Skeleton Crew

ragged.

'Ra—' He sensed the raft tilt in the water as Deke moved toward them. He reached for Rachel at the same time, meaning to pull her back, dimly aware that he didn't want Deke to be the one to do it.

Then Rachel's hand touched the water—her forefinger only, sending out one delicate ripple in a ring—and the black patch surged over it. Randy heard her gasp in air, and suddenly the blankness left her eyes. What replaced it was agony.

The black, viscous substance ran up her arm like mud... and under it, Randy saw her skin dissolving. She opened her mouth and screamed. At the same moment she began to tilt outward.

She waved her other hand blindly at Randy and he grabbed for it. Their fingers brushed. Her eyes met his, and she still looked hellishly like Sandy Duncan. Then she fell outward and splashed into the water.

The black thing flowed over the spot where she had landed.

'What happened?' LaVerne was screaming behind them. 'What happened? Did she fall in? What happened to her?' Randy made as if to dive in after her and Deke pushed him backwards with casual force.

'No,' he said in a frightened voice that was utterly unlike Deke.

All three of them saw her flail to the surface. Her arms came up, waving—no, not arms.

One arm. The other was covered with a black membrane that hung in flaps and folds from something red and knitted with tendons, something that looked a little like a rolled roast of beef.

'Help!' Rachel screamed. Her eyes glared at them, away from them, at them, away —her eyes were like lanterns being waved aimlessly in the dark. She beat the water into a froth. “Help it hurts please help it hurts IT HURTS IT HURRRRR—' Randy had fallen when Deke pushed him. Now he got up from the boards of the raft and stumbled forward again, unable to ignore that voice. He tried to jump in and Deke grabbed him, wrapping his big arms around Randy's thin chest.

'No, she's dead,' he whispered harshly. 'Christ, can't you see that? She's dead, Pancho.' Thick blackness suddenly poured across Rachel's face like a drape, and her screams were first muffled and then cut off entirely. Now the black stuff seemed to bind her in crisscrossing ropes. Randy could see it sinking into her like acid, and when her jugular vein gave way in a dark, pumping jet, he saw the thing send out a pseudopod after the escaping blood.

He could not believe what he was seeing, could not understand it... but there was no doubt, no sensation of losing his mind, no belief that he was dreaming or hallucinating.

LaVerne was screaming. Randy turned to look at her just in time to see her slap a hand melodramatically over her eyes like a silent movie heroine. He thought he would laugh and tell her this, but found he could not make a sound.

He looked back at Rachel. Rachel was almost not there anymore.

Her struggles had weakened to the point where they were really no more than spasms.

The blackness oozed over her—bigger now, Randy thought, it's bigger, no question about it— with mute, muscular power. He saw her hand beat at it; saw the hand become stuck, as if in molasses or on flypaper; saw it consumed. Now there was a sense of her form only, not in the water but in the black thing, not turning but being turned, the form becoming less recognizable, a white flash— bone, he thought sickly, and turned away, vomiting helplessly over the side of the raft.

LaVerne was still screaming. Then there was a dull whap! and she stopped screaming and began to snivel.

He hit her, Randy thought. / was going to do that, remember?

He stepped back, wiping his mouth, feeling weak and ill. And scared. So scared he could think with only one tiny wedge of his mind. Soon he would begin to scream himself. Then Deke would have to slap him, Deke wouldn't panic, oh no, Deke was hero material for sure. You gotta be a football hero... to get along with the beautiful girls, his mind sang cheerfully. Then he could hear Deke talking to him, and he looked up at the sky, trying to clear his head, trying desperately to put away the vision of Rachel's form becoming blobbish and inhuman as that black thing ate her, not wanting Deke to slap him the way he had slapped LaVerne.

He looked up at the sky and saw the first stars shining up there—the shape of the Dipper already clear as the last white light faded out of the west. It was nearly seven-thirty.

'Oh Ceeesco,' he managed. 'We are in beeg trouble thees time, I theeenk.'

'What-is it?' His hand fell on Randy's shoulder, gripping and twisting painfully. 'It ate her, did you see that? It ate her, it fucking ate her up! What is it?'

'I don't know. Didn't you hear me before?'

'You're supposed to know, you're a fucking brain-ball, you take all the fucking science courses!' Now Deke was almost screaming himself, and that helped Randy get a little more control.

'There's nothing like that in any science book I ever read,' Randy told him. 'The last time I saw anything like that was the Halloween Shock-Show down at the Rialto when I was twelve.' The thing had regained its round shape now. It floated on the water ten feet from the raft.

'It's bigger,' LaVerne moaned.

When Randy had first seen it, he had guessed its diameter at about five feet. Now it had to be at least eight feet across.

'It's bigger because it ate Rachel!' LaVeme cried, and began to scream again.