Chapter 1: The Last Swimmer

Chapter 1: The Last Swimmer

The sky broke without warning.

One moment, the Oakridge Community Pool was a postcard of summer: screaming children, the scent of chlorine and sunscreen, the relentless glare of the July sun on turquoise water. The next, the sky bruised to a sickly purple-gray. The first clap of thunder was a physical blow, rattling the diving board and sending a tremor through Leo Collins’s elevated lifeguard chair.

“Everybody out! Pool’s closed!” he yelled, his voice barely cutting through the sudden deluge. Rain, thick and cold as ice water, hammered the surface of the pool, turning it into a churning, pockmarked mess.

Parents snatched up towels and children, a frantic exodus toward the relative safety of the locker rooms. Within minutes, the deck was empty, strewn with abandoned pool noodles and deflating floaties. The world had shrunk to the rhythmic drumming of rain and the flickering buzz of the overhead lights that had just kicked on, casting long, distorted shadows.

Leo let out a sigh, a plume of steam in the unnaturally cold air. Just another hour and he’d be free. Another ninety bucks toward a semester at community college, toward getting out of this town. He began his closing routine, his lean swimmer’s frame moving with an economy born of endless repetition: collecting the discarded kickboards, locking the chemical shed, checking the first aid kit.

He saved the deep end for last. And that’s when he saw her.

A lone figure, submerged to the shoulders, floated silently in the twelve-foot section. A woman. Just a dark silhouette against the agitated water, her back to him. Her stillness was a stark contrast to the storm’s fury.

Leo’s tired frustration curdled into annoyance. “Ma’am! You heard me, the pool is closed!” His voice echoed in the cavernous, now-empty space.

She didn’t move. Not a twitch. The rain plastered his brown hair to his forehead, and a shiver, unrelated to the cold, traced a path down his spine. Maybe she hadn’t heard him over the thunder.

He grabbed the long aluminum rescue hook. “Ma’am, I’m not kidding. Lightning strike means immediate closure. It’s policy.” He walked to the edge, the metal cool and slick in his grip. He could just make out the pale shape of her shoulders and the impossible mass of dark hair fanning out around her head like spilled ink.

Still nothing.

“Fine,” he muttered, dropping the hook with a clang. Protocol was clear. He couldn't leave until the last patron was safely out. His pragmatic mind cycled through the possibilities: she was drunk, defiant, or had headphones on. He peeled off his soaked hoodie, the red ‘LIFEGUARD’ logo looking offensively bright in the gloom.

The water was a shock, a brutal, biting cold that seized the air from his lungs. It was far colder than it should have been, even with the rain. He pushed off the wall, his strokes clean and powerful, cutting through the water toward her.

“Hey! I’m talking to you!” he shouted, water splashing into his mouth.

He was ten feet away when the world tilted on its axis.

The drumming of the rain stopped. The electric hum of the lights died. The familiar scent of chlorine was replaced by the thick, cloying stench of rot and stagnant pond water. He stopped swimming, treading water in a sudden, terrifying silence.

He looked up. The corrugated steel roof was gone, replaced by a canopy of skeletal, black trees clawing at a dead, perpetually twilight sky. The clean, blue-tiled walls of the pool were now cracked, crumbling concrete, stained with algae and dark, unidentifiable filth. The water he was in was no longer clear but a viscous, black sludge that clung to his skin like oil.

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through his disbelief. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the suffocating silence. He spun around, his eyes locking back on the woman.

She was turning toward him now, her movements slow, languid, and utterly unnatural. Her head rose from the water, and the last of Leo’s rational thoughts evaporated into pure, primal terror.

Her face was a mask of ethereal, waterlogged horror. Skin pale with a bluish tint, stretched taut over her delicate bones. Her dress was a tattered, translucent white thing that swirled around her like a burial shroud. But her eyes… they weren’t eyes. They were two pits of abyssal darkness, voids that promised nothing but sorrow and the crushing weight of deep water. Impossibly long, jet-black hair floated around her, each strand moving with its own serpentine life.

She opened her mouth, and a stream of silty, black water trickled out. No sound emerged, but Leo felt a voice in his head—a gurgling, whispered scream that spoke of betrayal and a cold, lonely death.

He scrambled backward, his powerful strokes now clumsy, panicked splashes in the thick, grasping liquid. The sludge resisted him, pulling at his limbs, trying to drag him down. Something cold and slick brushed against his leg. He kicked out wildly, a choked scream tearing from his throat.

The woman lunged.

She didn't swim; she glided across the surface, a horrifying wraith propelled by silent rage. Her hand, bone-white and wrinkled from endless immersion, shot out and clamped around his ankle. The grip was like iron, and the cold was absolute, burning straight to his bone.

He was pulled under.

The black water was a suffocating blanket. It filled his mouth, his nose, his lungs—not like water, but like swallowing mud and decay. He thrashed, his lifeguard training a distant memory in the face of this impossible assault. He could feel her long hair wrapping around his legs, his torso, a silken, living net pulling him deeper into the cold, silent dark. His vision tunneled, the pressure in his chest building to an agonizing crescendo. This was it. This was drowning.

With a final, explosive burst of adrenaline, he twisted his body and kicked with his free leg, aiming for the thing that held him. His foot connected with something that felt yielding and wrong. The grip on his ankle loosened for a fraction of a second.

It was enough.

He shot toward the surface, gasping, coughing up a foul mixture of air and black filth. He clawed his way to the edge of the ruined pool, his fingers finding purchase on broken concrete. He hauled himself out, his body shaking uncontrollably, and ran. He didn't look back. He just ran, his bare feet slapping against cracked, weed-choked ground, the skeletal trees and dead sky pressing in on him.

He ran until his lungs burned and his vision blurred, and then—

The world snapped back.

The blare of a car horn from the parking lot. The steady thrum of rain on the steel roof. The familiar buzz of the lights overhead.

Leo was sprawled on the wet, tiled deck of the Oakridge Community Pool. He was shivering violently, his skin clammy, his head pounding. He sat up, gasping for breath, his heart still trying to beat its way out of his chest. The pool was exactly as he’d left it—empty, clean, and chlorinated. The water was turquoise. The woman was gone.

“Collins! What the hell are you doing?”

Drew, his co-worker for the night shift, was standing in the doorway to the locker rooms, a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. “The sun’s almost down, man. I’ve been calling you for ten minutes. You were supposed to have locked up an hour ago.”

An hour? Leo looked at the digital clock on the wall. 8:15 PM. He’d dived in just after seven. A whole hour had vanished. He had no memory of it. He must have slipped, hit his head. A concussion? A bizarre hallucination? It was the only logical explanation.

“Sorry,” Leo mumbled, pushing himself to his feet. His muscles ached, and a deep, penetrating cold had settled into his bones. “I… I think I blacked out for a second.”

He finished his closing duties in a daze, ignoring Drew’s concerned questions. He drove home on autopilot, the car heater blasting, but it did nothing to chase away the chill. It was an internal cold, a dampness that felt like it had soaked into his soul.

At home, he stripped off his damp clothes and stood under a scalding hot shower, trying to wash away the phantom feeling of sludge and silken hair on his skin. But the water felt wrong, heavy. The steam seemed to coalesce into dark shapes in the corner of his eye.

A wave of nausea hit him so hard he had to brace himself against the tiled wall. He stumbled out of the shower, barely managing to wrap a towel around his waist before he was on his knees, retching into the toilet bowl. His body convulsed in a violent, agonizing spasm. It felt like he was trying to vomit up his own lungs.

Finally, with one last gut-wrenching heave, it was over. He stayed there for a long moment, sweat and water plastering his hair to his face, his throat raw. He shakily reached for the flush.

His hand froze.

He stared into the porcelain bowl, into the clear water tainted with bile. Floating there, coiled like a dead serpent, was a thick, tangled clump of impossibly long, jet-black hair.