I fainted during the fall. In fact, I’m pretty sure I fainted seconds after the laundry lady shoved me over the edge. I’m sure everyone is curious as to how I survived the fall into that hole, but we’ll never know, and frankly I’m a little surprised to find out that I don’t want to know. At all. Let’s assume it was some weird otherworldly transition bullshit and not think about it much anymore. I’m certainly trying to forget about that sudden lurch of abject terror and weightlessness. It’s buried back there with everything else I’m trying to hide from myself.
Suffice that I woke up flailing. I was on my back on a flat surface like cement, surrounded by an inch of water. My shirt and jeans were soaked, but only on the back, so I couldn’t have been laying there for very long. The sky overhead was a dingy beige, like it was shooting for gray but didn’t quite make it. It reminded me of the paint in the dorm rooms. The ground all around me was the color of charcoal, a startling contrast to the sterile sky.
Something had a hold of my leg.
That is why I woke up flailing.
I shrieked and kicked, splashing at the water in a blind panic. Whatever had hold of me immediately let go, which went a long way to calming my panic, I’ll admit. I sat up, heart pounding, and stared at my… captor? Rescuer?
Patricia.
She stood with her shoulders and back slumped, like she was still kneeling in front of the slab, her arms dangling limply in front of her. Her head was missing save for a few pieces of flesh dangling from the edge of her tattered neck stub.
I pushed myself up, watching her carefully as I stood. She remained in place, swaying slightly from side to side, and made no move towards me. I reached back and checked my back pocket. The pencil case, thankfully, was still there and was undamaged.
“So what now?” I asked her. “Can you lead me to the eyeball?”
If this was its lair, then perhaps it was taking a nap. One of its pairs of legs was missing, after all, roaming the wasteland unattended. Patricia didn’t move, though. I tore my gaze away from her and surveyed the terrain.
Perfectly flat as far as the eye could see, save for strange structures dotted here and there. They reminded me of rock formations, worn away by water into arches and pillars, but they were colored in blues and greens and browns and had sharp edges jutting haphazardly from their bulk. I’d go investigate one of those first, I reasoned. There was nothing else to look at.
There’s an area in the dorms that divides the dormitories from the dining hall. It’s too long to be a room, but too wide to be a hallway. The university put furniture in it a long time ago in an attempt to make it useful, but no one uses it. When I say a long time ago, I mean it looks like furniture from an early 90’s Taco Bell. The sofas and chairs have hard wooden arms and the cushions are thin, the fabric faded teal with the remnants of once vivid purple and blue squares.
So naturally the students like to use them like building blocks. It’s not uncommon to walk past a pile of furniture that towers precariously to the ceiling, a sofa turned on its end and chairs balanced on top of each other.
Those bizarre sculptures now rose out of the water in this other world. I stared stupidly at the one I’d picked to investigate. Why was it here, of all things? Did the act of constructing it give it enough meaning to exist elsewhere?
I started walking to the next. Patricia followed me the entire time, shuffling a few feet behind me. I tried to ignore her. There was nothing I could say to her that could possibly make me feel better about what happened to her and the others. She wasn’t leading me to the creature, but nor was she trying to hinder me. I wasn’t sure why she’d been dragging me when I woke up, but I didn’t feel threatened by her at the moment. She was just kind of… there.
I checked two more structures before something happened. I was considering toppling one, just to see if that did anything, when Patricia sidled up next to me. Then she bumped into me. Backed up, and bumped into me again.
She was pushing me closer to the tower of tacky furniture.
I shifted as she directed, crowding close to the side of two sofas stacked on top of each other. The light source of this world seemed to be from all directions at once, so the furniture didn’t cast a shadow. I stood there a moment, waiting, and Patricia pressed her shoulder into my chest, pinning me there. I didn’t feel trapped, exactly. I felt like a good push would throw her off balance and let me walk away. Bemused, I played along though. I didn’t think Patricia - or whatever was left of her - had hostile intentions.
The light around me darkened. And then a shadow slipped out from the base of the tower - no - it covered it. It flowed fluidly along the water at my feet, undulating gently.
A whale’s shadow. I saw the flippers protruding from its sides. Instinctively, I looked up. Its back was to me. I saw the dark spot of its blowhole. Barnacles covered its skin in patches, but there was something wrong with them. They glistened pink and slick. I squinted, trying to understand what I was looking at.
Holes. The barnacles were gone and all that was left were holes, chunks of flesh taken out of the whale and revealing the fat beneath.
It continued swimming through the air, proceeding serenely with no attention given to myself and Patrcia huddling in the shelter of the stacked furniture. Only once it was well away from us did Patricia step away from me.
She didn’t want it to see us. We weren’t alone in this world, I realized.
I looked down at my feet. Stooped to get a better look at the water I was walking in. I stared until I began to see shadows, rippling shapes that I could only discern the outline of. I followed the edge of one for a while until it stopped, and I finally understood what I was seeing.
It was a building. I was inside the traveling river, staring up through the water at campus.
They said that things are in the river. Large creatures that swim deep down in its depths.
I glanced up at the direction the whale had gone, shuddering. I had to get out of here as quickly as I could. The next thing that came our way might not be as docile as the whale.
At least now I had a direction to go in. If the creature was the weapon of the administration, then it would likely be at the administrative building. I didn’t know where I was, but I only needed to find a distinctive enough shadow to get my bearings. There were only three buildings that were particularly tall on this campus. The library, the administrative building, and the building that housed the thing in the hallway.
I got lucky. I found the administration’s shadow before the other two. I’d continued walking in the direction Patricia had been dragging me, so I could only assume she was trying to take me there while I was unconscious.
It was a disconcerting thought. Was she trying to help or was she trying to add me to the creature’s collection of legs?
I tried shoving her, just to make sure I could overpower her if I needed to. She stumbled in the direction I pushed her in, her arms swinging like wet noodles. Satisfied, I kept going until I saw a long shadow stretching towards me underneath the water like a pointing finger.
We were here.
And up ahead, in a space clear of the stacked furniture mounds, was a dome. It protruded from the water like a contact lens floating in its case, glistening with moisture. I approached slowly. There were smaller mounds around it and it was quickly apparent what they were.
The other Rain Chasers. They lay scattered about like discarded dolls. Patricia was the only one to retain her will. But as we approached, she tottered ahead and then flopped lifelessly to the ground. She’d accompanied me here and now the rest was up to me. I was on my own.
Stabbing it with the pencil didn’t seem like a great idea. It hadn’t worked on the possum, after all. Unless… unless I got it right in the pupil. I mean, that seems like an important significant part, right? Some sort of vulnerability?
It was all I had to go on. So, with my heart in my throat, I went about trying to get its attention. Only part of its surface rose above the water and the pupil wasn’t visible yet.
So I walked up and kicked it.
And then, when that didn’t get a reaction, I climbed on top of it. I climbed up to the peak of the dome and then… I jumped up and down.
Look. I was a little hysterical at that point, I think. I wasn’t thinking straight. At least now I can say that I am probably the only person in the world to know what it’s like jumping up and down on top of a giant eyeball. (kind of like jumping on a soggy trampoline)
That got its attention. It shook beneath me and I lost my balance and fell sideways. I rolled down its side and then over the edge, falling a few feet to land in the water. All around me, the bodies of the Rain Chasers were staggering to their feet and hastening to support their parasitic master. I stumbled backwards, frantically feeling for the pencil in its case. The pupil. I had to stab the pupil.
The immense black circle rotated to stare at me. It was no longer indifferent to my presence. It saw me and it was angry. It couldn’t speak, but I understood nonetheless.
I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was an intruder. And it was going to make certain I never left this place.
It skittered forwards like an obscene spider. I turned to run, realizing belatedly just how fast it moved. I saw out of the corner of my eye Patricia, her shoulders absorbed into the creature’s mass. One of her arms gestured, flinging outwards and pointing.
I didn’t think. I simply reacted. I threw myself forwards to where she was pointing and behind me, the creature slammed itself into the ground.
It barely missed my legs.
This was how it had killed the kelpie. It’d simply flattened it, crushing its body beneath it.
I scrambled to my feet and ran. Behind me I heard the creaking of its stolen legs as it rose, readying itself for another attempt. I fumbled at the pencil case. How was I going to get close enough to stab it without being crushed in the attempt?
My fingers brushed something else inside the case. The pencil shavings.
An ancient thing had given me this pencil and the devil did play by the rules. The devil had probably written some of those rules himself as one of the prominent recurring tricksters in the stories. These creatures might not be following the rules, they might be new creations with their own patterns, but the devil’s authority couldn’t be easily dismissed.
The old against the new.
I upended the pencil case and shook the shavings out into the water.
A very simple trick. If given an object by an inhuman, no matter how innocuous it is, it should be thrown behind oneself when pursued. Then it will become something else and block the way.
The water began to boil. It turned shiny and black where the water touched it, the color of a lead point. The bubbles popped like tar. And when the bodies of the Rain Chasers struck the roiling patch of water, they slowed to a crawl. Their knees buckled and began to shake under the strain of keeping the eyeball aloft.
I saw the creature look around in panic. Its pupil rolled all the way back, looking at where it’d come. It was preparing to flee. It would turn around and run and escape the water boiling all around it. I clenched my fists, feeling a flicker of anger in my chest. No. This thing’s birth had killed too many people. I would not be satisfied unless it was destroyed.
“Patricia!” I screamed. “Over here!”
I called them by name. One by one, I cried out their names. I hadn’t known them all before they died, but I made sure to learn them afterwards. I wasn’t sure why at the time, if perhaps it was some weird way of grieving that I was going through.
I understood now. There are no coincidences in the stories.
The creature’s legs kept going. It kept dragging the eye forward, until they were in the center of the boiling water. Then they could go no further. Their strength was gone. One collapsed, falling heavily to their knees, and then another. The eye pivoted around and now it stared directly at me. I felt its hatred, its rage that I had dared bring this thing here, this poison provided to me by another ancient being. But I also felt its fear.
An inhuman. Afraid. Afraid of what I’d done.
One of the Rain Chasers raised their hand to me. Patricia. The water was carrying her down into it, growing steadily deeper and pulling her and all the rest of them under. I stretched out my own hand until our fingers met. I clasped at her and her hand went limp in mine. She wasn’t reaching out for help. She just… wanted someone to be there. She didn’t want to be alone as she finally, finally found her rest.
I held her hand as the water swallowed her up. Her fingers slipped from mine and vanished beneath the inky surface.
The eyeball was quick to follow. As it sank, the lead leached into its sclera, turning it black, and the blood vessels ruptured and blood bloomed beneath the surface. It was coming apart. Soon it would be nothing but a mass of jelly to be washed away by the water.
I watched it sink until there was nothing left to see. The poison in the water began to dissipate and the boiling subsided. It was gone. The devil’s weapon had done its job.
I stood there for a long moment, allowing myself to finally feel something like relief. It was done. I’d done it.
I wasn’t ready to think about how I was going to get out of there yet. But the moment was short-lived, for my actions had not gone unnoticed by the denizens of the river.
The skies were darkening at the horizon. My breath caught in my throat. I watched it approaching like storm clouds, until it grew close enough that I could see movement. It was a swarm. They swam through the air, churning their bodies in feverish pursuit. What I’d done had upset this place and now all those creatures living in the river - the fish and the whales and the older creatures that only exist in legend - were all coming for me. I looked about frantically, trying to find an escape. The featureless river stretched as far as I could see, broken only by the towers of furniture that would offer me no protection against the approaching swarm.
I was done. There was no one left to help me. There was just me, small and scared. The devil had said he’d make me a heroine, but in the end he’d be laughing at the audacity I’d had in accepting his bargain. I’m nothing special. I’d gotten this far by luck and there was nothing in me to get me out.
I collapsed under the weight of all those thoughts. My legs simply gave out. I sat there, my hands brushing the ground beneath me as my jeans soaked up the water all around me.
The ground didn’t feel like cement. It felt rubbery, like a membrane. My heart hammered with a brief flame of hope. I tentatively pushed on it. It yielded, but only a little, no matter how hard I pushed. It wouldn’t break simply by my efforts alone.
Unless it was pierced by something sharp.
Like a pencil.
I scrambled to my feet and pulled the pencil from the case, then threw the case aside. I wouldn’t need it any longer if this worked. Then, my throat tight with desperation, I raised the pencil high and then brought it down, stabbing it into the ground.
Part of me expected it to snap. Part of my brain was preparing for it to break, for it to leave me with no options but to sit and wait to die. Instead, the water resisted for a moment, then the ground broke beneath me. It was like a water balloon breaking in slow motion. The thin shell peeled outward in a ring and the water rushed through. I was caught up in a sudden whirlpool, swallowed up by a vortex of brackish water. I was falling, pulled down by the current I’d released, and there was nothing I could do but curl into a ball and close my eyes.
I slammed into something solid. It shook under the force of the impact, but held. I tumbled slowly in the water, flailing to feel what I’d been thrown into, and just as my palm touched its smooth surface, it was wrenched back from me.
Light flooded my vision. I had a split second impression of a doorway and then I was falling through, carried on a tidal wave of water that quickly depleted itself as it spread throughout the room. I was dimly aware that someone had screamed. I wasn’t alone.
I lay on my back in the middle of the room, a chair leg not far from my head. The lights overhead were blinding.
“Ashley!?” a familiar voice exclaimed in shock.
“Grayson!?”
He stood over me, his jeans sopping wet from being caught in the deluge. We stared at each other, dumbfounded. I stammered a few times, trying to figure out what to tell him. I finally settled on pointing back at the door I’d just fallen through (which I think was a closet) and saying ‘steam tunnels.’
The room I was in was an office. A very nice office. There were formidable paintings on every wall with heavy frames and vivid oil brushstrokes depicting various buildings around campus. I had no doubt they were originals. The desk was massive, but nearly empty, made out of a dark cherrywood. The carpet… well, it would need to be replaced, now that I’d released a massive flood of dirty river water.
“Oh no,” Grayson said in a panic, turning around and looking at the mess. “Oh noooooo.”
“Uh, maybe they’ll think a pipe burst?” I suggested.
“Okay. Yeah. Pipe breaking. Let’s go with that. But Ashley-”
He turned to me and grabbed my arm.
“You really shouldn’t be found here,” he said urgently. “It’d be really awkward to explain. You’ll have to tell me what happened later, okay?”
He started insistently dragging me towards the door. I followed more slowly, looking around the room in an attempt to figure out who it belonged to. The windows were covered with heavy curtains, but I could see through the gap that we were in the administration building, possibly near the top floor.
“Grayson,” I said slowly as he wrenched the door open, “is this the…?”
“President’s office,” he replied grimly. “Yeah.”
“But what are you doing here?”
“Meeting my dad for lunch. Now get out of here!”
And he shut the door in my face.
Grayson and I have been carefully avoiding each other since that encounter. I don’t want to explain what happened in the steam tunnels and he doesn’t want to explain that his father is the university’s president. I haven’t decided whether I should be angry or not yet. He’s probably got loads of reasons for not telling me, if this town is anything like the one I came from. Kate had a reputation from the moment she was born, simply because of her family name, after all. And Grayson may be struggling with his own familial issues, if his father hadn’t told him anything of what was really happening on this campus.
Besides, it’s not like I’ve been exactly forthcoming on my own. There’s not a lot of trust going around right now.
I focused on my approaching finals instead. And while I didn’t need help on them, the devil still deigned to make an appearance as I was walking to my final exam.
“I have so many questions,” I hissed as he fell into step beside me.
“I’m sure you do,” he replied smugly. “Who was controlling the weapon? Is anything going to come after me for destroying it? Will Grayson and I ever smooch?”
“And you’re not going to answer any of them.”
“I can answer the last one-”
“Don’t.”
He fell into a satisfied silence for a while, which I really appreciated. However, there was one question I wanted answered, and it was one I thought he’d indulge. He is the devil, after all, and the devil is quite vain.
“I have to ask - why a pencil?” I said. “I went down this totally wrong direction with it about writing and all along it was just one of those random things you throw behind you as you’re running away.”
“Honestly, I just asked a stranger on my way to find you. Came across some fourteen year old and was like hey if I’m giving a magic item to a college student, what should it be? And they said a pencil.”
I stared at him in disbelief for a good minute, not saying anything.
“What?” the devil huffed. He refused to meet my angry glare. “I thought it was funny.”
“Okay, well, whatever,” I sighed. “My part of the bargain is fulfilled. Now you just need to make sure I get through the next three years of school.”
I started to walk faster to get away from him. I had every intention of working very hard in my classes so that I never had to see him again.
“Hey,” he said.
I paused but refused to turn around. I was getting sick of his need to have a dramatic last word.
“You should talk to your advisors about pre-law. I think you’d be a good lawyer and you can major in anything you find interesting.”
“I’ve barely survived one year of school,” I sighed. “I’m not sure I could handle yet more school. Besides.”
I finally gave him the satisfaction of turning around so that I could see his smirk.
“I’m getting really sick of rules,” I said.
“That’s a pity,” he said, “because you’ve got three more years to go.
A new semester is starting. I’m officially a sophomore. Cassie and Maria are coming back to campus. I don’t think what I did is anything more than restoring the status quo, but I’ll take it. Because as much as I hate it, the devil was right. I’ve got three more years here. And they might be incomplete and they might be a flawed strategy… but the rules are all I’ve got to help myself and everyone else survive this place.
I’m already printing them out for when the semester starts.[x]