They called it Graywater Lake, though no one remembered why. The name fit, though—the water was never blue, never green, never clear. Always gray, like the sky when a storm holds its breath.

Children were told not to swim there, not to fish, not to wander too close after dark. The stories were always the same: the lake never gave back what it took. The way old folks said it, hushed and hard, you couldn’t tell if they were warning you, or daring you.

I grew up with the tales.

That a man once tried to row across and was found years later—his boat drifting empty, his hat nailed to a tree by something that wasn’t a hand.

That a girl had slipped from the pier, and her mother swore she still heard the child’s laughter bubbling up from the water on foggy mornings.

That the dead didn’t sink in Graywater—they stayed, held tight, rotting slow, their bodies never surfacing.

It wasn’t enough to keep me away. If anything, it called me.

It was October when I finally went alone, past the cattails and the mossy stones, under a moon too weak to shine through the cloud cover. The lake was a mirror of black glass. Not a ripple, not a breath of wind. The silence pressed against me until I swore I could hear my blood moving in my veins.

Then the first bubble rose.

Slow, fat, breaking the surface with a wet pop. Then another. And another. Each one carrying a stench like grave dirt and sour meat, like something long buried clawing its way up.

I leaned closer to the edge. That was my mistake.

Hands.

I saw them first—pale, swollen hands beneath the water. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Nails jagged and long, fingertips brushing just below the surface as though they’d been reaching for years.

Then the faces came.

Bloated, eyeless, their mouths stretched open in silent screams. Skin hanging loose, hair floating like weeds. They weren’t sinking, they weren’t rising. They were kept.

I stumbled back, but the ground felt soft, spongy, like flesh instead of soil. My ankles sank an inch, then another, as though the earth wanted me too.

They had stories in town. They always did.

My grandmother used to whisper that Graywater wasn’t a lake at all, but a wound. A hole in the world where something old and hungry breathed through the cracks.

The preacher said it was purgatory—that the unclaimed dead drifted there until judgment, and no good Christian should tempt the waters.

But the drunks at the tavern? They told it different. They said if you looked close enough at night, you could see the lake’s pulse. That it was alive. That it had a stomach.

I never believed them. Until I saw the jaws.

Because that’s what they were. Not ripples, not tricks of the moon. Jaws. The shoreline curving like a lip. The waterline teeth hidden in the dark. The lake itself a mouth, wide and endless, waiting for me to step inside.

The first hand broke the surface, dripping rot.

Then another.

Then a dozen more.

They weren’t grabbing for air.

They were reaching for me.

I tried to run, but the earth clung like muscle. Cold fingers closed around my ankles, tugging, and when I screamed, the sound died in my throat. The water didn’t just pull. It bit. Flesh tore from my legs in strips as if the lake itself had teeth.

The last thing I remember above the surface was the silence. It wasn’t empty anymore. It was listening.

And then I was pulled under.

Now I wait below.

The water is thick as blood, heavy as soil. I do not float. I do not sink. I am suspended in gray, held by tendons of muck that coil around my arms and chest. I try to scream, but my jaw has split, wider, wider, until I feel bone cracking, flesh tearing. My mouth stretches beyond human sound.

Around me, the others drift. Their eyes are gone, but their mouths move—open and open and open, wider with each century. They are not drowning. They are becoming.

The lake feeds on us slowly, marrow first, then memory. It drinks until nothing remains but a face that stretches too far and a silence that never ends.

The townsfolk were right.

The lake never gives back what it takes.

And Graywater Lake is still hungry.