cw: cave exploration, mentions of drowning, mentions of murder
Chapter 12: Keep Away
The underground lake. A wide laceration of reflective, light winking off a coal-dark pool stretching from one end of the room. The water was still, not so much as a ripple. They couldn't see the bottom. Maybe there wasn't.
De'afi brought the lantern around in a swing, tried to see everything at once. Heart thumping in hir ears. Ze had to believe Sybil was to blame for all this, his last fucking joke. Why else would he have told hir those stories?
"You know the 1700s?" De'afi said. "The Race for the Bottom--called it that, the newsy folks out in Eudora. "Started off this real deep sea exploration craze. Ru Divine and Turaq joint-built buncha undersea research stations, I think. Lined up this timeline of finding some real cool shit, marine life in the billions and ancient sunken cities and even leviathans. We got more about the deep sea than the underground. Ain't that something?"
"Sure is," the journalist agreed.
Hir light caught at something. A body sprawled before the lake, smaller than anything should be. There is a level of smallness where things become remarkably more human, Viola always thought. Everything was too enormous for All Creation.
De'afi pelted like a hound outta Damnation. No no no no no. This couldn't be happening again, that wasn't fair. But when's life ever been fair? If O'anna can lose herself grieving, what's fair?
Ze knelt and scooped Sadie Crane's head into hir lap, cradled them like a newborn.
Viola's breath snagged. Her lungs clouded painfully. This was what it must have felt like when Sybil died in the woods that night. They would never be anything past that moment.
But this was not death. This was something else. Like learning to breathe again. This was Sadie Crane stirring in De'afi's lap, their fingers spidering on the cold floor. All those tears for jack nothing.
"Gods alive," De'afi sobbed.
Thought: What? Huh?
Sadie Crane sprang up sitting and Viola came over, she tossed her arms clumsily around her friend's neck and crushed them flat into a hug. She sobbed against their shoulder, gripped that denim jacket like it was the only real thing. She'd never really liked that denim. Now it was all she wanted to hold.
"What in the damn fuck hell's wrong with you?" the aviator belled.
Thought: Sounds like ze could cry five hundred times over and not be dry.
"Saw something real weird, got after it," they squared. "Followed it all the way here, then It kinda--kinda got my nose bleeding again and I passed out."
They stroked Viola's hair and petted De'afi's back. Anchors to place and time.
"What weird?" the journalist queried.
"Sorta--it was Sybil," Sadie Crane said back no hesitation. "And the--The Thing with Antlers and--I dunno. Damn, my head hurts."
It was all kinda relative. Out where the trees grew thickest and the jackalopes screamed and the spirits walked. What answers are you gonna find out there? Zilch and zero.
Thought: Its all meant something, all those stories about the Blood Moon and jackalopes and curses. About black foxes and wolves. You just don't know what yet.
"That don't make much sense, space cadet," the journalist sighed.
"This is it," said De'afi in a quiet mournful voice. "Where the wicked things come. This place here. Don't you feel it?"
Thought: We all do. To the end, we all do.
Their voice clogged, heavy and pleading.
"I saw something," they insisted. "I was gonna--"
They didn't finish. They weren't gonna a damn thing. Get themself killed more like. They pitched their head up, glaring saucer-eyed into the obsidian encroach of lake water. It was not yet time to swim.
Viola hauled the anarchist to their feet.
"I think we gotta go, leastways for now," she said. "Nothing in here."
De'afi knelt edge of that underground pool, saw shapes moving in the black water. Ze caught bursting flecks of ivory, craned hir head sharp forward to see. Stones or aquatic curiosities. Nothing good down there.
Thought: The endless. If you walk down into that, you'll be gone. The music will stop. You will rest. You'll never hear his voice again. Peace.
"Bodies of water," ze said. "They're pathways, you get me? You got life, you got death--water is how you get between."
"It's pretty," said the anarchist.
Thought: Part of him, down there.
The thing in the water blinked at hir. It asked, simply, if ze wanted it. Ze did. Gods alive, ze did.
Ze reached out hir hand for it, fingers birding the surface.
"DON'T!" Viola screamed.
She let Sadie Crane go and sprinted, her eyes wild with fear. Her breaths frantic heavy, balling in her mouth and chest. Her voice bounced off the walls and ceiling and floor like skipped stones.
"What is it?" the anarchist trembled.
The journalist backed up even further. Far from lake as she could, her eyes fixed on the surface. She'd never raised her voice more than a couple inches.
"It ain't right," she whispered. "The water ain't right."
Turning their head back around, they cut peepers at the surface. Lumps of white moving under the coal-dark like bone under skin.
Thought: Maybe she's lost it?
The water shifted oddly, shrugging forward and down.
De'afi threw back from the surface, crying out a slew of creative profanities. Ze could swear they blinked, the glints in the water.
"Damn fuck hell," ze said roughly.
Viola exclaimed breathlessly, backed up further. She wasn't getting close to that lake, not on her life or theirs. She'd read books and seen films. She was a rationalist, not out of her head stupid.
But Sadie Crane was, always had been and always would be. They split from the others and approached lake's edge, taking the lantern to see by.
"Weird," they muttered.
Viola made quick, snatched their shoulders and pulled them away.
"We're getting outta here," she said.
"Yeah, screw this sideways," De'afi agreed.
Thought: It's late. It's too damn late.
"Why's this here for?" Sadie Crane asked. "The lake?"
"Don't think lakes gotta have, like, a reason," the aviator said back.
A flit of coal-dark skated out left. Black stars fireworked their vision something fierce. Cripes. A strike of headache made them squinch their eyes, blood spilling out their nose.
"I--I've seen this before," they said. "In a dream."
Thought: The black fox.
Viola came to them, gripped their shoulders in place real hard.
"Easy now, space cadet," she said.
Their back lolled into Viola's cloak.
Thought: You're a different person than you were two minutes ago. Cripes, what are you doing? And what you doing it for, space cadet? For this bad world fulla shitbugs?
They raised their head straight. Slow going, but they did it.
"I'm okay, I'm okay, gods alive," the anarchist squared.
"Gods stoned," De'afi said.
"Stone dead," Viola corrected.
Round corner of their head, primal cloys of terror pried at Sadie Crane's relief. Did they wanna die here tonight? Was it worth to die here tonight? Was there anything left, if they chose to live?
"You got a way we can get gone fastlike?" they queried.
Thought: Good night to go swimming.
They made quick for the tunnel Viola and De'afi came out of. Viola spoke to the air currents with her fingers. Asked the way out and they whispered back.
Thought: She's done this. In a life you'll never touch.
She took the lantern off Sadie Crane.
"Think we can, like--can get gone through where we came," she said. "Else we're gonna crack our stupid heads and get stupid dead."
Her point was redundant. There were no other exits.
Thought: Guess it's sorta worth. Staying alive.
They didn't look back, not even once. They pressed formidable forward.
Thought: Don't turn around.
Outside the town of Crow's Nest, under a sky shifted but same, Viola trembled and her friends trembled right back. Gods alive. Gods stone dead. That was an experience. Let's never have it again, please and crackers.
Thought: The king is dead but you're alive.
Sadie Crane looked at them both. Getting real close to sunrise. Real close to leaving. And they meant it both ways.
In silence, they walked back to the homestead.
End of Chapter 12
The faci started as this militia, this group of concerned citizens. The first iteration were called "patrollers" or something like that. They went after people who got mind sick. 'Cept there weren't no cure for mind sickness back then. It happens if you go out far enough in the woods, that's what people think. You come back wrong. The patrollers took care of it, leastways that's how my grandpap said. He was a patroller for ten years. He drowned them mostly. That's what you do with the mind sick. You throw them in a body of water, wait to see if they bob up or drown. If they bob up, there's something wrong and you gotta kill them anyhow. If they drown, they get a nice big urn and their loved ones allowed to grieve.
--Excerpt from "The Ungrateful Living Dead" by An-Astic