Maybe it was Lochlan.The thought struck him as funny, and he laughed, a giddy sound born of stress. He wondered what Lochlan would have done to the partiers. Anything? In the storybooks, he was protective of his lake; it was his sanctuary. After reading the passage from his grandpa’s journal, Graham began to understand the true inspiration behind the stories. With that knowledge in his head—and his heart—Graham wished the pontoon boat and its occupants would vanish. They were defiling the lake just by being there.
A dull splash somewhere behind him. Graham rolled and squinted. Another ripple, then the blunt sound of a body hitting water. Not a fish. The pontoon was too far away for anyone to be jumping in. He blinked drizzle from his lashes and kicked in a circle, scanning for one of the dipshits, just in case. But all he saw was the distant glow from the boat and, for a split second, something else—a humped silhouette pushing water where the shallows met the shore. Then it was gone.
Just his imagination. It had to be. Still, he treaded a little harder, a feathering of panic in his chest. He looked back at the pontoon. They weren’t watching the water anymore. Trevor wasdoubled over, head in his hands, and Evan was gesturing fiercely with a Solo cup, some private fight, probably alcohol-induced and about nothing. Wendy stood, arms crossed, her back a lighthouse in the darkness as her laughter echoed through the night.
Graham swam for shore, arms slicing, but the drag on his legs worsened—like the weeds had thickened or something beneath had grown curious. He couldn't kick free. Each stroke brought him closer to the dock, but each kick pulled the resistance up, snagging his jeans, then the bare skin above, where the water floated his T-shirt away from his body.
He thrashed, lost his rhythm, and for a moment went under. Water filled his ears, the pressure a slap. His feet scraped mud, but again the bottom wasn’t right—too soft, giving, like flesh and muscle rather than grit. He bent his knees to jump, to break the surface, and whatever was under him climbed higher, pressing up between his thighs with the insistence of alivething.
Pure panic. He kicked hard, knees up, and shot to the surface, coughing and spitting. Nobody saw. The pontoon was a party again, Wendy’s laughter, teasing, a little meaner; she was over him and already onto the next. Namely, Ryan, it seemed. The boat was drifting farther out, and the dock felt miles away, the gangplank ghostly and unlit. He was chest-deep now, legs numb, arms burning, his clothes clinging to his skin like a suffocating wetsuit.
He tried to stand, but the lakebed gave way beneath his toes. The next step plunged him into a pit, and he went under, air squeezed from his chest in a muddy fizz. Underwater, the world was green murk and ribboning weed, and the thing wrapped his shin, then both. Not a thing, he corrected.Things—plural, banded and pulsing, cold as raw dough. He kicked, but it was like fighting a giant tongue.
Graham opened his mouth to scream, and lake water rushed in. He clawed at his own legs, scraping nails along his calves, but the sensation only migrated higher, looping up the inside of his thigh, a peristaltic squeeze that pushed his jeans tight against his balls. In the weird, pressurized silence, Graham kicked and bucked, every motion magnified by the resistance of the water and the impossible clutch working its way up his leg, nowinsidehis pantleg.
What’s happening?He thought about his dream from last night when he nearly drowned.Was it really a dream? Is this?But how? He wasawake.He wasn’t drunk.
Something slithered along his inner thigh and under the elastic of his shorts, cold and slick, with a texture like boiled okra. Graham’s mind went blank with shock and fear, a hot electric pulse that briefly overwhelmed all his other senses. The thing probed, explored, found the soft spots, and lingered, a curious intelligence behind the pressure. Thetentaclebunched at his crotch and wormed gently around his dick, which, to Graham’s retroactive mortification, responded with a confused half-chub.
No, he thought, but the word was outgunned by something close to animal panic. He kicked hard, and the lake replied with a suction, a muscular draw that wedged the limb between his ass cheeks. His body shivered, every muscle firing at once, but the tentacle just flexed in answer, cinching him tighter. It curled around his sack and squeezed, not with violence, but with an almost playful test, as if it were trying to fit him for size.
Graham’s lungs burned. He scrabbled upward, face breaking the surface in time to take a single, stuttering gasp. The air was syrupy thick and laced with Wendy’s laughter, which had gone from teasing to shrill, and above the din, he heard Deke shout, “Holy shit, look at Graham—he’s getting eaten alive!”
Washe? Because every synapse firing through his brain insisted that whatever had him… meant todevourhim.
8
Something struck the waterwith a solidthwapnear Graham’s head, sending a needling spray of droplets across his face. “Huh!” His mind short-circuited, reality fragmenting around him into kaleidoscopic shards as the slick, muscular thing in his shorts tightened its grip. It squeezed his balls and cock in a pulsating rhythm—gentlethen firm, gentle then firm—sending electric jolts up his spine that made his eyelids flutter, and his toes curl againsttheslick inner soles of his drenched sneakers.
Anotherthwap.Closer. A metallic flash just inches from his left ear.
Graham jerked his head around, his vision sparking with black pinpricks. A third projectile hit the water with a hollow metallic plunk, grazing his cheek and leaving a stinging welt. He blinked away the lake water as he bobbed helplessly, his waterlogged clothes dragging him down so that his head barely broke the surface. Three unopened beer cans—silver Coors Light cylinders—floated past his face like miniature buoys. He craned his neck, the muscles straining painfully. The pontoon boat had circled back, its lights carving harsh yellow paths across the water, and now drifted a few hundred feet away.
Ryan hung over the side, his muscular torso flexed and his face twisted into a predatory grin, another can clutched in his right hand. Wendy stood at his side, her blonde hair fluttering in the warm breeze, her high-pitched laughter carrying across thewater as she clutched Ryan's shoulder and pointed at Graham like he was a carnival target.
Ryan hooted, his bloodshot eyes narrowing as he drew his muscular arm back. “Bet I get him this time!” The pontoon boat tilted precariously beneath his weight as he swayed. The can glinted silver in the boat lights as it sailed through the air, spinning end over end with deadly precision.
“Shit!” Graham gasped, the cold lake water slapping against his chin as he jerked sideways. The aluminum missile whistled past his ear, close enough that he felt the displacement of air before it punched into the water with another hollowthwap. His heart hammered against his ribs. Ryan's reputation as their high school's star pitcher hadn't faded—those same broad shoulders and fluid wrist motion that had dominated regional championships now threatened Graham's skull. Even with alcohol coursing through his veins, Ryan's aim remained terrifyingly accurate, each throw coming closer than the last. Graham remembered Deke's crude joke about Ryan's inhibitions dropping “faster than a hooker's panties” when he drank, but there was nothing funny about it now—not when each projectile could crack his skull open on impact.
His panic bisected as Ryan grabbed another can—and the thing beneath the water held him in its grip. What the fuckwas it?He kicked his feet, but it only cinched tighter, its pulsating flesh growing stronger. Graham whimpered reflexively as his raging erection strained painfully against his zipper, the wet fabric chafing with each throb. Through water-filled eyes, the world above distorted into wavering shapes, he saw Ryan's blurry silhouette lean back, muscles tensing as he cocked his arm again and released the can with perfect pitcher’s precision. It hurtled through the humid night air in slow motion, like in those dramatic sports movies, spinning end over end, dropletsof condensation flying off its silver surface as it sailed directly toward the center of Graham's forehead.
I could die… he could actually kill me—
Graham was yanked below the surface a split second before the beer can struck him. Down he went, face turned up in shock as the can punched through the water like a missile, its aluminum skin gleaming dully before it swooped back to the surface. He heard muffled, waterlogged shouts above—Ryan's baritone and Wendy's higher pitch blending into an indecipherable underwater symphony as lake water flooded his ear canals. The slimy tentacles inside his pants retracted with a final intimate squeeze, and a thicker, rope-like appendage—cool, muscular, and ridged with suction cups that left perfect circles of pressure against his skin—coiled around his torso just beneath his armpits.
It dragged him horizontally through the murky green-brown depths as a violent, rushing sound filled his clogged ears, and air escaped through his nose and mouth in a silver flurry of bubbles that tickled his cheeks as they rose. Just as his lungs began to burn with a hot-coal sensation, his head broke the surface, and he inhaled sharply and deeply, the sweet air knifing down his throat, before collapsing into a fit of coughing and gagging that tasted of algae and silt.
Whatever had him was gone, and when he dropped his feet, his shoes struck the silty lake bottom. He stood waist-deep in the lake near the dock, coughing up more water. He blinked and wiped his face, squinting at the pontoon boat. Their loud voices carried easily across the lake’s surface.
“I think you got him!” Wendy squealed.
“Hell yeah!” Ryan howled in triumph.
Graham rubbed his stinging eyes, lake water streaming in rivulets down his face from his hair that hung in sodden ropes against his forehead. The boat's halogen lights cut weaklythrough the darkness, reflecting off the surface in trembling pinpricks. At first, the lake appeared normal—then he saw it. Twenty yards from the pontoon, the water humped upward like a muscular shoulder, a dome of liquid rising against gravity. It swelled higher, six feet across and growing, surging silently toward the boat.
Paralysis seized Graham’s limbs as if he’d been flash-frozen. His jaw locked, throat constricting until each shallow breath whistled through his teeth. The surreal scene unfolded through eyes stretched so wide they ached, his peripheral vision dimming to tunnel blackness. Had he been able to force sound past his vocal cords, would he have shouted a warning?
A warning about what?He didn't even know what was happening—or what was headed toward the boat with such terrible intent.
