There is a man-made lake on campus. It’s a small thing. You can see clear across it even on the foggiest of days. On the warmer days, you can find a fountain fixed in the middle of it, the stock fish swimming up to it eagerly, only darting away when the geese take to the water to torment them. You can see all manner of activity on the tiny lake at the heart of the university—people skipping rocks across its shimmering surface, kids fishing with their parents, and the occasional disk-golf player throwing too wide, their disk careening into the lake, sinking in moments. Adding another to the countless others which took the same doomed flight.

Despite the flurry of activity, you would never see anyone swim in the lake. It was fetid, rumor had it. It was often at the center of drunken dares, but even the drunkards walking home across campus wouldn’t be foolish enough to enter its waters.

My own interest in the small otherwise-tranquil lake started that first day on campus. As my parents dropped me off holding armfuls of belongings, our RAs would give us the run down, running through the checklist of expectations and code of conducts. And then there was the banlist. “And lastly, no scuba gear,” the woman had finished.

I remember cocking my head, students giggling behind me. One of them, audibly, “why the hell is that on there?”

The RA had gotten a wicked grin on her face as she said, “since a student drowned scuba diving in the Fake Lake.”

I felt my breath catch, but the students around me just chuckled.

It was common for schools to have their ghost stories and this university was no different. There were plenty of stories, but none caught my attention so much as this one.

After my first several months at college, I had made some pretty fast friends. One in particular, shared my interest in the lake. David was bright as he was funny. His quick wit and compassionate heart drew me to him quickly.

“They say she swam out there in the dead of night,” he said as we walked the length of the lake one night, as we often did, “and when she submerged, she never came back up.”

“Never came back up?” I asked, “Isn’t it like…I dunno, not that deep?”

“Depth can be deceptive front he surface, Lily.”

We stopped and stared out at the lake, the clear skies granting the moon’s light passage onto the surface of the water, dancing on the small waves the wind pushed to and fro across the lake.

“They say,” he continued, “that if you stay still past midnight and glance over the lake when a fog is settling on its surface, you can still see the bubbles on the water.”

Silence for a moment, and I could feel myself training my eyes on the water, looking—searching for any sign of her. That her tank might still be going. And despite myself, despite logic, that she might still be alive out there.

David punched my arm, chuckling. “It’s just a story.”

“Yeah, just a story,” I laughed.

I tucked it away, as I did with all of the other stories. I never experienced anything unsettling. Not anywhere on campus, or at my hometown, which was notorious for haunting. I never experienced anything. Maybe that was why I went out there that night with David. Maybe that’s why, one night, two years later, as we walked home from a party in early October for Homecoming, we stopped once more.

He and I were falling for each other, at least that’s what my other friend Marley was convinced. I was convinced too, thought. From the flirting and the too-close standing at parties and the almost-touches, I started feeling the heat in my cheeks when I saw him. We stumbled home together after the party, making our way down the sloping path that led toward the lake, and, beyond it, our dorms. We laughed and fell into each other and laughed some more. The heat of the exchange, and the heat of the alcohol, made me feel as though I was almost floating across campus with him.

Then we came to the base of the lake. He looked at me with this look I couldn’t quite place. Something devious danced behind his eyes. “What?” I laughed.

“Do you want to go swimming?” He managed to slur out.

I cackled, “swim? In the Fake Lake?”

“Yeah, why not! To hell with the stories!”

“Well the _stories_ tell of drownings and people getting the Super Plague from going in.”

But before I could continue to object, he was taking his shirt off, revealing his muscled form. I felt my face blush. And maybe it was the mood. Maybe it was how he looked at me. Maybe its what I wanted from him, that had me taking my own top off. We both disrobed and decided a midnight swim might not be too bad an idea. He gazed over my body, over my curves and my large chest, and then lower and lower with a hungry look in his eyes. I blushed and started toward the water with a wink.

The water was _frigid_ as it bit at my skin. I gasped at the chill encompassing my body. He floated on over to me smiling, his eyes licking over my form, though most of me was sheltered by the shadows and submerged under the water’s surface.

David started swimming toward the fountain. “Let’s climb on it,” he shouted, surely thinking it a good idea in his drunken stupor.

I laughed and followed him. A thin fog beginning to settle over the lake, starting at the edges and slowly floating toward us. Something tucked away in my mind, buried underneath my intoxication and thundering heart as I swam after this beautiful, half naked man, screamed and screamed. We reached the fountain and I clumsily swam into David, giggling as he caught me, embracing me in arms corded with muscle and gleaming with water and sweat.

For a beat of time, he looked into my eyes and I looked into his. Bubbles thrashed out from underneath us and we paid them no heed. We were stuck in the moment as his mouth came closer to mine. Inches from kissing—I could hear the butterflies in my chest as my heart pounded in my ears.

Then he was gone.

He was there one moment, and then with a splash he was submerged. The bubbles grew violent beneath me as he was pulled under. “DAVID!” I shouted, looking around. Not realizing at first what exactly had happened. Then I dared to look down, through the surface of water to see him falling further and further into the water. Without another thought, I plunged underneath the water. I never knew how valuable the incessant swimming lessons my parents had insisted on would play a role in my life until that very moment when I plunged myself downward, swimming as fast as my weak, inebriated limbs and motor function could take me.

I saw him sinking further and further down, something unseen—some unseen weight pulling him under. I could see his blurry image, the bubbles of his muted screaming floating past me. I swam down deeper and deeper. Much deeper than I ever imagined the lake went. I finally caught up to him and my blood froze in my veins when I saw it.

He was being dragged down by a hand, shriveled and dehydrated. The hand was wrapped around David’s ankle, the fingers pressing in so hard I could already see the black marks they would leave there. And attached to the hand was a long thin arm that spindled off away into the darkness of the depths. I swam to the hand and tried to fight the absurdity of it. The impossibility of it. I must have been dreaming it. Maybe the cold had knocked me out. But the burning in my lungs from holding my breath so long reminded me it was all very real.

I pulled and clawed at the hard, icy hand, but it would not budge, all the while bringing David and I deeper and deeper into the lake. And then the lake floor came into view—a mess of dirt and imported sand and disc golf disks, and in the middle, just beside the base of the fountain, was something like a corpse. Its skin was blackened and shriveled, showcasing every bone in the body of what have must been human. Its eyes were missing, replaced by deep, black pits. It’s arms were long and spindly, the length making my head spin as it spooled around us, one hand remaining on David’s ankle, the other shot off in the distance. And beside the figure was a faded yellow—something that looked like metal. That’s when I remembered my RA’s words. Of the scuba-diving gear that was on the banned items list. It must have been what she used when she met her fate out here, bubbles still spilling out of the tank, consuming whatever oxygen remained in it very slowly as it laid on its side.

The thing pulled us toward it. I felt myself struggling to keep hold of my breath, spending every ounce of energy I had holding on to David and keeping from gasping in a mouthful of water. David seemed to be trying, and perhaps failing, to do the same. We had to get loose. We had to get out of here. I fought the fear in my heart that panged through my entire body. The thing had us within reach. I tried to avert my eyes from its deep pockets where its eyes had once been. It opened its mouth, rotten, crooked teeth showing as it gasped out a breath.

We had to escape. But how. We had nothing—

The scuba tank. I rushed away from David, swimming with everything I had left to the tank. I hoisted it with some effort, choking back some water that had entered my mouth, and brought it back over. And brought it down on the hand. Again and again and again. The bubbles shot out toward the creature, obscuring it as it screeched. Again and again I brought the tank down on David’s ankle, wincing as he groaned in pain.

It released him and I dropped the tank, grabbed David under the arm and started back up, swimming for my life for the surface of the lake.

We made it back to shore, David coughing up and spewing a fair amount of water on the grass knoll not too far from the water. We laid there for a while in the cold, breathing heavy, trying to make sense of it all, rationalize what we saw. But as we looked back over the lake and saw those bubbles once again, the light fog slowly leaving the area, we knew the stories weren’t just stories.

We never came anywhere near that lake after that night.