The front door squeaked open, spilling a silhouette onto the icy front step: a sagging Santa hat with a bell on it perched on its head.
Oh God, here we go.
“Hey, you made it!”
“Todd, hi! Oh, it’s so good to see you!” Deb exclaimed, spinning on her heel and smiling wide. The switchover from fighting to delighted was natural, so smooth no one but me would notice. I looked at the back of her hair, coiled in neat ringlets, and swallowed my retort. Her hair looked nice. It should; it was the subject of hours of effort and swearing earlier in the afternoon. I swallowed that too. Only Deb could pivot in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out fight and slap a smile all across her teeth. Me, I was about ready to push her into the bushes. But we had to do what she wanted to do. We always had to do what she wanted to do.
All because of a sweater. She couldn’t let me have even that one, tiny victory.
“Come in, come in, it’s freezing out there.” The man flattened himself against the door frame, beckoning us inside with enthusiasm bordering on frantic. We squeezed into the hallway, stamping the slush from our shoes onto the overworked floor mat.
“You must be Josh! I’m Todd, Mary’s husband.” The man stuck out a hand, and I shook as best I could with one arm still trapped in my heavy jacket. On Todd’s chest a three-dimensional reindeer burst through a knitted screen door. At the end of the hall a dozen people stood in subdued conversation beneath Michael Bublé belting out his latest wretched holiday album. Todd and Mary’s “ugly sweater” Christmas party was one of the hot-ticket social events of the year. The fact that “we” merited an invitation had been the primary source of excitement from one-half of my household for weeks.
“Is that Deb?” A mousy woman with an expensive haircut rounded the corner, a huge smile splitting her red cheeks. She had decided to forego the theme of the party and wear a glitzy neon-blue cocktail dress. It was only five thirty, but judging by the flush working up her neckline, she’d been “celebrating” for a few hours. Upon seeing Deb, she burst into ear-rending squeals, blowing away any questions about her sobriety. I tried not to wince.
“Ah! Debbie, there you are, darling, Katie and I were just talking about the drama that went down in Home and Furniture today!”
Debbie? No one had called her Debbie since grade school. I thought she couldn’t stand the nickname.
“Oh, with Damian?” my wife gushed, instant excitement lighting her eyes. Nothing got Deb going like juicy gossip, and she was already running hot from the car ride over. She stuck her jacket out behind her without looking. I took it automatically, nodding in thanks for the hangers Todd pulled out of the hall closet. “God, wasn’t it a bloodbath?”
“Claire thinks they’re gonna fire him.” The woman lowered her voice to a whisper, looking around like she was revealing state secrets. Too late, she noticed me, the obligatory husband. She straightened, waving. “Josh, hi! So good to have you! How’s everything over in marketing?”
“Hi, Mary.” Deb’s boss had everything Deb was too scared to admit she wanted. Vapid and wealthy after fifteen years of seventy-hour weeks for Amazon. Rumor was she spent more time on the pull-out cot at her tiny office than sleeping next to her husband. I wondered if Deb wanted that part too. Oh, I’m sorry—Debbie.
My own boss at Amazon was a slightly mellower sort. Still a dick, but in his defense, that could be mostly Amazon’s fault.
“Do you want a drink, dear?” Mary turned back to my wife.
“Oh my God, so badly,” Deb said with a not-so-subtle sideways glance at me. She slipped an arm inside Mary’s elbow, and a split second later they were gone, eaten by the crowd.
“Boy, they get along well, don’t they?” Todd offered me a good-natured smile I didn’t feel like returning.
“Like a house on fire,” I said. The irony of the words slipping off my tongue wasn’t lost on me. “Beer?”
“Oh, right out by the sliding doors.”
“Thanks.” I turned and left him standing in the front hallway. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to make conversation with strangers. Not after the events earlier today. A chance I was being rude, but I didn’t care.
The ugly sweater theme was out in full. More three-dimensional reindeer, and a few with swanky, built-in LED bulbs. In most cases the sweaters had more to say than the white milquetoasts poured into them. I squeezed past the cliques and snagged the first bottle I touched from the ice chest without looking. Beyond a pair of glass doors, festive string lights lit the landscaped back lawn. There was a fire pit beneath a wood portico with a view of the Olympics over the Puget Sound. They even had a clay pizza oven. I guess throwing your life away for the sake of a mindless corporation came with its benefits.
Not that I could talk. Amazon was printed on my paychecks the same way they were on Deb’s. I, however, just worked there. Deb lived there. She loved every minute of her sixty-hour weeks. She was fully drunk on the Kool-Aid.
The beer was malty and crisp, with a sharp sting of alcohol. I glanced at the bottle; a barrel-aged porter with 11.8 percent alcohol by volume. A hint of something sharp wafted from the top of the bottle, some smell I should recognize but didn’t. Sweet but with a bitter undertone. Tell you what I did recognize, though: that sweet, sweet ABV percentage.
“Hello, you,” I murmured. I looked down into the ice chest and swiped a backup, slipping it in my back pocket for a quick reload. I promised Deb I’d be sober enough to drive us home so she could cut loose. I shrugged; two beers wasn’t gonna be that bad.
“Mallorca!”
I spun, daring to hope. Only one person who swam in these circles called me by that nickname. A thick black beard rushed me, arms outstretched. Behind it, an all-teeth grin gleamed. I took a breath of relief, the first in hours.
“Rakesh! Hey!” He smelled of expensive cologne layered over the faint tang of spice.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Rakesh said, pulling away but keeping a grip on my shoulder. “I would have worn something a little more risqué.”
The big man wore one of the LED-rigged sweaters, each over a scrawled letter of the alphabet. A knitted attempt at a Demogorgon lurked just under his armpit.
“Stranger Things. Nice. Does that technically count as Christmas, though? Isn’t it set in, like, October?”
“It’s Christmas lights,” Rakesh said, gesturing at his gut like I was oblivious. “Besides, my only options were either this or a sweater of Santa taking a dump in someone’s chimney.”
“You mean like that one over there?” I took a sip of beer and nodded at a mid-thirties man wearing the exact garment. He also sported a peach-fuzz mustache. I’m sure he would chuckle and assure me it was ironic . . . but he refused to shave.
The smell of the beer sharpened. New plastic, a little bit, like a fresh shower curtain. Whatever. I wasn’t here to break down the flavor notes. It was good, it was strong, and that was all I cared about.
“Oh, yeah.” Rakesh craned his head for a quick peek and shrugged. “Well there were only so many options in Prime, what are you gonna do? I see you went with . . . that.” He gave me a doubtful side-eye, his smile slipping.
“It’s my dad’s. My mom made it,” I said somewhat curtly, washing the words with beer. My choice of sweater was the spark firing off a six-hour shouting match between me and Deb, and I didn’t particularly feel like talking about it at length. Luckily, Rakesh knew the play when it came to my family. He murmured a generic compliment and dropped the conversation like a bad habit.
“So what are you doing here, anyway? I haven’t seen you at T and D’s before.”
“Deb got an invite after she did . . . I dunno, something with a crisis a few weeks ago. I’m riding shotgun for designated driving purposes, not because I merited an invitation.”
Rakesh raised an eyebrow at the mostly empty bottle in my hand, but didn’t say anything about it.
“Well, what do you think of your first party at the glamorous home of the VP of Finance?” He turned and gestured at the milling expanse of people. The doorbell had rung three more times since we arrived. The islands of talk grew as people gravitated toward who they knew and worked with. The house itself was lovely, a mid-century craftsman Todd and Mary had put either a lot of money or effort into. Or both. Charcoal cabinets and white marble counters lined the kitchen; the living-room ceiling was high and lent an airiness to the room. Even an indoor fireplace—I wonder if they got a two-for-one deal with the one outside. A painting hung over the mantel—some modernistic wash of grayscale with a hint of brilliant neon blue.
I caught a glimpse of my wife at the home bar along one wall, giggling into a flute of champagne.
I looked away, but not before the burn of irritation brought a heat to my collar.
“It’s . . . nice. Not my vibe, but nice.”
“Your vibe is playing Destiny in your pajamas, which doesn’t make for a fun Christmas party.”
“Uh, strongly disagree.”
We laughed. My chest was lighter, a little looser. Like the events of the day were being shuttered away. Did I want to be here? No. But, there were worse ways of spending an evening than goofing around with Rakesh.
“Where’s Deborah?”
“Over there.” I nodded to the bar.
“How are the two of you doing?”
“Oh, you know. Same old.” Another drink, this time to wash down the lie. Wash, wash, wash. Maybe one of my sentences would taste pleasant tonight. He was asking out of politeness, there was no reason to dump all our shit on him. Besides, we were work friends, not real friends.
The hours rolled by, and more people showed up. Someone turned up the music. The conversations grew more animated, people shouting and shrieking with glee. The ice chest was emptied, refilled, and emptied again. I pounded down my pocket beer and went back for another, then another. Ah well, I thought, so we have to take a Lyft home. At least I was finally enjoying the life my wife wanted so desperately. A born-and-bred hippie who’d give her left foot at the ankle to have the life promised her by Corporate America. The irony turned my stomach, and I doused the rising bile with more beer.
I wasn’t above a little self-improvement by corporate ass-kissing; that was the way the world worked. But I liked hiking and backpacking and paddling on Lake Union on the weekends. My free time was exactly that—mine. Deb, on the other hand, hadn’t taken a full day off in three years. Not even when we flew to Decatur last Christmas. She worked from the guest bedroom. Dad and I had turkey and stuffing silently in the living room.
Rakesh introduced me to people whose names I forgot as soon as I heard them. I stood in on a conversation about the merit of PNW-centric IPA. Someone bemoaned how expensive the Seattle housing market was, to much-muttered agreement. It took everything in me not to laugh outright; everyone in the tight circle, including me, made low six figures, if not more. We were the reason studio apartments were closing in on eighteen hundred dollars a month. But sure, let’s sit here and mourn the loss of the city’s identity, ignoring the fact that we’re the ones forcing the original residents of Seattle out of their homes and neighborhoods. Hey, we can drink our expensive beers in a multi-million-dollar home while we do it, isn’t that a gas?
After a few minutes the irony became sickening, and I left, pounding down the dregs of my fourth—fifth?—beer. The chemical smell was all around me now. Lingering in the back of my throat like an oncoming sickness. I’d pick a different beer this time. Because that was for sure the issue.
“Did he just . . . leave?” A not-hushed-enough murmur behind me. “What’s his problem?”
“Ooooh, let me tell you,” I mumbled to nobody in particular. I bumped into someone and apologized to a sweater-clad shoulder, making my way back to the ice chest. The floor was being a tricksy hobbit, bobbing underfoot as I tried to navigate the packed living room.
Deb. Deb was my problem. Deb and her desperate need to climb a cold, corporate ladder. To please faceless goons who didn’t give a shit about her or how hard she worked. And the way she chose to do it was to micromanage my wardrobe, apparently.
“You can’t wear that,” she’d told me as I emerged from the bathroom, hours earlier.
“What are you talking about? It’s a Christmas sweater,” I said, looking down.
“It’s not funny enough. It’s an ugly Christmas sweater party. That’s not ugly. Well, it is, but it isn’t funny-ugly.”
“My mom knitted it for my dad. We’re about the same size. Come on, it’s not a big deal.” It wasn’t a great sweater. Loose in the armpits, sagging from the gut, it was knitted from wool long since gone to seed and it smelled a little like mold. But I wanted to wear it—I didn’t want to blow sixty bucks on a sweater for a meaningless party. There was a Christmas tree on it, and it counted. Besides, we ordered from the Thai place down on the corner even though I hated Thai, so it was my turn. That’s how a relationship worked, right? Based on score?
“I don’t care if your mom made it, it’s not on theme. Come on babe, this is Todd and Mary’s ugly sweater party. It’s important. Go change.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn what you want, Josh.”
And we were off to the races.
* * *
Rakesh followed at my shoulder, mouthing apologies for me as I bumped into a handful of other people. I didn’t care. He steered me toward the upper floor, but I fought against him, angling toward the cooler. People were staring; I was making a fool out of myself. I didn’t care about that either.
The stink of chemicals, jagged in my throat, in my nose. Every time I breathed, it choked me. I knew that smell.
She was still standing at the bar, but her coworkers were gone. Instead, she was talking to a guy I didn’t recognize—tall, dark hair, broad shoulders. His sweater wasn’t an ugly sweater at all—some sleek charcoal number molded to his muscles. Like she felt my gaze across the room, my wife looked up at me, a smirk touching the corners of her eyes—private, just for me. Just for a second, then back to the conversation, enthralled, nodding along. He cracked a joke, and she sputtered into a fit of giggles. She laid a hand on his, caressing the skin of his wrist. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. On the underside of her wrist, a delicate curl of neon-blue mold crawled across her skin.
Looking at it, I knew where I’d smelled the scent threatening to block my throat. It wasn’t a beer smell. That was just my brain playing tricks on me. My perspective.
Chemical, yes.
Ammonia.
Rot.
I snapped awake. Air, sharp with frost, pressed against my face, slipped beneath the ragged edges of the blanket. A dream, it was a dream. It had to be: I’d never been to Todd and Mary’s house. Mom had never knitted a day in her life. I blinked, trapped between the lingering clutches of bad sleep and uncertain reality. It was dark, cold. I pulled the blanket over my head, and a finger of unwelcome cold air brushed my ankles. I tugged it back down and my shoulder popped out.
I sat up, groaning. My stomach felt small, tight. My wrist burned, too hot. I didn’t have a watch, but no moon lit in the sky, no stars lit the woods; it was as black as frostbite, twice as cold.
It didn’t help that my shirt had absorbed the wood-rot water as I slept, and now clung to my back. A shiver rocked through my gut, making my teeth chatter. My headache woke up with me. Grown from its origin behind my eyes, it now wrapped around the front of my head. A gripping vise winched tighter every time I moved. Despite the unwelcome chill in the air, sweat slicked my armpits and forearms.
Something pinched my thigh, bundling in the fabric I adjusted for the fiftieth time, trying to get comfortable. I panicked and slapped at it, imagining a rat or bug, but nothing went skittering into the underbrush. In my pocket. A hard piece of metal. I fumbled for it.
That fucking fire starter. God, a fire would be so welcome right now, the warmth slipping over me like dropping into a hot bath. Muscles relaxing one by one until I could finally sleep. I remembered the sensation like the aftertaste of a meal too far in the past.
So why not try again? Because it never worked, that’s why. But hope springs eternal, and I sat up with no small amount of effort.
I grasped around for the remains of my last attempt, tapping the sticks to dislodge left-over ash, stacking them one by one. I had plenty of leaves—the rain and wind from the last two days had blown a tumbling talus of gold and crimson into one corner. I sorted through them with painful slowness. I tucked the dry ones inside my trusty Lincoln Log arrangement of sticks. I knelt, clicked the starter near the leaves, and blew. Nothing. I tried again; same results. The leaves were cold, stiff to the touch. Like corpses, piled on top of one another.
It’s fine, I told the cold weight of disappointment dropping my stomach into my pelvis. It’ll happen.
A lie, and I knew it. It was my own fault for getting hopeful. Now I lived and died with each raspy click. It’s the hope that kills you.
A fairy-dust cinder leaped from the metal, landing on a leaf. I inched close, blowing on the spark, trying to feed it a constant stream of air while not blowing it out of existence.
It worked. The spark grew to a red glow, which curled into a tiny finger of flame. Just like I’d done my first night, I fed it a leaf at a time with trembling fingers, nudging it beneath one of the charred sticks until the flame caught.
The inside of the cell flickered into distinction with orange light. I scrounged around, building a pile of dryish leaves and the occasional twig. After fifteen minutes a palpable heat bloomed from my tiny flame, and I warmed my hands on it. I leaned my head back against the wall and finally relaxed, smiling, relishing the light. I’d spent a long time in the dark.
The wall sagged behind me. Like, properly sagged—I almost fell to one side, thrown off balance.
I turned, curious, careful not to threaten my baby fire. Dozens of pin-sized holes had been drilled into the waterlogged wood. Winding lines connected them, some rough and crisp around the edges. Others had been scoured smooth by time. Termites. Without the fire, I never would have seen them. Never even have noticed.
I swallowed the immediate excitement surging to my fingertips. It could be nothing. I probed, pushing against the wood. A two-foot section facing the backwoods, close to the floor where I huddled for warmth. Even with a small amount of pressure the wall bulged outward, creaking a soft, sad sigh.
Holy shit. I sat backward in a rush, pulled my knees up to my chest.
The wall stood on its last legs. I’d guess a few decades of nonstop termite nesting combined with water damage did that. A few sharp kicks, and the whole section would buckle and tear away. This was it; this was my chance. I knew it in my bone marrow.
Then what? Then I’d run, my wrist be damned. I’d take three months in a cast over an immediate and, if I had to guess, painful death.
I’d go south. Toward the end of the valley, away from that box canyon with its wretched, writhing secrets. A river ran at the other end, flowing toward Bedal. I remembered it from my first sob-riddled and heart-pounding run for my life. It was either run and risk it or wait to die. Not much of a choice, when you came down to it.
I leaned down, braced myself. Beyond the confines of my cell, the forest slept, silent save for the breath of wind through the pine boughs, rustling like fingers. I kicked out, wincing at the dull thump echoing along the tree hollows. I froze, my ears straining. No rustles or cries, no sound of movement beyond the trees. The seconds crawled by. Another kick. My heart slammed in my throat now, threatening to choke me. Any minute they’d come rushing through the darkness, teeth sharp and blood in their eyes. They’d drag me back to that canyon, where the thing lived.
A last kick, and the wall crumbled outward with a wet pop, giving me a two-foot section to the free world. I waited, gritting my teeth and clenching every muscle in my body. I heard no alarm raised, no crashing of knife-wielding men breaking through the trees. I peered out of the hut, half expecting to see a twisted and scarred face leering back at me. But there was only the forest, black and cold.
They waited for me out in those trees, I knew. With their teeth and fingers, with their scars and milky eyes. Watched me in my feeble attempts, watched my hope building.
Now or never. I looked around my cell.
The fire. It crackled in earnest now, snapping at the moisture left in the leaves’ crumpled-up crevices. A cheerful sound audible from a hundred feet in any direction, not to mention the light blowing away the shadow in every corner.
Figures. The one time I got a blaze going out of nothing in the backcountry, and I needed to smother it.
“Sorry,” I muttered. I grabbed a fistful of leaves and batted at the flame, sending it to smolder and smoke against the wet floorboards. Darkness surged back inside the cell, leaving after-images floating in my eyes. They huddled in the corner, buried beneath a tattered blanket.
They cried. A gentle susurration, ringing in the edges of my hearing like a mirage.
I’d left him, abandoned him. His blood stained my fingers just the same as the Woodkin’s.
No, not my fingers—Switchback’s. Never me, never mine. None of this was happening to Josh. This was just a nightmare for Josh, and now was his chance to snap awake.
Time to go. I wriggled through the hole head first, gritting my teeth as the termite-riddled wood scraped against my shoulders. I tried not to imagine dozens of hourglass-shaped maggots falling from the wood to crawl over my skin. The wood pressed tighter, and tighter . . . and suddenly I couldn’t move forward anymore. I pulled with my hands, uprooting fistfuls of grass and dirt, kicked with my feet.
Nothing. The splintered remains of the wall clamped down even tighter, like teeth, crushing me. I took a breath and tried wriggling back inside. A different angle, that’s all I needed. The wood scraped against my skin, drawing hot blood.
Stuck. Half in, half out of the wall.
Jesus.
Around me the forest came alive with sound, wind rattling the tree branches, leaves skittering across the ground. A snap, just to my left. My breath burned my ragged lungs, and panic flooded my senses. A crunch of dead leaves, a footstep. Teeth, grinning at me in the shadows. Real or imagined, it made no difference to me. They’d eat me, still stuck here. Crack open my back and start with my soft organs, still steaming and pulled from my twitching and howling form. Just like when the boy chased me into this valley the first time, when I stopped at the winding rivulet—hiding in the trees, watching. Letting me get my hopes up until the last possible moment.
I clenched my jaw, took a double-fistful of grass, and pulled. My wrist popped, something molten poured into my veins and muscles and a scream pressed up against my teeth, but the wall gave with a dull, wet sound, and I fell forward. I almost kissed the dirt.
I army-crawled through dead leaves, soggy and freezing to the touch, sharply smelling of rot. I stayed low, not risking standing up yet. Toward the trees, trying not to gasp as my wrist jolted against unseen twigs.
Oh my God, I did it. I made it outside. I couldn’t tell if I shook with excitement, fear, or fever. I tried to focus, but my heart was pounding hard enough to shake my vision. The distance between me and the trees stretched, a hundred feet of bare, open ground. Stepping into that no-man’s land upright would expose me. They’d see me. I ignored the soaking moisture chilling my skin, the soft give of mud and dirt beneath me. When I closed within ten feet of the trees I couldn’t take it anymore. I jumped into a stagger, desperate for the safety of the shrouding darkness.
The sky was a rolling layer of charcoal-edged silhouettes, backlit by a silver moon. A ridge was outlined against the far side of the valley. I kept it on my left, ducking around trees and over exposed roots dredged from the dirt like heavy limbs. I didn’t look behind me, didn’t slow or pause for breath. I forgot about the agony in my wrist.
I burst through the same meadow, wreathed in thigh-high grass, from three nights ago. Clouds roiled in the fogged black reflection of the scummed-over pond, thick and heavy.
A stick snapped twenty feet behind me. A ghost of movement, the smallest suggestion. I whipped around, my throat closing to a desperate whine.
I saw him first this time. A silhouette against the dark clearing, a shadow against a shadow. Running straight at me.
Oh God.
I dove into the forest, weaving around a pine tree, going south, or what I hoped to God was south. The fever tripped another breaker in my head; suddenly it was hot and muggy beneath the black layer of leaves and limbs. My breath clawed into my lungs, and blood pounded in my ears.
His alarmed shout followed me through the many-fingered forest.
Fuck.
The valley shifted and dropped down, the walls closing in on either side. I had to be close—I heard the muted white static of rushing water. I had a huge lead, but they were fast, so fast, like wolves in the dark with sharp teeth, snapping—
A sudden burst of motion out of the darkness to my right, and a pale hand lunged for me, missing by inches. I screamed, fear and anger ripping my vocal chords. Twigs and leaves snapped and ruffled to my left, too close. In front of me the woods opened; water rushed below. The river. If I could make it to the river . . . I lunged for it, breath coming in ragged pants.
I almost made it.
The woods fell away behind me, turning to rock, stubbled with pale forms of fallen and long-dead trees. I couldn’t see the river, but I could hear it, drowning the sounds of chase and fear, of my own panting desperation. I saw them for the first time, six or more, emerging from the black shadows behind me, twisted and scarred faces contorted in rage. One reached out, grabbed my shirt. My momentum slowed to a grinding halt.
They caught me. Panic, black and raw, took what little breath I had. They were going to take me back. The man who held me smiled wide. Moonlight winked in the holes riddling his face.
The deer skull in the clearing. The roiling smoke.
“No!” My high-pitched shriek barely made it above the roar of water. I kicked out in desperation, my foot making contact with the side of his knee. He released me, grunting in pain. Twenty feet below me the river churned and roared in a mad rush.
I careened over the bank, limbs flailing at empty air. Only twenty feet, but it felt like two hundred.
The surface of the river came out of nowhere, forcing what little air I had in my lungs outward in a stream of desperate silver bubbles.
Crushing black water surrounded me on all sides. Blind motion rushed against my face, but I couldn’t see. The water stung my eyes like salt, a thousand fingers trying to pry them open. I flailed against the current and a rock slammed against my toes, hard enough to make me yell and swallow water. I broke the surface long enough to try a choking inhale before I sank back under, fighting. It was cold. Everywhere there were rocks hammering against my feet when the riverbed shot up to meet me.
I tried to kick backward to slow myself, but the riverbanks on either side of me were already streaming past in a blur of shadows.
I didn’t see the tree trunk hovering over the surface until it was too late. A blinding flash of light and a roaring noise, and the volume knob of my life turned all the way down. My escape, the canyon, the black writhing thing, even my struggle to breathe. Fuzzy, indistinct things I couldn’t bother to draw into focus. A relief, to just . . . let go. Let death come for me if it wanted to.
The river swallowed me, and I floated on.
* * *
I wallowed in and out of consciousness, grasping at incoherent details slipping out of reach. A looming riverbank carved into a curved cliff. Trees, arthritic and hanging over the water like outstretched claws. Twin lights of a car on a late-night (early morning?) drive. A car. People. I felt like there was something there, some important bit of information I needed, but I couldn’t focus. The river flowed slower now, lazy. I looked up at the sky. At the stars glittering in a patchwork spiderweb behind the heavy silhouettes of clouds. It wasn’t cold anymore. That was nice.
A hand grabbed my shirt and pulled me out of the current. Water splashed and rolled in my ears.
“Hello.” A voice, distant. I wanted to look, but I was fading back into the darkness again, sinking back into myself. A glimpse of tan coveralls and a face wreathed in a thick beard. Black, beetling eyes stared at me in cold speculation.
“What have we here?”