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.

The two friends, Nate and Jack lounged in the truckbed of the orange 2002 Ford pickup. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, painting the sky similar colors to the the truck. Jack always hated the paint job of his best friend's truck but was too nice to say so.

They weren't just friends they were brothers not by blood but by bond. They couldn't be more different. Nate was tall athletic, strong dark haired and a 24 year old atheist. Jack was short pudgy, dirty blond, and an 18 year old Christian who was struggling with his Faith among the other issues a person faces at that crux between adulthood and teenager.

No of that mattered right now. It never had-- not for these two. They'd driven out to this venue for a specific purpose. It was the Fourth of July; they weren't just celebrating the Nation's independence but Jack's as well.

He'd taken the bold step to leave his toxic home environment and strike out on his own. "Why wait for a college to answer you? Launch now." That's what Nate had told him.

The duo didn't know this would be the last time they would spend together for years to come. They stayed in touch long distance but life's seas sent them drifting different directions. That didn't matter though not now as the black sky burst into multi colored explosions of patriotic jubilee because it was Independence Day!

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.

Gaslight flickered along the tiled walls and danced across the faces of the professors in the gallery above, perched like birds of prey. A portly man stood in the first row and stared gravely down at Thomas. Thomas kept his eyes fixed on the man’s waistcoat button, which was threatening to burst at any moment. The man cleared his throat. “Mr. Greaves, it is a pleasure to see you come this far in your medical education. This nation finds itself in no small want of capable young physicians. I took up the profession myself in the years following the Great Rebellion, as my father did before me. And God knows we needed doctors in those days.”

Thomas stood stiffly straight, like he was about to march into war. His hands trembled under the cover of the examination table in front of him. As the professor continued droning on, Thomas’ eyes drifted to the row of windows ahead. The red-bricked campus stretched as far as the eye could see outside, with crimson leaves dotting the lawn between buildings. The leaves were the same color as the smeared blood on the ground from the previous exam. He knew it was there, but he dared not look now. He would look anywhere but downward until absolutely necessary. He took a deep breath and choked on the heavy taste of lye.

Then Thomas heard the dreaded word: “Begin.”

He lowered his gaze to the table in front of him. The exam subject before him was a young man, likely no older than twenty. Thomas could smell stale sweat and iron coming off the body. His long, black hair spilled across the table in a dark crown, trailing nearly to his waist. A breechcloth was tied loosely around his hips. Thick calluses formed along the base of the fingers and across the pads, the kind that came from years of handling tools. These were not the hands of a soldier, but of someone who built. He imagined the man building homes and tools. But faint marks traced the skin around the ankles in rough, symmetrical abrasions, as though rope had bitten into skin for too long. The flesh there was rawer than it should have been. Thomas tried not to think about what had caused the wounds.

A bruise stretched above the right cheekbone, its deep purple mingling with the specks of dirt clinging to the skin. Thomas reached out and touched the copper-colored cheek. The softness of the flesh startled him. He had heard that the school was getting a fresh supply from western territories, but he could’ve sworn the skin felt warm to the touch.

Thomas moved slowly, inspecting every inch of the specimen. Near the scalp, beneath the tangled hairline, he uncovered a wound—thin, jagged, and barely closed. The edges of the cut were uneven, the surrounding skin inflamed. It had not been cleaned, much less stitched. Whoever this man was, no one had tried to treat him. Thomas walked over to the other side of the table and paused. Near the lower ribs on the left side, there was a small, clean wound, no wider than a coin. The skin around it was intact with minimal bleeding. He searched the back but found no exit, only the neat puncture.

The air felt colder now than when he began. Thomas’ hand hovered in midair, unsure whether to reach again or retreat. The room was quiet except for the scribble of pencils and the ticking of the clock behind the gallery. He told himself to keep going. The body would not speak, and yet something about it refused to be silent. Above, a professor chuckled and whispered to his colleague that he could still smell the smoke from the raid.

Thomas kept his eyes on the body, but his mind drifted. He recalled a seminar from the previous winter, when Professor Bell had brought out a skull wrapped in yellowed linen. Along the temple, a faint cross had been carved into the bone. “Wampanoag male, twenty-six, executed,” the label had read. The students passed it from hand to hand like a textbook, noting the clean fracture along the jaw. No one had asked how it had come into the school’s possession. It had simply arrived, like everything else.

Now, with pencil in hand, Thomas began to write in his notepad. He avoided any mention of the temperature of the skin, the bruises, or the raw marks around the ankles. The facts he recorded were clean and defendable, just enough to fulfill the assignment and get one step closer to a position at one of the major hospitals. This was a male, likely an older adolescent. Evidence of recent trauma. Cause of death: gunshot wound to lower thoracic cavity. He kept his handwriting steady, though nothing about the body in front of him felt still.

He set the pencil down on the exam table and picked up the scalpel. With a nod, a young nurse came rushing to his side and picked up the pencil and notepad. He made an incision down the length of the torso and recited his findings to the nurse. The battery the body had been subjected to on the outside was reflected on the inner organs as well. When his inspection was complete, he cleaned the death off his hands in the basin of water nearby.

The professors conferred after the presentation was given. An old, slender professor who looked as if he was made of paper detached from the huddle and leaned over the railing. “Mr. Greaves, that was a commendable display of clinical judgment,” his voice boomed. “The university is pleased to endorse your work and shall recommend your placement with the highest distinction.”

Thomas pulled the corners of his mouth into a grin, but he couldn’t help but feel like he had been a part of something awful. As the nurse wheeled the exam table away, Thomas thought he saw the man’s jaw hang slightly open, as if it was waiting to speak. After the exam, Thomas remained in the hall long after the other students had gone. He stripped off his apron with care and folded it neatly, as if doing so might steady his thoughts. The nurse had already vanished down one of the corridors, the wheels of the exam table echoing faintly behind her. The scent of iron still clung to his hands, even after the second rinse.

He found his way to the records room in the basement, a place he had only visited once before during his first year. The walls were lined with shelves of neatly labeled files, grouped by illness, region, and date of death. He searched along the rows for anything that might connect to the man on his table, any document or a name. But there were no files for the new cadavers. No biographical sketches. No acquisition forms. He opened a drawer near the back of the room and found a single, leather-bound ledger. Inside, the pages held nothing but numbers. Three columns. Date. Quantity received. Quantity processed.

That morning’s entry read: October 21 – Received: 3 – Processed: 1

No origins. No names. No notes of consent or circumstance. Just numbers, counted and crossed through like inventory. Thomas closed the book and rested his hand on its rough cover. For a moment, he did not move. He couldn’t shake the image of the number one that corresponded to the blood on his hands. He straightened, left the ledger as he found it, and walked out into the late afternoon light.

Outside, the wind pulled dry leaves across the path. Thomas stepped onto the path and glanced toward the west gate. Three covered wagons were rumbling slowly away from the campus, their wheels groaning against the cobblestones. They had no markings. The drivers did not look back. One of the wagon flaps had come loose and was fluttering in the breeze. As it lifted, Thomas caught the brief sight of a bare leg bent at an unnatural angle inside.

He stood there until the wagons vanished into the tree line. Then he turned and walked back across the grass, head down, hands in his coat pockets. The wind pulled at the rust-colored leaves around him, sending them tumbling in every direction. Behind him, the facade of the medical building loomed, still and indifferent, its windows reflecting nothing. He did not speak of what he saw. Not to the faculty. Not to his classmates. Not even to himself. But for the rest of his life, whenever a patient asked whether the body remembers pain after death, Thomas would pause just for a breath before giving his answer.

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.

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.

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." 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 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