Body of Water

The wind in the trees had more to say than the five postgrads who’d arrived at the campsite to commemorate Kate Gibson. Not even her sister, Bethany, said a word.

The bouquet of flowers laid at the base of Legion Lake’s sign looked out of place. Although, appearing more alive than the weeds around them, their delicate life was cut short as a sacrifice to the memory of a loved one.

“I can’t believe it was just a year ago.” Nick spoke, breaking the silence as he brushes his hair beneath his cap.

David’s arm around Sarah. “Yeah. Worst school camp ever. Didn’t think I’d be back.”

Sarah lifts his arm off her shoulder. “Well, we aren’t here for fun, are we?” She steps toward her best friend. “We’re here to support Bethany, so she can find closure, and stuff. Right guys?”

The two jocks both reassured Bethany with a glancing nod.

Ben gently touches Bethany’s arm from behind. “I know this mustn’t be easy, but we’re all here for you.”

She pulls away from his touch, but not discrete enough to go unnoticed by the others, who then left the two alone and began to unpack the SUV. Nothing more was said, except that which was heard from the others.

“It’s a full moon tonight,” David yelled from the car. “I wouldn’t setup too close to the lake.”

Nick laughs. “Why, in case werewolves decide to join us after their midnight swim?”

“No, dumbass. Full moons affect the tides.”

“Lakes don’t have tides, moron. I bet ya. Look it up.”

“Well, we are officially camping,” Sarah remarked, checking her cell phone. “I can’t get a signal.”

Ben stood with Bethany, who seemed to be hiding her emotions exceptionally well while they watched the sunset over the lake. He kisses her cheek to give her a moment and joins the others, briefly glancing back at her to see Bethany finally talking by herself.

Too many beers later, Bethany sat awkwardly quiet next to Ben by the campfire. Sarah and David did most of the chatter, as usual, talking about anything other than the one thing on everyone’s mind. Nick, however, was preoccupied searching the bushes.

“Nick, I wasn’t going to ask,” David said, finally. “But it’s been fifteen minutes and you haven’t found the fuck you’re looking for.”

“You don’t smell that?” Nick replied.

“Ugh, dude, you didn’t take a shit in the bushes, did you?”

“I’m not a fucking animal, David. No, there’s something dead around here.”

“Nick! That’s not funny!” Sarah said.

“What?” Nick notices everyone glaring at him. “Oh, c’mon. I wasn’t talking about Kate.”

“Alright, Nick. You can fuck off!” Ben said, lobbing a branch at him. “Go!”

“Jesus Christ!’ Nick dodges the stick. “Fine. Whatever. I need to take a leak anyway.”

Nick stumbles, turning to leave, and wanders far from the campfire light, until he finds a secluded spot that overlooks where the lake meets the rocks. He unzips his trousers to urinate. His eyes, not yet fully adjusted to the dark, naturally gravitate toward a white lump glistening in the moonlight by the water on the bank. It was the only thing his gaze fixated on during his tranquil release while he listened to his piss turn dirt into mud. Nick glances down and finishes up but when he looked back, he catches sight of the tail end of the white blob slipping into the lake.

The campfire warmed the group who gathered around it, but it was their laughter that brightened the atmosphere. Bethany finally seemed to be enjoying herself, enough for Sarah to feel comfortable asking her how she’s coping. Ben and David went quiet when Bethany opened her mouth to speak.

“Uh, guys,” Nick interrupted, in a Nick-like fashion, as he emerges from the bushes, “I think something’s in the water.”

Bethany provoked, steps to her feet and disappears through the trees. Ben, Sarah, and David all exchange Nick the same exasperated stare, which he ignored while sitting down and opening another beer.

Sarah turns to Ben, who watched Bethany fade into the distance. “Are you guys okay?” she asked. “You two haven’t talked all evening.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “Actually, this is the most interaction we’ve had in a while. She just hasn’t been the same since Kate, uh…”

“Sacrificed herself?” Nick offered, taking a sip of his bottle before noticing everyone glaring at him again. “Alright. Message received. I’m going.” He stumbles his way behind the SUV to his tent.

“Why did Bethany invite that asshole?” Sarah muttered.

“Why were any of us invited?” Ben said. “I mean, we weren’t that different from Nick before Kate died.”

“Oh my god. You’re right. We used to call her the evil twin.”

“To be fair,” David interrupts, “she used to practice witchcraft.”

“Babe, that was just a rumour.”

Ben looks back into the night which hid Bethany from view. “Only Bethany knew her sister for who she was behind her gothic façade.”

“Maybe you should check on her, Ben.” Sarah suggested.

Ben immediately stands up. “Yeah, me too.”

The couple watches on as Ben wanders off after her.

“Nice one, babe.” David shuffles closer to Sarah. “Alone at last.”

“I don’t know if I’m in the mood tonight, David,” she said.

He leans in closer and kisses her delicately on the neck. “Well, allow me to change that.”

Despite expressing her reluctance, Sarah didn’t stop him. Instead, she raises his lips up to hers and –

“HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!”

David was quick to respond to Nick’s distress. “What? What happened?”

Nick hysterically bounced around in his two-man tent in terror. “DID YOU SEE IT?”

“See what?”

“I don’t know. It wrapped around my ankle.”

“A SNAKE?” Sarah shrieked, hiding closely behind David.

“Yeah. I mean. I don’t know.” Nick fumbles his way out of the tent. “It was pale and slimy. It felt more like a tentacle.”

Crickets and the popping of the campfire cracked in the silence.

“A tentacle?” David asked. “Like an octopus tentacle?”

“I guess. Maybe?”

“An octopus in the woods?”

“Maybe it came from the lake?” Sarah offered.

“There are no octopuses in fresh water.” David proceeded to scout the area. Finding nothing, he peaks inside Nick’s tent. “What’s this?” he says. “The fuck…”

“What?” Sarah asks. “What is it?”

David backed out from the tent with something held in his hands. The others watched in suspense. David then shouts and tosses at Nick what was just a Japanese Manga comic.

“Lay off the tentacle porn, you creep,” David laughed.

“FYI, David, not all Hentai is tentacle erotica,” Nick returned.

“Whatever, man. Get a girlfriend.”

“Okay. Sure. Can I share yours?”

“Ugh. Ew.” Sarah gagged.

“Alright. Your loss.” Nick said, pinching a rolled joint from his pocket. “I guess it’s just you and me then, Mary Jane.”

Nick walks between the couple and sits back at the campfire.

David sighs. “Well, there goes our privacy.”

“Let’s find someplace else.” Sarah nudges him along.

“I like your thinking, babe.”

Nick lingered at the campsite attempting to blow smoke rings by the fire. He was higher than the pitch he was singing when he wasn’t breaking out in a coughing fit. His joint had eventually been smoked to a nib pinched between his fingers, which he flicked into the fire before championing himself back to his tent. When he arrived, he got a fright upon peering inside, followed by relief.

“Holy shit,” Nick laughed. “I wasn’t expecting you here. Wait… Are you naked?” Nick squints to focus his stoner haze through the entrance. “Oh shit,” he says. “Nice. I knew you’d come back for more.” He undoes his belt, allowing his pants to drop to his ankles before crawling inside. “Ugh, you brought in mud, you naughty girl.”

Catching up with Bethany, Ben discovers her standing by a line-up of rowboats near the shore.

“You’re not thinking of taking one out, are you?” he said.

“This is the one,” says Bethany. “Boat 15. The one we took out.”

“Holy shit.”

“At least they’ve replaced the cement tires with proper anchors.”

“Maybe we should go somewhere else…”

“I could’ve jumped in after her, but I paused.”

“You were probably in shock.”

Bethany's head looks to the water. “She sank so quickly.”

“Jesus.”

“Her skeleton was apparently found not that far from the tire.”

“I heard. But at least she was found, right?”

“A month later? It usually takes several months for bodies to fully decay. I looked it up. And that’s only on dry land. Underwater, it’s much longer.”

“Maybe fish…” Ben stops himself.

David and Sarah’s laughter was heard from a distant bank that protruded the lake. Tugging on the rope tied to the overhanging tree by the cliff edge was David, who then bellowed Tarzan’s famous cry while swinging over the water and back again.

“How about we catch up with the others?” Ben says. He holds Bethany’s hand and proceeds to lead the way.

Following the sound of David and Sarah’s antics, Ben and Bethany unwittingly arrive back at the campsite to find it darkened, forsaken, and covered in mud.

“What the hell?” Ben said. “Looks like they had a mud fight.” He chuckles, failing to disguise his annoyance from the mess.

“DAVID!”

“That sounds like Sarah.” Bethany said.

“HELP. SOMEBODY HELP!”

Ben didn’t delay and followed the sound of distress. “SARAH?” he called.

“Oh my god, Ben. It’s David. He fell into the water and, and, I can’t see him.”

Ben didn’t hesitate to slip down the bank, holding onto the roots that stuck out of the cliff face he frantically scoped the surface of the water for movement. But time ticked quicker than it seemed before Ben dove into the water fully clothed.

Bethany had finally caught up and looked on with Sarah in anticipation as Ben came up for air empty handed repeatedly before diving under again. After what seemed like an eternity, Ben finally found him unconscious and pulled him back to shore. Sarah followed with her cell phone light fixated on them. But when Ben arrived at the bank it was realized he hadn’t retrieved David’s body.

Sarah gasps in shock. “Oh my god, is that Nick?”

Ben immediately checks Nick’s airways, to discover they were completely stuffed with mud. He tries to finger it out of his throat, but it was too dense.

“Fuck,” Ben said.

“Tell me he’s not dead.” Says Bethany.

“What about David?” Sarah panicked,.

Exhausted, Ben climbs to his feet. “Call for help!” He pushes his way back into the water to keep searching, still determined to find David with the little hope time still spared.

Bethany stared emptily at Nick’s body as mud oozed out of his orifices, while Sarah dialed and redialled emergency, but couldn’t get through. She persisted to seek out reception while checking on Ben’s progress as he desperately dips in and out of the water. But, despite all efforts, too much time had fed his dismay, and he knew it was too late.

Sarah, however, was all-the-more determined. She ran off anxiously trying to gain a bar of signal on her cell phone. She held it up high, hitting redial, hoping the sky will open so she could get through to emergency. She weaved around the trees, resisting the urge to blink while the screen blinded her from everything else. Unknowingly, she was back at the campsite when her cell phone finally switched to ‘SOS.’

She stops abruptly, her phone raised high above her head, hoping to maintain connection while her thumb hits redial. But then her eyes catch something up in the trees beyond her phone. The shadow with eyes fell from above and she screamed her lungs inside out as the creature flopped on top of her.

When Ben and Bethany caught up, they discovered Sarah tangled in what looked to be pale tentacles restricting her arms firmly against her body. They couldn’t believe what they saw, brown hair and four appendages that tied itself around its prey. The creature’s identity wasn’t clear until its sack of a head peeled backward from Sarah’s neck revealing a familiar face.

Ben’s eyes widened. “What the fuck... Kate?”

The boneless body, bounding Sarah like an octopus, curls one of its fingers backwards out of Sarah’s mouth. Fingernails painted pink, it points at her sister standing beside him, to whom Ben turns and sees glaring at Sarah with a wicked smirk.

“Kate?” he says, snapping her attention. “Oh god, Kate.” Realising he’d mistaken her for Bethany. “What did you do?”

She scowls back at Sarah tangled in Bethany’s soggy corpse. “I couldn’t take the ridicule anymore," Kate says. "I needed to prove witchcraft wasn’t bullshit.”

“You murdered Bethany to prove a point?”

“Moonlight wasn’t enough to move the water. It needed life in order to obey.”

“SHE WAS YOUR SISTER!”

“Our blood was the only relationship I had,” Kate explained. “Such sacrifice was necessary to bond with the water spirit.” Kate raises her hand and then clenches it into a tight fist. Bethany’s body, coiled around Sarah, immediately twists as it crushes her best friend.

Sarah drops to the ground dead.

“BETHANY, YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS!” Ben shouts.

“Sister doesn’t possess her body anymore,” said Kate. “The lake does.”

The naked body of water, as if swimming on land, began to pull itself toward Ben. He keeps his distance until he backs up against the trunk of the SUV, which was open to a bed. Trapped, Ben stands horrified by the sight of his girlfriend’s marbling corpse star-fishing in the mud with one cloudy eyeball poking out at him from her water-balloon head.

It curls its arms and legs into themselves and then springs toward Ben. He manages to dodge its attack, causing it to land inside the SUV. He instantly shuts the trunk door and backs away while watching the humanoid squid flop around hysterically inside. Too soft to break the windows, it projectile vomits its muddy insides all over the interior, exposing a slight opening in the passenger window. Ben continues to back away from the car as he watches its appendages squeeze through the glass' two-inch gap. Its pickled skin tightens as it presses its way out, struggling with the bulk of its body. But as soon as the torso fully breached, the rest of the corpse slipped out with ease and flops onto the dirt in a tangled mess.

Kate didn’t flinch when the corpse slithered up and around her body in a snake like fashion, until Kate looked as though she had two identical heads on her shoulders.

Ben surrenders. “Kate, I’m sorry we doubted you but killing everyone proves nothing. Is it really necessary to kill me too?”

“A pentagram has five points; one final sacrifice is needed to complete the ritual.” She rubs heads with Bethany’s, whose mouth drooped without a jawbone to hold it shut. Kate’s eyes lock with Bens and then she muttered a command.

“Feast.”

Bethany immediately wraps around Kate’s face, who in a panic couldn’t grip its mucosal skin to release her airways. Unable to breathe as the arms coiled around her neck, Kate drops weak to her knees. Suffocating her for a whole minute, the body finally eases its grip, allowing Kate to take in one big gasp of air. Mouth wide open, the corpse slips inside and down Kate’s throat. Its rubbery limbs slapped about like slurped spaghetti until it had fully burrowed its way inside her sister. Kate drops limp before her arms and legs, like a glove fitting a hand, began to slowly straighten stiff.

And then she was serene. “Ben?”

It took him a moment to recognise her tone, the sound of which he’d almost forgotten. “Bethany? Is that you?

She nods and reaches him for a hug, to which he embraces.

“Don’t ever leave me again” Bethany sobbed.

“I never gave up on you.” Ben pulls away to look into his love's eyes to find they were crying tears of mud. “But there’s nothing I can do to bring you back.”

Bethany sinks her face into Ben’s chest, and they held each other closely one last time.

“Saying goodbye is never easy,” he says. “But we are fortunate we still can.”

Then Bethany in his arms began to melt into mud.

Looking down at the puddle left in her footprints Ben takes a deep breath and gazes out onto the lake. “We’ll always be together.”

Approaching the SUV, Ben opens the door to the driver’s seat and wipes the mud off. Upon stepping inside his foot was caught on something. Ben instinctively tries to kick it free but no success. He looks down and sees a hand wrapped around his leg. Ben jumps in sheer fright and trips, collapsing below the car door. Tugged suddenly, he latches onto the car frame. Ben looks down at his leg and sees all his friend’s bodies linked together leading into the water. Then he’s pulled abruptly, knocking his skull on the door.

Ben took his final breaths unconscious before he was dragged into the body of water to be made one with Legion Lake.