Lineage(74)

He stood, his heart picking up speed. He turned from the room and began shining the light in swinging arcs across the breadth of the house.

“Andy!” His voice sounded lifeless as it bounced off the hardwood floors. He sped down the stairs, being careful to point the gun at the rafters in case he tripped or Andy startled him. His eyes came to rest on the floor in the living room.

What he had originally disregarded as a patch of moonlight he now realized was the stain he had noticed his first night in the house. The moon had made a full revolution from waning to waxing and now hung bloated in the sky above the lake. Lance walked over to the spot and gazed at the oblong stain. It was exactly the same pattern as before, not a speck of the silvery blotch different. His vision traveled up and out of the window before him and his breath stuck in his throat like something solid.

Andy stood waist-deep in the water below the house.

Lance felt his eyes fly open and his bare feet slip on the polished wood as he scrambled past the alcove and into the kitchen, pausing only to set the Mossberg on the counter before yanking open the partially ajar patio door.

The night had become brisk and the dew from the short-bladed grass felt cool on his feet. It might have been a welcome sensation any other time, but as Lance plummeted down the slope past the gazebo, it only helped further the chill he had felt run down his back when he spotted his friend standing in the water.

“Andy! What are you doing? Get out of there!” His friend gave no indication that he’d heard him, and now that Lance had closed the distance between them, he saw that Andy wore only his boxer shorts, the waistline just visible above the lapping water.

Lance hit the water and felt as if he’d been struck by electric current. Even though the weather had been overly warm as of late, the water felt blindingly cold. In a matter of seconds, as he began to wade out to where his friend stood, his feet went from stabbing pain to pinpricks to numb, barely registering rocks and shells on the sandy bottom.

“Andy! Come back in!” Lance yelled at his friend’s back. Andy’s slight form still seemed a mile away as he waded in, the ice water creeping up his legs. He could see Andy’s backbone in the silver light of the moon, each vertebra standing out like the peaks of a mountain range. Lance’s mind turned to hypothermia, and he wondered how long his friend had been standing in the frigid lake.

Lance felt the bottom drop off and couldn’t help the involuntary hiss that left his lips as the water washed over his groin. Andy held his position, and now Lance could almost touch him. His friend’s head sat tilted on his shoulders, his face upturned, cupped in the moonlight.

Lance lowered his voice, trying to sound calm. “Andy, come back inside, you’re going to freeze to death.” His hand reached out and gripped Andy’s shoulder. The flesh beneath his fingers felt like a half-frozen steak fresh from the fridge; even the bones beneath the skin seemed cold. Lance pulled his friend around to face him. Andy turned in the dark water. Lance’s hand flew away from the other man’s skin as if Andy had suddenly reversed temperatures and become too hot.

Andy’s face was shredded from his eyes down.

The skin hung in loose scraps, barely concealing the hamburger-tissue behind it. Blood dripped into the water in timed drops, counting off the seconds, as the bare gums and teeth smiled in a grisly rictus.

“Down below.” The voice that issued from Andy’s torn mouth wasn’t his own, and couldn’t have been, since Lance could see that there was only an empty pit where a tongue should be. Instead, it sounded like many people speaking at once, their garbled voices melding into something resembling speech. Lance backed away, the water sloshing around his thighs and waist, stirring up white froth in his haste, even though Andy hadn’t moved from where he stood.

“Down below,” the voice croaked again, shards of other vocal tones sounding like a broken synthesizer in his friend’s mouth.

Something grazed Lance’s calf under the water. His mind thought fish, but his instincts told him that no fish possessed soft, rotted skin. His feet tangled and he stumbled backward. The last thing he saw before the water closed over his head was Andy, his face unblemished, turning back the way he had been looking and sliding under the surface as if he was being pulled.

The water temperature seemed to drop as the bottom of the lake met Lance’s ass and a particularly sharp rock bit through his thin layer of shorts. With the image of Andy being dragged underwater in his mind, he launched himself off the bottom, back to a standing position. Water rolled off him and showered down. His eyes searched frantically, but besides the concentric ripples that flowed away from him, the surface remained still.