Trevor Baxendale - Something in the Water

He found her floating in front of him. She loomed out of the darkness like the ghost of a drowned woman, her hair waving around her head like a living thing, part blonde, part weed. Her face was human and beautiful — until she smiled, revealing a mouthful of hundreds of sharp, needle teeth.

She grabbed him, pulled him closer as if she was going to kiss him, jaws opening like those of a shark. Jack lashed out, grabbing her around the throat before she could bite, pushing her back, trying to keep her at arm’s length.

A plume of bubbles broke from his lips as Saskia whipped back and forth, trying to break his grip. Jack swallowed water, clamped his lips shut, pulled back his fist and tried to break her jaw. But he couldn’t fight properly underwater. No one could.

No one except a water hag, a creature born to live in the water as easily as out of it. A creature infamous for luring innocent humans underwater, dragging them down to their deaths.

They pelted down the secret passageway leading from the Tourist Information kiosk, through the giant cog-wheel door, the flashing lights, the holding cage. The Hub looked all wrong. The main lights were down, and there was a dull green glow reflected from the tiled surfaces and metal walkways. In the centre of the Hub stood the base of the water tower fountain, strange, multicoloured lights shimmering across the surface.

Toshiko was sitting at her workstation, where the screens showed a series of wildly fluctuating blue patterns, overwritten by computer graphics and equations. The others knew just enough to tell that the readings weren’t good.

Gwen, Ianto and Owen all crowded around Toshiko, peering at the screens, firing questions.

‘I don’t know,’ Toshiko stammered. ‘It’s been fluctuating for some time, but this is a sudden change. Like nothing I’ve seen before — not even when the Rift was opened. This is different — as if the Rift itself is … reacting.’

‘Reacting to what?’ asked Owen.

‘Take a look,’ Toshiko replied. ‘At the tower.’

They all looked across at the silver monolith rising up in the centre of the Hub. Heliotropic lights swirled across the tower like oil mixed with the water which streamed down the mirrored surface, sending ripples out into the pool of water at its base. But there was something causing further ripples in the water which ran vertically down the tower, as if something invisible was disturbing the flow.

Owen and Ianto went down for a closer look. The water was trickling in specific patterns, making way for something they simply couldn’t see until Ianto pointed, and said, ‘Look — look at the shape the water’s making …’

The water had bulged out as if running over a ball of air, but there were shapes in the bulge, moving, thrusting forward out of the mirror behind. A face — long, sharp, trailing weeds.

‘Water hag,’ breathed Owen.

There were faces appearing all over the tower, spectral faces haunting the mirror.

‘How can we stop them?’ asked Ianto.

‘We can’t,’ Owen said, staring in fascinated horror as the faces grew more pronounced, more definite. He found himself looking directly into the eyes of a water hag as it began to emerge with a distinct sucking noise.

‘There may be a way,’ Toshiko said. ‘The water hags are all connected in some way — to the Rift, as we already know … but also to the first water hag to arrive on Earth.’

‘Saskia,’ said Ianto.

‘I’ve traced the temporal web between all the creatures,’ Toshiko confirmed, indicating a complex, ever-changing pattern on one of her computer monitors. ‘They all lead to Saskia.’

‘They are all her children on Earth,’ Gwen realised. ‘She said she was here first — the only survivor. This is her new generation. Preparing the way for takeover.’

Toshiko nodded. ‘She used the Rift to travel to Earth. But it’s not a reliable method of travel. She arrived back in the Middle Ages. She knew she had to find a way to procreate — to use human beings to create more of her kind.’

‘Using coughs and sneezes,’ Owen said. ‘Reproduction via contagion.’

‘But she was the first one, the progenitor. She came through the Rift, and is inextricably linked to the Rift, and thus all the other water hags are inextricably linked to her.’

‘Which helps us how, exactly?’ demanded Ianto. There was an edge of panic in his voice as he continued to watch the water hags materialising in the stream. ‘What are they coming through here for? What do they want?’

‘Control of the Rift?’ suggested Toshiko. ‘Perhaps they know about the Rift Manipulator. The reproduction by contagion is a bit hit-and-miss for invasion purposes. Control of the Rift could help.’

‘What if it’s control of us they want?’ suggested Gwen. ‘Control of Torchwood? They know we’re the only people that can stop them.’

‘ Were the only people,’ Owen corrected. ‘Past tense.’

‘Jack would know what to do,’ said Ianto.

‘Jack’s not here!’ Gwen yelled at him.

He was practically blind now. They were so deep and the water was so black and murky that he couldn’t see his own hands, or the face of the creature in front of him. They were locked in a tight embrace, each trying to squeeze the life from the other, to exploit a moment of weakness neither would allow the other to sense.

Jack felt his grip on her loosening. His fingers, cold and rigid with the effort, had long since lost any sense of feeling, but he could tell, nevertheless, that she was slipping from his grasp. It was almost as if she was dissolving before him, the constituent parts of her breaking away and turning to liquid as they fought. And then, quite suddenly, there was nothing in his arms except water and a residual cloud of mud and blood.

He panicked. He was utterly disorientated, unable to tell what was up or down or how deep he was. If he tried swimming in any direction it could be the wrong one, taking him down further. But to allow himself to go limp, to hope that he would eventually float to the surface, would be to accept defeat. Saskia hadn’t simply dissolved. She’d escaped.

And then there was the current, the deep swell beneath the waves that could suck him down, deeper and deeper and further away from the shore. He could feel it now, tugging at him, rippling through the freezing water all around him, clawing and dragging at him. And, in a distant part of his own mind, now as dark and cold as the water which surrounded him, he could hear the mad screech of laughter.

The tower was a mass of churning water and slime. The hags were forcing their way through the Rift, right at its very core, taking on solid form as the water cascaded around them. Particles of sand and mud and a thick syrup of mucus were combining in the torrent, clumping together to form faces and hands, arms and bodies.

‘They do want the Rift Manipulator,’ Toshiko realised. ‘They want to open the Rift right up, use it to tear the world apart so they can rebuild it for themselves.’

‘Get the guns,’ said Owen, heading for the armoury.

‘It’s no use,’ Ianto roared. ‘It won’t stop them, not for long enough.’

A large pustule of mud and seething matter bulged from the centre of the tower and suddenly unfolded long, angular legs like a giant insect emerging from its chrysalis. The limbs were a gnarled, twisted coagulate of mucus and soil, skinned by the moss and lichen which had covered the base of the tower, streaming with filthy water.

A head emerged, the face carved into a hideous mask full of sucking orifices and sharp black teeth like nails. Glowing spots opened up across the lump of matter, blinking yellow, like eyes emerging from the dark.

‘What is it?’ Gwen asked weakly, staggered by the overwhelming sense of wrongness which surrounded it. It shouldn’t be here, not just in the Hub, but in her world. Alien was too small a word for it. It was an unnatural imposition on the Earth, an infected scab on the surface of her planet.