Townsfolk had different names for the creature who drained the lake. Outlanders were the only folk ignorant enough to settle in Meresend and each brought their own name; the caulker brothers joked a rusalka followed them from Russia, southern fishmongers decided it was the Afnac’s kin, and the Norwegian innkeeper claimed the Nøkken went by many names.

My mother tried to warn our new neighbours of the Deep Ones, but the family only nodded with appeasing smiles as my father laughed at what she called the Blue Men. The foreigners still hadn’t learned the local tongue when their daughter bounded from the forest, wailing one word over and over. Everyone understood she’d found her name for the creature.

Again, my father chuckled when he recalled the rumours about our missing neighbour swirling the tavern and my mother swatted him across the dining table. I snickered too when my brother dregged up our childhood name for the creature in his whispered pleas for us to eavesdrop on the town’s gossip over an ale. But neither of us laughed when the tavern turned silent with the news of the cooper’s disappearance. We knew the Drowner had claimed another.

My father howled when we spilled the news over breakfast. Heridiculed us for believing fables meant to teach boys not to second-guess themselves on the water. Said two missing folk didn’t herald the disappearance of the lake’s water, despite what Meresend’s oldest claimed. It warned of what happened to the careless.

I stared into the void that night. At the empty bed where my brother should’ve slept.

The lake dried up before dawn. My father didn’t laugh.

He was silent in the following days and only murmured at the funeral as we stood over the coffin he’d built. “Open and empty.”

I stared at the void. A bed never to be filled.

“Like the lake.” My mother’s words were spat like an accusation.

That was the last time I heard my father laugh. But the first I heard my mother curse him.