Jon Fore - Black Water

“Yeah,” she answered as she headed for the back of the tent.

“I’ll go with her,” Shannon announced as she climbed from the sleeping bag and followed the little girl.

Ethan watched her go, trying to memorize the shape of her bottom as it moved her away. When he could no longer see her, he fished some foil- and cellophane-wrapped foods from his pack. The two jugs of bleach had smashed the Twinkies somewhat, but they were still edible—just a bit difficult to handle.

When the two girls returned, Shannon was holding Kayla’s hand. She led her over to Ethan, and Kayla sat to have a quick breakfast while Shannon got dressed.

“What do we do now?” Shannon asked Ethan around a mouth full of granola bar.

“Well, we could try making it through the fog or we can wait and see if it goes away.”

“I don’t want to go in the smoke,” Kayla said flatly. “The monsters are in there.”

She sounded so adult but looked so young and helpless. It was an odd contradiction for Ethan.

“I’m with her; I say we—”

A building sound cut her short, the sound of an old man inhaling, an old man that should have given up his life to his nicotine addiction long ago. Chills ran down Ethan’s spine.

They all at once looked towards the source of the sound, and found the smog rushing away into a single focus, drawing tight into a single spot. The sound began to rise in tone as the smog cleared away from the opening of a shallow cave, and Ethan felt his stomach sink into a frozen ball of dread. It was the very cave he had escaped from, the opening not more than twenty feet away. Then the cave seemed to exhale the smog back into the clearing, washing them all with its fetid breath before the fog broke, leaving them in the same clearing, but with the cave’s mouth, squat and agape at one end.

Ethan stood, drawing the rifle up with him, leveling its killing end at the stone opening.

“Ethan, what is it?”

“This is where we came out, me and Abby. This was where we escaped.”

Shannon turned towards the hole and stared, drawing Kayla closer to her. They stood like this for what seemed an eternity before anyone spoke.

“What did Madison want from you last night?” Shannon asked, not breaking her stare on the cave.

“She wanted me to join her with something she called The Culture—some being that she claimed has been around for thousands of years.”

Shannon immediately pictured a Petri dish, a fungus-like bacteria growing across the clean pinkish gel like a video fast forwarding. She suddenly became nauseous. “I’m not going in that cave.”

“No, you won’t be going in that cave…just me,” Ethan replied thoughtfully.

“No you won’t,” Shannon commanded.

“They want me, only me.”

“You don’t know that!” Shannon shouted angrily. “How could you know that? Let’s try the fog, Ethan!”

Ethan began to walk slowly towards the cave mouth, “Just me… I can make them let you go… Just me…” His conviction of self-sacrifice became stronger with each step. If he offered to join them willingly, he hoped they would let the girls go alone.

Kayla began to cry softly.

“Ethan! No!” Shannon screamed as she began to stand.

A trail of jet-black mist began to trace its way out of the opening of the cave. The three of them froze where they were, transfixed by the seeping blackness.

It began to grow, become more substantial, stretching forth in many directions now and infecting even the rotting forest floor with its inky blackness. It did not rise, but fell to cover the ground. Then a head began to raise, a greasy, longhaired head followed by a soot-coated and torn blue uniform. Ethan knew it was Captain Black, the thing he had fled from while in the prison. The creature still wore the glowing cinders, each embedded deeply in its flesh. In its one hand, it held a rusted cutlass, in the other, a cinder stick.

It hauled itself out of the opening and stood, its head dangling to one side, the greasy hair reaching into the black mist obscuring the ground.

Another head came out, this one with the same matted hair and filthy rotting flesh. When it stood, its head fell to one side limply, its hand clutching a crosier with a single large ember smoking at the top, hidden just under his grip.

They parted sloppily, in a stumbling gait, to allow room for Ethan to continue towards the cave, but he remained frozen, transfixed by the tortured corpses before him. They waited patiently for Ethan to regain his composure as best as he could. Somewhere, back in the still-Ethan parts of his mind, he heard Shannon screaming the doom of the world.

“Let these two go!” Ethan screamed at the smoldering monstrosities. “I will come willingly, if you let these two go.”

“No…” the pair hissed together. Their voices were wet and gravelly but dry at the same time, a disembodied voice of ruined throats. It made Ethan’s skin crawl.

“Then I will not come!” Ethan shouted. His voice was becoming excited, almost too highly pitched to be the voice of a man. His hands were shaking violently, and he would have bolted right then had it not been for the oppressive gray fog surrounding them.

“Come…” they beckoned in unison.

“No!” Ethan yelled again. His mind snapped back to him like an over-stretched rubber band. Everything came into sharp focus, and he raised the shotgun again.

Father Burns leaned to one side a moment, and then began a slow, shambling walk towards Ethan. Ethan brought the gun over and fired. The retort made the girls scream again, and the flesh of the thing’s chest exploded out its back in a black sticky mass, coating the rock wall behind it. The priest did not slow.

Ethan fired again, this time joined by a couple of shots from Shannon’s pistol. It still had no effect, and Father Burns reached for Ethan’s face with one large boil-encrusted hand, the cinders in its arm trailing an oily smoke.

Kayla suddenly rushed forward and began spraying the thing with her bottle of cleaner. It reacted immediately, melting the flesh of the corpse’s face and neck, boiling down its chest where it stripped more as it went. It screamed a high-pitched, many-voiced scream. Ethan thought immediately of Hell and that this was the many voices of its victims.

Burns turned in the same sloppy fashion and tried to get away, streaming its flesh behind it in violently sizzling puddles. It screamed again, and Ethan almost lost hold of his bladder. He gently worked the bottle from Kayla’s small hand and rushed up behind the creature, spraying its back with the cleaner, like some murderous housekeeper. It screamed again and finally pitched forward to dissolve into the forest floor.

Captain Black stood stationary for a moment, and then rolled its head onto its shoulder atop the neck long shattered by a hangman’s noose. “We cannot die, we are forever…” it hissed. Raising its cutlass, the corpse began walking towards Ethan.

Ethan rolled the nozzle over to stream and began spraying the thing, its flesh reacting in the same violent manor as the priest’s, but the captain’s screams were more hideous, more voice-filled and ruined.

Ethan found himself backing away, spraying the thing repeatedly before it toppled from lack of muscle and the sinew that held them. He continued back until he met Shannon, still holding the spray bottle before him like a flamethrower.

He turned to Shannon, and then quickly looked away, seeking out his little savior. When he found her, he scooped her up in a full hug and began to sob with her on the little girl’s shoulder. Shannon embraced them both in one large hug.

“Thank you, Kayla,” Ethan whispered softly into the girl’s ear.

“Yes, thank you. You were very brave, Kayla.” Shannon sounded as if she were about to begin crying herself.