long after the frantic splashing and struggling had ended, the loons began to scream back.
That night was forever.
The sky began to lighten in the east around a quarter to five, and he felt a sluggish rise in his spirit. It was momentary; as false as the dawn. He stood on the boards, his eyes half closed, his chin on his chest. He had been sitting on the boards until an hour ago, and had been suddenly awakened—without even knowing until then that he had fallen asleep, that was the scary part—by that unspeakable hissing-canvas sound. He leaped to his feet bare seconds before the blackness began to suck eagerly for him between the boards. His breath whined in and out; he bit at his lip, making it bleed.
Asleep, you were asleep, you asshole!
The thing had oozed out from under again half an hour later, but he hadn’t sat down again. He was afraid to sit down, afraid he would go to sleep and that this time his mind wouldn’t trip him awake in time.
His feet were still planted squarely on the boards as a stronger light, real dawn this time, filled the east and the first morning birds began to sing. The sun came up, and by six o’clock the day was bright enough for him to be able to see the beach. Deke’s Camaro, bright yellow, was right where Deke had parked it, nose in to the pole fence. A bright litter of shirts and sweaters and four pairs of jeans were twisted into little shapes along the beach. The sight of them filled him with fresh horror when he thought his capacity for horror must surely be exhausted. He could see his jeans, one leg pulled inside out, the pocket showing. His jeans looked so safe lying there on the sand; just waiting for him to come along and pull the inside-out leg back through so it was right, grasping the pocket as he did so the change wouldn’t fall out. He could almost feel them whispering up his legs, could feel himself buttoning the brass button above the fly—
(do you love yes I love)
He looked left and there it was, black, round as a checker, floating lightly. Colors began to swirl across its hide and he looked away quickly.
“Go home,” he croaked. “Go home or go to California and find a Roger Corman movie to audition for.”
A plane droned somewhere far away, and he fell into a dozing fantasy: We are reported missing, the four of us. The search spreads outward from Horlicks. A farmer remembers being passed by a yellow Camaro “going like a bat out of hell.” The search centers in the Cascade Lake area. Private pilots volunteer to do a quick aerial search, and one guy, buzzing the lake in his Beechcraft Twin Bonanza, sees a kid standing naked on the raft, one kid, one survivor, one—
He caught himself on the edge of toppling over and brought his fist into his nose again, screaming at the pain.
The black thing arrowed at the raft immediately and squeezed underneath—it could hear, perhaps, or sense ... or something.
Randy waited.
This time it was forty-five minutes before it came out.
His mind slowly orbited in the growing light.
(do you love yes I love rooting for the Yankees and Catfish do you love the Catfish yes I love the
(Route 66 remember the Corvette George Maharis in the Corvette Martin Milner in the Corvette do you love the Corvette
(yes I love the Corvette
(I love do you love
(so hot the sun is like a burning glass it was in her hair and it’s the light I remember best the light the summer light
(the summer light of)
afternoon.
Randy was crying.
He was crying because something new had been added now—every time he tried to sit down, the thing slid under the raft. It wasn’t entirely stupid, then; it had either sensed or figured out that it could get at him while he was sitting down.
“Go away,” Randy wept at the great black mole floating on the water. Fifty yards away, mockingly close, a squirrel was scampering back and forth on the hood of Deke’s Camaro.
“Go away, please, go anywhere, but leave me alone. I don’t love you.”
The thing didn’t move. Colors began to swirl across its visible surface.
(you do you do love me)
Randy tore his eyes away and looked at the beach, looked for rescue, but there was no one there, no one at all. His jeans still lay there, one leg inside out, the white