The Pale Bride of Lanier

The May moon hung like a drowned coin over Lake Lanier, its light slicking the black water with a sheen that seemed almost alive. I was the night deputy, and the radio had been spitting static all evening, as if the lake itself was trying to speak. Then the calls came—three, four, five of them, voices cracking with terror: a girl in a white dress, floating on the water, just beyond the old docks. I drove out to the shore, my flashlight cutting a weak beam through the fog that rolled off the surface like breath. There she was, or there she seemed to be—a pale figure, arms outstretched, her dress billowing in a wind that didn’t touch the trees. I called out, but she didn’t move. I waded in, the cold seizing my boots, and as I reached for her, she dissolved into ripples, leaving only the echo of a child’s laugh. We searched for hours, boats crisscrossing the dark, but found nothing. Days later, divers pulled up a car from the depths, its windows like empty eyes, and inside, a skeleton wrapped in a tattered white dress, its fingers still reaching for the surface. They say she was a bride who drove off the bridge in 1958, but the lake keeps her young, keeps her hungry. Now, on moonlit nights, she rises again, and the water calls to the living, promising a cold embrace. I’ve seen her face in my dreams, and I know she’s waiting for me to join her beneath the waves.