Chapter 6: Many Waters

Trina stared at the looming figure. Darkness hid most of her features. But a sliver of dying firelight cut in through the door and lit one side of the long, wavering neck. Trina’s stomach revolted at the reality of the skin, the matter-of-factness of the hair as it swayed and slid. A fringe of the orange glow dappled a nose and highlighted moist pink lips.

The figure reached out her hand and placed it on Trina’s upper arm, stroking the fabric of her sweater. She took it between her fingers, which were ghastly in their normality, like any girl’s hand checking to see how soft. Trina remembered doing it herself.

The hand moved over to Trina’s chest, and she sucked in a breath, but the fingers floated above her, as if expecting a different form to be there. The hand continued to move above her, down her body and back up again, following the topology of some other form until it came up to her neck. Then fingertips fell and rested on her skin, tracing their way up to her jaw and around to her ear. Deeply they sunk into her hair before being joined by the other hand. They pulled, but the tug was luxurious, not hostile. The fingers savored the feeling of Trina’s hair, too thick for her own liking, too full.

Her body trembled under the touch, terrified that the hands would return to her neck, wrap themselves around, and put an end to her. This thought scared her, but not as much as the sure and certain knowledge that she would do nothing to fight back. The fear within Trina pinned her to the bed, and she knew that if it came to it, she would simply die pathetically, unwilling to fight, unwilling to even try to struggle.

Would she die? The thought sidled into her mind as the figure luxuriated. Would she? Was this real? It couldn’t be, of course. She was in the hospital with...

No. Not with the model doctors and their too large grins. But a real hospital. Somewhere else, somewhere where she was going crazy. Or, possibly, she was already dead, and this was hell. And if that were the case, she couldn’t die. Whether mad or dead, she was, she reasoned, safe from harm. But that thought did nothing to calm the quaking in her flesh, or the conviction that she would submit to whatever horror this creature had for her. Some part of her mind knew that that was bad reasoning.

That thought fled from her mind, however, when the thing took one hand from her hair and reached over to the nightstand and flicked on the small lamp that sat there. Trina tried not to scream. She forced the need back like an impending sneeze for as long as she could. But it came, moaning and rumbling at first, like the sound of the grave. Then it grew, rolling up and out, unfurling like a great mast blown on gales of terror. It came from deep within and drew to itself breath after breath. It wasn’t one scream, but a rolling tide of them, one swelling, rising, and crashing down in a great lungful of fear. Then the next following it, arching higher and foaming whiter against a dark shore of woe. Many waves, but one tide. One sea of deep and abiding horror.