Something is very wrong with Cardinal Lake. For two weeks now, I’ve been tasked with keeping its “wrongness” at bay, every night, risking my life to prevent the destruction of not only the park, but the town of Greycott and beyond. Losing sleep, blood, sweat, and tears, all to confine that wrongness to the lake. If only I knew how in vain all that effort really was. Cardinal Lake is more than just the population of carnivorous fish people that call it home. It’s a cancer, seeping into everything it touches, the water, the land, even the minds of its people. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry it got this bad. If anyone is to blame, we are. But, I’ll tell my story for whatever it’s worth. In my own words, here’s how the world nearly came to an end.

Our ill conceived escapade with the sonar device on the lake that night cost us two boats, the skin of our teeth, and a lot of head trauma. It worked, but barely. Supporting each other, we limped halfway around the lake until Victoria picked us up. When we finally made it to the park again, Quint sat us down in the breakroom, red medical kits splayed open on the table. All of us were pretty bad off. My leg had a few deep gashes in it from a Gill Man’s claws, something I tried not to think about as I poured a bottle of hydrogen peroxide down my skin. Across from me, Mel sat impatient as Victoria wrapped his bleeding head with gauze.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I’ll walk it off.”

“If you don’t keep your head still, I’ll throw you in the lake myself.”

As I wrapped my leg, I looked up at Mel and saw one of his reddened eyes get covered up by Victoria’s gauze wraps. He saw me looking, pointing from his bandages to mine. “Hey look. We’re twins now.”

“Thanks for saving us.”

“Ah it was nothing.”

Quint had thrown his coat on a chair, sitting away from the rest of us atop the foldout table. He looked like he’d crawled out of the earth itself, face and beard flecked with dirt. He was firmly locked onto the sonar screen, scanning the digital map over and over, not even bothering to clean himself. “Alright. We have what we need.”

“You mean we didn’t risk our lives for nothing?” Victoria stared daggers at the man.

Quint hobbled over to us, throwing the box onto the circle table. “At the bottom of Cardinal Lake, there’s a trench. It’s deep. Real deep. We get to the bottom of that trench, we find the portal and can end all this.”

I leaned over to the box. The device had generated a 2D image of the lake bottom. The blue of the lake gave way to yellow, then orange as the lake grew deeper. Then, abruptly, there was a sharp drop into red, then purple, all the way to pink. It just kept going.

“Three thousand five hundred feet into the depths of Hell.”

“So,” I shifted in my seat, looking up at the man, “how do we get down there? Is that even possible? I mean, isn’t there like pressure differences or something? What about the Gill Men? We were nearly ripped to pieces just by being on top of the lake.”

“I’ll make a few phone calls. If all goes well, you might not even need to do it yourselves. After tonight, we got enough evidence to get some real professionals on the ground. For the time being, enjoy yourselves. You’re all gonna be just fine.” Quint grabbed his long jacket from the chair, grubbing for a cigar in one of the pockets as he made his way to the door.

The only sound in the room now was the humming of the fluorescent bulb dangling above our heads. Victoria went first. “So, what do you two think?”

I went next. “What do you mean?”

“You really think we’re getting out of here? Like, we’d really get to leave?”

Mel sat back in his chair, exhaled. “Dude, I’ve got no clue. Do I think Quint’s people can pull it off? Sure, whatever group he works for probably does this sort of thing on the daily. I don’t know how the company’s going to react to their problem disappearing. It could only be good, right? I mean, you and me have been working here for years. You think they’d try and do something to us? Rory, what’s your two cents?”

I was lost in thought, just contemplating. “Do you think this feels too easy?” I got two befuddled looks in return. “I mean, something just feels wrong, am I crazy? I nearly got stabbed last week by someone trying to sabotage the lake seals. Now, it’s just over?”

Mel put up his arms, stuck them behind his head. For a guy so old, he sure did remind me of a mid-twenties stoner a lot. “I’m not complaining. Let the professionals handle it for once. We were nearly torn to pieces tonight, and I’m sick of dealing with fish monsters. I’ll gladly let all this slide.”

Victoria shrugged. “I know I haven’t been the biggest fan of Quint, and tonight I wanted to punch him in the face for throwing us all into danger like that, but if his people are able to get rid of our Gill Man problem, then yeah, I’m okay with relinquishing control for once. This is the first bit of optimism I’ve been able to have in a long time. I want to enjoy it.”

I took in what they were both saying. Maybe I was just being paranoid? This was all supposed to be a good thing. So why did I feel so tense, still? Whether or not it was just plain shock, I carried that tenseness with me outside the breakroom. I leaned up against a wall and hit my cart, letting the fuzz of THC try to coax me back to normalcy again. My quiet breeze was interrupted by a one sided, gruff sounding argument from my left. Sure enough, leaning against a railing in the kids splashpad area, was Quint, a tall dark shadow only lit by a still burning cigar. “Uh huh. Mm hmm. It’s thirty five hundred feet of bloodied water, mud, and bodies, what do you think? Just do it.”

I walked over towards the man. In his right hand he held what looked like a Nokia flip phone of all things, which he shut dramatically, leaning over the railing again, looking down. He’d sounded annoyed before, but now, on his own, he looked tired, worn out. I wasn’t sure what to do with that. “Uh, hi. Good news?”

Quint shifted, as if he hadn’t noticed my approach. I saw him put the cigar between his fingers, and turn towards me. “Something like that. Give it a few days, I’ll have some men on the ground, and they’ll take care of business.” I stood next to him on the railing, looking out on the water of Cardinal Lake. It was certainly more peaceful now, the ghost-blue light of the hoard having disappeared. Every so often, something would breach the surface from below. “How old are you, kid?”

“I’m twenty three.”

“Good. Got your whole life ahead of you. Wouldn’t want you to spend it in a shit hole like this.” He took another hit from the cigar, sprinkling ash onto the splashpad below. “You excited?”

Maybe it was the weed, but I had a lot on my mind. “Do you like your job, Quint?”

“Eh,” the man did a 50/50 motion with his hand. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I nearly died tonight, guess I’m just thinking of my future. I came here thinking I’d find myself, but everything I’ve come across just makes me feel… hollow, if that makes sense? I thought I was stuck here. Now I might get the chance to leave and I still don’t know what I’m doing. How’s that even possible?”

Quint dropped his head, let out a groan. “Kid, if you’re asking that sort of question from me, you’re doing something wrong.” He looked out on the lake, and I tried to parse out his expression, what little there was in the moonlight. The word “reserved” came to mind. “I’ve been doing this gig since I was six years old. Literally. This here’s a family business. My dad killed monsters, so did his, going back to the invention of the wheel I’m sure. It’s good. I help people, it’s what I do, but if I were to tell you I do anything else besides this, I’d be lyin’. Don’t have much of a life of my own, just this. I keep on truckin’ because what else is there to do?”

I took in the man’s words. “So, what should I do?”

“You really want my advice? I think you got it all wrong. Find something you like first, worry about the other shit later. Don’t let all this other stuff consume you.”

“Huh.”

I woke up the next night like most other evenings over the past few weeks: soar, sweaty, and full of dread. I checked the clock: 6 PM. By some strange miracle, I’d managed to wake up hours before my next shift. Of course, I tried to use that time to nod off some more, but no amount of tossing and turning in dirty sheets was enough to send me back to sleep. Eventually, I sat up, showered, and figured I’d try getting out for once. I’d lived in Greycott all this time and I could count the number of times I’d actually been in town on one hand. What else did I have to kill time with?

I stepped out into the hallway and turned around to lock my door. There was this dull, rhythmic thumping noise. At first, I thought it was just the headache remnants from the boat crash the previous night. It was only once I turned the key that I realized it wasn’t in my head. Looking off to my left, there was a man standing halfway down the hall. I’d never seen him before, but it was safe to say he was another tenant in the apartment complex. That wasn’t the part that unsettled me. Instead, it was what he did next.

The man wasn’t facing me. He was standing upright, resting his head against the wall, arms down. The man reared his head back, and I gasped, seeing the bloody smear where his head was, and I knew what was going to happen next.

THUD. He reared back again. THUD.

I didn’t know if it was drugs, or an episode, or what, but there was something deeply wrong with this person. THUD. “Are you okay, sir?” Without thinking, I called out to him. Probably a bad idea, but I didn’t know what else to do. He hit his head again, blood and skin coating the concrete exterior of someone else’s unit. The man hadn’t even looked at me. I didn’t even think he could hear me. THUD. “Sir!”

The man’s movements stopped, and he turned his whole body to look at me. His face was awful, blood trailing from the self-inflicted divot in his forehead down his cheek and dripping off his chin. It was like he’d been bailed out of a moving car. His eyes, though. They were somehow worse. Crazed. His eyelids flickered, blinking over and over again. Whatever this was, I wasn’t having it. I turned to run, but the man suddenly buckled over, falling onto his hands and knees. Suddenly, he was retching, shaking, and then, spewing. What came from his throat wasn’t blood, and it wasn’t puke. It was black. Steaming. Shimmering like oil. I turned, running out to my car, fumbling with my phone for 911. I drove off while on the phone with dispatch. It was an anonymous call. At the time, I didn’t know what had happened to that man. I’d learn soon enough.

I wasn’t going back to my apartment, not when that guy was so close to my door. Instead, I drove around until I found myself at the Brick-a-Brack, the same diner I’d wandered into on my first day. The sun was going down, but the building was still lit, bustling with patrons, exactly what I needed after weeks of isolation. I walked in, the bell above me dinged, and something felt off. Looking around, people were going about their business, but the diner felt… wrong somehow. I sat down at the bar, and saw Fred coming over to my seat.

“Hey, I remember you. It’s been a few weeks. How are you liking town so far?”

“Could be better,” I said, arms folded on the table, trying my best to smile.

“I’m sure it could, you’ve got eye rings like a raccoon, bud. What can I get you?”

“Grilled cheese and fries, thanks.” He walked over to another group down the way, and I shut my eyes, slowing my breath. Why was I like this? There was a baby crying. I sat up, looking around the diner. There was a family in the back, their toddler sat in a high chair at the end of a booth. The kid was screaming, but the parents were just… staring at each other. Their bodies just slowly swayed back and forth, looking into the middle distance, totally ignoring their child.

“Hey!” An old woman, frail voice and shaking a cane, shouted from one booth over, “do something about that!” The man didn’t react, but the woman did. She turned to look at the old lady, and she had those same eyes I’d seen on the hallway guy. Her face had no expression but her eyes looked crazy, tweaking out on something. The more I looked, the more I realized that might not have been eyeshadow moving down her face. 

“Here you go.” Fred placed a plate down in front of me and I jumped. “Man, you’re a really jumpy guy aren’t you?”
‘I-I guess so?” I tried collecting myself, “thanks.”

“No problem, sir.” Fred seemed proud, but then he turned slightly. I saw him reach into his pocket, pulling out a handkerchief and pushing it to his face.

“Are you alright?”

“Oh, I’m fine, thank you. Sorry,” he turned back to me, stuffing back the handkerchief into his pocket, and I noticed a small, black smear on his nose. “I’ve just been having these nosebleeds for the past couple days. If it doesn’t clear up by tomorrow, I’ll head to a doctor.” 

This wasn’t right. None of this was right. I heard an awful whining noise from behind, flipping around to see a patron at a window seat. The patron wasn’t facing us, instead he was drawing on the window with what I hope was just ketchup, carving some kind of symbol onto the glass. “Hey!” Fred called out, “you can’t do that!” The man flipped around in his chair, his jaw open wide, and he let out this guttural scream, like a human bullhorn, and he just kept doing it, eyes rolled back, screaming.

“What the hell is happening,” I stood up, stepping away from the bar. Fred, who’d been trying to reason with the insane man, had given up, and was coming around the corner of the bar to try and throw him out. I got out of his way, watching the whole scene, too stunned to do anything else. That was when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see Victoria’s name on the screen. I answered immediately.

“Rory! Where the hell are you?”

“I-I’m in a diner, what’s happening?”

“Something bad is going down! Get to the lake, NOW!”

“Alright, okay, I’m on my way-” I turned around, heading for the door, and stopped. At first, I thought I was hallucinating. Maybe, nights of sleepless running and terror had driven my brain to make me see things that just weren’t there. Maybe it was a warped reflection, a trick of the light, or maybe just a really, really weird shadow. But, shadows don’t cause steaming breath against glass. Shadows don’t leave wet handprints where their freakish claws just were. I wasn’t looking at a shadow. Right behind the glass, directly in front of me, was the snarling, bulging eye’d face of a Gill Man, staring right at me, in the middle of town.

I had enough sense to throw myself to the right before shit hit the fan. The beast bored straight through the door’s glass window and tackled straight into a different patron sitting at the bar. Immediately, the small diner erupted into chaos. The monster was big, it’s shark-tail whacking back and forth, knocking over chairs and items off of tables. I hit the tiled floor hard, and when I flipped over I could only watch as the monster grabbed hold of the poor man and sank its teeth into them, spraying blood all over the counter. Screaming patrons fled for the door. “What the hell is that thing?” Fred shouted at me from behind, backing away from the thing in horror.

I pushed off the ground with my foot, sliding back and away from the Gill Man. The beast whirled around, leapt across the diner in a single bound, trapping another poor patron in a corner seat, a woman this time. Immediately, I went for the gun on my belt, only to realize a horrible truth: my holster was empty. I’d left my service pistol in my car. Shit.

“Fred! Run!” I got to my feet, grabbing a chair from my right, tossing it at the monster. It broke against its back, and the thing turned towards me, teeth bared, hissing, its weird head-fins bristling with irritation. It whirled around, slapping the patron across the face with its tail. I saw Fred on my left side, an army crawling back behind the counter. The monster sized me up, fanning out its arms. I grabbed another chair, my own arms shaking in terror. How did the thing even get here? What was going on? Suddenly, I lost that chair when I was tackled from my right. It was the screaming man from earlier, shoving me straight into the back wall.

“Praise Him! Praise Him!” The man was gibbering like mad, black liquid leaking from his eyes and mouth. He had me pinned against the wall, and it took a knee to his stomach for him to let go. I shoved him away, yelling, and he staggered right back into the Gill Man. “Praise Him!” The beast, with just one webbed hand, grabbed the man by the head and picked him up, chomping straight through him with its teeth and flinging the body aside like a ragdoll. I was cornered now. The thing was about to lunge at me, when I heard something to my left.

“Get out!” There was a large blast, and the thing’s body slammed against the wall, black blood spraying everywhere.The thing hissed, trying to get to its feet again, but then a second blast put it down for good, and it went limp, sliding down against the wall and leaving a black stain against the tile.  I looked to see Fred, back behind his counter, holding a double barreled shotgun. He was heaving, clutching his head and placing the smoking gun on the countertop. He motioned to the corpse. “What in God’s name is that thing?”

I got up, stepping over the monster’s body. We were the only people left in the diner. “It’s a Gill Man. You need to find shelter. It’s not safe out here!”

“Christ, my head,” he kept clutching his head, doubling over onto the counter.

“Come on! Fred! You have to go!” I tried grabbing him by the arm, but he shoved me off.

“RAAH!” I lurched away when he threw up his head, snapping at me with his teeth. His face had started leaking all the same, eyes, nose, mouth, all seeping with black. I pushed him away and he stumbled back, looking confused, looking down at his hands. Then, I saw a shadow on the right. Outside another window, on the other end of the diner.

“Watch out!”
A second Gill Man came crashing through the glass, heading straight for Fred, and before I could do anything, he was gone, tackled behind the counter with a spray of blood. I bolted, nearly tripping over myself to grab my phone off the ground as I ran right out the door. The street had descended into chaos. People were fleeing in terror, running towards my position, as a hoard of Gill Men came shambling down the block. Those that weren’t running away were shambling husks, or dropped to their knees in the middle of the road, all in some kind of trance. Quickly, I bounded down the steps, only to hear a hiss from behind. I looked up to see another Gill Man, on all fours, looking down at me with its jaws open. It leapt. I ducked. It sailed over me, just barely snagging me by the back of my shirt, dragging me down with it. The stairs hurt, but by now the adrenaline was keeping me going. I got back up to see it had landed on the hood of my car. It swiped at me with its hideous claws, but I staggered back as it leapt for me again, diving out of the way. I had my key fob out, unlocking the driver side door. The thing was running, gaining on me. I threw open the door, shielded myself behind it, and the thing cracked the glass with another jump, nearly tearing the door off its hinges with the force. I pulled my feet inside just before it could snag me, shutting the door and locking it behind me.

I didn’t have time to breathe. The thing was pounding on the glass, spiderwebs growing across the surface as the monster’s anger grew. I screamed, throwing my car into reverse and pulling out of the parking spot, only for another Gill Man to fling itself onto my car’s windshield. The monster, with one punch, pounding its claw straight through the glass. I screamed again, shoving the car into drive, and without any other options, I slammed down on the gas pedal. I wasn’t sure what was louder: my terror, the monster’s hiss, or the engine, as I plowed right through the road in a blind panic. Swerving left and right caused the thing to veer off balance, and I felt the car jostle as it fell under my tires with a loud squish. There were more of them, climbing buildings, running along the streets, or just feeding on what they’d already caught.

With one hand, I called back Victoria. She picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?!”

“I’m on my way! What is going on? There’s Gill Men everywhere!” A semi truck had flipped over in the middle of the road, and I had to swerve off to my right down a separate street.

“We don’t know! Mel and I are holed up in the breakroom. Cardinal Lake’s gone insane! There’s Gill Men everywhere. Where’s Quint?”

“He’s not with you?” I had no idea where I was going now. The town was under siege. Buildings were on fire, the Gill Men were climbing on cars, snagging anyone left on the street. But, then there were others. As I sped downtown, I noticed burning pyres in the middle of intersections, built from furniture, sticks, even whole vehicles. Men and women were gathered around, dancing, some of them unclothed, some of them dressed in familiar black robes. Some were even on their knees, seemingly praying, before being snatched up by a passing Gill Man, dragged into an alley to be fed upon. The others didn’t even notice.

“No! No he’s not with us! We thought he might be with you!” I’d found what road I was on, reorienting myself, swerving around one of the burning pyres and down a separate street. Some people had tossed things at my back window. In my side mirror, I could see some of them were chasing after me, roaring with that same black liquid dripping from their faces. I sped up. I had to get to the lake.

“Everybody in town’s gone insane!”

“I know. We have to-” the call suddenly cut out. Caller unavailable.

“Hello? Hello!” Then, I noticed a large black shadow fall upon the road. In horror, I looked up to see a cell tower come crashing down. I sped up, bringing my speedometer to its limit. It hit the road hard behind me, kicking up dust and wind as the metal compacted in on itself. I saw three Gill Men standing atop the downed tower, roaring in triumph. That was the last I saw of Greycott, as it disappeared into the dust and smoke.

Night had fallen. Flipping through radio stations. Almost all of them were static, all except for one, where the DJ had started preaching his insane gospel.

“We must praise Him! Blood will spill forth upon the Earth to please Him! His name shall never pass the human tongue! He has opened us to the miracle of our existence! He-”

I turned it to the next station. I’d rather hear actual static than whatever that was. I was getting closer to the lake now. Every now and then, something would dart across the road, just a blue-green blur in the headlights. It seemed like my car was fast and bright for me to avoid any full frontal attacks on this road. I was getting closer to the park, but from where I was coming in, I knew what I’d be passing on the way. I had a hunch, a horrible, but rational hunch. Surely enough, when I got a glimpse through the trees and got a glimpse at the lake, I was proven correct. The smouldering crater that was Mystic Rock had fallen off into the lake itself, a smoking mess of rubble. The fire that been there had spread off into the surrounding grasses, and even some of the trees. Cloaked figures had taken to dancing in the fire. One of them had thrown themselves into the lake, only to disappear into a frenzied mix of water and blood. My worst fear was true. They’d broken the seal. Cardinal Lake was now open. Forever.

Ten minutes later, I found myself driving straight to the entrance of the park. I wasn’t going to bother with the employee parking lot, not at a time like this. The actual park gates were chained shut, and I didn’t have a key. So, after a moment of hesitation, I whirled my car around to the back of the parking lot, and gunned the engine. Tire smoke filled the lot, and as I braced for impact, I blasted right through the gate, snapping the chain and throwing the wooden doors wide open. I got halfway down mainstreet before the engine died on me. I was dazed, stumbling from the car and onto my hands and knees, trying to get my thoughts together. When I finally stumbled to my feet, I realized I was no longer alone.

Cloaked figures emerged from around the street, wielding torches. Quickly, I reached back into my car, flipping open the glovebox to grab my gun. I waved it around, trembling as I realized how outnumbered I was. Ten of them, easily. “Who are you people,” I shouted.

“We carry His will,” shouted someone at the end of the lane. They stood in front of Seaweed Cove, the wave pool attraction, accompanied by three others.

“Let me see your faces!”

All of them removed their hoods. I looked around, confused. All of them had the black ichor leaking from their faces, but aside from that, they were all different. Men, women, all regular townsfolk from what I could tell. Then, I recognized a face. It was an ordinary kid, pale in the face, but even streaked with that strange liquid, I recognized him. Blue and yellow eyes. His name came to me then. I ran up to the guy, nobody moved from their positions. “Cole!” I shouted. He didn’t react, staring right through me. “Cole, come on! Snap out of this! Remember your sister? Cass? Say something!”

“He has a new purpose,” said the man at the end of the lane. In another life, he might’ve been an ordinary office worker. Now, he was a crazed man, bald headed, self inflicted tattoos of strange symbols dotting his head, face, every inch that wasn’t covered by robes. “He has given us his wonderful embrace! And soon, He will bring this world, this cruel, meaningless world under his reign! The stars are right! He has come!” From all around, the others chanted with the man.

“HE WILL COME!”

The man fell to his knees, arms stretched to the sky, and I noticed a dark shape emerge from the water around him. The man looked at me with the biggest smile I’d ever seen. “Praise Him!” And just like that, he was gone. The Gill Man engulfed the cultist’s head within its maw, and he disappeared beneath a scaly mound of teeth and fins. I had to run. The rest of the cultist’s dropped to their knees in synch, chanting Praise Him! Praise Him! The Gill Man had a whole buffet to feed from. I ducked off to my left into an alley between two gift shops. There was just an employees only area, but all around I could hear them now, the snarling hisses of the monsters from the Lake, hunting me, looking for me. This was all starting to seem very familiar. When I reached the main road again, I tried to stay out of the light of the streetlamps. I could see the lake clearer now. It was glowing, a ghoulish, greenish blue light emanating from the darkest depths of Cardinal Lake. Something was happening down there.

I tried to catch my breath behind a dumpster next to a foodstand, staying low and out of the way. The park was crawling with them. Dark shadows atop the distant slides would shift and dart around as they made their way across them. I had limited ammo, and any noise at all could attract them to me. The Fun Zone wasn’t far now. I just had to make it there, and get inside the breakroom, and then everything would be fine. I That was when I heard the hiss fill my ears. I didn’t bother looking. I ran in a blind panic and could hear the thing bounding after me from behind. I had to keep moving. Keep moving. Don’t stop. Do. Not. Stop. Just run and-

I turned, screaming, firing my pistol. The bullets met their mark. The Gill Man was scarily close, just behind. It tanked the bullets, powering through the first three, but the rest did their job. The thing’s head flew back and then it went down onto the path, bleeding black. When the tinnitus cleared, the snarls had only grown louder. On my right was another perched Gill Man atop a fence. On my left, towards the lake, walking across the artificial beach was another one, walking right out of the lake, shaking off the excess water like a dog, before spotting me and hissing. Two of them. I fired. The pistol clicked. I started backing up as the monsters closed in on me from both sides.

Beep! Beep!

I heard something from behind. The rolling of tires against the ground. Suddenly, the monster perched along the fence dropped, a metal bolt lodged through its skull. The other one went rigid, screeching, fleeing back into the lake and swimming off. I whirled around to see a golf cart coming straight at me.

“Get in! Quick!” It was Mel, driving the golf cart. On the back was Victoria, wielding Quint’s crossbow, trying her best to reload it with one arm wrapped around the golf cart’s base. “Come on!”

I hopped inside, begging him to go. Mel made an awkward turn, and Victoria swore as she nearly fell out of the cart. He gunned it, and as we went, the howling noises from the lake only grew worse. It wasn’t long before we made it to the Fun Zone. We didn’t even bother cutting the engine. Instead, once we were in distance of the door, we bolted, didn’t even wait for the cart to stop.

“Get inside! Just go!” Victoria was the last one in, holding open the door. I could hear the Gill Men creeping up behind. It was another duo, reaching out for us, and then, it was done. Victoria slammed the door, and the electronic lock clicked into place. We all sat there, weary, as we heard the creatures pounding on the steel. They dented the doors once, twice, and then nothing. With one last snarl, we heard them run away. It was over. For now.

I was gasping for air. “Thank you. Thank you both. I thought you were both dead!”

Victoria lifted me up. I thought she was just being nice, but then she grabbed my face, hard, with both hands, shining her light in my face.

“Hey! What are you doing? I’m clean! I’m fine!” I pushed off of her.

“Yeah, he’s telling the truth.” She clicked the flashlight off. “Rory’s not brainwashed.”

“Oh thank God.” I noticed Mel had his gun trained on me from behind. “I really didn’t want to shoot this guy.”

“You were going to shoot me?!”

“Yeah! Of course we were!” Victoria shouted. “My whole cabin got invaded by a group of those weirdos! I even recognized a few of them. One of them goes to my gym, for fuck’s sake! It’s like the whole town’s gone insane.”

“Everybody except us,” said Mel. “Or at least, that’s what it seems.”

There was a quiet moment between the three of us, then I suddenly remembered something. I dug out my phone, relieved to see a single bar left of data. I scrolled through my contacts, and there it was. I called “Officer Leeds.” I placed my phone on the round table, put it on speaker. Our anxiety grew with every buzz that went by where he didn’t pick up. Then, suddenly, it happened.

“Hello?” Quint answered. He sounded like death.

“Quint!” I called out. “Where are you? Greycott’s in ruins! The Gill Men are roaming the streets, where have you been?”

“Kid,” and just like that, any hope I had was snuffed out, as I heard Quint start coughing, choking on something harsh, and liquid-sounding, “I don’t have much time.”

“Y-you’re infected?”

“Something like that.”

Victoria chimed in. “Where are you right now?”

“Handcuffed myself to a radiator in my hotel room. Would you believe that?” He coughed again, retching. “Can’t hurt people if I’m locked in here.”

“Damn it,” Mel said. “How do we stop this?”

“None of you are infected?”

“No.”

“Good. You have to c-close the p-portal.”

“And how the hell do we do that?”

“B-bomb is in t-t-the room. Vent. Corner. Check it.”

Victoria sprang to her feet, looking around. In the corner of the room, under the desk with the cameras, was a medium sized vent grate. She lifted it off, noticing the screws were already missing, set the grate inside, and reached in. We watched as she pulled out a large duffel bag, which she carried to the table. When she undid the zipper, we gasped. Inside was a large, metal tube, wired together under inches of plexiglass. “You put a bomb in our breakroom?”

“Surpriiiiise.”

I exhaled. “So what are we supposed to do? How do we get to the bottom of the lake?”

“Get out of there… red container crate… you’ll see it. Destroy the portal. End this…”

“Quint?” There was more coughing on the other end of the line. The line went quiet, until it wasn’t.

“Praise Him! Praise Him! PRAI-”
We ended the call. We didn’t want to hear any more of that. Mel sat back in his chair, exasperated. “Why us? Why just us? I mean, seriously? The entire town goes nuts, including our only competent hope, and we are the people left to take care of things? What are the odds?”

I was thinking the same thing. Out of everybody, why were we spared from the lake’s influence? Then, it came to me. I looked up, and Victoria seemed to have the same idea. “It’s because we died.”

Mel looked up. “Huh?”

“I think that’s why they hired us,” she said, “we’re immune. Maybe dying just… makes us different from the others. Like, we’re severed from it somehow. An X factor.”

He looked from Victoria to me, then back to Victoria. “You told him about my…?”

“Sorry Mel, it came up.”

“Well isn’t that just great. Now we can all die with our secrets in the open.”

I threw up my hands. “We can’t be doing this. We have to get to the container crate and figure out what Quint’s plan was. Let’s just get out of here and get this over with.”

He stood up, hands in pockets. “Alright, alright, fine. Let’s go bomb Cardinal Lake.”

Getting out of the breakroom and over to the woodchipper’s red container crate was something we discussed for a long time. In the end, it wasn’t as hard as we thought. We followed that vent under the desk, helping each other up until we busted out of a vent on top of the breakroom building (Victoria carried the bomb). Once we were at the top, Mel fired his gun at the golf cart, and its alarm went off immediately. We ran like hell as the park’s monsters began to swarm in on the massive decoy lure. From there, we hauled ass to the further end of the lake, making it to the red crate with time to spare.

“Please tell me it’s a submarine or something,” I said while Victoria dealt with the lock.

“When have we ever been that lucky?”

Victoria threw open the doors to the crate, and I felt a sudden chill seeing Quint’s “solution.” Two suits lie against the wall. Two metallic, fat, diver suits, reinforced for ocean pressure. A truly gargantuan hose was wrapped against the far wall, no doubt for air supply. “Oh no. Oh no no no no no.”

“This is it.” Victoria said. “Here’s our ticket to the bottom of Cardinal Lake.”

Mel chimed in. “This is suicide.”

“This is our only option.”

Our two previous boats were taken from a dock connected to the park itself. Apparently, the park was a rather popular place for the rich people of cardinal lake to dock their overly sized aquatic eyesores. Fortunately, Mel could hotwire one of them. I asked how he was able to do that, he said he doesn’t like to talk about it. Just like that, we were on the water, silently drifting across the lake. We wondered what would happen if we were swarmed, but as it turned out, we weren’t. We weren’t sure why at first, but I came up with a theory.

“I think most of them are already in town.” I told them.

“How do you know that?” Victoria asked.

“Well, whatever this portal thing is, the Gill Men would likely be guarding, right? Why wouldn’t they try to protect their one way back to their world? So, maybe the ones in town are like the offensive group, and down there, well, they’re the defense.”

“Makes a little sense,” Mel said, guiding the boat to the center of the lake. “Why else are we not dead yet?”

Two suits. There were only two diver suits. We assumed Quint had more coming, but apparently, this was all we had at the moment. I snuck off while Victoria and Mel argued, sequestering myself in the bathroom. My phone wasn’t dead yet, surprisingly, and I still had that bar of data. Part of me had wondered, that first shift out on the lake, what I’d really do if I knew I was going to die. This was as good a time as any. I hovered over my contact list. Holly’s name was right there. If I wanted to, I could tell her my feelings. Tell her I was sorry. Tell her how much I screwed up and how she deserved so much better than my immature ass. But, I couldn’t. She deserved to move on. I had to let it go. Instead, I called someone else. Someone I hadn’t called in a long while. My phone twice, and then it worked.

“Hello?”
“Hey, Liza. It’s Rory.”

“Oh my God Rory hi!” My sister should’ve been asleep by now, but she sounded as awake as ever. I leaned against the bathroom wall, feeling the water rock the ship back and forth, back and forth.

“Hey, uh, how’ve you been? How’s Mom and Dad?”

“Oh they’re doing fine. Dad just got done swearing at another football game. I don’t think it went very well lol. As for me, I’m up writing my scholarship essay.”

“Oh, wow, that’s really great Liz. Happy for you.”

“Yeah, it’s going well, just needs another draft haha. How’s your security guard thing?”
It was then I’d realized just how long it’s been since I’d even spoken to my family. I shut my eyes, feeling like shit. “Oh, it’s alright. It’s… it’s hard work, but it’s work, you know?”

“Are you okay, Rory?”

I felt a tear roll down my cheek. My phone was trembling. “Yeah, yeah I’m okay. Umm, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah bro, just shoot.”

“You’ve always been the super genius in the family… do you.., do you ever get really scared of something big? Like, an exam, or an interview or something?”

“Oh yeah, all the time. The pressure’s real.”

“Right, right. How do you… how do you get through it?”

Liza was quiet for a moment. “Well, it can be scary sometimes, doing something really really big. But, at the end of the day, I just try my best, and the rest is out of my hands. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. That’s life, I suppose. What else can you do? Why, you got something big coming up?”

“Yeah,” I peered out the tiny porthole window to see the glowing sea beneath us. “Something like that.”

“Well, hey, I believe in you. You’ll do alright, bro.”

I felt the dam break. More tears. This was so stupid. I slid down the bathroom wall. “Thanks, Liza. I love you guys so much. I want you all to know that.”

“Yeah, Rory, we know. You’re starting to scare me a little bit.”

“I know, sorry. Everything’s fine. Um, I got to go now. See ya later.”

“Oh, okay! See ya!”

I clicked the end call button, crumpled into myself for a moment, composing myself. Breathing in. Breathing out. This was it. I left the bathroom, walked back to the others. The argument had grown heated, trading insults. I interrupted, “I’m going down there.”

The two of them looked at me. “What?”

“I’m going down there in one of those suits so we can bomb the portal.”

“Why?” Victoria said. “You can just stay up here and keep an eye on the boat, the air tubes, that stuff.”

I was quiet for a moment. “The whole time I’ve worked at this lake, I’ve been trying to find my purpose. This is it. This is my purpose. I want to stop those things before they burn everything down. We don’t know how far this’ll go. For all I know, that “Him” guy comes through and destroys the entire damn world. I don’t want to sit by and let that happen. If I can do something about it, I want to.”

Mel looked at me, then at Victoria, who was pinching the bridge of her nose. “Fine,” she said, “but I’m going with. I have actual combat experience.”

“Alright. Suit up.”

They make it seem so easy in old cartoons and movies. Turns out, those giant diving suits are a process and a half. Nearly ten minutes for everything to get ready, all out on the deck, exposed in the open. When we were done, both Victoria and I looked like deranged astronauts.

“These air hoses are what’s keeping you alive. When the bomb is delivered, pull on it, and I’ll bring you up,” Mel explained. “If any Gill Men find you, don’t let them cut this thing, otherwise you’re a goner.”

“What’s this thing?” I pointed to a large pull cord on the suit. 

“That’s the emergency gas supply. Pull it, it’ll act as another air supply, but it’s emergency use. Don’t pull this. Over here’s your weights too. Don’t get rid of those, either.” “How do you know all this?”

“Looked it up.”

“Oh.”

“Your radio is over here, use it to talk to Victoria. She and I don’t get along much, but I trust her with my life, and so should you. Use the flares if you need them. I found these two spear guns in the cargo hold. One shot each. Use it wisely.”

“Right. Yeah.” I turned and looked at Victoria, who was slowly pacing back and forth, awkwardly waddling in a suit not made for land traversal. I gave the universal “okay” sign, and she did the same. Her smile looked forced. So was mine. She bent over, nearly falling flat on her face as she grabbed the duffel bag containing our WMD, and waddled over to the edge of the deck. I followed her.

“See you on the other side,” she said, looking behind us at Mel. He gave a mock salute in return, to which she gave him the finger. Armed with two commandeered spear guns, a box of flares, and a bomb, we took the plunge, one big leap into the glowing lake of Hell.

It’s hard to describe how that initial descent felt. I was sweating profusely in the suit before, but when I hit the water, it was goosebumps all across my body. Lights on either side of our armoured shoulders switched on, illuminating nothing but bubbles and darkness in front of me. I felt my ears pop, and when the bubbles cleared, I looked up to see Victoria just above me. Beneath us in the cold, black, infinite waters, was that ghost-blue glow. We continued our descent.

Cardinal Lake only got darker as we went, if that’s even possible. The flashlights could only do so much. I tried my hardest to keep my thoughts from drifting, imagining the potential predators all around us. Even in these suits, we were so fragile. This wasn’t our domain. It was theirs. The depth gauge kept going up. 500 feet. 1000. 2000. At the 2500 foot mark, we hit a bottom. It was more like the surface of the moon than a silty lake bottom. Darkness all around. Victoria hit the bottom with me, and we shined our lights all around. The coast was clear. Or, at least, the coast we could see was. We knew what to do from there. The glowing blue light was in the distance. In any other scenario, we would’ve avoided it with our lives. We’d found the trench.

The trench was a gash in the Earth; a canyon of truly impressive size, the end of which disappeared into the distance, and we had to make our way down into it. “You know,” my radio screeched in my ear, scaring me a little, “I’ve been working here so long, and in that time I wondered where the Gill Men really come from. This is worse than I could’ve imagined.”

“Let’s just take it slowly. Lights off” I replied. We both switched our lights off. We’d have to go blind for this if we wanted to make it far. Carefully, I bent over, grabbing the ledge, dangling my legs over the abyss. Slowly, using extraneous rock as handholds, I lowered myself down. Victoria followed soon after, letting go, descending, then grabbing back hold. We repeated that, watching our depth gauges, feeling the punishing cold around us that would almost certainly kill someone without the proper insulation. Even our suits couldn’t shield us fully. My ears popped again. In the distance, I saw blue glowing dots, separate from the glowing mass at the bottom of the trench. Guards, maybe?

It was after a certain while that the rocks we were using felt oddly similar to each other. They started to feel spherical, spongy even. I heard Victoria stop above me. She’d realized it too. Against my better judgement, I turned on my light, and it took every ounce of will for me not to scream. It wasn’t a rock. Rocks don’t blink.

In my hands, the thing I was using to keep myself from falling into the trench, was an egg sack. Affixed to the wall, a bulbous, translucent orange egg sack. Within the gummy looking egg was a small, floating embryo. The small creature looked back at me with tired looking eyes, and its tiny head lure ignited, a pale blue. Then, it seemed to reverberate. In all directions, the “rocks” around me glowed blue in return, farther, and farther. The entire wall of the trench started to glow. Thousands, maybe millions of eggs, all along the trench wall. This wasn’t just their home. It was a nest.

“Rory, your light.”

“Shit.” I switched it off, hoping against hope we hadn’t been spotted. I turned around. The blue glowing dots didn’t appear any closer. In fact, they’d disappeared entirely. Victoria stopped, went quiet. Then, the water around us ignited red, as she’d ignited a flare. We were surrounded. The Gill Men at the edge of our vision lurched backwards, defending their eyes with their claws as they hovered in the water. The only way we could see their eyes the reflection of the red flame in the water.

“Ignite your flare! We have to go now!” Victoria leapt off the wall of eggs, falling headfirst into the glowing sea below us. I pushed off, following closely after, pulling off the head of my flare and praying that the hoard would be kept at bay. I couldn’t even tell how many there were. Where one snarling fish monster ended, another began, just a congealed blob of teeth and inhuman hatred.

The hoard followed us down, shielding themselves from the red glow. The blue kept growing around us. That was when the noise began. Like an earthquake, or a waterfall, a dull roar that reverberated around the trench and engulfed us in its resonance. The flares were going out. The monsters were getting closer. Desperately, we pawed at the box of flares, grabbing for a new one as the old ones started to dim. Then, I hit something solid. My descent stopped abruptly, and the wind was knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. The hoard was above me now, gaining on me, getting so close and then-

FSHOOOO!

The flare went up in my hand, and the monsters stopped, defending their eyes but not going away. Tentatively, I held it out, pushing myself to my feet in the process, and the hoard acclimated, moving around. Certain death was mere feet away, but unable to move in.

“We need to go!” Shouted Victoria, who I only just realized was in the bubble of nightmares with me. We trudged on, the glowing blue light just ahead, over a small ridge. Just a few more steps. Then, there it was. The portal.

It was a pool of… something. It was indescribable. Even looking at it hurt my eyes, my head, my brain. It was a color that was just wrong. It made noises that nothing on Earth should make. It was a swirling, vibrating mass of liquid that pulsated and writhed to a beat I’ll never know and probably never understand. From the other side came more of the monsters, emerging from the portal and physically pushing through, breaking into our world as the portal seemed to stitch itself together again.

At the portal’s base was a group of five. These were new Gill Men, easily ten feet tall, maybe more. They wore clothes, purple robes adorned with all manner of golden jewels, each one donning a crown of shining green rock. They were speaking, but what they were saying I couldn’t comprehend. Their voices were heinous, scratchy, somehow worse than the hissing I’d grown used to. 

“There it is!” With the roar of the portal, I could hardly even hear Victoria anymore. She was facing away from me, just ahead, walking with the bomb-bag dangling at her waist. Then, I noticed something. A Gill Man broke from the crowd, snaking its way between us, reaching for the bag.

“Wait! Watch out!” I saw the thing grab for the strap, pulling, tugging, and when the strap broke, I had no choice. With the spear gun in my hand now I aimed and fired. The metal bolt sailed through the water and stuck the thing through the torso. It seized up, flailing in the water before dropping dead, drifting to the silt below. Victoria turned, and through the glass I could see the question on her face.

“What did you just do?”

The hoard descended onto us, pulling at our armour, our limbs. Whatever these suits were made of, they were holding us, but they could only hold up so long. The five tall ones, the Priests, continued their unholy chants, and whatever was beyond that portal was growing angry. The portal itself seemed to violently shift and shake. I kept hearing something, feeling something, on the edge of my senses, like something calling out to me, but it was muted, just beyond my recognition. “Rory! The bomb!” I looked down, nearly tripping on the duffel bag. I scooped it up, dropping my flare, and Victoria ignited a separate one, dual wielding them, but then, she yelped in pain.

“What’s wrong?” I yelled out, holding my own flare.

“I’m fine! Just give me the bomb!” I looked down, noticed she was limping.

“Your prosthetic…”

“I’ll be alright, damn it!” I could tell she was lying. Her leg had collapsed under the pressure. She was bleeding. Badly. Just by looking at her face, I could see her hiding the pain. “We need to end this!”

I looked at Victoria. She was my friend. She was a good person, doing what she could to fight a losing battle against an impossible force. I made a decision then. I slowly waded through the water to her, holding out the bag with the bomb. She handed me one of the flares, and with her free hand, she reached for the bag. I didn’t let that happen.

“Wait! NO!” She called out, as I pulled the cord to her emergency air supply. Then, she began ascending. Her screams over the radio would continue on until she was out of distance. I wasn’t going to let her throw away her life for this. She deserved a vacation for once. So, with a still burning flare, surrounded on all sides by snarling, sanity destroying death, I reached down, and armed the bomb, trudging on. It only gave me seconds.  I looked up at the Priests. One of them looked at me, paid me no mind, and just continued to chant. The monsters were clawing at me. My flare was dying. The glass of my viewport was starting to crack. I didn’t have much longer, but I wasn’t going to half ass this. I had come too far to take chances. Then, I was in. I crossed to the other side of the portal.

I shut my eyes all the while, for fear of what I might see. It was hot and warm. It was impossibly loud and deafeningly silent. Nothing could prepare me for the sensation of the other side. That distant, muted calling I’d felt before was booming, impossibly demanding, the voice of an Old Testament deity and somehow older than even that. Floating in space, I let go of the bomb-bag, beeping, so close to detonation. Then, I deployed my own emergency air supply. I shot right back through the portal, and I was moving up. Boom.

The explosion, whatever was in Quint’s bomb, was loud. Impossibly loud. If the depth and sudden rise didn’t destroy my ear drums, the explosion did. I closed my eyes, the snarling howls of the Gill Men snuffed out completely, sound now gone as I felt immense pain in both my ears. I felt my air hose snap, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I had to hold my breath, riding the wake up the explosion up, dropping my weights as I went. My ascent was far from safe, but by then I’d given up on leaving the lake unscathed. The next moments were a blur, as my oxygen deprived brain tried its best to piece together the information. I remember feeling myself break through the surface. I remember looking around bleary eyed, realizing how far I’d become from the boat. I remember drifting to the shore nearby. Then, I remember feeling someone grab me under my shoulders, dragging me ashore. They removed my helmet, and the last thing I remember before unconsciousness was the faint scent of cigar smoke in the air.

When I awoke, it was in a hospital bed. Surprise, I’m not dead. Just about every part of me was battered, bruised, and I can no longer hear out of both ears, but I was alive. Fortunately, I was able to read lips, for the most part. The doctors were amazed I was awake at all. Apparently I’d been in a coma for a full three days. I later learned that those left alive in the town of Greycott were lucid again. The tragedy of what happened on Cardinal Lake was acknowledged, leaked to the news as an earthquake. I doubt that’ll stick. Someone will come forward, if my story doesn’t already count.

“You son of a bitch,” Mel said in the doorway, “you’re awake.”

“Hey, you came,” I said, in a voice so hoarse it surprised even myself.

“Uh huh. I was just about to tell them to cut the cord on your ass.”

“Oh really,” I said. It’s hard to laugh with broken ribs. “Did Victoria make it?”

“I thought you knew.” He walked over to my left side, pulling back the curtain to show me another hospital bed. There was Victoria, sleeping peacefully, probably the best sleep she’s had in a long time. “Her leg was pretty bad, but we got it taken care of.”

“She made it. That’s good.”

“She said she was going to kill you when she woke up, though.”

“Yay,” I wheezed, laying my head back. “Where’s Quint?”

“Oh him? He skipped town. Actually, he’s the one footing the bill. All the medical stuff is taken care of. I guess his organization’s pretty loaded.”

“Ha. Ha ha.” It was over. I was done. The nightmare had ended.

I don’t know where to go from here. As I write this, I’m still in the hospital bed. Of course, Mercer had us all fired, considering the park no longer exists, having “fallen into the lake” as Mel put it. My future is just as uncertain as it was as I came here, but, in my own way, I’m okay with that. I’ve got all the time in the world now. Whatever gig I find next, whatever comes my way, I’ll figure it out. I’ll do my best, since its the only thing I can do. Besides, whatever’s next, there’s no way it can get worse than the night shift on Cardinal Lake.

END.