"What? No!" Jostling his arm free of Aaron's grasp, Mark stood up. "As long as you've known me, do you think I'd be that stupid?" Immediately, his throat tightened at the fear of Jacob hearing him, and he dropped his voice. "It's nothing like that."
"Ok, ok, just had to check. Sit down; you're making me nervous now." As Mark slowly sat on the edge of the couch, Aaron continued, "Well, what kind of 'thing' is it like?"
"Never mind. I can't-I promised not to tell. Just don't worry about me. I'm ok, really."
Aaron's brow lowered so far it shadowed his eyes, and his chin quivered almost imperceptibly. "Fine. We've been friends since we were eight, and I've told you every secret I've ever had. Even that thing in the woods. But if you don't want to tell me, then don't. Share it with your new girlfriend instead. You've known her, what, two full weeks now?" Launching himself off the couch, Aaron stomped to the front door and wrenched it open.
"Aaron, wait!" The sentence was cut off by the slam. As an impulse, Mark started to run after him, but forced himself to stop. Once he lost his temper, talking to Aaron was like talking to a rabid badger. Somehow, he would find a way to apologize later.
"What's going on?" Jacob stumbled down the hall. "Why're you slamming stuff?" He glanced for a moment at the empty living room, the TV still blaring. "Wasn't Aaron here?"
With a sigh, Mark waved him back. "It's nothing, just forget it." After Jacob had already turned down the hall, he added, "Sorry". After standing stupidly in the middle of the floor, Mark returned to the couch. Not knowing what else to do, he steadied his eyes at the TV, but all that passed through his brain was an erratic seizure of fluorescent motion and babble.
CHAPTER SIX
MARK SNORTED AWAKE at the gentle touch on his shoulder. His mother crouched next to him where he had fallen asleep, still sitting on the couch. As the television light flared over the sags and folds in her face, he tried to remember when his mother had started looking so worn.
"Hi, baby," she rasped quietly. "Sorry to wake you, but you looked so uncomfortable."
"Mom, please don't call me 'baby.'" Mike straightened the twinge in his back from slouching. "But I'm glad you woke me. I didn't mean to fall asleep."
"I can call you 'baby' because I'm your mother, and you'll always be my baby." She softened her retort with a comical frown.
Mark rolled his eyes, familiar with the gag. "Yeah, yeah."
His mother frowned earnestly as she sat back and watched him straighten his aching muscles. "Is everything all right, Mark? You haven't fallen asleep on the couch in a long time."
With an annoyed click of his tongue, Mark turned his head away. "Jeez, everyone keeps asking me that! Yes, I'm fine. Everything is fine. I just lost track of time and got tired, that's all."
As she started to respond, a commercial blared in volume over her voice. Grumbling in her throat, his mother grabbed the remote and turned off the TV, throwing them both into a stale dusk lit only by the stained streetlight through the mustard curtains. She pressed on. "I know how hard this divorce has been on you boys, but if something's bothering you, you know you can..."
"Divorce?" Mark interrupted. "You haven't even started the divorce! You and Dad have been separated for two years, and neither of you has even begun to file for divorce yet!" A tiny part of his brain guilted him about waking Jacob, but he couldn't control the rise in his voice.
"Do you have any idea how expensive a divorce is?" His mother recoiled from his tone. "Why do you think I've been working so hard lately? There are filing fees and lawyers, and I can barely afford to keep up with daily expenses on my own! Do you think your father is helping me with your boys' things? And Jacob won't even..." she forcefully stopped herself and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I just...I know I haven't been there for you like I should. This has been hard for me, too."
Even in the dim light, Mark could see her hands shaking, and the guilt stabbed a little deeper. No matter how hard either of them tried, they could not seem to hold a conversation that did not end in yelling. Yet, he could not seem to cut away the coils of pain that clung to his throat and forced out words he never wanted to say. "Well, it'll just be one more year before you'll only have one slacking son to take care of. Then I'll be like Dad and finally be out on my own."
Nauseated by shame, anger, and exhaustion, Mark hurried out of the room before he could see the pain swell into his mother's eyes-the same pain that took control of him and whipped knives from his mouth. In the hall, he saw Jacob's light under his door. Perhaps his brother had fallen asleep in his usual haze with the lights on, but more likely he had heard the whole exchange. Even Mark's protective instinct towards his brother could not outweigh his current, confused spirals of anguish. Slamming his bedroom door shut behind him, he crumpled on his bed, letting exhaustion quickly sweep him away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE NEXT NIGHT, Mark and Tatiana huddled around an LED lantern that threw harsh light and shadows across the cobblestones. Their heads leaned close, but their attention focused on the edge of the underground spring, which they had ringed with small stick-on lights. Also focused on the spring was a camera and tripod, the camera remote clutched in Tatiana's hand. They listened so intently to the silence that they synchronized their breaths, memorizing each other's whooshes of air. Though concentrating on catching the smallest movement or sound, Mark still found himself thinking-for minutes at a time-about the soft spearmint he could smell on Tatiana's lips, or the faintest rustle of cotton that moved with her breathing. When she cleared her throat suddenly, he was so startled his whole body twitched.
"What if we're just scaring it off with all these lights?" she whispered. "Maybe it wasn't the lights that attracted it last time?"
Smiling, Mark shook his head. "You say that every time. We have to use the lights or else we can't get proof. The camera was your idea."
She nodded, but still frowned in worry. "Yeah, but maybe your idea was better. Maybe we should turn off the lights and just try to record the sound."
"But even then if it shows up, we won't be able to prove what's making the sound. Everyone would just say it was a bell, or..." he trailed off, unable to think of an instrument that could reproduce the song. "Anyway, why do you want to go over this? You were the one who wanted to hold off on telling anyone." With a twinge, Mark recalled the hurt in Aaron's face.
Tatiana blew out an exasperated puff of air. "You don't get it. I'd been waiting almost my whole life to see any sign of one of those, even a toenail, and you show up once and look one in the eyes. What if we scared it off, and that one time will be all I'll ever get?"
Mark wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed gently. "I do get why this is important to you, but we're doing all we can. I'm sure we'll see it again, now that it knows we're here. Those were not eyes that looked scared. We just have to be patient."
Glancing down, Tatiana licked her lips-a habit that Mark noticed she did when thinking carefully. "I-I haven't told you about something that happened when I was little. When my dad took me exploring." She paused and licked her lips again.
Mark waited.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"WHEN I WAS eight, my dad... well, I didn't meet my dad until I was eight. That I remember, anyway. He just showed up one day and...he was trying. To be a dad, I guess. We'd go on walks around the city, and he'd show me all the subway and bus routes, so I'd know how to get around on my own. I'm not sure if he even knew how to drive." Her mouth curled into a half smile. "It drove my mom crazy, worrying about me wandering all around, sometimes in pretty bad neighborhoods. I think my dad just had no idea what to do with a kid, so he took me on his own hobby. We'd explore abandoned buildings, walk through the subway access tunnels and listen to the trains, sneak into supply rooms of restaurants and hotels. You'd be surprised how easy it is if you act like you know where you're going."
"Anyway, one day we were exploring an underground gas line access tunnel, I think under a park or something. I know there were water pipes
running through everywhere. It was really quiet-usually you can hear traffic or something, but we couldn't hear anything except the water. Then, the farther we walked, the louder the water got; but the sound was coming up from underneath the tunnel, not through the pipes. It got so loud we had to shout at each other. I started getting really scared, because I imagined this giant wave of water breaking up through the concrete and smashing us. I think I actually believed a monster of water was coming after us."
"I grabbed my dad's hand and tried to pull him back in the direction we came. At first, he just shook me off and said to keep going. I started crying and screaming, 'Let's go, let's go, there's a monster in the water!' Any moment, I felt the ground was going to open up and we'd get swept away. But then my dad laughed, and I was confused. Why would he be laughing when I was so scared? He crouched down to my ear, to make sure I could hear, and said, 'That's not a monster, that's the river, La Fuente. The conquistadores named it The Source, because it's the source of life here. It's so loud because it's keeping the forest and the animals and the whole city alive.'"
"I know it sounds cheesy, but somehow that worked. I wasn't scared anymore-I imagined the water totally differently, almost like it was magical instead. And then, right after he finished saying that, we heard this ringing sound. The same sound that we heard," she pointed to Mark and herself. "It was like it was a part of the water, or like the water was carrying it, because we could hear it totally clearly through the noise. The song traveled right underneath our feet. Probably, it only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed like my dad and I were standing there forever. We just stared at each other for the longest time, and we were grinning and we started laughing. I can't even remember being so happy." For a long pause, Tatiana stared at her hands, twining her fingers distractedly through the sharp lines of shadow.
"Because I was just a kid, I thought it was angels singing. After that, of course, I started learning all the legends and history and realized it must have been something living in the river underground. I've spent ten years trying to find whatever that thing is, trying to hear that song again." Looking up, she peered into Mark's eyes, so close that stray wisps of her curls tickled his forehead. "And suddenly you come along, and I find it again. My next happy moment."
CHAPTER NINE
SPEARMINT AND CLOVES dizzy in his head, Mark could no longer resist the flecks of copper in her eyes, delicate and trusting as the dust of butterfly wings. He leaned across the precarious inches between them and touched his lips to hers: gently, unassuming.
A little gurgle sighed in her throat, and she slowly pressed more firmly, and then drew back. She met his eyes again, smiled, and glanced down with a nervous cough. Mark knew his face was betraying the heat in his heart, but he trembled at noticing that the rich shade of her skin could not hide her flush of blood either. They both sat with their heads bowed a moment, not speaking. Rolling the tip of his tongue, he tasted the spearmint on his lips.
Trying to change the subject, Mark asked, "Um, can I ask what happened to your dad?"
The only change on her face was a slight crinkle in her brow, but somehow Tatiana's entire person drained. "I didn't see him much after that. A couple more times he took me exploring, and then he just stopped showing up. I felt really abandoned, especially since I thought we'd been having so much fun. Every place we went was this mysterious adventure, like the kids' detective novels I used to read. Before that-before he showed up-I didn't really think of him or feel abandoned, 'cause I'd never known him. My life was school, my mom, and her hobbies, which was a lot of going to the mall. Then I abruptly had a dad, and he showed me this whole other way of living and looking at the places around me; and just when I really started to get attached to him, he disappeared. It crushed me." Her voice cracked.
Cautiously, Mark rested his palm on her knee. "It's ok, if you don't want to talk about it." Tatiana shook her head quickly.
"No, I'm ok. Actually, it's nice being able to trust someone else with this. My mom and I don't talk much anymore. You're a pretty good listener."
"Yeah, well, not talking is one of my best skills," he grinned. Tilting her head, she angled a smile up at him. Then she focused her eyes sideways into space, her mind concentrating on some raw, buried place in her mind. When she continued, her voice was a delicate rustle.
"Turns out, I learned years later, the reason my father disappeared again was because he'd gotten arrested and sent to a mental health hospital. What my child self had perceived to be just an exciting sense of fun and kind of a quirky imagination, was actually a symptom of his mania. One day he just had a breakdown, grabbed some random guy walking down the street, and beat him to a pulp. The guy was in the hospital for a week before he died of brain trauma. I don't know exactly what kind of sentence they gave my dad, but he's pretty much going to be in the hospital for the rest of his life." She took a deep breath and slowly released it before continuing. "I've been holding that memory of us in the tunnel, with the singing and the water, for so long. I just can't imagine how the man who was with me, who made me unafraid so easily, could be the same man who would...do something like that. It's stupid, but I felt like if I could just find a connection to that moment again, if I could find the thing that was singing and prove it was real, then maybe it would prove that moment was real. Validation, I suppose." Her shoulders were visibly shaking. "Now I'm so close, and I feel I might lose it all again."
For a stunned moment, Mark scanned his words for something that might sound comforting, but nothing felt right. Ever so gingerly, he reached up and touched her cheekbone, lightly as a whisper. He could feel the warm tears that the shadows hid. Brushing them off, he traced his hand along the side of her face, his pulse nearly bursting through his fingertips.
"We'll find it again, whatever that creature was. And even if we can't prove it to anyone else, at least you'll always know for sure that it was real."
With her eyes closed, Tatiana laid her hand against his and pressed it tighter against her face. She guided his palm to her mouth and kissed it again and again. His skin became wild under the quivering of her breaths; he had to focus on gulping lungfuls of air to calm the trembling of his entire body.
At that very moment, they heard it. A hissing whisper that meandered like mist around the walls.
Both their eyes flew open, and they turned to the spring.
CHAPTER TEN
THE CROCODILE CREATURE had pulled its entire head above the edge of the well, its arms gripping the stone with webbed, long-fingered hands that were a cross between crocodile and human hands. Like a cat at night, its eyes mirrored the light with a blazing sheen. Though its great, toothy jaws were not moving, it was making a series of hissing, whistling sounds; as he watched more closely, Mark saw its nostrils fluttering around each airy syllable.
Almost forgetting to breathe himself, Mark finally pulled his senses together enough to whisper, "Is it talking?" As he heard his own sounds blend with the creature's, he realized what little difference lay between their speech.
"I-I think so," Tatiana whispered back, obviously noticing the same thing. "Should we, um, what should we do?"
Before he could respond, a subtle but distinct snap came from the camera as Tatiana overcame her own shock enough to remember the remote in her hand. Instantly, the creature went silent, its albino eyes glinting huge. Every muscle freezing at once, Mark wondered why it had not occurred to him earlier that, speaking or not, this was still a creature with a fang-filled deathtrap that could crush his torso in one bite. How far away would they need to be to outrun it?
As soon as the question entered his mind, the creature lunged entirely out of the water with a thrash of its giant tail. Mark and Tatiana scrambled their feet under them, slipping on the worn cobblestones. Flinging himself backwards, Mark stumbled and slammed his elbow on a rock; an electric jolt of numbness temporarily paralyzed his arm. The creature's force was so great it nearly flew towards them, and Mark knew they could never possibly outrun th
is thing, even if they had been much farther back. Instinctively, he threw his uninjured arm over his head and waited for the inevitable snapping of his bones. He heard Tatiana shout his name, but his body was too panicked to move.
Instead, he heard a metallic crash and plastic splintering nearby, and looked up to see the camera smash on the ground. The creature stopped, cracked open its jaws, and unleashed a shrill, gurgling screech that drained the blood from Mark's head. Then, with a grace that seemed preposterous for such a large body, it swung around and ran towards the far edge of the courtyard, all four legs swiveling swiftly underneath it like a dog or a cat. Except, instead of moving its pairs of front and back legs together, it moved its side legs together, so that it was both galloping and slithering in a hypnotic S-curve. In the space of a thought, it was beyond the reach of the lights.
"Hurry!" Tatiana ran up to Mark and pulled him to his feet. Grabbing her backpack and throwing it around her shoulders as she went, she ran after the creature, calling back to Mark, "We've gotta catch up!"
His elbow stabbing alive with pain, Mark stumbled after her. "Wait! It's too dangerous!" She ignored him. Her flashlight was a spastic firefly as she bounded ahead in the darkness. Mark pulled on his head lamp and followed, every movement jarring through his arm. Tatiana's light disappeared around the corner of what appeared to be another passageway. The light from his head lamp bounced almost worthlessly across the uneven ground; Mark could only hope he wouldn't slip on a hidden rock or patch of algae. Just before he reached the opening of the passageway, a furious swoosh echoed out, and Tatiana screamed. His heart clamped to a stop.
"Tatiana!" Oblivious now to the burning in his arm, he ran faster. Images of her body crumpled in the unforgiving mouth of that creature nearly blinded him. Now fully in the passageway, he could not see any sign of her or the crocodile ahead in the short span of his lamp. He ran for what must have long enough to catch up, but still there was nothing. Shouting her name over and over, he heard no answer. No sound at all but the hysterical echo of his voice, mocking him.