Lineage(133)

“I’m not running anymore.”

Erwin’s disfigured mouth hissed, and then he was gone. The water roiled as if it were boiling, and Lance watched the last traces of white skin sink into the clutches of the dark liquid.

“Lance!” Mary’s voice trembled with her scream, and he turned to see her body hunched and scrabbling to hold on to the windowsill.

Lance crawled to the edge of his bed, which now sat almost upright on its end, and pulled himself slowly up its frame. Each foot gained felt like eight hours of hard labor, and by the time he reached the headboard, he feared his heart would simply detonate within his chest.

Lance climbed onto the back of the headboard, and grabbed Mary’s foot while wrapping his remaining fingers into the stubs, forming a sling.

He looked through the stinging rain that fell through the open window above him. “When I say go, pull yourself up and out. Okay?” He barely discerned a nod, but readied himself anyway. “Ready? Go!”

Lance pulled up as pain shot through his dismembered hand, but he felt Mary’s slight weight lessen, and then her foot lifted completely from his makeshift sling. He looked up and saw her legs and feet vanish through the rectangle of light. Relief settled over him and he crumpled to his knees. He looked up again and saw Mary’s head and reaching arms appear again in the opening.

“Jump!”

Lance shook his head. “Leave me, get off the house!”

A look of disbelief gathered on Mary’s face, visible even in the waning light and the distance between them. “Get up! Jump and reach, dammit!”

He pushed himself away from the floor, which was now a wall, and looked up. Mary’s extended arm appeared to be miles away and his vision dimmed at the edges, tunneling his sight. He would try once and then he would make her leave. He would force her to go and he would sit down. It would be nice to sit and close his eyes for a while. Lance tilted his head back and stared at her hand. I think I’d like to hold that again, he thought, as he bent his legs and pistoned upward as hard as he could.

An alien strength surged through his muscles at the moment his feet left the bed frame. He shot upward and reached, his arm stretched out so far he was sure it would dislocate.

Then Mary’s palm was clasping his, and his butchered fingers were wrapped solidly around the window’s border.

“Yes!” Mary cried, and stood on the uneven surface as she heaved him fully outdoors. His body slid free of the structure and he lay on his back, panting into the falling rain.

“I shouldn’t have made that,” he said between breaths.

Mary knelt beside him and closed her eyes as she let her tears begin to flow. Lance turned his head and risked a last look into the bowels of the house.

A watery form was dissolving into the waves that were now well inside the room. For a moment Lance thought the blood loss had finally caught up with him, but then the shape shifted, and he saw eyes gaze up at him through the darkness.

Rhinelander’s rippling face stared at him, and then the barest of smiles pulled at the corners of his watery mouth. A heartbeat later the apparition was gone, enfolded back into the grave it shared with so many others.

The house vibrated and uttered a human-like groan. A sound like static built into a cacophony around the house. Lance rolled to his stomach and, with Mary’s help, pushed himself to his feet.

The face of the house was almost level now, and Lance could see more and more of the bay surrounding them. The waves continued to crash against the rock and soil, and as he watched, chunks of land the size of pickup trucks crumbled into the water. The house shifted again and nearly sent both he and Mary back to their knees. Lance grasped Mary’s hand and looked into her eyes. It was impossible to tell the rain from tears.

“We have to jump,” Lance said, as he led her to the house’s foundation. They peered over the edge together and he felt her fingers clamp down over his.

The four vehicles sat twenty feet below them on soaking ground that was fractured with fault lines. The house itself had sunk into the soil as it tipped, but the drop still looked as if it could easily snap an ankle or vaporize a knee upon impact.

“Oh God, I don’t know if I can,” Mary said, wavering on the foundation’s stonework.

“We have to. This whole place is going to be gone in a minute or two.”

Mary’s frightened eyes flickered toward him and then back down to the awaiting ground.

“Did I ever tell you I’m afraid of heights?” she asked.