The Undrowned

by K. R. Alexander

  I consider putting up a fight. But after what I’ve just experienced, I don’t have much fight left in me. How in the world had the drawing moved like that? And the water pouring from the closet … Had any of that been real?

  I look in the mirror when I have the door locked behind me. Peel back my eyelids. I don’t know what I’m looking for—some sign that tells me I’m losing it, maybe—but I definitely don’t find it. I look like my normal self. Tired but normal.

  With a heavy sigh, I turn on the shower and wait for it to heat up before stepping in.

  I wash my hair and close my eyes as I rinse off, letting the warm water ease the tension in my shoulders and the panic in my veins. Mom buys really nice bath products that she doesn’t want us to use—my sister and I are supposed to use this gross all-in-one stuff—but I figure that I deserve to treat myself a little bit after today.

  Besides, the bottles say they’re for stress relief, so I think I need it.

  Water pools around my feet, bubbling over my toes as I lather and scrub my skin. I keep my eyes closed to keep the soap from them, and after a little while I realize that the water isn’t just over my toes like normal. It’s reaching my ankles.

  I rinse off my face, wondering if the tub got clogged from Jessica’s hair again. When I look down, I see that the water has risen even farther. I groan in the back of my throat. I can only imagine it’s a massive hairball. But I gotta get it out. I lean over, steeling myself for the grossness of tangled hair and old conditioner, and reach toward the drain.

  And something glides over my feet.

  I tell myself it’s just a washrag. But then it happens again.

  Something cold. Something slimy.

  Something slithering around my ankle.

  I yelp and stand up, but my movement is too quick. I fall flat on my back in the tub with a painful thud.

  Stars crash over my eyes and I put a hand to my head as I try to sit up.

  I can’t move.

  Something binds me down, and when I reach for it my hands are met by cold and slippery seaweed. It wraps quickly around my chest. Around my arms and legs. Around my forehead. Pinning me to the bottom of the tub.

  I gasp. Bubbles escape my lips. Water rises around me, and within seconds I can’t breathe in. I struggle against the seaweed as the water fills the tub. As more cold, slippery seaweed or eels or fish squirm around me. I hold back my scream.

  If I scream, I will drown.

  I thrash. Water sloshes.

  Surely someone will come in here. Surely someone hears me. They’ll help. I just have to hold on. I just have to—

  Movement!

  I nearly gasp in relief as I see someone lean over the tub, their form hazy in the murky water.

  Their hands reach down.

  Grab my shoulders.

  But they don’t pull me up.

  The too-cold hands pin me down, and as the face lowers and becomes recognizable, I realize who it is.

  Rachel.

  Her eyes glow blue, her face hangs unevenly from her sharp bony cheeks, and when she smiles her mouth is filled with thousands of needlelike teeth. She opens wide.

  I scream.

  And sit upright in the tub.

  Shower water sprays down all around me, spiraling freely through the drain.

  No seaweed. No fish.

  No Rachel.

  I hastily turn off the water and yank back the curtain.

  The bathroom is completely empty.

  What in the world just happened?

  I stand on shaky legs—my back definitely still hurts from the fall, so that at least was real—and grab a towel from the rack. I feel like I’m going through the motions of a dream as I dry off.

  Had I passed out?

  Was I delusional?

  It’s only when I reach for the door handle that I see it.

  The words scrawled in the steam on the mirror.

  I don’t know how I’m going to sleep.

  I sit on my bed with my knees to my chest and stare at the nightstand where I stashed the sketchbook, long after everyone else in the house has gone to sleep. Waiting for more water to spill from the drawer.

  Waiting to drown again.

  The lights are out.

  The waterfall never comes.

  I wait.

  And I wait.

  And I know that this fear, this dread, is exactly what Rachel wants.

  She doesn’t even have to do anything anymore to torture me.

  That makes the waiting worse.

  I’m dreaming.

  I know I’m dreaming because there’s no way I’d come back to the lake in real life. That, and the birds in the sky aren’t actually moving. They hang there, suspended, black smears against the pale blue dome, like museum pieces. Everything here is still.

  I stand on the edge of the dock, my bare toes just over the edge, and stare down at the crystal-clear and mirror-smooth surface. My reflection stares back. I’m just in my pajamas, which is another clue I’m asleep, because I wouldn’t be caught dead outside in these faded pink unicorn–covered things. (They were a gift from my grandma, and my mom refused to let me throw them out.) Not that there’s anyone out here to see. Just me and my reflection.

  I look tired. Dark circles ring my eyes.

  “What am I doing here?” I whisper to myself. Why am I not waking up? Normally, when I realize I’m asleep, I wake up immediately. But now, nothing changes.

  I wonder if maybe this means I can do whatever I want. Maybe I can fly?

  I close my eyes and will myself to levitate off the docks, to soar up into the sky, and then maybe I could give myself more magical powers, like shooting lightning out of my fingers or breathing fire like a dragon. Rachel’s face flashes before my mind—we used to play make-believe like that, when we were younger. Before …

  I open my eyes. I’m still firmly on the docks.

  And Rachel’s face is no longer a figment of my imagination—she stares back at me from the lake, my reflection changed to hers.

  I gasp and try to take a step back, but I can’t move. I look down at my legs; seaweed wraps up my calves, thick and green and slimy, like moldy ropes.

  “You can’t escape from me,” Rachel says. Her voice is eerie. It sounds like her, but it’s scratchy, deeper, like a bad recording. “You can’t escape from what you’ve done.”

  She reaches her hand up, and when it touches the water’s surface it stops being a reflection—it’s a hand, a real hand, pale as paper and just as thin, with bits of skin peeled back to reveal gray muscle and sharp white bone.

  “We will make you hurt,” she says, her hand stretching farther, reaching toward my leg.

  I struggle against the seaweed holding me in place. It doesn’t budge, just wraps tighter, making pins and needles scream out along my legs. Why won’t I wake up? Why can’t I wake up?

  Her hand claws around my ankle, ice-cold and shockingly strong. She begins to pull me down, my feet slipping on the wet, algae-covered wood.

  “No, no, you can’t,” I gasp out.

  “Why not?” she asks mockingly. “When you did the same to us?”

  I blink. It has to be my imagination.

  But no.

  She’s not alone in the water. Other faces appear. Some old, some young, in all shapes and colors. Only one thing remains the same—each of them is decayed, flesh peeling back to reveal bones and gums, their eyes wide and watery, their mouths open in screams I can’t hear …

  … until Rachel yanks and pulls me under with a splash, and their collective howls fill my ears with the sound of crashing waves.

  I wake up covered in water, choking for air, gasping for breath.

  I thrash against the sheets and still feel like I’m drowning, until I realize that I’m safe.

  I’m in bed.

  Daylight pierces through the curtains.

  And I’m not covered in water. It’s sweat. Just sweat.

  I flop back on my pillow and stare up at t
he ceiling, breathing fast as a rabbit.

  Downstairs, I hear my parents and Jessica talking, the faint rumble of the television. Outside there are birds and cars and people.

  I’m safe. I’m safe.

  “It was just a bad dream,” I whisper.

  I look over to my nightstand, to where I stashed her sketchbook last night. It looks perfectly normal. Perfectly dry. No wonder I’m having nightmares—I’m losing my mind.

  “Samantha!” Dad calls from downstairs. “You better be getting ready for school!”

  His voice makes me jump.

  I close my eyes and force the last of my dream from my mind. It’s Friday. Almost the weekend. And then I can avoid Rachel. I just have to get through today.

  I can do this.

  I can do this.

  I try to get out of bed, and stumble immediately because the sheets are wrapped around my ankles. I collapse on the carpet, the sheets still tangled around my feet. At least I landed on a pillow.

  “Clumsy,” I mutter to myself.

  I try to kick off the sheets, but they don’t budge. I reach down and yank them away.

  But it’s no longer my sheets.

  It’s seaweed.

  Thick ropy vines tangle around my ankles, their leaves covered in tiny snail shells and thick algae. I yelp in horror and grab at the vines. They are cold and mushy beneath my fingers, but I can’t pull them away.

  With every grab, they twine tighter.

  With every scratch, they dig deeper.

  I want to scream out, but my voice is lodged in my chest.

  This can’t be real.

  This can’t be real.

  Except it is.

  The sun is shining and the birds are singing and it is.

  I look around, trying to find something that can free me, and find a pair of scissors sitting on my desk.

  I claw my way over. The seaweed tugs me back.

  Almost

  there—

  My fingers close around the scissors and I twist back, cutting and hacking at the seaweed until it finally—finally—gives way. It coils back in on itself, slinking back like an injured snake.

  I scramble to my feet

  drop the scissors

  race to the door

  and when I look back,

  the vines are gone.

  Just tangled sheets.

  Tangled, shredded sheets

  and a swiftly fading puddle of lake water.

  Rachel’s waiting for me outside the school when I arrive.

  She is smiling.

  “How did you sleep?” she asks. As if she knows.

  Of course she knows.

  I stare at her, uncertain what to say. I’m so tired I don’t think my brain could put together a good insult even if I wanted to. And right now, I don’t think I want to. I don’t know what she’s capable of.

  Or maybe I do know what she’s capable of …

  “Fine,” I say.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” she replies, her smile growing wider. Her hair is dripping wet. Did she just get out of a shower without drying her hair?

  I’m reminded of the way the books she handed me seemed to stay wet.

  Maybe she didn’t shower.

  Maybe she went for a swim in the lake.

  “Here you go,” she says. She holds out her hand. I can’t see what she’s holding in her fist, and I don’t want to. Probably an eel or crab or some other icky thing.

  I take a step back.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  She cocks her head to the side.

  “Your lunch money, silly. I won’t let you forget it again. I’d be a bad friend.”

  She takes my hand and forces what she’s holding into my palm before closing my fingers over it. Thankfully, it’s just paper. Just folded money. But she doesn’t let go.

  Her hands are clammy and cold.

  She pulls me in closer, and there’s no mistaking the scent coming off of her: like decaying seaweed. It clogs my nostrils and makes me gag.

  “And we know what happens to bad friends, don’t we?” she whispers into my ear. I swear I feel my lungs fill with water as she says it.

  Then she takes a step back and pats me on the shoulder. Her smile hasn’t slipped at all this entire time, but now it looks even more menacing, her teeth more pointed than usual, her lips a little more thin and fishlike.

  “See you around,” she says.

  It sounds like a curse.

  I don’t open my palm until I reach my locker. I considered throwing the money away, but something makes me hold on to it.

  Fear.

  The fear that Rachel would find out. The fear of what she would do to me if she did.

  With shaking hands, I unfold the five-dollar bill she handed me.

  There’s a note inside.

  I shove the money and the note to the bottom of my locker and slam it shut.

  School feels different.

  At first I think it’s just my imagination, me jumping at shadows after the horrible night I’d had. But when I’ve taken a few steps down the main hall, it’s clear that something has changed.

  It doesn’t take me long to figure out what it is.

  A boy bumps into me as I head to my locker.

  “Watch it!” I yell. I shove him back.

  “You watch it!” he retorts. He turns to the friends walking with him. They erupt into laughter, and I definitely hear him say the word loser as they walk off.

  My face goes hot.

  Loser?

  I think maybe it’s just a freak occurrence. Some new kid who doesn’t know his place.

  Except then it happens again. Only a few feet from my locker, and some girl rams into me, latching on to my backpack as she goes and causing my books to spill all over the floor.

  “Hey!” I yell.

  But she and her friends burst into giggles.

  The heat in my face reaches my eyes, and the world swims as I fight back tears.

  This isn’t supposed to be happening.

  I gather my books and quickly wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and stand, trudging to my locker. I can’t help but notice now that people are looking at me. And they aren’t staring with the same fear they had before.

  No.

  Now they point and laugh and whisper to themselves.

  As if I have a sign on my back.

  As if they’ve learned they can finally pay me back for all the horrible things I’ve done to them.

  Rachel.

  She has to be behind this.

  Before, that would have filled me with rage. Now it just scares me.

  I dial the combination to my locker and open it.

  The moment the door swings open, a barrage of white objects fall out from it, clattering at my feet, accompanied with the heavy stench of algae and stale water.

  I yelp when I look down and realize what they are.

  Fish heads.

  Dozens and dozens of fish heads, their glassy eyes staring accusingly up at me.

  I scream and leap back.

  Right into our principal, Mr. Detmer.

  “Is there a problem, Samantha?” he asks.

  “I—I—” I stammer.

  I look back to my locker.

  No pile of fish heads at its base.

  Just a book and a few crumpled sheets of paper.

  I shake my head and step away from him, try to gather my things without drawing any further attention to myself.

  From the corner of my eye, I can see Rachel watching.

  Smiling.

  I manage to make it to lunch without any more strange things happening.

  Well, save for the fact that people seem to go out of their way to bump into me now, and I’ve scattered my homework all over the tile more than once. But even those feel like blips. They are nothing compared to the true horrors I know Rachel is concocting for me.

  At lunch, I know that she’s devising something truly terrible.

  She sits with
some people that I don’t think she’s ever talked to in her life, her tray of food untouched before her and laughter clear on her lips. She’s having the best time. Everyone around her is listening and laughing. As if she’s suddenly the coolest girl in the school. Because I realize then that she’s sitting with all the cool kids—the jocks and the cheerleaders and some of the really popular theater kids. Kids who were popular rather than feared, like me. People who never would have let her talk to them. Not in a million years. They barely even talked to me. They were all scared of me.

  One of them, I note with shock, is Bradley. Beside him is Christina.

  Rachel sits at his other side, laughing and nudging him with her shoulder. When she sees me looking at him, her grin goes so wide it nearly splits her face in two.

  I immediately look away.

  Instantly, the fear I’d felt from before is replaced by a new sensation: jealousy.

  I’ve never been jealous of her. Not in my entire life.

  Okay, that may be a slight lie—she definitely has nicer things than me, but that’s it.

  But now she’s hanging with the coolest kids, including the boy I sort of have a crush on, and when I quickly look back to her, she actually has the nerve to smile and wave. She even gestures me over.

  Some of the kids turn to look at me when she does, and it’s clear that they’re confused. Confused as to why she would want to invite me over.

  Like I’m the uncool one.

  Like I’m the impostor.

  Just yesterday, she barely had any friends. No one knew who she was except for me. How in the world did she suddenly become friends with the coolest kids in school?

  I ignore her gesture to come join them. I can’t even imagine what she would have up her sleeve. There’s no way it could be good. Especially since she knew I liked Bradley. I just have to hope that she hasn’t told him anything.

  I swallow my anger and head into the lunch line, even though I’ve completely lost my appetite—not that I had much of one to begin with, nervous as I was.

  I don’t even notice what I’ve piled on my plate; it’s only when I’ve sat down beside my fake friends that I realize it’s spaghetti day. Everyone’s plates are piled high with noodles dusted with gritty Parmesan cheese.