On Saturday, Miss Kehoe had arranged a Dancing Devil car wash fundraiser in the Icy Hut parking lot. The money would be used to fund scholarships for dancers in need and for a new sound system so the squad wouldn’t have to always rely on the school’s archaic system for tunes.
To attract drivers to their car wash, Minami had decreed that the squad should wear their pom uniforms, with their short skirts and tight tops. Unfortunately, the warm snap had passed, and fall had descended upon Massachusetts, so Audrey broke out in goosebumps before she’d even touched the hose. She hoped the sun would come out, because she didn’t think that blue lips and shivering would exactly bring out the customers, and she wanted Minami’s event to be a success.
Business started slow that morning, giving the small group of volunteers time to suck down Styrofoam cups of coffee and hot chocolate while they chatted. Minami had arranged the schedule so that Audrey had the first shift and Constantine the last, eliminating any possibility that they might run into each other on accident, so Audrey was able to relax and goof around without worrying about any tongue attacks. After 10:30, the sun came out, and the number of cars on Broadway increased. They got quite busy, washing and waxing and stuffing donations into the money box under the hawk-like supervision of Miss Kehoe, who was determined that no quarter should go unaccounted for.
At the end of her shift, Audrey waited by Minami’s car for her ride home, soggy and freezing but happy with how the morning had gone. Sometimes fundraising felt like pulling teeth, begging relatives to buy wrapping paper and popcorn tins they didn’t need out of guilt, but the car wash had been fun, and they’d made serious bank. She couldn’t wait to get into dry clothes and thaw out her fingers, but she’d had a good time. She’d even had a chance to wash Tank’s truck as he swung by on the way to football practice, and she’d gotten a real kick out of watching him blush all the way to the tips of his ears when she leaned over in her short skirt.
Minami had offered her a ride home as soon as she was done talking with Miss Kehoe. While she waited, Nora’s car swung into the parking lot. Audrey watched her arrival with surprise. None of them had expected their captain to take a shift given her injuries, and even if she just wanted a wash, Audrey didn’t think she should be driving. After all, her medication had made her act super flaky, and she had a leg in a cast for heaven’s sake. Operating a car didn’t seem like the safest undertaking given the circumstances.
Nora threw open the door and swung her leg out, her eyes fixated on Audrey.
“There you are!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“What’s up?” Audrey responded, walking toward the car.
“Can we talk? I could use your advice.”
Audrey nodded, trying to figure out what Nora’s deal was. They barely knew each other, so the fact that Nora had come to her for advice meant something. Audrey just couldn’t decide what that something was. She suspected that the request would come with ulterior motives, or Nora would have approached someone she was closer to, like Tank.
“I’ve gotten in over my head,” said Nora. “And I thought maybe you’d have some suggestions on how I could get out.”
Audrey brightened. The phrasing suggested that Nora wanted some advice on how to get out of a bad situation, just like Audrey had done with Drama Club. Rebooting your entire friend group could be tough, and Audrey had recent experience. It made sense that Nora would seek her out under the circumstances.
“Sure,” Audrey said with sympathy. “That’s hard. How can I help?”
Nora inhaled as if steeling herself to undertake a difficult task. Then, in one quick motion, she pulled down the hood of her sweatshirt and turned her head, baring her neck. For one long moment, Audrey couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on. Wasn’t Nora going to vent or something?
Then Nora said, “Do you see them?”
She pointed, directing Audrey’s attention. Three long, horizontal marks ran in parallel down Nora’s neck, surrounded by mottled, scaly skin. They looked like cuts that hadn’t clotted over yet. What could have caused that? Had Nora gotten hurt during her fall, and she wasn’t healing properly? Had the stress gotten to her, and she’d been cutting? Audrey had no idea what to think, or how she was supposed to react.
“Yeah…?” she said.
“I tried to exfoliate, but they won’t come off. They just keep growing,” Nora babbled. “I know I made a mistake getting involved in the first place, but I just wasn’t thinking clearly. I need to know how you’ve been resisting.”
At that point, Audrey realized she’d read the entire situation wrong. Nora didn’t need advice. She needed a good therapist, and someone to look really hard at her list of medications, because she’d had some horrible reaction to it and appeared to be hallucinating and maybe cutting herself. Audrey had no idea what to do about it, and the responsibility weighed on her. She waved a hand to get Minami’s attention, desperate for backup, but Minami was deep in conversation, and she held up a finger in a request to wait just one more minute.
“Well?” Nora demanded. “How are you doing it? Does it have something to do with that necklace?”
Audrey put a hand to her neck, where the ugly plastic necklace still hung.
“I’m not sure I understand you,” she said.
“I don’t know why not. I’m being perfectly clear,” said Nora.
Audrey gestured to Minami again, more insistent this time. She needed backup, and she needed it now. Finally, Minami wrapped things up with Miss Kehoe and hurried over.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know you’re freezing, but Constantine called out sick, and that made a total mess out of the afternoon schedule.”
“It’s fine. Nora and I have just been talking. Nora, would you tell Minami what you told me?” Audrey said, enunciating each word in an attempt to communicate her intense discomfort.
Minami looked from Audrey’s insistent expression to Nora’s frustrated one, her brow furrowing. “I’m listening.”
But Nora hesitated. “Can she be trusted?” she asked.
“You can tell her everything,” Audrey assured her.
“Okay.” Nora took a deep breath. “I joined a cult with Constantine and Haven, and we’re trying to summon a god from another dimension, who promised us power and wealth and all that stuff, but then I started growing gills and scales, and I’m dreaming about him all the time, and thinking things that I just wouldn’t think about, like throwing people into the sinkhole and killing them when they annoy me, and I’m starting to realize that this was a real mistake and maybe I’ve been brainwashed, so I need help.”
Minami gaped, her mouth hanging open like she’d lost the ability to speak. Audrey didn’t necessarily blame her. She didn’t have words either.
“You don’t have gills,” Minami finally said. “Like I said before, pain medication can really mess with people’s heads. Or maybe you did bonk your head when you fell. We just need to get you to a doctor, and everything will be fine.”
“You’re telling me you don’t see them?” Nora asked, baring her neck.
Minami looked at the red, glistening cuts under Nora’s ear. The oxygenated flesh did look like gills, the more that Audrey looked at it. But people just didn’t grow gills out of nowhere. That was insane. If they were real, then Audrey had to entertain the possibility that the rest of Nora’s crazy story might be true too. Just like her encounter with the Yellow Man. Just like her dreams.
Minami’s face had turned a sickening green color.
“People don’t grow gills,” she said, echoing Audrey’s thoughts.
“But they really look like it, don’t they?” asked Audrey, maintaining her calm with effort.
“They don’t grow gills!” Minami’s tone rose to near-panic heights. “And I sure didn’t sign up for this. I signed up to run car washes and dance practices, and I’m already at my limits. After this, I have to go to a study group, and then I’ve got a volunteer shift at the animal shelter, and I just don’t have time for…whatever those are.”
She unlocked her car, averting her eyes from Nora and her gills. Nora pulled on her hood, a sad expression on her face.
“What about my ride?” Audrey asked.
But Minami didn’t even look at Audrey, or appear to hear her. She kept her eyes on Nora as if she expected her to mutate again at any moment, and she worried that the mutations might be catching. She didn’t look away at all, not even to check the mirrors before she pulled out of the spot, and she nearly ran over Clarissa as a result.
Clarissa leaped out of the way and shouted a swear word before she realized who was driving. But Minami still didn’t stop. She peeled out of the parking lot like a herd of cultists were chasing the car, hoping to infect her with gills and scales too.
“What’s her problem?” demanded Clarissa.
“I don’t know,” said Audrey.
After a tense moment, Clarissa shrugged and picked her sign back up, resuming her efforts to attract cars into the lot. Audrey watched her, trying desperately to figure out what to do. What to think. The marks on Nora’s neck had come from somewhere, so why couldn’t they be gills? How was that any weirder than the necklace that had burned Constantine, or his strange behavior, or her sleepwalking and constant nightmares, or the strange thing that had happened to the music at practice? She hadn’t believed in the man in yellow, but he had to have been real. Maybe she needed to believe in Nora too.
“I think we need to find somewhere warm to sit down and have a talk,” she suggested.
“You believe me?” Nora asked, pitifully hopeful.
“I think something’s going on. I’m not sure I believe all of it, but I’m willing to listen.”
Nora nodded. “I’ll take it. Can we go to your house? I don’t want my sister to know that we’re talking. She…wouldn’t take it well.”
“Sure. As long as you’re safe to drive?”
“I’m not crazy,” Nora insisted.
“Sure you aren’t. But you’re still wearing a cast,” Audrey responded with what she thought was admirable reason.
“Oh. Right. It’s on my left leg, but you can drive if you want.” Nora handed over the keys. “Just don’t get into an accident, because I’m not sure I can explain the gills to the EMTs.”
Audrey tried to imagine that and began giggling. Nora watched her, stone-faced, until she finally got hold of herself again.
“Ahem,” said Audrey. “Sorry. We can go now.”
“That’s alright,” said Nora, getting into the passenger seat. “If I wasn’t turning into a fish person myself, I’d find this whole thing hilarious.”
Audrey didn’t know what to say to that, so she started the car instead.
Audrey’s mom had left a note to say that she’d gone to get groceries, so she and Nora had the house to themselves. Although Audrey found herself a bit nervous to be alone with someone who might be having a mental breakdown, it was probably for the best. Her mom’s paranoia wouldn’t have helped the situation.
After Audrey threw on some dry clothes, the two girls settled in on the sofa with some snacks and blankets. Nora took some popcorn and toyed with it, too nervous to eat.
“So tell me more about this cult thing in detail. How did you get into it?” Audrey asked.
“It just kind of happened. I’d been having a lot of dreams after the first earthquake, and after I fell into the sinkhole, they got even worse. I’d wake up chanting and dancing around in my room. Then I saw my sister’s scales, and I tried to do a skin care intervention, but it ended up with her infecting me. She took me to the sinkhole, and there was this…tentacle. It came slithering out of the sinkhole and wrapped around me, and then my leg didn’t hurt, and I wasn’t upset about missing out on the dance season, and…it just took the pain away.”
That last bit felt too real for Audrey to touch. She knew how hard it was to give up something you loved, even when you had other new things to look forward to. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit how much it had hurt to give up Drama Club after putting her heart and soul into it, but it did. She patted Nora on the hand and changed the subject as gracefully as she could.
“A tentacle? Like an octopus tentacle?” Audrey asked.
“Kind of. But it doesn’t have suckers, and there’s an eyeball on the end.”
Audrey didn’t know what to say to that. She searched around for an answer, but before she could come up with anything that made any sense whatsoever, the doorbell rang. Both girls jumped, exchanging nervous looks as they both worried if the cultists had come to do unspeakable cult things to them both.
Screwing up every ounce of her courage, Audrey crept toward the door and looked out the peephole to see Tank on the front step, his hands clasped behind his back. She relaxed. Tank couldn’t be a cultist. She’d gotten up close and personal with his neck just the night before, and he definitely hadn’t had gills.
She opened the door. “Hey,” she said.
His face broke out into a wide smile at the sight of her. “Sorry to drop by unannounced, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and you’re not answering texts.”
“I’m sorry. I just got home, and I haven’t even checked my phone yet. I’ve been busy.”
“It’s no big. It gives me an excuse to swing by and give you flowers.”
He produced a bouquet of daisies out from behind his back and offered them to her with the eager expression of someone who loves giving gifts and can’t wait to see what happens when they do. Unfortunately, she was so overwhelmed with the knowledge that gilled cultists ran amok at Innsmouth High and had recruited both her dance squad captain and her ex-boyfriend that she couldn’t appreciate them the way she thought she should. She just stared at them, at a loss for words.
His excitement faded, to be replaced with concern. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not… having second thoughts about us, are you?”
“No! Absolutely not. This is the sweetest thing a guy’s ever done for me, but… I’ve just got my mind on other things, that’s all. It’s been an eventful day,” she explained.
“So should I leave?” He took a reluctant step back off the porch. “I don’t want to pry into your business, but… I guess I was hoping you’d lean on me sometimes. I don’t want to just be your make out guy. I want to be your everything guy.”
“Even when the everything is really disturbing?”
“Absolutely.”
Audrey opened the door fully, revealing Nora sitting on the couch. Her hood was down, and the marks on her neck stood out against her pale skin.
“Well then, your best friend came to me because she grew gills and joined a cult, and I’m trying to figure out how to help her,” Audrey said.
Tank stood there dumbstruck for a long moment, disbelief and concern warring for control of his face. Finally, he nodded.
“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” he said. “But I know the both of you, and I know a prank when I see one. That’s not makeup?”
“I wish it was,” said Nora.
“And you believe this, Audrey?”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “I do. There’s a lot more evidence that something really weird is going on ever since that first earthquake hit.”
“Okay.” Tank stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “How can I help?”
Nora told them everything, to her immense relief. She told Audrey and Tank about her nightmares and the constant corrupting presence of the chant in her mind. She told them about trying to save Haven and falling into the sinkhole and about discovering her sister’s gills in the bathroom. She described the changes she’d seen in her body afterwards, and the empty bliss that grew over her as the scales crept over her skin.
“You’d think I would have panicked,” she said, “but I didn’t worry about anything. I knew that summoning the Master could kill me, but I didn’t worry about that either. I couldn’t worry. It was like the part of me that thought about things was locked deep down inside.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Audrey joked.
“It was awful.”
Tank rubbed Nora’s shoulder. “I wish you would have talked to me. You know I’d believe you, even with a crazy story like this.”
“See, but I couldn’t do that either. I was really paranoid. I couldn’t trust anyone who wasn’t in the cult, and Haven has to approve all infections.”
“Infections?” Audrey asked. “What does that mean exactly?”
“Haven picks new cultists who can dance and sing, because the ceremony to open the door involves some complicated stuff. Then one of us tries to get close to them. When the Master touched Haven, he infected her with these spore things. They make it really hard to think, almost like you’re drugged, and you start growing gills and scales.”
“So how did you get free?” asked Tank. “You got the spores too, right?”
“Well, it was a lot of hard work,” Nora began, straightening with pride.
“Yeah, but how’d you even start thinking for yourself in the first place? Did they wear off or something?” he persisted.
“My medications, maybe?” Nora suggested. “I had a nasty infection in my leg, and they gave me some really high powered antibiotics.”
“That would work,” he allowed. “Too bad we can’t rob a pharmacy or something. We could knock this thing out of the park without any effort at all.”
“So how do they spread?” Audrey interjected.
“We can give them to other people via bodily fluids. It’s like the world’s worst STD.”
“So when Constantine was trying to stick his tongue in my mouth, it was less about molesting me and more about trying to give me gills and make me a cultist?” Audrey asked. “I can’t decide if that makes me feel better or worse.”
Tank took her hand and squeezed it. “He won’t be doing it again. I promise.”
“Actually, Haven sent us both to recruit her.” Audrey recoiled, and Nora hastened to reassure her. “I promise I won’t. Something changed. I kind of snapped out of it and started to think for myself again.”
“What did the trick?” asked Tank, his eyes alight with excitement. “Maybe we could replicate it and rescue the other cultists.”
Nora hesitated. She didn’t want to admit that jealousy over her sister’s exalted status in the cult had brought her to her senses. Although she knew she’d been justified in wanting her time in the spotlight—after all, she’d been busting her behind for years to earn it—it still didn’t make her look good. She didn’t want to lose Tank’s respect. Success had always come easy for him, with his athletic build and welcoming personality, so he didn’t get how hard she’d worked to build herself from a super nerd with no friends into the popular head of the dance crew. He wouldn’t understand. Audrey might, because she’d reinvented herself and knew how hard it was, but she’d tell Tank anyway.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It just happened.”
“Something must have triggered it,” Tank persisted.
Nora scrambled for an explanation as Audrey leaned forward to snag a handful of popcorn. The ugly plastic necklace clattered against the side of the table as she moved. The sight of it no longer stabbed Nora’s eye sockets, although it did give her a vaguely queasy sensation, like she’d eaten too many hot wings and would pay for it later.
“Maybe Audrey’s necklace had something to do with it,” Nora said. A little white lie wouldn’t hurt, and she knew that the pendant was the best weapon they had against the cultists. “It burned Constantine when it touched him, and when I hung out with Audrey at the game, it hurt me to even look at it.”
Audrey wrapped her hand around the necklace with an expression of mingled alarm and possessiveness. “That’s crazy,” she said.
“Not any more crazy than the rest of it,” Tank suggested. “So it doesn’t bother you now, Nora?”
“I get a little uncomfortable when I look at it, but I think I could touch it without burning myself now.” Nora took a deep breath to steel herself and held out a hand. “Let me try?”
Audrey’s brow furrowed, and she kept a firm grip on the chain as if worried that Nora would try to pull it off of her. But she leaned forward, allowing the pendant to dangle between them. With slow care, Nora brushed the plastic with her fingers. It shocked her a little, like when she ran across the carpet too fast during the winter. But it didn’t hurt. She smiled in triumph.
“See?” she said. “I’m good.”
“How does it work?” asked Tank, frowning in thoughts. “Where’d you get it, Audrey?”
In halting tones, Audrey explained her bout with sleepwalking and the appearance of the Yellow Man at the side of the pit.
“He gave me the necklace,” she said. “He said it was for protection. I put it on just to make him happy, but then I didn’t want to take it off.”
“So we try and find this yellow dude and ask him for more of these necklaces?” Tank asked in halting tones. “Man, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“Me either,” Audrey agreed.
“I know what to do,” Nora said with rising excitement. “The same symbol was on the door that kept Ath’Tsorath locked away. It’s not the necklace itself as much as the shape of the pendant. Symbols are important for reasons I don’t entirely understand, but I know Haven is arranging all of the cultists to make a symbol kind of like this when they dance. It’s supposed to summon the Master if it’s done right.”
“So one symbol summons the bad guys and the other one repels them?” Audrey said. “We really need more of these necklaces.”
“Heck, just get a Sharpie and draw it on yourself,” Tank suggested. “I’ll do it too. We’ll tell people it means ‘straight vibing’ in ancient Sumerian and draw it on everyone we can. If you make the story good enough, everyone will want one. In junior high, I got everyone to call themselves ‘dog humpers’ in German. I told them it meant ‘badass’ instead, and they all bought it.”
“Well, at least it wasn’t bear humper,” Audrey muttered.
“I’m serious,” Tank insisted. “It’s all in how you sell it.”
She and Nora exchanged a look.
“It’s worth a try,” Nora said.
“I’ll handle it,” Tank reassured them. “You got a marker? Nora and I can draw ours right now.”
Audrey went to rummage through the junk drawer for a marker and finally returned with a purple one.
“Sorry, it’s all that I have except for highlighters, and they won’t show up well enough,” she said.
“No big.” Tank took the marker and scooted closer to Nora. “Hold up that necklace so I can draw it right?”
Nora shied away. “The other cultists can’t see it. Put it on my side or something where they won’t see.”
Tank fixed her with a stern look. “You can’t go back there. If any of them figure out that you’re no longer with the program, I don’t know what they’ll do. You said it yourself that you were willing to consider things you normally wouldn’t.”
“But if I don’t go back, they’ll know I’ve defected, and they’ll come after me. Besides, if I leave the cult, we won’t know when they intend to summon Ath’Tsorath. We can’t stop them if we don’t know when and where they’re going to do it.”
Tank scowled, but she returned his stare with level calm until he relented.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But I guess we don’t have a choice.”
Nora nodded. “So I’ll go back to the cult and see what I can find out. Tank will start the campaign to make drawing the symbol on people a fad. Audrey, can you find the Yellow Man again? Ask him how to stop the summoning.”
“I can try.”
Nora settled back against the sofa cushions so Tank could ink the protective sigil onto her skin. As he drew, her head grew clearer than it had been in weeks.
The Elder Sign worked. She just hoped it would be enough.