In the Water

In the Water

         Three messages on her answering machine, all from Kinsley Brock, Logan’s editor. She sighed and erased them, not wanting to hear Kinsley’s chastising that day. It was murder for what remained of her creativity. Logan was in the prime of her writing career, money still piled in from her previous book ‘Shadows’, and now she had writer’s block. She plopped down at her desk and faced the computer. It stared blankly back at her, taunting her, teasing her. No stories for you today. Her stomach knotted.
         “It’s useless.” she sighed as she leapt up from the chair and backed away from the computer. She ran her fingers through her frazzled hair and emitted a disgruntled groan.

         It’d been like this ever since Beau left. She often called him her muse, for he was. In fact, he was the inspiration for her latest book; she’d even based a character on him. Even now, she couldn’t believe he could have left so suddenly, so abruptly. She shook her head and shrugged off the advancing memory, preferring not to take a stroll down the memory lane of pain. Besides, surely there must be another muse for her, some source of raw inspiration, somewhere in the world. She’d just have to find it, or stumble across it. She quietly left the room, nonchalant-like.
         “This bites.” she breathed as she plopped onto her plush couch in the adjacent room. She closed her eyes, trying to focus, but instead conjured the relentless memory of her loss…

         …In her mind, she pictured Beau. He stood a towering 6’1” to her average 5’5”. He had inky black hair that flowed past his shoulders, almost shockingly pallid skin, and amazingly vivid emerald green eyes. His features were usually cold, unless he smiled, then, his whole face lit up, brighter than the sun above, melting the last of the icicles from her heart. His favorite color had always been black and he wore it almost religiously, making him appear far paler than he actually was. And, yes, Logan adored him…but not enough to still his wandering eyes as she’d learned one frigid autumn day…

         …Logan squirmed with the memory, trying to fight it off, trying not to remember, and yet helpless to it. The memory demanded to be replayed and she reluctantly obliged to its advances…

         …She remembered how the air felt, crisp and frigid. She’d had to wear and thick coat out that day. She remembered rubbing her arms, still, regardless of the mound of cotton called a coat she wore. She shivered a little as she stood at the front door of her apartment, rummaging through her purse for the keys. Frustration furrowed her brow, yet triumph brought a grin to her lips as she felt the familiar cool metal surface of the key ring. She yanked them out, her grin broadening, feeling like the happiest woman in the world. Her first book was a best seller, she was now classified as a rich woman, and she had Beau. Dear sweet, Beau. A man that adored her, loved her with all his heart, mind, soul, and with every ounce of his energy. A man as devoted to her as she was to him. A man that would never break her heart. Still beaming, she shifted through her keys until the found the right one, slid it into the lock, and turned it. Immediately warm air met her face, warming her up minutely. She stepped inside, already starting to shift out of her coat, a greeting on her lips, and then she heard a sound. It had been cursory and low, but she’d heard it. A gasp, emitted from their bedroom. A gasp of surprise, a gasp that sounded oddly like a woman’s. She hastily tore the key from the lock and shut the door, not knowing, but knowing what she’d see if she went into the bedroom. And her feet, as if by their own accord, walked steadily toward the closed door until she stood in front of it, her hands trembling as she reached for the knob. Her mind raced with the possibilities and the impossibilities. She watched her trembling hand grasp the knob and turn…and turn…and open…

         “Beau?” she called, unsure if he would answer and he didn’t. The room was too dark for her to see and she stood in the doorway, gazing blindly in, trying to adjust to the inky dark. She glanced toward the place where the windows should be and saw multiple horizontal lines of light. He’d drawn the blinds…but why?
         “Beau?” she called again, louder this time and with more authoritativeness. A sound came from the proximity of the bed and she reached along the wall to find the switch. She flicked it and flooded the room with momentarily blinding light. But with the sight that ensued the light, she wished she had been blinded. Beau was standing at the side of the bed, hastily buttoning his shirt, his long hair falling across his face. A girl sat on the bed, fully clothed (however scantily), and stared directly at Logan, a smirk curling her lips.
         “Beau.” she whispered seductively and Beau looked up, glanced at the girl, and then slowly looked at Logan. Logan could feel her chest heaving in grief, pain, and betrayal. Unconsciously, she clenched her fists.
         “Logan,” he said, startled,” I didn’t think you’d be home so…so soon.” He was looking up at her and then back down at his shirt to make sure he’d buttoned it correctly. Logan could hear his hastened breathing and knew instantaneously what Beau had just been about to do or had already done. Logan narrowed her eyes and hissed,
         “Who’s she?” she pointed indignantly at the smirking girl.
         “Esmerelda. Nice to meet you.” the girl answered snobbily and crossed her arms over her rather large chest. She cocked her head to the side, and her luscious wavy hair fell over one of her shoulders. She had caramel colored skin and eyes the color of an overcast sky. She was stunning, Logan reluctantly noted with a hint of jealousy.
         “What’s she doing here?” Logan asked vehemently. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes and cursed her obvious sign of weakness. Esmerelda smirked and stated,
         “Well, that’s a bit obvious.” Logan felt her face redden with anger, she felt hot all over from the ardency of her indignity. She had some nerve to come in Logan’s house, seduce Logan’s man, and then disrespect Logan right in front of him. Her mind ran through myriads of retorts, but her tongue, encumbered by anger, wasn’t quick enough to lash them out. She could only glare, chest heaving, at the little vixen named Esmerelda. Her heart felt pierced by betrayal.
         “Beau?” she asked quietly, turning her hard gaze upon him, and yet she couldn’t muster enough hate to make it effective. She felt so weak, so vulnerable. She hated it, and yet it couldn’t be helped. She felt tears spill down her cheeks and drip onto her shirt. Beau wouldn’t return her gaze, he only stared down at his shirt (black, of course), fiddling with the last button, although he’d long since fastened it. She could see his Adam’s apple wobble as he gulped. He was nervous, but about what?
         “I’m leaving.” he finally murmured after pausing for thirty seconds. He continued to fiddle with the last button and wouldn’t look Logan in the eye. Esmerelda snickered and rose from the bed, gliding to his side. She placed her hand on his right shoulder and began to massage it.
         “He’s been wasting his time with you. He’s been blind to what he really needs for a while now, but I’ve opened his eyes. I’m it.” she grinned at Logan and then abruptly flitted past her, purposefully whipping her head to allow her hair to slap Logan’s face. Logan had a fleeting vision of grabbing that long, black, wavy hair and yanking it…hard. She imagined Esmerelda falling back, a little gasp of surprise escaping her lips. Yet, her body was sluggish to her mind’s desires and she could only watch, a small frown on her lips, as Esmerelda made her way through their home and out the door. She moved as if she’d been there before and she probably had. After Esmerelda’s exit, she turned to face Beau again. His eyes were still averted, but now he held a duffel bag, one she hadn’t seen when she’d entered upon the scene.
         “I was going to leave you a note.” he murmured.
         “Oh how thoughtful.” Logan hissed. Her temples throbbed unbearably and she massaged them with one of her fingers.
         “Look, Logan, don’t make this harder than it is, okay. I’m leaving you.”
         “I heard that already.”
         “Logan, we both know you were just using me for your stupid book.”
         “Beau, that’s not-“
         “Yes, it is. You’re done with your book, so I’m done with you. My duties are over.” With that he breezed past her with not even a further word. She watched him follow the path paved by Esmerelda and turned her head just as he’d reached the door. She heard him pause for a minute and then heard the door click close with certain finality. Then, she collapsed, bawling, to the floor…

         …a ringing tore her from her reminiscing, but she’d never been more grateful. She hated remembering the past, especially THAT past. The phone let out another wail and Logan eased herself from the couch.
         “I guess it’s time to let Miss Kinsley give me a talking to.” she sighed as she effortlessly arrived in the study and lifted the phone.
         “Hello?” she answered blandly, waiting for Kinsley’s outrage and onslaught of words.
         “Hello.” a pleasant answered.
         “Oh, um, hi.” Logan replied, feeling like an idiot.
         “You are having problems.” the voice continued.
         “Well, everybody is, I guess.”
         “Yes, but yours can be solved.”
         “Come again?”
         “Come to Greenville.”
         “Greenville?”
         “Come and drink the water.” Logan noted a rather ominous tone to the voice, but didn’t think much over it.
         “Who are you?” she asked, thinking this person was insane and wondered how they’d achieved her number. She considered, for the thousandth time in her writing career, about getting an unlisted number.
         “Drink the water.” the voice reiterated and the line went dead. Logan shook it off and replaced the phone back in its cradle.
         “Some crazy guy.” she murmured, more to assure herself, but she only felt the pungent ominous feel of the house. She couldn’t shake herself of the message and knew, before she knew, that she would be taking a trip to Greenville, and soon. But a part of her mind knew, somehow, that if she went, she probably would never return.

         “Greenville?!?” Kinsley queried from the other end of the phone connection. Logan could imagine Kinsley’s eyes bugging out comically with the news. Logan was on her way to Greenville, as she’d known she would. It would only be a thirty minute drive and one she was curiously willing to take. She’d been intrigued by the call, by the voice, and by the prospect.
         “Kinsley, I’ll be back later on today, don’t worry. I’m searching out a prospect.”
         “Tell me this has nothing to do with Beau.”
         “It has nothing to do with Beau.”
         “I find that hard to believe.” Kinsley answered incredulously.
         “Kinsley, that was two years ago.”
         “I know, but still…”
         “Yeah, whatever.”
         “Okay, well, good luck with the new prospect. I’ve got to cut this call short. I’m meeting a new client today to go over some new book.”
         “Oh, what’s the name?”
         “The client or the book?”
         “The client.”
         “Some Esperanza? Emerella? I think it might be Esmerelda. I don’t really remember. I’ve got too many clients.” Logan scoffed half heartedly, her mind trying to wrap itself around the name and the coincidence of it. It couldn’t be THAT Esmerelda. She shook her head, bid farewell, and hung up. Could it be? Couldn’t be. That brutish Esmerelda with gypsy hair and ethereal eyes. That witch that stole Beau. She squeezed the steering wheel tightly and then released it.
         “Thank God I’m going to Greenville,” she murmured to herself, “I’ll need to clear my head.” and onward she drove to Greenville and a fate of unimaginable peculiarities.

         Greenville wasn’t known for being a large metropolis. It was a quaint town and quite small. Upon viewing, Logan doubted that the population exceeded 200. She cruised down the main street (and probably the only paved street, Logan conjectured) at a leisurely speed of 15 mph. The street, though considered the main street, was quite small and narrow, appropriate for the town but not for her huge Grand Marquis. It barely fit.
         After about ten minutes of driving down “Main Street”, Logan found that she was quickly growing tired of Greenville. She had a budding desire to return home promptly. But first, she needed to find that lake, river, or whatever the source of the water was. Yet, even as she’d cruised down the dirt roads (Main street ended after about five minutes of driving and let out to dirt roads), her car bucking over every bump, she couldn’t see any lake, pond, or anything anywhere. A tiny building, perched conveniently at the end of this road, struck an idea in her and she decided to pull in to ask for directions.
         She eased her car in to a narrow parking space and cut the engine, hopping energetically out of it although the trip had been emotionally straining, she couldn’t seem to get her mind around Esmerelda and just as she’d begun to sink deeper into cerebration, a pleasant voice (just as the one on the phone, Logan would later realize) interjected her thoughts by greeting,
         “I knew you’d come.” Her head swiveled dizzyingly in its direction. A man stood at the entrance of the door. She didn’t inspect him much, her thoughts still surrounding her troubles at home, but she gave him recognition by nodding. His words never completely sunk in. She pushed through the wooden door at the entrance and entered to find it was a small diner. She turned around to see if the man was still there but found that he’d vanished. She felt a queer feeling of disquiet and then shook it off.
         “Visiting?” a cheerful voice asked from behind her. Logan whirled around to come face to face with an elderly woman of about seventy-five. The old woman had silver hair and it was pulled back in a tight bun.
         “Um…yeah. How’d you guess?” Logan queried carefully. The old woman chuckled amusingly and stated simply.
         “I know an outsider when I see one.” For a second a certain meanness flashed in the old woman’s eyes. The words held a slightly ominous tone. Logan, though she was gifted at picking out ominous undertones and peculiarities, never noticed either. She merely laughed lightheartedly, thinking the old woman meant that she was an “out-of-towner”; she’d heard worse references before.
         “Okay. Well, I got this weird call telling me to come here and I’m having a sort of crisis so by this point, I’m desperate.” The old woman listened, her eyes glistening eerily, but Logan never noticed this either.
         “You’ve come to drink the water.” The old woman stated matter-of-factly.
         “Yes, can you take me to it? Now? I really need to go home…quickly.” Logan added that last word rather hesitantly, she didn’t know why, but she felt like she should leave and fast. The old woman made her feel nervous; suddenly the whole town made her feel nervous. But she was there, and she might as well drink the water, to appease her curiosity. The old woman stepped back a little and began to cross the room.
         “I know where it is, but I couldn’t take you, not now.”
         “Why not?” suddenly Logan wished she’d never come.
         “You want to benefit from the water, am I correct?”
         “Okay?” Logan didn’t quite agree nor did she disagree for the truth was, she didn’t quite know why she came in the first place.
         “Well, if you do, the best time to do it is at midnight. Tonight’s a full moon so he’ll be far more powerful.”
         “He’ll?”
         “It…the lake, sometimes I like to think of it as a person.”
         “Oh.” She watched the old woman come to pause by an old coke machine. She leaned against it, her hands plastered over her slightly bulging stomach.
         “Why at midnight?” Logan queried.
         “Midnight is the best time for the process to take hold.”
         “Process?”
         “Creativity. If you haven’t heard, Greenville is home of some of the best writers in the country, almost everyone here has written a novel, short story, or something that’s been published. It’s the water; we’ve all grown up with it. You’re not from here, but you could be a product.”
         “Product?”
         “One of us, like us, a published writer.”
         “But I am a published writer.”
         “Yes, but your next book will make whatever you’ve written in the past look like something a first grader wrote, trust me.” There was a certain knowing in that old woman’s voice, Logan wasn’t completely sure if she liked it or not. She decided not to question it any further.
         “Well, since I’m staying here all day, is there a hotel around here?” The old woman grinned at Logan’s question. Her smile made Logan’s skin crawl. She watched as the old woman fetched two quarters from a fold in her dress. She turned to face the ancient coke machine and slid both in. Logan listened to the quarters sliding down into the depths within, resting with an audible clang as it hit the metal of the box that would encase it. The coke machine emitted a loud buzz to announce that it still lived and to announce that the old woman should make a decision for which drink she wanted. Logan watched as the old woman punched a button with the engraved word “coke” on it. A second later, a deep rumble started in the machine and then a coke appeared. The old woman bent and retrieved it.
         “Have a coke while I call Elli for you.” She cheered as she strolled toward Logan, the coke extended in her hands.
         “Elli?” Logan asked as she grasped the coke, noting the chill of it on her fingers.
         “She owns the only lodging here. Drink your coke.” And then the old woman turned away and disappeared through a dark entrance Logan hadn’t noticed before.
Logan stared into the darkness for a moment, contemplating.
         “Drink up.” A voice whispered from behind her. Startled, Logan flew back and crashed into the man who’d greeted her previously. She whirled around to voice her apologies and then she saw who it was. Up close, she could see that he was completely blind in his left eye, a milky white cataract completely covered the pupil. Tufts of a beard jutted out form his chin. He wore a dusty gray jacket that nearly swallowed him. He smiled, revealing several rotten teeth. Once again, Logan’s skin crawled. He eyed her intensely with his good eye and she noticed that it was a queer shade of gold. Not like the brilliant gold ubiquitously seen on jewelry boasted in flamboyant adds on TV, but an eerie gold, creepy, and somehow, murky. Like the depths of a mud puddle…filled with gold. She turned away suddenly, but could still feel his gaze. Perhaps to busy her mind, she complied with his and the old woman’s order, and drank the coke.
         “It tastes funny.” She said as she turned to face him and then she realized she was talking to no one in particular. He’d vanished yet again. She sighed and eyed the coke in her hand.
         “It’s probably pretty old.” The old woman cackled as she emerged from the dark doorway. She held a small piece of paper in her hands.
         “These are directions for…” her voice became muted to Logan’s ears. Her head swam and the taste in her mouth intensified. Her vision became blurred, then clear, then blurred again. She placed a hand on her head and another clutched the counter for balance.
         “Are you alright?” the old woman asked, concern etched across her face. Logan moaned a little as she tried to focus on anything in particular. She thought about the coke. She knew how old coke tasted and what she’d had didn’t taste like old coke. It tasted like something else, something she couldn’t quite place. Her head pounded furiously and her stomach knotted. Soon, the world would become a midnight void, but before it did, before she lost consciousness, her gaze rested on the old woman. Her vision had momentarily cleared and using it she saw that the old woman’s previous expression of concern was no more. Her eyes, hard and unforgiving, watched Logan with ravenous interest and with horror, she realized as she fainted, the old woman was laughing.

         Hours later, Logan woke in a strange room. She glanced around, searching for familiar surroundings and only saw the dark. She nearly panicked but then remembered.
         “I shouldn’t have come here.” She murmured. She had a slight headache still from whatever had been in the coke, but it was dissipating.
         “No, you shouldn’t have, this is a horrible place to be.” A voice whispered in reply. Logan immediately strained to see in the dark, alarmed that someone else was here with her and further alarmed that she couldn’t see them.
         “Don’t be afraid,” the voice whispered, “and don’t talk above a whisper, no one can know that I’m here.”
         “Who are you?” Logan asked, her whisper coming out more as a loud hiss.
         “I can’t say.”
         “Why not?”
         Silence, her reply.
         “Are you a ghost?” the voice gave an impatient sigh, making Logan feel small and diminutive for asking.
         “I’m not.”
         “What’s that supposed to mean?”
         “Never mind that.”
         “No seriously, what did you mean? Are there ghosts here? That man with the blind left eye, is he a ghost?”
         “Honestly,” the voice sounded weary, “I don’t know.”
         “You don’t know?” she asked incredulously, her previous bout of fear, forgotten.
         “I know he’s not human, none of them are.”
         “What?”
         “It’s the water, there’s something about that water.”
         “Yeah, it’s supposed to help your writing, they told me.”
         “Maybe it does, but it does something else, too.”
         “Like what?”
         “When you drink it…I can’t accurately describe it, but something happens and you change.”
         “Change?”
         The owner of the voice sighed, frustrated.
         “I’m sorry, but this is a little much to take right now.”
         “I know, but you need to know this information, you need to escape.”
         “Escape? I will after I drink the water.”
         “NO, DON’T DRINK THE WATER???” the voice hissed this comment vehemently.
         “And why not?”
         “Something bad will happen, I can’t explain it, but trust me on this one.”
Logan paused for a second, trying to let this information sink in, then she asked carefully,
         “How do you know so much?”
The voice didn’t answer right away, perhaps cerebrating over its reply, then said,
         “Because it happened to me. I came here to drink the water, like you. And I did, and then they pushed me in and weird things happened…”
         “How anticlimactic,” Logan said blandly, “you could’ve told that better.”
         “I’m really starting not to like you.”
         “Join the club.”
         “But have to at least try to help you.”
         “Help me with what? Water? Is there something wrong with it? E. Coli, Botulism, Salmonella, Typhoid, something?”
         “NO!” the voice nearly screamed. Below them (apparently they were on an upper floor) alarmed voices started to rise and rapid footsteps began.
         “Now, I’m out of time,” The voice stated, defeated, “why do you have to be so difficult?”
         “I don’t know.” Logan replied, wishing she could’ve dished out a harsher statement.
         “Just take my word for it, don’t drink the water. Don’t do it.”
         “One question before you go.”
         “Fine, hurry up.” The voice sounded disgruntled.
         “If you hate it here so much, why don’t you leave?” She listened to the voice sigh and then listened to the answer.
         “Because I try to help people like you.”
         “Have any of them been helped.”
         “Eight have left without drinking the water, but I doubt you will.”
         “I might.”
         “Just listen, Logan, don’t drink the water, please don’t, I beg you.”
         “Wait!” Logan called, but the voice didn’t reply, it had slipped out somehow without making a sound. Logan had wanted to ask how it knew her name. She didn’t remember telling anyone. The voices were louder, now and the footsteps more urgent. Logan listened to their hastened approach with a sense of unease and disquiet. Once again, she wished she’d never come.

         After her visitors had left, verifying that no one else was in the room, Logan lay, staring up at a ceiling she couldn’t see. The words of the voice kept ringing in her head, giving her goose bumps. After thinking over it for a while, she concluded that the voice must have been a minion sent by Esmerelda. However farfetched this idea seemed, it helped her anxiety lessen. The more she thought of it, the less farfetched it seemed. Esmerelda, having caught wind of Logan’s impending success, decided she’d have to do something about it, perhaps she knew about the water’s ability. In fact, hadn’t she spoken to Kinsley about this very thing? So perhaps Kinsley had let a little information slip and Esmerelda decided to do something about it. The idea seemed so plausible, it had completely convinced her. In truth, Esmerelda hadn’t known, but had she; she more than likely would’ve done just as Logan had conjectured. So when footsteps returned down the hall and her door swung open, she wasn’t afraid, but triumphant.
         Elli stood in the doorway’s entrance, illuminated by a faint light in the hallway. Logan noted that it flickered, and she ascertained there were candles somewhere nearby.
         “It’s time to go.” Elli called into the dark void that was Logan’s temporary room.
         “How far away is it?” Logan questioned, watching Elli with interest and curiosity.
         “Oh, not far.” She waited for Logan to emerge from the darkness. Little did Logan know (and would never know), Elli couldn’t see well into the room, even though she had a source of light. Had Logan known this and had she the desire to, she could have attempted to escape. But Logan didn’t know and had no desire now to leave, not without the water, that is.
         “Should I grab my things?” Logan asked, trying to feel for the familiar shape of her purse, hoping they’d brought it when they brought her.
         “That won’t be necessary. You won’t need them.” Elli replied. The warnings of the voice returned to her, but she shrugged them away, cursing Esmerelda for making her paranoid. She approached Elli’s side and caught her eye. Logan almost took a step back. Those eyes, a queer shade of gold, just like the man at the diner. She shrugged it off and let Elli lead her down the hallway, lit, as Logan had ascertained, by flickering candles. Surely, Logan thought to assure herself, Elli and that man must be related somehow, maybe they’re brother and sister. She tried to smile to ease her mind of the thought but couldn’t quite accomplish the feat. Something still didn’t feel right. And as soon as I drink that water Logan thought, I’m hightailing it out of here and never coming back.
         “Wait here.” Elli commanded as she disappeared into a bedroom. She returned with two flashlights shortly after.
         “The bog surrounding the lake is full of snakes, we have to be careful. I wouldn’t want you to get bitten. The venom might hinder the-” Elli faltered for a second, perhaps trying to find the correct words to say.
         “-creative process.” She chirped falsely. The lodge was deathly silent, and the alacrity in Elli’s voice reverberated, giving the lodge a disquieting ambiance as the echoes faded.
         “Follow me.” Elli commanded in her crooning voice. Logan scoffed in her mind, thinking, Like I have a choice? She followed Elli down a flight of stairs, listening to the disquieting creaks of old wood, wondering if it was already too late to turn back.

         Outside, a full moon shone, lighting up the area almost brilliantly, yet the air was strangely frigid for early September. Goose bumps erupted on her arms and legs.
         “It’s cold.” Logan commented, rubbing her arms. Elli mmhmm’ed to agree and continued forward.
         The way was long than Elli had implied and full of sticker bushes that scratched andripped at Logan’s skin. Elli didn’t seem to mind. It almost seemed like she couldn’t feel the stickers tearing at her soft flesh. Logan noted that at one time a fairly large sticker ripped a moderate sized cut on Elli’s arm. She didn’t even flinch. For some reason, this deeply disturbed Logan. Again, she wished she’d never come.

         “We’re here!” Elli chirped after they’d broken through a barrier of shrubs, littered with sticker bushes. A large clearing came into view as they crossed through and not far off, Logan could see the shores of a lake. The moon reflected off the calm surface, revealing that it wasn’t as large as it appeared. The moon, unbelievably bright that night, also revealed a crowd surrounding the shores of the lake, proving Logan’s previous theory wrong. As she entered the presumably one-horse town, she’d ascertained that she population could not have exceeded 200, yet surrounding the shores must have been about twice that amount, if not more. A strange thought came into Logan’s head, Where have they all been hiding? Then she shook the thought off, thinking surely there must be other houses in the woods. Their eyes glistened in the moonlight, glinted with a strange greediness and Logan knew that, had it been day, she would have seen that their eyes were that same strange hue of gold. Suddenly, drinking the water seemed like a very bad idea. Elli slipped behind her and pushed her forward crooning,
         “Go on, it’s right in front of you, don’t be afraid.” Logan nodded and numbly took a step forward, as if in a trance. Her legs were doing things her mind wished to decline from. She turned back, perhaps to see if an escape could still be possible, but she saw that more people had begun to crowd in behind Elli, cutting off any possible way to escape.
         “No.” she muttered under her breath in disbelief as the shores of the lake became closer with every step she took. She listened to the disturbing whispers of the crowd, could feel their ethereal eyes on her, watching her, waiting. For what, Logan didn’t really wish to know, but knew she’d soon find out, her will or against it.

         As she neared the shores, she noticed that no water lapped onto the surrounding beach. The lake sat, waiting, a well of black ink. Elli slipped behind her and handed her a flashlight. Logan grasped it and turned its light onto the surface of the water, wishing immediately after that she hadn’t. The water, calm on the surface, flowed and ebbed in a strange, unseen current and it was that same eerie color of gold. She looked up at the crowd that now crowded snugly around her, perhaps pleading, her last attempt. But they gestured for her to drink and she reluctantly obliged.
         She cupped her hands together and dipped them into the water, not liking how the current sucked incessantly at her fingers, dragging at her with an unusual strength. And she definitely didn’t like the consistency, thick and slimy. Yet, her obvious revulsion would not sway the crowd behind her, she would have to drink. She brought her hands to her face, eyeing the strange water, and then drank.
Almost instantaneously after consuming the murky water, her mind filled almost to bursting with ideas for her next novel, even incorporating her past experiences in it. She realized, as her mind brimmed with the burden of the new ideas, that this new novel could potentially be her retribution, her requited revenge. She grinned and looked up from the water, then faltered. Someone was right behind her, perhaps bending over to reach out to her. She could feel their breath on her neck. Before she could whirl around to see who it might be, she was shoved forcefully into the lake.
         Flailing and coughing, she fought against the current. It unceasingly sucked at her, trying its hardest to bring her down, down, down.
         “Help!” she coughed, expelling water from her mouth as she did. The water was unusually warm despite the cold temperatures around her. On any normal occasion, she might have found delight in it, yet in this situation, it only furthered her fear. She looked toward her previous location and saw Elli and the old woman from the diner, standing, watching, with twin grins on their faces.
         “Oh, but we are helping you.” They said simultaneously. Logan yelped once again for help, a little more urgent this time, for the felt the beginning of fatigue in her muscles.
         “You’ll be like us.” Elli and the old woman stated, their grins widening to become eerily toothy.
         “One of us.” The crowd agreed. Logan fought harder, thrashing, splashing water onto the nearest to her. The ones that were drenched seemed to bask in a strange elation.
         “Don’t fight it, let it take you, lead you, change you.” Elli, the old woman, and the crowd crooned. Their eyes took in her struggle greedily and nastily. Soon,          Logan would have no choice.
         The current dragged and pulled at her feet, somehow with a greater force. She started to cry, tears mingling with the tainted water. Her life flashed before her eyes, in brilliant snippets and scenes. She’d always thought this a bit cliché and never included it in any of her stories. But now, considering the situation she was in, it seemed perfectly plausible. She let out a tear drenched yelp as her limbs gave and the current overtook her. Before she was completely submerged, she saw the crowd, their bodies undulating strangely in the moonlight, their eyes glinting fiercely and horrifically. And the force, prodigious and like a pair of strong hands, gripped her ankles and pulled her down to an abyss unfathomed, a place she’d written about in “Shadows”, her first novel, a place she’d often had nightmares about and now the force of the current was taking her there. She glanced down, her lungs screaming for air, and saw a faint glow emanating from somewhere in the deep. She gave one last futile attempt to hold her breath, failed, and then gasped. She found that, though she was a good hundred feet below the surface, she could breathe and as she sunk down, the light that pulsed and throbbed somewhere beneath her, grew brighter ever still. She closed her eyes and let it engulf her, no longer afraid.

         What felt like hours to Logan and a certain onlooker located in a patch of dense shrubbery, had only been a few minutes in reality.
         The owner of the voice watched as a figure emerged from the lake, watched as the crowd parted, and watched as Logan stepped among them. She bore a creepy grin and her eyes were the same eerie color of gold, just like everybody else in the town, well, except for one. Logan began to trod back toward town and the crowd, like a litter of eager puppies, followed happily. She was one of them now, the process had been successful, and she’d changed.
         Logan glanced up toward a bit of dense shrubbery and saw the person of which had tried to deter her from this moment of chance. She saw it was a woman, about ten years her senior, and she was watching her avidly. Logan grinned sadistically and waggled a little finger, thinking to herself that, later, this menace would be dealt with and Greenville would be pure, but until then, she had other things to do. For instance, she had a novel to write.