Narrator: Stuart H. | Norfolk, England
I heard a bicycle bell while walking the dog beside a drainage ditch. Two quick rings. I moved onto the grass to let the cyclist pass, but nobody came.
It rang again from the reeds below the path.
I called down, thinking someone had come off a bike. The dog planted himself behind my legs. A woman’s voice said, “Here. Down here.”
There was barely any water visible between the reeds. I crouched and pulled a few stems aside. An eye was looking up at me from below the mud. Not a face covered in mud. An open eye in an otherwise smooth patch of it.
I fell backwards and dragged the dog home. My wife phoned for help because she thought someone might still be down there. They searched and found an old bicycle frame. No person.
I wasn’t trying to abandon anyone. I need that understood. I went to the edge because I thought somebody was hurt. But that eye was following my hand before I’d made an opening wide enough to see through.
