by Gaby Triana
“Alright, people, let’s finish this outside. Come on.” Alvarez gestured us further down the hall. At least he wasn’t treating us like criminals anymore.
But Mori collapsed to their knees, face in hands. “I’m staying. I have no one.”
“Not true.” I offered my hands. “You have Citana. You have me…”
“You have me,” Wilky said, squatting beside them.
As Wilky tried talking Mori off the ledge, and the two officers met with the rest of the team on their way back from inspecting the damage, Crow shifted his weight against the wall. A spasm rocked his body, then another, and another. A raving mad look crossed his eyes. He began sweating profusely, agonizing over some unseen force. The haze of purple-silver light I’d seen in the ballroom emanated from his eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Dark cracks formed in his cheeks. His eyes darkened to pure black.
He looked to me for help, but I froze.
How could I help? Crow wasn’t Crow anymore.
To my horror, he was growing taller, limbs cracking and stretching, as he writhed in pain. One of the officers noticed it at the same time Wilky and Mori saw it, too, and watched agape, as Crow’s torso thickened. A layer of slime covered him, oozing out of his pores.
“Wilky…Mori…time to go,” I said.
“We are not…going…anywhere!” Crow screamed, his mouth opening into a wide tunnel. My eyes widened to absorb the horror. Like the Antoni of my nightmares, Crow shrieked out his rage. “I never should’ve let you in heeeere!”
Hot wind blasted from his elongated throat, lifting flaps of clothing and hair on everyone, his gaping mouth firing squall after squall of tainted green miasma. Loose papers, fiberglass, even wall sconces detached from the walls and flew around us, as Crow released suppressed rage. Years and years’ worth.
The worst part was I understood it.
I could’ve easily become the monster.
We tried to run, getting as far as the atrium where pieces of ceiling had begun falling, whole panels, fiberglass, and stucco raining down on our heads. My vision blacked momentarily when something hard hit my head. I fell on my back and covered my head with my arms. As I scrambled to find a hiding spot underneath a cypress tree, a dislodged painting fell at my feet—the Lady of the Lake as her mythical, legendary self, her beauty a ruse to earn human sympathy.
His screams—her screams—assaulted us. With each shrieking gust of wind that came out of his mouth, I watched Crow’s skin change to a deep aquamarine, as swags of lake grass grew from his head and got caught in the whirlwind. Smooth, scale-covered breasts formed on his torso, his waist cinched into an hourglass shape, and his legs lengthened then fused together to form one.
Two of the cops drew their weapons and fired round after round at Crow’s periphery, a misguided attempt to scare him off without hurting him. It was clear they didn’t know what to make of him, having been a young human a moment before. The two inspectors were gone; two other cops ran off in opposite directions.
The one, fused leg of the creature that was no longer Crow had formed a fish tail, the mass of which supported its upper weight, and its lake grass hair had morphed into thin tentacles at the ends, feelers that covered a multitude of square footage at once. Its luminous eyes covered by filmy membranes appeared blind to light. The creature reached out its long arms, quickly stretching into tentacles, and caught each of the two, fleeing officers in its coils.
They were crushed on capture, their bodies quivering, nerves outplaying their remaining actions. The fine tentacles of hair stretched behind it, into the repressed gloom of the hallway, and plucked out the two remaining police officers. One slipped from its grip and fell to the ground, where the creature promptly crushed it with its tail, and the other slapped the female officer with its mermaid tail until her skull smashed into the Sunlake’s dissolving walls.
The beast plucked the two county code enforcers from behind the columns of the lobby and raised them to the ceiling. It inspected them casually before popping each one into its maw then ripping the heads off one, then the other. As blood rained down around me, spattering my arms, I winced and tried my best not to breathe, so it wouldn’t find me.
At times, the creature looked like Crow, helpless and remorseful. At others, the Lady of the Lake. But it was neither. The creature was something else, something from the depths of the lake we never could’ve seen coming, something ancient that had lain dormant for centuries, awaiting its perfect moment of rebirth. When it was done devouring the five or six bodies it’d smashed to pulp, it turned its attention to us.
Wilky and Mori scrambled to share my hiding spot. Our arms embraced each other as one. In their touch, I “saw” their fear wind its way through my veins, turn mostly black with flecks of scant specks of light, like tourmaline. The creature turned its rage on us.
Death by evil mermaid, headed this way.
“Run,” I breathed.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Mori and Wilky took off, slipping past the creature undetected, as it let out another wail. I’d started out as well, but then the walls of the Sunlake reverberated, releasing tatters of wallpaper, Mediterranean light fixtures, and artwork, the hotel’s remaining shreds of dignity. I sank back again.
The creature narrowed its sightless eyes in my general vicinity and screamed with words I couldn’t hear. I’ve waited centuries…
Every warning I’d ever heard from my family, church, or friends echoed through my ears. Don’t mess with the spirit world. You’ll be sorry. I tried again to run, managing to get a few feet into the hall, when the subterranean siren’s tail came thrashing toward me, a rush of sulfurous air preceding it, powering its muscled flesh against me. I retreated at what felt like hundreds of miles an hour against one of the atrium’s outer walls, heard a crack, and tumbled. My bones screamed in agony.
Along the glass, a fissure spiked upward, spitting sharp fragments raining toward the ground, as my vision wavered in and out of darkness. Vaguely, I heard Wilky’s voice imploring me to reach out and hold onto him, but then that massive whooshing tail swept the floor once more, slamming Wilky into one of the great columns.
He slumped with a thud, writhing in pain.
“Wilky!” Mori ran to him. “Vale, let’s go!” they screamed across the hall, but there was no way I could span the distance without getting scooped up.
“Just go!” I screamed.
Mori kept shouting, but I couldn’t focus on their words. A roaring boom from the creature’s depths groaned in a voice that didn’t translate as human, but I understood just the same. It needed one more.
One more what?
One more soul to make the transformation complete. Then it would rise from this forsaken nest where it’d spawned and seek eternal life in the natural world.
I would’ve liked to reply, Like hell you will, but I was only one tiny life. If the beast was going to take anybody, it’d be me, not Wilky, not Mori, who had already suffered enough for one lifetime. I’d lived a good life, despite the lies. They were just lies, not physical pain, not harassment, not abandonment, not hate.
I had a family.
I measured the distance between the spot where I lay hurt and the auxiliary door or even the closest broken window. I’d rather cut the hell out of my skin jumping through one than provide the last soul the creature needed. If I couldn’t make it, so be it. I’d already done what I’d come to do—save the others.
Give yourself, the creature told me, its tentacles curling and whipping.
“You won’t survive out there,” I replied.
Yes. There is enough hate to sustain me.
“There’s more love than hate.”
In the distance, I heard the ambulances navigating toward the Sunlake. They wouldn’t make it past the gate, I knew. But who would? Macy. I could hear her voice calling for me from the back of the building. The veranda. She’d found the same path I’d used to first come here.
“Vale!” she cried.
I could s
ee her and Citana pounding on the atrium glass. “I’m alright! Go home! Get out!”
“It’s a sinkhole!” Macy screamed. “Vale, did you hear me?”
Yes, I could hear her, but there was nothing I could do. The atrium I’d feared for weeks had become my terrarium, and the creature was my captor.
The stress cracks, the squashed columns, the gate that had shifted on its axis, the sunken foundation, the ravine in the basement, the fissure through which the lake water poured… It wasn’t only a crumbling, decrepit building, but a literal pit of death opening beneath us. An eroded limestone foundation about to suck the dying and unstable into its earthy depths.
Through the glass, I could see Macy’s mouth open when she saw what I faced. All the creature needed was one more soul. It could easily break out of the crumbling building and take Macy, Citana, or Lucinda, too.
Macy, please, I tried telling her. GO.
But sisters don’t leave when sisters need help, and so she remained at the glass, pounding and searching for a way in. When the creature shifted its attention to Macy, I jumped from the foliage, leaping over rocks and fallen palm fronds to distract it. It coiled a tentacle underneath me, lifted my flailing body to its scaly face. Its mouth was an explosion of teeth. Its eyes, no pupils, no soul, just two gaping holes of blindness.
When I looked into them, I saw reflected back at me the woman who’d crashed through the atrium, whose dead flesh the creature had used as a starter to its new form. It was Crow, purple hair sprouting from its massive, shiny shoulders. It was the woman holding her womb, furious at what had been done without her consent. It was the priest with the dire warning. It was Wilky’s grand-uncle and the other men in cages. It was Fae, clutching her gold. It was the little boy who’d witnessed his mother’s death.
It was no one and everyone at the same time, every soul who had passed without dignity in this cursed place.
The creature wheezed open its jaws. What if…after I died, there was nothing on the other side?
No Heaven, no Hell, no in-between, no duality.
What if “spirit communication,” the gift of sixth sense, the psychic ability to “see” another dimension was all natural brain phenomenon that would end after we drew our last breaths?
This was my ultimate fear.
Macy kept pounding and pounding at the glass, and the creature, distracted, loosened its grip on my torso. I wriggled out of its grasp and fell twenty feet to the soil below, rolling into the bushes behind the tree. I watched it thrash with anger, searching for me in the plants. It upended trees left and right, slapped its tail, and toppled the fountain. The mermaid fell on her stone head and cracked at the neck. Her eyes gazed at the creature.
As more debris rained into the hallway from the floors above, the creature blocked the entrance to the atrium considering its next move, while I prayed for a way out. Closing my eyes, I imagined the purple light washing over me. Nothing existed but now, this moment. I imagined running past the beast and spilling out the front of the hotel. Nothing else. I could do it. And if I couldn’t, I’d die in peace knowing I’d tried.
The creature slowed, its tentacles curling beautifully around it. I pitied its need for fury. It would not survive in a world overdue for healing. Though plenty of anger remained, the old establishment was on its way out. The new establishment was about love, joy, and acceptance.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Old habits died hard. I sucked in a breath, stood, rubbing the tips of my fingers together—and ran.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…
Straight towards the creature, ducking through plants, aiming for the right side of the hall where it hopefully wouldn’t see me. I leapt through small spaces, flew through the air, landed on the other side of the beast. But the lobby column with the fishtail began crumbling, its crown molding raining down in chunks, and one hit me square on the temple.
I cried out.
The mercreature heard me. It shifted, swept its tail along the lobby floor, and curled around my body, squeezing tight. I punched against its slimy, giant scales with my fists, but it lifted me to its mouth, sniffed me once, then to my shock, catapulted me across the air back into the atrium.
As I flew, I reached out and caught the tangled mess of the loose chandelier’s old wiring. Why had it let go of me? Was it playing with its food before it ate me? As the creature spotted my dangling limbs, it slithered toward me and peered into my face with iridescent blind orbs. Someone was inside.
“Crow?”
The ground began to shake. It rumbled so furiously, I knew this was the end of my human experience on Earth. I wasn’t afraid anymore, but the creature was. It howled at what was happening, just as I heard another howl from down below.
My lupine familiar stalked the atrium, searching for a way to reach me.
“Lobo, no.”
Every few seconds, I caught his beautiful golden eyes looking up worriedly, saw his silky black fur reflecting dim light. He stepped over rocks and wooden planks. He was solid, as solid as any animal that roamed.
From underneath us, the atrium floors began to crumble into the inky fathoms below. The creature looked at me. Why wasn’t it crying anymore? For one split second, the creature’s iridescent eyes turned luminous blue. It cast a glance at the cross around my neck.
Crow always looked at the cross around my neck.
“Crow, it’s okay,” I said. “I forgive you.”
None of it had been his fault. He was just a kid when it happened.
“It’s over,” I told the entity controlling him. “This place is coming down, and you’re coming down with it.”
I’ll be reborn, it spat and hissed.
“You won’t. You’ll be trapped here.”
Hold your charm, I heard Crow say.
“My what?”
Your father’s protection charm.
I could barely hang onto the chandelier, how could I hold onto my charm?
I switched to my other hand and hung with renewed determination. With the little energy I had left, I pressed my palm, not against my charm, but against the creature’s cheek. Closing my eyes, I “saw” its pain, a hurt older than this hotel, a deep hole in the earth, the passage through which it’d been born. I saw its fall from grace, the moment it was cast into hiding by the universe.
Consumed by hate.
Helpless and hurting.
I opened my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I told Crow, trapped inside it.
Its blind eyes blinked once.
And then, it opened its mouth.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Some places couldn’t help but be miserable. They festered, steeped in the lingering effects of human wrath, fury, and pain. They never should’ve been born in the first place and held onto their wounds like a pacifier. The Sunlake Springs Resort was one of these places.
And it was ready to die.
I touched my father’s charm.
My little starshine, sleep, oh, so tight
My little moonshine, dream with the night
As the bottomless tunnel of teeth wrapped around my body, I smelled its foul breath and punched a serrated tooth so hard, my free hand cut open. The earth began to fall away. I heard Lobo cry. The creature spun its head to see what was going on, and my body flew out of its mouth. I swiveled, grasped for the chandelier’s chains and hung on. The same object had touched my father.
The walls of the hotel came crumbling down.
Lake water rushed through the halls, and the land and lake merged as one.
I felt a squeeze of muscle around me. The entity tried pulling me off the chandelier chain, but I held on. With a roar, a chasm opened in the floor beneath the atrium. Plants, rocks, discarded benches tumbled into the tunnel. The chandelier swung back and forth, two of its chains loose. I contemplated letting go. To keep itself from falling into the chasm, the creature released me and clung to the chasm’s edge instead, roa
ring angrily.
I heard Lobo whimper. I wanted him gone and safe. Instead, he’d climbed onto a mountain of broken debris and began howling at the creature.
“Lobo, no!” I appreciated he was trying to protect me, but there was no way for him to help.
More of the floor fell away, concrete and tile tumbling, eroding closer to the wolf. The creature swung one of its long, coiling arms toward Lobo, which he artfully dodged as he sailed from one pile of debris to another. The sinkhole yawned open. If I didn’t jump now, I’d be sucked into it.
My little starshine, sleep, oh, so tight
My little moonshine, dream with the night
I swung, gained momentum, then soared through the air, aiming for the other side of the earth’s opening. My feet hit ground, my knees cracked, and pain radiated through my leg. When the mercreature saw what I’d done, it tilted its head back and bellowed into the atrium. Glass shattered and showered down.
Lobo skirted the outer edge of the sinkhole. He whimpered and limped.
“Come here, boy. Come on,” I called to him.
But the Sunlake gave its last breath. Water and plaster rained all around, as it begged to put itself out of its misery. The creature hung on, blindly grasping at plants, tree trunks, and rocks.
It wrapped a slimy coil around Lobo.
The wolf squealed.
“No!” I screamed.
The last of the standing walls crumbled. The ceiling fell to pieces—plaster, pipes, dust plummeting all around me. Debris smashed onto my shoulders, as I wrapped my arms around my head to protect myself. As the Sunlake Springs surrendered to the earth, its resident evil leapt over the chasm right at me, falling short, holding onto the edge, clinging with the same tentacle that held Lobo.
Calm, golden eyes watched me.
Nothing to fear.
The creature squeezed its coil to gain leverage, shutting the light in Lobo’s eyes out forever. My heart filled with rage so deep, my bellows rivaled the mammoth’s. It hung off the chasm’s edge, pulling itself up with two appendages, flinging them at me in a last-ditch effort to survive.
