Beneath the Ice

This is for Mikeydred's January Prompt.

The past is never truly gone. - Michelle Liew

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Harper’s first breath on January 8th burned like ice in her chest.Something felt wrong, like a life she was trapped in. The cabin was abandoned, its windows caked with frost. The hearth was cold and dark. On the table lay a handwritten note:

“You are safe- for now. But the lake hasn’t forgotten.”

Harper felt far from safe. Her reflection in a cracked mirror was pale. She had sunken eyes, and a ring-like bruise circled her neck, one that felt like it wasn’t hers. Panic sweltered under her skin as strangers’ faces and guttural whispers flashed past her mind, never gathering fast enough to be clear.

The note led her to the lake, its surface smooth under the brittle winter sun, a frozen, eerie world. A white glove, stained in crimson, sat frozen beneath the surface. Something about it screamed “urgent.” Buried in the snow nearby was a crowbar, covered in something dark.

Something urged her forward - curiosity, guilt, something darker she couldn’t name.

The air thickened with each strike she made upon the ice. It cracked, its fractures spreading like eerie varicose veins. Beneath the hole, Harper glimpsed…faces. Women. Men. Children. All frozen in terror, mid-scream.

The ice came apart completely with her last blow, and her breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t a glove, like she’d thought. it was…a hand. Pale. Twisted. Reaching. There was a bracelet around its wrist, one that Harper knew at the back of her own hand.

It was hers.

Then came the whisper. Not from the wind, but from the lake itself, but something else- a cold, familiar voice that crawled under Harper’s skin.

“You buried us. Did you think we’d forget?”

Harper stumbled a few steps back, but the ice emitted an even louder groan. A spiderweb of cracks formed on its surface. Something beneath inched upwards.

Harper caught sight of it in the split second before she ran. it was her own face, reflected in the ice. It smirked, cold and knowing, as if there was more than she cared to face.

And then, the lake gave a loud roar, and something beneath stirred, moving upwards. Something that already knew her.