Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

She didn’t move. The water did.

A black shape emerged from the muck and began to crawl across her face, claws scratching her cheeks, its shell black with slime.

The girl moaned. She was alive.

I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her up. The baby snapper fell as dark forms suddenly bobbed everywhere, scrabbling at her head and arms.

“Kenzie—it’s me. Cass,” I whispered. “From the motel. Hold still, for Christ’s sake—”

She struggled to kick me with her bound legs. Turtles slopped over the stall’s lip and scrambled across the floor. I dragged Kenzie from the stall, pulled a corner of the tape covering eyes.

“You have to shut up!” I breathed. “Kenzie, please —”

The wet tape slid off easily. Beneath, her eyes were blood-red slits in oozing skin. I thought she’d been blinded, but then her eyes widened. She began to shake her head frantically.

“Listen!” I hissed. “ Don’t scream . I’ll take it off your mouth, but you can’t fucking scream—”

She nodded, and I peeled the tape from her mouth. She leaned over and vomited, bile and bitter almond. On the other side of the door, Denny’s voice rose with the music, singing wordlessly.

A baby turtle cracked beneath my boot as I grabbed Kenzie and dragged her into the darkroom. I shut the door and turned on the safelight. Kenzie leaned against the sink, gasping. I jammed the dark tent’s legs beneath the doorknob, grabbed the bag of sugar, and poured some into my palm.

“ Eat this! ” Kenzie gagged as I shoved my hand into her face. “ Eat it! ”

She retched but kept it down. Glucose is an antidote to cyanide—Rasputin survived poisoning because of sweet pastries and Madeira. I had no idea if it would help, but Denny obviously hadn’t given her enough cyanide to kill her; not yet, anyway.

She wiped sugar onto her filthy shirt, and I reached for her hand. Her fingers were scraped raw, her knuckles black with bruises.

“You fought,” I said. “Good girl.”

“There’s a gun.” She began to sob. “He—”

I clamped my hand over her mouth. “ Shhh .”

The music had stopped.

“Get under there,” I whispered. “Cover your eyes.”

She scrambled beneath the table. I grabbed the largest bottle on the shelf and turned off the safelight.

There was a soft knock on the bathroom door. “Cassandra?”

In the next room the door opened.

“Oh no, oh no…”

His cries were like a bird crooning. I heard something skitter across the bathroom floor. Denny swore under his breath and gave a guttural shout. The darkroom door shook as an object was flung against it. I heard stomping as he crushed one shell after another beneath his feet.

Then silence.

I could see nothing. From beneath the table came Kenzie’s ragged breathing. I braced myself against the sink and pried the cork from the bottle.

There was a rustle of cloth, the scrape of wood as Denny pushed against the darkroom door. The dark tent’s legs snapped. The reek of dead fish and musk filled the room. Kenzie whimpered.

He was inside.

I grasped the bottle in one hand, with the other found the flashlight in my pocket. Phantom shapes swam in front of me in the darkness. I began to shake, imagining each of these was Denny. The floor creaked a few feet from where I stood.

“ Cass ,” he whispered. “ Cass, Cass… ”

Nausea overwhelmed me, a darkened street.

“ Cass, Cass.”

I couldn’t move. The sound of my own name bound me, formless horror and Aphrodite’s voice in my head.

Both of you—nothing.

Something brushed my foot.

No , I thought. Not this time .

I turned on the flashlight. Denny’s dazzled face hung before me, his mouth a gaping hole as I shouted, “ Kenzie! Run! ”

I flung the mercury at his eyes.

With a scream he fell. Kenzie bolted for the door with me behind her.

“Run!” I yelled as we stumbled into the living room. “Run and don’t stop! Here—”

I thrust the flashlight at her. She took it and stared at me blankly until I pushed her roughly toward the front door.

“Get the fuck out of here!”

She fled outside. Behind me Denny’s screams rose to a howl as he staggered from the bathroom.

“Come—BACK!”

Kenzie was right. He had a gun.

Mirrors exploded as a shot went wild, then another. Denny clutched his eyes with one hand then aimed the gun at me. I turned and ran out onto the front steps, icy rain slashing at my cheeks.

Kenzie was gone. I grabbed the boat hook, whirled to see Denny’s face, gray splotched with mercury. The gun’s barrel thrust against my temple.

“You can’t go.” His breath was cold and stank of rotting fish. “I see you, Cass. I know.”

He twisted his hand. I cried out as metal bored through the skin beside my eye.

“Tell me what you saw,” he whispered. “You saw them. I know you saw them.”

I didn’t move.

“I know what you saw.” He licked his lips. “Tell me. Tell me.”

I swallowed. My hand tightened imperceptibly around the boat hook.

“All of them.” My voice came in a hoarse whisper. “I saw all of them.”

“Where?”

“In the quarry.”

“Where else?” He dragged the gun’s barrel across my cheekbone and I moaned, feeling my skin tear.

“The photos,” I gasped. “All your photos—I saw them too.”

“And the mirrors?” His voice was so soft I could barely hear him. “What did you see there?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You saw me.” I heard him breathing faster. “You saw me, Cassandra. And you saw—”

I struck his shoulder glancingly with the boat hook then staggered backward. Blood streamed into my eye as I caught my balance, grasped the boat hook with both hands, and swung it like a club.

The bronze end struck his hand. There was a deafening retort. Fire lanced my upper arm, and I screamed.

Denny stood at the edge of the granite step, his long white braids spattered with blood.

“I see you,” he whispered and laughed.

I screamed again, beyond rage and pain, beyond everything.

“You fuck .” I hefted the boat hook and with all my strength smashed it into his face.

I heard a sound like a jack o’ lantern hitting pavement and swung again. Denny roared and dropped to his knees. The gun spun into darkness. I kicked him, felt my boot’s steel tip dig into his chest as though it were loam. He tried to roll away, and I kicked him again and again then raised the boat hook and rammed it against his skull. He tried to raise his hands as I struck him repeatedly, half blinded with weeping and my own blood.

Finally I stopped. I leaned on the boat hook, panting, and looked down.

He lay on his side, staring at me. A black stain crept across his forehead like a spider. One eye bulged like a crimson egg, a white petal of skin folded beneath it. As I stared, his other eye opened. His mouth parted in a wash of red and indigo as he gazed up at me. He smiled.

“I see you.”

I backed away as he began to get to his feet. Another voice echoed faintly through the rush of rain and wind.

“Cass!”

I clutched the boat hook and fled down the steps and into the darkness, past the granite sentinels with their green-flecked eyes, until I reached the road.

Kenzie waited near the quarry, her white face glowing in the flashlight.

“I told you to keep going!” I grabbed her roughly, spat a mouthful of blood, then snatched the flashlight from her hand. “Come on.”

She stared at me wide-eyed. “Oh my God, your face. Are you okay?”