Lucas sat in the dining room one evening with Zoe, the family getting ready to eat. His mom had dinner prepared and spread on the table. All that was left was waiting for Jack, who listened to the news from the living room. The old man joined them after it ended.
"Supposed to be a hurricane coming in soon," he said, taking a seat.
His mom questioned, "Oh dear, you mean that storm the news has been watching?"
"The very same. An' they said it's gotten worse. Category 3, at least. Lucas, me an' you gonna have to seal windows an' doors, clean out the gutters, check the pump — you know the drill."
"Yep," Lucas replied shortly.
Fuck. Sounded like a huge workload that he didn't feel like dealing with. He entertained Jack listing off their chores and talking about hurricane safety, but didn't pay much attention as he ate. Louisiana's bayou'd had plenty of bad storms over the years, especially seeing as it was early October, and they'd always been a pain in the ass, with the old house leaking from every possible seam. Last year in September, the guest house basement had been completely flooded out. What fun that was, wallowing around in the muck with the old man, trying to empty the damn thing with a specialized hose. With any luck, the guest house would just collapse in on itself and he would never have to worry about it again.
After dinner, the family returned to the living room to put on the news in hopes of hearing more about the storm. Lucas sat in the corner with Diane, one arm around the dog as he got on his phone and texted Persephone.
'Supposed to be a hurricane rolling through soon.'
He read their last text messages from that morning while he waited. She'd texted him first; a cute, if not odd greeting.
'Good morning, papa wolf!'
To which he'd followed up, 'Morning gorgeous, wtf is a papa wolf?'
He chuckled when he read her response for the second time. 'You, cuz you're all scruffy and fierce'
'You are a weird one'
'Gotta get my weirdness quota in before Saturday's hands-on training'
Ah, hands-on training. Happiness swelled in him to see it spelled correctly. He'd had her undivided attention and he absolutely loved it. Ronald's death had almost been a blessing. Ever since Ronald kicked the bucket in February, Persephone had been finding more time to spend with him. He didn't finish reading their exchange before his phone notified him of a new message.
'A hurricane?'
'Yep, category 3 according to Jack.'
'Are you guys going to be okay?'
'Hope so. You know how the storms round here get, but the news just suggested that everyone in the southern parishes evacuate.'
'Holy shit, are you going to?'
'Probably not. Momma and the old man are way too stubborn.'
He waited again. She didn't text him back, not even after 5 minutes had passed. It was 7 PM for him, so 8 for her. Probably making dinner for herself and Terry.
Thinking about her relationship with Terry prompted him to quell his anticipation by scrolling back up through their messages. He reread one she'd sent him about a week beforehand when she'd vented to him after a day of almost complete silence.
'Sorry I couldn't talk much today. Terry called me during class and the motherfucker was threatening to kill herself. I had to call 911 thinking she'd do it and I rushed back home. Turns out, she took almost an entire 2 weeks worth of her happy pills that morning, so I was with her at the hospital all damn day. They're keeping her overnight. Now I'm back at the stupid welfare house. Feels so empty.'
Hopefully, something like that wasn't going on at that very moment. Terry had been a handful this past year. When Ronald had died, Terry'd pawned almost everything to fuel her addiction and Persephone had kept the house(s) barren since then. Terry'd claimed to never be on anything aside from her medication and booze, but neither he nor Pers believed her.
His phone's notification went off.
'No way, they can't expect you to just hold down the fort.'
'That's exactly what they're expecting. Gonna have to seal windows and shit all day tomorrow. What a way to spend my weekend.'
October 5th was when the hurricane was supposed to hit. It was a Sunday and, more importantly, 2 weeks before Persephone's birthday. No way he was going to forget such an important date, no matter how hectic it got.
She responded, 'Sounds like it'll suck. I gotta eat and shower before bed, but I'll text you later. Stay safe. Love you.'
'I will. Love you, momma wolf.'
By the time the hurricane reached Louisiana's shores, it had been raised to category 4. The flooding was the worst part. Everyone, Zoe and his mom included, had to tend to leaks: emptying buckets, mopping up floors, resealing windows from failed or overworked sealants; the works.
Their power had gone out for three days, and his phone battery had died moments after he'd warned Persephone that it was about to happen. Three whole days of no Pers had been a fucking nightmare but he'd managed it. After all, so much work had to be done that it'd kept him quite distracted.
Once the storm had passed and the power had come back on, he let his phone charge and went out to help the old man check the damages. Jack headed to the old house, leaving Lucas to check the boathouse.
The soggy wooden planks going out to the boathouse were so rotted from weather exposure that Lucas purposefully stepped over certain ones. Still, that didn't prevent him from nearly taking a tumble into the bayou when he stepped upon one that didn't look so worse for wear, which sent his foot right through it as though it was tissue paper. Very splintery tissue paper. He'd have to come back out with boards and tools to redo some of the docks. Whoopie. The boathouse itself didn't look so bad, though. It reeked of swamp just like normal and the inside had dried out nicely, including the stairs that led up above the door to the docking area.
They never used the damn thing but for shits and giggles, and to appease Jack so the old man would get off his back, he scaled down the ladder, into the ankle-deep layer of mucky water, and checked the dock outside. It all appeared normal, if not waterlogged and green with algae. There was an old boat still tied up and ready for use that it would probably never get.
Lucas peered around at the trees out in the swamp — none of them had downed, somehow — and the cloudy skies above. Grey as hell, but a parting in the clouds let the sun shine through, illuminating the area. The bayou was so bright, in fact, that he swore he saw something in the distance. Far out there, nestled between the treetops, loomed a silhouette of something tall.
That old Pers-style curiosity wriggled its way into his mind. It must have rubbed off on him good, given that an urge to ride the little motorized boat out there and take a gander sent him on his way. When he did, he was amazed at what he found.
"A boat?" Jack questioned back at the main house during lunch.
"Not just a boat — a huge tanker," Lucas explained.
There was so much shit to do around the house, however, that he and Jack couldn't check it out until the next day. It weighed on his mind what he'd seen. It looked like the massive ship had been cracked in several pieces, with all sorts of piping and gnarled metal jutting out of the wreckage. He'd wanted to explore it himself but something told him to get back-up beforehand — some kind of warning in his brain that prompted him to think of Pers and how she'd feel if anything happened to him. As such, he didn't see too much before heading home to tell the old man. And after lunch, he texted Persephone to explain to her that he was okay and what he'd found.
'Wow,' she'd replied, 'all I've found over the past few days has been roadkill and you find a cool busted up ship. Keep me updated, stay safe.'
In the early afternoon the next day, Lucas hurried through his bigger chores to get to the ship faster. He helped Jack, rushing the old man along until they steered the boat back to the huge tanker.
The whole ship really had been split apart and seeing it the second time still ran a shock through him. It had somehow washed up so close to home from the Gulf, probably due to the immense flooding and strong winds. But how did it get completely destroyed? Like it had exploded in two places.
As they drew closer, staring up at the tanker, their small boat bumped something. He scanned the water and his heart skipped a beat. It was a person. Just floating there.
"Oh my—…" Jack trailed off. Then he quickly reached in and grabbed her by the arm. "Lucas, get 'er other arm an' help me get 'er in the boat."
He did. Her skin had been coated in a layer of disgusting blackened slime and looked ashen underneath. She was filthy and cold but as they pulled her into their boat, he could see she was still breathing.
"Holy shit," said Lucas. "How long's she been in here?"
Jack turned the boat around. "I have no idea — to think she'd be alive, even since yesterday."
"Gotta be longer. The hurricane was two days ago n' I think that's how that tanker got here."
"You may be right about that. I'm gonna call the authorities when I get back home, then come out an' see if I find any other survivors. I want you to stay home, keep an eye on everythin', help your mother, an' wait for the police to show up, all right?"
Dammit… He'd been hoping to maybe board the ship, but there went that. "All right."
Back home, Jack carried the soggy, dirty woman to their late grandmother's bedroom inside the recreation room, laying her down on the bed that Zoe made for her. At his mother's suggestion, Lucas brought in a bucket full of warm water and a couple of washcloths. Then he and Jack got kicked out of the room and the old man went off to check the ship again.
Lucas made his way to the kitchen to wait for the cops to show up, engrossed in his phone the whole way.
'Y'all will never guess what we found near that boat.'
While he stood by for a response, he brewed some coffee for himself and the rest of the family. Zoe, the type to be summoned by the mere scent of coffee, entered the kitchen in moments, carrying Diane's favorite toy and energetically shaking it to get Diane to follow. She tossed the stuffed monkey through the serving window and into the dining room, and Diane rushed to fetch.
"Your dog doesn't seem to like that woman very much," Zoe said, checking the coffee maker.
'What did you find?' Persephone responded.
"Weird, Diane usually loves everybody," he said to Zoe as he texted. 'Some woman. Found her just floating in the bayou. Looked like she was covered in black slime.'
"Talkin' to Persephone?" Zoe asked.
"Yeah."
"You been a lot easier to deal with ever since you an' her started chattin' more."
Lucas rolled his eyes. "Thanks."
Zoe chuckled, retrieving a coffee mug from the cabinet beside him. "Just glad to see you two bein' happy, that's all."
'Holy shit, what? That's fucking crazy. What happened?'
"Just told Judith 'bout her, too," said Zoe as she peered at Lucas's messages.
He hid the phone up against his chest, eying her with a glare.
"Oh, sorry, I forgot that you're scared I'll see Persephone's nudes on your phone."
"Shut up."
She wasn't exactly wrong — maybe not nudes but he and Pers liked to share… Questionable texts. Having Zoe in the habit of looking over his shoulder wasn't something he wanted.
He told Pers what had happened, and after some back-and-forth, the cops still hadn't shown. Strange. Lucas called emergency services again, saying pretty much verbatim what Jack had told them an hour before. But after yet another torturous hour, no one came. Zoe and his mom called the police several times on the land-line and he and Zoe tried on their phones, but cops never arrived.
He had to work on more chores for that day, cleaning up water from new leaks, resealing a few windows that needed it, and his mom and Zoe would check on the woman every now and again. Last they checked, she'd regained some semblance of consciousness, and called herself Mia. Zoe described her as delirious and scared, especially when they told her emergency services were on their way.
Near dinner time, Zoe put on the news for the storm to see why no one had shown up to help the woman. Lucas and his mother set the table and he looked to the television every now and again, curious about the world outside of his bubble. Maybe the roads were too flooded out and the residual thunderstorms too rough for cops to get to his house.
The old man had been gone for hours, causing his mom to glance toward the dining room doors and wring her hands on her long skirt. It was odd to him, too, that Jack was taking so long. He kept Persephone updated as often as he could.
When he finished setting the table, Lucas shoved himself into the corner near the kitchen entrance, leaning against the wall with phone in hand.
"Marguerite!" Jack called from around the corner. "Found another one!"
Lucas's gaze shot up and he saw Jack lumber through the doors, carrying a little girl who couldn't have been more than 10. Great, that boat's causing more trouble than it was worth. He was about to send a message to Persephone when he heard his name.
"We'll put her up in Lucas's old room," his mom said.
"Oh, come on!" Lucas complained, arms thrown out and fist clenched around his phone. "Can'chu put 'er someplace else?"
"Hush up, boy," Jack said firmly. "You long out grown that room."
Ugh. He still had that other laptop up there. His newfound "Fuck You" lists were written almost exclusively in the attic. Plus, the drenched little girl dripped with filthy swamp muck. He'd kept his old room exactly the way he and Persephone left it and that little girl was going to ruin the whole thing. No fighting it, though… He wouldn't win, as if Jack and his mom couldn't put the little girl in their room instead, as if he was being completely unreasonable to think that such a sacred area shouldn't be messed with.
When his mom slipped past him to go into the kitchen, he took a seat at the dining room table, texting away.
'Just found a little girl near the ship, too. wtf'
He looked through the weather reports to occupy himself. Rain all day, rain all night, more rain tomorrow. How tiring.
Persephone texted him, 'Wtf is right. And the cops still haven't showed up?'
'Nope. I mean, it's storming, but still we called them hours ago'
'What was a little girl doing on that ship, anyway? You said it was a tanker'
'It's definitely not a passenger ship'
His mom muttered something about heading to her room to fetch the towels she'd not put away yet. Mostly, all Lucas heard was,
"Watch the stew for me, dear."
"Yep."
He didn't look away from his phone and checked his call list; a call to 911, and a couple calls to South Dulvey Parish police. That wasn't even counting the times he and his family had tried to contact them on their land-line. Persephone's notification went off again.
'Dunno why, but I got a bad feeling about this'
'Don't worry, Pers. Let's just think about next summer'
Then the power cut out.
When he tried to text Persephone to let her know, he got an error message telling him he had no service. He sighed gruffly and threw himself back in his chair. As if more things needed to go wrong ever since the damn hurricane. Maybe being able to talk to Pers so often nowadays spoiled him.
He jumped when Diane started going crazy out of nowhere. She barked and growled; vicious, mean, not at all like her. The fur on her back stood as she stared at the windows. Was someone outside? Even if there was, Diane was never much of a watchdog.
Lucas shot up and, at first, sped walked toward the window. But each step made his stomach sink lower and his stride turned to a much slower tread. Pers was right, something was wrong.
By the time he reached the windows, his hands felt clammy from sweat and his heart raced. Diane continued to bark, a crazed sound like he'd never heard from her. She wouldn't behave that way for no reason. With a shaky hand, he pulled a sliver of their Venetian blinds down and peeked outside.
Out there, in the rain, looking directly into his eyes, was the little girl. He ripped his hand away, gasping hard from the rush of adrenaline. What the fuck? She was just passed out, taken upstairs not even five minutes ago. How did she get outside? Why? And how was she exactly where he'd looked? He'd peered out the window eye-level. How could their gazes have met so perfectly?
"Hello, big brother."
His heart leapt hard enough that he thought it was going to come out of his throat. He whipped around to where the small, high-pitched voice came from, his back slamming against the window. There was the little girl, perched atop the kitchen table. Diane went ballistic, sticking close to Lucas and barking and snarling like crazy. He couldn't speak, couldn't scream, couldn't do anything except stare in abject horror. The little girl bore into his eyes, or perhaps even deeper than that.
She giggled maliciously, black tendrils dripped from her body, then flew at him. Memories rushed through him at Mach speed, zipping before his eyes near unintelligibly. He went cold, skin like ice. Just before his vision turned black, he saw lightning in his peripherals, Diane vaulting onto the kitchen table, and heard roaring thunder and dishes shatter as the table splintered to pieces.
His fuzzy mind started coming back. How long had he been out? Hell, he didn't remember what happened in the first place. But Diane licking his cheek was bringing him to reality. His head pounded, body drenched in sweat, and his limbs felt weak as he struggled to push himself up. Diane whimpered and lapped at his hands with her tail between her legs, shivering. He leaned down to pet her and tell her everything was okay (though he wasn't so sure, given he'd passed out), but he stopped and shot straight up again when he noticed the wrecked table and broken dishes. What the hell happened?
His stomach then churned violently and he thought he might puke. The longer he lingered, shocked, on his sickened stomach, the worse it got, so he dashed to the toilet.
He scrambled up the stairs and toward the bathroom, but as he reached the door, something wrenched his shoulders from around the corner and threw him down the hall. He landed flat on his stomach and groaned from the jolt of pain, amazed he hadn't been sick immediately.
That something then grabbed him by his jacket's hood and ripped him down the hall a ways before his disoriented body fought back. He thrashed away from whatever had him and threw himself to his feet, flipping back his hood to face the attacker.
He stammered, "Wha… W-What the fuck?"
Jack reared back and unleashed a powerful punch to his jaw. The heavy hit made him delirious, dizzy enough that he fell on his ass. Jack seized him by the ankles and yanked him down the hall.
"What the hell, Dad!?" Lucas shouted, struggling to flip around so he could claw himself free.
"Oh, hush, boy! Don'cha wanna play with your new sister?"
Jack dragged him to his old room, where that little girl messed the place up with her muck. His new sister? What the fuck was Jack talking about? What the fuck was Jack doing to him!? And those words, that little girl… She'd been there, on the kitchen table, laughing and calling him 'brother'. What the fuck was wrong with her!?
Lucas kicked wildly, flailing at the cusp of his door. When Jack went to open it, he ripped an ankle free and stomped as hard as he could into Jack's groin. Jack dropped him and he whirled around, trying to scramble onto his hands and knees. But that was as far as he got before Jack's boot crushed his back, knocking the wind out of him and slamming him into the floor. Jack ripped him up by the foot again and he thrashed in his grasp.
"Get off me! Get the fuck off me, old man!"
Jack only laughed and spun Lucas onto his back, tearing him into his old room so fast that the ceiling rushed by his vision. The door slammed shut as Lucas tried once again to get to this feet. Jack kicked him in the side with enough force that Lucas heard a bone crack, though the adrenaline made him numb to the pain.
His arms were forced behind him by the old man's abnormally strong grip and he was made to sit upright before that same little girl. She still looked filthy, dripping black goop. A malevolent smile held fast on her face as she giggled.
"Hi again, big brother."
Then she vomited.
The same black goop spewed from her mouth, smelling like bile and mildew and rotted fruit. It landed all over him, all over the floor, and down his hoodie. A scream caught in his throat. His voice was gone as he saw his vomit-covered body, blackened with the horrific fluids. He surely was going to be sick, too.
Then the vomit twitched and moved and pulsated as though alive. It quickly grew like disgusting roots, scaling up his body and neck. His voice found, he screamed, but it gave the roots a way to enter his mouth. He gagged and sputtered on it, another wave of her warm, putrid vomit splashing against him, into his eyes and mouth and down his throat. He, too, puked. Gagging and choking, his mind blanked, panic having overtaken every sense. He felt himself slipping. His vision faded, then everything stopped as he lost consciousness.
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