Chapter 9: The Beckoning Deep

Three Years Later

The apartment in downtown Portland was everything Alex had thought he wanted—third floor, corner unit, far from any natural bodies of water. The closest thing to a river was the concrete-lined drainage canal six blocks away, and even that made his skin crawl when he had to cross it on his way to work.

He'd chosen the city specifically for its distance from wilderness, from camping, from anything that might remind him of those four days that had cost him everything. The urban landscape was comforting in its artificiality—steel and glass and asphalt, a world built by humans for humans with no room for ancient hungers or impossible amalgamations of flesh.

But water had a way of finding him anyway.

Alex stood at his kitchen sink, holding a glass of tap water and trying to work up the courage to drink it. It was a ritual he went through several times a day now, this simple act that had once been as automatic as breathing. The water looked normal—clear, odorless, perfectly ordinary city water treated and filtered and certified safe by municipal authorities.

But when he looked too closely, when the light hit it just right, he could swear he saw shapes moving beneath the surface. Pale shapes that reached upward with too many fingers, faces that wore familiar features arranged in impossible configurations.

"Just water," he whispered to himself, the same mantra he'd been using for three years. "Just H2O. Nothing else."

He forced himself to take a sip, fighting down the nausea that rose in his throat as the liquid touched his tongue. For just an instant, it tasted wrong—not like treated city water but like something organic and ancient, with undertones of decay and secrets.

The glass slipped from his shaking fingers and shattered against the kitchen floor, sending water and glass fragments across the linoleum in a spray that looked too much like reaching arms.

"Fuck," Alex breathed, pressing his palms against his eyes until spots danced in his vision. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Dr. Reeves had warned him about the setbacks. Three years of therapy, two hospitalizations, and a pharmacy's worth of psychiatric medications had taught him to recognize the warning signs. The hypervigilance around water. The auditory hallucinations that sounded exactly like his dead friends. The crushing certainty that he was losing his mind by degrees.

"Trauma responses," Dr. Reeves called them. "Manifestations of survivor's guilt and unprocessed grief." She had explanations for everything—the way his hands shook when it rained, the panic attacks triggered by the sound of running water, the insomnia that had become so chronic that four hours of sleep felt like a luxury.

What she couldn't explain was why he'd gotten worse instead of better over time.

Alex knelt carefully among the glass fragments, using paper towels to soak up the spilled water. Each piece of glass reflected the kitchen light in patterns that hurt to look at directly, creating prismatic displays that reminded him of sunlight on dark water. He swept the shards into a dustpan with mechanical precision, trying not to think about how the wet paper towels felt cold against his fingers in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

The phone rang as he was disposing of the mess, its shrill tone making him jump. The caller ID showed his mother's number—she called every Tuesday and Friday, a schedule they'd maintained since his release from the psychiatric hospital two years ago.

"Hi, Mom," he said, forcing warmth into his voice.

"Alex, sweetheart, how are you feeling?" Her concern was palpable even through the phone line, the careful tone of someone who'd learned to listen for signs of distress in every conversation.

"Good. Better. I had a good day at work." The lies came easily now, polished smooth by repetition. His job at the Portland Public Library was quiet and safe, surrounded by books and knowledge and rational explanations for everything. He'd become an expert at cataloguing information while revealing nothing of himself.

"That's wonderful, honey. Are you still seeing Dr. Reeves?"

"Every Thursday." Another lie. He'd stopped going to therapy six months ago, unable to bear another session of being told that his experiences were symptoms to be managed rather than memories to be trusted. Dr. Reeves meant well, but she lived in a world where water was just water and the dead stayed dead.

"And you're taking your medication?"

Alex looked at the pill organizer on his counter, filled with neat rows of antianxiety drugs, mood stabilizers, and sleep aids. He'd been taking them religiously for years, yet the symptoms Dr. Reeves attributed to trauma had only grown stronger. The medications dulled the edges of his fear but did nothing to silence the voices that called to him from every faucet, every shower, every puddle of rainwater.

"Every day," he said.

They talked for another fifteen minutes about safe topics—his mother's book club, his father's retirement projects, his sister's new job in California. Normal family conversation about normal family problems, with the careful avoidance of anything that might trigger another episode. No one mentioned camping or hiking or the three friends who had vanished into the wilderness and left him alone with his impossible memories.

After he hung up, Alex stood in his kitchen listening to the sounds of the city outside his window. Traffic humming along the streets, people walking past on the sidewalk, the distant rumble of a MAX train crossing the river. Normal sounds of normal life, the soundtrack of a world that made sense according to the rules of physics and psychology.

But underneath it all, so faint it might have been his imagination, he could hear something else.

Alex.

The voice was barely a whisper, carried on the sound of water moving through the building's pipes. It could have been the settling of old plumbing or the whisper of air through the vents. Any rational person would dismiss it as urban white noise, the ambient sound of a city's circulatory system.

But Alex recognized the voice.

Alex, we miss you.

Callie. Speaking with the same precise diction she'd used when organizing their study groups, when planning their camping trips, when calling his name as she walked toward the dark water three years ago. The voice was so clear, so perfectly her, that Alex found himself turning toward the kitchen sink as if she might be standing there.

The water is so beautiful here, Alex. So peaceful.

Blake's easy laugh echoed from the bathroom down the hall, accompanied by the sound of water dripping from a faucet Alex was certain he'd turned off completely. The laugh had the same infectious quality it had possessed in life, the same warmth that had made Blake the center of every social gathering.

You don't have to be alone anymore.

Sam's gentle voice rose from the drain beneath Alex's feet, carrying with it that familiar tone of compassion that had made him everyone's confidant. The voice that had once offered comfort after breakups and bad grades now offered something else entirely.

Alex pressed his back against the refrigerator, as far from any source of water as he could get in the small kitchen. His heart was racing, his palms slick with sweat despite the apartment's steady temperature. Dr. Reeves had taught him breathing exercises for moments like this—slow, measured inhalations designed to activate his parasympathetic nervous system and counter the fight-or-flight response.

But the breathing exercises assumed his terror was irrational.

We're waiting for you, Alex. We've been waiting so long.

The voices were getting stronger, more distinct. Alex could hear them emanating from multiple sources now—the kitchen sink, the bathroom down the hall, even the water heater in the utility closet. They spoke in perfect harmony, the way his friends had never spoken in life but had learned to speak as components of something larger and hungrier.

The city water tastes like us now. Every drop. Every glass. We're in all of it.

Alex's knees gave out, and he slid down the refrigerator door until he was sitting on the linoleum floor. The voices were right—he could taste it in every sip of water, that organic undertone that spoke of decay and transformation. He'd attributed it to his damaged psyche, to trauma responses and chemical imbalances and all the other rational explanations his doctors had provided.

But what if the doctors were wrong? What if his breakdown wasn't a symptom but an awakening? What if the thing in the river hadn't been content to stay in its isolated stretch of wilderness but had found ways to expand its influence, to follow the water cycle from mountain streams to urban taps?

We're everywhere now, Alex. Every time it rains, every time snow melts, every time water flows downhill toward the sea. We're in all of it. Part of it. And it's all part of us.

The voices were coming from inside his apartment now, emerging from every pipe and drain and faucet with increasing clarity. Alex could hear dozens of them—not just his friends but all the others the river had claimed over the years. Hikers and fishermen and campers, their voices blending into a chorus that spoke of connection and belonging and the end of loneliness.

You're the last piece, Alex. The final component we need to be complete. We've been calling to you for so long, reaching out through every stream and storm drain and swimming pool. Why do you keep running from us?

Because he knew what completion meant. He'd seen it rising from the dark water three years ago—the grotesque fusion of human consciousness and alien hunger that wore his friends' faces while consuming their individuality. Joining them wouldn't be reunion; it would be obliteration with the illusion of continuity.

But the isolation was killing him by degrees. Three years of living in a world where no one believed his story, where his own memories were dismissed as trauma symptoms, where every interaction was filtered through the assumption that he was fundamentally broken. He'd lost his friends to the thing in the river, but he'd lost himself to the aftermath—to the medications and therapy sessions and careful conversations that treated his experiences as pathology rather than truth.

Just one sip, Alex. One drink from the tap, and you'll never be alone again. We promise.

Alex looked toward the kitchen sink, where water was now flowing freely from the faucet he hadn't turned on. The sound was hypnotic—not the mechanical rush of urban plumbing but something more organic, more alive. The water caught the overhead light in patterns that seemed to move with purpose, creating shapes that looked almost like reaching hands.

He could feel his resistance crumbling, worn down by years of isolation and disbelief. It would be so easy to stand up, to walk to the sink, to cup his hands under that flowing water and drink deeply. To let the thing that had claimed his friends claim him as well, ending the long nightmare of being the sole witness to an impossible truth.

We love you, Alex. We've always loved you. Let us show you how much.

The voices rose in perfect harmony, a sound like water singing as it moved through ancient channels. Alex closed his eyes and listened to their promise of peace, of belonging, of an end to the crushing weight of being alone with his memories.

When he opened his eyes again, he was standing at the kitchen sink with his hands cupped beneath the running water, preparing to drink.

Outside his apartment window, the city hummed with oblivious life, and every pipe and drain and water main whispered his name.