Clawing Free

by Josh Roberts

  His face contorted as he appeared to be suppressing tears. It was enough to confirm to Lissy what she knew he would never verbally admit.

  “Fine. But I’m drivin’.”

  Neil turned to Lissy. Emotion tightened his throat as he said, “Lis, we can run. We can get on a plane and we can just leave.”

  “I’ve been running my entire life, Neil. I can’t do it anymore. I need to be at the lake. I’ve never felt so drawn to anything. I can end this.” She motioned to another person on a gurney as two nurses wheeled him by. “I need you to let me go.”

  Anguish filled his eyes as he began to cry. “I can’t lose you.”

  Her eyes burned as she tried to fight her own tears. “You won’t have me if I stay. I can’t escape this.” Her words rendered him mute. He knew she was right, they all did. If she stayed with him, she would be consumed by her desire to somehow reconnect with her sister, and until she confronted the beast, the death count would only keep climbing. There was truly only one option left.

  “Fine. Then I’m going with you,” he said, firming up his resolve.

  “Neil, I—”

  The sheriff cut in, “Elisabeth, we’ve gotta go.” Then, turning to Neil, he said, “You can ride up with Logan. He’s on his way. He’ll be just a couple minutes behind.”

  “No, I’m not letting her go without me.”

  The sheriff’s face grew red again. “You’ll do what I tell you. Now, I can’t be babysittin’ you while I’m tryin’ to protect Elisabeth, so you’ll wait until my deputy arrives. Got it?”

  Neil was fuming as Lissy nodded at him, pleading silently for him to say okay. Begrudgingly, he did, grabbing her and pulling her into his arms. She tried not to wince as he kissed the top of her head and pressed his face into her hair. She squeezed him hard in return, knowing that this would be the last embrace they’d ever share.

  “Let’s go,” the sheriff said when they finally parted.

  27

  August 30, 2019

  Lissy white-knuckled the handle on the ceiling as Porter blasted the truck down through heavy rain. Although the large vehicle was far more stable than her car had been, she wasn’t even close to forgetting what it felt like to lose control and careen off the road less than forty-eight hours before. Chaotic flashbacks cycled through her mind as thunder clapped above them, and he edged the truck even faster. In tandem with her fear of dying in a wreck, her tensions about the approaching encounter were escalating. She was horrified at the thought of finding Porter’s men dead and scattered around the water. If the dragon had decided they deserved the same fate as Melissa, there would be nothing they could do to stop it from decimating all of them. And regardless of whether they’d survived or not, she would have to confront it—give herself to the beast. But she wasn’t even really sure what that meant in practical terms.

  She noted the sheriff was taking the longer freeway that skirted around Mitchum instead of cutting through town to get to the lake. She almost questioned him on it but then remembered how he’d described the destruction of his town minutes prior. If it was as bad as he’d said, which she believed it was, then the road was most assuredly obscured.

  “How many?” The words flew from her mouth without thought.

  “How many what?”

  “How many dead in Mitchum?”

  “Oh. I dunno. At least five. This weather’s unbelievable.”

  “You know it’s not a storm that killed them.”

  He only stared out at the road, not replying. Eventually, he ended his silence with a question. “What ya gonna do to stop . . . whatever is doing this?”

  “Give it what it wants,” she said with hesitation.

  “Which is?”

  “Me.”

  He glanced over, confused, but didn’t press it. They spent the remainder of the trip in silence. The farther they drove, the quicker her pulse raced and pain throbbed in her skull. Apace with the pain, conflict permeated her. On one hand, she felt the lake—the dragon—drawing her in more intensely than ever. On the other, Yunjin’s words played through her mind: This place, this earth, belongs to us. What did that mean? It didn’t feel like anything belonged to her. Her whole life was a losing game. Yet Yunjin believed so strongly that she, Elisabeth Oullette, for whom life had only ever dealt losing hands, should have some say in things. If she had more time, she would’ve loved to ask Neil’s aunt what had changed for her. To ask when Yunjin had come to see the world through thankful eyes, even though she’d been through so many horrible things.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror, hoping to see lights cutting through the rain. While she knew it would be better for him if Neil hadn’t followed, she also desperately hoped he’d ignored the sheriff’s request and ran straight to his truck after they’d left the hospital. She yearned to have him at her side, to not stand alone in this. But the rain was coming down too hard to make out anything beyond twenty feet from the truck. Meaning that Neil, Logan, or possibly no one could be right behind them and she would be none the wiser.

  The sign denoting One Mile to Diamond Lake shimmered as their headlamps reflected off of the silver lettering. She shifted in her seat, preparing for the onslaught that she was throwing herself into. Porter slowed as they neared the entrance to the parking lot. The rain was so dense Lissy couldn’t make out anything as they turned in.

  The truck dropped into a pothole, startling her as it shifted down-and-left, then back up as the large wheel climbed out.

  Porter drove them cautiously past three vehicles, no doubt belonging to the other officers. None of the cars appeared to be running, although Lissy could barely make out more than a portion of their tail ends amid the rain. Her gut told her that the men who’d driven those cars were already dead. That the souls Porter had sent to hinder her from returning to the lake had been ripped to pieces and strewn about the forest.

  They reached the path leading through the trees from the lot to the lake. It was the same path Lissy had walked almost two weeks before—the day this all began. It was the same path she’d had a waking vision on only days before. As they drove into the trees, her stomach twisted into knots.

  The path grew impossibly dark, the light from their headlights barely visible now. This would be the straight-and-narrow that led to the end of her life. Her body quivered as an ominous anticipation built inside her, and a dull throb in her skull reminded her that her head wound could drop her to her knees at any second.

  Finally, they reached the egress and the vehicle emerged from the trees. As if timed for her benefit, lightning flashed above, allowing her to see the monstrous inky-black lake fifty yards ahead. She winced as a thunderclap sounded so intensely close, she thought she might die via lightning bolt before ever meeting the dragon.

  Porter pulled close enough to the lake to illuminate it with the vehicle’s headlights. Anxiety flooded her as he shifted into park and turned to face her. “Now what?”

  Her voice was weak and trembling as she replied, “Now I go.”

  “You go?” Confusion-fueled anger laced his tone. “Hon, I didn’t drive all the way here just to watch you try to face—whatever this is—single-handedly. This thing flips cars and chucks double-wides like Tonka trucks.”

  “It’s not going to want you with me. I think . . . I think he wants me alone.”

  “No way you’re gettin’ out of this truck without me. Come on.” He swung open his door, jumped into the downpour, and headed to the storage box mounted in the truck’s bed.

  Lissy took a deep breath, attempting to firm her resolve. This would be her only chance at reuniting with her sister and ending the murders before the dragon took any more innocent lives. If she didn’t do what it wanted, it would go after Neil, or Rose, or Lee.

  She opened her door against gale-force winds, the rain pelting her the instant the seal broke from the vehicle’s cab. Stepping down, she found herself sinking into two inches of cold mud. She stood silently and waited to see what the beast would do. The
n, out of nowhere, her head lit with the knifing of pain, a firebrand to her brain. She buckled, bringing her hands to her temples.

  “Elisabeth!” The sheriff was shouting as he came around the truck juggling two floodlights and a shotgun. “This was a bad idea, we gotta go back to—”

  “No!” she shouted in response, the hot poker still finding its way to every nerve ending in her cranium. He seemed to recognize the futility in arguing because he didn’t press it any further, only stood silently and waited.

  After some time—possibly seconds, possibly minutes—the pain subsided, leaving a throbbing ache in its place. She looked up at the lake, half expecting to see a dragon hovering over the water, but there was nothing. The storm that tossed the water back and forth wasn’t anything to scoff at, but there were no dragons. Suddenly it struck her that it may not have returned from the city to meet her. Maybe she was supposed to go there? Or worse, maybe it was too late altogether.

  “What do we do?” the sheriff shouted over the storm as he handed her one of the lights. Lissy remembered handheld floodlights similar to these casting beams a couple hundred yards or more on a clear night. But now, the shafts barely made it fifteen feet before becoming obscured to the point of uselessness. It was as if the darkness was actually defusing the light instead of the other way around. This was surely an omen of what was to come, she thought, her eyes flitting up to the bluff as she recalled the visions. It was then that the answer to Jack’s question became apparent. She wasn’t where the Imugi wanted her to be.

  “I’ve got to climb!”

  “Are you out of your mind? You can’t hike in this storm!”

  “I don’t have a choice!” She began to move through the thick mud, each step feeling like there was a forty-pound weight strapped to her leg. She could barely make out the sound of the sheriff trudging along behind her. Pressing through the sheets of rain, she couldn’t fathom getting to the top of the trail in her current state. She was already in excruciating pain, enough to make her actually consider giving up, falling to the ground, and letting mud and storm consume her then and there. But she knew the end was near, and if she could just make it up to that cliff, she could save lives and maybe reunite with her sister.

  As she neared the path leading to the cliff, she heard Porter shouting. She stopped, waiting a second for him to catch up. She hadn’t realized how far ahead of him she’d managed to get, even in her weakened condition.

  “Lemme go ahead,” he said, waving the shotgun around, reminding her of its existence. It was a bad idea to let him lead. But no worse than his being with her in the first place. And there was no way he was leaving her alone at this point.

  For an instant she thought she may have glimpsed more headlights from the direction of the parking lot. She wondered if Neil might be in the oncoming vehicle. But then there was nothing. She assumed it had been the lightning playing tricks on her.

  “Fine,” she yelled over the rain. “Just be careful.”

  As they ascended the trail, the ground grew slightly firmer, the mud unable to pool at such an incline. With their lights shining at their feet, they slowly made their way around rocks and protruding tree roots in the path.

  “Lissy!” The sheriff’s voice cut through the storm. He pointed just inside the tree line to his left.

  Aiming her flashlight, she saw it immediately. A body. One of Porter’s men. Although the storm had washed the blood from the corpse, the gashes across his frame were still visible under the glow of their flashlights. She looked up at Porter. He was glaring at her, waiting for some kind of explanation.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing he wanted more, but also that he wouldn’t believe her if she tried.

  “I need to know what’s goin’ on here, Elisabeth!” He wasn’t angry this time, it was worse than that. For the first time since she’d known him, she saw anguish in Porter’s eyes. He knew that by sending these men to the lake, he’d signed their death warrants. And now he wanted to understand who’d reaped the bounty.

  “I think you know exactly what’s going on here, Jack.”

  He grimaced, the same pathetic, disgruntled face she’d made every time she tried to rationalize what was happening to her. But there was no rationalizing this—not for Jack Porter and definitely not for her.

  “You’re telling me you believe the lake monster did this?” He winced as he looked back at the officer’s twisted body.

  “I don’t care what you call it, Jack. But it is a monster.” She couldn’t believe the words had come so easily from her own mouth. At what point had she become so completely convinced?

  Lightning flashed, giving her a glimpse of the whole trail in front of them. They were nearing the peak. The sheriff stared at her, completely at a loss.

  “I’ve got to move on,” she said, beginning to climb again.

  Just as the sheriff began to protest, she stepped on slick stone and went careening backward down the hill. She grappled aimlessly for something substantial to grab hold of until finally she came to a stop, her torso slamming into the trunk of a large tree, sending hot fire straight to her brain. She blacked out, her body unable to cope with the pain.

  * * *

  When she came to a moment later, she was completely disoriented and utterly exhausted. Rain poured over her face, making it nearly impossible to catch her breath. The storm raged above her as the cacophonous sound of thunder crashed louder than she’d ever dreamt possible. Lightning struck the forest beside her, splitting a huge fir completely in half. It was a display of immense power, one that she believed was being put on for her sake: a sign that it had arrived.

  In the grog of her mind, she wondered if this was it. Had she come so far to die halfway up the last path her sister had walked? Just then, it felt wholly possible—probable even—that she’d never had it in her to end the murders, and being with her sister again in some type of glorious afterlife was nothing more than a pipe dream.

  Splayed out at the tree’s base, her entire body felt as though it were on fire. Her head pulsated, pain ebbing and flowing with each beat of her heart. Seemingly out of nowhere, a flashlight flicked onto her face, then down her body.

  “Lissy!” Porter shouted excitedly. Lissy was so disoriented, she’d already forgotten he’d been right above her when she fell.

  “Jack,” she muttered as she attempted to roll onto her side. His flashlight waved wildly as he rushed down the path toward her.

  “What were you thinkin’?” He knelt beside her and lifted her head to keep the rain from choking her.

  “I-I’m so close, Jack.”

  Even through the fog in her brain, she could sense his frustration. “Close to what? What’ve you seen?” It wasn’t a question; it was a plea. He needed to know what was doing these things, what he’d sentenced his officers to face.

  “It’s a—” She swallowed, gathering the strength to even get the word out. “It’s a dragon.”

  Porter was silent as the rain washed over them. Then finally he said, “This was a mistake. We gotta go. I don’t know what—” He froze midsentence. “Did you hear that?”

  They went silent, both shivering, both listening. But she couldn’t hear anything over the storm.

  “Jack, I—”

  “Shut up! I thought I heard a—”

  Then she saw it, a light cutting through the rain below them. “Lissy!” She could barely make out the shouting through the storm, but whoever it was, they were close. She froze. Had Neil caught up with them? Why was there only one voice?

  As the light grew brighter, she recognized the voice—Logan. And he was alone.

  “Lissy, are you okay?” he asked, running up beside her and helping the sheriff get her into an upright position, leaning against the tree.

  “Where’s Neil?” Lissy asked.

  “Neil? Why would Neil be with me?” Logan looked to Jack.

  Lissy’s heart sank at the recognition of what had happened.

  “Jack . . .” she began
.

  “I couldn’t risk somethin’ happenin’ to him too. It was dumb enough of me to bring you out here as it is.”

  Logan chimed in, “Lissy, we need to go. You don’t look—”

  “No!” shouted Lissy, surprising both of the men.

  But Logan ignored her. Taking her by the elbow, he attempted to help her stand. She jerked away, but Jack was already behind her, and he wrapped his arms around her chest and began forcing her down the hill.

  Logan retrieved the sheriff’s light and gun and followed after them.

  “You don’t understand!” She struggled to free herself from his grip, but he was twice her size. “He’ll kill you too!”

  “Who?” Logan shouted, now keeping pace beside them as he juggled two lights and a shotgun. “Who’s killing—”

  “Leave it, Logan!” Jack interrupted.

  Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Lissy screamed as she brought her elbow into the sheriff’s thick gut.

  He yelped, dropped his hold on her, and buckled over, gripping his stomach. Logan threw down both lights and the gun, grabbing hold of her wrist in the dark.

  “Dang it, Lissy!” the sheriff shouted through heavy breaths as he bent over to retrieve the lights.

  This was the only chance she’d get. Using every ounce of energy she could summon, she brought her knee up into Logan’s side. He didn’t fall, but his clutch loosened just long enough for her to break free.

  She ran as hard as she could up the path, excruciating pain screaming at her with every bound. An instant later, she saw both flashlights take aim in her direction. Logan and the sheriff had recovered and were only seconds behind her. There was no way she’d make it up to that cliff unless—

  It hit her all at once. They weren’t just chasing after her, they were running straight toward their own deaths. The Imugi would dispense with them just like it had David for trying to stop her from doing what it wanted. She whipped around, shouting, “Logan stop! It will—”