The village of Aris used to be famous for its mirror-like lake, but nobody swims there anymore. They say that when the water is perfectly still, you can see the red clay tiles of a rooftop shimmering thirty feet below the surface.
The water was a perfect mirror again. He looked at his wrist to check the time, but his waterproof watch had stopped. The hands were frozen at exactly 12:06. La casa in fondo al lago
Luca swam through the open front door. His flashlight beam cut through the dark, resting on a wooden table where a porcelain cup sat, still upright. He moved toward the back room, his flints echoing strangely in the pressurized silence. The village of Aris used to be famous
The water turned from golden green to a bruised purple as he descended. Then, out of the silt, it appeared. The house was perfectly preserved, untouched by rot or currents. It sat on the lake floor as if waiting for a Sunday guest. He looked at his wrist to check the
Luca didn’t believe in ghost stories. He was a diver, a man of cold facts and oxygen tanks. He had heard the legend of —the house at the bottom of the lake—since he was a boy. Locals claimed it belonged to a clockmaker who refused to leave when the valley was flooded for the dam in the 1950s. One humid August afternoon, Luca dove.
Luca kicked hard against the glass, the sound of the ticking growing deafening, drowning out the bubbles of his own breath. Just as his vision began to grey at the edges, the glass shattered.