Chapter 1: Stripped by Phantom Hands
The heat at Lake Powell was a physical thing, a dry, red-rock oven that baked the air until it shimmered. Tyler lay sprawled on the smooth stone of their secret cove, the turquoise water below him so clear he could count the pebbles twenty feet down. A gull cried somewhere high above the canyon walls, the sound echoing into emptiness.
“Last one in buys the first round tonight,” Josh called out, already sprinting for the ledge.
He was a silhouette against the brilliant sky, all broad shoulders and defined back, before he cannonballed into the water with a slap that sent a curtain of spray over everyone. Ben yelped, shielding his glasses, while Collin just laughed, a bright, easy sound that bounced off the stone.
“Show-off,” Tyler grinned, pushing himself up. His skin was warm from the sun, his muscles loose. This was perfection. Just the four of them, the water, and the whole silent afternoon stretching out.
That’s when he saw it.
“Uh, guys?”
It wasn’t there, and then it was. Drifting soundlessly from around a bend in the narrow canyon wall was a boat. But not any boat. It was small, a sleek runabout, but it looked… forgotten. The white paint was peeling like sunburnt skin, and the upholstery was cracked. Yet, it glowed. Not with light, exactly, but with a kind of visual hum, a warp in the air that made Tyler’s eyes water if he stared too long.
It drifted to a stop maybe ten yards from their rock, bobbing gently as if it had always been there.
“Whoa,” Collin breathed, coming to stand beside Tyler. “Where’d that come from?”
“Beats me,” Tyler said. The easy-going comfort of a moment ago tightened into a knot between his shoulders. “No engine sound. No one in it.”
Josh swam over, treading water below them. “Score! A free boat!”
“It’s creepy, is what it is,” Ben said, staying resolutely on his towel, a paperback forgotten in his hands. “It looks haunted. Or radioactive.”
“It’s just some abandoned junk,” Josh said, hauling himself up onto the rock. Water streamed down the dense musculature of his chest. “Maybe it’s a gift. From the lake gods.”
As Josh took a step toward the water’s edge, as if to swim to it, the boat’s hum intensified. Tyler felt it in his teeth.
“Josh, don’t—”
It happened fast. A pulse, silent and deep, rolled out from the boat. Tyler looked down and saw the neon green of his board shorts begin to dissolve. Not tear, not fade. Unweave. The individual threads seemed to turn to mist, evaporating upward into the hot air. He gasped, clutching at his waist, his fingers meeting only his own skin.
Around him, the others were in the same state of shock.
“What the hell?” Josh barked, staring down at his own vanishing trunks.
Ben made a small, choked sound, scrambling backwards on his towel as his clothes simply ceased to be. Collin was staring, open-mouthed, at his own disappearing t-shirt.
In less than a heartbeat, they were all just four very naked, very shocked young men standing on a sun-baked rock.
Before the embarrassment could fully ignite, before the shouts of protest could form, the boat pulsed again. This time, the sensation was cool and targeted, like a dozen ghosts brushing against their skin.
Tyler looked down again.
Where there had been nothing, now there was fabric. Minimal fabric. He was wearing swim briefs. Shockingly brief. They were a deep blue and cut high on the hips, the material sinfully soft and clinging to him like a second skin. He swallowed hard.
A strangled laugh burst from Collin. Tyler’s head snapped up.
The sight that greeted him drove all coherent thought from his mind.
Josh stood there, hands on his hips, wearing a red thong. It was a tiny, fiery scrap of material that did little more than hint at coverage. The confidence Josh usually wore like a cloak was still there, but it was transformed, charged with something else entirely. His smirk was wider, more challenging, as he struck a casual pose. The sheer, unabashed display of his physique—the powerful thighs, the flat stomach, the defined v-cut that the red string seemed to point to like an arrow—sent a jolt of pure, unauthorized heat straight through Tyler’s gut. He looked away, fast.
His eyes landed on Ben.
Ben was frozen, pale and skinny against the red rock, wearing what could only be called a microkini. It was black, with thin string sides, the top barely containing his chest. He was hunched over, arms crossed, trembling fingers plucking at the knot on his hip as if he could somehow expand the fabric by will. His glasses slid down his nose. The vulnerability was palpable, a stark contrast to Josh’s brazenness. Tyler felt a fierce, protective urge rush in, followed immediately by another unsettling flicker—the sharp line of Ben’s collarbone, the delicate shape of him, so different from Josh. It was a flicker of attraction that felt like a betrayal of his role as the leader, the protector.
“Dude,” Collin’s voice cut through the silence, thick with amusement. “Check me out.”
Collin was in a full-body speedo. It was iridescent, shiny silver material that started high on his chest and went down to mid-thigh, zipped up the front. It clung to every single contour, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. It was the most absurd thing Tyler had ever seen.
He burst out laughing, the tension breaking in a welcome wave. “You look like a superhero from a cheap porno!”
Collin threw his head back and laughed, then struck a series of exaggerated muscle-man poses, flexing and turning. “Feel the power!” he boomed. The laughter was a relief, a return to normalcy. But as Collin turned, the silver fabric straining across his back and shoulders, Tyler’s laugh caught in his throat. There was an unexpected grace to him, a sensuousness in the way the light played on the shiny material, defining the curve of his ass, the length of his legs. It wasn’t just funny. It was… compelling.
The four of them stood there, a bizarre tableau on the ancient stone: the jock in his daring thong, the nerd shrinking in his strings, the clown in his full-body glitter, and Tyler himself, the grounded leader, in the painfully revealing briefs.
A deep, resonant tone emanated from the boat, vibrating up through the rock into the soles of their feet. It wasn’t a sound you heard with your ears. It was a sound you felt in your bones. A command.
Come.
Josh, ever fearless, or perhaps just unable to back down from a challenge, was the first to move. “Screw it. It’s just a boat.” He walked to the edge and dove in, a flash of red against the blue.
The boat’s tone softened, approving.
Ben looked at Tyler, his eyes wide with panic behind his lenses. “Ty, we can’t.”
“We don’t seem to have a choice,” Tyler said, his voice quieter than he intended. He held out a hand. “Stay behind me.”
He jumped. The water was cold, a shock that stole his breath. He surfaced, pushing his sun-streaked hair back, and saw Josh already pulling himself over the boat’s transom. Collin cannonballed in beside him with a shriek, sending a wave over Tyler’s head.
Ben was the last, slipping into the water with a whimper. Tyler swam close, a reassuring presence, and together they approached the ghostly hull. Tyler put a hand on the fiberglass. It was warm, and the unnatural hum was strongest here, thrumming up his arm.
He hauled himself up and over, then turned to help Ben. The microkini was practically non-existent when wet, and Tyler focused rigidly on Ben’s eyes as he pulled him aboard. The others were already there, Josh claiming the helm, Collin sprawled on a cracked vinyl seat.
The moment Ben’s feet touched the deck, the engine started. Not with a roar, but with a silent, potent vibration. The boat began to turn, slowly, purposefully, away from their cove, away from their piled towels and normal lives, and pointed itself toward the deepest, most shadowy part of the canyon.
No one spoke. The only sounds were the lap of water against the hull and the low, psychic hum of the boat itself. Tyler stood in the center, feeling the eyes of his friends on him, feeling the alien fabric of his swimsuit against his skin, and understood with a cold, sinking certainty that the easy-going afternoon was over. The real journey, whatever it was, had just begun. And he had no idea where it would take them, or what parts of himself it would drag into the light.