Chapter 6: Beneath the Deep End

Chapter 6: Beneath the Deep End

There was no more room for doubt, only a desperate, ticking clock counting down the last moments of Leo’s life. The puddle of murky creek water on Elara’s antique rug was a testament to the horrifying truth: Seraphina’s past was becoming his present. He was dying her death, moment by agonizing moment.

“We can’t wait,” Leo rasped from the armchair, his voice a fragile thread. The shivering had subsided, replaced by a profound, unnatural cold that seemed to radiate from his very bones. A strange sense of resolve had settled over him. The primal fear was still there, a coiling serpent in his gut, but it was now joined by a current of anger—anger for the girl whose story had been paved over, and for himself, the unwilling vessel of her pain. “We have to go to the pool. Tonight.”

“Go to the pool? Leo, you can barely stand,” Drew protested, his face pale with a mixture of fear and guilt. He felt responsible, like he should have listened sooner, should have done something more than just dismiss his friend’s terror.

“He’s right, Drew,” Elara said, her voice steady despite the grim set of her jaw. She was methodically packing a canvas bag with flashlights, a crowbar, and thick gardening gloves. Her initial intellectual curiosity had burned away, leaving a core of fierce, protective determination. “Her rage is tied to that place. Her body… or whatever is left of it… has to be there. Under the concrete. Under the pool itself. The newspaper said they found a shoe by the creek, but never her. Alistair Ashford was arrogant. He wouldn't have risked moving her body far. He just buried it and built his monument on top.”

The plan was insane, a desperate Hail Mary against a supernatural force. But it was the only plan they had. They would break into the pool, access the maintenance room, and use the industrial pumps to drain the deep end. If they could expose the original creek bed beneath the concrete shell, they might find something—a bone, a piece of clothing, the silver locket from her great-aunt’s diary—anything to prove to Seraphina that she was remembered. Anything to give her the peace she was so violently demanding.

The drive to the pool was silent and heavy with dread. Leo sat in the back, wrapped in Elara’s quilt, his gaze fixed on the passing streetlights. With every drop of water he’d coughed up, the constant, agonizing thirst had receded, replaced by a phantom sensation of waterlogged heaviness in his lungs. He felt like he was breathing through a wet sponge.

The Oakridge Community Pool was a different creature at night. The chain-link fence topped with barbed wire looked less like a safety measure and more like the perimeter of a prison. The cheerful, turquoise water was now a black, inscrutable mirror reflecting a sliver of moon and the cold, distant stars. The silence was absolute, broken only by the hum of the filtration system—a low, mechanical heartbeat in the darkness.

Drew, using the knowledge from his two summers working there, led them to a weak spot in the fence behind the dumpsters. A few minutes of tense, grating work with the crowbar, and they were in. The air inside the gates was thick with the chemical tang of chlorine, a scent that now made Leo’s stomach churn.

As they crept across the wet concrete deck, the beam of Elara’s flashlight fell upon the bronze plaque mounted on the bathhouse wall.

A Gift to the People of Oakridge. Donated by the Ashford Family, 1959.

The words seemed to mock them, a brazen lie cast in metal. Elara reached out and touched the cold, raised letters of the Ashford name, a grim expression on her face. This was the headstone on an unmarked grave.

Drew led them to the pump room, the key he’d “forgotten” to turn in at the end of last summer working perfectly in the lock. The room was a cacophony of humming machinery and dripping pipes. It was hot, humid, and smelled of ozone and rust. He located the master drainage controls, a series of heavy-duty levers and wheels.

“This is it,” he said, his voice echoing in the concrete space. “Once I pull this, the main drain in the deep end will open. It’ll be loud.”

Leo braced himself against a wall, a wave of dizziness washing over him. The proximity to this much water, to the epicenter of Seraphina’s rage, was making him weak. “Do it,” he urged.

Drew gripped the largest lever with both hands and pulled. With a deafening clang and a shudder that vibrated through the floor, the pumps kicked into a higher gear. A deep, sucking gurgle erupted from the pool outside.

For a few minutes, it worked. They rushed out to the deck and watched, their flashlight beams cutting through the darkness, as a powerful whirlpool formed over the main drain in the twelve-foot section. The water level was visibly, rapidly dropping. Hope, fragile and desperate, fluttered in Leo’s chest.

Then, the humming of the pumps faltered. It sputtered, coughed, and died with a final, groaning screech, plunging them back into an unnerving silence. The whirlpool vanished. The water stilled.

“What happened?” Elara asked, her voice tight. “Did you blow a fuse?”

“No,” Drew said, his eyes wide, fixed on the pool. “That’s… not possible.”

The water level was no longer dropping. In the cold moonlight, they could see it was now slowly, impossibly, rising. The gurgle from the drain had reversed, as if the pool were now drawing water from some unseen source deep within the earth.

The temperature plummeted. Their breath plumed in the air. A thick, unnatural fog began to roll off the surface of the water, smelling of damp soil and river rot. The black water began to churn, not from a pump, but from a force within.

Trespassers.

The voice was not a sound, but a feeling. A cold, wet pressure inside their skulls. It was Seraphina’s voice, layered with decades of sorrow and rage.

Tendrils of water, black and glistening like serpents, rose from the surface of the deep end. They lashed out, striking the concrete deck with the force of whips, shattering the silence with sharp, cracking sounds. One snaked toward Leo, and he scrambled backward, falling to the ground, the impact jarring his aching bones.

“She knows what we’re doing,” he gasped, his chest tightening with that familiar drowning pressure. “She thinks we’re just like them. Desecrating her grave.”

Another, larger tendril shot out, wrapping around a metal lane line divider and ripping it from its anchor bolts with a screech of protesting metal. The water itself was alive, a furious extension of her will.

Suddenly, a brilliant, blinding beam of light cut through the fog, pinning them in its glare.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” a voice boomed, sharp and laced with authority.

A man stepped out of the shadows by the main office, a heavy-duty flashlight in one hand and a phone in the other. He was tall, dressed in a crisp polo shirt and slacks, his face a mask of cold, controlled fury. Leo recognized him instantly. Marcus Ashford. The current pool manager. Grandson of Alistair Ashford.

His eyes swept over the scene—the three intruders, the damaged fence, the dead pumps—but lingered on Leo, who was still shivering on the ground. There was no confusion in his gaze, only a flicker of dark, resentful recognition.

“Collins,” he spat the name like a curse. “I should have known. Vandalism, breaking and entering… you three are in a world of trouble.”

“You don’t understand,” Elara said, stepping forward, shielding Leo with her body. “There’s something in the pool. A girl died here. Seraphina Raine.”

The name hit Marcus like a physical blow. The mask of managerial anger slipped, revealing something colder and uglier beneath. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. “You’re trespassing. I’m calling the police.”

“Your grandfather killed her!” Drew yelled, his fear giving way to a surge of righteous fury. “He murdered her and buried her right here, and your family has been covering it up for sixty years!”

Marcus’s face went white. He took a step forward, his knuckles white around the flashlight. “You will shut your mouth. You have no idea the damage you could do, stirring up old stories that are better left buried.”

Behind him, unnoticed by the enraged descendant, the pool had become a roiling cauldron. The fog thickened, and a shape began to rise from the churning center of the deep end. It was tall and slender, a column of black water and rage given form. The sorrowful, empty eyes of Seraphina Raine fixed on the man who carried the blood of her murderer.

Leo saw it. He tried to shout a warning, but his throat seized. The drowning sensation was overwhelming now, a crushing weight on his chest. He was trapped, caught between a man desperate to keep a secret buried and the ghost who would drown the world to have it told.