Chapter 8
Something struck the water with a solid thwap near Graham’s head, sending a needling spray of droplets across his face.
“Huh!” His mind short-circuited, reality fragmenting around him into kaleidoscopic shards as the slick, muscular thing in his shorts tightened its grip.
It squeezed his balls and cock in a pulsating rhythm—gentle then firm, gentle then firm—sending electric jolts up his spine that made his eyelids flutter, and his toes curl against the slick inner soles of his drenched sneakers.
Another thwap. Closer. A metallic flash just inches from his left ear.
Graham jerked his head around, his vision sparking with black pinpricks.
A third projectile hit the water with a hollow metallic plunk, grazing his cheek and leaving a stinging welt.
He blinked away the lake water as he bobbed helplessly, his waterlogged clothes dragging him down so that his head barely broke the surface.
Three unopened beer cans—silver Coors Light cylinders—floated past his face like miniature buoys.
He craned his neck, the muscles straining painfully.
The pontoon boat had circled back, its lights carving harsh yellow paths across the water, and now drifted a few hundred feet away.
Ryan hung over the side, his muscular torso flexed and his face twisted into a predatory grin, another can clutched in his right hand.
Wendy stood at his side, her blonde hair fluttering in the warm breeze, her high-pitched laughter carrying across the water as she clutched Ryan's shoulder and pointed at Graham like he was a carnival target.
Ryan hooted, his bloodshot eyes narrowing as he drew his muscular arm back. “Bet I get him this time!” The pontoon boat tilted precariously beneath his weight as he swayed. The can glinted silver in the boat lights as it sailed through the air, spinning end over end with deadly precision.
“Shit!” Graham gasped, the cold lake water slapping against his chin as he jerked sideways.
The aluminum missile whistled past his ear, close enough that he felt the displacement of air before it punched into the water with another hollow thwap.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Ryan's reputation as their high school's star pitcher hadn't faded—those same broad shoulders and fluid wrist motion that had dominated regional championships now threatened Graham's skull.
Even with alcohol coursing through his veins, Ryan's aim remained terrifyingly accurate, each throw coming closer than the last. Graham remembered Deke's crude joke about Ryan's inhibitions dropping “faster than a hooker's panties” when he drank, but there was nothing funny about it now—not when each projectile could crack his skull open on impact.
His panic bisected as Ryan grabbed another can—and the thing beneath the water held him in its grip.
What the fuck was it? He kicked his feet, but it only cinched tighter, its pulsating flesh growing stronger.
Graham whimpered reflexively as his raging erection strained painfully against his zipper, the wet fabric chafing with each throb.
Through water-filled eyes, the world above distorted into wavering shapes, he saw Ryan's blurry silhouette lean back, muscles tensing as he cocked his arm again and released the can with perfect pitcher’s precision.
It hurtled through the humid night air in slow motion, like in those dramatic sports movies, spinning end over end, droplets of condensation flying off its silver surface as it sailed directly toward the center of Graham's forehead.
I could die… he could actually kill me—
Graham was yanked below the surface a split second before the beer can struck him.
Down he went, face turned up in shock as the can punched through the water like a missile, its aluminum skin gleaming dully before it swooped back to the surface.
He heard muffled, waterlogged shouts above—Ryan's baritone and Wendy's higher pitch blending into an indecipherable underwater symphony as lake water flooded his ear canals.
The slimy tentacles inside his pants retracted with a final intimate squeeze, and a thicker, rope-like appendage—cool, muscular, and ridged with suction cups that left perfect circles of pressure against his skin—coiled around his torso just beneath his armpits.
It dragged him horizontally through the murky green-brown depths as a violent, rushing sound filled his clogged ears, and air escaped through his nose and mouth in a silver flurry of bubbles that tickled his cheeks as they rose.
Just as his lungs began to burn with a hot-coal sensation, his head broke the surface, and he inhaled sharply and deeply, the sweet air knifing down his throat, before collapsing into a fit of coughing and gagging that tasted of algae and silt.
Whatever had him was gone, and when he dropped his feet, his shoes struck the silty lake bottom. He stood waist-deep in the lake near the dock, coughing up more water. He blinked and wiped his face, squinting at the pontoon boat. Their loud voices carried easily across the lake’s surface.
“I think you got him!” Wendy squealed.
“Hell yeah!” Ryan howled in triumph.
Graham rubbed his stinging eyes, lake water streaming in rivulets down his face from his hair that hung in sodden ropes against his forehead.
The boat's halogen lights cut weakly through the darkness, reflecting off the surface in trembling pinpricks.
At first, the lake appeared normal—then he saw it.
Twenty yards from the pontoon, the water humped upward like a muscular shoulder, a dome of liquid rising against gravity.
It swelled higher, six feet across and growing, surging silently toward the boat.
Paralysis seized Graham’s limbs as if he’d been flash-frozen.
His jaw locked, throat constricting until each shallow breath whistled through his teeth.
The surreal scene unfolded through eyes stretched so wide they ached, his peripheral vision dimming to tunnel blackness.
Had he been able to force sound past his vocal cords, would he have shouted a warning?
A warning about what? He didn't even know what was happening—or what was headed toward the boat with such terrible intent.
Don’t you? A curious voice whispered from a deep pocket of his mind, a voice both foreign in its liquid cadence yet familiar as his own heartbeat.
The lake's surface trembled ominously, concentric ripples spreading outward like the rings of a disturbed spider's web, small waves whispering warnings ahead of the swelling mass beneath.
A primordial rage—hot as magma yet cold as the deepest trench—surged through the creature's ancient consciousness, dormant for decades but now awakening with the sharp-edged vengeance of a forgotten god.
Its memory, perfect and crystalline despite the passage of time, recalled the humans who had invaded its domain—their tobacco-stained breath, their hatred glinting in bloodshot eyes, their grotesque cruelty as they sought to kill its beloved.
Their bloated remains had long since settled into the sinister depths, becoming food for bottom-feeders, yet the creature never forgot the darkness humans were capable of—the unique cruelty that existed nowhere else in nature.
The pontoon’s lights spilled yellow across the obsidian surface of the lake, while bass-heavy music thundered downward through the water column, vibrating through the creature's gelatinous form like an electric current.
The humans' drunken laughter—harsh, staccato barks that sliced through the night—carried the same bitter malice as the tobacco-stained threats of those men who had dragged Quinn into the lake decades ago.
Now these new intruders aimed beer cans like missiles at the young man's skull—the same young man whose childhood laughter once rippled through these waters, whose small fingers had once stroked the creature's tentacles with innocent wonder.
The water rose rapidly, surging across the surface toward the boat like a miniature tsunami, moonlight gleaming off its unnatural crest. It hit with the force of a battering ram, flowing beneath the hull with deliberate malice.
The craft lifted and tilted forty-five degrees, its aluminum railings groaning under the strain as the passengers’ screams pierced the night.
Beer cans and coolers slid across the deck, smashing against the railing.
The swell subsided with eerie suddenness, causing the boat to drop heavily like a stone, its flat bottom slapping the water with a thunderous crack that echoed across the lake.
The creature dove deeper, its gelatinous body undulating with purpose as it swam in tight, vengeful circles below, accelerating until the water above formed a perfect vortex, generating swirling currents that spun the craft like a child’s toy in a bathtub drain.
Graham's jaw unhinged. “What the fuck...?” The words escaped as a strangled whisper, barely audible over the violent churning of water. The lake’s surface erupted into a frothing maelstrom around the pontoon boat.
Rooted to the spot, muscles locked in terror, he watched Ryan and Wendy scramble as they lost their grip on the metal railing.
Their bodies cartwheeled through the air before hitting the water with twin slaps that echoed across the lake.
As they surfaced, gasping and sputtering, the whirlpool dragged them into its spiraling maw.