closely by a deep bass note that warbled and sputtered loudly. A stench hurried through the cavern, the smell of the long dead and mostly rotted. The tone carried for a few moments like a large tuba, then began to change swiftly, as if the lake were trying to speak. Ethan’s light revealed that the edges of the hole vibrated rapidly as it flexed tighter.
“It's trying to speak; don’t listen to it! Run, God damn you, run!” the bum screamed.
Ethan could tell that he was scared. This figment of his own subconscious was afraid and trying to get him to flee.
“Come…” The sound exploded from the hole in the surface. Even without the control of lips and tongue, the word was unmistakable.
“Run!” the bum screamed desperately.
“Ethan?” Shannon could not seem to form a question around the terror raging through her head.
The inward rushing sound came again, this time edged with a hissing sound. Ethan’s mind screamed to be away, louder than the bum, and he felt himself begin to tremble along the back of his knees. Just a simple crawling of the flesh, but it was the first time Ethan could remember fear being his master.
“Ethan… Come…” the black water hissed in its deafening baritone voice. “We… Wait…”
“Run!” the bum screamed. His voice had become high pitched.
“I think we should get out of here, now!” Ethan declared, no longer concerned about hiding his fear.
“Yeah, let’s get the hell out of here,” Shannon agreed readily.
They turned towards the tunnel they had crawled through, but it was gone, consumed by a wall of the sludge. Ethan felt a snap in his reality and began searching frantically for the tunnel. His desperation gave his fear free reign, and his thoughts began to scatter as he rushed to where the tunnel should have been.
“Shit! Where is it? Shannon! Where is it?” he shouted.
Kayla began to sob lightly, more afraid of Ethan’s attempted flight than the horror of the lake.
“I don’t see it! It’s gone!” Shannon screamed.
“Don’t touch that black shit!” the bum cautioned.
“Don’t touch the black shit!” Ethan repeated the warning.
“How do we get out?” Shannon asked, trying to bridle the rampant fear in her own chest, if not for her, then for Kayla.
“You… Don’t…” the lake replied wetly, its consonants barely perceptible. “You… Join… Culture…”
“I want to go home,” Kayla whimpered around her sobbing.
Shannon drew her close and embraced her. “Me, too, sweetie, me, too.”
“What do we do, Ethan?” Shannon asked, her speech rapid and shallow breathed.
“I…” Ethan could not seem to put words to his overwhelming feeling of hopelessness.
“Clean the water,” Kayla said softly. She lifted her bottle of bathroom cleaner and squirted the wall. The thin stream caused a violent reaction to the black sludge, and it hissed, sputtered, and released much too much vapor as it fell from the stone to become a puddle of rapidly evaporating gray.
“No…” the black water hissed. “So… Many…”
The threesome stared flatly at the sizzling puddle of hope on the ground, unsure of what they were seeing.
Kayla suddenly ripped from Shannon’s arms with a screech cut short by her impact with the cavern wall. The black ilk splashed around her and began to coat her into oblivion.
Ethan saw the stiff black tendril extended from the lake and into Kayla’s back just before Shannon retrieved the spray bottle and began squirting the appendage. It snapped instantly and began to sputter and writhe on the ground as it released Kayla. She slid down the wall a moment then fell onto her back, her front coated thickly with the black sludge.
Ethan rushed to her as he pulled off his flannel. He began wiping the black from her face as it mixed with the reddish color of the child’s blood. When he uncovered her mouth, she sucked in a huge breath and screamed in pain, her eyes squinted shut against the invading blackness.
Shannon made a huffing sound that ended in a short scream. Ethan looked to her and saw another of the appendages extending just in front of her. Her eyes were wide in shock and her face twisted in agony. The arm thing suddenly drew itself back into the lake with a soft plopping sound, and Ethan could see her insides begin to ease out of a clean slash across her lower abdomen.
She looked at him with a grave sadness and then dropped to her knees. The impact forced her intestines out with a rush as she fell backwards, her legs bending painfully. This time, Ethan screamed, completely drowning out the crying child lying before him.
“Leave them, shit head! We have to get out of here!” the bum screamed at him.
“Come… Ethan…”
Chapter 35
Ethan lifted the child and carried her the short distance to Shannon. She lay prone, bent at the knee, and her breath ran in and out in short bursts. Her hands held back the urging tide of her innards and her eyes had rolled backwards, deep into their sockets so only the whites showed. Ethan laid Kayla down beside her and began rummaging his pack for more water.
“Leave them!” the bum shouted, becoming less hysterical but more desperate.
As Ethan began pouring water over Shannon’s draining insides, a hissing sound drew his attention back to the black lake. There, a tendril began to sprout from its darkness followed by more wispy lengths of black that sprung up randomly around the surface of the lake. The chaotic twisting lengths made the lake appear as a large weed bent to its own strangling growth, and Ethan felt like a fragile plant about to succumb to the thing’s ravenous life. The hole through which the Culture had spoken was now gone, given over to these new abominable extensions.
Even with the swamping fear, Ethan turned back to his task. He pulled the gallon jugs from his backpack to fish from it a shirt he had packed from the drug store. With this, he gently wrapped Shannon’s spilled organs and placed them on her stomach, again soaking the bundle in water.
“I really wanted to have children, Ethan. Maybe just one, a little girl…”
“Shannon, try and stay still. I will get you out of here.”
“I wanted to name her Kylie… She would have had blonde hair…”
“Shannon, don’t try to talk. I can’t give you anything to drink.”
“Behind you!” the bum’s voice called from the edge of the lake.
Ethan spun around to see the tendrils drifting towards him, searchingly. They whipped about in slow motion, twisting and overlapping each other like toiling snakes. The walls had run clean of the black coating, the Culture having pulled itself together to extend in this searching way. He instinctively tried to step back, but his heel bumped into Shannon, a corpse-like reminder of what held him.
“The tunnel! We can escape the cave now! Run!” the bum shouted as he backed away from the searching appendages.
“Kayla, can you walk?” Ethan asked as he began to gather Shannon in his arms.
“I can’t see! I want my daddy!” she sobbed, still clearly in pain. Her nose and lips had stopped bleeding, but her face had begun to swell, and Ethan was sure she was turning dark around her eyes and mouth, but it was difficult to tell with the black water still there.
“Leave them!” the bum demanded savagely.
Ethan felt something grab onto him, wrap itself tightly around his thighs. He released Shannon and grabbed at the thing. It was slimy and bone-chillingly cold, black beyond the glare of his flashlight. He began to tear at the thing as it grew taunt, ripping fists full of the ilk, when another found his ankle. He dropped his flashlight and began using both hands to tear at the thing, but it yanked his foot out from under him, and he fell hard to the stone floor.
“You stupid fuck!” the bum screamed, having gone back to his former hysterics.
