Deathdream #2

still have no idea what this is.  but here's the next bit, anyway...

...

The young man grunted. “You’ll need to find out,” he stated, with firmness and just a hint of... What? Warning?


Confused and growing slightly alarmed at her inability to remember her own name – feeling sure she had one – the swimmer turned back towards the two girls washing themselves and their clothes in the moonlight. But they had both lowered their arms to stare out of the French windows, over her shoulders, and out towards the dark brightness of the sky.

The youngest momentarily flicked her gaze to the swimmer and said, “Now see what you did!” Moving her eyes back to the sky, a frown creased her features. The swimmer turned back around until she was facing out towards the lake.

The wind was picking up, tugging at her wet nightdress and trying to tease the military cap from her straggling tresses. Holding the cap down with one hand, she lifted her chin and gazed towards the moon. Its face was being slowly covered by sliding clouds – as black and lightless as the masses on the shore of the lake. Glancing down at Biffy she noticed that he, too, was regarding the moon’s slow disappearance, but with an equitable expression on his face, as though he had seen this many times before, and did not share the youngest girl’s annoyance with the situation.

Spits of rain began to land on her bare arms and the swimmer, despite being already wet, instinctively edged backwards to the shelter of the room behind her. The rain became heavier as they watched the last corner of the moon’s face disappear behind the slithering clouds, and she could hear it over the sound of the wind: a soft-sharp pattering on the wood of the walkway and cabin roof. As it became heavier, she looked towards Biffy – standing as he had been before, but with his face now turned towards the crowded darkness of the sky. Realising that she should not, now, be able to see him, she wondered at her ability to do just that. Staring at the back of his head, she watched as the rain, coming down in earnest, now, plastered his curls to his head. Then it came to her. Slowly lifting her eyes to the lake, the swimmer took in what was before her.

It was not the moon’s light that had given the lake its milky glow – it was the water itself. As more and more clouds piled into the sky above them, the water increased its translucent radiance, the ripples and wavelets creating scintillating patterns that dazzled and mesmerised.

Except...

“What are they?” she asked of her three companions, raising a shaking finger to point.

Shadows moved beneath the surface of the water.

Turning to glance up at the swimmer, Biffy casually remarked, “You’re lucky you got here when you did – a halfer like you – ten minutes more and they’d have had a field day.” Thus unburdened, he returned his gaze to the opposite direction – this time it was focussed, like those of the females, on the shadows sliding through the water.

The swimmer edged back further into the room, until the backs of her legs met the bed, on which she half-sat, half-slumped, her eyes still fixed on the teeming luminescence of the lake.

“Really,” said the older girl, conversationally, “You ought to find out what your name is – it’s bad that you don’t know. Really bad”

.