Chapter 7: The Gurgling Chase

Alex's lungs burned as he crashed through the forest, branches whipping at his face and roots reaching up to snare his feet. Behind him, the sound of pursuit grew louder—not footsteps, but something far worse. The wet, dragging noise of bodies that no longer followed the rules of human anatomy pulling themselves across the forest floor.

"Alex!" Callie's voice called from somewhere in the darkness behind him, but it was wrong—harmonized with itself, echoing from multiple throats simultaneously. "Don't run from us! We love you!"

He didn't look back. Couldn't look back. The memory of what he'd seen rising from the river was burned into his retinas—those grotesque amalgamations of his friends' features, twisted and reformed into something that wore their faces like poorly fitted masks.

The forest seemed to fight him with every step. Low-hanging branches caught his clothes and hair, thorny undergrowth shredded his pants, and the ground itself felt unstable beneath his feet, as if the very earth were trying to trip him up and deliver him to the things that hunted him.

"We're so lonely without you," Blake's voice gurgled from somewhere to his left. When Alex glanced in that direction, he caught a glimpse of pale flesh sliding between the trees—too many limbs moving in coordination, eyes that reflected the dim forest light like wet stones.

A sob escaped Alex's throat as he veered right, crashing through a stand of young pines. The familiar voice was the worst part. It was perfectly Blake—the same easy confidence, the same warm inflection—but layered with harmonics that suggested multiple vocal cords working in unison. As if Blake's voice had been recorded and played back through speakers made of human tissue.

"The water is perfect for everything," came Sam's gentle tone from directly ahead, and Alex skidded to a halt just in time to avoid running straight into another of the pursuing shapes.

This one had been Sam once—Alex could see fragments of his friend's kind face in the twisted features that regarded him with terrible affection. But Sam's body had been stretched and distorted, limbs elongated beyond human proportions, skin gone translucent so that Alex could see dark fluid moving beneath the surface like oil in water.

"You remember how peaceful it was," the Sam-thing said, its voice a perfect replica layered with wet, choking sounds. "How complete we felt. You can have that too. We can all be together forever."

Alex backed away, his heart hammering against his ribs. The thing that had been Sam reached out with arms that had too many joints, fingers that bent in directions human fingers shouldn't bend. Its smile was Sam's smile, but there were too many teeth behind it, arranged in rows like a shark's mouth.

A branch snapped behind him, and Alex spun to see the Callie-thing emerging from the undergrowth. It moved with that same fluid grace he'd seen in Blake's final moments, but magnified and made horrible. Where Callie had been compact and athletic, this version was elongated, stretched like taffy, with her features distributed across a face that was too long and too narrow.

"We've been waiting so long," it said in Callie's precise, organized voice, but the words came from multiple mouths that opened along its throat like gills. "Planning for this moment. You were always supposed to be the last. The final piece."

Alex realized with growing horror that he was surrounded. The Blake-thing had circled around to his right, its massive form sliding between the trees with impossible silence. More shapes were emerging from the forest—dozens of them, all wearing fragments of faces he didn't recognize but somehow knew had once been human.

They formed a loose circle around him, swaying slightly as if moved by a breeze he couldn't feel. Their voices rose in harmony, creating a sound that was almost musical if you could ignore the wet, gurgling undertones.

"Join us," they sang in unison. "Complete us. Make us whole."

The compulsion hit him like a physical force, that same hypnotic pull he'd felt building over the past three days. His friends' voices were all there, woven into the chorus, calling to him with perfect love and acceptance. It would be so easy to stop running, to walk forward into their embrace, to let the thing in the river add his voice to its collection.

For a moment, Alex almost gave in. The exhaustion, the terror, the crushing loneliness of being the sole survivor—it would all end if he just stopped fighting. He would be reunited with Callie and Blake and Sam, would never have to feel alone or afraid again.

But then he looked closer at the Sam-thing's face and saw something that made his blood freeze. There, in the creature's too-many eyes, was a flicker of awareness. Not the serene acceptance the voice projected, but something else—a trapped consciousness looking out from behind alien features, screaming silently for help.

It was only there for an instant before the empty contentment returned, but it was enough. Sam was still in there somewhere, still aware, still suffering. They all were.

"No," Alex whispered, then louder: "NO!"

He broke toward the thickest part of the circle, diving between two of the older amalgamations—things that might have been hikers or fishermen decades ago, their original features so degraded by the river's transformations that they looked more like abstract sculptures than anything human.

The circle collapsed inward as he ran, the creatures moving with coordinated purpose that spoke of a single controlling intelligence. Alex could hear them crashing through the underbrush behind him, their movements creating a symphony of wet sounds—flesh sliding against bark, too many limbs striking the ground in complex rhythms.

"We'll catch you eventually," Callie's voice called, closer than before. "The forest is ours. Every trail, every stream, every hiding place. You can't run forever, Alex."

She was right, and he knew it. His legs were already shaking with exhaustion, his breath coming in ragged gasps that felt like swallowing broken glass. The things pursuing him didn't tire, didn't need to breathe in any normal sense. They could hunt him for days if necessary.

But Alex kept running anyway, driven by pure animal terror and the horrifying knowledge of what awaited him if he stopped. The forest blurred past in shades of green and brown, punctuated by flashes of pale, reaching flesh whenever he dared to glance back.

"Remember when we went camping at Yellowstone?" Blake's voice asked conversationally from somewhere behind him. "How we stayed up all night telling stories around the fire? We can do that again. We have so many stories now, Alex. Stories from everyone who's ever joined us."

The casual normalcy of the statement was somehow more terrifying than any threat. It spoke of the thing's complete confidence, its certainty that this chase was merely a formality before the inevitable conclusion.

Alex stumbled over a fallen log and went down hard, his hands scraping against rough bark as he tried to break his fall. For a moment he lay gasping, listening to the sounds of pursuit growing closer. He could hear individual voices now—not just his friends, but dozens of others, all calling his name with various degrees of familiarity and affection.

"Alex, come back to us," said a voice he didn't recognize, warm and motherly. "We're your family now. Your real family."

"The water loves everyone equally," added another voice, this one with the accent of someone from the deep South. "Rich, poor, young, old—we're all the same in the water."

He forced himself back to his feet and kept running, even as his vision started to blur at the edges. The voices were getting inside his head now, creating a constant chorus of invitation and promise. They spoke of peace, of belonging, of never being alone again. They painted pictures of an existence without pain or fear or uncertainty.

All he had to do was stop running.

Through the trees ahead, Alex caught a glimpse of something that made his heart leap—the metallic glint of sunlight on a car windshield. The road. The blessed, normal, human road that led back to civilization and safety and people who had never heard the river's song.

"Almost there," he gasped to himself, pushing his burning legs to move faster.

But even as hope flared in his chest, he could hear the gurgling laughter behind him growing more confident. The things knew where he was going. They'd probably driven other victims toward this same desperate goal, let them taste the possibility of escape before snatching it away at the last moment.

"The road won't save you," Sam's voice whispered, so close now that Alex could feel something's breath on the back of his neck. "Nothing ends here, Alex. Nothing ever really ends."

The trees began to thin, and Alex could see the gravel shoulder of the mountain highway just ahead. A car was passing—a normal, wonderful, completely ordinary sedan driven by someone who had no idea that nightmares could walk upright and speak with the voices of the dead.

Alex opened his mouth to scream for help, but all that emerged was a strangled croak. His throat was raw from running and gasping, and his voice seemed lost among the harmonious chorus that surrounded him.

Behind him, the wet sounds of pursuit grew louder, more eager. His friends' voices rose in anticipation, calling his name with increasing urgency and need.

But the road was right there, just twenty yards away now. Twenty yards to safety, to sanity, to a world where water was just water and rivers didn't dream.

Alex summoned the last of his strength and sprinted toward salvation, the gurgling choir at his heels promising him that this was only the beginning.