The Water at Midnight

Chapter 1: Dare to Dive

The air carried the scent of wet pine and this afternoon's rain. As they walked, Garrett's boot found the mud and the mud swallowed it, slow and deliberate, making a too-loud, near-obscene sound, in the moonlight. Above them, the moon was half way up the evening sky, near-full. It’s stony brilliance stripped color from the trees and poured black into the shadows.

“I don’t like it,” Tommy said, his voice a low rumble from the shadows. He stood at the treeline, a solid black shadow against shadows, from Garret’s point of view.

“What?” Garrett shot back, his words slightly slurred from the whiskey they’d shared in the truck. He fumbled with his belt buckle. “You joined the Navy, saw the world. Now a swimming hole at midnight scares you?”

“It’s not midnight. And I don’t know this place.” Tommy’s voice wasn’t shaking, but that was whiskey bravado.

“I do.” After that, Garrett ignored him, shucking his jeans so they piled on his boots. The night air bit at his skin, raising gooseflesh on his thick arms and broad chest. He stood in his boxers, facing the water. It was the swimming hole, the one the two of them had been in dozens of times in the past. Not drunk, not recently. But it was the same, familiar place. The reflection of the moon shivered on it, broken by the currents of the stream that fed it.

Right now, though, he felt old. The divorce papers were a fresh weight in the glove box. The empty echo of his new apartment followed him even here. He needed to feel like the guy he remembered being—the one who didn’t think, who just did.

“Still got your huevos, Tommy?” he called over his shoulder, puffing his chest out. “Or did they mail those back to you with your discharge papers?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He took three lumbering, stumbling steps and launched himself out into the water.

The splash was a gunshot in the silent night. The cold was an absolute, a vice around his lungs, driving every molecule of air and whiskey out of him in a silent scream. He plunged down, disoriented, the dark complete. For a second, he didn’t know which way was up.

He kicked, frantic, and burst back into the air with a ragged, gasping shout. “Christ! It’s colder than a witch's tit!”

He tread water, the initial shock hardening into a brittle, buzzing adrenaline. He wiped the stinging water from his eyes. “See? Still alive! Your turn, pretty boy!”

Tommy hadn’t moved. He was still standing there, arms crossed. Not smiling.

“Get out, Garrett.”

“What? Scared?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, simple and clean. “I am. Something's wrong. The current is wrong. My gut says so. Get the hell out.”

Garrett laughed, a booming sound that shattered the quiet and felt good in his chest. “Current, my ass. It’s water. It’s just water.” He paddled a little further from the bank, showing off, rolling onto his back. The sky was a vast, star-pricked bowl. He felt a sliver of the old feeling, the invincibility. It was fleeting, but it was there.

Then something brushed his leg.

It wasn’t a root. It was cold, but not the chill of the water. This was a different cold, a slick, purposeful cold. It slid against his calf—a firm, muscular pressure—and was gone.

His boast died in his throat. He froze, his treading water becoming still. Every nerve ending fired at once.

“Tommy.”

He didn’t mean to whisper.

“What?” Tommy’s voice was sharp, immediate.

“Something’s in here.”

“Fish. Snapping turtle. Your common sense finally catching up to you. Get out.”

Garrett slowly turned in the water, scanning the impenetrable surface. Ripples radiated from him, distorting the moon’s reflection. His heart was a hammer against his ribs. The bravado was gone, leaving only a primal, liquid fear in his gut. He was suddenly, acutely aware of the unknown depth below him, of the miles of dark woods around him, of how very alone he himself was in this black cup of water.

It touched him again. This time it coiled, just for an instant, around his ankle. A languid, exploring loop of cold, living rope.

He yelped and thrashed, a panicked explosion of limbs. “It’s got me! Tommy, it’s fucking got me!”

On the bank, Tommy was moving. Not running, but with a terrifying, efficient speed. He kicked off his boots, stripped his shirt over his head in one fluid motion, and was at the water’s edge, his eyes locked on the spot where Garrett flailed.

“Stop kicking!” Tommy barked, the voice of command cutting through Garrett’s panic. “Stop! Now!”

Garrett forced his legs still, choking on lake water. He was panting, tears of terror mixing with the lake on his face. The coil was gone. The water was just water again.

“It… it let go,” he stammered.

“Swim. To me. Now. Do not splash.”

Garrett swam. It was a clumsy, desperate crawl, every second expecting that slick touch to return, to drag him down. He covered the ten yards like it was a marathon. His hands scraped the steep, muddy bottom. He clawed his way forward, half-swimming, half-crawling through the shallows.

A hand closed like iron around his forearm. Tommy hauled him out of the water as if he weighed nothing, dragging him over the slick roots and onto the muddy bank. Garrett collapsed on his back, heaving, his boxers slid down now, exposing his hairy ass. His body was shaking with cold and fear.

Tommy stood over him, breathing hard, not from exertion but from adrenaline. His gaze wasn’t on Garrett; it was fixed on the water, scanning, professional, hunter-like. The moonlight highlighted the hard lines of his torso, and the scars, and the old tattoos.

“What was it?” Garrett finally rasped, pushing himself up on his elbows. “A snake? A big eel?”

Tommy slowly looked down at him. The boyish charm was utterly absent. His face was all hard angles and shadow, eyes dark pools. “You didn’t see it?”

“I felt it. It was… it wrapped…”

Tommy knelt suddenly, his hand on Garrett’s still-submerged foot. He pointed. In the weak light, just above Garrett’s ankle, was a faint, muddy mark. Not a bruise. A pattern. A spiraling smear of deep, clay-red sediment, like something coated in silt had gripped him tightly.

Neither of them spoke. The woods were utterly silent. No crickets, no frogs.

Tommy’s eyes went back to the water. “It’s not an eel,” he said, his voice barely audible.
“Doesn't matter. Let's go. Now.”

A bubble, large as a dinner plate, broke the placid surface in the center of the pool. Then another. A slow, rhythmic exhalation from the deep.

Tommy stood, grabbing Garrett’s arm again. “Get up. Don’t look back. NOW!"

Garrett didn’t argue. He scooped his clothes and ran, hiking up his boxers as he went.

Tommy grabbed his shirt, scooped up his boots. Once his gaze turned back to the black water. More bubbles. Huge ones.

They stumbled back through the trees, toward the distant, welcome glow of the truck’s parking lights. The comfortable drunkenness was gone, replaced by a sober, electric dread. Garrett risked one look back.

Between the trees, the swimming hole lay still and black. And for a moment, he thought he saw a thicker darkness breach the surface, a slick curve that caught no light at all, before it slid back under without a sound.