“Yeah, we were coming back from there and kinda got lost . . .” I started to say, when I caught the guilty glint in all their eyes. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Nothing!” one of them blurted out in panic. I grabbed the flashlight from his hand and pointed the beam at his face so as to get a better look at him. His eyes were filled with shame and guilt – a dead giveaway of whatever devious plan they’d had for tonight.
“Liar, liar,” I murmured, my eyes locked on his.
“Oh, shit! That’s that Joe girl with the empathy-sight, isn’t it? She can read our thoughts.” He looked frantically to Simon, pleading for help.
“L-look, girls, it’s not what you think!” the other friend intervened.
I played up my act of mindreader. I couldn’t really read people’s thoughts, but I could get a good read of their strongest upfront emotion. I knew with absolute certainty that shame was the most fervent feeling, so I picked that one first.
“I see.” I tossed the bait. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
“N-no! I swear we weren’t going to spy on you girls. We didn’t even know you were swimming naked by the lake!” he blurted out in complete panic, just as I had expected.
So that was what they were up to: sneaking around in the middle of the night to check out the naked girls by the lake. Typical.
“Shut up!” Simon hissed.
“I can’t believe you guys,” I told them, shaking my head disapprovingly. “Was this your idea, Simon?”
“Of course not! I only wanted to see what magic Luna Harker was dealing with. She’s quite famous for her dark rituals. I wanted to check that out,” he said in a reproachful tone. “I talked to that Alicia girl this afternoon, and she told me if I wanted to see what their Gathering was like, first I would have to participate in an initiation hazing. I was planning to skip that and spy on the activities from a distance.”
I pointed the flashlight at his face and watched him squirm under my scrutiny. “Well, maybe you should have been more brave and come along for the initiation, Simon. Sometimes, you can’t skip the bad parts and go straight for the good, you know,” I countered.
“I’m not a coward!”
“I didn’t say you were. Those are your words, not mine.” Eye roll to that. “So, tell me, this plan of yours was only for study purposes? The part where you get to see naked girls is just an occupational hazard, is it?”
He at least had the decency to blush at that. I shook my head again.
“Who cares, anyway?” Mayumi cut in. “There weren’t any naked activities to spy on! The peeping Toms here would just have seen us standing by the lake, looking into the mists, that’s all. It’s no big deal. I’m glad they’re here! Who knows what sorts of dangerous animals we could have bumped into in these woods? We could have been eaten by wolves, if these guys hadn’t shown up.”
“W-wolves?” one of the boys stammered, looking around in alarm. “Nobody said anything about wolves! There are wolves here?”
“I’m sure there are bound to be one or two ambling around,” Mayumi mused.
“Don’t be stupid. There are no wolves here,” Simon snapped.
Then, as if on cue, we heard some suspicious shuffling and crackling of twigs nearby.
“What was that?” Mayumi squeaked.
“That was nothing. The forest makes all kinds of rustling sounds. It’s just the leaves rustling in the wind,” I rationalized; everybody had decided to act like scared fools, all of a sudden.
“N-no, that was definitely something. I-I think I really saw something moving back there . . .” the boy murmured, squinting through the dark.
“Stop being idiots! It’s just shadows playing tricks on your eyes,” Simon said, but his voice didn’t sound so sure any more, as he glanced around, looking for possible threats. A series of sharp snaps broke close by, right behind some trees. I could even detect a faint hint of an animal growl.
“I saw its eyes! Glinting in the dark. I saw it! I told you there were wolves here!” Mayumi cried out and grabbed my arm in fright.
“Guys, come on! This is nothing, seriously. I’m sure if there were wild animals in this area, Craig would have told us when we arrived,” I tried reasoning again. “He would certainly have warned us about any wolves.”
“Who the hell is Craig?” Simon asked, still looking over his shoulder in alarm.
“The camp caretaker, Craig. The guy in the cabin at the first gate, with the safari clothes, the round glasses and bushy moustache,” I said.
“I don’t remember him,” Simon said.
“Well, Craig didn’t say anything about dangerous animals roaming the camp.” I tried to reassure them, but the growl that followed my statement wasn’t as soft or subtle this time around. No way could trees or the wind make that kind of sound.
There was definitely something out there.
It was out to get us.
And it was getting closer.
Chapter Nine
The Last Breath
THE MOMENT THE second growl came, Mayumi, having already lost every shred of self-control, took off running like a deranged lunatic, flailing her arms in the air and screaming at the top of her lungs. Simon’s friends didn’t take long to follow her lead and also scrambled through the forest in panic, each one running in a different direction.
“Oh, fucking hell!” I groaned, trying to decide which way to go and who to run after.
Simon stood in a semi-crouched position, wracked with indecision as well.
“Come on, we need to get Mayumi back first!” I quickly made the choice. “She will kill herself out here alone!”
He nodded and darted in the direction where he had seen her disappear. I followed him, thankful that I still had his friend’s flashlight in my hands.
Whatever the growling thing was, it had evidently now decided that Simon and I were its next meal and was chasing after us. I could hear it running and snapping its teeth right behind us.
“Run! It’s following us!” I shouted, and sped after Simon, vaulting over dark bushes and rocks, trying to avoid hitting the small tree branches, which left stinging slashes all over my face. The growling faded gradually into the background. “Simon! Wait!” I tried to make him slow down so we could get our bearings. We were running blindly in the forest and I could still feel us moving on an incline. That surely meant we were heading further and further away from the main house.
“I saw her running past that tree. She must be right over there!” Simon shouted, grabbing my hand and forcing me onwards.
“Hey, Simon, hold on.” I tried to make him stop again. Running blindly was a dangerous thing to do, but I didn’t have the chance to explain why that was, because what I feared suddenly happened.
Simon slipped and fell into a ravine that had opened abruptly on the ground in front of us. He plunged down the slope, pulling me along with him. The hill became steeper to the point where we no longer had any chance of breaking our fall.
We were like two rag dolls falling. I couldn’t even feel the ground underneath me as we slid past a precipice and into the dark waters of the lake below. The plunge into the cold water knocked all the air from my lungs. It hit me like a punch in the chest, burning and stinging all the places where I had scratched myself in the forest.
I pushed with my arms and legs, propelling myself quickly upwards. I spluttered as I broke the surface of the lake, and looked around, trying to find Simon. He burst through the water a second later, splashing around in complete panic. He looked frantic, trying to understand what the hell had just happened.
“We fell down a slope and into the lake,” I gasped. Hot puffs of air shot from our mouths as we tried to catch our breath.
The hulking frame of the boulder from where we had fallen loomed right above us. Climbing back up was going to be impossible. Especially in the dark, with only our bare hands to grip with, and our clothes completely drenched.
“Oh, no, no, no . . .” I hear
d Simon mumbling to himself.
“Simon, are you okay?”
“NO. No, this can’t be happening,” he mumbled to himself, clearly still in a panic.
“Calm down. Are you hurt?” I asked, but he was so scared, he wasn’t listening. “Simon. Are you all right?” I swam closer to get a better look at him.
“I can’t be in the water! I can’t be in here!”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s the curse! I can’t! I’m cursed! It’s coming to get me!” He was looking at the water as if some monster was going to appear at any second. “I can’t be in water! My brother did this to me. He cursed me! If I’m in the water, something will come and get me!” he cried out. “It’s happened before. I swear to you! Please, please, help me! Get me out of here,” he begged, scared out of his mind, thrashing about in the water. His dark hair was plastered over his face and his voice was breaking.
“Listen, you need to calm down,” I said slowly, treading water. “There’s no such thing as curses, Simon.” I paused uncertainly: I had faced so many strange things in my life that there was every possibility that curses did exist. “But even if there is,” I corrected quickly, “nothing is going to get you, all right? I’m here with you. I’m not letting anything get you.”
“Y-you don’t understand. This is real! I’m not making this up . . . Please, you gotta believe me. I’m not crazy!” he pleaded with a desperate sob, struggling to keep afloat in all his panic.
“I believe you, okay? But we need to get out of this lake, then, as fast as we can. If I’m not mistaken, the shore should be to our left. I remember seeing this rock formation when I was standing on the shoreline with Luna. We need to swim in that direction.” I pointed through the mist.
“H-how d-do you know it’s the right way? I can’t see anything in this fog!”
“It’s that way. Trust me,” I told him with the most assertiveness I could muster, and prayed that, this time, just this one time, I could give the right directions. “Come on, let’s go. Swim with me, okay?”
We swam as fast as our drenched clothes allowed us. My soaked jeans and shoes were heavier in the water, and it was a struggle to move with all the extra weight. I was now glad that I had forgotten my jacket; it would have dragged me down if I’d been wearing it.
After a few minutes struggling through the cold waters, the mists gave us a break and swiftly dispersed, opening a clear path that showed us the way.
“There! See, it’s the lake’s shore, I told you I was right!” I cheered victoriously. It was only a few meters away, but I couldn’t brag for long because Simon, who had been slightly ahead of me, turned around, his face suddenly a mask of complete horror.
“There’s s-something in the water,” he whispered, his teeth chattering with the cold. “I f-felt s-something brushing my leg. T-there’s something here with us.”
I looked worriedly around, trying to peek into the water, but it was too damned dark to see anything. “It’s probably a fish, Simon. Lakes have fishes, right?” I tried to reason, but my voice faltered and then I too felt something brushing up against my leg.
Simon was having a full-on panic attack now, splashing around and looking desperately into the water. “It’s here! I’m not crazy, it’s down there!” he cried out.
“Simon, calm down, it’s noth—” I didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence before something grabbed Simon and pulled him down.
I didn’t think. I reacted immediately and dived after him, pushing my hands in wide arcs through the dark waters until I found him. I grabbed his hand and gave it a hard tug to pull us both back to the surface. As we surfaced, he sputtered and coughed out water.
“What the hell happened, Simon?” I asked, alarmed.
“I t-told you . . . I’m c-cursed! It’s coming to get me, drag me down and drown me!”
“Come on, let’s go!” I ordered, taking his warning very seriously now. “The shore is right there. We can make it! Swim fast, Simon!”
He didn’t need to be told twice and darted forward, splashing furiously in the direction of the shore, as I followed suit. He’d only managed a few strokes ahead when something pulled him down again. I dived after him. As soon as my hands found his, he latched on to me desperately, but the thing holding him wouldn’t let him go. I pushed a little deeper into the water and caught a glimpse of the thing: it had a human-shaped silhouette, but its eyes glowed ominously in the dark waters.
That thing clearly wasn’t human.
And whatever it was, it was looking right at me.
Goosebumps coursed through my whole body, the water becoming considerably colder. I kicked the thing’s arm a couple times before it finally released its grip on Simon, letting us propel ourselves towards the surface again.
As soon our heads were out of the water, I shouted to Simon, “Swim! Go!”
The panic-induced adrenaline kicked into his system, making him shoot towards the shore as fast as a bullet. The shoreline was almost within reach. Only a few meters more and we’d be out of the water and out of danger.
But the thought had crossed my mind too soon. I felt the hard grip of the creature as it grasped firmly on to me. As its fingers constricted around my ankle, digging in the fabric of my jeans, I gasped loudly.
“Simon!” I called out for help. He was so terrified that he had swum faster and was considerably closer to the shore. “Help!” I cried out again, choking in my struggle. My head submerged for a desperate moment, but I thrashed fiercely and managed to pull myself back up again. “Simon!” I called out one more time, and managed to stay afloat for a few more fleeting seconds – enough for me to see Simon standing on the shore, water splashing at his shins, as he watched me, paralyzed, his eyes wide and his body frozen in terror.
“Help me!” I shouted, and for a moment it seemed he was about to take a step back into the water, but then he stopped and remained where he was, unmoving, his arms hanging limply at his sides. I realized I was unable to do anything more than watch as Simon took a small step back, away from the shoreline, and as I felt another tug at my ankle, stronger this time, pulling me down with a greater force, the water engulfed me again. I realized that he wasn’t going to come for me. He wasn’t going to help me.
The coward was going to let me drown in his place.
I kicked and thrashed in the water, trying to free myself, but the thing had an iron grip and kept pulling me down towards the dark depths of the lake. I struggled, stretching a hand up, trying to reach the surface where the moonlight shimmered, and I watched helplessly as bubbles of air escaped my mouth and floated up as if in slow motion.
All I could think of in that moment was Simon’s image, standing on the shore: the resigned look on his face as he backed away. All I could think of was how much of a coward he was. I felt betrayed.
And with that thought came anger, filling the whole of me and igniting a scorching trail through my veins. It spread like wildfire with each violent thump of my frantic heart. It was pure rage, bursting through my body.
I remembered this feeling. I remembered it happening before, when I had been taken by Vigil’s powers. I remembered how the anger had taken over me until there was no space left for it, and it could only burst out of me in a fiery explosion of rage. Then, the flames had reached as high as the sky. I remembered rattling chains, snarls full of violence, a burning desert and fire. So much fire.
Let it burn.
I didn’t feel cold any more. The water was bubbling all around me, as if it was boiling. I closed my eyes and let all my anger out. This thing holding me, dragging me to the lake floor, needed to stop.
Let it burn, something whispered in my head.
I unleashed all the fire and rage I felt inside. No flames could burst out of me because I was under water, but nonetheless, the scorching heat I released burned everything in its way all the same.
The creature – whatever it was – was no longer holding me: it was no more. I watched as i
t screeched a last agonized breath and melted away, dissolving quickly into the black, boiling water.
I swam upwards sluggishly until I reached the surface. My clothes felt too heavy, as if they were made of lead. A thin spray of water was falling on the top of my head, like I had just caught the end of an explosion, and smoke billowed inside a ring of fire all around me, burning at the surface of the lake. I glanced to where Simon stood. If it was possible, his eyes were wider and more scared than before.
I tried to call for help again, but I kept swallowing water and coughing up too much to be able to talk. I swam slowly out of the smoking ring of fire, knowing from past experience that the fire I created couldn’t burn me, but I was too exhausted and swimming was becoming extremely hard for me.
I had spent too much energy burning through water, and now I only had a wisp of it left to swim back. The last remaining meters to the shore were an agonizing torture.
I was weak, but I thought I could make it. I needed to focus. But then I saw Tristan bursting from the depths of the forest to the shore so fast I could barely recognize him. He halted next to Simon, who pointed a shaking finger in my direction, and then took off again, running towards the water.
He dived in like a professional lifeguard, and I sighed in relief. I only needed to hang on for a few more seconds and I would be safe; only a few more seconds, and he would reach me. A small wave rolled over me and my head was momentarily submerged. I was so tired; all I wanted to do was close my eyes and go to sleep, but I knew I had to keep fighting for a few more seconds. I gave one more push with my legs and my head was out of the water in time for Tristan’s arm to snake under my arms, pulling me up against him.
“Joey! Thank God!” he called out in worry. “Your head disappeared for a second and I almost couldn’t see you! Are you okay?” He pulled me closer, making sure my mouth and nose were always clear to breathe.
I didn’t have the strength to reply, so I just nodded, spluttering when another small wave hit us. He pulled me along with him, swimming quickly to the shore, and only when we were finally out of that damned lake did I notice Luna standing next to Simon. She also looked worried as she and Simon watched Tristan carrying my limp body in his arms.