Yesterday’s incident involved my friends—Alex Dang, Claire Thibodeaux, and Ben and Ryan Jenkins. Several years ago, Alex and Ryan got into urban exploration—trekking through abandoned shopping malls, condemned houses, the works. YouTube devoured their content. Alex and Ryan’s channel was Urbexploitation. I shot videos for them before I moved away.
Everything started with Alex’s text. He wanted me to meet him and Ryan in the woods. Growing up in Dawsonville, you hear shit about the forest. A bunch of kids in the nineties met out there to offer sacrifices to the devil. Satanic Panic stuff. There are also stories of people who went into the woods and never came out or people who came out screaming after seeing three-eyed deer. No one ever had proof.
Anyway, Alex texted me. He said if I was back in town, he and Ryan could use my camera skills. If Ryan had texted, I wouldn’t have gone. Ryan, Alex, and I grew up in the same neighborhood, played together all the time when we were kids. Ryan and I dated in high school. We tried to stay together when I moved away for film school. It didn’t work. I cheated on him. Naturally, he wasn’t thrilled when he found out. We broke up, but he was still resentful. Whenever someone showed any interest in me, he talked shit to turn them against me. It sucked, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
So, I grabbed my camera, laced up my shoes, and checked my battery levels. There weren’t many places to charge in the middle of Dawsonville Forest.
Ryan’s younger brother Ben was supposed to meet us there, too. Unlike Ryan, Ben didn’t have his head up his ass. The only person I didn’t know there was Claire. She replaced me as camerawoman when I went off to film school, so neither of us wanted to spend the day together.
As soon as I pulled up and got out of my car, Alex came over and hugged me. It was nice, like nothing had changed. Like Ryan hadn’t tried a thousand times to come between us. I didn’t see Ryan’s car, and I understood why when he and Ben got out of Alex’s van.
“Had to steal your mom’s ride again?” I asked Alex.
He shook his head. “It’s the only ride we have now. Rolled the Civic into a ditch.”
“Jesus. Why didn’t I hear about that?”
“Not my finest moment. I was checking my phone.” He averted his gaze. “Channel notification. I keep the phone in the glove compartment now just to be safe.”
Ryan looked at me but said nothing. Ben looked at Ryan and hesitated only briefly before hugging me as well.
“Long time no see,” he said.
Alex was tall and well-built. Black stubble, sloping nose, sharp jawline, brown eyes. Korean. Handsome.
Ryan was shorter than Alex but wirier and leaner. Disheveled blonde hair, short on the sides and maybe a little too long on top. Blue eyes. The corners of his mouth turned down a little, making him look perpetually unhappy.
Ben looked nothing like his brother. He was taller than Ryan and Alex with an athletic build—he played basketball. He had floppy brown hair swept to one side and warm, brown eyes.
The boys replaced me with Claire after I went away. Looks-wise, she was gorgeous. She intimidated me. Claire was half French-Creole and half Irish. Her hair was curly and dark and fell over her shoulders. She had freckles across her cheeks and nose.
As far as I knew then, Claire didn’t like me because Ryan had turned her against me. Like I said, he tried to do that with everyone since we broke up. Since Alex was his best friend, Ryan had bitched about me to Alex the most. Thankfully, Alex treated me no differently than he had before the breakup.
When Alex introduced Claire, she didn’t shake the hand I offered. Maybe if she had, we would’ve been friends sooner. Might’ve had more time together—or better time, at least.
After we’d all gathered, Ryan and Ben took the rafts and the air pump out of the trunk. Ben had a backpack strapped over his shoulders. It was army green and had his full name scribbled on the front flap in permanent marker.
We headed into the forest in silence. The woods were chilly. The cold aggravated my fibromyalgia, spreading pain through my joints and muscles. Finding the bunker took us a while, even with Alex’s intel. It wasn’t exactly top secret — I’d seen footage of it on the Internet.. Alex wanted to explore it all, to be the first to go all the way in.
The biggest danger was the region’s radiation. Three-eyed deer, and all that. No one knew how dangerous the deeper parts of the bunker were, but Alex had a Geiger counter. He said he’d keep us posted. He said we wouldn’t be in danger.
While we walked, he said he was grateful to have our help.
“Zipper Paranormal covered this place once,” Alex said. “His results were inconclusive, but we’re not looking for ghosts.”
That’s the thing about urban exploration: a lot of paranormal channels also explore abandoned places, but they’re more interested in ghosts. Not Urbexploitation. It had never been like that.
The first part of the bunker was dry. It took a while to get to the flooded sections. The only sounds were dripping water, the hissing of Ryan’s air raft dragging behind him, and our echoing footsteps. The second sound disappeared after Alex chastised Ryan. He worried that dragging the raft might make holes, and then we couldn’t use it.
The bunker’s entrance sloped like a sunken driveway. Trucks, vans, and other military vehicles used to head down that way. It was prone to flooding, hence the rafts. Based on footage I’d seen, most of the bunker was underwater. We’re talking five stories of a military base here, just submerged. I had thalassophobia, the fear of deep water.
I could swim, though. All of us could except Ben. When we were kids, he’d been the only one sitting out by the pool, focused on his tan or some book about sports. He must have been relieved about the rafts.
Claire and I readied our cameras. The boys set the rafts at the edge of the water. Ben held onto them so that they wouldn’t float away. Alex ran a hand through his hair. His legs trembled like they always did when we filmed, and I was surprised he hadn’t gotten past his childhood anxiety. When we were kids, he bit his nails, fidgeted, and bounced his leg a lot. Now, he wasn’t biting his nails, but maybe he’d just outgrown that.
Claire and I exchanged a look.
Brow furrowed, I pointed my lens toward Alex.
“Hey,” I said. “Who’s filming this?”
“Both of you,” he said. “We can go with the better angle.”
Annoyance flared in my mind. He’d never doubted me before, and the challenge stung. I knew Claire had stepped into the spotlight, but I was determined not to let her show me up.
Claire opened her mouth like she had something to say, then changed her mind. She, too, raised her camera.
I sighed and started recording. Whatever Alex wanted, I’d make sure he got it.
Alex shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hey, explorers! It’s Alex Dang. Once again, you’re watching the antics of Urbexploitation. Don’t try this at home.”
Warmth rushed through my veins. The intro was familiar, and it comforted me. If I closed my eyes and shut out Claire, it was almost like nothing had changed.
“Today, we’re in Dawsonville Forest,” Alex continued. “We wanted to do something closer to home. This place is surrounded by rumors. From occult ceremonies during the Satanic Panic to mutated animals, radioactive waste, and more. There are plenty of reasons to stay away from it. As you can see, we’re ignoring all those.”
I readjusted my camera’s focus, pulling back to get the rafts in view. Ben ended up in the shot, but he’d been in shots before. I doubted he minded or he wouldn’t have come.
“Come with us,” said Alex, “as we head into a flooded bunker and unravel the mysteries Dawsonville Forest has in store.”
I cut. Claire kept filming, and it wasn’t until Alex swept a hand across his neck that she realized what he wanted. That took me by surprise. She’d been filming them for years, but she didn’t know them as well as I did.
We packed up the cameras and climbed aboard the rafts. Alex, Claire, and Ryan took one, and Ben and I got in the other. Jealousy flared in my chest. Maybe they didn’t need me. Maybe they didn’t like me as much as they liked Claire.
Ben picked up the oars and paddled, taking us ahead of the others. I looked back at the other raft, hugging my camera close to my chest. Alex smiled at me. No one else paid me any attention.
“Reach into my backpack and grab the lights,” Ben said.
The pack was sitting on the floor of the raft between his feet. I rummaged around inside it until my hand closed on cold metal. The lights looked like floodlights with big battery attachments. If they didn’t fold up, they never would have fit into Ben’s backpack.
“Good,” Ben said. “Toggle the switch on the side of the packs and they should just come on. We can worry about placement once we know they’re working.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you know so much about lighting?”
“Since our best lighting tech went off to film school,” he said.
I guessed that meant Claire had less experience than I did, too. Without saying anything, I switched the lights on. They were harsh and yellow, reflecting off the surface of the water like the sun. Ben cursed. I directed the light away from him, pointing forward into the bunker.
After a few adjustments, we were ready to film. I raised the camera and started recording. Alex sat as straight as he could and beamed into the lens.
“As you can see, this bunker’s treacherous. We have to contend with about five stories or more of water, plus uncertain lighting conditions.” Alex pushed his hair off his forehead. He stared at Claire. When she didn’t do anything, he sighed. “Can you get some shots up ahead? Liv has me covered. I want to make sure we’re setting the scene.”
Claire grumbled something but did what he asked anyway. I wondered how often she’d been told to focus on their surroundings. I’d been working with the boys so long that I had no trouble anticipating what they wanted shots to look like. But Claire had been with them for the past three years. I assumed she had learned something.
Ryan scooted forward to peer over Alex’s shoulder. Back when I’d been the primary camerawoman, they did the intros for each video together. I wondered why they’d changed it, why they’d felt the need to fix things that hadn’t been broken. Honestly, I was still nursing the hurt I felt at having been replaced. I had taken the job of my own free will, but it still bothered me that the future was so up in the air. When Alex contacted me, he hadn’t made it seem like a partnership was coming. No long-term deal or anything. We hadn’t even drawn up a contract.
Ryan leaned around Alex and cleared his throat. “Our cell phones don’t work here, either. If anything happens to us, we can’t call for help. We’ve filmed in dangerous locations before, but at least we could call someone in an emergency.”
I thought back to a video we’d made in an abandoned mental hospital. We had to haul our asses up to Kentucky. Ryan and I had both contracted a stomach bug; we couldn’t stop puking. Three days into the trip, we were shaky, dehydrated, and could barely stay awake. Alex called us an ambulance even though we were in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, all we’d needed were saline drip IVs, and it was a huge relief to know we weren’t as alone there as we’d felt upon arriving.
I checked my phone. No service. We were on our own.
Ryan and Alex touched on the history of the bunker. It had been owned and operated by the military up until the 1950s, when it was suddenly abandoned. No one had found any records explaining why the bunker wasn’t used anymore. It had flooded from decades of rainfall, disrepair, and disuse.
As Ben paddled, I kept filming. So did Claire. Ryan and Alex talked until there was nothing left to say. We headed deeper and deeper into the bunker, until we couldn’t see the entrance anymore. The floodlights kept us going. We were all okay.
Maybe they’d all be here with me if it weren’t for the light in the water.
The light wasn’t ours. It wasn’t a reflection. For one thing, it was cooler, a far cry from the yellow glare of our floodlights. It was submerged, and it kept moving. If we’d been somewhere else, I might have thought it was a fish. But the bunker was too isolated and too hostile for anything to survive there.
I had to know what was down there. Without stopping to think, I plunged my hand into the water. The chill made my bones ache. Right before I closed my hand around the light, it darted away.
“What are you doing?” Ben asked.
“I thought I saw something,” I said. “Looked like a light or something.”
“It wasn’t a reflection?”
“No, Ben,” I snapped. “I don’t think so.”
I felt bad for being short with him, but I was sick of the boys dismissing me. In the past, whenever I thought I’d seen something, they teased me.
I leaned over the edge of the raft and peered into the water.
The light came back brighter than before. Closer, too.
The urge to reach into the water again overpowered me despite the cold.
“Film her,” Alex said to Claire. He gestured to Ryan, and Ryan picked up his paddle.
“Wait a sec.” Ben raised a hand, holding Ryan off. “We don’t want to scare it off.”
“We don’t even know what it is,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Ben. “And if we’re talking and splashing around so much, we’ll never get the chance to.”
I wish he’d been right. I wish we could’ve scared them off.
Just as I reached toward the water again, the first one broke the surface.
I didn’t understand what I was seeing. It looked a whole lot like a human, but pure white. Not just pale, but white, like Cloroxed bones. Her face was feminine, with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She had a light in her forehead. It reminded me of those fish that live at the bottom of the ocean, anglerfish.
Her long black hair billowed around her shoulders in the water. I couldn’t see for sure, but it seemed like she was naked. I thought she had black lipstick on, too, and when she smiled, her teeth were pointed.
I reeled backward into Ben’s lap. The paddle slipped out of his hands, plunged into the water, and vanished.
Ben swore.
When the woman laughed, her voice sounded like water running over stones.
“Looks like you kids are lost,” she said.
I couldn’t do anything but gape at her.
“Who are you?” Alex blurted out.
The woman’s gaze flicked to Alex. Her eyes were silver. Like the back of a mirror. It looked like they’d been lined with heavy black makeup, but it was just her skin.
Before she could answer, two more figures popped out of the water on either side of her. It scared me so bad I almost toppled out of the raft entirely. They looked like the first woman, though one had blue hair and the other bright red. Not ginger, but red. The color of blood. She also struck me as the leader.
“She’s Molly,” said the woman with the red hair. “My sister.”
“And who the hell are you?” Alex pressed. I couldn’t believe how he was speaking to them. It was like he wasn’t scared out of his mind, and maybe he wasn’t. Not yet. But I’d known Alex Dang long enough to know that this kind of thing should’ve spooked him.
“I’m Harper,” she answered. “That’s Sidney. What are you doing down here?”
Harper was sleek and pale, almost the color of marble. Her eyes were blue with slitted pupils, and her lips were black. Her teeth were sharp but not as formidable as Molly’s. Her ears were long, too, almost like fins. Her fingers were webbed. Her hair was long and crimson.
Like Harper, Sidney was white as bone. Her eyes were green with slitted pupils, and her lips were also black. Her teeth were sharp and thin like needles. She had silver stripes going down her face and her sides. Her tail was blue threaded with silver, like a barracuda’s. It matched her long hair.
“Fuck,” Ryan said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”
“We should leave,” said Ben.
I was thinking the same thing. I don’t know why we didn’t.
“I’m still recording all of this,” Claire said to Alex. “You never told me to stop.”
I told myself that Molly must have gotten lost in the bunker somehow. It was easier to believe that when there had been only one of her. Three was a hard sell.
Before the other ones showed up, I had thought we needed to get Molly some help. I didn’t think Molly was her real name, but it was all she’d given us to go on, so it would have to do.
“Are you… do you live down here?” I asked.
“Stuck in the water,” Harper said. “Can’t get up and go anywhere.”
I glanced at Alex. He frowned, eyebrows knitting together as he looked the trio over. Like me, I assumed he was trying to make sense of what we were seeing.
“You’re stuck?” Ryan echoed.
“I think we should keep our distance,” Ben said.
Harper smiled and flipped over in the water. She floated on her back, staring up at the ceiling a hundred feet above us. Her breasts came into view, along with her toned abdominal muscles and the full length of her tail. It was striped red, white, and brown, with spines jutting out like a lionfish. The spines were barbed. I didn’t want to learn how sharp they were.
“Keep filming,” Alex hissed.
Harper smiled. Her teeth looked sharp, but maybe that was the lighting or the potential radiation. How long had she been down there? Long enough to mutate?
Goddamn mermaids. That’s what we were dealing with. I almost couldn’t believe it, but what else could Harper, Molly, and Sidney be? The evidence was there. I didn’t fully understand the power dynamics at play, but I knew enough to realize that Harper was in control.
“You’re filming us?” Molly asked.
“How… you know what filming is?” Alex asked.
“They used to record us all the time,” Molly said. “Their instruments looked different. Clunkier. But they do the same thing, yes?”
“Yes,” Ryan answered.
I didn’t know who they were, but I pushed it to the back of my mind. The sirens had given us their blessing, so we’d roll with it.
Claire kept her camera trained on them. I still held mine, but I wasn’t using it. Somehow, it didn’t seem right. Ryan and Alex exchanged a look.
Alex waved a hand at Claire. “She’ll only film with your permission. If you’re not cool with anything, just let us know.”
He looked pointedly at me. I hesitated.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t filmed weird shit before. A lot of the locations we’d visited we hadn’t obtained a permit to travel to, let alone record. We’d received some cease and desist letters from various property owners. Most of it had been tame, but there were still a few weirdos we’d gotten in the frame, people we hadn’t gotten to sign release forms. Those that recognized themselves were seldom understanding. And all those people had been human.
I didn’t think crossing the mermaids or sirens or whatever was a good idea.
“I’m only filming if you want me to,” I said to Harper. There were more important things to worry about at that moment than whatever Alex and Ryan wanted. I was trying not to get us hurt, or killed. We still didn’t understand what we were up against.
“We don’t mind,” Harper said. She looked at the others, who only nodded. Sidney’s gaze was warm as it touched me. Molly grinned, her mouth full of needles. I sucked in a breath.
If we couldn’t stay on their good side, who knew what might happen?
“I like the attention,” Sidney added.
Still, Molly said nothing.
Harper swam parallel to our raft, rolling onto her back in the water. The light glanced off the rivulets that slid over her skin.
“We don’t mind you filming,” Harper said again, “as long as you play by our rules.”
She raked her eyes over me, lingering on my neck. I fought the urge to cover it.
Alex leveled his gaze at her. “We’re in your neck of the woods. I guess whatever you say goes.”
Harper grinned again. Fear squeezed my stomach.
“We should head to deeper water. That’s easier for us. And I’ll bet the lighting is better.”
This was a bad idea. Every fiber of my being screamed it. I was in pain, for one thing. The fatigue would hit me soon. Chronically tired people aren’t thrilled about swimming.
“Deeper water,” Alex echoed.
“How would the lighting be better?” Ryan asked.
Harper’s smile dimmed. “There’s a hole in the ceiling, and sunlight comes in. Why, don’t you trust me?”
“I… it’s not that,” Alex stammered. “Ryan’s just… we just had different plans for the shoot.”
“Plans change,” Sidney said, almost dreamily.
Molly kept staring at us, saying nothing. Something flickered in her eyes.
I wanted to say something to Alex. I wanted to tell him I had a bad feeling, that maybe we shouldn’t trust these creatures. But he just looked at me and nodded, and I knew I didn’t have a choice.
“Okay,” said Ryan. “You all lead the way.”
More than anything, I wish I’d said something to stop them.
I don’t know how it happened, but we let them push the rafts. I thought it was a terrible idea, letting them lead us, but Alex insisted. Ryan went along with it like he went along with everything. I should’ve said something when no one else did.
For a minute, I looked back at Ben. His brow was creased like he was lost in thought, maybe thinking of a way to protest without coming across as a party pooper. He might’ve been on my side had I done anything.
Harper was at the back of our raft. Sidney and Molly were at the other. Harper kept talking, either to fill the silence or simply because she liked the sound of her voice. Or both.
“Been abandoned down here for a long time,” she said. “No one down here until you all came along. Well, no one besides the three of us.”
I remember thinking how weird it was that she said that. From the footage posted on YouTube and TikTok of other people around our age exploring the bunker, I doubted she was telling the truth. Maybe we’d just gotten farther than anyone else, but maybe not.
Still, I knew Alex had seen the footage, too. When I looked back at him, something flashed in his eyes—right before Ryan interrupted.
“How did you end up down here, anyway?” he asked.
“We used to be like you,” Harper said. “I guess you must have a device that measures radiation? It should tell you how dangerous it is to stay down here too long. That’s what happened to us. We should have gotten out sooner.”
I knew that wasn’t right. I knew it couldn’t be right, even back then.
“How long?” I asked.
Harper considered me for a minute. Maybe she was sizing me up. “Long enough, little fish. We used to have legs. Used to have to come up for air when we were swimming here, too.”
“Good thing you could all swim,” said Ben. “If I got stuck here, I’d be screwed.”
I looked at Claire. She was still rolling, still recording it all. It felt petty, but I couldn’t help wondering if my footage would be better than hers. It wasn’t like I had to prove myself to the boys anymore, but I couldn’t help being competitive. I wanted to be back on top.
The sirens turned us down a shadowy corridor. Even though we had lighting with us, it barely seemed to break through the darkness of the bunker. Our raft bumped into something floating on the water. I leaned over the edge to get a closer look.
An empty water bottle, faded stickers on the side and the name CLARA scrawled on it in permanent marker, floated in the water. This was proof people besides us had been in the bunker, which we could confront the sirens with.
It didn’t seem like the others thought they were lying. I wanted to bring it up but I couldn’t figure out how without alerting the sirens. I didn’t want them thinking I was onto them. I didn’t know exactly what I was afraid of—whether they’d retaliate or something. I just knew that I was afraid and that we needed to be careful.
They brought us deeper into the bunker. Deeper than we ever should’ve gone. Deeper than anyone needed to go.