Splash. Pause. Splash-splash.
He brought the handset to his mouth.
Sploosh.
“Help.” His voice was so low, so small, there was almost no sound at all. “Help, help me.”
Splash-splash …
“Help,” he said, louder now. “Help me. Somebody, help!”
SPLASH-SLOSH-SPLASH …
“No!” Tony shouted. He stared in horror as the blackness gathered and folded and formed shadows in the dark: something monstrous and denser than the night, and it was right there, it was right there, it was right—
“HELP ME!” Tony shrieked. “HELP ME, SOMEBODY HELP—”
CASEY
Full Fathom Five
“CASEY!” RIMA GASPED. “That was Tony!”
“I know.” The words felt thin in his mouth, like flat letters on white paper. “I can’t see …”
“HELLLP!” Tony’s shriek tore through the night. “PLEASE HELP ME!”
“Tony!” Rima floundered around the hood, and that was when Casey heard not the shush of snow but a splash.
Water? He sniffed, and then his eyes widened. “Hey, do you smell that?”
“What are you …” She stopped moving and looked down, then shuffled her feet. Casey heard the slap and gurgle of liquid against the Camry’s metal chassis. “Gasoline?” she said. “But where did it come from? The van? How? The van couldn’t possibly hold that much.”
“I don’t know,” he said. Even if you factored in a rupture in the Camry’s tank, that wouldn’t explain this. “Look, I think we need to take a second here and …”
Another shriek from Tony, agonized and shrill, and then Rima was sloshing away from the car: “Tony! Tony, we’re—”
“No!” Casey’s arm pistoned out; his fist closed around her arm. “Don’t! Wait!” He heard her gasp and felt her go rigid. “What?” he said.
“Let me go!” And then she was shrieking, batting at him, like she’d completely lost it: “Let me go, let me go!” Flailing wildly, she tried twisting away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Rima!” Jesus, what was wrong with her? The girl was still screaming, and from across the ice, in the dark, Tony shrieked again: a drill bit of sound that cored into the meat of his brain, and God, all Casey wanted was for Tony to stop screaming and for this nutcase to stop hitting him. “Rima, stop, be quiet! You want whatever’s out there to find us, too?”
“Let go, let go!” In the light from his flashlight, he could see the cords standing in her neck and the glitter of an animal fear in her eyes. “Take your hands off!”
“Fine! Okay! There, you stupid …” As soon as he released her, she staggered, her feet tangling and slip-sliding. Without thinking, he reached for her again—to steady her, give her a hand; he was just trying to help, for God’s sake—but she aimed a kick, a goddamned kick.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “I told you not to touch me!”
“All right! Fine! Fall on your ass; I don’t give a shit!” Another blood-curdling scream from Tony set his teeth. “Just get back in the goddamned car!”
“What?” Rima was wild-eyed, her face drained of color. “No! Are you crazy? We have to help him!”
Was he crazy? “We can’t! What’s already happened has happened! We have to get inside, get off the snow!” Casey was already splashing back to the car. The gasoline fumes were starting to get to him; he could feel the burn in his throat. Breathing was hard, and his head ached. Lurching for the back door, he felt his boot suddenly skate, and he thought, Ice? Wait, what happened to the snow?
Another scream boiled from the darkness, but the sound was now much different: formless and queerly garbled, a drowning kid’s gurgle, and as liquid as this improbable lake of gasoline.
I don’t want to know, I don’t want to see this. Desperate now: “Rima, we can’t help him. We can’t even see him!”
She still wasn’t moving, the idiot. “But we can’t just leave him.”
“Yes, we can, and I’m going,” Casey said, and then he was grabbing the handle of the back door before he remembered: locked. Damn stupid … He was shaking so bad he couldn’t sock the key into the lock, had to hold it with both hands. Come on, come on. He felt the key ram home, and then he was twisting the key, hauling back on the handle. The door opened with a shriek, the hinges crying out. He practically dove into the car. Craning round, he saw that Rima hadn’t moved.
Well, screw this shit, and screw her. He dragged the door closed with a hard thunk. The locks socked home, and only then did he allow himself a relieved sigh. Safe. Or as safe as he could be in this nightmare. Of course, if whatever was out there came for them, he wasn’t so sure about that either. Car windows broke, didn’t they? You’d have to be one strong mother to do it, but a rock, a hammer, a stout piece of pipe, and then he was screwed. Man, what he wouldn’t give for a weapon.
Outside, Rima was a murky silhouette, still as a statue. Fine, let her die out here; he wasn’t risking his ass for a guy he’d just met. What was he supposed to do, anyway? Throw snowballs? Spit? God, his head was killing him from all those fumes. The metal box of the car muted Tony’s screams, so they were only bad and not bone-chilling, as if he were listening to a horror movie leaking from a distant television—but that was still plenty horrible enough.
Shut up, Tony. Casey squeezed his eyes tight. The taste of gasoline furred his tongue. Swallowing made him gag. Saliva pooled, and he spat, trying to rid himself of the taste. Shut up, Tony. Shut up, and die already if you’re going to, but shut the f— He let out a startled yelp at a sharp bap on the window behind his head. Turning, he saw Rima at the door. “What?” he shouted. “What do you want now?”
“Open up!” Rima’s fist hammered the window again. Even in the gloom, her eyes were bright and raw with terror. “Casey, please, open the door! Something’s coming! Quick, open the door!”
Oh, so now she wanted in. Fine, fine, crazy stupid bitch … Still fuming, he reached for the lock, no real thought behind it at all, only reflex, and then Big Earl, who’d been so quiet, boomed, What the hell you doing, boy?
“What?” He hesitated, his fingers hovering in midair, twitching a little like the legs of a spider. “I’m … I’m letting her in.” Thinking, I’m talking to a dead man. I’m having an argument with a ghost.