Nocturnes

I was afraid too of what our parents would say if they discovered that we were in this place, if they knew what we were pla

“I’m not afraid,” I said.

In my mind, I replayed fantasies of a life we might have together; of marriage, and children, and love, and the touch of her skin against mine. We had kissed, Catherine and I, and I had tasted her before she pulled away from me, laughing. Yet with each kiss she lingered a little longer, her laughter a little more uncertain, her breath a little shorter.

And I lived and died in every kiss.

“Are you sure?”

She stood on the bank and glanced at me over her shoulder. She was smiling, and there was that promise in her smile. She could tell what I was thinking. She could always tell. Then, with one short peal of laughter, she took a deep breath and arced into the pond. There was no splash. The surface simply separated to allow her passage, then bound itself together again behind her. No ripples appeared, and the rhythm of the water lapping at the bank remained undisturbed.

But I did not follow her. I looked into that black pool, and my courage left me. Instead, I waited for her, shivering, the grass sharp beneath my feet, the wind cold against my skin, and willed her to emerge once again from the water, her laughter baiting me and her eyes calling me to her.

But she did not return. Seconds passed, then an entire minute. I stared into the pool, hoping to see her golden form just below the surface, but there was nothing. There was not even birdsong in this place, and no flies buzzed. I thought of the warnings, the old tales. Others had descended into those depths, and some had never been seen again. The riverbanks had been searched in the hope that the waters might yield up their bodies, but they never did. Now only the bravest or most foolhardy came here, young men who hoped that their youthful displays would be rewarded by an embrace, or more. And when at last they walked away from this place, their hands entwined with those of another, they promised themselves that they would never return, for they were the lucky ones. They knew that others had not been so fortunate.

And so my love for her overcame my fear, and I closed my eyes and followed her into the depths.

The water was unimaginably cold, so cold that I felt my heart would stop beating and freeze within my body, and its strange thickness made it difficult to swim. I looked up and could not see the sun, yet there was a light of sorts. I could perceive my hands in front of my face, but the palms were lit from below, not above. I twisted in the water, facing the bed of the pond, and kicked back with my legs, moving toward the source of the illumination.

There was a house at the bottom of the pond.

It was built of stone and had two windows, one at either side of the door, and a roof that might once have been thatched but was now no more than slats and struts. The remains of a low stone wall curled like arms around what might once have been a garden, a gap in the middle where a gate had once hung, and a ruined chimney stack pointed an accusing finger toward the bright, blue, unseen world above. The light came from behind the windows of the dwelling, moving slowly from side to side as if what was bearing it were somehow trapped and, like a caged animal, had bound up its madness in relentless motion. Around the house, tall thick weeds grew, each fifteen or twenty feet in length and swaying gently in the flow. I had never seen anything like them before. It seemed to me that there was something wrong with them, for their swaying made me uneasy. It took me only seconds to realize what it was about them that troubled me.

Their rhythm was not being dictated by the current of the river. Instead, they moved independently of it, seeking, probing, spreading themselves through the dark waters like the tentacles of some great sea creature searching for prey. And at the end of one weed, something golden thrashed, and a broad halo of hair was briefly burnished by the light from below. Catherine looked up at me, her cheeks swollen as she tried to hold in the last of her air, and shook her head desperately. Her hands reached for me, the fingers grasping. I began to swim to her, but the weed wrapped itself once more around her body, twisting her in a circle as it did so, tightening its grip upon her. Catherine’s mouth opened, sending a stream of precious bubbles toward me. Her eyes grew wide and her lips seemed to form my name as the dark green water entered her body. Her thrashings increased in intensity and her hands lashed out at the weed, her fingers wrenching wildly at it. Then her lungs flooded, her struggles became feeble, and she grew still as she drowned. She hung in the depths, her arms outstretched and her eyes open, staring into eternity.

Even then I thought that I could save her, that somehow I could bring her to the surface and pump that foul water from her, that I could fill her with life from my body and taste once again her breath in my mouth. But as I tried to swim to her, she began to recede from me. I thought at first that it must be some illusion, that the water was simply deeper than it at first seemed, but the ruined cottage continued to grow nearer even as she drew farther away from me. I watched helplessly as the weed pulled her deeper and deeper down until, with one final jerk, she was yanked through the doorway, and I understood at last that the weeds were growing not around the house, but from within it.

Inside the cottage, the light stopped moving. Through the wreckage of the roof, I saw Catherine anchored to the bed of the river, the weed still tight around her waist. There came the muffled, distorted sound of an old chain clanging on stones as the light approached and surrounded her, then wrapped her in its embrace. It assumed a shape: arms and legs formed, thin and pale, the muscles wasted and the skin hanging loose upon the bones. I saw long white hair writhing in the water. I caught a glimpse of naked flesh, wrinkled by the relentless flow of the river and pitted with ugly red sores. Old female breasts, flat and lifeless, pressed themselves against the still form of my beloved Catherine, as it bent as if to kiss her.

I was almost within reach of the roof now and, for the first time, the being seemed to sense my approach. It twisted toward me, raising its face to mine, and I saw its mouth. Where lips and teeth should have been, there was instead the round, sucking hole of a lamprey, red and engorged. It opened and closed, pulsing quickly, already tasting the girl it had ensnared. Above the mouth, black lidless eyes regarded me blankly before its hunger finally overcame it and it turned away to begin its work. I tried to wrench one of the struts from the roof to use as a weapon, but my strength was failing and my head ached from the effort of holding my breath. I felt certain that I had only seconds of air left, but I would not leave Catherine to this thing.

Yet as I gripped the wood, I sensed movement around me. White things shimmered at the periphery of my vision. I looked to my left and found that the length of weed closest to me no longer moved gently in the flow. It could not, for the burden it held constrained it. Strands of green had wrapped themselves around the legs of the boy, holding him in place even as he seemed to be reaching for the surface, but this one was long dead. There were dark patches around his unseeing eyes, and the edges of his bones showed like knives beneath his skin. His lips were torn and bruised where that lamprey mouth had attached itself to his for one final kiss.