A Devil's Dictionary

1980-4

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT happened very fast—or so I’ve been told, because it sure didn’t seem fast at the time. Indeed, it felt like the longest dozen seconds of my life. All I know is that the girl-thing sank rapidly, briefly, dragging me along with her, before just as suddenly releasing me—discarding me, as it were—and disappearing.

Except she didn’t disappear, not really, which I found out as soon as I burst back to the surface. Rather, she had leapt from the water and tried to beach herself on the raft—but had overshot it—so that she now hung off its opposite side: flopping and struggling, fighting and twisting, like a fish out of water, or an animal against its leash.

For she was connected, you see, to a kind of umbilical cord, which began at her back, stretched taught across the boat, and vanished into the cold, dark water. Nor was the cord at rest but seemed to be contracting like a great rubber band—pulling her back toward the surface, exerting what must have been a great force. That’s when it hit me that I knew what the cord was, and that it was neither inorganic material nor biological tissue—if anything, it was both—just as I knew that she had not so much attacked me as merely glommed onto me in desperation.

Because something had happened while we touched beneath the water, something like telepathy, or accelerated osmosis. And I understood suddenly why she had been unable to escape; and why, too, she had called out to us, beckoned us, and suggested we do things like sharpen sticks. More importantly, I understood what she, it, was capable of; that the futures she had shown us were not only possible but easily within reach—if we but freed her and reunited her with her ship (which was so much more than a ship!). If we but stayed true to our purpose and did our allotted part. And I knew beyond any doubt what I—we—had to do.

“Don’t let her slip back into the water!” I cried suddenly, kicking toward the raft, grabbing one of the hand-holds. “Keep her inside the boat!”

But the pull of the life-line—for that’s what it was and that’s what it was tethered to: a life-pod, something which had ejected from the ship upon crashing and sunk to the bottom of the lake—was too strong, too resistant, and she began to slip backward across the boat.

That’s when Orley stood upon his knees in the raft and brought his makeshift spear down as hard as he could, stabbing the cord precisely at its center—causing blue-black ichor to geyser like blood. Kevin quickly joined him, and I after that, so that the cord was weakened even as the girl-thing struggled and screamed—to the point that she was able to free herself at last and slide back into the water, looking, in the instants before she vanished, not like a girl at all, but a gelatinous mass. A thing without limbs or extremities. A kind of blue-black worm.

Needless to say, the raft did not survive the encounter. And yet we were able to paddle at least partly to shore before it deflated completely— enough so that the remaining distance was easily traversed, primarily by floating on our backs while kicking.

And then we were huddled in the tent like sardines, the fire having been left to die and our over-clothes hung from the branches to dry— nobody making gay jokes, nobody saying anything—as our minds raced and dwelt on the future, as our sharpened sticks stood sentinel, canted in the sand.

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