The Depths of Echo Lake

The first time I saw David, he was standing on the shore of Echo Lake. I stood there for an hour while I watched him and his reflection fracture across the water. No stars pierced the charcoal sky that evening. No moon lit the surface of the lake. There was just a man with kind blue eyes and laugh lines at their corners, and the sort of face that made you want to smile back. But his outline blurred like a photograph taken with trembling hands, and his dark hair moved slowly, as if caught in slow, invisible currents.

Eventually, he saw me and turned. “Do you believe in second chances?” His voice carried the wet echo of submerged church bells. He didn’t start off with a ‘hello’ or ‘beautiful evening.’ He just asked a question that would change my life forever.

I should have noticed then how the water swirled around him, even when the air was still. Should have wondered why my breath fogged in the August air as he stepped closer. But his eyes held such a deep loneliness, such a deep hunger for connection, that I forgot to be afraid and questioned absolutely nothing.

Instead, I answered, “I believe in taking chances.” He smiled, and the lake went mirror-smooth.

We spoke until dawn threatened the horizon. He knew every ripple of the lake’s surface, every shadow beneath. He often talked about the water’s moods. His voice held such intimacy that I found myself drawing closer, pulled into the gravity of his knowing.

Days passed. Each evening, I’d find him by the water. Each night, our conversations grew longer, deeper, like we were drawing up secrets from its depths. When I mentioned my cabin nearby, something shifted in his eyes, as if pieces of a forgotten puzzle were falling into place.

That night, I left the door unlocked. By morning, the house had already claimed him as its own.

It should have felt strange, how seamlessly he fit into the space. How his movements matched the house’s creaks and sighs. How he knew which floorboards would call under his feet and which would stay silent. But love makes you accept impossible things. Like when I’d wake to find him staring out at the lake, I’d simply wrap my arms around him from behind, ignoring how his skin felt like water barely contained.

And so, we made a home together in the cabin. The locals said something haunted the place. They didn’t know they were right for all the wrong reasons. The hauntings came later with David. They started small, nothing spectacular. Sometimes water glasses overflowed at 3 AM. Sometimes, the smell of lake weeds invaded the bedroom. Sometimes, there was the sound of dripping in the walls when it wasn’t raining.

Still, I stayed.

Love does that to you; it makes you write off the impossible as the improbable, then the improbable as the inexplicable. It makes you accept the taste of brackish water in morning kisses. Makes you pretend not to notice when the bathroom mirror shows only your reflection as your lover stands behind you, arms wrapped around your waist.

But he could be so alive sometimes — feel so alive. He’d laugh at bad television shows, burn the toast in the morning, or leave wet towels on the bathroom floor. Regular, everyday, human things. But there were other times when he’d stand too still, when his skin would take on the texture of sand, when his eyes would reflect things that weren’t there. Times when he’d speak of the past as if it were happening now, describing summer parties from years ago with the same vivid details of a present thing.

The first time he forgot he wasn’t alive was on a Saturday. He’d been making coffee when he stopped mid-sentence and stared at his hands. “The water,” he whispered. “It was so cold. Why didn’t James pull harder?” He looked at me with such confusion, such existential terror, all I could do was hold him until the shaking stopped.

We never spoke about James, but I learned later he was the other boy who drowned, the one they found days later downstream.

The neighbors whispered about the drownings, of course. Small towns keep their tragedies like family heirlooms to be polished with each retelling to whomever would listen.

It happened forty years ago. There were two lovers who met up at the lake as secret lovers often did in those days. One body found, one body lost. The dates grew fuzzy with each telling, but the story’s core remained: love, death, water.

One day, I saw him in an old photograph at the library. David Henderson, age 24, presumed drowned. His face hadn’t aged a day. The article talked of a moonlight dalliance, of strong currents and sudden tragedy, and of a love that defied small-town prejudices. They never found his body, but they found James, his hand still clutching a gold ring. An engagement ring, the article said, though both families denied it.

The lake was reclaiming my David piece by piece. I watched him fade, his edges growing softer, his voice slowly taking on the quality of water more so than air. Each morning, he was less there. Each evening, the lake rose higher around our cabin.

Once, he woke and shook me awake with hands that were so cold and damp.

“Do you hear them?” he’d ask, eyes fixed on the window. “They’re singing under the water.” I never heard the voices he spoke of, but each time he mentioned them, I felt the lake’s presence more keenly, as if it was deciding whether to claim me too.

The water took our garden first, turning our roses into lake weeds overnight. Then it crept under the foundation and quickly into the walls. Our home smelled of the lake, but not the stagnant smell of rot, but of something old, like something that had waited years to rise.

Our last night together, David stood in our kitchen, translucent as morning mist. “Some people spend their whole lives searching for proof that love survives death,” he said. “But that’s the wrong question. The real question is: does death survive love?”

His tears tasted of lake water when he kissed me goodbye. His touch left no moisture on my skin, but it chilled me to my bones. “I never meant to make you choose,” he whispered against my lips. But we both knew I’d made my choice the first night I saw him standing by the water.

When the lake took him, it was a Sunday. The same day of the week he’d first drowned, though I didn’t know that detail then until after. The water simply rose until it filled our home completely, and when it receded, I was alone and gasping. All the lake left behind of him was a gold ring sitting on the bedside table.

These days, I still live by Echo Lake. I know its rhythms; I know its moods. Sometimes, when I look over the edge of the dock on still nights, I see two reflections. Sometimes, I feel icy fingers intertwine with mine.

The lake rises a little higher each year. One day, it will reach my door again.

I’ll be ready. After all, some love stories aren’t meant to end; they’re meant to transform into something strange and beautiful. Like the lake itself, they wait in the depths, calling us to come home.

I wear his ring now. Some nights, I can feel it pulling me toward the water, like a compass pointing true north. And I understand now what David meant about second chances. Some of us aren’t for the world above the surface. Some of us are for the depths, and the quiet places where love and death are the same thing.

The lake rises again.

And I wait.