She’s standing there, at the hallway’s dead end, barely five feet away, dripping water all over the floor. It pours from her orifices, trickling over her torn and faded clothing to puddle at her bare feet, which are swollen and garnished with barnacles. Her hair is snarled and soaking wet, sticking to her cheeks and shoulders.
She wasn’t there before. Iknowshe wasn’t there before.
Choking, I pedal backward, trying to remember how to turn my body around, trying to remember how to run. The crew mess is behind me, the stairs beyond it. I need to get there, I need—
The woman’s bloated lips part, and a small waterfall rains from her mouth, mimicking the gurgling I heard a few minutes ago. The water that comes from her is brackish and dark; it slaloms down her chin and splatters to the linoleum. There is salt crustedon her eyelids and around her nose, and her eyes are bloodshot and beseeching.
Her hands, which are blue-tinted and peeling, flap at her sides until she finally raises one of them, reaching out to me. As if she’s telling me to stay.
“No,” I whisper. “This can’t be happening.”
She is the same height as my former friend—she has the same dark hair. But it’s hard to tell her features in their bloated state.
Not Sage, not Sage, not Sage, I chant in my head, and I can’t tell if I’m right or if I just want it to be true.
The woman’s lips move again and more water belches free. A smell rises; salt and putrefaction. A watery rot. Skin sloughs from her cheeks and neck, asking to be flayed away.
My stomach heaves.
We stare at each other, unmoving; her leaking over the floor, expression obfuscated by her distending body and dank hair.
Outside, the storm screams.
The woman steps toward me, and the spell breaks.
I spin on my heels and bolt, nearly pitching forward as I lunge for the crew mess and the stairs. No sounds dog my steps, but I don’t dare turn around to check if I’m being pursued. If there’s anything even there at all.
I tear past the cabinets, the found phone bumping in my pocket next to my own, and fling my body into the cramped staircase. My extremities tingle with exertion as I scurry upward. I expect to feelwaterlogged fingers at my back at any second, wet hands around my waist.
But nothing comes.
When I blast back into the main level, wheezing and near tears, I’m surprised to find the others have gathered again in the kitchen. Piper isn’t there, but the rest of them are grimly sipping hard seltzers, looking like vacationers who were put out by a little drizzle instead of people who are trapped during a hurricane.
“Whoa, Charlie, what the hell?” Fiona says, peering around Carl as I throw myself away from the crew door.
“Are you okay?” Rachel asks.
“Someone is down there,” I rasp, pointing at the crew door. “I fuckingsawher.”
“Hang on, what’s happening?” Carl’s fine features crease in confusion.
“Char,” Viv says soothingly, coming around from the island to approach me as if I’m a wounded hawk. “It’s okay. Tell us what’s going on.”
“She’s down there. Dripping water. I don’t think she can speak. She’s there. I saw her. She’s reallythere.” I’m rambling; I shouldn’t be saying all this in front of my boss and coworkers, but I can’t help it. My skin is on fire, as if it needs to burn to prove to itself it’s not drenched like the woman in the crew mess.
“Char—” Viv starts to say, but Trey puts a hand up.
He nods to me. “Show us.”
* * *
The crew quarters are empty. Of course.
The last thing I wanted to do was return, but with the whole party grouped around me, I felt marginally safer and finally calmed down enough to descend with them, leading the others into the crew mess.
The woman is gone, as is any trace of her. The floors are dry. When Carl and Trey come back from poking their heads into the crew cabins at the end of the hall, they shrug.
“Stripped beds and the tiniest bathrooms I’ve ever seen,” Carl informs us, coming to stand next to Fiona near the crew table. His voice is hoarse—he had another coughing fit when they were searching.
