Chapter 9: It Follows

The chrome tap was cold as a bone beneath Alex’s trembling fingers. It felt impossibly heavy, as if turning it required not just physical strength, but a profound act of will, a defiance of every screaming instinct that had kept him alive. He squeezed his eyes shut, the image of the jaundiced, bloodshot eye in the drain burning on the back of his eyelids. This is a different place, he chanted to himself, a desperate, flimsy mantra. Clean pipes. Safe house. The fire worked. It’s over.

He twisted his wrist.

A soft hiss was followed by a gush of water, a loud, shocking explosion of sound in the pristine silence. He snatched his hand back as if burned. He watched, frozen, as the stream of crystal-clear water hammered against the white fiberglass floor of the tub. It swirled in a perfect vortex before vanishing down the small, gleaming drain. It was just water. It looked like just water.

Hesitantly, he reached a hand into the spray. It was hot, almost scalding. A clean, honest heat. There was no unnatural coldness, no solid pressure. He let the water run over his filthy, trembling fingers, watching as rivulets of grey and black—the soot from the fire, the grime of his days of decay—ran from his skin and disappeared.

A fragile tendril of hope began to uncurl in the frozen landscape of his chest. Maybe he had done it. Maybe his desperate, insane act had actually worked. Fire against the thing from the water. A cleansing fire.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Alex unlatched the heavy glass door and stepped into the tub. He pulled the door shut behind him, the soft click of the magnetic seal sounding like a vault door locking him in. He stood stiffly for a moment, his entire body clenched like a fist, waiting for the touch, for the lick, for the violation. He flinched as the hot spray hit his back, every nerve ending screaming in anticipation.

But nothing came.

There was only the steady, percussive drumming of the water against his skin and the fiberglass walls. The steam began to billow around him, warm and thick, clouding the glass door and cocooning him in a private, hazy world. He grabbed the bar of lavender soap his mother always kept in the guest bathroom. The scent was aggressively, beautifully normal.

He began to wash, a frantic, scrubbing motion at first, trying to scour away the last few days, to peel off the tainted layer of himself and let it circle the drain. He washed the smoke from his hair, the grime from under his nails, the stench of fear from his skin. And with every passing second that the water remained just water, the knot of terror in his gut began to loosen.

The fire had worked. It must have. The creature was a physical thing, tied to that place, to those old, rotting pipes. He had destroyed its nest, its anchor in the world. He had burned it out of existence. The thought was so intoxicating, so liberating, that a choked, hysterical laugh bubbled up in his throat.

He had won.

Relief, pure and absolute, washed over him in a wave more powerful than the shower spray. It was a physical sensation, a relaxing of muscles he didn't even know he had been holding tense for days. The strength went out of his legs, and he sagged against the tiled wall, letting the hot water cascade over his head and face.

He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, surrendering to the sensation. This was the first moment of peace he had known since that first, horrifying touch. The trauma, the paranoia, the wild-eyed escape, the cleansing fire—it was all beginning to feel like a fever dream, a psychotic break from which he was finally, blessedly, waking up. The water was washing it all away. He was safe. He was clean. He was home.

He allowed himself a moment of pure, unadulterated bliss. The drumming of the water was a lullaby. The steam was a warm blanket. The world outside this small, safe space ceased to exist. He was just Alex again, in his parents’ house, taking a shower. Normal.

Then, he felt it.

It started subtly, a change in the pressure against his left calf. A warmth that wasn't the uniform heat of the water, but a focused, localized heat, like a living thing.

His eyes snapped open. The relief vanished, instantly replaced by a surge of ice-cold adrenaline. No. His mind screamed the word. No. Not here. It's my imagination. It’s a phantom limb, a memory of the sensation.

But it wasn't a memory.

The pressure intensified. It wasn't the clumsy, inquisitive bump from the first time. This was confident. Deliberate. He felt a broad, wet, muscular thing press firmly against his leg. He could feel the fine, rasping texture of its surface, a texture he had felt only once before but was seared into his sensory memory forever. A tongue.

It began to move. Slowly, sensuously, it wrapped itself around his leg. It wasn't a tentative exploration. This was an act of ownership. A possessive, proprietary embrace that sent a signal of absolute dominion. It was claiming him.

Time stopped. The sound of the water faded to a distant roar. The lavender-scented steam felt like it was choking him. A single, horrifying truth bloomed in the ruins of his mind, annihilating his last shred of hope with its devastating clarity.

The fire had done nothing.

The nails had done nothing.

His escape had been a fool's errand.

The forum post from the deleted user flashed in his mind, its stark white letters burning brighter than the fire he had set. You don't understand what it is. It is of the water. It flows.

He had thought it meant the creature could move through pipes, from one place to another. He had been so catastrophically, suicidally wrong. It didn't live in the pipes. The pipes were just its highway. His apartment hadn't been a nest; it had been a faucet, one of countless billions on the planet.

The horror wasn’t tied to a place. It was tied to the medium. And maybe, to him.

He looked down. Through the churning, soapy water, he could see nothing but his own pale, trembling leg. But he could feel it. He could feel the impossible thing coiled around him, its grip tightening with a lover's familiarity. It had tasted him once in his apartment and had recognized him now, miles away, in this clean, safe place. It hadn't been waiting in the drain. It had come for him. It had followed him through the endless, unseen circulatory system of the world.

He stood frozen, a statue in a cage of steam and glass, the warm, comforting water now feeling like the very blood of the monster itself, sluicing over him, trapping him. It was everywhere. Every tap, every pipe, every puddle, every raindrop, every tear. It was an ocean, and he was drowning in it, no matter where he ran.

The thing on his leg gave a final, affectionate squeeze, as if to say, Found you.

The horror wasn't in the drain of his apartment; it was in the water itself.

And it would follow him forever.