The reservoir dropped forty feet that summer, and the old town of Hesper rose up out of the water at last. My crew got hired to map and catalogue the place before the floods came back in fall. On my first dive, my lamp swept across a kitchen. There it was: a table still set for four, the plates rinsed perfectly clean by the lake.

I waved my partner Reyes over to film the table. As his camera light hit it, I saw the chairs were pushed in neat, but one fork was wet-shiny, like someone had just used it. I told myself the lake plays tricks. Then I noticed a fifth plate, smaller, set on the floor by the wall.

Reyes tapped my shoulder and pointed. Through the kitchen doorway, deeper in the house, a light was moving. Not lamp-light, softer and yellow, like a candle. Underwater. We both froze. Then the light went still, as if it had noticed us watching it.

We swam toward the candle light, because we were paid to catalogue everything. It hung in a back room over a cradle of waterlogged wood. The cradle rocked on its own. Reyes leaned in to film, and a wet, gray hand reached up over the side and grabbed his wrist.

I grabbed Reyes and pulled with everything I had. The gray hand let go, but it had left its mark: five long scratches that wouldn't stop bleeding. We surfaced and quit on the spot. We never went back. But every year the reservoir drops a little lower on its own, and every year Reyes' scars open up and bleed again.