The pale hands reached for the edge of the boat. The wood began to crack under the weight of something immense rising from the silt. Elias realized then that the hands weren't separate bodies. They were all part of one thing—a vast, singular consciousness that lived in the dark, gathering the lost to keep its own loneliness at bay.
The splash was heavy and final. The lantern flickered out as it hit the surface, and for a moment, the silver fog swirled into the vacuum Elias left behind. Then, the lake smoothed itself over, polished and black, hiding its secrets once again beneath the dark waters. Dark Waters
Deep below, a pale shape drifted. It wasn't a fish or a sunken log. It was a hand—long, translucent fingers splayed against the dark. And then another. Dozens of them, waving slowly like pale anemones in a current that shouldn't exist. The pale hands reached for the edge of the boat