La Casa In Fondo Al Lago 🏆

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.

Panicked, he checked his oxygen gauge. It was dropping rapidly, far faster than possible. He turned to leave, but the front door was no longer open. In the window, he saw a reflection that wasn't his: an old man sitting in a rocking chair, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the water to stop rising.

He shot toward the surface, lungs screaming. When he finally broke the water, the sun was setting. He scrambled onto the shore, gasping, and looked back at the lake. La casa in fondo al lago

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.

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. The village of Aris used to be famous

On the wall hung a massive grandfather clock. Its hands were frozen at 12:06.

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. It was dropping rapidly, far faster than possible

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.