When he went diving it was a little past midnight, though he was technically not supposed to be there. There weren't any gates around, despite all the new renovations to the little tourist trap so it wasn't quite trespassing. He only wanted to know more about the village without the usual crowd clamouring over every inch of it.
The focal point was the church which hadn't surfaced since the mid 1100's, remaining a brick shell at the bottom of the lake. It was a popular diving spot thanks to the community adding informative plaques and smaller buildings around it to recreate the surrounding village. None of the signs admitted that the church was the only original structure, much less how it came to be there or why there was no record of the settlement that had been there before the lake expanded.
From other local records it is only known that there was a sudden storm, possibly a tornado according to some sources. The entire village holed themselves up inside the church and went down with it which is as much as anyone of the time saw fit to write (that survived to this day, of course).
The interior of the sunken church showed none of the usual signs that anyone had been in there - graffiti, human remains, tools buried underneath the sand covered flooring etcetera. If there weren't written records from neighbouring churches it would be all too easy to assume that there had never been a settlement around it at all, much less that they had all hidden inside the church during a storm and sunk all together.
As he shone his torch around his light fell onto the remains of the stone pulpit where sermons would be given from to the local God-Fearing-Folk. He swam closer to it, wanting to stand there for the thrill of it, to be where a priest had been hundreds of years ago, now little more than worn rock covered in lake weeds.
It took him a while to notice that the water was draining, in fact it took him until the newly formed doors slammed shut behind him just as his flippers touched the pulpit floor. He turned to see the water ending just above his head and sinking by the second. As it left he found himself staring into the anxious eyes of at least fifty people of all ages staring back up at him from wooden benches.
They all wore similar sack-ish clothing in varying shades of brown and green as they clutched rosaries and held their children close. He would have stood up there for longer but a polite cough behind him startled him so that he nearly fell over the ledge. An old man dressed as the very picture of an old fashioned monk waited a few steps down, Bible in his hands and a look of fearful bewilderment upon his face.
The diver awkwardly shuffled past him and waited at the base of the steps until he was beckoned to a bench by a parishioner. When he had seated himself the sermon began in...modern English. The monk was speaking directly to the diver and somehow the more he spoke the louder the sound of wind was until it howled all around them.
The monk kept calling the congregation "Children of Noah", claiming that them being inside the church had kept them safe all these years, for them to reappear every night and continue to praise God Almighty for giving them eternal life to worship him in peace and safety. His every pause was echoed with thunderous Amen from the people around him, all fervently believing that they came ti life each night.
The diver sat there in confused and awed silence, wondering if they were in fact alive or if he was suffering from some sort of oxygen deprivation as he still hadn't removed his mask. He listened as several people around him spoke of their fears during the Great Storm and how the windows had shattered upon them as the waters crashed into the church, leaving them formerly at the bottom of a valley and now inside of a new lake.
As it turned out, they remembered drowning in vivid detail and how the bodies of the young, weak and other early dead floated to the ceiling "like angels". It was a sign to them that they had all been saved. Saved yet sentenced to repeat the drowning every night after they had finished their prayer. He was lucky enough to be with them to witness this.
Nothing stays to fresh in the mind as the dying spasms of a village. As their bodies drift past you gradually bloating. As the glazed eyes of an infant meet yours, their little legs still kicking in their mother's lax arms while their older sibling still clings on beside them.
Once the church was fully flooded their bodies seemed to fade into the water, the sand covered the tiles, the benches decayed to nothing all in a matter of minutes. Within an hour it was like nothing had happened there for nine hundred years.
The focal point was the church which hadn't surfaced since the mid 1100's, remaining a brick shell at the bottom of the lake. It was a popular diving spot thanks to the community adding informative plaques and smaller buildings around it to recreate the surrounding village. None of the signs admitted that the church was the only original structure, much less how it came to be there or why there was no record of the settlement that had been there before the lake expanded.
From other local records it is only known that there was a sudden storm, possibly a tornado according to some sources. The entire village holed themselves up inside the church and went down with it which is as much as anyone of the time saw fit to write (that survived to this day, of course).
The interior of the sunken church showed none of the usual signs that anyone had been in there - graffiti, human remains, tools buried underneath the sand covered flooring etcetera. If there weren't written records from neighbouring churches it would be all too easy to assume that there had never been a settlement around it at all, much less that they had all hidden inside the church during a storm and sunk all together.
As he shone his torch around his light fell onto the remains of the stone pulpit where sermons would be given from to the local God-Fearing-Folk. He swam closer to it, wanting to stand there for the thrill of it, to be where a priest had been hundreds of years ago, now little more than worn rock covered in lake weeds.
It took him a while to notice that the water was draining, in fact it took him until the newly formed doors slammed shut behind him just as his flippers touched the pulpit floor. He turned to see the water ending just above his head and sinking by the second. As it left he found himself staring into the anxious eyes of at least fifty people of all ages staring back up at him from wooden benches.
They all wore similar sack-ish clothing in varying shades of brown and green as they clutched rosaries and held their children close. He would have stood up there for longer but a polite cough behind him startled him so that he nearly fell over the ledge. An old man dressed as the very picture of an old fashioned monk waited a few steps down, Bible in his hands and a look of fearful bewilderment upon his face.
The diver awkwardly shuffled past him and waited at the base of the steps until he was beckoned to a bench by a parishioner. When he had seated himself the sermon began in...modern English. The monk was speaking directly to the diver and somehow the more he spoke the louder the sound of wind was until it howled all around them.
The monk kept calling the congregation "Children of Noah", claiming that them being inside the church had kept them safe all these years, for them to reappear every night and continue to praise God Almighty for giving them eternal life to worship him in peace and safety. His every pause was echoed with thunderous Amen from the people around him, all fervently believing that they came ti life each night.
The diver sat there in confused and awed silence, wondering if they were in fact alive or if he was suffering from some sort of oxygen deprivation as he still hadn't removed his mask. He listened as several people around him spoke of their fears during the Great Storm and how the windows had shattered upon them as the waters crashed into the church, leaving them formerly at the bottom of a valley and now inside of a new lake.
As it turned out, they remembered drowning in vivid detail and how the bodies of the young, weak and other early dead floated to the ceiling "like angels". It was a sign to them that they had all been saved. Saved yet sentenced to repeat the drowning every night after they had finished their prayer. He was lucky enough to be with them to witness this.
Nothing stays to fresh in the mind as the dying spasms of a village. As their bodies drift past you gradually bloating. As the glazed eyes of an infant meet yours, their little legs still kicking in their mother's lax arms while their older sibling still clings on beside them.
Once the church was fully flooded their bodies seemed to fade into the water, the sand covered the tiles, the benches decayed to nothing all in a matter of minutes. Within an hour it was like nothing had happened there for nine hundred years.
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