Chapter 8: The Survivor's Curse

The fluorescent lights in the hospital room hummed with mechanical indifference, casting everything in a harsh, sterile glow that made Alex's skin look corpse-pale. He'd been staring at those lights for three hours now, ever since the state trooper who'd found him collapsed on the highway had finally left him alone with Detective Martinez.

Martinez was a compact woman in her forties with graying hair pulled back in a severe bun and eyes that had seen enough human misery to develop a permanent squint. She sat across from Alex's hospital bed with a digital recorder between them, her expression carefully neutral as she reviewed her notes.

"Let's go through this one more time," she said, her voice carrying the patient tone of someone who dealt with trauma victims regularly. "You and your three friends—Callie Chen, Blake Morrison, and Sam Williams—went camping at Whitewater Creek three days ago."

"Four days ago," Alex corrected automatically, though the correction felt hollow. Time had become elastic since his escape from the forest. Minutes felt like hours, hours collapsed into seconds, and the constant sedatives they'd been feeding him made everything feel wrapped in cotton.

"Four days," Martinez agreed, making a note. "And according to you, they disappeared one by one under... unusual circumstances."

The way she said 'unusual' made it clear what she really thought. Alex had heard that tone from three different police officers, two paramedics, a nurse, and Dr. Kellerman, the psychiatrist they'd brought in to evaluate his mental state. It was the careful, professional tone people used when they thought they were dealing with someone who'd snapped under pressure.

"I know how it sounds," Alex said, his voice hoarse from hours of repetition. "But I'm telling you the truth. Something in that river took them. Something that... that collects people."

Martinez nodded with practiced sympathy. "Trauma can do strange things to memory, Alex. You've been through a terrible ordeal. Losing three close friends in the wilderness, being alone for days—it's understandable that your mind might try to make sense of it by creating explanations for things that might have simpler causes."

"Simpler causes?" Alex struggled to sit up straighter in the hospital bed, though the IV line in his arm limited his movement. "You think it's simpler to believe that three experienced hikers just wandered off and died within four days of each other?"

"I think it's simpler than believing in supernatural river monsters, yes."

The words hit Alex like a physical blow. He'd spent the past day trying to convince a parade of officials that his friends hadn't just gotten lost or fallen into ravines or succumbed to exposure. He'd described the pale amalgamations rising from the water, the chorus of familiar voices, the thing that wore his friends' faces like masks. Each time, he'd watched the same expression creep across his listener's face—concern mixed with professional skepticism, the look of someone deciding whether they were dealing with a witness or a patient.

"Have you found their bodies?" Alex asked desperately. "Any trace of them at all?"

Martinez's expression softened slightly. "We've had search and rescue teams combing the area since yesterday. So far, we've recovered Blake Morrison's backpack from a cliff about three miles upstream from your original campsite. The straps were torn, consistent with a fall from height."

"Blake didn't fall," Alex said. "He walked off that cliff deliberately. I watched him do it."

"You were exhausted, probably dehydrated, definitely in shock. Night-time visibility in dense forest—"

"His eyes were black!" The words erupted from Alex's throat with such force that Martinez actually leaned back in her chair. "Completely black, like they'd been filled with ink. That's not shock or dehydration or hallucination. That's something else entirely."

The detective made another note, and Alex could see her writing the word 'agitation' in her careful handwriting. Everything he said, every desperate attempt to make them understand, was being catalogued as another symptom of his deteriorating mental state.

"Alex," Martinez said gently, "I've been doing this for fifteen years. I've seen what the wilderness can do to people, especially when they're isolated and afraid. The mind creates explanations for things it can't process. It's a survival mechanism, not a character flaw."

"Then explain the voices."

"What voices?"

Alex realized he'd never mentioned the voices before. The doctors had been focused on his physical condition—severe dehydration, exhaustion, multiple lacerations from his desperate flight through the forest. The police had been interested in establishing a timeline, searching for clues about what had happened to his friends. No one had asked about the sounds that had driven him to flee.

"I can still hear them," he whispered, though even as he spoke, he knew he was making things worse for himself. "Callie, Blake, Sam. They're calling my name. They're asking me to come back."

Martinez's pen stopped moving. She studied Alex's face with the intensity of someone trying to solve a complex puzzle. "You're hearing your friends' voices now? In this room?"

"Not now. But when I was running, and sometimes when I'm trying to sleep. They sound so real, so much like themselves, but there's something underneath. Something wet and cold and..." Alex trailed off, seeing the expression on the detective's face. "You think I'm having a psychotic break."

"I think you need help processing what happened to you."

Dr. Kellerman chose that moment to enter the room, his soft-soled shoes making no sound on the polished floor. He was a thin man in his sixties with kind eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and the sort of carefully groomed beard that suggested he took his professional appearance seriously.

"How are we doing, Alex?" he asked, checking the chart at the foot of the bed. "Getting some rest?"

"He's been telling me about voices," Martinez said, her tone carefully neutral.

Dr. Kellerman nodded as if this were the most normal thing in the world. "Auditory hallucinations are common in cases of severe psychological trauma. The mind's way of trying to maintain connection with lost loved ones."

"They're not hallucinations," Alex said, but his protest sounded weak even to his own ears. "They're real. The thing in the river, it can use their voices to—"

"Alex," Dr. Kellerman interrupted gently, "I'd like to discuss adjusting your medication. The sedatives we've been giving you are helpful for sleep, but I think we need to add something that will help with the anxiety and... other symptoms."

Other symptoms. Delusions, he meant. Psychosis. The kind of mental breakdown that turned reliable witnesses into unreliable patients.

"I want to call my parents," Alex said suddenly. His mother and father lived six states away, but they were the only people left in the world who might believe him. Who knew him well enough to understand that he wasn't the type to fabricate elaborate fantasies.

"Of course," Dr. Kellerman said. "Though I should mention that they called earlier. Your mother is quite worried. She wanted to fly out immediately, but I assured her that you were stable and that it might be better to wait until you've had more time to process what happened."

The casual mention of his parents' concern hit Alex harder than all the professional skepticism combined. His mother had probably been crying. His father would be pacing the kitchen, trying to figure out what he could do from a thousand miles away to help his son. They were probably scared, confused, desperate for answers he couldn't give them.

Because who would believe the truth? Who could accept that their son's friends hadn't died in some tragic accident, but had been absorbed into something ancient and hungry that lived in the water and wore human faces like a collection of masks?

"I want to go back," Alex said quietly.

Both Martinez and Dr. Kellerman turned to stare at him.

"Back where?" the detective asked.

"To the river. I want to show you what I saw. I want you to see for yourselves."

"Absolutely not," Dr. Kellerman said firmly. "You're in no condition to—"

"I'm the only one who knows the truth!" Alex's voice cracked with desperation. "My friends are still out there, still suffering, and everyone thinks I'm crazy because what I saw doesn't fit into your nice, rational worldview!"

"Alex, please try to calm down," Dr. Kellerman moved closer to the bed, his expression shifting from professional concern to active alarm. "You're becoming agitated again."

"Of course I'm agitated! Three of the most important people in my life have been turned into components of some nightmare creature, and everyone keeps telling me I imagined it!"

Martinez stood up, closing her notebook. "I think that's enough for today. Alex, if you remember anything else—anything concrete that might help us find your friends—please let someone know."

Concrete. As if the testimony of the only witness wasn't concrete enough. As if his detailed description of events wasn't worth considering simply because it didn't match their preconceived notions of what was possible.

After they left, Alex lay in the hospital bed staring at the ceiling tiles and listening to the normal sounds of the hospital around him. Nurses chatting at their station, monitors beeping, televisions playing in other rooms. The sounds of a world where water was just H2O and rivers were just geographical features that didn't dream or hunger or collect human souls.

But underneath those normal sounds, so faint he might have been imagining it, Alex could swear he heard something else. A low murmuring, like voices calling from very far away. Familiar voices, speaking words he couldn't quite make out but somehow understood.

They were still out there. Still waiting. Still calling his name.

And no one in this sterile, fluorescent world would ever believe him.