FIRST IT’S JUST A HAND. A BLUE HAND—THE GRAYISH blue of a corpse. And then a second hand emerges from the lake, scraping at the rock shelf with grotesque jagged claws as the monster drags its hideous form out of the lake. A bald head emerges, skin stretched tight over an elongated skull. Its bulbous eyes blink at us, see-through vertical lids flicking inward and outward. A skeletal body follows, its protruding spine curved and crested. It hunches over and oozes mucus as it inches toward us.
The blond girl . . . BethAnn . . . grabs my arm and clutches me so tightly that her fingernails bite into my skin. “Oh my God, oh my God,” she chants, wheezing with fear. The dark-haired girl is on my other side, and is silently backing away.
The thing is out of the water now and crawls slowly on all fours, its head raised, blinking obscenely at us. It looks like it crawled straight out of a horror film, but no effects team could create something this gruesome. Its mouth hangs open, and green slime drips from pointed white teeth as sharp as blades. Terror chokes me. I feel my head nod forward and my knees grow weak. No, not now! I grab my forearm and focus on my tattoo: “DFF” inked in curly Gothic letters. I breathe in deeply and feel my strength return.
I have to calm myself so I won’t get too emotional and collapse. Surely something I’ve seen is scarier than this, I reason. How about The Ring? The Japanese version. That was terrifying, and I watched it so many times it made me yawn. I glance back at the monster, and it slowly lifts its head to look me in the eyes, and I’m paralyzed by shock and confusion. Although the grotesque features mask any sense of humanity, there is something there that strikes a chord deep in me. For a moment, I have the craziest feeling that something is familiar about the creature. Something is familiar about all of this.
Then I recognize the creature’s eyes. They’re the same cold green shot through with brown as my dad’s. And they’re staring straight into my own. I shudder with horror and disgust.
“What do we do?” BethAnn shrieks, shaking me from the illusion. I look back and those eyes are set in the face of a monster. It is not my dad. But I’ve been here before. I can feel it—a memory that is just beyond my grasp.
I yank my mind from the sense of déjà vu and force it into strategy mode. We’re trapped. If we stay here, the monster’s got us. If we go back in the lake, it could follow us. Or, scarier still, there could be more of them lurking below. Waiting to grab us with their bony fingers and pull us under.
I glance around at the shelf we’re standing on, trying to spot anything I can use as a weapon. There’s nothing growing inside the cave. No branches or roots to break off and use. But, a few yards away in the shadows, a section of the ceiling has caved in, and large pointed stones—stalactites?—are piled in a spiky mound below. The brown-haired girl has noticed them too, and makes a dash toward them. BethAnn is clinging to me so ferociously, I’m pretty much immobilized. By the time I’m able to disentangle myself, the brunette is already rummaging through the stones. She picks one up, but it slips through her fingers and shatters against the floor.
She lunges for another and comes out with a shard the size of a baseball bat. Holding it in both hands, she strides toward the monster. It is halfway across the shelf, crawling like a spider toward BethAnn, who is screaming like she’s the victim in a slasher movie.
I’ve made my way to the rock pile, and, leaning down to grab the heaviest one I can find, I head back toward where the girl has confronted the monster. The gruesome creature has seen her coming and switches into high gear, scrambling toward her faster than she can move out of the way. And then it pauses midattack and directs its attention to me, staring unblinkingly with my father’s eyes.
I hear him speak. “Your illness is a figment of your imagination. You could heal yourself if you wanted, but you don’t want to be normal, do you? You’re pathetic.” The voice seems to come from the direction of the beast, dripping poison into my ears with those words I know so well.
The girl takes advantage of the creature’s being distracted and raises the rock shard high over her head.
“Wait!” I yell without thinking. She hesitates, then watches in horror as it dives for her leg and clamps its claw around her ankle.
I fumble forward, numb with shock. What the hell, Fergus? This monster is not your dad.
The girl is kicking at it. She stumbles backward and loses her grasp on her stone, which clatters to the floor. I pull my arm back to lance mine like a spear, but the girl is in my way now, and I’m afraid I’ll hit her.
The creature grabs her ankle with its other claw, and as it throws its head back to bare its teeth, I finally have a clear shot. I hurl my stone, and it connects with the monster’s protruding rib cage. Its scream is a chilling mix of a baby’s cry and a raven’s croak, amplified to a deafening level by the cave’s acoustics. It lets go of the girl’s ankle.
BethAnn darts forward, picks up the rock shard the other girl dropped, and swings it high over her head. She brings the stone down with a powerful blow, smashing the beast’s head so hard that the stone embeds in its skull. She lets go and scuttles away as I grab the brunette under her arms and pull her toward me. The monster lies lifeless on the ground, dark goo oozing from under the stone forming a gelatinous puddle around the head.
I want to throw up, but it’s not because of the gore. It’s because I have this totally irrational feeling that we just bashed in my father’s head.
What is wrong with me? That wasn’t my father. It was a freaky blue monster. A monster that was trying to kill us.
You’re always having dreams about your dad trying to kill you. The thought zigzags through my brain like a lightning bolt. Dream. This is your dream. And you’ve been here before.
“Is it dead?” BethAnn calls. Now that her moment of glory is over, she’s cowering a few feet away, hands clenched into fists.
“Looks dead, but who knows,” I respond, trying to keep my voice calm. “We have to get out of here.”
The brown-haired girl stands there, zoned out, staring at the monster.
“Are you okay, Cata?” yells BethAnn. “Did it hurt you?”
The girl, Cata, shakes her head like she’s coming out of a daze. “I’m okay.” She looks at BethAnn, and then at me, her blank expression melting into a scowl. “Why did you tell me to wait? I had it!”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Something felt . . . wrong.” I don’t want to tell them we’re in my dream. It sounds too crazy. And besides, even though I know I’ve been here before, I have no idea what could happen next.
She shoots me the stink-eye, then turns back to BethAnn. “Thanks for saving me.”
“No one’s safe yet,” I cut in. “We have to move.”
“Where?” BethAnn asks, looking around like she expects to see an exit sign hanging on the wall.
“Looks like there are two ways out,” I say, pointing to the tunnels on either side of the room.
“You mean get back in the water?” BethAnn asks, horrified.
Cata forgets that she’s pissed with me and looks out doubtfully over the lake. “I guess it’s either that or just wait here and see what else comes out of the slime.”
“There might not be any more of those things,” BethAnn says. “And if there are, we can defend ourselves better on dry land than swimming in that . . . stuff.”
Cata looks back down at the dead monster and shakes her head. “We have to get out.”
“Maybe we should just stay here, where it’s safe,” BethAnn insists.
The words are barely out of her mouth when it seems like the entire ceiling detaches and swoops down upon us in a suffocating cloud of wings and claws.
“Bats!” Cata screams, and crouches over, swatting them out of her hair.
She’s only partially right. The body and wings are those of bats, but the heads look exactly like the creature we just killed. Flying monsters with my dad’s eyes. What. The. Fuck. I definitely don’t remember ever seeing this before. There are dozens of them swarming all over me, scratching my face and my arms with their claws. My dad whispers, “You choose to remain a prisoner of your own mind.”
“Get out of my head!” I growl back, then turn, yelling, “Into the lake!”
I can’t even see the girls, the cloud of bats is so thick, but as I make a run for the lake and plunge into its nasty slime, I hear two splashes behind me, one after the other. I dive under the surface, squeezing my eyes shut, and swim a few strokes through the phlegmy liquid before coming up for air. I wipe the goo from my eyes and look around. The girls are right behind me, swimming with panicked strokes away from the bat creatures, who have landed on the shelf, having given up the chase as soon as we entered the water.
“Which way do we go?” asks Cata, holding her head above the slime, though her hair is drenched in it.
A bone-chilling animal shriek comes from the tunnel farthest from us. “Away from that!” I respond, turning to head for the closest tunnel. We swim toward its opening like our lives depend on it. Which, all things considered, they probably do.
As we near the passageway out of the cavern, I look back to the far side of the room where the noise came from. Something is taking form inside that tunnel entrance, and even though it’s practically a football field away, I can tell what it is: an army of the blue lake creatures, heads bobbing horrifically above the surface of the slime as they enter the room.
“Swim faster,” I yell. “We’re almost out of here.”
The lake has risen by the time we reach the tunnel, the slime lapping against the underside of the arch. “We’ll have to dive under to the other side!” Cata yells.
“How long is the tunnel? Can we swim that far without air?” BethAnn gasps from beside me.
A chorus of shrieks come from behind us. Closer.
“No choice,” I say.
She meets my eyes, and her own look deranged with fear.
“We’ll do it together,” I say, looking over at Cata.
She nods her agreement. “On the count of three,” she says. “One . . . two . . .”
I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the putrid air. Then, grabbing BethAnn’s hand, I dive, swimming blindly, eyes squeezed shut, for what seems like an eternity. I feel her hand tugging mine, and we surface, only to find ourselves trapped in the top of the archway, only a few inches of air between us and the curved stone. “Breathe in!” I gasp. “We’re almost there.” I hear her sputtering and gasping beside me, before she squeezes my hand and we submerge once more. I wonder if Cata has made it to the other side, and then wonder what we’ll do if she hasn’t. My lungs are burning from the lack of oxygen when BethAnn pulls on my hand once again, and we surface, sputtering and wheezing and spitting the nasty liquid from our mouths and wiping it from our eyes. We’re in another room, larger than the one we started in.
To our right, Cata surfaces, flailing as she slaps her hands on the surface of the lake, testing to make sure she’s out of the tunnel, before wiping her eyes and looking around. “We made it,” she gasps, treading hard to stay afloat.
I peer through the low light around the room. On another rock shelf, not far away, are four people—human people—staring at us like they can’t believe their eyes. At their feet lie two dead monsters, identical to the one we killed.
“Help us!” BethAnn yells. “There are more of those things coming!”
A cawlike cry comes from the tunnel behind us. I swim as fast as I can, fear propelling me forward until I am close to shore and the people step down into the liquid to help drag me and the girls out. One of their group—a small boy wearing a knit hat—is sprawled on the ground with blood oozing out of a huge bite mark on his leg.
I’m wiping the foul slime out of my eyes when I turn and see the first of the grotesque heads emerge from our side of the tunnel.
“Here they come,” says Cata.
Then, as we watch, something appears between the monsters and us. It looks vaguely human, but it’s flickering in and out like static on an old TV screen. And it’s walking on the surface of the water. Toward us.
BethAnn gives this kind of half shriek, half scream, and then from all around us comes a booming noise, like someone banging on a giant door. Everyone stares at one another, frozen in confusion.
Another bang comes, and this time I know what it is. It’s the noise I heard right before I left the dark place and was plunged into the slimy lake.
A third knock comes, and a black wall opens beside us, stretching far above and below the limits of the cave. A wind whips around us, dislodging dirt from the cave floor and lifting it into a swirling cloud of dust.
As another shriek comes from the water we run full speed toward the darkness, two of the kids scooping up the hurt boy and dragging him between them.
As we plunge through the wall, the cave disappears, the wind stops, and we are back in the silent blackness where we started.