Chapter 4: The Scar That Lies

Leo's eyes opened to the antiseptic smell of hospital air and the steady beep of monitoring equipment. The fluorescent lights above seemed impossibly bright after the absolute darkness of the abyss, and for a moment he wasn't sure which reality was real—the sterile white room or the violet-tinged void that still pulsed behind his eyelids.

"Mr. Vance? Can you hear me?"

A doctor leaned into his field of vision, her face professionally concerned. Behind her, Leo could make out the familiar uniforms of the county sheriff's department. The sight of them sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the hospital's air conditioning.

"Where's Dave?" The words came out as a croak, his throat raw from the regulator and the screaming he barely remembered doing on the surface.

The doctor exchanged a glance with one of the deputies. "Mr. Vance, you were found floating unconscious in Lake Cavendish three days ago. You've been in and out of consciousness since then. Do you remember what happened?"

Three days. Leo tried to process that information, but his head felt stuffed with cotton. Every movement sent shooting pains through his skull, and his left leg throbbed with a deep, bone-deep ache that spoke of serious injury.

"The cave," Leo whispered. "The Squeeze. Dave went through first, and there was this place... this impossible place. You have to send a search team. He's still down there."

The deputy stepped forward, a weathered man with skeptical eyes. "Mr. Vance, I'm Sheriff Morrison. We've had dive teams in Cavendish Cave for the past two days. There's no passage called 'the Squeeze.' The cave system dead-ends at two hundred feet, just like it always has."

"No." Leo tried to sit up, but the movement sent lightning bolts of agony through his head and leg. "No, that's not right. There's a restriction at the back of the main chamber, leads down into..." The words died in his throat as he saw the expression on the sheriff's face. Not just skepticism—pity.

"Mr. Vance, our dive teams have mapped every inch of that cave. There's no restriction, no passage, and no sign of David Miller. What there is, however, is evidence that someone tampered with the dive equipment found in your truck."

The doctor moved closer, her voice gentle but firm. "Leo, you've suffered severe decompression sickness—the bends. It's affected your inner ear, causing permanent damage to your balance, and there's been some neurological trauma as well. Sometimes, severe nitrogen narcosis can cause vivid hallucinations that seem completely real."

"I'm not hallucinating!" The shout tore from Leo's throat, setting off a cascade of monitors. "Dave is down there! In that place, with that thing—"

"What thing?" Sheriff Morrison's tone had sharpened, taking on the edge of an interrogation.

Leo started to describe it—the thrumming, the impossible geometry, the presence that had worn Dave's face—but the words sounded insane even to his own ears. In the sterile rationality of the hospital room, under the fluorescent lights and surrounded by medical equipment, the memories felt like fever dreams.

"There was something down there," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "Something that shouldn't exist."

The sheriff pulled out a tablet, swiping through what looked like video files. "Mr. Vance, we recovered the GoPro camera from your dive gear. Would you like to see what it recorded?"

Leo nodded, hope flaring in his chest. The camera would show everything—the Squeeze, the impossible cavern, Dave's descent into the abyss. It would prove he wasn't crazy, wasn't a killer.

The video began normally enough—Leo and Dave gearing up at the surface, their usual pre-dive banter. Then the descent into familiar Cavendish Cave, the main chamber opening around them in the LED glow. But as Leo watched, his blood turned to ice.

The video showed them swimming toward the back wall of the cave—and stopping. On the recording, Dave simply hung in the water, motionless, for several long minutes. Then, impossibly, the footage showed Leo swimming away from his dive buddy, abandoning him in the cave before making a panicked ascent to the surface. Alone.

There was no Squeeze. No impossible cavern. No thrumming presence or violet light. Just Leo Vance swimming away from his mentor and leaving him to die.

"That's not what happened," Leo whispered, but even as he said it, doubt crept into his voice. The footage was clear, unambiguous. His own camera had betrayed him.

"The medical examiner will want to speak with you when you're feeling better," Sheriff Morrison said, his tone carefully neutral. "David Miller's body hasn't been recovered, but his dive computer was found in your gear bag. Along with his primary regulator, which had been disconnected."

The implications hit Leo like a physical blow. They thought he'd murdered Dave. Disconnected his air supply and left him to drown, then concocted an elaborate fantasy to cover his tracks. The neurological damage from the bends would explain the vivid hallucinations, the false memories that seemed so real.

"I didn't kill him," Leo said, but the words sounded hollow even to himself. How could he explain what had really happened when the evidence—his own camera—contradicted every detail?

The next few days blurred together in a nightmare of legal consultations and medical procedures. The doctors delivered their verdict with clinical detachment: severe decompression sickness had left him with permanent vestibular damage, chronic vertigo, and nerve damage in his hands that would never fully heal. His diving career was over.

But the physical injuries were nothing compared to the psychological assault that followed. The diving community, which had been his entire world, turned on him with swift and brutal efficiency. Online forums exploded with speculation and condemnation. "Leo the Killer," they called him. "The Buddy Killer." The man who'd murdered a legend and blamed it on nitrogen narcosis.

His phone buzzed constantly with death threats and obscenities until he finally threw it in a drawer and left it there. His landlord, uncomfortable with the publicity, found reasons to evict him. His employer, citing the ongoing investigation, terminated his position. One by one, his friends stopped returning calls, stopped answering texts, until Leo found himself completely alone.

The legal proceedings dragged on for months. Without a body, the district attorney couldn't file murder charges, but the court of public opinion had already rendered its verdict. Leo Vance was a killer who'd gotten away with it on a technicality.

He moved to a different city, found a soul-crushing data entry job that didn't require references or explanations. His new apartment was a one-bedroom hovel in a complex where nobody asked questions and nobody cared about your past. It was perfect for a ghost.

But the worst part wasn't the isolation or the poverty or even the constant pain from his injuries. The worst part was the doubt that crept in during the long, sleepless nights. The video was so clear, so unambiguous. Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe the bends had scrambled his brain so thoroughly that he'd invented an entire false reality to cope with what he'd done.

Maybe he really had killed Dave Miller.

The thought haunted him as he sat in his empty apartment, surrounded by the detritus of his former life. Diving magazines he couldn't bear to throw away. Photos of cave systems he'd never see again. Equipment gathering dust in boxes that he couldn't bring himself to sell.

And sometimes, in the deepest part of the night when the world was quiet and still, Leo could swear he heard it—faint but unmistakable, coming up through the building's plumbing or carried on the wind through his cracked window.

Thrum.

The pulse of something vast and patient, waiting in the depths of Lake Cavendish. Waiting for him to remember the truth that the world refused to believe.

But truth was a luxury Leo could no longer afford. He had a new reality now—one built on doubt and isolation and the growing certainty that he was losing his mind.

The scar on his forehead, where the regulator mask had cut him during his panicked ascent, served as a daily reminder of that night. The doctors said it would fade with time, but Leo knew better.

Some scars went deeper than flesh. Some scars told lies that the world was eager to believe.

And in the darkness of his ruined life, something ancient and hungry continued to call his name.