Chapter 3: The Drowning Prayer

Three years later

The rosary beads were worn smooth from Leo's nightly grip, their silver cross catching the lamplight as he knelt beside his bed. At fourteen, his knees had grown accustomed to the hardwood floor, his voice steady in the familiar cadence of prayer that had become his armor against the dark.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee..."

The words came automatically now, a litany of protection he'd discovered purely by accident during his freshman year of high school. That first night when desperation had driven him to his knees—not from faith, but from the kind of terror that strips away everything except the animal need to survive—the brown-eyed boy had recoiled like he'd been struck.

Prayer was weakness to that thing. Prayer was light in its world of drowning darkness.

"...blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus..."

Leo's bedroom had become a fortress of faith over the years. Crucifixes on every wall, holy water in a small dish on his nightstand, a Bible with pages soft from constant handling. His mother thought he'd found religion after the "accident" at the creek—her word, never his. She encouraged it, even bought him the rosary for his thirteenth birthday, relief evident in her eyes that her troubled son had found something to believe in.

If only she knew what he was really praying for.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

The temperature in the room held steady. No frost on the windows, no smell of stagnant creek water, no sound of dripping in the walls. Leo allowed himself a small smile as he climbed into bed, pulling the covers up to his chin. Another night won, another dawn he'd live to see.

It had taken him months to perfect the ritual. The prayers had to be specific—Hail Marys worked best, though the Lord's Prayer provided decent backup. The rosary had to be blessed, purchased from the Catholic gift shop downtown rather than some generic religious store. Most importantly, the faith had to be real, at least in the moment. Halfhearted recitations were worse than useless; they seemed to amuse the thing rather than repel it.

Leo had become a master of manufactured devotion, conjuring belief from desperation night after night. It wasn't honest faith—he doubted God most days, questioned why any benevolent deity would allow something like his doppelganger to exist—but it was functional faith. And function was all that mattered when you were fighting for your soul.

Sleep came easier now than it had in years. The exhaustion that had plagued his early teens—dark circles under his eyes, the constant jumpy alertness of prey animals—had mostly faded. He could focus in class, laugh at James's jokes, even talk to girls without looking over his shoulder every few seconds.

Sarah Hutchins had smiled at him in the hallway just yesterday. Actually smiled, not the pitying look she'd worn when he'd gone through his worst period freshman year. Leo was starting to feel almost normal, almost human.

Which made Thursday's lapse all the more devastating.

It started innocently enough. Leo had stayed after school for a debate team meeting that ran long, then got caught up helping Mrs. Patterson clean up the classroom afterward. By the time he got home, ate dinner, and finished his homework, it was nearly midnight.

He was exhausted, bone-deep tired in a way that made his eyelids feel like lead weights. The rosary felt heavier than usual in his hands as he knelt beside the bed, and the words came slowly, slurred with fatigue.

"Hail Mary, full of... of grace..."

His eyes drifted shut. Just for a moment, he told himself. Just to rest them while he finished the prayers.

The next thing Leo knew, he was waking up on the floor beside his bed, rosary scattered across the hardwood, his mouth tasting like copper and terror. Dawn light filtered through his curtains, and his entire body ached like he'd been thrown down a flight of stairs.

That should have been his first clue that something had gone wrong. The second was the way his sheets looked—not just damp, but soaked through to the mattress, water still beading on the surface like morning dew.

But it wasn't until that night, when he knelt to resume his prayers with renewed determination, that Leo discovered the true cost of his failure.

The brown-eyed boy was waiting for him.

The paralysis hit the moment Leo's head touched the pillow, his body locking up like a rusted machine. But this time was different. This time, the thing didn't just stand in the doorway radiating silent hatred. This time, it walked into the room with slow, deliberate steps, its bare feet making no sound on the hardwood floor.

Leo tried to scream, tried to move, tried to reach for the rosary on his nightstand. Nothing responded. He was trapped in his own body, helpless as his eleven-year-old doppelganger approached with those burning brown eyes fixed on his face.

"You forgot," the boy said, his voice Leo's voice but wrong, distorted like an old recording played through broken speakers. "You forgot to keep me out."

The smell of creek water flooded the room, so strong it made Leo's paralyzed throat spasm with the urge to gag. Moisture condensed on the walls, ran down the windows, dripped from the ceiling with the steady rhythm of a leaking faucet.

The boy climbed onto the bed with movements that were too fluid, too graceful, like he was floating rather than walking. His clothes—the same shorts and t-shirt Leo had worn that day at the creek—dripped with water that never seemed to diminish, leaving dark stains on the blankets.

"Three years," the boy whispered, leaning close enough that Leo could see the fury swimming in those familiar-strange eyes. "Three years of your borrowed prayers, keeping me in the dark. Did you think I would just fade away? Did you think I would give up what's mine?"

Leo wanted to explain, wanted to apologize, wanted to promise he'd never miss another night of prayers. But his vocal cords were frozen, his tongue a useless lump of meat in his mouth.

The boy smiled, and it was the most terrible thing Leo had ever seen—his own face twisted into an expression of pure, predatory joy.

"Let me show you what I've been learning in the deep places," he said.

He cupped his hands together, and water began to pool in his palms. Not clean creek water, but something dark and foul, thick with sediment and crawling with things Leo didn't want to identify. The liquid moved with its own current, swirling and eddying like a miniature whirlpool.

"You stole my breath," the boy said, raising his hands above Leo's face. "Let me return the favor."

The water fell like a cold fist, hitting Leo's nose and mouth with shocking force. It tasted of mud and decay and something else, something that might have been blood. Leo's body tried to cough, tried to turn away, but the paralysis held him fast as the liquid poured down his throat.

He was drowning. Drowning in his own bed while something wearing his face watched with delighted fascination. His lungs burned as they filled with the spectral creek water, his vision graying at the edges as oxygen deprivation set in. This was how he would die—not from the original accident, but from this slow, deliberate execution carried out by his own displaced soul.

The boy leaned closer, his face inches from Leo's. "This is what you took from me," he whispered. "This is what it feels like to drown. But you won't die tonight. Tonight is just a lesson. A reminder of what waits for you when your prayers finally fail."

The water kept coming, an impossible amount pouring from those cupped hands, and Leo felt consciousness slipping away like sand through his fingers. Just as the darkness closed in completely, the weight on his chest lifted.

Leo jerked awake, gasping and choking, his hands clawing at his throat as his body remembered how to breathe. Creek water streamed from his nose and mouth, soaking into his pillow as he retched up what felt like gallons of the foul liquid.

His sheets were drenched, water dripping from the mattress onto the floor below. The room reeked of stagnant pond water and rotting vegetation. And there, in the growing puddle beside his bed, Leo could see the faint outline of small, bare footprints leading from the door to his nightstand and back again.

He stumbled to the bathroom and turned on every light, needing to banish the shadows where his doppelganger might be hiding. His reflection looked like a corpse—skin gray, eyes sunken, lips blue with oxygen deprivation. Water still dripped from his hair, and when he opened his mouth, pond weeds fell onto the white porcelain sink.

The message was clear. The brown-eyed boy was getting stronger, and Leo's protective prayers were no longer enough to keep him at bay. The thing in the water hadn't just taken his eyes, his place in the world—it had taken his sense of safety, his ability to rest.

And it was nowhere near finished with him.

Leo sank to his knees on the cold bathroom tiles, rosary clutched in his shaking hands, and began to pray with the desperate fervor of a man who had just glimpsed his own death. But even as the familiar words tumbled from his lips, he could smell creek water lingering in the air, could feel those burning brown eyes watching him from the shadows.

The war for his soul had entered a new phase, and Leo was no longer sure which side was winning.