Black Water

by S. D. Rudd

  Camille?

  He flipped to the next page and froze. Written dead center of the page read the words: The Nest. He dropped the journal, the journal disappearing under the leaves, and backed away. This couldn’t be happening to him! What did those words mean? He knew what they meant; he knew what it was…yet he didn’t.

  Why couldn’t he remember? Yet he did in the cave, bits and pieces of it, but enough. Who was the shadowy figure?

  The cell phone, that he just recognized was his to begin with, came to life in his hand. He flinched and thought about staring at it but then realized his clock was ticking. Alan flicked it open on the first ring.

  “Hello?” he answered in desperation, panting.

  There was a long pause and Alan almost yelled it this time.

  “Hello!”

  Another pause. Then, “twenty-four seconds,” the familiar male voice said.

  Alan’s blood ran cold. Why was this voice so familiar? He wrenched the phone from his face and checked the caller ID. Call blocked. Again. He slammed it against his ear.

  “Tell me right now who this is!” he barked. “Just know that it’s only a matter of time before I’ll find out anyway, and when I do—”

  “Eighteen seconds.”

  The caller hung up.

  “Hello?”

  No answer. Alan’s mental clock kicked in.

  Seventeen seconds.

  “Hello!” he hollered one last time, realizing he didn’t have much time to find out what would happen if the timer ran out. Adrenaline jumpstarted his chest. Energy surged through his veins. Raw cheetah-like instincts invaded his mind.

  Then, something inside him snapped. He started seeing red and he wasn’t even angry. His thermal heat sensor was repaired. He blinked twice to shut it off.

  Fourteen seconds.

  Something was going to happen, or not happen, or something was going to be missed if he didn’t—twelve seconds. Alan heard the water trickle to his left, grabbed the journal without looking at it and jumped up. He reached behind his back and tucked the journal inside his belt.

  Eleven seconds.

  He closed his eyes. Why was he still standing there? Danger had to be present; the caller did everything but spell it out. Why? He knew why.

  Because he’d somehow loved the rush of getting to the scene just in time, the danger, the power to beat the clock before it was too late, was something he’d once lived for. Suddenly, Alan was beginning to realize. This was something he was well accustomed to.

  Eight seconds.

  He slowly turned his head to the river; eyes still shut, counted two…one…and then bolted toward the sound of the river. Eyes still shut. Instead, he’d activated his thermal vision and saw everything in various shades, purple being the coldest, red being the hottest. It wasn’t until a full count of three seconds that he opened his eyes to see where he was going, blinking away the thermal sensory at the same time.

  Three seconds.

  He ran with all his might, feeling the power envelop his bones, crunching pinecones underneath, rustling drying leaves, disturbing this peaceful white oak forest. Birds took flight as he ran pass heavily populated dwellings.

  He only imagined that every animal who lived there scurried for cover, wondering if an asteroid was approaching the earth and they were on the brink of extinction.

  As he overtook the small hill, the decline revealed a river…of black! Up ahead. Black water, flowing in between two mountains. And a boat!

  There was a boat floating in the water, just off shore, that has already pushed off. Instead of screaming at the rower to wait, Alan ran harder. He was going to feel some cramping from this later that night but he had to get to that boat.

  One second.

  Time ran out just as Alan made it to the rocky shore. The Rower, not noticing him, had sat down in position and pushed off with both paddles.

  Alan didn’t hesitate.

  As soon as his feet was about to touch the water he jumped, flying so far the distance he’d traveled amazed even him. His landing was hard, the boat shook violently, and he rolled to a halt, his head resting at the Rower’s fishing boots.

  TWENTY

  THE OLD GUY with the partially severed ear just looked down at him with not even a hint of surprise and smiled as if seeing an old friend.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I was hopin’ you’d make that jump. Shame if you didn’t and hit that warter. Ya know how fur that was?”

  Alan looked up, panting, and recognized the distance from the shoreline to the boat. He instinctively was able to calculate how far he’d jumped.

  About thirty-one feet.

  How was that possible?

  “Well, get yur’self sichiated. We got lots to do.”

  Alan lifted his throbbing body up from a fetal position and sat at the other end of the small rowboat, staring at the floor. Next to the silence sat the rhythmic swishing of water as the old man rowed down an endless, slow moving river.

  The boat swayed in the middle of it all, a loaf of bread in the presence of this body of water.

  It was hard to figure out if all this were a dream.

  He looked at the old man with the partially severed ear, who rowed with a sardonic grin across his face, staring at Alan the entire time as if fascinated by some sort of interesting laboratory specimen.

  Alan diverted his eyes with a mild irritation and studied the black water.

  Oil.

  Was the first thing that came to mind.

  It looked heavy, not sludgy, but close enough to thick. If it weren’t for the fish swimming through it Alan would have thought it toxic.

  “See you noticin’ the warter,” the old man said a little too loud for Alan’s eardrums.

  Alan looked up from the water, staring at him, concentrating on slowing his breathing to reduce his heart rate. He would need every bit of his energy. Who knew how many times he’d repeated this day?

  Three.

  That’s what Camille told him.

  Three times he’d ran the same scenarios. Three times he had the same betraying taste of hope. And three times he ended up right back where he had started. Chained. To the floor. Inside the old wooden house.

  With her.

  And the Leviathan.

  Alan stole another long stare at the black water, wondering what would happen if his hand broke its surface. He contemplated dipping in his hand, cupping a scoop full of the tar that would likely fill icky…tasting it.

  A strange curiosity that almost took him. Almost.

  It had his mind like the mammoth beast at the house. Fear…terror, just not enough to keep him from resisting a touch without considering the repercussions.

  “Don’t worry,” the raspy voice said, startling every bone in Alan’s body, shaking him from his deep thoughts.

  Alan returned an exasperated look at the old man, prompted by the blain interruption of his thought patterns.

  “It only gets bad at night,” he continued with an unearthly smile. Then he laughed hard enough to come across as a madman. Alan thought he was a madman.

  He started to ask what was going to happen at night but there was no need. “These creatures, this forest,” the old guy said, “only show their eyes when the sun goes down. Jus be ‘ware if yur plannin’ ta venture out. But here’s a lil tip.”

  He leaned in for effect. Alan smelled something on his breath that reminded him of an overstuffed garbage bin in a back alley.

  “I wouldn’t be out here at night,” he said. Settling back into his normal position, still rowing, “unless you know wha chur gettin’ into.”

  The old guy held his eerie stare, keeping the madman grin carved into his face. “That’s it!” he said, startling Alan again with the outburst.

  The old man’s eyes glazed over as he studied the naked swaying trees on the banks, steady with his strokes as the little boat swished downstream with a slow creep. A hint of intrigue mixed with the sensing of danger filled the old man’s eyes.
<
br />   Alan’s bones chilled.

  “Only at night,” the old man said.

  He spit a glob of black into the river, steady rowing.

  “She doesn’t like the daylight much…but at night…” he paused and looked at Alan with serious eyes. “Jus don’t go out at night son. It’s fir ya own good.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “YOU DO COME here often, don’t you?” the old man said.

  Alan searched the smooth ripples of the black water wondering what this old man was talking about. He had no clue. Then again, Camille had told him back at the house that Alan had repeated the same day over and over again.

  The old man continued. “Whacha like the woods? You’s outdoorsy son?” The old man released a hard gargled laugh that pinched Alan’s eardrums. “Da proof is inda puddin!” he said before giving Alan an encore of the last wretched laugh.

  It took everything in Alan not to tell the old man to shut up and row.

  But he didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know these woods and he didn’t know if this guy had the ability to help him find Monica or not.

  Until then, he would have to suffer through the foolishness.

  He watched the old man wrap up his longer than before gargled laugh, probably indicating throat cancer, with anticipation of more useless yet annoying chatter.

  At some point he would ask some questions. Right now he would catch his breath.

  “Seriously son…why do you come here so much?” the old man said, all serious now. “You seem lost most of da time. You lost, son?”

  If he said “son” one more time, Alan thought.

  “Son?”

  Alan clenched his teeth but quickly swallowed the rising tension.

  “Son? Ya hear?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alan spat out a little too forcefully.

  It took a while to register on the old man’s face. Then, “course not,” passed through his hard wrinkled lips. The Rower went back to rowing the boat down the river, taking long slow strokes. Had Alan been in a more peaceful mood, he could sing a melody to the rhythm.

  But the forest was too eerie All of the trees stood baron, stripped of its color, swaying ever so gentle in the light breeze. It was almost serene if he could escape the chills.

  The goose bumps.

  The slight shakes.

  He saw things. Eyes. In the trees, glaring at them, watching them from a safe distance that allowed for them to swoop upon the boat with ease just in case these creatures decided to attack.

  Alan surveyed his surroundings; they would never escape if those creatures swarmed the boat. He took his focus off the trees, centering it on the water around them. Why was it black?

  Alluring, that’s what it was. Toxic in appearance yet Alan desired to taste it which was strange seeing how Alan had seen lakes half as murky that he didn’t even want to touch.

  Something about that alarmed him. Maybe he shouldn’t touch it. Maybe he shouldn’t be in this boat either.

  The Rower, this old man…who was he? Could he be trusted?

  Alan pushed these thoughts out of his mind, blinking away the imagination of being lured into a vicious dog fight let by this unknown man with the partially severed ear.

  Right now he had no choice but to go with the flow.

  One thing was for sure.

  If anything ever reminded Alan of death it was these woods. The snapping of twigs as creatures prowled, patrolling the borders of their home.

  The faint hissing barely reaching his ears from all sides but not all at once. It was like they were communicating, plotting against these two strange beasts rowing in the middle of a black slow-moving river.

  Rattles.

  It wasn’t until the crickets ceased as the boat passed by that Alan sensed something following them, maybe from the rivers’ banks. Then a heavy snap yanked his head toward his right, over his shoulder, to swaying branches.

  Low-laying. And concentrated.

  Nothing was disturbed save about a twenty-five foot radius that moved along with them.

  Something in Alan’s veins reminded him of the blizzard of ninety-six when three feet of snow trapped most Marylanders indoors for nearly two weeks.

  What was that?

  Another snap and his head shot over to his left. Over the shoulder. Swaying branches. Low-laying. About a twenty-five foot radius. Same position as the one on the right.

  They were being followed.

  By two…things.

  Alan didn’t know what it was but he knew that it was no human. Could be that rigid creature he felt in the water a half hour ago. Dark. Leathery. Seemed like they had been rowing for days and this old man with the partially severed ear muttered one word. A swear. Because he smashed his finger during one of his long strokes.

  He studied the guy as his body rowed without cease, the swoosh of water producing a rhythm that would have put Alan to sleep had he not been so disturbed by that mysterious phone call with the recognizable-but-not-quite voice. He struggled to match a face to the voice pattern as he tried to forget the hissing, forget the snapping of branches alongside the boat. Who could it have been?

  A better question centered on how Alan got into the woods in the first place.

  Last he knew he was being attacked by bats in a cave he would have never ventured into had the lion not been convincing, trustworthy. Before that he remembered being transported through the vortex of intense lights with colors he had never seen.

  The house.

  The Nest?

  Camille.

  Something about that invited a searing wound in his heart. His memory was so shot he even struggled to recall when he’d fallen in love with her, if he did, and if there was a longstanding relationship with her in the past.

  Monica.

  Suddenly, the thought of her brought a certain reality that didn’t seem to exist inside that house. Or the vortex. The black cave.

  The old man with the partially severed ear seemed real enough. He’d managed to mangle every ounce of nerve Alan possessed in his body and it had only been one hour.

  One hour.

  Time flew fast enough to increase his heart rate again.

  Camille had mentioned something about Alan ending up back in that house with her when the sun went down. Which was in…Alan lifted his hand, just now realizing that the cell phone he’d found in the leaves,his cell phone, had digitized 11:17 in the morning on the screen.

  That and a blinking battery icon with nothing inside of the box. He swore inside his head. He would have to find his truck and plug it in to the car char—

  Did he drive here? Or did the portal place him here?

  If it were real; if all of that weren’t just a dream.

  Yeah, it had to be that, a dream, and he would prove it by finding his truck. A dream. Everything. Even this forest experience could have been a part of the dream. Unlikely, but a possibility. And Monica. Her kidnapping was real.

  The explosion at the restaurant was real. The fact that his father was working with Shawn Ramsey was real. Latent memories came to him and his blood heated up. Even though he was border lining anger, his thermal heat sensors did not kick on…

  Something moved! In a haste!

  Alan turned to his right, turning toward the eruption of cracking branches and rustling leaves that rapidly diminished in volume. He saw a trail of moving forest shrinking away from them. Fast! Faster than any animal he’d ever seen. Then, to the opposite side, another burst of action igniting in similar fashion. Similar trail leading away from the rivers’ banks.

  “Eh!” the old man said, startling every molecule in Alan’s body. “Looka like you scured ‘em off, eh ole boy!”

  Alan stared at him. Fighting more thoughts of strangulation. “Don’t call me ‘boy.’”

  “All, boy. You certainly ain’t no man, looking like those young hippity hoppity gippers runting around these days. Have you no sense of style youngling?”

  “What’s a r
unt? And who the devil says ‘youngling’ anymore?”

  The old man laughed that blood gurgling, throat lacerating laugh again. Alan smacked his lips and settled back in position, searching the white forest for signs of movement. None.

  As the man laughed with no signs of ceasing, his phone chimed once in his hand. Alan brought the phone up a little and flipped it open. No recognizable number on the display.

  A text message:

  C U 2nite

  Had to be someone he knew, perhaps some plans he’d made that he had forgotten about. But why was the number unavailable? Too much to think about with this loon roaring like a lion, seeking whom he may devour. Right now it was Alan’s nerves. He had none left.

  On top of that he only had twelve hours to figure all of this out.

  Before he would end up right back inside that house…again.

  Find Out What Happens Next

  …to be continued…

  EPILOGUE

  “MY REASON FOR being here is still a little hazy,” Richard Baines said, irritated. Sitting in the oversized office of a man too celebrated for his own good, Richard’s annoyance meter peaked at an all-time high.

  He fantasized about throwing some gasoline around the place and accidentally dropping a half lit Newport 100 before leaving the room. “After all,” he continued, “there’s more to life than bathing in the droplets of another mans’ narcissistic behavior.”

  Only he could cross such a lofty figure and get away with a mere look of dissatisfaction. His forehead tightened, annoyed, when Cornelius spun his chair around to face the panoramic view of the city.

  “I just got off the phone with the president,” Cornelius Black said, now staring out through his lavish top floor office window. All Richard saw was the back of his panther leather executive, blinding daylight and the top of Cornelius’ head. Typical CEO behavior of the number one world news magazine corporation in the nation.