Chương 36: The Girl in the Sparkly Bikini

A few minutes later, the path curved abruptly around a dense cluster of trees, and we could see the camp ahead. The glow of the bonfire lit the night sky. Music pounded, some bass-heavy electronic track that masked any sounds of approaching danger.

We weren't going to make it, and everyone was about to die, and it was all going to be my fault for not solving the stupid mystery fast enough or stopping the ritual or even knowing it was happening or even— FEAR: 92% (CRITICAL) LUCIDITY: 8% (FAILING) W̸A̸R̸N̸I̸N̸G̸: ̸ ̸C̸R̸I̸T̸I̸C̸A̸L̸ ̸F̸E̸A̸R̸ Moments away from another full collapse— like when we found Austin —I slammed to a halt. I couldn't afford to pass out again. Not now. I tried to breathe and couldn't.

The air was too thin, coming into my lungs in expensive gulps, as the salt-sting of sweat in my eyes blurred the woods into a watercolor of dark green and black. Every blob of light became a stark white, eyeless face gliding toward me. The eyeless faces multiplied as the trees dissolved. They got closer. Everything blurred and streaked and then spun and the distant bonfire— —was the cheap plug-in nightlight in the hallway outside Mom's room. I was in my bedroom doorway. When did I get here?

Mom was at the end of the hall, looking at me the way she looked toward the end; utterly lost. She reached for me…

"Mom—""NORA." Tre's voice came out of her mouth. The shock bowled me over, and I fell onto my back, knocking the wind out of me. Trees above. Not the ceiling. I wasn't at home. Something small and vinyl hit my face. I gasped back into the treeline, looking up at the stars. Tre leaned over me, hand raised for another slap. Isabel was two feet away, her brow knitted together with concern.

"She's back." FEAR: 79% (TERRORIZED) LUCIDITY: 21% (FAILING)"Do the breathing," Tre said, placing a hand on my sternum.

"Don't think. Just do it."

"I… Can't…" That was all I could gasp out. Isabel knelt on my other side, putting her cold hand on my forehead.

"Yes. You can." I didn't have the air to argue. So I did it. In for four. Hold. Out for eight. FEAR: 69% (PANICKED) LUCIDITY: 31% (SLIPPING)"That's it. Keep going," Tre steadied.

"Is this what a Lamaze class is like?" I smiled. The blood thrumming through my veins depressurized, slowing the staccato vibrations in my chest. The relief gave me control over my body again, which I tested by making light fists. In for four. Hold. Out for eight. I repeated it a few more times. FEAR: 29% (NERVOUS) LUCIDITY: 71% (CLOUDED) Time was being wasted. This would have to be enough. EVOLUTION TRIGGERED! BOX BREATHING III (Passive) Effect: Usable while moving. Brief hallucination immunity.

"The breathing was the friend you made along the way." Propping myself up on my elbows, I blinked the sweat from my eyes and checked the rest of my stats. My stamina was somehow still at forty percent, which felt impossible. I should have been exhausted after running, screaming, and everything, but I was raring to go. Then I remembered the Caretaker's Endurance passive.

A decade and change I spent taking care of Mom distilled into an RPG passive to help me push through exhaustion so they could pull more fear from me. Cool.

"You good?" Isabel asked.

"Barely."

"Good enough," Tre replied, still caked in mud.

"We gotta move." I climbed to my feet, looking down at my own filthy clothes. At least I wasn't alone. Liam's jeans were streaked with lake water mud, and a small piece of Evan's gray matter clung to his neck. Isabel was no better off, hoodie still smeared with gore from trying to hold Sameer's neck together. We looked like crash victims moonlighting as hikers. And at camp, kids were still drinking and dancing. Couples were making out.

A cluster of seniors played beer pong with a level of concentration that implied it might impact their GPA. A girl in a purple top and black skirt squealed with delight, throwing her arms around a friend. Screams of laughter stabbed through the bass. They had no idea. In two minutes, every single one of them would be screaming for real. Tre's weight shifted off my back. He swung around and slid down my left arm, landing in the grass.

Without a word, he took off toward the DJ booth, about thirty yards away through a churning ocean of dancing bodies. Isabel was already moving toward the water's edge, revolver held low at her side, watching the lake. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Oh shit! You look fuuuucked up." The Deadpool T-shirt guy stood three feet away, staring. A joint dangled from his bottom lip.

"Did ya'll fight a bear or something?"

"Get your friends to the parking lot. Now." I didn't wait for his response, just pushed past him, trailing Tre through the crowd.

"Time to go, Blaine. Tell everyone," Liam said behind me. I positioned myself between the dock and the dance floor, watching Tre pump his little legs through the crowd, weaving between dancers who didn't even notice the two-foot doll sprinting past their ankles. Behind me, teenagers jumped and sang along to the music, totally oblivious to their impending doom. Ahead, dark shapes moved through the water. I ran through the plan again. Tre needed to get to the DJ booth and on the mic to warn everyone to evacuate.

The only problem was that the DJ booth was set up on the docks. I wanted to create a fire barrier at its base, trap the Mothers on the dock, but that would also mean Tre and the DJ would be trapped. Movement in the lake, less than fifty feet from the dock, pulled me out of my head. The Mothers were moving faster, their massive forms cutting through the water like whales breaching. Mist rose from the water around them, wind carrying their swampy stench of rotting vegetation and stagnant death. Nora!

Tre's voice hit my head, tight with panic. They're moving too fast! I might not get there before them.

"I know!" I shouted back, not caring who heard me.

"Just try!" He dodged a spilled drink, squeezed between two guys passing a bottle back and forth. The DJ booth was still twenty feet away. The Mothers were thirty feet from the dock. Tre wasn't going to make it in time. The music drowned out everything else. A few kids near the water's edge started pointing, laughing.

"Why are they doing the Lake Mothers thing again?!" someone shouted. Phones came out, expecting another performance. I checked the Fear meter and saw it tick up to 58%. I was close to [PANICKED] status, which would hit me with debuffs. It took more effort to stay calm now that I was without the buffs provided by Isabel and Tre. At the end of the dock, the dark-haired girl in the sparkly bikini was still dancing alone, phone in hand, filming herself with the lake as a backdrop.

Completely oblivious to what was rising behind her.

"RUN!" I screamed at her, waving my arms.

"GET OFF THE DOCK!" My voice was nothing against the music. She didn't even look. The Lake Mothers breached the dock with a wet, heavy slap. The wood screamed and splintered under their impossible weight. They rose dripping, shedding waterfalls of black silt and algae, while the rusted boat hooks they each held trailed slime across the planks. The dancing girl finally caught something on her phone screen: her own video showing the massive shapes behind her.

She turned, and a thin, piercing shriek of pure terror tore through the thumping music. The Lake Mother on the right moved with the casual indifference of a butcher. Her hook swept across, the barb punching through the girl's midsection. Before she could even scream, the second Mother drove her hook into the girl's back. The two Lake Mothers moved in opposite directions. Ribs snapped. She tore apart with a nauseating rip. Half her torso hit the dock, still wrapped in sparkly fabric, as her phone spun away.

The other half collapsed in a spray of blood. Her head rolled once before dropping into the lake with a plop. I fought back the watery mouth feeling you get right before you puke, as the Lake Mothers moved through the gore, their hook weapons slowly dragging the pieces of the girl's body behind them. Midway down the dock, the DJ had a front row seat to the destruction of that girl. He screamed, terrified, as he stumbled backward, hands up like he could ward them off.

The nearest Mother swept its hook across in a casual arc, catching the DJ mid-scream. The barbed point punched through his midsection and out his back, lifting him off his feet. He was a slab of meat on a spike, dangling. She twisted the hook. The DJ's body sailed off the dock and splashed into the water. Oh, fuck oh fuck oh FUCK, Tre's panicked voice burst into my head. Nora, they just … the DJ — Some kids near the water also saw the Lake Mothers and started screaming.

With a single, massive backhand, the nearest Mother obliterated the DJ booth. The structure exploded, sending sparks flying as the laptop and mixer shattered, equipment and splintered wood erupting outward before plunging into the lake with an enormous SPLASH. The music cut out. The Lake Mothers let out simultaneous loud growls and moved closer to the end of the dock. Everyone started screaming. I hurled the first Flame Burst at the dock's base where wood met shore.

The glass shattered in a burst of orange flame that spread outward like napalm. A wall of fire whooshed to life, bright enough to turn the lake's surface gold, creating a blazing barrier between the dock and the camp. Smart, Nora! Trap them there. Keep them from reaching shore. Heat rolled off the flames in waves. Kids near me scattered backward, screaming. A guy grabbed his girlfriend's hand and tugged her away. They collided with a different girl. She was shoulder-checked back into the fire.

A younger kid with glasses was shoved to the ground, and someone's foot slammed down on his hand. He opened his mouth to scream as someone else's knee plowed into his face. He went down, and I lost sight of him in the stampede to escape. The Lake Mothers walked straight into the flames. The fire engulfed them, crawling up their waterlogged bodies, their stringy hair igniting like dry tinder. For a moment, it was working. But they just kept walking.

The dock burned around them, planks cracking and collapsing into the water in gouts of steam and sparks. They kept coming, step by step, emerging from the wall of fire like demons. I lobbed the second Flame Burst toward the nearest Mother. The glass shattered against her, erupting in a burst of orange flame. Fire engulfed her entire torso, crawling up her neck and face, consuming the rotted flesh. But it didn't stop her. It didn't even slow her down.

The crowd saw the burning monster walking through fire like it was nothing, and something broke. The screaming turned into pure panic. The stampede began. Bodies surged backward from the shore in a massive wave, everyone pushing and shoving at once, trying to get away from the dock, away from the monsters. The orderly evacuation we'd planned dissolved into chaos. Tre hadn't made it to the dock; he'd gotten stuck halfway across the dance floor, his small legs unable to keep up with the retreating surge.

Then the wave of bodies collapsed inward, and he disappeared from view.

"TRE!" I screamed, but my call was lost in the chaos. Nora! His panicked voice burst into my head. Too many people! Can't— A yelp of pain. I'm down! People are stepping on— The connection went silent. Three gunshots from Isabel. Her last three. The bullets tore into the second Mother's torso, neck, one catching it in the face. The umpire mask buckled, the steel frame contorting inward against her bloated features. Dark fluid began to seep from the gaps in the metal. It didn't even flinch.

The Lake Mothers stepped through the fire. The one on the right was smoldering; her dress hung in tattered rags, leaving her mostly naked, exposing charred, blistered flesh that fissured with every step. But the one on the left, the one I'd hit directly, was in much worse shape. Flames had burned away her stringy white hair and a lot of her flesh. She was completely bald, and I could now see white bone in places her skin had burned away entirely.

The heat had been so intense that the umpire's mask had partially melted the wire grate, fusing it to her face in the places where she wasn't just exposed skull. Despite the injuries, she was still walking. Still gripping that rusted boat hook like nothing had happened. The stench was unbearable: burnt flesh and swamp rot. They heaved ahead through the crowd, straight for the bonfire, the cabins, and the mass of fleeing teenagers. But I couldn't worry about that now. I had to get to Tre.

He was maybe twenty feet away, buried in the center of the stampede. I sprinted away from the dock fire into the crush of bodies, using my shield to shove past terrified teenagers who were mindlessly running for their lives. Shoulders slammed into me, elbows clipped my head, but I kept focused on the spot where I'd seen him fall.

"Move! MOVE!" I screamed. The crowd was thinning near the water now, the bulk of the panic shifting toward the cabins. I sprinted to where I'd seen him fall, scanning the trampled grass and sand.

"TRE!" He wasn't there. Just footprints, scattered drinks, someone's abandoned phone. No. No, he couldn't be— Nora! On your right! I spun toward the bonfire. Tre stood near the edge of the ring of stones, waving his little arms. Completely unharmed. I ran to him, nearly tripping in my relief.

"How?! You went down—""I grabbed someone's belt loop and held on for dear life," he said.

"Let them carry me out of the crush." I wanted to hug him. Instead, I just stared at the Lake Mothers advancing toward us. Tre watched them as well.

"Nora... what do we do now?" They were maybe fifteen feet away now, moving in that slow, inexorable march. The burnt one on the left was a walking nightmare; charred flesh cracking with each step, bone showing through in places, smoke still rising from her body. Isabel stood her ground between them and the fleeing crowd, empty revolver still in her hand like she couldn't quite accept it was useless.

"PARKING LOT!" I screamed at the remaining kids still scrambling away.

"GET TO YOUR CARS!" The metallic scent of blood hung thick in the air. The Mothers' hollow eyes swept past the scattered crowd, then settled on us. I clung to my spear with one hand, holding Tre carefully with the other. We'd made things worse. The fire didn't stop them. The bullets didn't stop them. And now they were coming straight for us.