watched your kind. I lived among you. I learned.

I believed the disappearances were necessary at first. I was collecting data, gathering biological samples, doing the job I was sent here to do. But they stopped in the winter of 2013 as suddenly as they had started.

I stopped.

Yet still the lake pulses. People see the lights beneath the water and call them cursed or sacred, depending on who you ask. They say the souls of the lost linger below, their glow a plea to return home. But the light is not from beyond the grave. It’s the fractured core of my ship still emitting a faint glow, barely alive. A heartbeat where there shouldn’t be one. I thought it had gone silent. I hoped it had. But last week, I felt a shift. A low hum beneath the earth. A signal received.

They are coming.

This time it will not be a lone scout. It will not be quiet. It will be swift. Absolute. You believe your lake is haunted. And it is, but not by ghosts. It’s haunted by me, and by what I've brought.

I came here to end you. Now I’m the only one trying to save you.

Everyone in town agreed the lake was haunted, but only I knew what was actually buried beneath it.

The key word being 'was'.

I will never forget the cold water filling my lungs, burning me from inside and out. I will never forget the rage, the dread, the regret that filled my entire being as I was descending into the abyss.

But in that abyss, I felt something else. Something far more dreadful. Something ancient. Primal.

And it spoke to me.

It gave me a choice. I could rest in an everlasting bliss of the lake where nothing would hurt me ever again, or I could live again. Get my revenge. Be free.

I chose vengeance.

The next thing I remember is waking up at the lakeshore. Drenched and cold, but I was alive. I looked at the lake — it was still, serene... and empty. I looked at my reflection in the water and saw a stranger looking back at me. She smiled.

"Let's go get your revenge," she said.

everyone agreed

the lake was haunted

haunted not really

the right word

unearthly visited possessed

uncomprehendable

felt but unseen

not by everyone

just all those townspeople

looking the other way

when passing

never stopping

to gaze into its deep

afraid of what they'd see

in their own reflection

I knew

diving in deep

to visit and add to

the secrets of those souls

those unsuspecting townspeople

noted observed recorded collected

simple plain uncomplicated poetry

ineradicable ineffaceable indestructible

letters on lambskin snuggled in silver tight

I buried beneath

"Everyone in town agreed the lake was haunted, but only I knew what was actually buried beneath it." I was also the only one who didn't tell the rest of the town that only ghosts can see the lake in the first place. If they knew what was buried beneath it the light would suck you up into some great beyond. Heaven maybe? Shh...

It will be our little secret.

Everyone in town agreed the lake was haunted, but only I knew what was actually buried beneath it. A million dreams, a ton of souls, a couple of hopeless drivers, and several unlucky fishermen. A secret held within every household in town but the quiet majority rules. No secrets there are good secrets. The word haunted says that there are stories untold and souls not cold enough to keep quiet.

Under the water the house where my father taught us and loved us and killed us and was beyond us now.

They had covered the whole town and that house, where it all happened, was finally sunk beneath the waves.

As it should be, for bad things are best left be.

As some memories like houses are best forgotten.