Chương 24: Chapter 23 – Drowning Isn’t Peaceful

Passage sat, alone in the dark, and waited. He held the dinghy steady, floating just around the side of the rotten townhouse that Bracken had ventured into. He tried to listen for sounds from within, ears straining to catch any hint of things going wrong. Screaming, shouting, explosions and mayhem. Nothing. The only sound for several long minutes was the gentle lapping of the water, and the not-too-distant muttering of a young man struggling with a broken mind.

The man that he and Bracken had passed earlier was now pacing closer to the edge of the canal, walking back and forth along the edge of a pier, in and out of Passage's sightline. Passage couldn't quite hear him well enough to make out the words. He doubted they'd make much sense even if he could. The man seemed to be arguing in circles. He plucked at the air as he spoke to himself, as if picking up and tallying the pieces of his fractured psyche.

Every few panicked laps of the pier, he would pause, cutting himself on those pieces and coming to a stumbling halt. He slapped himself, looked about, hesitated, and started again. Passage watched him quietly and patted the bell where it sat between his legs. It was silent, still smuggled in the canvas sack and stuffed full of rags to keep it from ringing. Even without the magic of its tolling, he took strength from its presence, so long as he also ignored the shame of having stolen it.

The man might not be an addict, though his kind often were. That didn't make them bad, just troubled. Harrow opened the temple doors to the city's homeless a few times a week, offering food and warmth to any willing to trust an act of kindness and enter peaceably. Some did. Many didn't. Experience enough cruelty and kindness starts to look like a baited hook, a trap to be avoided. For others it was the shame of being helped. Pride mixes poorly with charity. There were plenty of lost souls in the Gutters.

The ones who had been discarded by those who knew them or drifted too far on their own with no one there to reel them back in. It happened all the time. You live hard enough, for long enough, and eventually the mind or the body will fail. It's really just a question of which goes first. Either way, most Gutterfolk had little time or need for broken things. Just contempt for the crippled and mistrust for the mad. Passage continued to watch the man, distracting himself from nervousness with melancholy.

If not for the need to be stealthy, he'd have rung the bell in the hopes of offering the man a moment of peace. He was clearly troubled. A chill wind blew through the canal, and the boat began to drift. Passage reached for the rotting bollard beside him in a hurry, pulling the boat close. In his haste, he accidentally kicked one of the oars and it clattered loudly against the brickwork. The man paused in his pacing, alert to the sound like a hound to a whistle.

He spun about, top half twisting suddenly to face in Passage's direction. He leaned over, body bending unnaturally, almost eel-like. Passage stilled, melancholy forgotten, dread slipping through him colder than the rain. The man turned fully, his lower half twisting to face the same way as his face. He stepped calmly off the pier, and a black pillar of water rose up to meet him. He sank into it without a sound or a ripple, the pillar collapsing silently after him.

Passage swallowed hard, the dinghy seeming smaller than it had a moment before. The water darker, deeper, and more alive. He hesitated only a moment before pushing off from the bollard and paddling the boat around into the wider canal in front of the sunken houses. He looked up at the leaning planter box that Bracken had climbed, but it had groaned under even Bracken's small weight. Passage doubted it would bear him, let alone with the stone bell on his back.

Swearing quietly under his breath, oars slipping against palms that were damp with sweat despite the cold, he rowed closer to Cinder and Pike's balcony. The water splashed, painfully loud, his movements jerky with rising panic. He searched frantically for his sense of calm, but it had fallen into the canal, probably already being eaten by the mad Stained. Or was it a full-blown Hollow? He clutched the bell tighter between his legs and rowed faster.

A rope ladder dangled, the lower half drifting in the water beneath Cinder and Pike's balcony. Passage grabbed hold of it with one hand, bringing the dinghy to a stop under the balcony. Every muscle in his body tensed, he shrugged the canvas bag over one shoulder and hesitated, looking about at the moonlit waters for any sign of the creature. There wasn't a bubble or ripple in sight. In fact, the boat did not even rock. The water had gone still and flat as glass.

"Fuck this," Passage swore to himself, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He hastily tossed a lasso of rope around the same bollard that Cinder and Pike had used, and placed one foot on the rope ladder, ready to climb. Better to wait on the balcony. It was only a few feet further from the water, but that few feet seemed a country mile in the moment, and at least up there he could stand his ground, for what little that might be worth. Just as Passage began to the climb, the creature struck.

Silent as the drowned, a tendril of water rose up and wrapped around his face. He tried to shout, to scream, but water filled his mouth, clogged his throat, filled his nose. All he managed was a pained and quiet gargle. Water flooded into his ears, muffling the world around him, cold pressure driving into his skull. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Passage flailed, tried to jerk his face away and pry the suffocating tendril from his mouth.

His fingers tore into the watery arm unresisted and scratched at his face, fast numbing with cold. Still the water clung to him, and his senses slipped, his mind drowning beneath waves of panic even faster than his body. His lungs burned and vision dimmed, all his oxygen lost to a scream that no one heard.

"Passage," the words were quiet, a hissing whisper heard from underwater. He flailed about, nearly falling from the boat. He caught himself blindly, one hand snagging on the rope ladder.

"Stop struggling! Quiet! You need to be quiet!" The voice was strained, fearful. Water dribbled away from Passage's ears, retreating. His eyes snapped toward the sound more out of reflex than attentiveness, the words meaningless through his terror. The creature floated there beside him. His head and shoulders protruded from the water, leaning close to whisper. Passage's hands reacted faster than his mind.

He released the ladder and swung, dropping his fist on the beast's face with all the weight of his falling body behind it. The punch connected, knuckles driving into the monster's cheek with a meaty thud, and the man sank further into the water, ripples erupting out around him. Passage fell forward, his chest slamming into the lip of the boat's side. The creature grunted in pain and for a moment the watery hand drowning Passage lost its shape.

It splashed apart and Passage vomited water down his front, sucking down a desperate and choking breath as he shoved himself away from the edge. The creature rose up, body emerging from the water like some leviathan of the deep poking its head above the surface. He did not move, did not paddle or swim, but rather was moved by the water wrapped around him, the Stillwake an extension of his body. He hissed, the sound faintly garbled like his lungs were halfway full of water.

His hair floated around his face as though even the parts of him exposed to the air were still suspended underwater. More arms made of black water hovered around the boat, poised to strike. Moonlight fell across the creature's face, his eyes wide and wild, and Passage realised he knew the man. Or had known him, at least, before he'd become so nearly Hollow.

"Patrick?" he rasped, still gasping for air, the panic not yet fading. He watched the creature warily, not yet trusting how much man remained within. The watery arms poised around the dinghy grew still, then sank back beneath the surface.

"You have to be quiet," Patrick muttered again, eyes darting about, never settling in one spot for more than a split second, as if he were trying to watch everything everywhere all at once.

"They'll hear. Can't let them hear." Passage shivered, freezing water running swiftly down his skin, drawn by some inexorable pull towards Patrick. He sat up and shuffled a little further back, careful and slow, not wanting to startle the man. His Stain had spread, further and faster than any Passage had ever seen. Both of his Stains had, Passage realised. When he'd seen Patrick up close just a few days prior, the boy's eyes had held shadows in the corners.

Inky blackness that had swayed like seaweed in an underwater current. Seeing those eyes Stained fully black now, obsidian tears running in unbroken streams down his corpse-white cheeks, Passage recognised the darkness for what it was. The mark of Thulmor, a low-Stain. Patrick's Seldun Stain had progressed further still. Gills flared in the sides of his throat, white scales glimmering across his chest and shoulders. Corpse pale, hair floating, it seemed that Patrick hung suspended, forever freshly drowned.

"Patrick, what happened to you?" Passage asked. Though his heart still thundered, and Passage feared for himself this close to a man near Hollow, his sense of horror dimmed. Behind it was pity, cold and heavy as the corpse of one who died too young.

"They're going to kill my parents," Patrick whispered, floating closer, his movements uncanny and unnatural.

"I need to stop them. You need to go." His eyes narrowed in focus, as if it took enormous mental strain just to eke out those few words. Patrick dragged his nails down the side of his own face, blood welling in the furrows left behind and clenched his teeth against the pain, seeming to ground himself in it. Hard to tell with his eyes dyed black as pitch but Passage got the sense he was looking straight at him. Passage searched for a response, for the right thing to say.

He wanted to plead for Patrick to go home, to seek help before the Plane madness could take what remained of his mind. But more than that he wanted to apologise, to give his sympathies to the man, because they both knew that wasn't an option. Patrick hung on the precipice, holding onto his humanity by his broken fingernails. One more sip of the power infecting his soul and there would be no Patrick any longer. Just a monster wearing his face.

"Patrick," said Passage, voice low and wheezing, holding back a cough. He raised one hand slowly, palm out like he was trying to calm a spooked animal.

"Bracken is in there, alright? You can't go in." Patrick's brows furrowed, his lips peeling back in a silent and toothy snarl. Too many teeth. Three rows of them, crammed into a mouth too small to fit them.

"Please, Patrick. If the guard see you like this, if anyone sees you like this… you need to go. Swim, far from here. It's not too late." That snarl faded, Patrick's eyes softened, and his lips drooped into a frown. They both knew that last part was a lie.

"I won't hurt Bracken," Patrick said, his voice softer, more human for an instant.

"But the others need to die." A dull crash, the sound of splintering wood came from within the room above. Both Patrick and Passage flinched at the sound, faces jerking toward the source. What humanity remained in Patrick's face firmed into resolve.

"Patrick, no!" Passage begged. He clambered to his feet, almost slipping over the edge as he hastened toward the rope ladder. The boat finally rocked, Patrick releasing his grip on the water around them.

"Passage!" came Bracken's muffled scream from within. Patrick turned to the doors of the mostly sunken ground floor and vanished beneath the water. There was no time to fear, no time to think. Bracken was in danger. Passage clung tight to the strap of his bag, the bell bouncing on his shoulder, and he climbed.