by Brian Harmon
The hellhound shook its great head and let out a chilling howl.
As if in response, the ostrich monster burst from the trees and turned its fanged face toward him.
Eric’s phone rang. That would probably be Karen. Shoving his hand in his pocket, he pulled it out, accepted the call and shouted, “Can’t talk! Stealing a boat!” Then he hung up and shoved it back into his pocket.
There was a loud crack from somewhere in the forest, as if a very large branch, or perhaps even an entire tree, had just been knocked down. Looking in that direction, he saw that awful glow moving through the treetops toward the water.
No matter what might be waiting for him in the water, he didn’t want to still be here when that thing arrived.
Eric unwound the rope as fast as his hands could move and dropped it, then grabbed the post, pushing himself out onto the lake as the two creatures rushed down the hill toward him.
Swearing, he grabbed the next post and gave it another shove, speeding himself along.
He half expected the ostrich thing to utilize those long legs and leap right into the boat with him, but when it reached the end of the dock, it merely paced back and forth and hissed at him.
Eric showed it his middle finger and felt a momentary sensation of déjà vu. Hadn’t this happened to him once before?
He shook away the thought and withdrew his phone again. He snapped a picture of the two angry-looking creatures on the dock as he floated slowly away, and sent them to Karen. They weren’t great pictures. It was too dark to reveal much more than a weird silhouette, but they’d do.
Overall, he was pretty proud of himself. But Isabelle wasn’t as thrilled.
BAD IDEA, she told him.
“Which plan would you have picked?” he asked her.
I DON’T KNOW. BUT HOLLY SAID TO STAY OUT OF THE WATER
“I know she did. But—”
I KNOW. BUT IN IT OR ON IT, THAT ENERGY’S EVEN STRONGER OUT THERE
Eric sighed. “Well, we’ll just have to get across as quickly as possible, won’t we?”
HURRY
“I’m hurrying,” he grumbled. He decided he didn’t care as much for irritable Isabelle. Irritable Isabelle didn’t have much patience for him.
Chapter Thirty-One
Fortunately, Fettarsetter wasn’t too paranoid about someone stealing his boat. Either that, or he intentionally left it for him to take. He was bragging about having predicted his visits with Mrs. Fulrick and Ned.
After some tinkering, he figured out how to start the motor and he was off across the lake, heading for the part of the shore he thought was closest to Mrs. Fulrick’s house as fast as the boat would go. He wanted to spend as little time on the water as possible.
He looked back over his shoulder at the shore. The moon was behind the clouds again, and he couldn’t see the dock from here, but that eerie glow was still burning in the treetops.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
His cell phone rang again. It was Karen.
He braced himself for the worst and answered.
“You stole a boat?” she shouted.
“Only a little bit,” Eric assured her.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably.”
“Holly told you to stay out of the water!”
“Technically, I’m on the water.”
“And what, exactly, is this a picture of?”
“Those would be the things that made me steal the boat.”
“I can’t make it out… What are they? Is that an emu?”
“Only if emus have fur and fangs.”
“Yuck.”
“Pretty sure the other one’s a hellhound.”
“A hellhound?” She sounded skeptical. He didn’t blame her. He barely believed it himself, but he’d seen the fiery glow in its throat with his own eyes. That wasn’t typical of any earthly canine. “What’s that noise?”
“Boat motor. I’m running wide open. I don’t actually want to be out on this lake.”
“Yeah, don’t slow down. Holly’s casting another spell right now.”
“Good. I could use a clue what I’m supposed to do next.”
The boat gave a lurch, as if it’d hit something. Eric grabbed the side of the boat to keep from tumbling into the lake and cursed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Something hit me.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to go.” He disconnected and stuffed the phone back into his pocket.
He was still two hundred yards or more from the far shore. He gripped the side of the boat with one hand and steered straight ahead.
“Come on,” he murmured. “A little farther.”
Again, something slammed into the boat, forcing it into a ninety-degree turn, threatening to tip it.
Eric steered the boat straight again, forcing back the panic he was feeling.
Isabelle was right. This was a very bad idea.
His betraying imagination reminded him of something Owen said when they were telling him about the monsters in the triangle. Something about an enormous fish, big enough to overturn a boat.
This was getting ridiculous. Hellhounds, shallows walkers, lake monsters, alien spaceships…was Specter Ten right about everything?
“Come on come on come on…” he breathed. Just a little farther…
Whatever was stalking him struck the boat again, this time hard enough to bring the entire back end up out of the water. Eric cried out in surprise and held on for dear life, somehow managing not to capsize.
He didn’t waste time being thankful. He sat up and steered the boat toward the shore again. But now something was wrong with the boat. He was still a hundred yards out and struggling to move forward. Did the motor sound strange now? He wasn’t very familiar with boats. He wasn’t really the outdoors type. He never was. That was more Paul’s thing. If he were here, he’d probably know instantly what was wrong and how to fix it. But Paul wasn’t here. Eric was on his own.
Maybe there was something caught in the propeller. He let off the throttle and fumbled with the motor, cursing at it until he figured out how to raise it up out of the water. He immediately saw the problem, and his heart sank. There wasn’t anything tangled in the propeller; it was the propeller itself. Two thirds of it was gone, broken off in that last impact.
Eric swore. Now what was he supposed to do?
Panic filling him, he turned and looked at the oars resting on the floor of the boat. He was going to have to get himself to shore with those. But he’d no more than snatched one up when a final impact sent the boat, and Eric, into the air, finally overturning him.
Eric’s next rational thought was that he was now in the water. In all that he’d experienced, he’d never had a thought that filled him with terror quite like this one. Even the numbing cold was but a distant thought in his panicked mind. He remembered Holly’s warning about staying out of the water, that there was blood in it. He remembered the vision of a great, evil shape rising from the depths, and of countless wriggling things churning in it, making the water boil. He kicked and flailed, lurching upward, struggling to pull himself back to the surface.
His head broke free. He gasped. He screamed.
He had to get his bearings. Where was he? Where was the boat? Where was the nearest shore?
The boat was gone. It probably sank, along with his flashlight. Fettarsetter would probably not be happy about it, but Eric found it hard to care about that at the moment. If the guy had been less of a creep, maybe he wouldn’t have had to steal the boat in the first place.
The shore was to his left. He could see it. He just had to swim.
Something big brushed past his legs.
He let out a scream like nothing he’d ever even heard before. He hadn’t known until that moment that he could make such a noise. Shrill with terror, wailing, panicked, it wasn’t a skill he’d be particularly proud of later, but right now he didn’t care. He just kept m
aking that noise as he kicked and splashed, dragging himself toward the shore in small, lurching motions. It wasn’t easy. He was still fully dressed, his clothes and shoes weighing him down. He wasn’t the strongest swimmer by any means, but he could swim. If it was only a matter of reaching the shore, he wouldn’t even be worried. But he’d never done any kind of training to prepare him to make a rapid, hundred-yard swim, fully dressed, while being stalked by a massive, voracious lake monster.
Now that he’d gotten himself into this mess, it kind of seemed like the sort of thing they should really prepare people for…
He swam as hard as he could, wondering the whole while whether the thing would bite him in half with razor-sharp teeth or simply swallow him whole into its crushing belly, and also wondering why the hell he ever thought watching Jaws was a good idea,
When he was about fifty yards out, he felt it again. It didn’t touch him. Instead, it seemed to pass beneath him, moving quickly and with enough mass that he could feel himself being pulled along in its wake. Whatever it was, it was much bigger than any fish he’d ever seen.
He couldn’t recall ever in his life having wished for a spear gun, but there was little he wouldn’t do for one now.
Forty yards. He could do this. All he had to do was reach the shallows and he could stand up and run. This thing was probably too big to swim too close to the shore.
Thirty yards. He was going to make it.
Then something that felt like a steel trap snapped shut on his right leg and he was jerked beneath the surface.
Something had him. In his panic, and with pain shooting up his leg, all he could imagine was a great, toothy shark dragging him downward. It didn’t matter that there was no logical reason for a shark to be in a Michigan lake. There was no logical reason for him to have been thrown from the safety of the boat, either. This whole, insane ordeal was illogical. And even if it wasn’t, he was being dragged to the bottom of a murky lake. His only thoughts, logical or otherwise, were to kick and flail and try not to pass out and drown.
When his left foot connected with something, he focused his attention there and kicked it again. Again. Again.
Finally, the thing let go. He was free. Kicking wildly, he swam toward the surface. Fortunately, it hadn’t dragged him down as far as he’d feared. He broke the surface sooner than he expected and gasped for breath.
He was farther out than he was before he was pulled under. He’d been dragged away from the shore. And now his leg pained him, too. He was probably bleeding. It would get harder to swim now.
It wasn’t so much the thought of dying that gave him the determination to keep pushing himself toward that shore. It was the idea of being stuck here on this lake for all eternity afterwards. It wasn’t even the idea of becoming one of the many spirits he’d seen here. It was the idea of never being able to leave these god-awful woods!
So help him, if he was going to die and haunt a place, it was not going to be this place!
Fifty yards to go. Again.
Forty-five.
This time, that steel trap clamped down on both legs. Before he could even cry out, he was being dragged downward again. Faster this time. Down into the cold, murky depths. He felt the pressure growing around him. His ears threatened to pop. In addition to everything else, he began to fear that his eardrums would burst.
He couldn’t move his feet. His arms weren’t strong enough to allow him to swim free. He was being pulled away from the shore, from his only chance at survival.
And he was rapidly running out of breath.
He was going to die.
Then, suddenly, he realized that he could see. The water was murky and dull, but there was light. A strange glow surrounded him.
His first response to this realization was to look down at his legs, to see what was holding him. He immediately wished he hadn’t. His legs were being mashed between the massive lips of a mouth that was as wide as the front bumper of his PT Cruiser. Above that mouth was the rest of a face so terrible that Eric barely prevented himself from belching out the precious air in his lungs in a very pointless scream. It looked like no fish he’d ever seen before, the sort of horrific life form that might populate a deep sea trench. It wasn’t scaly, but instead fleshy and blob-like, almost translucent gray and covered in deep scars. It had a great bump of a nose with what looked like a star-shaped pattern of flexing and pulsating nostrils. Above that were two great, empty sockets. Whatever huge eyes the thing might once have had were long gone, like the hellhound’s, and where they should’ve been, he could see things squirming, as if a teeming mass of tiny parasites had taken up residence in the vacant holes. A dozen long, snaky tendrils grew from the corners of its enormous mouth and from wide, bony ridges that ran over its eye sockets in a shape that gave it an eerily blank expression.
From the top of its head was spreading a dark, red cloud. The creature was bleeding. Probably from the impact that severed the john boat’s propeller blades.
As he stared down at this thing, it suddenly opened its mouth in a great, rapid yawn and lurched forward, snapping its jaws shut around his lower abdomen, swallowing his feet deeper into its throat and forcefully compressing his stomach, making him expel some of his fleeting breath in a mass of rising bubbles.
He gripped its bony lips and tried to struggle free, but the thing’s jaws were like a vise. It had no teeth, fortunately. Only long, bony ridges, much like a catfish. It didn’t pierce him, but neither did it allow him to wriggle free. He was going to be swallowed whole and digested in the slimy, grimy depths of this thing’s twisting guts.
Of all the ways he could’ve died, this definitely would not have made his top ten list.
His lungs ached. If he didn’t get free soon, it was going to be over.
The thing wasn’t dragging him downward anymore. In fact, it wasn’t moving at all. It seemed to be just hovering here, staring blindly into that strange glow…
His mind racing, his blood rushing in his ears, it somehow occurred to him to wonder what was casting that light. He turned and looked behind him, toward the thing that seemed to have captured the monster fish’s attention.
Another woman was hovering there, her long, black hair floating around her. Unlike the others, this one was neither bloody nor ghastly. She was beautiful. She had a dark complexion, and hauntingly dark eyes, and yet, contrastingly, she glowed like a beacon in the gloom, her entire body radiating that warm glow.
A strange voice drifted through the silent water, a language he’d never heard before, and suddenly, the beast opened its mouth as if taking a great gasp and he was free.
Something cold and hard gripped him beneath his arms, and he turned to find himself staring into the terrifying faces of two more women who both had the flesh stripped from their skulls.
Now Eric lost the rest of his breath. He couldn’t help it. It bubbled out of him in a terrible scream. And then he was being whisked away through the water by the skeleton women, dragged upward and away, and just as quickly released.
His heels struck the weedy lakebed and he shot to his feet, coughing and gasping, gagging on the awful water. He staggered toward the shore, stumbled, fell to his knees in the shallows and vomited. Then he stood up and screamed. He stomped. He splashed. He kicked at a piece of driftwood that was lying nearby. He swore at the lake and he shook himself, trying to rid himself of that awful experience, trying to shake away the water, the stench of the lake, the very memory.
He spat another barrage of foul curses at the lake and kicked the water.
When the last of his energy was finally spent, he turned and sloshed back onto dry land, where he found himself face-to-face with the two old fishermen in their waders and hats. They were obviously on their way home, their gear gathered up, stringers full of fish dangling at their knees. They were just standing there, watching him have his temper tantrum.
Eric threw his head back, exasperated, embarrassed, and gestured angrily toward the water. Then he thrust his arms out
to his sides to illustrate and blurted, “Big fish! Huge!” Then he dropped his arms and hung his head, exhausted.
“Got away, eh?” said one of them.
“Barely…” croaked Eric.
“I’ve been there,” said the other old fisherman, his voice full of sympathy.
Eric looked up at him, surprised. “You have?”
He was nodding, his kind eyes twinkling in the pale moonlight. “Oh, ya. I lost a record muskie the year I was first married. Had that very same fit, too.” He smiled broadly. “But we’ll get ‘em someday, eh?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Eric was not having a good day.
He trudged through the forest without a light, soaking wet, shivering, sniffling, limping a little, and staring down at his dead cell phone.
He’d always hated cell phones. He’d never wanted one. And now, when he really needed it, it was ruined.
He’d already asked Isabelle to contact Karen and let her know that he’d survived his lake ordeal, preferably with as few details of the actual event as possible, and to see what advice Holly’s latest spell had offered him. (Probably, “Don’t get in that boat, dumbass.”) But there was little else he could do until he found his way back to civilization. She would still be connected to him, but until he found another phone, there was no way she could talk back to him. Anything she might have to tell him about his crazy encounter with the glowing woman in the lake would have to wait.
The moon shined down through the trees less and less as the clouds grew thicker and the rain drew nearer. This time, when it peered out from behind the clouds for a moment, it revealed a miserable-looking old man standing beneath a nearby tree, wearing tattered overalls and an old straw hat. There was blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, and a deeply troubled look in his old eyes. As Eric walked by, the man tipped his hat and nodded, and seemed to say, “I feel your pain, buddy.”
Eric merely nodded back and lifted his hand in a tired sort of wave as he walked on by.