Chapter 271

The pool had always been a feature of the neighborhood—a quiet place to escape the heat, where people came to swim, chat, or bask under the sun. But that summer, something changed. The water started to look... wrong.

At first, it was a faint discoloration, almost imperceptible. A few weeks later, a thin film of something oily had begun to collect along the edges. It wasn't enough to keep people away. Not yet.

The first to fall ill was Emily. She had been the one to notice the strange film first, laughing it off as some sort of algae, maybe even the chemicals the city was using to treat the water. It didn't matter. She was too young to worry about something like that. Too carefree. The others had thought the same way.

Emily swam that afternoon, as usual, chatting with her friends about the usual teenage nonsense. The temperature had soared into the 90s, and the air was thick with the scent of chlorine. The sound of splashing, water dripping from sunburned skin, and distant laughter filled the air.

But by evening, Emily had gone silent. She was too tired to move, her skin burning with fever, her stomach churning like it had been set on fire.

Her friends noticed the change first. It didn't take long for them to realize it wasn't just the heat. The sickness spread quickly—tiredness, nausea, fever—and by the second day, Emily was unresponsive, barely able to open her eyes.

By the time anyone thought to call for help, it was too late.

Emily died a few hours later, her body left cold and still. It was a shock, but people still didn't put the pieces together. They thought it was just a freak accident. It wasn't until her body was pulled out of the pool that things started to unravel.

The pool began to smell. It wasn't the usual odor of chlorine or even the faint stink of wet concrete. This was different. It was a foul, pungent stench. One that reminded everyone of something rotten, of decayed things hidden in the dark.

But still, people kept coming. They told themselves it was just a part of the summer heat. A little smell wouldn't stop them from cooling off. It didn't stop Tom and Sara, who were next. Both of them started feeling off after a few hours in the water. They were laughing and chatting, just like Emily had, and then something began to settle over them.

At first, it felt like fatigue, like they had simply worn themselves out. But the weakness got worse. The dizziness crept in, slowly, until they were stumbling, clinging to each other for support. By the time they managed to leave the pool, they could barely stand. Their limbs felt numb, like their bones were turning to liquid.

When the ambulance came, it was already too late. The paramedics did what they could, but the sickness was too fast. Both of them were dead before they could reach the hospital.

It was around that time that the pool was finally closed off. Not because anyone knew what had caused the deaths, but because the city couldn't afford the liability. It was easier to just shut it down and pretend nothing was wrong. They didn't even bother to drain the water.

A week passed, and the deaths stopped. People moved on. It was just another tragedy that could be swept under the rug. But the pool didn't stop.

It waited.

A month after the last death, Alex, a young man who used to hang out at the pool every day, decided to sneak in after dark. The gate was still locked, but it was nothing a bit of wire-cutting couldn't fix. He hadn't really expected anything. He just wanted to see if the place had changed. Maybe to get a glimpse of the water again.

What he found was worse than anything he could have imagined.

The pool water had turned black. Not murky. Not deep green or dark blue. Black. Like the night. It looked thick, as though something inside was moving, shifting under the surface. A thin layer of foam clung to the edge, and the smell... it was worse now. So much worse.

The odor was sharp, the kind that made your chest tighten and your stomach turn. It was a scent he couldn't name, but it burned the inside of his nostrils, filling his mind with something ancient and wrong.

And then there were the bodies.

He saw them first from the corner of his eye, half-submerged in the water, their limbs twisted in grotesque angles. They didn't move, but Alex knew they weren't dead. Not really. The bodies of the drowned had been pulled from the pool before, but these... these were different. They didn't look like people who had drowned.

They looked... wasted. Their faces bloated, their eyes missing. Something had replaced their flesh. A thick, brownish slime had dripped from their mouths, their ears, their noses, as if they had been drowned in something far worse than water.

Alex stumbled back, his heart pounding in his chest. His mind screamed at him to turn and leave. But then, there was movement—slow, but unmistakable.

The bodies began to twitch. At first, it was subtle, a jerk of the arm, the flex of a finger. But then they moved in unison, dragging themselves toward the shallow end of the pool, their gurgling sounds muffled by the thick sludge that had overtaken them.

Alex's throat tightened. He was too far in now. He had to get out.

But before he could make a move, something brushed against his ankle, something soft, wet, and cold. He looked down, and there, pressing itself against his leg, was a hand.

A hand that had been submerged for too long.

The fingers were slick with the same disgusting brown goo that clung to the bodies. The hand clenched around his ankle, pulling him down. Panic hit him like a freight train, but before he could scream, the figure surfaced, its bloated face gaping open, filled with what could only be described as a rotting, smelly mask of sewage.

Alex's scream was muffled by the water. He tried to pull himself free, but the grip tightened. The dark substance, thick and viscous, poured into his throat as he struggled, choking on it. His eyes rolled back in his head, and everything went numb. His mind was lost to the suffocating stench, his body consumed by the very thing he had once splashed through in summer.

The last thing Alex felt before his body went cold and stiff was the dark, creeping sensation spreading over him, turning his flesh into something alien, something unrecognizable. His thoughts died slowly, absorbed into the fetid slurry that was now his new home.

And then he was gone, swallowed by the pool, the last echo of his life fading beneath the surface.

When the police arrived, the pool had become something else entirely. It was no longer just a place of death. It was a breeding ground, an incubator for something worse. The bodies of Alex and the others had turned into something new—creatures driven by nothing but the urge to feed, to spread whatever had infected them. They stumbled, their bodies contorted and their limbs stiff, the foul stench clinging to them like a shroud.

It wasn't until they reached the pool that the police realized the full horror of it. The water had stopped moving. No ripples, no current. It was just a stagnant pit, full of corpses and creatures whose souls had long since died. It didn't matter if the pool was drained now. It was too late.

The last officer was the first to notice the darkness creeping from the water. Something had seeped into the ground. Something had begun to spread, filling the earth with its rot, with its hunger.

And the cycle would continue. There would be no end.

The pool had claimed its final victims. And then, it would wait for the next.