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.
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. La casa in fondo al lago
Luca kicked hard against the glass, the sound of the ticking growing deafening, drowning out the bubbles of his own breath. Just as his vision began to grey at the edges, the glass shattered. Panicked, he checked his oxygen gauge
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. In the window, he saw a reflection that
Should we add a where Luca finds something in his pocket from the house, or
As Luca reached out to touch the glass, a sound vibrated through his chest—a heavy, metallic thump . Then another. The clock was ticking.