Near midnight, Eli appeared again, breathless and pale, carrying his drone case like contraband. He had gone through older footage stored on his laptop, he said, and found another strange morning from months earlier. The pale line was fainter there, but it was unmistakably the same path.
Together they watched the older clip in the blue light of Maggie’s kitchen. Halfway along the line, the water seemed to bubble in tiny patches before smoothing over again. Nora felt a twist of doubt then. Could there be some truth to stories of an underground creature?