Chapter 5: Echoes, Shadows, and Other (Not Funny) Terrifying Distractions

By the fifth morning, I was convinced the Loch was trolling me personally. Every day: eyeliner sharp, coffee lethal, phone charged, hope barely flickering like the last bulb in a gas station restroom. And still—zero monsters, zero content, zero progress.

But today felt… different.

Not “different” like Elliot with a new pen or me discovering a new filter. Different like the air itself had weight, like the mist hanging above the water was thicker, heavier, watching. Yes, watching. Don’t ask me how fog can watch you, but I swear it was sizing me up like I was an appetizer at some spectral buffet.

I tried to film a quick intro for my vlog, all moody mist and “unsolved mystery vibes,” but Elliot photobombed me by crouching in the background like a cryptid in khakis.

“Move,” I hissed.

“I’m conducting a humidity reading,” he hissed back, clutching his thermometer like it was a blade.

“Cool. I’m conducting an experiment too,” I shot back. “It’s called ‘How long can an audience tolerate a nerd in the frame before they unsubscribe?’”

Elliot, of course, looked like he’d just won the Science Lottery. His eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas, except instead of toys, Santa brought him humidity.

“Do you feel that?” he whispered, crouching at the water’s edge. “The barometric pressure is unstable. The ions in the atmosphere are… electric.”

I squinted. “Elliot, the only ion I care about is neon, and only if it’s on a nightclub sign. Calm down.”

“No, no,” he insisted, scribbling furiously in his notebook. “This is unprecedented. Fluctuations like this indicate seismic agitation or—” He paused, eyes gleaming. “—or the stirring of something vast beneath us.”

I groaned. “Great. So we’re either about to die in an earthquake, or Nessie’s alarm clock finally went off. Riveting content either way.”

He ignored me, muttering like a deranged prophet. “Note the ripples—non-random, angular deflections. They correspond to geometric harmonics. This isn’t mere fluid motion. This is… communication.”

I choked on my coffee. “You think the lake is texting us? What’s next, Elliot, a knock-knock joke in Morse code?”

“Listen!” he snapped. “It’s a language of the deep. Patterns. Signals. The Loch is speaking.”

I tilted my head. Sure enough, there were ripples—too many, too close, in strange crisscrossing shapes. Not quite fish, not quite wind. For once, my sarcasm wavered.

Elliot launched into a lecture that could have bored paint off a wall. “If these ripple sequences persist, they might indicate a limnological anomaly—a structural rhythm underpinning the hydrodynamic equilibrium.”

I blinked. “Congratulations, you just made ripples sound like they have a mortgage.”

“No, don’t you see?!” His eyes gleamed. “It’s evidence of systemic organization. Perhaps even a supra-ecological intelligence manifesting through aquatic oscillations!”

“Elliot,” I said, deadpan, “if the Loch is intelligent, then right now it’s looking at you and regretting its life choices.”

Elliot looked like he’d been crowned King of Nerdland. “This is monumental! We’re witnessing a paralinguistic aquatic phenomenon. Imagine the implications: interspecies semiotics—”

“Elliot,” I cut in, “if you say ‘semiotics’ again, I’ll semi-automatically drown you.”

Still, I couldn’t deny it: the water looked… wrong. Like something just beneath the surface was dragging its fingers along the skin of the Loch.

I tried to shake it off with humor. “Well, if it’s trying to talk, I hope it speaks TikTok. Otherwise, my audience isn’t interested.”

But inside? Yeah, I was rattled.

Hours stretched. Elliot recorded water temperatures, oxygen levels, the “frequency of anomalous frog calls” (his words, not mine). I rolled my eyes, filmed him looking like a demented weatherman, and pretended I wasn’t checking over my shoulder every two minutes.

At one point, Elliot went full Shakespeare about algae. “Observe this patch, Serha. Its distribution deviates from the expected phototropic gradient. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes,” I said. “It means algae are freeloaders who refuse to follow your nerdy little charts. Like me, except slimier.”

He glared. “It means the ecosystem is disturbed. Something is altering natural growth.”

I snapped my gum. “Yeah, probably your face mask from yesterday. You basically baptized this Loch in bad skincare.”

And yet… I glanced again. The algae had arranged itself strangely, like streaks in a spiral, curling toward the center of the water. It looked almost deliberate.

My stomach tightened.

To make it worse, the water started bubbling—not like a boil, more like… sighing. I swear the Loch exhaled.

Elliot, of course, lost his damn mind. “Gas release! Methane pockets! Possibly a tectonic prelude!”

“Oh, totally,” I said, backing up. “The earth just farted. Groundbreaking science, Elliot. Pun intended.”

He was scribbling faster than I could mock him. “Serha, you don’t understand—the methane concentration could suggest anaerobic microbial colonies under extraordinary pressure!”

“Translation,” I told my camera: “Loch farts are serious business. Next he’s going to name them after himself. Marsh Gas. Coming to shelves near you.”

Then came the sounds.

Not ducks. Not frogs. Not wind. Something else. A low vibration, so faint I thought I’d imagined it. Then another—like a groan from beneath the earth, rolling under the surface.

Elliot froze mid-scribble. “Did you hear that?”

I tried to laugh it off. “Probably a cow farting three fields over.”

He shook his head, eyes wide. “No. That was resonance. Subaqueous resonance. The Loch is… alive.”

“Elliot, sweetie,” I said, clutching my phone like a rosary, “if the Loch is alive, I’m billing it for emotional damages.”

The noise came again, louder this time. A pulse. A heartbeat? No, impossible. But my skin prickled.

Suddenly, even I didn’t want to joke anymore.

Just then, a frog croaked behind us—loud, guttural, like a demon choking on bubble tea. I jumped so high I nearly threw my phone into the water.

Elliot spun, notebook raised like it was a holy shield. “Did you hear that tonal deviation?! That was a distress call!”

“Distress?!” I shrieked. “It’s a frog, not a freaking violin concerto!”

The frog croaked again. Longer this time. Almost… echoing? Like something in the Loch was answering.

I grabbed Elliot’s sleeve. “If another frog starts harmonizing, I’m leaving you here to start the first amphibian boy band.”

The mist thickened. Shadows curled across the water, stretching, bending. For the first time since we’d started, Elliot shut up. Dead quiet. He stared, pale, as something broke the surface far out in the distance.

A shape. Brief. Long. Then gone.

“Was that—?” I whispered.

“Wave interference,” Elliot said automatically, but his voice cracked.

“Oh my god,” I hissed, grabbing his sleeve. “Elliot. You’re scared. You. Mister ‘Everything’s a Pattern.’ You’re terrified.”

He didn’t answer. Just stared at the water, notebook forgotten, calculator dangling uselessly from his fingers.

I couldn’t resist one last jab, even through my own fear. “Wow. Historic moment. The Loch finally shut you up. Write that in your nerd diary.”

But my laugh was hollow. I was trembling too.

We sat in silence for what felt like forever. Just us, the mist, and the water’s slow, unnatural breathing.

Then, mercifully, Elliot found his voice. “We… should withdraw. For now. For safety.”

I exhaled, shaky. “Wow. I never thought I’d hear you say that. Safety over science? Alert the Nobel committee.”

“It’s not fear,” he insisted weakly. “It’s prudence.”

“Uh-huh,” I smirked, though my heart was racing. “And me leaving my followers hanging is just… strategic mystery marketing.”

But in truth, we were both rattled to the bone. The sarcasm was the only shield left.

We gathered our things in silence, glancing back at the Loch as if it might leap out and swallow us whole. The ripples still danced in impossible patterns. The mist still hung too low, too heavy, too alive.

And then—because fate has a cruel sense of humor—my phone glitched. Screen froze. Camera locked on record. Except the feed showed… not us. Not the mist. Something else.

A shape. Like a face pressed against the other side of the lens, but warped, stretched, dripping with static.

I screamed, dropped the phone, and when I picked it up—the feed was normal again. Just me, pale and shaking.

Elliot didn’t even mock me. He just whispered: “Document everything.” His hand was trembling too much to write.

As we reached the path back toward the village, I stopped. “You know what? Let’s tell people we left because—because the Loch ruins natural lighting. Yeah. Too much fog, kills the vibe. Makes my jawline look weird on camera.”

Elliot actually nodded solemnly, clutching his mud-stained notebook like a life raft. “Yes. Exactly. Poor lighting. Entirely unsuitable for rigorous documentation.”

And just like that, we had our excuse: not terror, not shadows, not whatever crawled beneath the waves—just bad lighting.

Day five: abandoned due to unflattering mist. And maybe, just maybe, because for once we realized the Loch might actually be looking back.