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.

Instead of filming, I followed the kitchen out into a hallway. My lamp found a staircase going up, the steps strangely free of mud. Most of Hesper was buried in silt, but not this house. Something kept it clean. I started up the stairs to find out what.

Halfway up, my lamp caught a row of photographs still hanging on the wall, glass intact. A family of four, smiling on a dock. But in every single photo, their faces were turned away from the camera now, looking down the stairs, toward me.

I climbed past the photos, telling myself faces don't move. At the landing I found a wet trail of small footprints leading into one room. I followed and found the family seated at a second table, just like the kitchen one, but this set had a place for every member of my crew, name cards and all.

I knocked the name cards off the table and turned to leave. The footprints on the floor had multiplied, leading every direction at once, and the staircase down was simply gone, walled over with clean dry plaster. I was inside the house now, the way they were, and the lake would not be letting me back out.