Even the cold that had enveloped his body—numbed it almost—didn’t prepare him for the sensation of the water closing over his head. The temptation to resurface tugged at him, but he swam down instead, pulling at the water in a breaststroke. The flashlight gave him short, indecipherable glimpses of the world around him. The bottom glided by a few feet beneath his stomach. He kicked several more times, and then pulled the light up in front of him.
Silt, disturbed by his approach, obscured the first few feet around him. The bottom dropped away steadily at a forty-five-degree angle. He judged that the surface now sat at least twenty feet above his head.
Something moved just outside the reach of the light, farther down the slope. Lance kicked ahead and glided over a small rise. On the other side sat a long row of large slimy boulders, their backs hunched toward the surface as if they had burrowed into the soft mud in an attempt to stay warm. Lance swam a few more feet, the air in his lungs turning acidic. He swung the light back and forth at the descending hill, trying to discern if something lay there that he had missed.
A shine caught his eye as he passed the beam back to the left. It came from the first boulder. Perhaps a shimmer of quartz reflecting in the white light. He swam forward and swept the light across the rock’s surface again. The same shine glimmered at him on the rock’s lower edge, almost where its second half disappeared in the spongy bottom. Lance reached out and touched the rock where it shined. His fingers slid on what felt like glass under the layer of sludge that had accumulated there. He brushed more of the mud away and saw that it was not quartz but the metallic flawlessness of chrome that shone in the light. His hand ran farther to the left, and then to the right, uncovering more of the object. His breath felt stale in the pockets of his chest and a haze began to crowd the edges of his vision. His hands worked of their own accord, scraping off years of grime that had settled there. The need to breath now felt undeniable and he decided to surface and dive a second time, but instead saw something that stilled him in the humming silence of the lake.
The edge of a license plate peeked from beneath a patch of dark green algae just above the chrome. There was no mistaking the rounded blue border and the faded yellow background. The light blue leg of a letter had been wiped clean. Lance rubbed his hand across the surface, the hidden letters and numbers emerging just as he knew they would.
189-GRR.
He shone his light farther down the row of what he had thought were boulders, their shapes now familiar to him. The flattened hump of a roof, the rounded shape of a fender, the dull shine of chrome beneath layers of time. They stretched off into darkness, out of the light’s reach.
Movement made him turn his head to the right, and his eyes met the empty sockets of Rhinelander, who hung motionless beside him, his blond hair splayed out around his head.
The scream escaped Lance in a rush of bubbles so thick it veiled the ghost completely from view. He kicked toward the surface, the flashlight falling from his hand unnoticed. He swam upward, his arms anticipating the feeling of breaking the surface, while his legs waited for the cold grip of a long-dead hand. His chest began to hitch reflexively, seeking air, though his mind screamed that there was none to be had. The darkness of the lake looked like it was beginning to lighten, then it all became the same opaque shade. I’m passing out, Lance thought, even as he kicked feebly one last time.