But your pa-paw is crying and doesn’t notice. He sobs, “It’s okay, Holly. We’re here. Tyler, get a towel or something.”
Tyler doesn’t move. His mouth opens, but he can’t speak. Where your fingers clutch your pa-paw’s shoulder, gnarled bark breaks through his skin. The cloth of his shirt rots and blackens with blood.
“Mr. Alton, you need to get—”
“A towel, Tyler! Get a towel!” As he twists around, your fingers dig deeper. Hickory twigs tremble up from his back, the leaves already yellow and orange.
“Mr. Alton, get back! Get away!”
He fights to break free, dead leaves rattling. More branches sprout along the curve of his collar bone. His eyes bulge and veins in his neck turn purple as he suffocates, but then the creature cries, “Pa-paw!” and he stops trying to get away. Still struggling to breathe, he reaches for the thing that has your voice.
“Pa-paw, I don’t know where we are.”
He holds the creature until roots split his elbows and wrists and between his fingers, swallowing his arms in squirming white clumps. His face and chest are mostly gone, but the creature still whimpers and hugs the stunted hickory tree that’s sinking its taproot into the boat deck. Nut husks break open and spill their dry brown fruit.
We run away. Moving is hard. It’s like running through mud. It’s like in my nightmares. Duck through the hatch, down into the cabin. I trip and fall, twisting my wrist. It doesn’t hurt even though I know it should.
“Tyler?”
He slams the hatch and locks it.
“Tyler, what is that thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did it kill Mr. Alton?”
“I don’t know!”
“Tyler?” the monster croaks from outside. “Tyler, let me in.”
It starts scratching at the hatch. Black-eyed Susans and wedding-white hydrangeas sprout through the varnish. I yank the curtains shut so it can’t see us. “We have to go. Get to shore, then we can run.”
“The anchor is down, Jane. The milfoil has tangled the propeller. We’re stuck.”
I turn the key anyway, listening to the engine groaning rarr … rarr … rarr … as it struggles to turn the propeller. We’re trapped. The thing lured us here, trapped us, and then killed Mr. Alton.
The wooden hatch rots away, and a breeze carries the pungent smell of river muck into the cabin. The mud-thing, coughed up from the drowned forest, moans as it pushes through. “Jane?”
I crumple to the floor, crushing myself between the captain’s chair and the steering console. It finds me, though, and the crooked gash of a mouth opens into a smile. It reaches for me. I scream, and it pulls back.
“Jane? Wh—what’s the matter?” It’s your voice. Wet and weak, but it’s your voice.
“Holly?”
“Jane.” Sunny yellow dandelions blink open. “I got lost. We—we were diving off the bluff, but then I got lost somehow. I’ve been wandering around for … Pa-paw was here, but then he … ” You search the cabin, confused, then look back at me. The horrible smile widens, displacing your jaw. “I knew you’d come. Just like the time with the church flower gardens, remember? Remember?”
This monster is you, Holly. Dead and come back to life—back to some ramshackle version of life—clumps of mud and weeds matted together—but it’s you. I shut my eyes and whimper. Fingers clutch my shirt, scratch my skin. The reek of your sludgy skin chokes me. “Stop, Jane. Please, I can’t find my way—”
Tyler puts his full force into the kick, knocking you off me, knocking off half your face. He grabs me by the arm, yanks me up, screaming, “The aft hatch. C’mon!”
The floor buckles underneath us. The hull has already rotted where you were crouched. Cold water swirls in around our ankles.
“No, don’t go! Jane!”
“Holly … I’m … ” But there aren’t any words. I turn and run. The boat is listing to one side, but we get past the sleeping berths and through the aft hatch, jumping for the shiny black water.
Ten
The river swallows me. It slurps me down a throat of bubbles and swirling noise, down, down into water as silent and dark as a womb.
I kick at the blackness, kicking back up toward the air and Tyler’s wail. “—aaaane! Jaaaane!”
“Over here!” I wave until he sees me.
“You okay?”
I don’t know how to answer that. “Where’s Holly?”
“Still onboard, I think. You hurt? Can you swim?”
I’m not hurt, so we start to swim. The houseboat—and you—squat between us and the bluff, so we make for the north shore. I focus on the downtown lights crowding along the embankment. Cars speed across the dam. From a concert in the Veterans Park amphitheater, brassy notes carry out across the lake. Behind us, the houseboat slips lower and lower, then vanishes with a great sploosh and waves that ripple out beneath me. For a few seconds, cabin lights shimmer under the water. I turn and watch it sinking down. Then the generator shorts and the hull goes dark.
Treading water, I look for you, but nothing moves.
“Jane! Come on!”
I start swimming again, muscles burning. Where are you? Under the water? Trapped in the houseboat or chasing after us? Can the thing you’ve become swim? Do you have to come up for air? I keep going, waiting for you to grab my ankle and pull me down. As we cross above the drowned forest, I can feel it below us, barren branches reaching up like hands, waiting to embrace me.
But it doesn’t happen. We make it to the park, down from the shining amphitheater. Years of lapping waves have licked a hollow below the walking trail. Tyler tries climbing up but doesn’t have the strength. He slumps back to the soft red clay, catching his breath, holding on to an exposed root. “Okay. Okay. We’re okay,” he pants.
I’ve lost my flip-flops. I rub the scratches you left on my arm and hand. They’re swollen and angry red, and there’s a weird sort of pressure from under my skin, like it wants to pucker open.
“My truck’s still at the marina. We have to—”
“Tyler? J-Jane?”
We whip around, but there’s nobody—no body. Just your thin voice in the dark.
“Where … are?” A crack widens in the clay bank. No lips, no teeth, but a slug-like tongue moves inside.
“Tyler … need help.”
I can’t take this. Please, please don’t do this, Holly.
The clay shifts. Something like a shoulder pushes upward. An eye opens.
“Jane?”
Tyler grabs the waistband of my shorts, heaving me up onto the grass, then scrambles after me. We run past the dark picnic shelter. Tyler checks his cell phone, but it’s wet and ruined. He cusses and smashes it to the gravel path.
Reaching the road, he sticks close to the low wall, stopping to think. “Stratofortress! They live close by. Come on.”
Crusting mud cakes my legs and hands. Tyler’s sneakers squelch with water. The sidewalk is fever-hot under my bare feet, but I can still feel the cold of the drowned forest below.
No, the cold isn’t under me anymore. It’s inside. It’s termite-tunneling through skin and muscle. Delicate flowers emerge from the scratches on my arm, my hand—sticky, hairy stalks and tight buds already unfolding. “Ty-Tyler?”
He looks over. And because he still has shoes, he heaves me onto his back and starts jogging. “Hang on, just … hang on … please.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and cling to him. When you scratched me, you left some essence of the drowned forest under my skin. I can feel roots probing, teasing skin away from muscle, soul from bone. They’re reaching for my heart, but it doesn’t hurt. Their coolness feels nice on such a hot, humid night.
Staring up past the streetlamps, I can’t see the stars anymore, Holly. Can’t you remember our nights down here? Burning to rush around and be loud and be alive, and who cared that the stars were all gone? I miss you so much. I don’t want to grow up without you. I can’t, Holly. The drowned forest is in my head now. Its voice is a lullaby, hypnotic like gentle waves lapping the shore. It promises death will be easy, like relaxing a clenched fist. Dying will be less painful than living.