“A Light Beneath the Docks”

Part I 

The tires hissed over gravel as Alexis Kidd turned off the county road and followed a winding lane that sloped toward the lake. The air cooled the deeper she went into the trees. A thin mist hung in the birches like gauze, and the occasional glimpse of water through the trunks flashed with dull metal light. Late autumn had stripped the hills to bones. The silence pressed against the car windows, broken only by the rattle of her art supplies in the back seat.

She hadn’t painted for nearly six months. The burnout came after her last exhibition—an abstract series that critics described as “technically skilled but emotionally inert.” She’d read that review too many times, like scratching at a scab. So she’d rented this place—a month by the water, away from gallery calls and fluorescent studios—hoping the quiet might give her something real to work with again.

The road ended at a small clearing where a weather-beaten cottage sat against the shore. The dock extended like a gray finger into the still water. A figure waited on the porch—an older woman in a wool coat, holding a key ring that caught what little sun there was.

“Ms. Kidd?” she called as Alexis stepped out, stretching her cramped legs.

“Alexis, please. You must be Ellen Drummond.”

Ellen nodded. “That’s right. Not many come this time of year. You’ll have the lake mostly to yourself.”

The woman’s voice had a practiced calm, but her eyes drifted toward the dock when she said it. She pressed the keys into Alexis’s palm. “It’s simple living here. Wood stove if you need heat. Tap water’s fine. And don’t worry about the old brushes in the shed—leftovers from another renter. Artists, mostly.”

“Any still around?” Alexis asked, forcing a polite smile.

Ellen’s answer came too quickly. “No. Not for a while.”

Inside, the cottage smelled faintly of linseed oil and mildew. The main room was cluttered but tidy: a narrow table, an empty easel by the window, a shelf stacked with yellowed sketchbooks. Alexis set down her bag and listened to the quiet. It wasn’t the same silence as the city—this was older, thicker. Even the wind seemed to move cautiously here.

She walked through the rooms, each one smaller than the last. The bedroom faced the lake; its single window framed the dock like a painting. The water beyond it was perfectly still, a muted mirror of gray sky.

When she unpacked her paints, the familiar smell filled the space—comforting, almost medicinal. She ran a finger along the edge of the old easel. It wobbled slightly, as though someone had used it hard and often. The grooves in the wood were crusted with dried pigment. She could imagine the other artists here—anonymous hands mixing, brushing, scraping—until exhaustion or inspiration ran them dry.

By dusk, a light drizzle had begun. The lake darkened to slate. Alexis made tea on the stovetop, sat by the window, and tried to sketch the shoreline. Her lines were clumsy, unmotivated. She abandoned the pencil halfway through and stared instead at the reflection of the cottage lights on the glass—two small smears trembling on the water’s surface.

A faint knock startled her. Ellen stood outside, coat buttoned high, face pale in the rain.

“I forgot to mention,” the woman said, “the dock can get slick after dark. And… if you see lights in the water, best to ignore them. The fishermen say it’s minerals. Nothing to worry about.”

Alexis frowned. “Lights?”

Ellen smiled, but her eyes didn’t. “Old stories. Every lake’s got a few.”

She left without further explanation.

After locking up, Alexis walked to the bedroom and pulled back the curtain. The lake reflected no stars, only the vague outline of the dock. A single bulb over the door cast a cone of yellow across the boards. Beyond that—nothing. The darkness looked absolute.

She undressed, slid into bed, and listened to the cottage settle. The wood creaked with temperature changes, the pipes clanked softly. Then she heard it: a wet, rhythmic sound, faint but steady—lap, lap, lap—as if the water were licking the pilings.

She turned on her side, tried to ignore it.

But the rhythm persisted.

Finally, unable to sleep, she rose and went to the window again. The night air pressed against the glass, thick with mist. Somewhere beneath the dock, something moved—subtle, like a hand brushing beneath silk. She told herself it was the reflection of the porch light shifting in the water. Nothing more.

The next morning dawned with a sky the color of pewter. Alexis stepped outside, coffee steaming in her hand, and looked down at the dock. Dew glistened on the boards, but the lake below was perfectly still. She crouched to peer between the slats. Nothing. Only darkness and her own faint reflection staring back.

By mid-afternoon, she’d arranged her materials and opened the window to let in the lake air. The scent of damp earth mixed with turpentine, oddly pleasant. She felt calmer than she had in months. She began sketching again, letting her hand move without thought. The lines formed the shape of the dock extending over still water, but she stopped abruptly when her pencil caught something unexpected—a soft shimmer beneath it, drawn instinctively.

She hadn’t meant to add it. It was just… there.

Outside, the sunlight dimmed as clouds gathered. The lake’s surface flickered, briefly catching a pallid glow before smoothing over again. Alexis looked from her sketch to the window and back, uneasy.

She put the pencil down. “Minerals,” she murmured, echoing Ellen’s voice. “Just minerals.”

But when she turned the page over, faint streaks of luminescent pigment had bled through the paper—though she hadn’t used paint. They pulsed faintly, like something alive.

Part II

The clock read 2:11 when Alexis gave up on sleep. Wind had fallen away, and the cottage felt suspended—no traffic, no insects, only the slow tick from the stove’s cooling metal. She put on a sweatshirt and stepped outside with a small flashlight.

Fog lay low across the lake, a thin sheet drifting against the pilings. The dock boards were damp and slick, the wood slightly soft under her bare feet. She clicked off the flashlight halfway down, letting her eyes adjust. The dark wasn’t complete; a gray cast rose from the water as if dawn had changed its mind and left the scene unfinished.

A soft thump sounded under the boards. Then another, spaced like a heartbeat. She crouched and peered between the slats.

Light moved below.

Not a beam. Not a reflection. It bulged and thinned like a pulse traveling through a vein—pale turquoise that shifted toward gold at the edges. It kept its shape even when the surface rippled, hugging the under-dock shadow as if it belonged there.

Alexis leaned forward until the wood mark pressed a line across her knee. The glow slowed, then gathered into a blur brighter than any starlight would be. For a moment she thought she could see lines inside it, faint strokes crossing each other, a mesh of color like brushwork caught in water.

The thumps stopped. The light drifted out from under the dock and flattened into a wide oval. It hung at a depth she couldn’t judge, neither near nor far. When she reached for the flashlight, the oval tightened, as if wary. She kept the light off and held still. The oval relaxed and drifted back under the boards, settling in a pocket of shadow.

She whispered, “Minerals,” but her voice sounded thin, like she was speaking into a closet.

When she finally stood, her legs ached from the crouch. The fog had thickened. She walked back to the cottage without turning her light on. Once inside, she sat at the table, opened her sketchbook, and drew from memory—first the dock, then the rectangle of shadow, then the shape of the glow. Her pencil kept wanting to curve, to repeat the same oval. She made herself stop, dated the page, and closed the book as if that would contain it.

Morning came slow and lid-colored. Coffee helped. The air through the open window smelled of wet wood and cold mud. The night’s edges blunted, and rational explanations returned: phosphorus, disturbed silt, some trick of angle. She told herself to test it. Paint it once, get it out of her system.

She stretched a small canvas and laid out ultramarine, phthalo green, a touch of cadmium yellow. The mixture turned too vivid, so she added gray, then a trace of white. The color settled into something close to what she’d seen—blue-green with a thin rind of warmth around it. She began with the long lines of the dock, then slowed near the water. The brush moved more easily than it should have, gliding as if the canvas had been oiled an extra time. The oval formed without planning. A faint ring appeared at its edge where her bristles had barely touched down, a halo she hadn’t intended.

She stepped back. The glow sat in the paint like a coin under shallow water.

Alexis set the canvas on the sill to dry and cleaned her brush. The solvent’s sharpness cut through the room. When she looked back, the oval seemed a fraction farther to the left. She told herself she’d misjudged her starting point, rotated the canvas, and left it alone.

By noon, a pickup rumbled into the clearing. A tall man in work clothes climbed out, carrying a toolbox and a new plank. He tipped two fingers from his cap and walked straight to the dock.

“Morning,” he called without looking up. “Theo Kellerman. Ellen sent me to fix a board.”

Alexis followed. Theo knelt, pried up a warped plank, and checked the supports. He worked quickly, motions spare and practiced. When he had the new board in place, he stood and scanned the underside.

“Lose anything off the dock?” he asked.

“No.”

“Sometimes people feed the bass. Whole place lights up when that happens.”

“Lights up how?” she said.

He glanced at her, then at the lake. “Thought you were a painter.”

“I am.”

“Then you’ll know this: reflections don’t hold their shape when the water moves. If you see something that doesn’t smear, it’s not a reflection.”

He wiped his hands on a rag. “Stay off here at night. Boards get slick.” He paused. “Some folks see things this time of year. Lake turns ideas around and sends ’em back. You watch long enough, you’ll think it’s talking.”

She tried to laugh it off and failed. “I’m not that suggestible.”

He nodded once, not agreeing or disagreeing. “Ellen wouldn’t rent to you if she thought you were. Just remember: the lake remembers what you show it.”

After he left, Alexis returned to the cottage. The painted oval looked off again, as if the tide inside the pigment had shifted. She held the canvas under the window light and ran a fingernail lightly over the surface. Smooth. No raised edges. No trick of texture. Still, something about the center read as deeper than the rest, a faint dark that wasn’t a color so much as an invitation to look longer.

She set the canvas on the easel and mixed a thin glaze, thinking she’d dull the glow. The brush hovered, then lowered, and the glaze bled outward in a soft ring. In the wet edge she caught a detail she hadn’t put there: a short ladder fixed to a piling, two rungs visible. She hadn’t painted the ladder at all.

She backed away and nearly bumped the table. The room smelled heavier with turpentine now, and a cool draft pushed across her ankles from the door. The lake sound picked up: lap, lap, lap.

She pressed her hands flat on the table until the sensation of movement eased. Then she took the canvas off the easel and set it face-in against the wall.

Before dusk she walked the dock again, telling herself it was only to check Theo’s repair. When she reached the end, she stared down into the same patch of shadow. The glow was there almost immediately, as if it had been waiting for her to arrive. It flattened and brightened, then pulsed once, and she felt the answer in her ribs.

“Just minerals,” she said, but the words had no weight.

She stayed until the cold reached her feet and made the boards ache. When she finally stepped back onto shore, she knew she would paint it again.

Part III

That night, the lake returned to her dreams.

Alexis floated in water so still she could see herself beneath the surface, an inverted twin reaching up through the mirror. Her hands held a brush that moved without command, bristles sweeping through liquid color that spread in ribbons of green and gold. Each stroke left a trail that pulsed faintly, glowing like veins under translucent skin. The deeper she painted, the more the light thickened around her until she could no longer tell where her arm ended and the color began.

When she woke, the smell of oil paint clung to the air. Her hand still gripped a brush.

She sat up slowly, disoriented. Morning light leaked through the curtains in narrow bands, and something shimmered on the easel by the window. A new canvas stood there, nearly finished—paint still wet, streaks of blue-green coiling beneath the surface like captured water.

She hadn’t painted it.

The realization crawled through her chest as she approached. The image was unmistakable: the dock under moonlight, the lake calm, and the same soft oval of light glimmering just below the boards. It was rendered with her palette, her technique—but she couldn’t remember picking up a brush, let alone standing long enough to make it.

The paint surface rippled when she touched it, a subtle movement like the wake of a small fish. She jerked her hand back. The motion stilled.

“Sleepwalking,” she muttered. “That’s all.”

But the brush she’d found in her hand had a tag burned into the wood—L.S. carved faintly near the ferrule. Lucien Sable. The name from the old gallery catalogs she’d browsed years ago. He’d been one of those mythic painters whose final collection vanished after his death, rumored stolen or destroyed.

She set the brush down carefully and opened the window for air. Outside, fog clung low over the lake. A slow tapping came from below—water against the dock’s supports. She tried to convince herself it was the rhythm of the waves, but the pattern was too regular.

She forced her attention back to the painting. Beneath the main glow, faint shapes hid in the brushwork—small ridges of paint forming half-seen outlines. At first she thought they were stones on the lakebed, but the longer she stared, the more they resembled hands.

Alexis stepped away. Her palms itched, slick with sweat.

She spent the rest of the day trying not to look at the canvas. She cleaned the kitchen, reorganized the paints, anything to stay busy. But by afternoon, curiosity started to smother fear. She sat down again, mixing new pigments to replicate the glow from memory.

The palette knife clinked against the glass jar. When she wiped her fingers on a rag, she noticed faint shimmer clinging to her skin—pearlescent residue that refused to wash off. The more she scrubbed, the more it spread, leaving her fingertips faintly luminescent in shadow.

She stared at her hands under the lamplight. The glow wasn’t constant; it pulsed.

By late evening, she began hearing whispers beneath the hum of the stove. They weren’t words so much as tonal shifts, like the rise and fall of speech in another language. When she dipped her brush in thinner, the sound swelled, a faint chorus of syllables caught just below understanding.

“Add reflection,” something breathed between the crackle of the wood stove.

She froze.

Her eyes darted to the window, then to the easel. The lake outside was invisible through fog, but she could feel its presence—the vast weight of still water pressing against the shore.

The voice came again, softer. “Add reflection.”

Her pulse hammered. She looked back at the wet canvas. A spot near the top seemed to darken, as though waiting. She lifted the brush before she could think better of it and drew a thin mirrored streak above the light, duplicating the oval as it might appear if seen twice.

The voice stopped.

When she stepped back, the effect was uncanny. The reflection she’d painted was reversed—the glow sat where her own would not have appeared, as though the lake itself had painted its side of the exchange.

Alexis set the brush down, trembling. She turned on every lamp in the cottage and forced herself to sit at the table. But even in bright light, the edges of the room felt porous. She could swear she heard the faint, steady rhythm of lapping water echoing through the floorboards.

By midnight, her exhaustion returned. She lay in bed and closed her eyes, but the afterimage of the painting burned behind her lids: the light beneath, the reflection above, both trembling in sync.

Sleep didn’t come easily. When it did, she dreamed again of Lucien Sable. He stood knee-deep in the lake, palette in hand, eyes hollow and shining like the light below. His mouth opened, and bubbles rose. Each one held an image—a dock, a window, a woman painting.

Her own face stared back from the last bubble before it burst.

Alexis woke gasping. The lamp she’d left on was dead, its bulb cold. The cottage smelled of turpentine and something faintly sweet, like lake algae drying in the sun. She stumbled to the easel. The painting was dry now, unnaturally fast for oil. The reflected oval had sharpened, gaining definition that wasn’t there before.

Inside it, a blurred silhouette hovered just below the surface.

Her reflection—or someone else’s.

She turned the canvas toward the wall and sat on the edge of the bed until dawn, hands slick with sweat and pearlescent residue, whispering that it was only paint, only fatigue.

But through the cracks in the boards, she swore she saw faint light seeping up from the lake, tracing lines across the floor in the shape of her own unfinished signature.

Part IV

The next morning came too bright, too sharp. Alexis pulled the curtain aside and blinked into the gray light that rolled off the lake. The painting still faced the wall. She didn’t want to look at it, but its presence filled the room like an unspoken question.

She made coffee, but the smell of oil paint clung stronger than the roast. When she tried to open the window for air, her fingertips left faint pearlescent streaks on the latch—whatever had stained her hands hadn’t faded. She rubbed them against her jeans, but the shimmer only spread.

She needed to get out.

The town library sat at the end of a street that looked almost abandoned, its storefronts shuttered for the season. Inside, the air was dry and smelled faintly of newsprint. The librarian, a soft-spoken man with wire glasses, perked up when she asked about Mirror Lake’s history.

“Plenty of ghost stories,” he said, typing slowly on an old computer. “But if you’re interested in art, there was a painter—Lucien Sable. Spent a few summers out here about twenty years back. Brilliant work, from what people said. Then he just… stopped showing up anywhere.”

“Stopped how?” Alexis asked.

“Disappeared.” He shrugged. “Police said he drowned. No body found. Same thing happened with another artist about five years later. Ellen Drummond rented to both, if I’m remembering right.”

The librarian searched a folder and handed her a faded photocopy: “Local Painter Missing: Authorities Continue Search of Mirror Lake.” The grainy image showed a man standing beside a dock that looked exactly like hers. Behind him, light rippled on the water—too bright to be a trick of the camera.

When she looked closer, she noticed something else. In the background, near the edge of the frame, stood an easel on the dock. The canvas was blank, but the light in the photograph seemed to bend around it.

Ellen answered the door before Alexis could knock twice. The old woman’s expression wavered between surprise and resignation.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask about him,” she said.

“You knew Lucien Sable.”

“Everyone did, back then.” Ellen poured tea and motioned for Alexis to sit. “He painted like he was racing something. Said the lake showed him things. I thought he meant reflections, storms, the usual romantic nonsense. But he’d come in at night covered in paint that glowed like fish scales.”

Alexis’s stomach twisted. “What happened to him?”

Ellen’s eyes shifted toward the window. “He finished a painting no one ever saw. Said it was his masterpiece. I found the easel overturned on the dock the next morning. The lake was still glowing. I burned what was left of his canvases.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t dry. Paint should dry.” Ellen’s voice trembled. “But it kept moving. Even in the fire.”

She looked at Alexis with something like pity. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

Alexis didn’t answer. She couldn’t lie convincingly, and Ellen’s silence afterward said she didn’t need to.

“If you’re smart,” Ellen said, “you’ll leave before it starts asking you to paint again.”

Back at the cottage, the lake lay motionless beneath a bruised sky. The easel stood where she’d left it. When she turned the painting around, the image had changed.

The reflection—the second oval she’d painted—was gone. Only the original glow remained, brighter than before. At its center, faint outlines spiraled upward, as if something beneath the surface were beginning to climb.

Alexis dragged the canvas into the kitchen and propped it by the wood stove. She tried to light a match, but it snapped in half. The second one fizzled out. The air in the cottage felt damp, heavy. It took six tries before the fire caught, but the moment she lifted the painting toward the flame, the edges slicked with moisture. The paint beaded like sweat.

And then the glow began to pulse.

She stumbled back, nearly tripping over the chair. The heartbeat rhythm from the dock returned, echoing through the floor. She could almost feel it moving beneath her bare feet—steady, patient, like something breathing.

By evening she’d convinced herself to search the attic. Ellen had mentioned old supplies; maybe something there would explain what was happening.

The trapdoor creaked open, releasing a cold draft that smelled faintly metallic. Dust motes hung in her flashlight beam like suspended ash. In the far corner, a wooden crate sat beneath a tarp. She lifted the lid.

Inside lay a small set of brushes, their handles darkened by use. The ferrules gleamed faintly in the beam, etched with the same initials: L.S. Beneath them, jars of pigment rested in straw, each labeled in Lucien’s handwriting. The powder inside emitted a faint, sickly glow—soft at first, then stronger when her shadow crossed it.

The crate hummed.

Not loudly, but deep—like a faint vibration inside her chest, matching her pulse. When she reached to close the lid, the sound grew stronger. The jars rattled, clinking against one another as though urging to be opened.

She slammed the lid and staggered back. For a moment the glow dimmed, then one of the jars cracked down its side with a soft pop. A wisp of golden dust leaked out, curling upward before dissolving in the air.

The hum stopped.

But when she descended the ladder, the lake outside flickered once, reflecting the color she’d just seen.

That night, Alexis tried not to paint. She poured herself a drink, turned on the radio, even read from one of the sketchbooks left behind by another tenant. But every page ended in the same motif: water, reflection, light beneath.

Her thoughts drifted back to the attic, to the hum that had matched her heartbeat. She could still feel it faintly in her ribs.

Near midnight, she heard movement. Not outside—inside.

A faint slosh came from the corner. The canvas leaned against the wall where she’d left it, but the sound came from it, not the lake. She turned, frozen.

The glow had returned, brighter now, painting the ceiling with waves of pale blue. The surface of the painting rippled like water in a bowl. For a breathless moment, she saw her own reflection looking back at her from inside the frame—blurry, inverted, and smiling faintly.

Her knees nearly gave out. She reached for the nearest object—a palette knife—and slashed the canvas from corner to corner. Wet paint sprayed her arm. The light went out instantly, leaving the cottage in shadow.

She dropped the knife and collapsed into the chair, shaking.

For a long time, she didn’t move. The only sound was the lake’s distant whisper against the dock. But when she finally dared to look, the torn edges of the painting were already knitting back together, sealing themselves with a faint shimmer.

Part V