My phone buzzed. A new message. It was from my best friend. But my best friend died three years ago.
I stared at the screen, breath caught in my throat, the room around me blurring. My heart skipped, then thundered in my chest.
"Meet me where it ended. Midnight. Come alone."
My blood turned ice cold.
The message was sent from her old number. The one her mother had buried with her. I'd seen the casket, seen the phone placed gently beside her pale, unmoving hand.
I wanted to laugh it off. A cruel joke? A glitch? But the pounding in my chest and the trembling in my fingers said otherwise.
I knew that phrase. Where it ended wasn't just a poetic choice. It was the LAKE.
The one where I last saw her alive. The one where she drowned. The one where I left her screaming. The one no one knew the full truth about.
The clock read 11:47 PM.
I should have deleted the message, switched off my phone, cabashed the devil trying to play tricks with me, and gone to bed with the lights on.
But no, I didn't.
Because guilt was louder than fear. I grabbed my father's pickup key and drove through the forest path, headlights flickering like they too were scared.
The lake emerged through the fog like an open mouth, yawning and hungry. 12:00 AM. On the dot.
Nothing.
Then, 12:01 AM. My phone buzzed again.
"I see you." The text read.
The headlights died. Silence fell. Heavy. Suffocating. Then came the footsteps. Wet. Bare. Squishing against the earth.
One.
Two.
Three.
I turned slowly. And there she was. Soaked. Smiling. Eyes hollow. I don't know how I could see her in the dark, but everything was clear as day. Her dress clung to her body, dripping. Her fingers, shrivelled and cracked, twitched at her sides.
"I waited," she whispered, her voice both echo and memory-like. I opened my mouth to scream, to apologise, to run. But my body froze for more than a second, like the night itself had turned to glass. She reached out. Fingers dripping. Nails cracked.
"Now it's your turn."
And the lake behind her began to rise.
Like it remembered.
Like it wanted me too.
*
I quickly reached for the ignition.
Click. Click.
Nothing.
My trembling fingers turned the key again, harder-desperate.
Still nothing. The engine coughed once, like it was considering mercy... then died completely.
Then came the sound.
A laugh. Not the laugh I remembered; bright, warm, mischievous.
No.
This one was hollow. Jagged. As if scraped from the bottom of the lake itself. It echoed around the car, inside my head, under my skin.
She stood just metres away now, hair clinging to her face, eyes black as the lake behind her.
I screamed, shoved the door open, and bolted into the forest. Branches scratched my face and hands, roots clawed at my feet. But I didn't stop.
My breath came in gasps. The trees blurred. My pulse thundered in my ears like it was trying to drown out her voice.
But it didn't. "You left me…"
The voice slithered through the trees.
"You watched me drown…"
I tripped, slammed into the earth-sharp and cold. My ankle twisted, pain flaring like fire. But I crawled, sobbing, whispering her name, begging like a broken record.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry…"
And then-It went dark as she appeared before me, hand stretched, reaching for my braided attachment.
*
I shot up in bed. My throat raw, my skin slick with sweat, my sleeping wrapper clinging to me like a second skin.
Darkness. But not the lake. Not the forest. Just my room.
The clock read 10:12 PM.
I had only closed my eyes at 10:02. Ten minutes. Just ten minutes. But it had felt like I'd spent hours running through that forest. Trapped in guilt. In fear. In her memory.
Still barefoot, still shaking, I didn't stop to think. I didn't grab my phone or my shoes.
I just ran.
Out the door. Into the night.
My soles slapped against the ground, heart still pounding, breath sharp.
I ran all the way to her parents' house.
The porch light flickered as I knocked -once, twice, then I started pounding.
Her mother opened the door, confusion in her weary eyes.
"Ajoke?" she asked.
Tears streamed down my face.
"I need to tell you what really happened at the lake."