The current draft of the rules went over really well with the Rain Chasers. So well, in fact, that they’ve started letting me in on the things I didn’t know about. The sort of back channel planning that they don’t make public so that random students and lurkers in the discord channel can’t come crashing their private get-togethers.
I’d be a little hurt, except I know there’s lurkers in that channel. Like Grayson. Who I actually talked to recently and asked if he’d come to the Rain Chasers meeting and he had a conflict. I looked up the other clubs that met during that time because all of you have turned me into a paranoid and suspicious person, and I found that the Rain Chasers were the only ones in this time slot. So I asked him, all casual like I wasn’t snooping into his private life. You’d be proud of me.
Turns out that Grayson signed up for Irish folk dancing classes that the university was offering in the evenings. Not what I was expecting.
(if you’re new, start here, and if you’re totally lost, this might help)
Anyway, I’ve now got a standing invite for the game night that Katana Boy hosts on Fridays and they’re making sure to let me know if there’s anything impromptu going on. Which is how I found out for a second time that Patricia was up to something.
‘Did Patricia remember to invite you?’ the message read.
It was from one of the members that was taking particular care to make sure she asked me about every single thing going on, as there was no private channel to invite me to, all the invitations were made through an absurd word of mouth system.
Not that I’m one to talk. I grew up in a small town, after all.
I messaged Patricia and asked what was going on. Maybe it was nothing bad, I told myself. She said she’d help take care of the laundry lady situation, after all. And she agreed to meet up with me to talk in person.
She was asking people to join her in the power plant, she said when we arrived at the dining hall in her dormitory, and my blood ran cold.
“It’s fine,” she said hastily, seeing the look on my face. “It won’t be like last time.”
They’d figured it out, she said. One of her cronies (she used the word ‘friend’ but we all know what she meant) was determined to take his chances with the water. He went down into that pit and when he thought he wasn’t going to get out, when he thought the water would never release its hold there in the darkness, he broke free to the surface. The group sat there while he gasped and choked on the water and tried to think of what made the difference. It wasn’t like he was close to dying. Yes, he was struggling to get out, but his lungs weren’t yet empty of oxygen.
Was it the belief that he was going to die? No, that couldn’t be it, as the person that did die probably had the same realization.
Then he spat onto the ground and asked if anyone had a bottle of water so he could wash his mouth out. The pool had an odd taste, he said. Salty, but faintly so.
He’d swallowed it, Patricia realized. At some point he’d opened his mouth and accidentally swallowed some water. She didn’t stop to ask anyone what they thought. It was a wild, impulsive thing, which she knew was the wrong thing to do, but she didn’t want to talk herself out of it.
She scooped up a handful of the water and drank it.
“I thought you didn’t do theories,” I said through clenched teeth at this point in the story.
She at least had the self-awareness to give herself a somewhat embarrassed laugh.
“I broke my own rule,” she said. “I admit it. But I was just - after that boy died I thought I had to make it right - and don’t you see? This could save everyone!”
She’d been experimenting since drinking the water. She’d been in the steam tunnels. Gone out while it was raining. Nothing has happened to her. Nothing at all.
“Aren’t you worried about side effects or something?” I asked.
Her proposal sounded very tempting and if I, who knows better than to drink from that damn pool, was tempted, then the other Rain Chasers wouldn’t hesitate.
“All my friends have had a drink at this point. Nothing has happened to anyone,” she replied with a shrug.
“But that’s not how these things work!” I was getting more frantic. “You don’t get something for nothing. There’s a cost - there’s always a cost.”
“What, is this like Persephone? We won’t be able to leave campus? I already tried going home, nothing stopped me.”
“But you haven’t graduated yet. You weren’t really leaving, were you?”
For a moment her expression faltered. I saw a flicker of alarm and then it was quickly gone.
“People can make their own decisions,” she said primly. “How about you come along and present your side of things, if you feel so strongly about this?”
How could I hope to convince anyone? There was a good chance they’d resent me for even putting them in a situation where they had to make this choice to begin with. I miserably agreed to Patricia’s offer, though. I wasn’t sure what else I could do.
I admit that I was thinking about taking her up on drinking the water myself. Who wouldn’t at least briefly entertain the idea? Immunity to all the inhuman things on campus. I stewed on it all the way back to my dorm and then stewed on it some more. It made concentrating on my homework quite difficult, and it was my math homework too, so I really needed to focus. I was almost relieved when my phone rang and gave me an excuse to stop trying to solve for x.
I expected it to be my mom, because who calls anymore? But it wasn’t and I scrambled to answer, my heart racing. It was Cassie. It couldn’t be good that Cassie was calling me instead of sending a text.
“Hey,” she said quietly. “Where are you?”
“The dorm,” I replied. “What’s wrong?”
“I just… don’t want to walk home by myself.”
Cassie had a late night class that didn’t get out until after dark. It was four hours long and only met once a week. It was meant to accommodate students that worked full-time, but the regular class session was full and Cassie wound up in this one instead. I stood and went to the window, pulling back the curtain and glancing outside.
It was raining. Quietly, gently, but raining hard enough that it no longer qualified as a drizzle. I hadn’t heard it because it wasn’t hitting the window for once. It came down in straight lines without a hint of a breeze. The skin on the back of my neck crawled. This didn’t feel normal.
“Can you get the campus escort service to give you a ride?” I asked.
“They’re walking only. They don’t do rides. C-can you just come get me?” she asked in a small voice.
Please don’t think I was being mean, but I wanted to make sure Cassie had exhausted more reasonable alternatives before I risked my life by walking out to get her. It wasn’t a guarantee that she’d be safe if I walked her back, either. Safety in numbers didn’t seem to apply to only two people, after all. I asked her if she’d called for a ride through something like Uber or Lyft. It was less than a mile, but she’d hardly be the only student not wanting to walk through this rain.
“I did and, uh, well.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Please come get me.”
Then she hung up and I didn’t have any way to keep arguing. Probably just as well. I was out of ideas anyway. I took a deep breath and consulted my map of the steam tunnels. I could use them to get there, I reasoned, and that would keep me out of the rain. I couldn’t shake the unease I felt every time I glanced out the window.
It’s not normal for there to be no wind. We have a lot of wind here, especially when it rains. Perhaps this rain was no more dangerous than any other, but the quiet and calm way it was coming down was enough of a departure from normal that it concerned me.
I didn’t want to walk in it if there were alternatives, even if that alternative was taking my chances with a ghost.
If you’re like Ashley, why didn’t you call for a ride, well, I did think of it. But I was getting creeped out just thinking of running that short distance between the dorm doors and the road.
Also I wanted to make sure the steam tunnels would be relatively safe so I could convince Cassie to follow me back through them.
And they were. Nothing came at me while I was down there. They were hot and damp and I was sweating by the time I emerged into the building Cassie had her class in, but that was the only unpleasant thing that happened to me.
I found Cassie in the lobby of the building. She was pacing back and forth, her footsteps echoing about in the cavernous room. No one else was around. I could only assume her classmates had found ways to get themselves home and left her behind, waiting for her rideshare to arrive.
Which was still out there, even though we were long past the time a reasonable person would have canceled the ride and found another fare. I could see the car’s headlights in the rain.
“Did you try requesting a different driver or something?” I asked, glancing over at the phone in her hand.
She’d stopped pacing at my arrival, at least. She took a deep breath and glanced absently at the screen, which showed her ride on the map, patiently waiting to pick her up just outside the building.
“I did,” she said. “Or at least, I tried. I cancel the ride and then it pops up again as if nothing happened. I thought maybe the app was glitching, but…”
She gestured helplessly at the car outside. I nervously walked over to the glass doors, keeping close to the wall so I’d at least have something solid at my back. Perhaps it was pointless, but it made me feel slightly less apprehensive.
I stared out into the darkness, trying to make out the interior of the car. It took a moment to comprehend what I was looking at.
The driver’s arms were coming out of her back. They started on either side of the spine and bent over her shoulders, the elbows at her ears, her hands resting on the steering wheel.
“I know her,” Cassie said miserably. “I’ve met her on campus before. I recognized her name and profile picture on the app. She’s a student like us.”
“But she’s… not right,” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes off her silhouette in the darkness.
“Sometimes these things happen, you know, when it rains. She doesn’t know anything is wrong and she’s probably perfectly safe but I just can’t - I can’t get in that car - and its supposed to rain all night and I don’t want to be here any longer -”
“It’s okay,” I hastily said. “I understand. We’ll walk back to the dorm together.”
The return trip through the steam tunnels was similarly uneventful. I was starting to relax by the time we reached our room. I’d gotten Cassie home safely and we could forget about the rain and the car and in the morning everything would be fine again.
I instinctively glanced out the window and I froze at what I saw.
“Cassie,” I said in a strangled voice.
She wordlessly came to look out the window with me.
The car was out by the curb. Cassie unlocked her phone and stared at the map, showing her requested ride waiting at our location.
“I think you have to take the ride,” I whispered. “She’s not going to go away.”
I sucked in a breath. There’s patterns to these things, I said as evenly as I could. A heroine, generally, is presented with something abnormal and has to act like everything is normal. I told her the story of the three heads rising out of the lake, each dirtier than the last, asking to be washed, to have their hair combed, and to be kissed. How they bless her but curse her step-sisters, who are rude to the three heads.
“But when it stops raining-” Cassie began.
“What happens to her?” I asked, gesturing at the car. “Does she go back to normal if her task isn’t complete?”
I amended that by admitting that I really didn’t know what would happen. These were all guesses, every last one of them. All I knew were stories. I didn’t want to be like Patricia, speaking with an authority I really didn’t have.
“Will you come with me?” she whispered.
The ride wasn’t restricted to one person, after all. There was no reason I couldn’t come with her.
I told her I would.
We went downstairs. She took my hand at the door to the dorm and took a deep breath. Then, together, we ran out into the cold rain and towards the waiting car. At least the rain made us anxious to get inside, so there was no hesitation diving into the backseat. But once inside, Cassie froze. The woman’s elbows were pointed back at us, visible on either side of the headrest.
I elbowed Cassie. I was only here to help. She had to fulfill the social obligations herself.
“T-thanks for picking me up,” she stammered. “Sorry I took so long.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that long of a wait,” the woman laughed. “Besides, not many people requesting rides right now. It’s been a slow night.”
The car started moving. Cassie slipped a hand over and grabbed mine. Her fingers were tight enough that it hurt.
I think I almost prefer dealing with something like the swimmers or the steam ghost. With those, there’s a brief moment of blind terror at the realization that something is trying to actively kill you. Then the adrenaline kicks in and maybe it just paralyzes me, but at least then I don’t feel that much anymore. It’s like all the emotion and sensation is smothered under a thick blanket and I’m just casually observing the world around me.
In the back of that car… it was like all I could do was feel my fear. A thousand useless thoughts ran through my head, asking me if I’d made the right choice, if this was going to really turn out like it did in the stories. And I know Cassie was thinking the same thing, judging by the grip she had on my hand. I squeezed back as hard as we sat in silence, watching the girl’s arms sway back and forth and she maneuvered the car around campus.
She took us to where Cassie’s class was and parked the car. She sat there for a moment and Cassie shifted, getting ready to exit. I gestured at her phone. She hastily checked the screen.
Our ride wasn’t showing as completed.
“Thanks for picking us up,” Cassie ventured. “Sorry… I took so long?”
“Oh, it wasn’t that long of a wait,” the woman laughed. “Besides, not many people requesting rides right now. It’s been a slow night.”
The car lurched into motion again. I glanced over at Cassie and saw that she was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide with fear. I leaned back in my seat and tried not to think about anything. We were heading back towards the dorm. We were almost there, almost back to safety. All we had to do was keep acting normal. The only sound in the car was the rain hitting the windshield and the slosh of the wipers. I counted every turn she took, watching with desperate hope as the lights of our dorm loomed closer and closer by the second.
Then, painfully slow, the car came to a halt by the curb.
“Hey, do I know you?” the woman asked, just as we were getting ready to exit the car.
“K-kind of,” Cassie squeaked. “We’ve met before.”
“Thought so. I just see so many people driving like this that it’s hard to tell sometimes.”
Cassie clearly wanted to bolt and I silently willed her to stay strong and endure the small talk.
“Well, maybe we’ll see each other again, then,” Cassie said with a forced laugh. “Thanks again. I really didn’t want to walk home in the rain.”
Her door opened and she stepped out.
Mine did not.
“Uh,” I said, suddenly panicking. “I-I can’t-”
I jerked harder at the door handle. No. This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t trapped here in this car with this woman with her arms on all wrong. Desperately, I glanced back at Cassie through the glass of the window. She stared at me with frightened incomprehension, not realizing that I couldn’t get out.
“Oh,” the woman said. “Yeah, sorry, this is an old car. The lock gets stuck sometimes. You just have to jiggle it a bit.”
She reached back with her long arm, strangely fluid as it turned itself all the way around and slipped past me towards the door lock. She pressed it with her thumb a couple times until I heard the locking mechanism clunk from inside the door. Her body never shifted during all of this. She remained staring straight ahead, her arm moving as if it had a mind of its own and could see everything in front of it. Then it snaked back around to the front of the car and resumed hold of the steering wheel.
The door opened.
“Thank you,” I gasped, and I stumbled out into the rain.
Cassie and I were freaking out quite a bit when we returned to the room. The adrenaline finally kicked in I guess, and we dealt with it by binge eating the snacks we had stockpiled. Finally, when I was full of popcorn and snack cakes, I thought to ask the question that was bothering me.
“Cassie,” I ventured. “What you told me back there. How the rain… changes… things. How did you know that?”
She licked her lips and didn’t reply.
“You know,” I said tentatively. “I saw someone die. These creatures - these inhuman things - I saw someone die because of them.”
She stared at her desk, strewn with candy wrappers, for a long moment and I thought she wouldn’t answer at all.
“My roommate… the one before you,” she finally whispered. “She told me. She had a run-in with the traveling river and after that, she started seeing all sorts of things. Like once you’ve seen one occurrence, all the rest are so much easier to spot.”
A horrifying realization dawned on me.
“She didn’t drop out,” I said quietly. “Did she?”
“I asked the school and they said they’d look into it. But they never talked to me. I don’t think they did anything. Just took her out of their system like she never existed at all.”
They knew what had happened to her. I clenched my hands into fists.
“I called her parents. They were so angry,” she continued. Her eyes were like empty holes, staring lifelessly at the floor. “They thought she ran off. They said I was responsible… because I’m - they blamed me.”
I knew what Cassie would say next. I knew exactly what she’d say. I crept closer to her, until I was right beside her, and she turned to look at me with tears cascading down her cheeks, the confused hopelessness naked on her face.
“I’m the only one that still remembers her on campus,” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just held her hand for a long time while she cried.[x]