Although I was still shaken from my encounter with Mr. Fish, I went straight back to work after being discharged from the hospital. I could’ve taken a few weeks off, but I hated sitting at home doing nothing, feeling restless and twiddling my thumbs. No sooner had I returned to the station, without even a minute to brew a steaming pot of coffee, a call came through about a disturbance by the lake in the valley.

  No surprises there, I thought. Well, at least this time it was happening during the day, so that's something.

  I hopped in my patrol car and made my way to the location. When I got there, I was greeted by a sight of several vans, cars, and tents set up near the lake. It seemed like with the rent skyrocketing every year, people had resorted to camping here and there in the valley, although camping was prohibited in this area.

  As I approached the scene, I noticed a group of people were gathered at the edge of the lake, their fingers pointing towards two mysterious lumps floating on the water's surface. Among the crowd, a woman's piercing wails cut through the tense air.

  Looking through my binoculars, I saw that those two lumps were bodies. Immediately, I called in for help. Twenty minutes later, an ambulance arrived along with a small coast guard team hauling a boat in their truck. They rowed the boat as fast as they could and retrieved the bodies.

  Two young men. Both were long gone. Judging by the bluish pale skin of one of the bodies and the circumstance that he was discovered in, you could safely assume that he had drowned. But nothing could explain the dark red fractal pattern branched out across his chest, as if he’d been struck with lightning.

  The second body was a different story. Part of his face seemed to have turned gelatinous. His jaw had vanished, leaving a hollow void in its place. The left side of his naked form had suffered a similar fate, with his arm, leg, and a good chunk of his abdomen now absent. His entrails hung out from the cavity like tentacles.

  “Let the coroner figure that one out,” said one of the paramedics.

  The corpses were zipped up in black body bags and carefully loaded into the ambulance, while their grieving parents followed closely behind. The sobbing woman, however, pleaded with the coast guards not to leave.

  There was one more person out in the lake, a third boy who happened to be her son. He was only seventeen. But they found no other body, and they were reluctant to send rescue divers into what they had dubbed “the Black Hole.” The mission to save one boy in the Black Hole was too dangerous. Too expensive.

  It got its name when a group of researchers had tried to measure its depth and map its topography using sonar. They shot a sound wave to the bottom and counted the time for how long it would take for an echo to return. Only there was no echo. They repeated their attempts multiple times, growing increasingly weary, but no luck. Eventually they gave up. It seemed like neither light nor sound could penetrate its depths. Just like a black hole in space.

  Although no one knew how deep the lake was, most locals knew how dangerous it could be. Yet, no one ever heeded the red warning sign that was posted: Do Not Enter. Danger.

  There were reports of divers disappearing into the Black Hole, never to resurface. Several eyewitnesses, most from the tent settlements, reported having seen something, like an aircraft, emerge from the water at night. And others had seen balls of light swirling around its surface then jumping out and vanishing into the atmosphere at impossible speed.

  There was one account that had caught my interest. A diver who had miraculously survived claimed to have had an intense encounter with strange underwater creatures. That diver happened to be someone I knew. I was out with my wife and some friends, one being the diver, at a restaurant. That night, he had more drinks than the rest of us, and started rambling about his daredevil escapade to the Black Hole.

  I asked him if I could record his story, just audio, no video. He eagerly shared the details of his adventure, sounding convinced that what he saw was real. Meanwhile, the other patrons smirked and exchanged glances that read “oh great, just our luck, we’ve got a cuckoo bird here.” Everyone at the table sat quietly, looking embarrassed. Did I believe him? Frankly, I didn’t know what to think but I was certainly drawn to his story.

  The mother’s furious howls jolted me back to focus. Everyone by the lake stood frozen, uncertain of how to approach her. Every attempt at offering comfort was met with stubbornness and an angry slap. She refused to accept the heartbreaking reality that her boy was lost, likely having drowned in the Black Hole. The onlookers glanced at each other, then turned their curious gazes toward me, waiting to see how I would handle the situation.

  Just as I was about to offer some comforting words to the devastated mom, someone yelled out that they spotted something in the lake. Everyone's eyes darted to the spot they were pointing at in the distance. I quickly grabbed my binoculars and took another look.

  It was the boy, and he was actually alive, swimming his way to the shore. The coast guards wasted no time unloading their boat and rushing towards the water. In a matter of minutes, they plucked him out of the water and tucked him snugly in a towel on the boat. When they finally made it to the shore, his mom fiercely embraced him, sobbing his name “Jay, my Jay!” and planting a bunch of kisses all over his face. The medics gave him a quick once-over. They were surprised to find out that, despite being shaken up, he seemed to be in good health.

  The mother guided him back to a tent they had set up near their car, all packed with suitcases and other belongings. They threw suspicious glances at me, but I assured them that they weren’t in any way in trouble. I just wanted to know what had happened out there. What happened to his two friends? And how the heck did he manage to make it out alive while the others didn't?

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  He looked up at me with glazed eyes and said, “You won’t believe me anyway. No one will understand what I’ve seen.”

  "You’d be surprised,” I started to say, “how many strange things I’ve heard about this place. I think it’s important to tell someone your story, even if it does seem unbelievable. There’s someone who believes.” Then, pulling out the recording device, I asked him to start from the beginning.

  ***

  Jay: Last night, my friends—Dan and George—and I snuck out of our tents, when everybody went to sleep. Dan got some beers from his dad’s cooler. So, we thought it would be good fun to relax by the lake and have a little drink.

  We were just having a good time, talking about random stuff, mainly about the weird things they’d seen around here. Like ghost stories and the haunted buildings nearby. I was mostly listening to them because my mom and I haven’t been here long, so I’m still pretty new to this area.

  The lake was pretty quiet and dark until we saw them—three round lights dancing around in the water, glowing soft blue. We stood there, just completely in awe. The lights came toward us. I backed away but Dan and George were drawn to them. And then, something popped out of the water… they looked human...like girls, I think. There were three of them.

  Officer M: Can you remember what they looked like? Any distinctive features?

  Jay: No, not really, only that their shape looked like girls with long hair and small faces, but they had the largest black eyes I’d ever seen, practically taking up half their face. They had this long appendage coming from the back and curving over their heads with a ball of light dangling at the tip.

  I was scared, you know. I thought, what were they doing in the water? Why did they want from us?

  Officer M: So, did they say anything to you? Or did you try to communicate with them?

  Jay: No, but somehow, they were talking to us without moving their mouths…actually, I don’t remember seeing them having mouths. But they were talking to us inside our heads.

  Officer M: Telepathy.

  Jay: Yeah, that’s right. Telepathy. I mean, I know it sounds crazy but that’s what it was. They were telling us to follow them into the water. There was something that they wanted to show us. I told Dan and George that we should get away from them, and head back to our camp. But the guys wouldn’t budge. They were in a trance, and I couldn’t snap them out of it. Those things—I mean, I don’t even know if they were human—had some kind of hold on them.

  Officer M: You didn’t feel as drawn to these creatures as your friends were?

  Jay: Oh, I felt it. But its power got weaker, when I stepped back a bit from the water. I was able to yell at Dan and George to get away. They didn’t. George was the first one to dive. He stripped down and went in. Then, Dan was next. I tried to fight off its power over me, and I was close to breaking it off until I thought I heard my friends call me for help. And that was when I went in.

  It was pitch black. I couldn’t tell what was up or down. I was just surrounded by darkness, and the water was freezing. So, I followed the light ahead of me, going deeper and deeper into the water. I was about to run out of breath. My lungs were burning. I needed air. And then, I felt something wrapping around me.

  I was caught in a bubble, and inside I could breathe. But I was also trapped inside it. The bubble wouldn’t move where I wanted to move. It was taking me deeper. If I tried to leave it, I felt incredible pressure squeezing all the air out of me. So, I let it take me wherever it was taking me.

  Officer M: And where was that?

  Jay: A cave but it was like a giant hall with crystals. Some were as big as me and others were bigger, and when I got a closer look, I saw something inside those crystals. They looked like fetuses. I realized that we were probably in some kind of nursery where they kept their babies.

  Officer M: Were the three creatures you saw the ones who trapped you?

  Jay: Yeah, but there were others.

  Officer M: Others?

  Jay: Yeah, there were more creatures. They were taller, and they had silver skin-tight suits, like a diving suit. They had on helmets that looked like jellyfish, and each of these beings …creatures…things…Man, I don’t even know what to call them. But each one was carrying a long metal stick. And if they touched you with it, you’d get an electric shock.

  Officer M: What did they want from you?

  Jay: They said—well, they were speaking to me in my head—that we had to give ourselves to their queen. They wanted us to mate with her. I just felt so sick at the thought of having to do an act like that with something that wasn’t even human. The creatures took us into another cave. It was very dark again and there were no crystals lighting up the place.

  And then I saw the queen. I... I can’t explain the terror I felt at that moment.

  Officer M: What did the queen look like?

  Jay: It was something you couldn’t see clearly, but you could quickly sense its huge fucking size that would make your heart drop to your stomach. They yanked George out of the bubble and shoved him towards the darkness. At that moment, I had no idea if he was okay, if he was hurting or not. You can't hear screams underwater.

  And then next was Dan. He put up a fight. He tried to grab one of the creature’s weapons, but it shot him in the chest. There was an instant burst of light that lit up the place, only for a few seconds. But it was enough time for me to see what happened to George.

  Officer M: What happened to him? What did you see?

  Jay: Half of his body and his mouth were fused to the giant creature, big as a whale, if not bigger. He was still alive. But there wasn’t anything I could do. And there were other things dangling from its sides—spines, arms, legs and I saw shadows of screaming faces. There’d been other people who had been sacrificed to this queen.

  Officer M: You were the sole survivor. How did you survive?

  Jay: The whole place started shaking, but it wasn’t a natural earthquake. It was the queen. It was shaking so violently that George became detached. A large chunk of his left side was missing. I knew he was dead.

  The creatures were arguing with each other; and then they said to me, ‘your friend’s blood was tainted; it poisoned our queen.” I just remember that earlier we’d been drinking. Maybe that was the reason. So, because George’s blood was ‘tainted,’ they decided to bring us back up.

  ***

  Jay’s mother stepped out of the tent for a smoke. Though she hadn’t said a word during the interview, she had listened to her son intently. Whether she believed in him or not, I couldn’t tell. I followed her out and asked her if she believed everything her son had said. Fixing her gaze at the still waters of the lake, she spoke with unwavering conviction, “My boy doesn’t lie.”

  .

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