The Anchor

The third story in Dark Music returns to Snow's more macabre and weird side, but we begin to see some themes Snow revisits.

A young man named Ailil loves boating on the lake at night, surrounded by nature and peace. One night, though, he sees a girl in cabin at the side of the lake, so lovely, that she seems to be a human version of everything he loves about the lake. They spend a night together, but the next morning, she is gone, and Ailil feels an urging to leave the lake. He begins pulling up the anchor to his boat.

And then Ailil saw that which sent him forever from the lake, never to return. Caught on a fork of the anchor was a human skeleton, dripping with mud and ooze, and long divested of the clothing of flesh which Ailil knew in a terrible moment had once been white, and tinged with the pallor of finely chiseled ivory.