Chapter 2: Blackwater Mark

Chapter 2: Blackwater Mark

A scream tore itself from Elias’s throat, raw and ragged, as he bolted upright. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. The air he sucked in wasn’t cold and briny, but warm and stale. It was the familiar air of his own bedroom.

He was tangled in his sheets, slick with a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the summer heat. His own bed. His own lumpy, blessedly real bed. The faint orange glow of a distant streetlight filtered through his grimy window, painting a familiar stripe across the cluttered floor. Outside, a siren wailed, a sound so mundane, so wonderfully normal, it was like music.

It was a dream. Just a dream.

Relief washed over him, so potent it left him dizzy. He fell back against his pillow, his breath coming in shuddering gasps. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to chase away the afterimages: the featureless grey sky, the oily black water, the horrifying, three-fingered hand.

His right arm throbbed.

He lowered his hands, his gaze snapping to his forearm. He flexed his fingers, rotated his wrist. There were no broken bones, no blood. But a deep, phantom ache pulsed from the muscle, a vivid echo of that crushing grip. He could almost feel the cold, damp pressure, the inhuman strength of it. He rubbed the spot vigorously, as if he could physically scrub away the memory.

“Stress,” he mumbled to the empty room, his voice hoarse. “Just stress. A nightmare.”

He’d had nightmares before, of course. Falling from impossible heights, being chased through labyrinthine corridors. But they were always hazy around the edges, dream-like. They faded with the morning light. This was different. The details were etched into his mind with the clarity of a photograph. The wet, puffing sound of the creature’s breath. The way its hidden face seemed to absorb the light. The chilling finality in its silent posture.

He swung his legs out of bed, the floorboards groaning under his weight. He needed water. He needed to ground himself in the tangible reality of his life. In the kitchen, he chugged a glass of lukewarm tap water, leaning heavily against the counter. He cataloged the sensations: the cool linoleum under his bare feet, the taste of chlorine in the water, the low hum of the ancient refrigerator. Real. All of it was real. His prison of a life had suddenly become a cherished sanctuary.

He tried to smother the memory under the heavy blanket of reason. He was overworked, sleep-deprived. His imagination, usually a source of comfort, had simply turned on him, weaponizing his fatigue to create a monster from the deep recesses of his subconscious. That had to be it.

He glanced at the dream journal on his nightstand. For the first time, he felt a flicker of resentment towards it. All those hours spent cultivating his inner world, giving his dreams power and meaning. Had he finally gone too far? Had he invited something in? The drawing of the star-sailed skiff he’d been working on seemed like a child’s fantasy, laughably naive compared to the raw, terrifying reality of the boatman’s vessel.

He felt a chill and rubbed his arms. He was still in his pajama shirt, the thin cotton clinging unpleasantly to his clammy skin. He started to peel it off over his head when he saw it.

On the sleeve of his right arm, exactly where the creature had grabbed him, was a mark.

It wasn't a bruise or a scrape. It was a stain. A faint, irregular smudge of oily black, no bigger than his thumbprint. It looked like a grease spot, but darker, more absolute in its color, as if the fabric itself had been dyed by a drop of pure night.

Elias stared at it, his blood running cold. The relief he’d felt moments before curdled into a thick, choking dread. It couldn’t be.

He stumbled into the bathroom, flicking on the harsh fluorescent light. He held his arm under the bulb, turning it back and forth. The stain was undeniably there, a smudge of impossibility on the worn cotton. He touched it. His fingertip came away feeling faintly greasy, and the scent that rose from the fabric was the same ancient, briny odor from the dream. The smell of the blackwater sea.

Panic, sharp and undiluted, seized him.

He ripped the shirt off and shoved the sleeve under the faucet, turning the cold tap on full blast. Water splashed against the porcelain sink. He grabbed the bar of cheap soap and began to scrub, his movements frantic. He worked the soap into a lather, grinding the fabric between his knuckles, his breathing growing ragged. The water sluiced over the material, washing away the suds, but the stain remained. Unchanged. Undiminished.

It wasn't just that it wouldn’t wash out. It was that the water seemed actively repelled by it. He watched, mesmerized with horror, as the stream of water parted around the black mark, beading on its surface before running off, as if refusing to touch the alien substance.

The stain wasn’t on the shirt. He realized with a sickening lurch of his stomach. It was in the shirt. It was a physical piece of that other place, a brand left on his world.

He let the ruined shirt fall into the sink. He backed away, his bare back hitting the cold, tiled wall. He looked at his own reflection in the mirror—the wild eyes, the pale, sweat-sheened face—and saw a man on the edge of a precipice. The line between his dream world and his waking one had always been his escape. Now, that line had not just blurred; it had been breached. Something had crossed over. Something had reached out of his nightmare and left a greasy handprint on his reality.

The sun was beginning to rise, casting a weak, grey light into the room. It was the dawn of another workday, another twelve hours of mindless labor. But for the first time in his life, Elias wasn't dreading the exhaustion of his job.

He was dreading the inevitable return of the night.

His apartment, once a drab but reliable shelter, no longer felt safe. It felt like a waiting room. Every shadow in the corner of his eye seemed to deepen and stretch. Every creak of the old building sounded like the groan of waterlogged wood. Sleep was no longer a portal to freedom. It was a summons. And tonight, he knew with a certainty that chilled him to his soul, the boatman would be waiting.