Conor opened his eyes and tasted blood.
His head snapped up, and he looked around the woods, half-expecting to find someone or be somewhere else. The remaining ash of his cigarette left with the wind, and Conor crushed it into the dirt without remembering when he’d lit it.
It took him a moment to remember what he’d been doing and Conor noticed his jacket lying beside him.
Rory was gone.
Then, he heard something.
“Brennan?” Conor looked up, saying his brother’s name naturally and standing without his belongings in hand.
The trees looked thicker—or maybe they’d always been like this. He couldn’t see the moorland or the sky, and again that song played in his head like a looping lullaby.
Earlier, he couldn’t pinpoint what it was about the song that made him feel at ease, but now, after listening closely, it sounded similar to an artist Brennan favored and often played during their trips together. A woman who sang folk songs and Nordic chants.
He wandered off, following the tune through dense groves of small, dead trees then breaking through the rest after stumbling.
Conor caught himself, though his feet nearly sank into the soft, mossy ground as though mud pooled beneath. He looked up, seeing a small pond sitting among the reeds and mosaic, its water dark and still. There were no birds or insects, just the throbbing in his temples resembling drums and broken glass.
Yet, among the cattails and algae, Conner saw glimpses of orange neon, a color he knew well.
His heart jumped, a painful feeling of fear that led him to run into the cold shallows. Mud swallowed his feet, and vines caught his ankles like unseen hands begging him to stop. But, Conor shifted through the waves, sinking until the water reached his waist, and he was digging through piles of dead plants to retrieve what he saw.
A backpack.
Conor lifted it and examined it closely. It was Brennan’s, or he hoped otherwise as he frantically tried getting it open. His shaking fingers fumbled with the zipper, but the smell in the air thickened—a foul stench of dead plants and sewage, and Conor held back the urge to gag.
Panic welled up inside of him, clawing its way to the surface the longer he stood, questioning why Brennan’s bag was here.
Did he lose it?
Did something happen to him?
What if he was lying dead somewhere in this—
“Conor.”
He quickly turned, and something pulled him under.
His scream gagged by floods of infested water, and Conor flailed around trying to remove himself from the grip of whatever caught him. There was nothing but dark, murky water and clouds of mud. His eyes burned, and his lungs felt tight. Bubbles and currents danced around him to the music he heard in the corners of his head.
He surfaced with a scream.
And the music stopped.
The pond had become deeper. Or he was taken too far for his feet to touch the bottom, leaving him swimming in the middle with a pain pulsing through his legs. He paddled, struggling to stay afloat and spitting out that foul water.
“Fuck! Fuck…fuck.” Conor shifted between swimming and reaching for the pain in his leg. His fingertips found furrows clawed into his skin, deep enough to cut through muscles and bone. Layers of skin hung loose, and a sudden jolt caused him to rip a chunk off. He hissed in pain, slightly whining as he looked around.
His head bobbed along the surface.
The waves stilled to a calm caress.
Conor spat out bits of debris and more of that rotted water.
Then, a splash caused him to turn, though he saw nothing behind him.
Another splash, like a large fish scraping the edge of the pond, and Conor tried circling to see what it was, but his pulsing wounds started to burn with each movement.
Conor floated, staying in place and glancing around with a slow panic.
He stopped.
His eyes went wide, and his stomach turned into painful knots.
At the far end of the pond—something watching him.
Conor blinked, and the creature rose.
Vines and algae hung from the massive jaws of an overgrown horse's skull, half-decayed and still holding onto the last bit of flesh and mane hanging from embedded cracks. Its eyes were bulging, fish-white and rolling off into different directions as if it couldn’t see, but the moment Conor breathed out a curse, both locked onto him. A long, pumping neck brought that massive head closer, and a human body stood out of the water. It hunched, weighed down by the creature’s skull as rows of dislocated vertebrae and ribs pushed up against paper-thin skin the color of ash.
It stretched out toward him, arms and neck growing as three-cloven fingers led the way.
“Fucking Christ!” Conor screamed and swam for the shore. He looked back, seeing bared teeth inside those agape jaws, not sharp but thick and flat molars that would crush his bones into chum.
“Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!” His toes grazed the bottom of the pond—mud, leaves, something flesh-soft and hair-thin.
Conor’s gut lifted. His stomach was in waves as relief flooded him the moment he made it to shallow waters. He stumbled once. Twice. Every step swallowed his feet, but he almost laughed out loud after he fell onto the shore.
The grass felt like glass, sharp and brittle fragments breaking in between his fingers and pricking his cheek. He coughed up water, bits of dead things, and dirt.
Then, a scream ripped through the air as violently as the claws that drove into his back and raked across his neck in a searing grip.
Blood choked him, devouring out his scream before he was dragged into the water.
Conor fought to escape the points tearing through his skin and pressure breaking his bones. Water filled his lungs, gathering muck and minnows with every scream, every breath. His ears popped, his spine snapped, and something began ripping into his neck.
The pain was gone, but something was eating him alive.
His eyes opened at the bottom of the pond, clouded by mud and foul water, but when everything settled—he saw Brennan.
The man laid a few inches away from Conor, fully dressed with a wide, dimpled grin.
They stared at each other, red clouds rising in between them, and Conor’s head bobbed after his neck snapped.
“It’s nice down here,” Brennan said, though his lips did not move.
Conor remained still, watching his brother smiling contently before he too smiled.
It really is.
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