THE SUN SLIDES DOWN SLOWLY behind the dense trees. It’s a beautiful sunset, one that uses all the colors of God’s palette, the broken clouds a canvas on which to paint the dying of the day. Purples blend from deep blue into a pink so fiery Jessie doesn’t think she’s ever seen anything like it. As the sun lowers past an unseen horizon beyond the surrounding forest, Jessie studies the slow melting of the sky as it blows out into a brilliant orange streaked with crimson clouds, then a red so deep it warms her heart just to lie beneath it. Within minutes, the red fades, the stars spark to life, and the night curtain drops, the day having taken a final bow.
If it is to be her last sunset, she is happy to have seen one such as this.
As the temperature drops, Jessie wonders how much longer she can last without sleep, not to mention food. If she does try to take a nap, she’ll have no way to wake herself up. No way to know if she’s in danger. The gentle lapping of the water against the sides of the boat, the way it rocks with every small movement of her body; the blanket of stars overhead, twinkling hypnotically, whispering in her ear that it will be alright, that everything will be fine in the end.
Despite her fears, her eyes grow heavy. Her limbs are tired, her mind wrung out by horror and despair, her nerves fried by the massive output of adrenaline, followed by intense boredom.
Jessie pinches her thigh—hard—and winces, but it startles her mind into wakefulness. She leans over the side, splashes cold water onto her face, drinks from a cupped hand, and thinks maybe she can make it through the night. Through one more night.
Momentarily alert, she locates the two men along the shoreline. They’ve been disturbingly quiet since dumping Blake’s body, which Jessie finds unsettling, as if they’re hatching some new plan she can’t possibly fathom or prepare for.
In the darkness it’s hard to make them out, but she sees Brad’s silhouette hunched on the dock, the white house backdrop exposing him. To her left she sees Tom’s ATV, even if Tom himself is hard to make out against the trees. Still, she knows he’s there. He wouldn’t risk being too far away from it.
Jessie debates making yet another run with the boat, just to see them jump, just to see them squirm … but both of her hands have developed painful blisters (and a splinter or two) thanks to the ancient handles of the rough wooden oars. Not to mention she’s just so damn tired. So very, very tired.
She closes her eyes once, just to rest them for a moment. She twitches, snaps them open, sees Brad’s silhouette still on the dock, unmoving…but blurry now. Her mind grows foggy, and her eyelids close once more. As if from a great distance, she feels herself slump forward, chin on chest.
And falls away into sleep.
BUMP.
Jessie jerks awake, startled by … what?
The boat is rocking, as if it had been hit by a rogue wave, and Jessie thinks she must have made some sudden move in her sleep … but (miraculously) she’s still sitting upright on the bench.
She hasn’t moved.
Panicked, she looks over each side of the rowboat, twists around to look behind her, sees nothing but rippling water. No Brad. No Tom.
How long was I out?
Welcoming the adrenaline rush of fear, she rubs her eyes and scans the shoreline. Even in the dark of night, she can make out one of the men—Brad, she thinks—lying down on the dock. Tom is now sitting on an ATV she’d seen earlier that evening. Neither of them have moved.
Okay, so what the fuck ….
BUMP!
This time Jessie screams, and somewhere in the back of her mind she clocks that Brad has stood up, but what’s more important right now is what the hell is striking the boat. Whatever it is, it’s in the water. And if it’s not one of the two assholes who want to kill me...
What the hell is it?
For a moment, Jessie’s strung-out mind conjures an image of Blake—whose body had been unceremoniously dumped into the water earlier that day—coming to life at the lake’s muddy bottom—eyes popping open wide to reveal milky whites, staring up and seeing the little boat floating high above, then swimming up for it, the bloodied sheet trailing behind her like a ghostly tail as she reaches for the surface, for life. Jessie imagines pale hands clawing at the boat’s bottom before finding their way up the sides to grip the railing, then lifting her dripping corpse from the water so she’s face-to-face with Jessie, smiling that brilliant Blake smile at her former best friend and gurgling out a greeting:
HEY JESS, WANNA SWIM WITH ME?
Jessie is about to shake the nightmarish image away when something does reach over the edge of the boat—something slick and wet and black. But not a hand.
What emerges from the water is an eel-like tentacle that slides gracefully over the boat’s side, just a couple feet in front of her, the tip feeling around the interior, as if searching. Jessie’s eyes go wide but she doesn’t scream, doesn’t dare move as the tentacle moves within inches of her bare legs. It coils in the wet bottom, the entire boat leaning left with the weight of the thick black limb resting on its edge. Jessie holds her breath, not believing—not daring to believe what she’s seeing. Finally, the black appendage (to what she can’t begin to imagine) slowly retreats, slides back into the water; the long, rubbery limb scraping against the wood as it slips from the boat.
Jessie lets out a breath, but has no time to think about what she’s seen before there’s another savage BUMP and the front of the boat rises up out of the water, the entire bow pointing toward the top of the tree line, and this time Jessie does scream, gripping the rails on either side as the boat rises, rises ….
Just as she fears she’s going to topple backwards into the lake, into the clutches of whatever is attached to that tentacle, the boat drops, slamming down with a bone-jarring smack to the surface.
Jessie doesn’t know what the hell the thing is beneath her and has no wish to find out. She grips the oars, lifts the blades, and drops them. She jams her feet into the makeshift bracers—hardly noticing the throb of pain from her sprained ankle or the stings of protest from her blistered palms—and pulls at the oars with all her might, aiming for the nearest shore. As she slaps the oars again and again into the water, desperate to get the boat moving, she hears Brad’s voice rise above the sound of the splashing oars, her grunted breaths, her pounding heart.
“I see you’ve met our friend,” Brad bellows gleefully. “I gotta warn you, she’s drawn to blood, so I hope you’re not cut, because that bitch is always hungry.”
The roar of an engine carries over the lake as Tom starts up one of the ATVs, revving menacingly before it takes off along the shoreline, moving to intercept.
Jessie cusses under her breath as the headlight races through the trees. She spins around to check her distance to shore. Figures no more than twenty yards. At this rate she’ll be out of the boat when Tom arrives. She doesn’t know how well she can run, doesn’t know if the ATV can pass through all the trails, but she’ll have to take that chance. The game has changed, and she knows there’s a better chance with Tom than with whatever waits for her beneath the water.
What did Blake call it?
Nessie.
“Un-fucking-real,” she mutters, feeling hysterical, as if her mind is being torn apart, her reality shattered. She pulls faster, desperate to be away.
She’s less than ten yards from shore when Tom arrives, beating her guesswork by a couple minutes. She turns to look at him, groans when she sees him standing at the waterline, just off the trail, the rifle in his hands.
Pointed right at her.
“This is an easy shot for me,” he says calmly. “One more pull on those oars and I’ll blast your heart right outta your chest.”
Jessie yanks one oar up, uses the other to brake, spinning her halfway around to face him. “What the hell is that thing?”
“I told you. I warned you about her. Remember?”
