Shifting

of my thighs while I took his head and his limbs off. After that, the limbs kept thrashing but with less purpose. I pushed him off and he floated way harmlessly. I backed further into the water, chest deep now, and realized I could not retreat much further or I would be unable to move freely due to the water, but there was nothing for it. Already, my toes were going numb from the cold.

I threw the kid’s head at the guy with the sunglasses and knocked him off kilter. He recovered and reached for me with gray fingernails which I sliced off with one wild swipe. His other hand I took off at the wrist, I grunted with the force of that swing and was shocked to see the saber cut right through bone. The sharpening stone had indeed worked some magic on my blade, I realized. Five stubs and one stump still reached for me, and then I tripped.

I went over backwards into the water and sank down. I had stepped off a shelf or into a hole and was underwater. I blasted bubbles from my nose and thrashed about. I put the point of my sword out blindly and felt it sink into something. It was the chest of the man with the sunglasses and he kept coming, forcing the blade into his ribs.

I struggled, the rocks in my pocket were doing their job, pulling me down. I thought I was about to run out of air and felt that bubbling, squeezing panic that comes with being down too long, like when you are a racing a friend underwater and start to feel you aren’t going to make it. I expected any second to see red flashes and feel my lungs bursting in open panic. I heaved up and took in a gulp of air. I sank back down with Mr. Sunglasses on top of me, his finger stubs massaging my scalp, my sword lodged into his ribcage.

With a great heave, I threw him off me and nearly lost my sword in the process. His body had deteriorated enough over the summer, however, that it released my blade and I swam backward with great kicks. I sank as I swam and I felt tired and heavy. I wondered if I would ever taste another lungful of sweet air.

More or less standing on the bottom, at least ten feet down, I gazed upward and ignored the stinging in my open eyes the cloudy water brought. There above me was a splashing company of things. They churned at the water and flopped up there. Some had sunk a bit, but most seemed to be floating, as bodies will do when they are dead. They lacked the coordination and self-control necessary to swim downward deliberately. I wondered if the Preacher or the Captain was among their number.

It was just about this moment that I realized I had been holding my breath for a remarkably long time. In fact, I felt no need to breathe at all. This set off a moment of panic, but I fought it down. I concentrated on the idea that I was holding my breath, and that I was simply holding it for a very long time and didn’t need to worry about it. This worked pretty well. My lungs felt strangely empty and deflated, however, as I had released a lot of air in my struggles. I worried that if I kept releasing it, in little bits, I might collapse a lung eventually with no air to replace it. Still, for the moment, I wasn’t drowning.

I turned and headed toward the bottom of the Lake. I walked downhill with slow-motion strides into the green-black unknown.

I saw the light down there, and it was entirely different underwater. From the surface, you might only notice it at night, but when you were underneath the silvery-blue line that made up the border between air and light and the depths of the lake, it shimmered with bluish radiance. Just looking at it, you could tell it wasn’t a normal light; it wasn’t a huge sunken light bulb. It looked more like a flame, a dancing, wavering blue flame that glowed in the murky distance.

I walked slowly toward it, feeling like a moth drawn by fascination to burn my wings upon a magical candle. As I descended, I ran into huge water weeds that stood at least a dozen feet high. I slashed and cleared a path. If nothing else, the path might help me find my way back to shore. But I felt doubtful that I would ever be making that return trip.

It was a horrid feeling, being down there. It wasn’t pleasant or funny. It was terrifying. I had no idea when the potion would wear off and I would be left choking at the bottom of the lake, or when I would find some underwater horror waiting for me. Or, possibly worst of all, the sun would go down and I would be left on the bottom of the lake, lost in blackness and bitter cold. A tiny part of my mind even wondered if I was already one of them, one of the things back on the beach. Perhaps, a tiny, evil monkey in my mind whispered, I no longer breathe because I am no longer alive.

I put my hand up to my chest, and it took a long second, but I felt my heart there, still thumping away. It wasn’t conclusive, but I took it as a very good sign. I continued down the slope. I looked up at the silvery-blue surface and, although it was hard to be sure, I figured I was at least fifty feet down.

I looked back, and my heart skipped and began pounding harder. The things, some of them at least, were coming down after me. Those that had little flesh on them, that were mostly white bones with scraps of clothing left, were still coming. They were just walking down. I supposed that their bones were dense enough not to float without their flesh. They weren’t coming fast, but they would never stop, I knew. They would not grow tired or bored. I knew somehow too, that even when darkness came tonight, if I still lived, they would still be coming.

The deeper I went the darker it became. I reached a flat plateau that ran out at least fifty yards, and then I found a low stone wall. It looked very strange down there, overgrown with waterweeds and with a few perch floating around it lazily. It had to be part of the town, I felt sure. I followed the wall for a while and found the foundations of building. I stepped into it and figured it would have been a barn. The timbers had rotted away for the most part, but there were still concrete anchors holding the bottom of the posts down. I imagined how it must have looked that day, more than half a century ago, when the waters of the river had risen up after they’d built the dam and consumed this whole area.

I noticed there were drowned trees here, on the bottom. They were festooned with growths and fish now, but there they were, with their dead branches reaching upward as if begging the impossibly distant sun.

I looked back and saw the things chasing me, there were four of them. I had left them far behind. Feeling relatively safe, I looked around and wondered at this drowned world and I had a new thought then, one I didn’t appreciate at all. What if the dam broke? Soon, heavy rains and snows were coming, and I’m sure that back in the summer when the world had gone mad and died, the engineers running it had left it in the normal summer configuration. It had been a dry summer, meaning the gates were set to only allow enough water to escape to keep the river alive. When the weather really came in, I’m sure the level would rise and the dam would overflow. Part of Redmoor might even flood. Worse, I had no idea how long the dam could overflow without giving way. Maybe years, or maybe just one season.

It was while I pondered such things that something grabbed my ankle. I jerked, and it gave somewhat, but flexed back again. I struggled out my saber and realized that a hand was wrapped around my foot. I hadn’t noticed the body laying in the weeds and rocks. The corpse was wearing a fisherman’s gear, right down to the hat with the lures stuck in it. He appeared to have ropes around his body. Bewildered, I struggled to keep my foot from his mouth, where he seemed determined to drag it. A second hand latched onto my ankle now, and was pulling hard. I struggled and managed to get some distance, but the thing held tightly to my foot. I realized after a time that ropes across its back meant the thing was tied down to something. Stabbing the body was doing no good, the struggles didn’t even register any pain, so I sawed instead at the ropes that wound around the midsection.

Before long, I had one of the ropes apart, then another. The creature began to float, just a bit, and now it had a harder time in its struggles with no firm anchor against which to push or pull. Without leverage, its grip weakened.

My face was a grimace of mixed disgust and triumph when I finally cut it free completely. It flailed in the water, making primitive, awkward flailing motions to reach me. It floated higher, and I finally saw what it had been tied to: a large metal tackle box. It painted a picture of the owner’s last hours, perhaps caught out on the Lake with monsters on the shore. Possibly, he’d spent days out on the water, but had been unable to return to his cabin for fear of a horrid death. Clearly, he’d decided to tie himself to his tackle box and throw himself into the lake, better to drown cleanly than to be torn apart.

Soon, the thing had floated up too high to reach me. It continued to struggle in awkward silence.

Before I could celebrate or mourn, however, I noticed the things that had followed me down from the surface had caught up and were very close now. I could see fresh white bone gleaming.

I turned toward the bluish flame and half-walked, half-swam toward it, scooping water with my hands to speed me along. I left the sunken barn behind and followed the stone wall, trying to hurry, which was really not possible when walking on the bottom of a lake. Then I found something odd: a road. It was a normal, asphalt