Chapter 5: What the Water Showed Him

Chapter 5: What the Water Showed Him

The federal occupation had dwindled to a siege of attrition, and Leo and Alex were the last pawns on the board. The other park workers had been "debriefed and relocated," a sterile term for being scared into silence and shipped out. Only Leo and Alex remained, prisoners of their own familiarity with the park's machinery. They were kept on to maintain the generators that powered the feds' skeletal command post, a task that felt like tending the life support of their own prison.

The order, when it came from Agent Thorne, was delivered with his usual chilling lack of empathy. "The backup generator at the Aspen Grove campsite is failing. Get it running. Now."

Leo’s blood turned to ice water. Aspen Grove. The beginning. The place where a routine day had cracked open to reveal the nightmare beneath. "That generator can wait until morning," Leo said, his voice flat and hard. "We don't go out after dusk. That was the protocol."

Thorne didn't even look up from his map. "The protocol has changed. An electrical failure would compromise the perimeter sensors. You have your orders, Martinez."

It wasn't a request. It was a death sentence delivered as a work order. Leo looked at Alex, who seemed to shrink inside his uniform. The kid had lost weight, his eyes wide and perpetually scanning the shadows, his hands trembling whenever a branch scraped against the roof of the maintenance shop. He was a frayed nerve, and Thorne was about to purposefully place him on an anvil.

The drive to the campsite was the longest ten minutes of Leo's life. He pushed the utility truck as fast as he dared, racing the setting sun. But the forest was winning. Long, grasping shadows clawed their way across the road, and the canopy above was a tangled black mesh against a sky bleeding from orange to deep purple. By the time they arrived, the world was bathed in a gloomy, submarine twilight.

Aspen Grove was exactly as he remembered it from that first day, but stripped of all innocence. The picnic table was a squat, dark shape. The iron water pump where they had first seen the toads stood like a crooked tombstone. And the reservoir… the water was a sheet of black glass, perfectly still, reflecting nothing.

"Let's get this done," Leo said, his voice tight. "Alex, you stay by the truck. Keep it running. I'll handle the generator."

He grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight and a tool kit, his boots crunching on the gravel. Every sound was magnified in the heavy silence. The generator was housed in a metal shed a few yards from the water line. Leo’s hands worked with frantic, learned muscle memory, his mind screaming at him to hurry. The air was cold and thick with the smell of pine and damp earth, but underneath it, a familiar, foul odor was beginning to rise. The smell of swamp rot and thick, ancient river mud.

He felt it before he saw it. A change in the atmosphere. A pressure. The chirping of the last crickets abruptly ceased. The woods fell utterly, profoundly silent. Leo slowly straightened up, his flashlight beam cutting a nervous swath through the darkness. He swept the light along the edge of the water.

And there they were.

On the small, pebbled shore, sitting in a perfect, rigid line, were the three harbingers. They were darker than he remembered, like lumps of carved bog oak, their warty skin absorbing the light. Their black, glassy eyes were all fixed on the shed. On him.

A cold, paralyzing dread seized him. This was it. The omen. The signal.

"Alex!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "Get back! Now!"

He spun around, aiming his light back towards the truck. Alex was frozen by the open door, his face a white mask of terror, his eyes locked on the toads by the shore.

"Leo," Alex whispered, his voice trembling. "They're... they're for us."

Before Leo could move, before he could scream another warning, the surface of the reservoir broke. It didn't ripple; it heaved. A massive, dark shape rose from the black water with a sound like boulders grinding together.

It was impossibly tall, a monstrous silhouette against the last dying light in the sky. It was a towering, amphibious humanoid, its slimy skin a mottled camouflage of green and brown that shimmered wetly in Leo's beam. Grotesque warts clustered on its broad, powerful shoulders. Its head was wide and flat, dominated by two large, black, unblinking eyes that reflected no light, twin pools of absolute void. Long, webbed fingers tipped with jagged, yellowed claws flexed at its sides.

The Toad King. It wasn't a story. It wasn't folklore. It was here.

The creature moved with a speed that defied its bulk. It took one silent, fluid step out of the water and onto the shore, covering the distance to Alex in a horrifying instant. Alex let out a choked, half-formed scream as a massive, webbed hand shot out and clamped around his chest.

Leo was galvanized by a surge of pure, primal rage. The promise—get your crew home safe—roared in his head, a fire against the ice of his fear. He wasn't losing another one. Not like this.

He lunged for the heaviest tool he could find in his kit, his fingers closing around the cold, solid steel of a three-foot pry bar. With a guttural yell, he charged. The creature was already dragging Alex, who was kicking feebly, back towards the lake. The dragging sound in the gravel was a horrifying echo of the sound he’d heard on the beach when Zach was taken.

Leo swung the pry bar with all the force in his body, aiming for the creature’s arm. The bar connected with a sickening, wet thud, like striking a waterlogged tree trunk. There was no cry of pain, but the monster’s grip on Alex loosened for a fraction of a second.

It was enough.

Alex tumbled to the ground. The creature turned its massive head, its void-like eyes fixing on Leo. For a terrifying moment, Leo felt a psychic pressure, a wave of ancient hatred that felt like icy water flooding his skull. But then, with a low, guttural croak that sounded like the bottom of a well, it turned and slid back into the black depths of the reservoir, vanishing without a splash. The three toads on the shore disappeared with it.

Leo scrambled to Alex's side. The boy was gasping on the gravel, covered in the same foul, gelatinous slime Leo had found in the woods where Marcus had vanished. He was alive, breathing, but his eyes were wide and unfocused, staring at something far beyond the treeline.

"Alex? Alex, can you hear me? We have to go!" Leo shook him, trying to break through the shock.

Alex’s body began to shake, a violent, rattling tremor. He started to scream. It wasn't a scream of pain or fear, but of sheer, unadulterated horror.

"The water!" he shrieked, clawing at Leo’s arm, his eyes rolling back in his head. "I saw it! I saw it all!"

"What? What did you see?" Leo pleaded, trying to pull him towards the truck.

"The houses… Leo, the houses are still there! Under the water! The church, the streets… it’s all there, waiting!" His voice rose to a hysterical pitch. "He's on a throne… a throne made of… oh God, the bones… he’s the King of the drowned town and we're walking on his roof!"

Alex convulsed, his eyes wild with a terror Leo could barely comprehend. He grabbed the front of Leo’s shirt, his knuckles white.

"I saw them!" he screamed, tears and saliva streaming down his face. "I saw their faces in the water! Zach… and the boy… and Marcus… they're all down there with him! Their faces… just floating in the dark… waiting! He collects them! He keeps them! It’s his tribute, Leo! We're the tribute!"

The words struck Leo with the force of a physical blow. Jedediah's tale, the missing people, the horrible, psychic visions—it all slammed together into one unbearable truth. The feds weren't coming to save them. No one was. They were just an offering, left on the altar of a drowned god. And as Alex’s coherent screams dissolved into raw, animal wails of terror, Leo knew his promise had been broken beyond repair. All that was left now was the debt. And the debt would be paid in blood.