He was right. We stumbled down the hill. Then we ran. Well, it wasn’t exactly running. It was more like walking fast but not fast enough to fall. It seemed pathetically slow.
The other team had disappeared down the path into the woods. When we crossed the break in the tree line, I glanced down it. There they were, tiny figures now, looking like shadows in a natural tunnel.
“One last chance,” a voice in my head said.
“I’m getting thirsty,” Marine remarked at that moment, possibly intentionally reassuring me that we were making the right decision. Because that settled it. We were going to the loch. It was much closer now.
We keep moving. I kept looking back at the knoll, now a distant feature in the background. I checked it like a person with OCD checking to make sure a door’s locked. I expected to see a large black shape on the hill or on top of the sacrificial cross. But I didn’t see anything.
Maybe it wasn’t there, or maybe it had followed the other group to the tower. Or maybe it didn’t exist, and was just some type of trick with sound effects to get us moving. Bastards.
–––––
We arrived at the shore of the loch. Beautiful desolation. It was lonely and still and cold – words that described much of Scotland. I looked at the water and one word seemed to sum it up: cold. I shivered, both from the wind that blew here and the still of that surface of the lake reflecting the sky – an ocean-like mess of dark clouds, whitecaps, and sunless, fading light.
The castle was in ruins. Beautiful, but ancient to the point where it sometimes looked more like a grouping of natural rock formations than something crafted and constructed by human hands.
It was perched on a peninsula and was accessible by a long causeway supported by stone arches. Apparently at certain times, depending on rainfall or snowmelt or whatever, the peninsula could become an island.
“I need water,” Clea said.
“We all do,” said Marine. “Let’s go ... Wait. What the fuck is that?”
Down the beach, there was something by the shore, only meters from the water’s edge. My first impression was that it was a giant anchor, set ornamentally by the beach as some type of maritime monument or something. There was a scarecrow bound to it.
“Water first, then we check it out,” I said. “Or ignore it.”
We didn’t ignore it. The “scarecrow” turned out to be the body of a girl. She had long brown hair that covered her face. Like Cleona, she was wet and nearly naked, but this one didn’t have the body that she did. Clea looked like a model. This one looked just like an average girl. There was something familiar, or at least less threatening about that. I still didn’t want to go near it.
“Oh fuck, another one,” Marine said. “They’re laying out the bait. We shouldn’t be here.”
Marine was right. There was something really, really wrong about all of this. With a growing sense of doom, I thought, Oh no. Bear was right. They want us to go the castle. There’s something in the loch. Or coming to the loch. This is the last place we should be.
“You’re right,” I said to him. “There’s something wrong here. We need to go.”
“Where?” Clea asked.
“Anywhere,” Marine replied. I totally agreed.
There was something off here that I couldn’t quite identify. I had a growing sense of dread. I’d had it ever since this whole contest started (well, actually it started when I woke up in jail, or even back when I was marching in the parade and saw the size of the crowd and all of the police). No, I’d been feeling nervous for a long time, but his was different. This was something much, much worse.
I drank from the loch. The water was clear and pure and ice cold. I felt a momentary hit of relief. I had just fulfilled my most basic need for survival. It was a physical and psychological victory. Maybe this little refreshment would led to some renewed confidence and strength and ... The conversation ended. The girl on the cross looked up and spoke.
“Help me,” she murmured. “Dear God, help me.”
God isn’t here, I thought to myself. If He is, He’s just watching. Like everybody else.
I pulled out my pistol and pointed it at the girl’s head. Marine, eager to get on with this and get out of there, impulsively reached for the hair hanging in front of her face. He inserted his fingers and pulled back the bangs like a curtain splitting to reveal a stage.
He instinctively jumped back and gasped, like someone opening a box with spider in it.
I suddenly felt cold, as if I had jumped into the freezing loch only meters from my feet. It was a miracle that I didn’t pull the trigger.
The girl’s face wasn’t monstrous, yet it terrified me as if it were. My brain started the denials, and I was starting to accept its protests, but Marine’s voice confirmed my first impression and worse nightmare.
“Moira,” he said calmly (but breathing heavily), “That’s you.”
“No,” I said, “It’s ...” I had no idea how to finish that thought.
“Moira,” Marine insisted. “That’s you. You have a sister?”
“No,” I whispered, horrified and fascinated by what I was looking at,”
“Please,” the girl said.
I regained a little composure, shoved the gun closer and blurted out, “What are you?”
The girl looked like she was going to cry. “I’m ... I’m a sacrifice. They said so. Please help me. Please.”
I looked at Marine. He looked back at me. His bewildered expression must have mirrored mine. We looked at the woman.
Am I really that fat? I wondered.
Then Marine said, “I know what she is. She’s a doppelgänger.”
“What?”
“A Skin Walker, a shape shifter, or something,” Marine said.
“Like a faerie,” I offered.
“No, not that nice.”
He didn’t get it. The Sidhe (or Scottish faeries) were not known for being nice. In fact, they were very dangerous. They were powerful, territorial, and vindictive. They could make themselves invisible. They were kidnappers of children. When Americans think of faeries, they think of Disney and fantasy art and stuff, but in Scotland, we know better.
“I don’t know what she is,” I said.
The girl cried out, “My God. What is wrong with you people? Get me down from here!”
I looked at Marine. I was starting to wonder what to do. Fortunately, Marine made the hard decision easier.
“Leave her. We’re going. This is all just some type of ...”
Marine stopped in mid-sentence. Clea had slipped her arms around him from behind. Her lips were whispering into his ear. Marine looked alarmed, then relaxed. I saw him involuntarily smile as he felt her breath on his skin.
Wonderful, I thought. She’s trying to change his mind without challenging me. Smart move. I saved her earlier, and I am holding a gun.
I turned and looked at the woman. She looked at me slyly, acknowledging the unspoken “competition” between us now to see who had the most influence over the man she had her arms draped around.
I could see the hope on the captive girl’s face as she looked from me to Marine, understanding, like I did, that her fate could still be open to discussion.
I looked at her closer.
So that’s my natural hair color.
I hadn’t seen it in a long time. Still, the details were staggering. How was this possible? How...
She looked into my eyes, imploring. That was a little freaky. It was like staring into a mirror. Then her gaze broke from mine and focused somewhere behind me. Her eyes widened in terror. I turned around.
I heard a loud splash. Marine and Clea were thrashing about in the water. The loch got deep fast. The two were only a few meters in and already the water was above their waists. At first I thought something had grabbed them both and yanked them in.
They thrashed about in the water. Clea had lost her clothing and was clinging to Marine’s body from the back. Her arms and legs were wrapped around him.
My first thought was that she couldn’t swim. I’ve heard that you never want to jump in after someone like that, because they’ll panic and drag you down, then you’re in danger of drowning. Instead, you want to throw them something to grab on to and pull them to the safety.
With all of the thrashing, splashing, and yelling, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Marine didn’t look like he was trying to help Clea stay on him. In fact, it was the opposite. He was trying to shake her off. And Clea didn’t look terrified. In the flashes of action I saw between splashes, she almost looked happy ... wickedly happy.
The two went down.
The girl on the cross was screaming.
“Marine!”
I pointed my gun but didn’t have a target. The two disappeared beneath the dark water. Seconds passed painfully. Then the pair burst from the surface, still bonded, clinging, and thrashing like lovers. Marine gasped for air. Clea was not letting go, and she wasn’t just clinging to him. Her hair and skin seemed to be sticking to him.
In a stroke of genius (or luck), Marine shuffled out of his jacket, breaking his bond with the woman-thing.
He staggered to shore. When the water fell below waist-level, I could see he was bleeding. He lurched straight towards me.
“Get out the way!” I yelled. I couldn’t get a shot off with him in the way. Seeing him reach for me, my priorities shifted. I stashed the gun and went to him.
I reached Marine in knee-high water. He practically fell on me. Although he wasn’t a big guy, he almost knocked me over with his weight. Like soldiers on a battlefield, I half-carried him to shore. We only had to slosh a few meters, but I wouldn’t feel safe until we were far from the water.
When we were on the rocky beach, I let him down (by the cross) and whipped around, expecting to see the creature right behind us, grabbing at my ankles.
But she was gone. The surface of the water was calm, as if nothing had happened.
Then I saw it. About ten meters out, something broke the surface of the loch. It popped out several centimeters and stayed still, looking almost like a rock. Only it wasn’t a rock. It was Clea. The top of her head and her eyes rose above the surface, while her nose, mouth, and the rest of her remained beneath. She had no need to come up for air. She stared at us with those vacant blue eyes. They had no emotional expression. As far as I could see, she hadn’t transformed into anything hideous. She was still a pale, dark-haired, blue-eyed woman ... who was naked, breathing underwater, and living in a cold, dark Scottish loch. There was something very, very wrong with that.
I pointed my pistol with a shaky hand and fired at the thing. A small splash rippled the water near her head, but the she-creature didn’t move. Her eyes just blinked like those of an alligator peering over the surface.
My mind kept conjuring new nightmares. Maybe she knew that I had little chance of hitting her at this distance. Or maybe the animal part of her brain had taken over and she didn’t know or care about the danger of guns. Or maybe she didn’t care because bullets couldn’t hurt her.
Just as I was feeling the fatalistic, Marine, with a sudden surge of effort, managed to get to his feet and throw a rock. It splashed loudly, and was large enough to make the monster move slightly. The attack was a nice try. The rock landed close to the creature, but like with my wasted bullet, a near-miss was still a miss.
Marine stumbled slightly, but somehow stayed on his feet. I looked at his face as he stared out at the lake. I saw his fear building and turned my head to look, somehow knowing what I would see. The water monster was moving closer.
Suddenly, an explosion of water burst into the air like the hand of a sea god reaching for something in the sky. The force knocked Marine and me to the ground. The woman in the water was blasted in half, with the top of her body going in one direction and the bottom in another. Gore rained down on the lake, and the dark water consumed all. Like a willing accomplice, the loch covered up the evidence, remained quiet, and feigned innocence.
I was stunned. I was out of breath. I kept staring at the spot, as if expecting more monsters to surface. None did. What just happened? Did someone around here have a canon? I looked at the castle. Did we have some type of backup? Maybe the monster triggered a mine, or self-destructed, or...
Marine laid on his back, coughing. Then, after a moment, he muttered, “I knew the grenade would come in useful.”
Marine had discarded his jacket in the loch like a selkie shedding her seal skin. His T-shirt was thrashed like a punk’s, but unlike a poser, beneath his torn shirt were bloody gashes.
“Oh God, Marine.”
He sat up and I helped him remove his shirt. I momentarily admired how in-shape he was. But my eyes were commandeered by the groups red lines running across his arms and torso. Most of the gashes were bleeding, but I didn’t see any spurting blood, which was a good sign. That meant no major blood vessels had been severed. That’s about all I knew about first aid though.
I also knew that you were supposed to keep a person warm. I peeled off my jacket and gave it to Marine. He nodded and took it, also understanding the importance.
I simply said, “We’re going to need that med-kit.”
“It’s not bad,” he said. “Really.”
He was shivering badly. I looked around and said, “We need to find shelter,” I said. “We need to stop some place and make a fire. We need to ...”
I looked at the stone bridge in the distance leading to the castle. There were large arches underneath it. I thought I saw movement over there, something from the corner of my eye. I stared. The only movement came from the clouds overhead, their mirrored reflections on the water of the loch, and the water itself. All moved swiftly and silently, as if they too were eager to speed past this scene of horror.
I told myself that maybe I was seeing things, or it was a bird or something. I was just starting to turn my head when ... There!
A shadow seemed to separate from the darkness under a large arch in the middle of the bridge. Then in merged back into the blackness where it had come from.
I froze. For several minutes, nothing happened. Then I saw it (or thought I saw it) again. If I had blinked I would have missed it.