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.
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. La casa in fondo al lago
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. Luca didn’t believe in ghost stories
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. Locals claimed it belonged to a clockmaker who
