“Oh shit,” Kathleen said.
They rushed up the stairs.
“The ground’s saturated,” Pat told her, pulling on his rubber hip waders. “I read once that during floods, the water doesn’t come in under the door or through the walls so much as it just seeps up through the foundation. That’s what’s happening now.”
Kathleen started to argue again, but closed her mouth.
Abandoning her home did not come easy to her, but she knew he was right. They just couldn’t wait around. Maybe if it had just been the two of them, but baby Jesse changed all that. They couldn’t afford to take chances.
Pat pulled on his raincoat—he wasn’t really sure why—and stepped out onto the porch.
As he moved down the steps, Kathleen grabbed his arm. “No,” she said.
“What?”
“I’ve got a really bad feeling. Don’t go out there.”
He wasn’t in the mood for her premonitions. Now of all goddamn times. He went down and stepped into the muck. It was oddly warm, thick and slopping like oatmeal. It seemed to have the same degree of thickness. He trudged through it over to the Dodge. He would back it up to the porch and Kathleen and the baby could get in and off they’d go. A simple plan, really.
By the time he got to the truck, the muck was up to his thighs.
The Dodge was high-profile, but even so the mud was up over the tires. Maybe it was too late. Maybe they would have to wait it out. Get upstairs and hope for the best.
No, dammit. They had to get out.
Kathleen was on the porch.
“Get Jesse ready,” he said.
At the moment he said that, he felt something move against his leg. There were probably all kinds of things bobbing in the muck, but this one moved. It brushed against his knee, then against the side of his other leg. The muck moved with secret eddies and ripples like a moat in a fairy tale.
What the hell?
He was about to call out to Kathleen when something hit his right ankle, gripping it in a crushing embrace, twisting it. He made a grunting sound and dropped into the mud, submerging in it. It flowed into his mouth and down his throat. He fought and thrashed in unbelievable panic as he was towed away with a violent jerking underneath the truck.
Something seized his right arm, then his left bicep.
And something else bit into his throat, shearing his carotid. In a dreamlike haze, he remembered nearly drowning out at Black Lake when he was a kid… as he gagged on mud and his own dark, pulsing blood.
7
Glub-glub-glub.
More of the vile black drainage dropped into the sink. There was a good five or six inches of it in there now. Tessa did not believe it was all coming from the tap. Much of it, in fact, most of it, was gurgling up from the drain.
Though that was hardly her biggest concern.
Because there was something in there and it was alive.
It had not moved in the past ten minutes or so that she had been staring at it. She was beginning to seriously wonder if she had imagined it all. Maybe she had. Maybe—
There was a gurgling sound from deep within the black slop. It roiled and splashed, a few bubbles rising to the surface and popping one by one. Tessa stood there watching it, nearly transfixed. Her throat felt dry and her limbs felt weak. She wanted to get away from whatever was in there, but she seemed to lack the strength.
More gurgling.
A chunk of something about the size of a steel wool pad bobbed to the surface. It seemed to have the consistency of solidified grease. Whatever it was, it was disgusting.
Her stomach shifted unpleasantly.
It was times like this that she really missed Charlie, though she supposed she missed him just about every hour of every day. Tessa was old-school. If there was a creature in the house then it was the man’s responsibility to do something about it. She had no problem with traditional duties. The cooking and cleaning had always been her department—last thing she’d ever wanted in a kitchen was a man—and the fixing, sprucing, and creature-killing had always been Charlie’s.
But Charlie had been in the ground these long seven years.
Tessa knew she’d have to handle this, whatever it was. The idea sickened her. Last year when the mice came to visit, she could barely keep her stomach down when she removed their broken little bodies from the traps. Somehow, whatever this was, she figured it would be worse.
The slop moved again and this time it was from the motion of whatever was in there.
Tess felt faint with panic.
Perspiration beaded her brow.
She could hear people outside, calling to each other from porches. They were like shipwreck survivors shouting to each other as they clung to bits of wreckage. They couldn’t help her.
If you want this critter out of your sink, old woman, then you’re going to have to do it. Nobody but you.
Gah. The idea was appalling. The only thing that gave her strength was that the monster was in the sink, in the kitchen, and the kitchen was her domain. She trucked no interference from intruders here.
A weapon.
There was a bag of old plates and utensils she was sending to Goodwill. She plucked a roasting fork out of there. It was nearly as long as her arm and would do quite nicely. If what was in the sink had come up through the drain, then it was small. It would be no match for the roasting fork.
But just to be sure, Tessa dug out a tenderizing mallet. With the fork and the mallet, she was armed like a medieval knight.
All right, whatever you are, I’m ready.
She wasn’t and she knew she wasn’t, but there was no choice. Trying to keep her stomach down, she prodded the floater with her fork. Just the motion of doing that disturbed the slop and ripened the already horrendous gaseous odor emanating from the sink. It made her think of dead, waterlogged things afloat in stagnant ponds.
She prodded it again.
It looked very much like a piece of greasy meat, though stained darkly from the muck soup. Clenching her teeth, she jabbed the fork around in there and felt the tines scraping off the bottom of the sink.
Maybe there wasn’t anything in there after all.
She jabbed around in there a few times.
Something moved.
She felt it brush against the fork, making waves of revulsion roll through her. She withdrew the fork… but, dammit, this was her kitchen! She was not going to be scared off by some stupid fish or whatever had swam up the pipe.
Getting angry, Tessa jabbed the fork around in there until… until with a physical shudder she felt it pierce something. Something thick. It felt like she had speared a summer sausage. It had the same sort of resistance to it as the tines went in.
Meaty was the word that popped into her mind.
Whatever it was, she had it. The crazy thing was, if it indeed was alive then why wasn’t it moving? Shouldn’t it be squirming with pain or something?
Sucking in a breath between clenched teeth, she lifted up the fork. The thing was weighty, a few pounds at least. She lifted the fork up quickly out of the soup before she could change her mind.
What she saw made her freeze.
It looked like a snake. That’s what she thought in an instant of absolute atavistic terror. It was maybe two feet long, but swollen, thick-bodied, maybe big around as a can of beer. It was coiling with slow, oily undulations, dripping copious amounts of inky slime.
With a cry, she dropped it.
It splashed into the muck… and came right back out like a rocket.
Tessa had enough time to hold her arm up to protect her face before it hit her, the roasting fork dropping from it and clattering across the floor. It seized her wrist in its mouth, clamping down with a savage biting/sucking pressure and she clearly heard her wrist bones snap like green twigs.